“Unless Eorl Theofrin joins him whole-heartedly?” Father Al nodded. “But he has to buy Theofrin’s support. I suggest we do what we can to eliminate his buying power.”
“Yes—and now, while he’s busy!” Rod turned to Geoff. “Try to wake Mama, son! She can get us out of these shackles. Try really hard.”
“I… will, Papa,” the little boy said hesitantly. “But sleeps real hard.” Nonetheless, he screwed his eyes shut, concentrating. His whole little face knotted up with trying.
Then he yawned.
“Son?… Geoff. Geoff!” Rod reached out and shook him. Geoff’s head lolled over against him, with a little smile, and the boy breathed deeply and evenly.
“Damn! Whatever they put into her must’ve been really strong—it put him to sleep, too! What do we do now, Father?”
“A good point.” The priest frowned down at his hands. “We are, as they say, thrown back on our own resources.”
“Which means me,” Rod said slowly. “Ready to try a theory now, Father?”
The priest sighed and straightened up. “I don’t have much choice now, do I?”
“We have come to the crunch,” Rod agreed.
“All right.” Father Al slapped his hands on his thighs. “Try to follow me through this. First, the Gramarye espers could read your mind—until you fell in love with one of them.”
“Hey, now, wait a minute…”
Father Al held up a hand. “It was your falling in love that did it. You can’t remember the precise moment you became psionically ‘invisible,’ of course; but you weren’t before you met her, and you were afterwards. What other event could have triggered it?”
“Mmf. Well, maybe,” Rod grumbled. “But why? I want her to be able to read my mind, more than anyone!”
“No, you don’t.” Father Al waved a forefinger. “Not subconsciously, at least. She may be your greatest blessing, but she’s also your greatest threat. A man’s vulnerable to his beloved when he’s vulnerable to no one else; because you’ve ‘let her into your heart,’ she can hurt you most deeply. You needed some defense, some way of keeping the core of yourself inviolate—which you couldn’t do, if she could read your mind.”
“It sounds sensible. But Lord, man, it’s been nine years and four children! Wouldn’t I have outgrown that by now? I mean, shouldn’t my subconscious be convinced it can trust her?”
“Should,” the priest agreed.
Rod was silent, letting the implications sink in.
Father Al gave him a few minutes, then said, “But that’s beside the point. What matters here is that the ability to shield your mind from a telepath indicates some power in you, some sort of esper ability that you’ve never been aware of. Not the ones we ordinarily think of—I’d imagine there’ve been some rather desperate moments in your life, when you could’ve used such powers badly.”
“Quite a few,” Rod said sourly. “In fact, my subconscious should’ve dredged them up out of sheer instinct for survival.”
“But it didn’t; therefore, you don’t have them. What I think you do have is the ability to use the psionic force that espers, and latent espers, leak into the general environment.”
Rod frowned. “But there must’ve been plenty of that power leaking into the rocks and trees of Gramarye; in fact, the place must’ve been permeated with it. Why couldn’t I use that?”
“Because you didn’t know how. You didn’t even know you could. You needed something to trigger it in you, to release it, and to teach you how to use it.”
“So what did it? Just being in a universe where magic works?”
“Not quite.” Father Al held up a forefinger. “When Redcap finished with you, you were so thoroughly chewed up that I doubt the most advanced hospital could’ve put your insides back together—but you wished for it, didn’t you?”
Rod nodded slowly.
“And it worked.” Father Al smiled. “That wasn’t the doing of a neophyte wizard—it was the work of a master. And I suspect it took a bit more power than your own.”
Rod frowned. “So where did it come from?”
“Lord Kern.”
Rod looped his head down and around, and came up blinking. “How did you figure that one?”
“The child, the one we saved from Redcap. He’s an exact double for your own infant son—and his analog.” He stopped, watching Rod closely.
Rod watched back—and, slowly, his eyes widened. “Holy Hamburg! If the kid’s Gregory’s analog—then his parents have to be analogs of Gwen and me!”
Father Al nodded again.
“And if Lord Kern’s his father—then Kern’s my analog!”
“But of course,” Father Al murmured. “After all, he, too, is High Warlock.”
“And if he’s my analog—then he and I can blend minds, just as his baby and Gregory did!”
“If you could learn to drop your psionic shield, yes—which, in a moment of great emotional stress, you did.”
“At least for the moment.” Rod frowned. “I never told you, Father—but each of those times I worked a ‘spell,’ I felt some… presence, some spirit, inside me, helping me.”
“Lord Kern, without a doubt!” Father Al’s eyebrows lifted. “Then perhaps there is something of the telepath about you—or about Lord Kern. For, do you see, whether or not you can hear his thoughts, you can apparently draw on his powers.”
Rod shivered. “That’s a little intimidating, Father. Well, at least he’s a nice guy.”
“Is he?” Father Al leaned forward, suddenly very intent. “What is he like?”
Rod frowned. “Well—from what I’ve felt when I was wanting some magic to happen—he seems kind, very kind, always willing to help anybody who needs it, even an interloper like me. But he’s stern; he knows what he wants and what he believes is right, and he’s not going to put up with anyone going against it.”
“Hm.” Father Al frowned. “That last sounds troubling.”
“Oh, no, he’s not a fanatic or anything! He’s just not willing to watch someone hurt somebody else! Especially children…”
“Yes?” Father Al prompted. “What about children?”
Rod shuddered. “Threaten a child, and he goes into a rage. And if it’s his child…”
“He loses control?”
“Well, not quite berserk…”
“It sounds somewhat like yourself,” the priest said gently.
Rod sat still a moment; then he looked up. “Well, shouldn’t it?”
“Of course.” Father Al nodded. “He’s your analog.”
Rod nodded. “But where’s your analog, Father?”
“Either we haven’t met him, or he doesn’t exist.” The priest smiled. “Probably the latter—and that’s why I can’t work magic here.”
Rod frowned. “But how come I’d have an analog, and you wouldn’t?”
Father Al held out his hand with the fingers spread. “Remember our theory of parallel universes—that there’s a set of ‘root’ universes, but any one ‘root’ branches? Every major historical event really ends both ways—and each way is a separate universe, branching off from the ‘root.’ For example, in our set of universes, the dinosaurs died, and the mammals thrived—but, presumably, there was another ‘main branch’ in which the mammals died, and the dinosaurs survived, and continued to evolve.”
“So there might be a universe in which Terra has cities full of intelligent lizards.” Rod gave his head a shake. “Sheesh! And the further back in time the universes branched off from one another, the further apart they are—the more unlike each other they are.”
Father Al nodded slowly, gazing steadily at him.
Rod frowned. “I don’t like being led. If you’ve got the next step in mind, say it.”
Father Al looked surprised, then abashed. “Pardon me; an old teacher’s reflexes. You see, this can’t be the universe next to ours—we’ve skipped a whole set in which science rules, and magic’s just fantasy. There should be a universe in which the DDT revolution failed, for example, and PEST still rules—and one in which the I.D.E. never collapsed, the old Galactic Union. And on, and on—one in which humankind never got off of Terra, one where they made it to the Moon but no farther, one in which the Germans won World War II, one in which they won World War I and World War II never occurred… millions of them. We skipped past all of them, into a universe far, far away, in which magic works, and science never had a chance to grow.”