Kenneth Bulmer - Keys to the Dimensions 03, page 12
They reached the walls. Here and there they had been broken down. Redfern looked across the sea of grass.
Massive machines on tracks lumbered toward the city. Many had nuzzled up to the walls and smashed them in. Others reared up over their companions and rolled on and over the rubble. Immensely larger than the largest Terrestrial tanks, the machines moved with a ponderous menacing slowness, chilling in the remorseless non-stop ability of the onward surge. A few isolated clumps of crystals swung above them and even at this range and backlash Redfern felt the wash of hatred; but the machines rolled on unaffected.
“Aye, they are Anna’s black spawn,” growled Fezius. “Even the emotion projectors of the Senchurians could not stop them.”
“No. But this will.”
Redfern aimed the Paneco and again that insubstantial flicker of force rebounded, thickened into blackness. War machines dissolved into collapsing dust and the air rushed in to fill the vacuums. He swung the weapon along the walls, clearing out swaths and lanes through the ranks of machines, picking them off carefully, wondering when they would react.
Flanked by the two from Venudine, Redfern began a circuit of the walls. He came upon Infalgon war machines in triumphant onslaught; he left no sign that they had ever existed.
The reaction, when it came, fell far short of dealing with the power of the Paneco. Now Redfern could feel at ease that the other weapon remained with Val. Quite deliberately he had left it with her, for he knew that with it her chances of survival were immeasurably greater.
Flickers of flame stabbed from the war machines. One projectile struck a merlon and burst in a gobbet of foam. The three jumped back. Redfern caught the whiff of acid, and he chuckled.
“They’ll have to do better than that!”
He negatively cohered the resisting war machine out of existence.
“The Wizards used their beams of green force on them,” said Fezius in high glee. “Useless. But this weapon you have, Scobie, this is indeed a king of weapons!”
“It cost some to come by,” said Redfern dryly.
When all the Infalgon war machines were gone and with tiredness pressuring him in a way he found strangely soothing, Redfern walked down from the walls. Fezius and Offa came with him. They found Sarah and Val still porteuring people through the Portal that existed beyond the Ruby Gate.
“Where does it go?” he thought to ask.
People milled about, not sure what was happening, a little resentful that they were no longer being put through the dimensions, when Redfern explained to the two girls.
“You are safe now!” Fezius shouted in his bull-whip voice that could carry clearly from the back of a Griff. “Go home. We will bring your friends back from—”
“Where?”
Val, laughed, wearily, and brushed a strand of brown hair away from her forehead. “Sarah’s very good,” she said gravely. “I’ve no idea where we’re sending these people.”
Sarah, her psychedelic dress immaculate, chuckled. She looked in a very special way at Fezius as that dynamic bundle of energy swaggered up.
“It’s not important where, for we got them to safety, and now they can come back here. But it’s a dimension called the Shosunate.” She looked at Redfern meaningfully. “And there is, I understand, a direct connection to Earth.”
Vivasjan, disheveled but his dignity regained, gasped.
Gait joined them, with Mina. After the first impulse to turn his back on the bearded philosopher of Arlan, Redfern decided to let bygones be bygones. He told them about Tony and Nyllee and for a moment a sober hush fell on them. Then Fezius, toughly resilient, said, “If they’ve a couple of those Panecos between them I wouldn’t worry. We can get them out.”
“Of course,” said Sarah. She smiled at Redfern. “David and Alec went back to New York, we’d had news, the Contessa—”
Redfern told her.
She made a face.
“The bitch is really becoming too tiresome. We’re going to have to deal with Perdita soon!”
“She struck me as a very nice sort of woman,” rumbled Offa.
Fezius, mentioning a buffoon and an oaf, remarked that any slip of a girl could twist Oag Offa around her little finger, and Offa, mentioning Mac the Black, replied that witch girls could toy with Fezius and that…
Vivasjan, with his people around him and in the name of the Wizards of Senchuria, thanked Redfern and Val and their friends.
Slyly, Redfern said, “It’s strictly a trade, Vivasjan. Integrity and business acumen. You quoted the rules. I’ll let you know what we want in exchange.”
“Might come out pretty expensive,” said Fezius, irrepressibly putting his oar in.
Redfern thought of Tony and Nyllee, of his journey through the painted forest and the Suslincs and the Gara’hec and the emotion-milker on his head, and he nodded. He had gained some small insight into the overriding reasons why pressures sometimes had to be applied; but that didn’t mean he liked them any better.
“I think I know what is uppermost in our minds now, though,” said Sarah. “I’m for going home.”
“Me, too,” said Offa. “You and Fezius can squabble over just where home is, as usual.”
“Home,” said Redfern. “Earth.”
“Home,” said Val. “Montrado.”
Well, they might squabble over that too; but he had no doubt in all the world—in all the dimensions—that they’d sort that problem out, too.
The Wizards of Senchuria, Kenneth Bulmer - Keys to the Dimensions 03
