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gods.
She was still a child of Rhodos, however sophisticated she might pretend to
be. She did not have her grandmother's upbringing.
The clavicle instructed her below a level she could follow with her conscious
mind. Her hands tingled; the effect was almost painful. Her muscles jerked
minutely, growing used to new directives, new channels of command being blazed
through her nervous system in just a few seconds.
For a moment, Rhita was both tired and nauseated, but that passed and she
straightened.
Surprised, she blinked away a few drops of water. The rain had stopped and she
hadm't noticed. Had she fainted or blacked out? She turned and saw Lugotorix
behind her, eyes focused over her head. Deme-trios halfway down the bank, and
Atta and Oresias and the soldiers along the edge, all stared at the gateway.
Rhita looked up.
The lens had risen and expanded, flattening. It gleamed oddly in the fresh
rays of a morning sun shining at a low angle between parting clouds. She
consulted the clavicle.
The gateway's changecL What's happening?
We have made it expand, the clavicle told her. You ordered it so.
Can I go through it?
Not advisable, the clavicle said.
Why?
We cannot know what is on the other side.
Rhita thought that made a great deal of sense, but their time was limited.
There no way we can find out?
None.
But it is open?
Yea
Can someone come through from the other side?
Yea
The enormity of what she had done began to sink in. She stood below and to one
side of the gate, admiring its uncanny beauty, like a suspended raindrop, or
the lens from the eye of some huge fish.
Water had risen above her ankles in the swale. It tumbled in glassy sheets
over the bent grass, muddy foam catching against the bank. Rhita glanced down
at it, annoyed, and decided it would be wise to climb up
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the bank, away from any possible flood. She stood beside Demetrios, holding
the clavicle level with her knees, breathing heavily. "It's open,"
she told him quietly. He glanced at Atta and Oresias, then back at her.
"Don't you want to tell them?"
"Of course," she said. "It's open," she called back over her shoulder.
"I opened it. The clavicle opened it."
Atta nodded, lips drawn down, eyes squinted in speculation. Oresias gave her a
short smile. "We can pass through?"
"It says we can, but that we shouldn't. It doesn't know what's on the other
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side."
Oresias walked down the bank. "We came here to investigate," he reminded them.
"Whatever's happened in Alexandreia, that's our mission.
You're too valuable to send through," he told Rhita, "and we need
Atta to command the pilots and soldiers in an emergency. Which this situation
is, probably. DemetriosB"
"I'd love to go," the mekhanikos said, eyes sparkling.
"No." Oresias lifted his hands and shook his head. "You didn't sign on to take
risks. I did."
Lugotorix watched them all closely, his eyes following the circle of
conversation.
"Bring down the second Object," Oresias ordered one of the soldiers.
The man ran off to comply.
"I don't know how to use it," Rhita said. "Grandmother didn't tell me."
"Careless of her," Oresias said, face glowing with the challenge.
"Wel'll see if it still works, and whether or not we can work it. If it works,
I go through. If not--"
"I'm responsible for all of the Objects," Rhita said.
"And I'm responsible for you," Oresias said. "If it doesn't work, we can at
least poke one of our caged animals through first, and then I'll follow if the
animal comes back alive." He touched Rhita's arm lightly.
"I'm not a complete fool, and I don't want to die. We'll be cautious."
The case containing the second object was brought down into the swale by the
soldier. Rhita opened the lid while he held it, and brought out the control
box and recirculation box, both attached to a thick black belt. "It's very
old," she said.
Oresias held up his arms and she wrapped the belt around his waist.
"How would you make it work?"
Rhita thought for a moment, then touched the control box with her hand. The
device did not communicate with her mind; apparently it was
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145 GREG BEAR
less sophisticated than the clavicle. What would Grandmother do? she asked
herself.
She'd talk to it.
"Please turn on," she said in Hellenic. "Please protect this man."
Nothing happened. She thought about that for a while, and then decided to use
her grandmother's English, a difficult language she was not at all fluent in.
"Please turn on," she said. "Protect this man."
Again, no response.
Rhita felt a flush of anger at her own ignorance. Why didn't Grandmother teach
me how to use all the Objects? Perhaps, toward the end of her life, Patrikia's
brilliance had faded. "I can't think of anything else to try . . "she said.
"Unless . . . it might work if I'm wearing it."
Oresias shook his head firmly. "If her Imperial Hypslots still sits on her
throne, she'd have my head if I put you in any danger. We'll try the animal
first." He ordered that a cony be brought forward.
"I'll go," Lugotorix told Rhita in confidence, speaking softly in her ear. She
shook her head; everything was confused. They were amateurs;
none of the others--probably not even her--had any idea of how momentous this
occasion was, how dangerous and not just for them.
The cony arrived, a small bundle of fur in a wicker cage, twitching a pink
nose, its cage suspended by a metal hook on a long wooden pole.
The water had not risen appreciably, so he took the far end of the pole and
stepped into the stream, walking awkwardly with the cage dangling before him.
"Where should I put it?" he asked.
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Despite herself, Rhita grinned. "In the center."
Lugotorix seemed to find this amusing, too; the Kelt seldom found anything
worth smiling about.
Oresias lifted the long pole and maneuvered the cage up to the center of the
glimmering lens. "Like this?" he asked. The cage and cony disappeared, as if
by some magician's sleight of hand.
"Yes," Rhita said softly, awed. She tried to visualize Patrikia falling
through such a lens, landing in an irrigation channel . .
"I'll leave it there for a few seconds," Oresias said, the pole trembling in
his grip.
Rhita heard a deep pounding sound to the north. Jamal Atta looked up from the
swale and flinched. "Tatars--Kirghiz!" he shouted. "Hundreds of them!"
Oresias's face blanched, but he continued to hold the pole in position.
"Where?"
Lugotorix leaped to the rim of the swale. Rhita was torn between staying near
the gate and Oresias and following the Kelt to find out what
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ETERNITY 147
was happening. Soldiers shouted around the beecrafi. The pounding grew louder.
"Horsemen and infantry!" Lugotorix called down to her. "They're close--a
couple of stadia."
"What banner?" Oresias asked, his entire upper body trembling with the weight
of the cage and pole. The lens hung steady and undisturbed, absorbing the cage
just as an invisible doorway swallows the top of a magician's rope.
"No banners," Jamal Atta said. "They're Kirghiz! We must leave!"
Oresias pulled the cage from the gate convulsively. Rhita saw a limp blur of
red and gray in the cage as Oresias swung the pole out over the stream to the
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