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“It can’t happen,” I said, tugging at Lance’s arm. “O Lance, go and fetch my lady. He’ll listen to her. Please. We’re what we always were. We can’t have changed; and he can’t. O run, run and tell her. Modred’s not well.”
He yielded backward to my tugging at him—like tugging at a rock, it was; but I put myself between the two of them—him and Gawain. Too proud to back very far: I saw Lance’s eyes. “Percy,” I said, “go.”
And Percy ran. The lift had worked again, down the corridor. Vivien was there, and I could see she was satisfied ... O the malice, the bitter, bitter malice that her makers never put into her, but the place had given her, and the ruin of all she was.
“What,” she said, “has he shut you out then?”
“Be quiet,” Gawain said. “We don’t need you here.”
“Modred,” Lynette called, gently, using the com by the door. “Modred, are you all right in there?”
“He’s gone over the brink,” Lance said. “Modred, come out of there. We’ve sent for my lady. She won’t be amused.”
Silence from the other side.
“Maybe something hashappened to him,” I said, fearing more and more. “We aren’t right to think the worst of him.”
“He hears us,” Lance said. “His partner knows what he’s doing. I’d bet on it.”
I looked at Gawain, whose beautiful face was flushed with anger, whose eyes had no little of fear: Lance could beat him, and there was no doubt of that.
“Wayne,” Lynette said, “you covered for him? You knew?”
“Should I let you kill yourself and the rest of us?”
Lance reached out very deliberately and took Gawain’s arm, brushed me aside as if I had not been there. “We have orders,” Lance said.
And might have said more, but Percy came hurrying back to our relief. “She’s coming,” Percy said, “my lady and Griffin—” He stopped, transfixed at this sight we made, this laying on of hands that we had never done to each other. But we had nerved ourselves to fight, and had nothing of substance to fight but each other. Lance let Gawain go, further argument abided. And down the hall came Griffin and my lady, in their nightrobes, Griffin with his hair wet from the bath, my lady all a flurry of loose blonde hair and laces and her eyes—oh, my lady’s eyes, so full of fright. She knew, sheknew how wrong we had gone: but Griffin’s face was ominous, all threat and anger. He came right through us, punched the com button, slammed his great fist on the door.
“Modred,” he said. “Enough of this nonsense. Get this door open.”
And more silence. I found myself with my hands clasped before my mouth, like praying. O Modred, I thought, Modred, you can’t, you can’t defy him. O Lance, O Gawain, do something.
“Modred!”Griffin yelled, another slam of his fist.
And my lady slipped past and leaned up to the com. “Modred. You know my voice.”
A delay. “Yes, lady Dela.” Like himself, it was, all quiet and untroubled as Pass the salt, please.
“Modred, I want this door open.”
“In a moment, my lady.”
In a moment.O Modred. Something shivered through me. We had all gotten very still, even Griffin. My lady looked distraught and then gathered herself.
“What are you doing, Modred?”
Silence.
“Modred, what do you think you’re doing?”
Silence. A long silence. “That programof his—” Griffin said. “That program he wanted to use—”
“Modred,” lady Dela said. “I want this door open right now. I want you to shut down what you’re doing and come out here. No argument.”
A longer silence.
“We’ll have to get the cutters,” Griffin said.
“Modred. Did you hear that? Are we going to have to do the Maiddamage on account of you? Open the door.”
It opened, so unexpected it jolted all of us—whisk! and he was standing there facing us across the bridge, a black figure against the comp lights and the screens that showed nothing they had not showed before.
“Get him out of there,” Griffin said, and Lance and Percy moved in, took Modred’s arms—nothing. No countermove. Modred gave way to them and would have let them take him out now, but Griffin barred the way, and the rest of us, and lady Dela.
Griffin put his hand in the middle of Modred’s chest and stopped him face to face. “What have you done?” Griffin asked.
“Discover that,” Modred said, “sir.”
“Modred,” Dela said—not angry, not anything but stu
“Contacting that thing?”
“It’s done.”
“And what did you get from it,” Griffin asked. “Anything?”
“I was working on that. If you’ll let me continue—”
I don’t think he even understood it was effrontery.
“Not likely,” Griffin said.
“How could you do a thing like this?” Dela asked. “Who gave you leave? Did I?”
“No,” Modred said.
“And what have you sent out? Whathave you told it?”
“Mathematics. Chemistry. Our chemistry ... in symbolic terms.”
“Then it knows what we are,” Griffin said.
“As well as I could state it.”
“Get him out of here,” Griffin said. “Lock him somewhere.”
“Sir,” Lance said. “Gawain knew.”
Griffin looked at Gawain, and Gawain’s face went white.
“Then we’ll be talking to you as well,” Griffin said.
“Sir,” Gawain breathed and bowed his head.
Griffin looked about at all of us then, and I felt my bones go cold. “Get him out,” Griffin said then and Lance and Percivale took Modred past me without argument from Modred. I stood, close to blanking, knowing what I had done.
“Staff’s dismissed,” Griffin said. “Go about your business. We’ll straighten this mess up. Now. Out. Crew stays.”
I fled, down the corridor after Vivien, disheveled as I was. My bones ached, somewhere inside the terror and the confusion: we had worked ourselves until we staggered with exhaustion, and now this—this, that was somewhere at the bottom of it my doing.
I went down and washed and put on clean clothes, because I knew there was no hope of sleep, Our night was over before it had started.
“See,” Vivien said, “how organized it all is. No one knows what’s afoot.” She looked up and about her, where the noise continued, maddening, lifted her hands to her ears as if that could give a moment’s relief. “They lost all our chances days ago.”
“Shut up,” I said, zipping my clean jacket and pulling my hair from the collar. “If you’re so efficient, go back to your lab.”
Oh. Cruel. Viv turned such a look on me that was hate and terror at once.
“Or do something outside yourself, Viv. Be something larger than you are. Think how to protect that lab of yours. Come up with something. Help us, for once.”
“Elaine the fair.”
“Don’t be trapped by it. By the tape. You don’t have to be. Oh, Viv—”
“Percy talks about God,” she said. Gleaming behind the hate in her eyes was outright terror. “‘ Hefound God,’ our Percy says. And what kind of thing is that for one of us? What’s for me? You’ve all gone mad ... and Percivale’s gone and Modred—What of this wouldn’t have happened without you? I think it’s fu
“Hush, be still.”
“What, be still? Me, who could work miracles in that stupid tape ... Let me do one enchantment and I’d be out of here, let me tell you, sweet Elaine.”
“Couldn’t it be we?” I asked. “It’s always I, isn’t it?” I went for the door. Stopped, hearing uncharacteristic silence at my back.
She might have been upset, I had thought. But there was that terrible anger on her face, a sulle
“He talks about God,” she said. “We’re all rather above ourselves, aren’t we? Like Modred.”