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.Lift-Off.On the bridge, her hands alternately at rest and work-ing with a swiftsureness across several sensor pads, Adelaar sat half-lost in a recapitulationof her Listening Station, part environment, part sculpture, part haphazardstack of blackbox units, playing her sup-with-the-devil-games with target andtie-line, blocking approach alarms, feeding in false readings, singing theancient shipBrain to sleep.Quale was taking the tug up on a long gentle arc, moving west to chase thenight, the ar-grav blending so smoothly with the drives that the only sense ofmovement the passengers had, on the bridge or in the hold, came through thescreens that showed Tairanna curving more and more beneath them.Page 148 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlElmas Ofka stood beside Quale, watching the screens, her hands closed intofists, her body stiff.She'd had it with strangeness, her own world wascomplicated and difficult enough, she needed all her skills, her intellect andenergy to deal with the disintegration of the society she'd been born into.This extra element of confusion threatened to wrench control from her anddestroy any possibility of a return to order.At least, to the sort of ordershe remembered.If she could have expunged these aliens from the Horgulsystem, closed it away from the Outside as Adelaar planned to encyst an areaof the shipBrain, she'd have done it without a second thought.Too intelligentto linger mournfullyon impossible dreams, she forced herself to concentrate on limiting the damagethe aliens could do.She could feel the one called Aslan watching her.Themost dangerous of all of them, if Parnalee wasn't lying to her.Aslan knew toomuch.She was capable of too subtle a twisting; the play-maker Parnalee showedher how Aslan had turned the Prophet's Life on the lathe of her knowledge andimagination and used Pradix to rouse the Hordar out there watching, innocentvictims of the woman's will to power.Ruthless, he said, you can never trusther because she can manipulate you without you knowing a thing about what washappening to you.She gazed at the back of Quale's head, cold dislike washingover her though she knew that was foolish.Thing.Bought thing.Cat on aleash, dancing for whoever pulls it.With regret and resentment she thought ofthe pouch of prime rosepearls she'd handed over once her fighters were loadedin the tug.No threat voiced, no threat in his posture, but he didn't need tomake explicit what was implied by his control of the machine.No, she had nochoice; the rosepearls bought her this standing space, bought her a chance atthe Warmaster, a chance at liberation for all Hordar.Divers did what theymust to stay intact.Discipline was life.She disciplined her fears andforebodings and watched the screens, watched the War-master swimming smoothlytoward them.Though its image was at that moment little larger than her hand, its mass waspalpable.And she knew from evidence of her own eyes how huge it was.Two daysago she'd seen it gliding south over the Mines.Two days ago it descended overthem to smother them with its immensity, its power.Two days ago it went southto Guneywhiyk to burn a Sanctuary down to bedrock.It could have been theMines.But for the Prophet's Hand over them, it could have been the Mines.Twodays ago.She felt the dead clustering over her, swimming through the incenseof all these alien souls, puff of unseen smoke, bouncing under the ceiling ofthis alien place.Forgive me, she breathed at them.She sang in her mind theLitany of Dismissal/ The Promise of Return.Return to a quieter, gentlerworld, a world of calm and order.She sang the litany over and over as theWarmaster grew until there was nothing in the screen but a cratered blacksurface whose pits and flaws were more and more apparent, a calligraphy ofage.She sang the litany over and over, sang it for herself, gentling herself,sloughing off her responsibilities, her plans and fears.odd, when shehad so many anxieties and frustrations, how free she felt.As if the momentwould permit nothing less.Free.For the first time she began to understandthe seduction of war.How it stripped away everything but the need to survive,how it narrowed life to the Now, how it freed you from the nigglingirritations and ambiguities of ordinary life.She was enthralled and appalled.The power of it.The temptation.She looked over her shoulder at Aslan; thewoman's face seemed wide open, utterly without defense.She looked into thosecool amber eyes, strange eyes, and saw.she didn't know what she saw, butit terrified her.Aslan knew her, knew what tempted her, knew so much it wasan obscenity.Moments passed before Elmas Ofka found the courage to look away.She shook briefly with fear, then the Now took her again, she turned back tothe screen and forgot to be afraid.Karrel Goza leaned against the wall, its vibration playing in his bones, notshaking but a note sung in a voice so deep he felt it rather than heard it.Hewatched Tairanna drop away, savoring this pale small taste of flight.Otherwise the tug gave him nothing, how could he feel himself flying without aPage 149 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlsymbiosis of soul and air; shut inside here how could he feel anything? He wassad.The skips were fast and reliable and nearly indifferent to storms.Withina generation they and their cousins would most likely replace the airships;they were too tempting and with Outsiders coming in and out with no controlson them, Family businesses would be replacing airships as fast as they couldimport these machines.Would start building them as soon as they had thenecessary mechanics trained.Not all airships would go, cost still meantsomething; but yosspod bags would be left to claw out a poor living on thefringes of transport and hauling.More change.He sighed.For over two decades, since a childhood he remembered as calm,slow, ordered, he'd watched the world pass through wrenching transformationsbecause the Outside, the OutThere, intruded.What they were doing this daywould wrench the world yet more violently from that remembered time, but itmight (only might, he couldn't see beyond the hour, let alone so long into thewhat-will-be), it might ensure the coming of a new tranquillity.If he werefortunate and outlived this day, he might see that time within this life; ifnot, he was content to wait for the next.He, like Elmas Ofka, surrendered tothe point-Now and watched the Warmaster swimming toward them; he forgotsadness, forgot speculation.Immense.Gargantuan.Enormous.Colossal.Feeble,all those adjectives.No words were adequate.It seemed to him impossible thatmen had made that immensity, it seemed to him that it must have been somedemon also beyond words which had laid so impossible an egg.Which was absurd
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