her pistol held out before her, gripped firmly in both hands. Her black handbag, whence the revolver had come, lay open at her feet.
The barrel of the little gun was pointed directly at Valadrakul’s head, from a distance of perhaps four feet away. The wizard was utterly motionless, his hands hanging stiffly at his sides.
“This gun works here,” Susan said, speaking calmly but emphatically. “You’ve seen it.”
“Aye, mistress, I do so recall,” Raven replied warily.
“You are not going to hurt anyone else. Neither is Valadrakul. If anyone else is harmed, your wizard dies. Clear enough?”
Raven flicked his gaze to Elani; Prossie’s own eyes turned to follow, and she found that Pel and Amy stood one on each side of the female wizard, each gently restraining one of Elani’s arms.
“Now,” Susan said, “we are all going to sit down quietly, and talk this out, and settle what we’re going to do, and we’re going to do it without any sort of violence, because the first person to use violence is going to get a bullet in his gut. Is that clear?”
“Aye, mistress,” Raven said, “’tis plain as the day. And it pleases me well—I’d no wish for strife. Yon fool drew ’gainst me, and I’ve no blade; am I to perish undefended by the hands of such as he?”
“You know perfectly well that blasters don’t work here.”
“Ah, but mistress,” Raven protested, “in the heat of the moment I misremembered.”
Susan did not reply to that.
She didn’t lower the gun, either.
For a moment, no one spoke; then Ted Deranian burst out giggling.
“What an anti-climax!” he shouted. “No gunfight, no wizard war! My subconscious is wimping out on me.”
“Shut up, Ted,” Pel said.
Ted ignored him, and turned to Susan.
“Lady, if you’re a real person and I didn’t just dream you up,” he said, “I sure hope you don’t try this sort of thing in the courtroom!”
Chapter Five
“But I tell you, I am your rightful lord!” Raven shouted.
The Imperial soldiers shuffled their feet and cast uneasy, mocking glances at one another.
“The hell you say,” one man muttered.
“Mr. Raven,” the lieutenant explained patiently, “leaving aside that you killed the colonel, or at least your man did, and while it may have been self-defense, I’m not saying it wasn’t, still, that ain’t the approved procedure for promotion, and as I was saying, even leaving that aside, you aren’t in the chain of command.”
“And I have the word of General Hart that I am,” Raven insisted.
“You got the paperwork, the signed orders, you let us see ’em,” the lieutenant answered. “Otherwise—you don’t have the uniform, you don’t have the rank, you don’t have anything. You’re a civilian.”
“I am a nobleman born!”
“That don’t mean shit to us, sir. Our oath is to the emperor, nobody else. You could be the bloody King of the Franks himself, and we’d still have to tell you to call your Dad and get the papers.”
Pel, watching and listening from a few yards away, could see that a couple of the soldiers were not happy with that particular claim; he wondered who the King of the Franks was. He supposed it might be a title given to the heir to the throne, like the rank of “Prince of Wales” in Britain. It seemed a very odd thing to him that there would be such archaic titles in an interstellar empire.
“Listen, man,” Raven argued, “your master is dead, and you are in the enemy’s lands, lands that you know naught of, and where I am all that you have to guide you. Your lord, the General Hart, sent you hither to aid me—me, and none other. Then is’t not madness and folly to deny that command is fallen to me, that Colonel Carson is no more?”
“Mr. Raven,” the lieutenant explained wearily, “you are not in the chain of command. I am. I was the colonel’s second-in-command, and with him gone, I am in command. You are a civilian, and as long as you are, you can’t possibly assume command. That doesn’t mean we can’t cooperate.”
“Permission to speak, Lieutenant?” one of the men called.
Startled, Raven and the lieutenant turned.
The man who had spoken—Pel didn’t know any of the soldiers’ names yet—was leaning comfortably against a tree; now he straightened, and pointed to Prossie. “We’ve got a mu… I mean, a telepath with us, Lieutenant,” he said. “Why not ask her? Check with Base?”
“Aw, come on,” someone called. “She’s the one who started this and got the colonel killed!”
“No, that was the guy over there in the funny clothes,” another voice protested.
“I don’t mean she killed him,” the first replied, “but she was the one who said things were screwed up!”
“So maybe they were screwed up!”
The lieutenant looked over his men, chewing his lip as he did so, then turned to look consideringly at Prossie.
“All right, Thorpe,” he said. “You call home and tell us what we’re supposed to do.”
“’Tis a waste…” Raven began.
The lieutenant thrust out a warning hand.
Susan Nguyen cleared her throat warningly.
Raven fell silent, and two score eyes focused on the telepath.
* * * *
When Colonel Carson fell, Prossie had not waited for orders; she had immediately relayed the news to Carrie and told her to tell someone in authority.
Carrie had done so—she had left her cubicle and gone running for the Office of Interdimensional Affairs. Her orders were to report anything received from other universes to the Under-Secretary, and that included messages from Prossie, as well as contacts with the handful of psychics on Earth, or with Shadow’s creatures.
The Under-Secretary was not in.
“It’s urgent,” Carrie told the receptionist.
“I’m sure it is,” the receptionist replied. “Have a seat, and the Under-Secretary will be back momentarily.”
Carrie hesitated, and glanced toward the door—she made it look as if she were seeing if there were any sign of the Under-Secretary’s approach, but in fact she was turning away so as not to stare while she read the receptionist’s mind in hopes of finding out just where the Under-Secretary was.
The receptionist was not thinking about Under-Secretary John Bascombe; she was thinking about
