Castle War c-4 Read online

  TOUCH SCREEN TO CONTINUE MESSAGE

  He brushed the screen with his finger and more lettering filled the lighted oblong.

  • Report to your building refectory for dinner. You also have the option of eating in. You may procure food at your nearest Grocery Outlet.

  • After dinner, watch the Information Special program that will start at 1900.

  • After the program you have one hour free time until Lights Out. You may continue to watch general programming or you may sit and get in touch with InnerVoice. Remember: peace is constant struggle.

  • At Lights Out you will go to bed and sleep for eight (8) hours. You will awake refreshed and happy, ready to face the challenges of the new day.

  Your Schedule Tomorrow:

  Tomorrow you will report at 0800 to the Committee on Employment, Job Training Subcommittee, Building 1. Complex 122, Dedication Drive. Be prompt. Watch this screen tomorrow for further details. That is all. You may proceed with implementation of the rest of today’s schedule.

  He had already familiarized himself with his “living facility.”

  He sat down. What would happen if he got on a bus, went to the edge of the city, got off, and kept walking? Perhaps this direct approach would work if he could keep his mind occupied somehow, if he could in some way not dwell on the fact that he was doing something forbidden.

  But was that possible? He had his doubts. No, his unconscious reactions would not escape InnerVoice. And there was nothing he could do about his unconscious — or “subconscious,” to use the popular term.

  Yet there had to be a way. Somehow the monitoring process would have to be defeated, or at least misled, until he could get to the castle. There, magic could be employed to rectify matters. But could he get as far as the portal? He did not know. That was not the only problem. He had no good reason to believe that the portal was still at the same location. It might have shifted again, or may well have disappeared altogether. He berated himself for being so foolish as to blunder through before checking things out. He should have immediately summoned Tyrene and alerted everybody that something was wrong with the Earth aspect.

  But the portal could have stayed put. He had no choice but to assume that it had and proceed from that assumption. So it was a matter of getting to the portal. He had to come up with a way of thwarting InnerVoice for as long as it took to get that far.

  He was getting nauseated.

  He was dismayed but not surprised. InnerVoice was probably extending and refining its control of his bodily functions. Eventually even stray rebellious thoughts would be punished. It was a powerful system of oppression, self-perfecting and self-perpetuating, more effective than any secret-police force or surveillance system.

  The screen brightened and a program came on. He sat and watched, trying to let the banal content — something about happy agricultural workers meeting new higher quotas — occupy the front part of his mind while he continued his scheming in the shadows.

  The ploy seemed to work, but he could not come up with any solutions. For the moment he was stuck in this strange world.

  When the program ended, something like a panel quiz show came on. Since he was under no compulsion to watch it, he looked for controls on the screen. There were none. He had to let it play.

  He didn’t relish the prospect of another cafeteria meal, so he went out to look for a food store.

  He walked several blocks before he encountered what passed for a business district. Finding what he took to be a supermarket, he went in.

  The place was virtually devoid of stock. The shelves held not much but empty packing cartons. There were a few items. There must have been an adequate potato harvest this year. Even at that, much of the stock was mushy and nearly rotten, alive with sprouting eyes. He found a few that were edible. There were no shopping carts or bags, so he broke off the eyes and stuffed the spuds in his pocket. He found canned goods. Most were vegetables, but he did come up with a lone can of “Beans (Baked).”

  That was enough to get him through a day and keep him out of the awful cafeterias. As usual there was no paying for anything, so he walked out of the store.

  On his way home he found himself following a woman. She was blond, her hair done in the unflattering pageboy style that was prevalent. Her figure — from what he could make of it through the baggy clothes — was trim and attractive. He drew abreast of her and glanced at her face.

  She wore no makeup. Her eyes were pale blue and her lips thin. She had a pronounced chin and an upturned nose. On the whole she was not unattractive.

  He wondered how reproduction was handled here. Were there married couples, families? He somehow doubted it. Mating centers, the offspring raised by the state. Worse, insemination centers supplied by mandatory donations. He had seen no children at all. Were they all sequestered in crèches? The thought of tiny children being inoculated with diabolical mind-controlling bacteria made him shiver.

  He walked on ahead of her. She followed him when he turned into the complex.

  In the lobby he pretended to read the bulletin board while waiting for her. When she passed him on the way to the stairwell he grinned.

  “Good evening,” he said.

  She gave him a brilliant smile. “Every day we’re getting better and better!”

  “It’s great, isn’t it?” he replied.

  “Oh, yes. Oh, yes.”

  She entered the stairwell and walked up.

  His eyes wandered over the bulletin board. One posting, handwritten in a scrawl, read: troubled citizen w. unsocail thougts wants to join “self-critisism group” help me citizens! Apt.

  He wondered how such “thougts” were possible, but obviously they were. InnerVoice’s control might not be as complete as he had surmised. Bugs in the system? Programming errors in the tiny biological computers?

  Perhaps there were random glitches, but he doubted that they were anything but rare. How long could he hope to go on thinking such blatantly unsocial thoughts as he was thinking right now?

  He would have to do something, and fast.

  Fifteen

  Laboratory

  “Jeremy, something’s happening.”

  Jeremy poked his head out of the hatch of the Sidewise Voyager.

  “Did you say something, Isis?”

  Isis was seated at the mainframe station. “Yes. We’re receiving data through the modem, but it looks like gibberish.”

  “Wait a sec, I’ll be up.”

  Jeremy sat in the craft’s pilot seat and entered a few commands on the keyboard of a Toshiba laptop computer, which was bolted to the control panel.

  A voice replied: “Will do, Jerry-baby.”

  “Hey, that’s ‘Jeremy.’ Cut the crap.”

  “Well, all right. Just trying to be friendly.”

  Jeremy’s Toshiba laptop had been an ordinary personal computer before he brought it into the castle. Since then it had inexplicably developed a personality of its own. After it interfaced with the old mainframe — the one that had been destroyed in the altercation with the Hosts of Hell — it got even stranger. Against his better judgment, Jeremy gave the laptop voice capability when he installed it in the traveler, and because the result unsettled him so much, he decided not to give the same capacity to the rebuilt mainframe. He was glad of the decision. He had needed a model in designing the mainframe’s operating system and chose the laptop’s MS-DOS system because it was handy. Perhaps this explained why the laptop’s personality and the mainframe’s were similar. Whatever the reason, he did not need two talking smart-asses.

  Now, Isis was another matter entirely. With the Isis program running, the mainframe’s personality was submerged. Or was it that Isis was an improved version of the mainframe? Both had the hots for him. The laptop, thankfully, didn’t.

  As he keyed in more commands, he felt a sudden wistful yearning for the days when computers didn’t think.

  “Run these instrument checks again,” he added orally.

  “Righ
t away, sweetie.”

  “Weird,” he muttered. He got up and left.

  Outside, he checked the small induction coil that was taped and glued to the craft’s bell-shaped hull. Screws had been impossible; the hull seemed impermeable, and Jeremy wouldn’t have chanced breaching it, anyway. Improvised as it was, the coil would provide a reading of the “interstitial etherium,” whatever that might be.

  Arriving at the mainframe terminal station, he asked, “What’s up?”

  “I can’t get a feel for what this data is,” Isis said fretfully.

  “It seems to be patterned, but I can’t put any kind of interpretation on it that makes sense.”

  Jeremy looked at the clot of numbers on the screen.

  “I smell pixels in all that.”

  “Pixels. You mean it’s —?” Isis’s brow went up. “Of course!” She threw her arms around Jeremy’s waist. “You’re so brilliant!” She typed in some commands.

  The numbers disappeared and what appeared in their place was the face of Lord Incarnadine.

  “Ah. You figured it out. Good work, Jeremy.”

  “Lord Incarnadine! Hey, you found a way to call again. Great. What’s your situation?”

  “Still on the way to a place where I might effect a spell to get me home. By the way, who’s your new assistant? I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

  “Hello again, my lord. It’s Isis. Remember?”

  “Isis! Why, how nice.… You know, I don’t recall ever seeing you in this configuration.”

  “I’ve never been in this configuration before. It was only a fortunate fluke that allowed it to happen — and of course Jeremy’s expertise.”

  Incarnadine chuckled. “You mean his recklessness in loading un-debugged programs into defective operating systems.”

  Isis pouted. “I’m hurt.”

  He laughed. “Don’t be. I’m glad you turned out as well as you did.”

  “But I don’t have bugs. Endearing foibles, maybe.”

  “I stand corrected. My dear, I’d love to chat, but we don’t have the time. Jeremy, I just called to check in. Don’t have any new information. There were some problems along the way, and I just got done riding a hellwind.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A fast but dangerous mode of transportation around here. The trick is getting off. I managed to do it, but the ride was exhausting. And my horse is about fagged out. I expect to be delayed even more. I’m assuming that Isis helped you with the operating system.”

  “With Isis, we have a fully functioning installation here,” Jeremy said. “Also, we’ve got the spell program pretty much worked out, but we need to input data on the state of the whatchamacallum.”

  “Yeah, getting a reading on the whatchamacallum is going to be a problem. Unfortunately I don’t have any answers. There are instruments in my study that would give us some idea, but one, they’re very old and temperamental and only I can use them effectively, and two, they wouldn’t yield the accuracy we would need, anyway.”

  “Right. We’re gonna need an energy-state factor accurate to a couple of decimal places,” Jeremy said. “We figure the only way to do that is to rev up the Voyager, fly out into the inter-universal medium, and get it.”

  Incarnadine shook his head sharply. “Absolutely not. Too dangerous.”

  “We know it’s dangerous, but it’s the only way we’ll get the data we need.”

  “We’ll end up losing you, the data, and the Voyager. No, too great a risk. Under no circumstances are you to try this. Understand?”

  Jeremy shrugged. “You’re the king.”

  “And don’t you forget it, kid. Seriously, it’s much too risky. Don’t do anything at least until I get there. There may be a way to interpolate the data from those rickety instruments of mine, but I’ll have to be there to do it.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Anything else happening?”

  “Yeah, Linda said that there’s something strange about the Earth aspect. Halfway disappeared, and there’s some unknown world out there.”

  “That’s not good,” Incarnadine said. “Anything else?”

  “Well, I haven’t heard anything. We’re pretty isolated up here. I’m expecting a report any minute now, though, and …”

  The door to the lab flew open and Osmirik rushed in.

  “Here’s Ozzie now, sir. Maybe he —”

  “Is that His Majesty?” Osmirik was breathless.

  “Right here, Ozzie. What’s wrong?”

  Osmirik elbowed Jeremy aside. “My lord!”

  “What is it, Osmirik?”

  “There is an impostor loose in the castle, someone claiming to be you!”

  Incarnadine said calmly, “Tell me all about it.”

  “This man has brought an invading force, my lord, dressed as Guardsmen and claiming to be Guardsmen. I have information that they are led by a man who is a double of Tyrene. The man claiming to be you is also a double, and from all reports a convincing one, at least on sight.”

  “Interesting. Have any idea where they come from?”

  “No idea, Your Majesty. Everyone is mystified. There has been sporadic resistance among our forces, but the problem of course is knowing which are our forces and which are not. Not many of our castle folk are convinced that the impostor is you, but there is widespread confusion.”

  “No doubt confusion reigns. Tyrene — our Tyrene — probably has his hands full, and we have a full-scale problem on ours.”

  “Yes, my lord. To compound the chaos, some of the Guardsmen have seen their own impostors among the invaders.”

  “That clinches it. It’s a mirror aspect.”

  “A mirror aspect?”

  “Another result of the same interstitial disturbance. It’s an ordinary aspect that has turned into a mirror image of the castle itself. Sometimes the image is true, sometimes wildly at variance with the original. I’ve never run into it personally, but my ancestors have. Though there’s nothing in the record about a mirror castle invading. It’s a crazy notion.”

  “It does beggar credulity, my lord.”

  “But it seems to have happened. Jeremy, you’ll have to throw a spell around the lab to protect yourself. Isis, do you think you can help Jeremy with that?”

  “It’ll be simple, my lord, compared to the other project.”

  “Yes, but you’ll be dealing with my double. He may be my double in everything, including magical power and knowledge of the castle’s secrets, as well as its spells. Understand? We’ll have to devise something out of the ordinary. Osmirik, could you come up with a puzzler out of some dusty old grimoire — you know, the real arcane stuff? There is the chance the impostor might not be the lover of antiquities that I am. It might give him trouble, at least temporarily.”

  “I may be able to oblige, my liege, though I shall have to be quick about it. Access to the library may already be threatened.”

  “Go then, and be quick.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Osmirik rushed out of the lab.

  “Jeremy, I don’t know what to tell you. Just get the big spell ready, and … well, I suppose I’ll get there when I get there.”

  “Yes, sir. Is that all?”

  “Yeah, except remember what I said about not risking your life.”

  “It looks like our lives are at risk as it is.”

  “Maybe, but don’t do anything rash. Keep a low profile, and get that protection spell up as quickly as you can.”

  Jeremy said, “I’ll do my best, but …”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, I’m still not used to all this magic stuff. Please don’t expect any miracles.”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself.”

  “He always does, my lord,” Isis said reprovingly.

  “We all know about Jeremy’s chronic inferiority bugaboo. Disabuse yourself of all that crap, mister. That’s an ironclad, kingly order.”

  Jeremy reddened. “Yes, sir.”

>   Incarnadine’s face split into a grin. “Tell my doppelganger not to do anything I wouldn’t do. I’ll try to keep in touch. See you later.”

  Incarnadine’s hand came up in front of his face, and his image faded.

  Jeremy and Isis sat staring at the darkened screen.

  “He’s such a great man,” Isis said:

  “Yeah.” After a moment, Jeremy yanked open a drawer, rummaged through it, and came up with a package of Hostess Twinkies. Linda kept him supplied. He ripped open the cellophane and stuffed one golden loaf-shaped cake into his mouth. “Excuse me,” he said with a full mouth, “but I’m starved.”

  Isis smiled. “Go right ahead. Would you like some coffee with that?”

  Jeremy nodded. He sat and chewed while his “assistant” got him coffee. Jeremy knew she was more than that. In fact, he couldn’t have accomplished anything without her. He should be getting her coffee.

  His gaze drifted to the Voyager, which sat up on its platform across the floor of the lab. He shook his head ruefully. There had to be a way.

  Sixteen

  The Mountains of Marnass

  He lifted his hand from the rippling water and watched his image waver in it. The faces of Jeremy and Isis were gone. He watched the surface of the melt pond until it grew still again. His image confronted him with a questioning stare.Who is real, you or me?

  “Don’t really know, my friend.”

  He went to his horse, which he had tethered to an evergreen bush. The animal had cooled off enough for him to allow it to take water. He led it to the rock-rimmed pond and let it drink of melted snows.

  A bracing wind blew across the peaks and down, whistling through stands of pine and fir. The scenery reminded him of the Rocky Mountains, western Colorado specifically. The hellwind had blown him across half a continent and deposited him on these slopes. It had been a strange sensation watching the ground drop away and feeling the horse beat its hooves against nothing but air. But beat it did, as on some invisible highway in the sky. The storm had lashed around him, lightning forking perilously close.