Hell's Gate m-1, Page 2

  "All right, Chief Sword," he sighed. "My respects to Fifty Garlath, and I want his platoon ready to move out at first light tomorrow."

  * * *

  The weather was much cooler on the other side of the base portal. Although it was only one hour earlier in the local day, it had been mid-afternoon?despite Jasak's best efforts?before Commander of Fifty Garlath's First Platoon had been ready to leave base camp and step through the immaterial interface between Hilmaran swamp and subarctic Andara in a single stride. The portal's outbound side was located smack on top of the Great Andaran Lakes, five thousand miles north of their departure portal, in what should have been the Kingdom of Lokan. In fact, it was on the narrow neck of land which separated Hammerfell Lake and White Mist Lake from Queen Kalthra's Lake. It might be only one hour east of the base camp, but the difference in latitude meant that single step had moved them from sweltering early summer heat into the crispness of autumn.

  Jasak had been raised on his family's estates on New Arcana, less than eighty miles from the very spot at which they emerged, but New Arcana had been settled for the better part of two centuries. The bones of the Earth were the same, and the cool, leaf-painted air of a northern fall was a familiar and welcome relief from the base camp's smothering humidity, but the towering giants of the primordial forest verged on the overpowering even for him.

  For Fifty Garlath, who had been raised on the endless grasslands of Yanko, the restricted sightlines and dense forest canopy were far worse than that. Hundred Olderhan, CO of Charlie Company, First Battalion, First Regiment, Second Andaran Temporal Scouts, couldn't very well take one of his platoon commanders to task in front of his subordinates for being an old woman, but Sir Jasak Olderhan felt an almost overpowering urge to kick Garlath in the ass.

  He mastered the temptation sternly, but it wasn't easy, even for someone as disciplined as he was. Garlath was supposed to be a temporal scout, after all. That meant he was supposed to take the abrupt changes in climate trans-temporal travel imposed in stride. It also meant he was supposed to be confident in the face of the unknown, well versed in movement under all sorts of conditions and in all sorts of terrain. He was not supposed to be so obviously intimidated by endless square miles of trees.

  Jasak turned away from his troopers to distract himself (and his mounting frustration) while Garlath tried to get his command squared away. He stood with his back to the brisk, northern autumn and gazed back through the portal at the humid swamp they had left behind. It was the sort of sight with which anyone who spent as much time wandering about between universes as the Second Andarans did became intimately familiar, but no one ever learned to take it for granted.

  Magister Halathyn's tone had been dismissive when he described the portal as "only a class three." But while the classification was accurate, and there were undeniably much larger portals, even a "mere" class three was the better part of four miles across. A four-mile disk sliced out of the universe … and pasted onto another one.

  It was far more than merely uncanny, and unless someone had seen it for himself, it was almost impossible to describe properly.

  Jasak himself had only the most rudimentary understanding of current portal theory, but he found the portals themselves endlessly fascinating. A portal appeared to have only two dimensions?height, and width. No one had yet succeeded in measuring one's depth. As far as anyone could tell, it had no depth; its threshold was simply a line, visible to the eye but impossible to measure, where one universe stopped … and another one began.

  Even more fascinating, it was as if each of the universes it connected were inside the other one. Standing on the eastern side of a portal in Universe A and looking west, one saw a section of Universe B stretching away from one. One might or might not be looking west in that universe, since portals' orientation in one universe had no discernible effect on their orientation in the other universe to which they connected. If one stepped through the portal into Universe B and looked back in the direction from which one had come, one saw exactly what one would have expected to see?the spot from which one had left Universe A. But, if one returned to Universe A and walked around the portal to its western aspect and looked east, one saw Universe B stretching away in a direction exactly 180? reversed from what he'd seen from the portal's eastern side in Universe A. And if one then stepped through into Universe B, one found the portal once again at one's back … but this time looking west, not east, into Universe A.

  The theoreticians referred to the effect as "counterintuitive." Most temporal scouts, like Jasak, referred to it as the "can't get there" effect, since it was impossible to move from one side to the other of a portal in the same universe without circling all the way around it. And, since that held true for any portal in any universe, no one could simply step through a portal one direction, then step back through it to emerge on its far side in the same universe. In order to reach the far side of the portal at the other end of the link, one had to walk all the way around it, as well.

  Frankly, every time someone tried to explain the theory of how it all worked to Jasak, his brain hurt, but the engineers responsible for designing portal infrastructure took advantage of that effect on a routine basis. It always took some getting used to when one first saw it, of course. For example, it wasn't at all uncommon to see two lines of slider cars charging into a portal on exactly opposite headings?one from the east and the other from the west?at the exact same moment on what appeared to be exactly the same track. No matter how carefully it had all been explained before a man saw it for the first time with his own eyes, he knew those two sliders had to be colliding in the universe on the other side of that portal. But, of course, they weren't. Viewed from the side in that other universe, both sliders were exploding out of the same space simultaneously… but headed in exactly opposite directions.

  From a military perspective, the … idiosyncrasies of trans-temporal travel could be more than a little maddening, although the Union of Arcana hadn't fought a true war in over two centuries.

  At the moment, Jasak stood roughly at the center of the portal through which he had just stepped, looking back across it at the forward base camp and the swamp they'd left behind. The sunlight on the far side fell from a noticeably different angle, creating shadows whose shape and direction clashed weirdly with those of the cool, northern forest in which he stood. Swamp insects bumbled busily towards the immaterial threshold between worlds, then veered away as they hit the chill breeze blowing back across it.

  This particular portal was relatively young. The theorists were still arguing about exactly how and why portals formed in the first place, but it had been obvious for better than a hundred and eighty years that new ones were constantly, if not exactly frequently, being formed. This one had formed long enough ago that the scores of gigantic trees which had been sliced in half vertically by its creation had become dead, well dried hulks, but almost a dozen of them still stood, like gaunt, maimed chimneys. It wouldn't be long before the bitter northern winters toppled them, as well, yet the fact that it hadn't happened yet suggested that they'd been dead for no more than a few years.

  Which, Jasak told himself acidly, was not so very much longer than it appeared to be taking Fifty Garlath to get his platoon sorted out.

  Eventually, however, even Garlath had his troopers shaken down into movement formation. Sort of. His single point man was too far from the main body, and he'd spread his flank scouts far too wide, but Jasak clamped his teeth firmly against a blistering reprimand … for now. He'd already intended to have a few words with Garlath about the totally unacceptable delay in getting started, but he'd decided he'd wait until they bivouacked and he could "counsel" his subordinate in private. With Charlie Company detached from the Battalion as the only organized force at this end of the transit chain, it was particularly important not to undermine the chain of command by giving the troops cause to think that he considered their platoon CO an idiot.

  Especially when he did.

  So ins
tead of ripping Garlath a new one at the fresh proof of his incompetence, he limited himself to one speaking glance at Chief Sword Threbuch, then followed along behind Garlath with Threbuch and Magister Kelbryan.

  Although Jasak had enjoyed the privilege of serving with Magister Halathyn twice before, this was the first time he'd actually met Kelbryan. She and Halathyn had worked together for at least twenty years?indeed, she was one of the main reasons the UTTTA had acquired the exclusive use of Halathyn's services in the first place?but she normally stayed home, holding down the fort at the institute at Garth Showma on New Arcana which Halathyn had created from the ground up for the Authority. Jasak had always assumed, in a casual sort of way, that that was because she preferred civilization to the frontier. Or, at least, that she would have been unsuited to hoofing it through rugged terrain with the Andaran Scouts.

  He still didn't know her very well. In fact, he didn't know her at all. She'd only reached their base camp three weeks earlier, and she seemed to be a very private person in a lot of ways. But he'd already discovered that his assumptions had been badly off base. Kelbryan was a couple of years older than he was, and her Ransaran ancestry showed in her almond eyes, sandalwood complexion, and dark, brown-black hair. At five-eight, she was tall for a Ransaran … which meant she was only eight inches shorter than he was. But delicate as she seemed to him, she was obviously fit, and she'd taken the crudity of the facilities available at the sharp end of the Authority's exploration in stride, without turning a hair.

  She was also very, very good at her job?as was only to be expected, given that Magister Halathyn must have had his choice of any second-in-command he wanted. Indeed, Jasak had come to realize that the true reasons she'd normally stayed home owed far less to any "delicacy" on her part than to the fact that she was probably the only person Magister Halathyn fully trusted to run "his" shop in his absence. Her academic and research credentials were impressive proof of her native brilliance, and despite the differences in their cultural heritages, she and her boss were clearly devoted to one another.

  It had been obvious Magister Halathyn longed to accompany them this morning, but there were limits in all things. Jasak was prepared to go along with the fiction that vos Dulainah wasn't far past mandatory retirement age as long as the old man stayed safely in base camp; he was not about to risk someone that valuable, or of whom he was so fond, in an initial probe. Magister Kelbryan had supported him with firm tactfulness when the old man turned those longing, puppy-dog eyes in her direction, and Magister Halathyn had submitted to the inevitable with no more than the odd, heartfelt sigh of mournful regret when he was sure one of them was listening.

  Now the hundred watched the team's junior magister moving through the deep drifts of leaves almost as silently as his own troopers. Despite?or possibly even because of?the fact that he'd never worked with Kelbryan before, he was impressed. And, he admitted, attracted.

  She opened a leather equipment case on her belt and withdrew one of the esoteric devices of her profession. Jasak was technically Gifted himself, although his own trace of the talent was so minute that he was often astonished the testing process had been able to detect it at all. Now, as often, he felt a vague, indefinable stirring sensation as someone who was very powerfully Gifted indeed brought her Gift to bear. She gazed down into the crystal display, and her lips moved silently as she powered it up.

  Jasak saw the display flicker to life and moved a little closer to look over her shoulder. She sensed his presence and looked up. For an instant, he thought she was going to be annoyed with him for crowding her, but then she smiled and tilted her wrist so that he could see the display more clearly.

  In many ways, it looked a great deal like a standard Authority navigation unit. He quickly identified the latitude and longitude readouts, and the built in clocks?one set to the base camp's time, and one which automatically adjusted to local time on this side of the portal?and the compass and directional indicator Barris. But there was another arrow in the glassy heart of the sphere of sarkolis crystal, and it was flanked by two waterfall displays which had never been part of any navigation unit he'd ever used.

  "This one," she said quietly, tapping the green waterfall, "indicates the approximate distance. And this one," she tapped the red waterfall, "indicates its measured field strength. And the arrow, of course," she grinned, "indicates the direction."

  "I've never seen a unit quite like that one," Jasak admitted, and she snorted in amusement.

  "That's because Magister Halathyn and I built it ourselves," she told him. "Actually, he did most of the design work?I was just the grunt technician who put it together."

  "Oh, I'm sure," he said, shaking his head.

  "No, it's true!" she insisted. "The beauty of it is in the theoretical conception. Once he'd done the intellectual heavy lifting, actually building the spells was relatively easy. Time consuming, but not difficult."

  "Maybe not for you," Jasak said dryly, and she shrugged. "But the important thing," he continued, allowing her to drop the subject of her own competency, "is that I've never had a nav unit that pointed me directly at an unexplored portal before. It beats the hell, if you'll pardon the language, out of humping the standard detectors around the countryside on a blind search pattern. Especially someplace like this?" he waved a hand at the heavy tree cover "?where it's all but impossible to get a dragon, or even a gryphon, in for aerial sweeps."

  "That's exactly why Magister Halathyn's been working on it for several years now," Kelbryan agreed. "In fact, the whole reason I let him come out here in the first place?" somehow, Jasak felt confident, her choice of the verb "let" was probably painfully accurate "?was still let him field test the spellware."

  "And is that the reason you're out here, if I may ask?" Jasak inquired.

  "Well, for that … and to keep an eye on Magister Halathyn," she admitted with a slight smile.

  "Which suggests to my keen intelligence that you were, indeed, being overly modest about your contribution to the project," Jasak said. "Somehow I don't see the Institute letting both of its top magisters wander around three or four months' travel from home if they weren't both needed."

  "I suppose there might be some truth to that," she conceded after a moment. "Although, to be completely honest, and without trying to undervalue my own contributions to the R amp;D, the real reason I insisted on coming was to keep him from wandering around out here to handle any field modifications the spellware might require. Besides," she smiled infectiously, "it's the first 'vacation' I've taken in over five years!"

  "But why all the secrecy?" Jasak asked. She looked at him, and he shrugged. "The UTTTA must the champing at the bit to get this deployed, so why was Magister Halathyn so busy insisting that he wasn't really up to anything?"

  "I didn't have anything to do with UTTTA, or any other official part of the Union," she replied. It seemed evident from her toad and her expression that she really would have preferred to leave it at that, but after glancing at him consideringly for a second or two, she shrugged.

  "You may have heard that magisters can be just a little … paranoid about their research." She smiled briefly, and Jasak managed to turn a laugh into a not particularly convincing cough. "A little paranoid," in this case, was rather like saying that White Mist Lake was "a little damp."

  "Well, all right, maybe it goes a bit further than that," she said with a reluctant grin. But the grin faded quickly, and she shook her head. "In fact, it goes a lot further than that where Magister Halathyn is concerned. Especially for something like this. There's no way he was going to let even a whisper about this project out where the Mythalans might hear about it before he was ready to publish."

  Jasak nodded in suddenly sober understanding of his own.

  "While I'd never like to suggest that Magister Halathyn doesn't hold you in the highest respect, Hundred Olderhan," she continued, "the real reason we're out here? It's the farthest away from the Mythal Falls Academy he could get for his field test. And?"<
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  She paused, looking at him with the sort of measuring, considering look he was unused to receiving. After a moment, she seemed to reach some inner decision and leaned closer to him, lowering her voice slightly.

  "Actually," she said quietly, "we've done a bit of refining on his original theoretical work, as well. The sort which requires absolute validation before anyone publishes. I have to admit that I didn't really expect to be able to test all of the features in a single trip, but take a look at this."

  She tapped the unit with her wand, and both waterfalls and the arrow disappeared instantly. A brief moment passed, and then they lit again … but this time, they were noticeably different.

  She looked up at Jasak, one eyebrow crooked, and he frowned. Then, suddenly, his eyes widened and he gave her a very sharp glance indeed.

  "Exactly," she said, even more quietly. "Magister Halathyn's original idea was to produce a unit which would detect the closest portal and home a survey team in on it. But once we got into the theory, we discovered that we could actually nest the spells."

  "So that?" Jasak indicated the display, "?means there's a second gate out here?"

  "If it's working properly. And?"

  She tapped the display again. And again. And a fourth time. With each tap, the process repeated, producing new directional arrows and new distance and strength displays, and Jasak swallowed.

  "Is that why Magister Halathyn's been talking in terms of a cluster?" he asked, and she nodded.

  "Either the thing's completely screwed up?which is always possible, however little we might want to admit it?or else there are at least a total of five portals associated with this one." A jerk of her head indicated the swamp portal. "Or, more precisely, this one is one of at least five associated with this one," she amended, bringing up the original display on the strongest and nearest of the other portals.