The emperor’s face was grim, his mouth a slit; his fingers drummed the table. The situation having become dangerous, he’d given his orders to Tenzin telepathically to save time. But the geshe had been so shaken by the morning’s disaster, it seemed best to receive his report face to face. The imperial presence might brace the man. Actually, it annoyed Songtsan Gampo to baby Tenzin, but the geshe was too valuable to see broken. And it wasn’t as if he asked for pampering.
The gong outside his door was tapped lightly; Maamo stepped inside and bowed. His baritone was furry, distinctly nonhuman. “Your Magnificence,” the ogre said, “Tenzin Geshe is here.”
“Send him in.”
The geshe entered and knelt, a sign, the emperor realized, of his mental state. Tenzin blamed himself for the demon’s presence in what they thought of as the fabric of the Tao. “Come, Tenzin,” the emperor said gruffly, and gestured at a chair. “Sit!” The geshe sat. “What were your results?”
Tenzin did not meet his gaze. “The demon withheld itself,” he answered. “It wasn’t interested in what I might ask. I did get an impression, though: that its action this morning was not to coerce us, but simply a test of its abilities. For its own enlightenment.”
“Oh?”
“I also believe it was dissatisfied with the results. Despite subjective appearances, and regardless of the overwhelming emotions it generated, it was unable to influence the physical universe directly. And I believe it does not fully appreciate how devastating its psychic effects were: It seems to have reached and terrified almost every psyche over a large area.”
It’s well it doesn’t fully appreciate it, the emperor thought. The streets of Miyun had been the site of wild panic. People had died of terror; others had gone mad, some murderously so. Fires had been set. And among the Yeti Guards, all but Maamo had panicked.
Maamo! Starting with the concept and technique for creating elementals, Tenzin had created the transcendant yeti. Among its species, the creature was as superior mentally as physically, and had remarkable influence on the others.
“Did you learn how far afield his ravages extended?”
“We reached out to Lord Kang, who is in the desert, approaching the lands of the Buriat. He said he’d felt something and had wondered what it was. The others felt it as a depression too slight for most to be consciously aware of. At Beijing it was somewhat less than here, but even there it was severe.”
And we don’t know if it’s found the limits of its reach, the emperor told himself. But even if it has, suppose it puts us through the same thing daily. We couldn’t govern from here; we’d have to move. And it may well have the ability, or the potential, to move about within the fabric. If so, we can’t escape it!
“What success did you have at placing anchor points in its field?” he asked.
For a moment the geshe hesitated, which in itself told Songtsan Gampo the answer. “Your Magnificence, I—I did not place any. It would destroy me if I tried. I would be vulnerable.”
For just a moment the emperor scowled, facially and mentally. He did not try! But the man was no doubt right. Surely he was if he thought so, and such a tactic would be dangerous at best. What particularly vexed Songtsan Gampo was that Tenzin, a geshe, lacked the tranquility to face the danger without fear. The man had great talent—he’d created Maamo!—but in the face of danger, he lacked spiritual strength.
At that moment the emperor knew what he needed to do. “Well. I will bring Jampa Lodro here. By force if necessary, though I don’t imagine it will be. I’ll send guards, human and yeti. And Maamo, in case the demon should exercise his powers while they’re enroute.
“Meanwhile I have something you can do. Return to the Circle; reach out and find Jampa. Presumably he’s at his gomba, but find out. Let him know about the demon and find out how he was affected by it, how his people were. But don’t let him know I’m sending for him. I am entirely unable to predict that man. I suspect he’ll come willingly, but he might conceivably go into the mountains, if he knows, and leave us to cope as best we can without him.”
He fixed the geshe with his gaze. “Can you do that?”
Tenzin colored not in anger but embarrassment. “Yes, Your Magnificence, I can do that.”
“Very well then; you are excused. Return to the Circle and see to it at once.”
Tenzin reported back within minutes: Jampa was at home. The demon’s morning outrage had shaken the novices somewhat, but the adepts had been little affected.
The demon had spread itself as widely, and thus as thinly in the Sigma Field as it dared, constrained by the fear that it might lose its unity and disperse, a dispersal that might well prove irreversible. It felt good spread thin though, as if it was absorbing knowledge from the Field, receiving it subliminally, learning what it needed to know about it, and how it related to the physical world. It would yet learn to shake mountains and tumble buildings.
Days earlier the demon had affixed an attention unit, a part of itself, on Maamo, to serve as a homing unit. It was analogous to a transponder of ancient times, but simple and inconspicuous, without physical existence, and through it he became aware that Maamo had left his customary bounds.
The demon gathered itself to see what was going on. It approached the interface cautiously though, for often a telepath, the great king himself, was near the ogre. Not that the demon felt any threat to itself in that, but if a telepath was present, to probe or even closely monitor Maamo would expose the connection. Which might result in Maamo being killed, and the demon had plans for the ogre.
At its remove from the interface, the demon discerned a number of faint swirls in the Field; Maamo was traveling, transecting the field as part of a group of large life forms. Three were the sort of single swirls he was familiar with, and had the flavor of ogre. The others were unfamiliar, some of them doubled, like a figure eight. These made him curious, and slightly uneasy.
After a time, he approached the interface near enough to discern whether there was a telepath near. In this he was very careful. If there’d been even a trace of the psychic “flavor of telepaths,” he’d have drawn back, hopefully before he was detected. But there wasn’t. He moved in until the swirls became living beings, seen as if with eyes.
What he discovered were one splendidly uniformed officer—the emperor’s adjutant—five soldiers from the emperor’s human elite guard, and three ogres, including, of course, Maamo. The humans were on horseback, and had a string of remounts. The mounted men were what he’d perceived as double swirls. The horses were trotting, the ogres keeping pace with them effortlessly. The demon put its attention on Maamo’s mind then, transferring his viewpoint to the ogre’s eyes, or actually to its imaging center.
Being non-telepathic, Maamo did not discern the demon’s thoughts as something foreign, at this or any earlier time, even though the demon had entered his mind. He felt impulses to remember and to think, but considered them part of himself and his own mental processes. They weren’t at all like the emperor stroking his mind. That was something to luxuriate to, and he knew it was the emperor doing it.
Sometimes this newer feeling brought to mind things he’d forgotten; often things from when he was his old self, before he’d been—changed, before he’d become like someone new. Sometimes it had brought to mind things it seemed he’d never known before, things that others of his people had experienced in the past. And sometimes it had caused him to have a knowingness about his body, its parts and functions that, when it was over, had left him more aware of them, more in control of them than before.
This time it brought to mind the meeting between the emperor and the man who had changed him. Much of their talk Maamo hadn’t understood, but unavoidably their words were recorded in his secondary memory.
There was more information than that: there was the meeting between the emperor and his adjutant, with Maamo present. From this the demon learned specifically what the adjutant’s mission was: He was being sent to fetch a man named Jampa, a wizard more powerful than either the emperor or Tenzin.
A wizard who might conceivably be a threat.
Also, Maamo had learned, someone else was with this Jampa, someone the emperor hadn’t expected to be there, someone who excited him. He’d referred to him as “the barbarian giant.” Nothing was said of why this excited the emperor, but it seemed to be something apart from the wizard or anything else. The emperor seemed to value the barbarian highly. Therefore it seemed to the demon that, in a pinch, both Jampa and the barbarian might provide him with leverage.
Thus the demon decided to continue with the adjutant’s company, even though they’d travel long hours from the palace. If nothing else, the trip might effect a further expansion of its readily accessible range, and provide a sense of the physical region. And it felt—somenow it felt that there was an opportunity there, though it couldn’t quite see what it was.
It considered the risks, too: They were going to fetch a wizard, who might discern him if he got near enough to the interface to preceive physical reality in a useful way. But the wizard would not be intimately acquainted with the mind of Maamo. Suppose I meld with Maamo, hide within him, suppressing my thoughts, simply watching the ogre’s. Would the wizard detect me then? The demon examined the idea. It would mean not using his own telepathy, or tapping power or information from the field in which he normally dwelt. It would mean perceiving little except what Maamo perceived, feeling little except what Maamo felt.
It was a challenge and a risk. Not a risk to himself; he considered himself safe from anything but the Great God, as long as he didn’t open his mind to intrusion and control. And he had no intention of doing that. The principal risk was to Maamo. Of course there was also a risk that discovery would teach the emperor and his wizards more about his own abilities.
But he would take those risks.
With the decision came a glow. It was the right thing to do, he felt sure.