The cold of Ruby's winter was shocking. The wind drove ice crystals like miniature scalpels through the close weave of the Inspector General's dress uniform.
The company of infantry drawn up at attention wore coveralls the color of dirty snow. The faces of the troops were as impassive as the armored bows of the tanks among the stunted fir trees, aiming their guns at Fortin.
An officer wearing a patch over her right eye stepped forward and saluted. "Sir!" she said. "I'm Major Fernandez, in charge of your escort. The High Council has already been briefed. They're proceeding to a rendezvous point."
Warts and knobs studded the tanks: weapons and sensors and defenses of various sorts. Snow collected on the angles and aided the camouflage of the huge vehicles, instead of melting from warm metal as Fortin would have expected. The shielding which hid the tanks from thermal imagers was obviously of exceptional quality.
As was every other facet of weaponry and mayhem in Ruby.
"Very good, Major Fernandez," Fortin replied without bothering to salute at all. He strode toward the nearest armored personnel carrier. "Let's get started then, shall we?"
The troops broke for their vehicles with a shout at Fernandez' order. Their noise didn't completely mask the whine of the hydraulic motors rotating the tank turrets so that their guns tracked the Inspector General to the millimeter as he walked.
A visitor to Ruby was a potential threat. North the War God was sacrosanct in Ruby, but security was greater even than North.
Though there was no wind to bite within the vehicle, the metal frame of Fortin's seat was cold. The APC made a lumbering take-off and turned hard to starboard.
Fortin smiled. If he'd really cared to know where he was being taken, the artificial intelligence woven into the metal braid of his uniform would have told him.
Neither where nor how they were going mattered. Nonetheless, Fortin was amused to know that his hosts would follow a unique course to a unique location; a location that shared with previous meeting places only the fact that it was a barren wasteland as far as possible from anything of significance to the security of Ruby.
"Brace yourself, please, sir," said Fernandez, locking the Inspector General onto his jumpseat with a powerful arm as the APC descended abruptly. She was missing two fingers as well as the eye.
Fortin's stomach squirmed with a feeling of queasy pleasure, like that he felt when he realized the tanks' big guns were tracking him and might at any instant blast him to vapor. It wasn't danger which provided that almost sexual thrill, but rather the thought that there might suddenly be a universe in which he didn't exist.
The drive engines howled to full power, buffeting the vehicle with echoes reflected from narrow walls to either side. Motion stopped except for engine vibration; then the APC dropped the last centimeter to the ground.
Fernandez slammed open the vehicle's hatch with the same motion in which her other arm released the Inspector General. He stepped out.
The sidewalls of the APC hadn't dropped because there wasn't room for them to do so within the narrow gorge in which the vehicle had landed. Two infantrymen were facing Fortin with automatic rifles leveled. Twenty meters above on the rim of the canyon were a pair of tripod-mounted plasma weapons whose bolts could devour the armored personnel carrier itself if circumstances required.
A colonel behind the infantrymen said, "All right, port arms." As the men obeyed, the colonel went on, "This way, sir. The Council is awaiting you."
The Council's command vehicle was fifty meters away, out of sight behind a kink in the gorge. Snow had drifted over the rim to knee height. High boots were part of the colonel's camouflage uniform, but Fortin wore polished shoes. Snow seeped over the tops of them, and he smiled at the discomfort.
Marshal Czerny leaned out of the side door. "Come aboard, sir," he said. His voice rasped as though he'd drunk lye, but it was probably just age. "Glad to have you with us again."
Of the five marshals around the table this time, Moro and Stein looked old, and Czerny looked as old as life itself. Tadley and Kerchuk were gone, replaced with a pair of men whose nametags read Breitkopf and Lienau—both of them middle-aged, wolf-lean, and with features that would have looked unusually cruel on sharks.
Fortin was a god to whom duration meant nothing, but duration meant decay and death for the tools he used. Despite the arrogance of the folk of Ruby, they would all die—and they didn't even care about that, so long as the system they served survived.
"Sit down, comrades," the Inspector General ordered. "I've come to see how you've succeeded with the task I posed you."
Fortin knew the answer already. The grins that not even discipline could hide, the wolfish joy in the faces above the gleaming gorgets—those were the signs of success.
The other four marshals looked at Moro. He spread his plump fingers as if to examine his nails and said, "We believe we may have a—theoretical—solution to your problem, yes. We first used the Main Battle Computer to locate the target—"
"Locate the position it would occupy if it actually existed," Breitkopf interjected in a surprisingly smooth voice. "The target is of course beyond even the possibility of actual observation."
"By us," added Stein.
"And quite a pretty problem it was then," Lienau continued, "since we still couldn't hit a point of separate spacetime with which we were in perfect balance."
"That balance was the key," said Marshal Czerny in his cadaverous voice. "Marshal Moro calculated—"
"The Main Battle Computer calculated," said Moro, fluttering his fingers in protest but unable to keep a note of pride out of his voice. "I merely suggested certain parameters."
"Marshal Moro calculated," Breitkopf said, "that the statistical identity of Ruby and the target point could be converted to physical identity."
"That if we bring Ruby into phase with the target," Moro amplified, "then we become the target—"
"And displace whatever's there now. Displace it out of the universe," Czerny concluded.
He coughed, lightly at first but growing into a racking series during which his fellows looked studiously at their displays and pretended not to hear.
"You say 'out of the universe,' " Fortin said. "Where, then?"
Lienau smirked. "Somewhere incomprehensible, sir," he said. "Certainly out of play."
"Ruby has been in a dynamic balance with the target—assuming the target exists," Marshal Stein said. "If we displace the target, then our segment of phased spacetime remains in static balance within the greater universe."
"Which is perfectly safe, of course," Moro said.
Czerny cleared his throat. No one except Fortin looked at Czerny until the old field marshal managed to say, "The security of Ruby must be our chief goal, of course, sir."
"As it is yours," Breitkopf added, in certainty as complete as his error.
"You say, 'bring into phase,' " the Inspector General said, examining his own perfect fingernails as he spoke. "How would you propose to go about that—if I were to give you the order to proceed?"
"Quite simple, really," Stein explained. "Just a matter of reversing the magnetic pole, Moro thinks."
"The Main Battle Computer indicates that would be the preferred course, yes," Moro agreed absently as his eyes focused on a hologram aligned so that only he could see it. "And the computer would, of course, control the power fed into a planet-wide network which would achieve the switch."
"It would have to take place when our phase was positive," Breitkopf said.
"Otherwise—" He drew his finger across his chrome gorget. There was a smile on his hard face, but madness winked behind his eyes at the thought of taking the action that would destroy Ruby rather than the target.
"So," said Fortin. "Physical preparations have to be made before your plan could be executed?"
Czerny began to laugh, a terrible sound that doubled him over in obvious pain. No one spoke.
Czerny straightened slowly and said, "Extensive preparations are required, sir. And they are already complete."
"We could not be sure when you would visit us again, Inspector General," Moro said. "So we decided to—improve our time while waiting."
"Nothing remains," said Lienau, "but for you to order us to execute the plan."
Fortin felt time stop—for him, for Ruby . . . for all the planes of the Matrix. Paths branched here, and ends approached with absolute finality.
"Very good, comrades," he said. "Execute your plan."
His face twisted. He began to laugh, louder and louder, until his eyes no longer focused for the quivering anticipation in his belly.