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14 - The Door Through Space - Marion Zimmer Bradley · Classic Science Fiction Books

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  Speaker 1: Chapter fourteen. Outside in the streets, it was full day,
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  Speaker 1: and the color and life of Charon had subsided into
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  Speaker 1: listlessness again, a dim morning, dullness and silence. Only a
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  Speaker 1: few men lounge wearily in the streets, as if the
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  Speaker 1: sun had sapped their energy. And always the pale, fleecy
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  Speaker 1: haired children, human and furred non human, played their mysterious
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  Speaker 1: games on the kerbs and gutters, and staring at us
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  Speaker 1: with neither curiosity nor malice. Miellyn was shaking when she
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  Speaker 1: set her feet into the patterned stones of the street shrine.
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  Speaker 1: Scared Miellyn, I know, Evarin, you don't, but her mouth
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  Speaker 1: twitched in a painful attempt at the old mischief. When
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  Speaker 1: I'm with a great and valorous earthmen cut it out,
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  Speaker 1: I growled, and she giggled. We'll have to stand closer
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  Speaker 1: to me. The transmitters meant only for one person. I
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  Speaker 1: stooped and put my arms round her like this, Like this,
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  Speaker 1: she whispered, pressing herself against me. A staggering whirl of
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  Speaker 1: dizzy darkness swung around my head. The street vanished. After
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  Speaker 1: an instant, the floor steadied, and we stepped into the
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  Speaker 1: terminal room. In the mastershrine under a skylight dim with
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  Speaker 1: the last red slant of sunset. Distant hammering noises rang
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  Speaker 1: in my ears. Miellyn whispered, Evarin's not here, but he
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  Speaker 1: might jump through at any second. I wasn't listening. Where
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  Speaker 1: is this place, Miellyn? Where on the planet No one knows,
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  Speaker 1: but Evarn. I think there are no doors. Any One
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  Speaker 1: who goes in or out jumps through the transmitter. She pointed.
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  Speaker 1: The scanning device is in there. We'll have to go
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  Speaker 1: through the workroom. She was patting her cushioned robes into place,
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  Speaker 1: smoothing her hair with fastidious fingers. I don't suppose you
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  Speaker 1: have a comb. I've no time to go to my own.
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  Speaker 1: I'd known she was a vain and pampered brat, but
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  Speaker 1: this past all reason, and I said so, exploding at her.
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  Speaker 1: She looked at me as if I wasn't quite intelligent,
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  Speaker 1: Little Bunes, my friend noticed things. You were quite enough
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  Speaker 1: of a redneck, but I Nebran's priestess walked through their workroom,
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  Speaker 1: all blown out and looking like the tag end of
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  Speaker 1: an orgy in ad Karan abashed. I fished in my
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  Speaker 1: pocket and offered her a somewhat battered pocket comb. She
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  Speaker 1: looked at it distastefully, but used it to good purpose,
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  Speaker 1: smoothing her hair swiftly, rearranging her loose pinned robe so
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  Speaker 1: that the worst of the tears and stains were covered,
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  Speaker 1: giving me meanwhile an artless and rather tempting view of
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  Speaker 1: some delicious curvature. She replaced the starred tiara on her ringlets,
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  Speaker 1: and finally opened the door of the workroom, and we
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  Speaker 1: walked through. Not for years had I known that particular sensation.
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  Speaker 1: Thousands of eyes boring holes in the center of my back.
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  Speaker 1: Somewhere there were eyes in human orbs, of the dwarf chacks,
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  Speaker 1: the faceted stare of the prism, eyes of the toys.
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  Speaker 1: The workroom wasn't a hundred feet long, but it felt
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  Speaker 1: longer than a good many miles. I'd walked here and there.
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  Speaker 1: The Dwarf's murmured an obsequious greeting to Miellyn, and she
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  Speaker 1: made some lighthearted answer. She had warned me to walk
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  Speaker 1: as if I had every right to be there, and
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  Speaker 1: I strode after her, as if we were simply going
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  Speaker 1: to an agreed on meeting in the next room. But
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  Speaker 1: I was drenched with cold sweat before the farther door
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  Speaker 1: finally closed, safe and blessedly opaque behind us. Miellyn too
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  Speaker 1: was shaking with fright and it put a hand on
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  Speaker 1: her arm. Steady, kid, where's the scanner? She touched the
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  Speaker 1: panel I'd seen. I'm not sure if I can focus
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  Speaker 1: it accurately. Evarin never let me touch it. This was
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  Speaker 1: a fine time to tell me that. How does it work.
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  Speaker 1: It's an adaptation of the transmitter principle. It lets you
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  Speaker 1: see anywhere, but without jumping. It uses it trace a
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  Speaker 1: mechanism like the one in the toys. If Rakhal's electrical
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  Speaker 1: impulse pattern were on file. Just a minute, she fished
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  Speaker 1: out the bird toy and unwrapped it. Here's how we
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  Speaker 1: find out which of you this is keyed to. I
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  Speaker 1: looked at the fledgling bird lying innocently in her palm
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  Speaker 1: as she pushed aside the feathers, exposing a tiny crystal.
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  Speaker 1: If it's keyed to you, you'll see yourself in this
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  Speaker 1: as if the screen were a mirror. If it's keyed
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  Speaker 1: to Rakhal, she touched the crystal to the surface of
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  Speaker 1: the screen. Little flickers of snow wavered and danced, then abruptly,
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  Speaker 1: we were looking down from a height at the lean
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  Speaker 1: back of a man in a leather jacket. Slowly he turned.
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  Speaker 1: I saw the familiar set of his shoulders, saw the
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  Speaker 1: back of his head come into an aquiline profile, and
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  Speaker 1: the profile turned slowly into a scarred, seared mask, more
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  Speaker 1: hideously clawmuked and disfigured than my own. Rakhal, I muttered,
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  Speaker 1: shift the focus. If you can, Miellyn, get a look
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  Speaker 1: out of the window or something. Charon's a big city.
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  Speaker 1: If we could get a good look at a landmark.
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  Speaker 1: Rakhal was talking soundlessly, his lips moving as he spoke
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  Speaker 1: to someone out of sight range of the scanning device. Abruptly,
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  Speaker 1: Miellyn said there she had caught a window. In the
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  Speaker 1: sight field of the pane. I could see a high
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  Speaker 1: pylon and two or three uprights that looked like a
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  Speaker 1: bridge just outside. I said, it's the bridge of Summer snows.
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  Speaker 1: I know where he is. Now, turn it off, Miellyn,
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  Speaker 1: we can find him. I was turning away when Miellyn screamed, look.
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  Speaker 1: Rakhal had turned his back on the scanner, and for
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  Speaker 1: the first time I could see who he was talking to,
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  Speaker 1: A hunched catlike shoulder, twisted a sinuous neck, high held
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  Speaker 1: head that was not quite human. Evarin, I swore, that
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  Speaker 1: does it. He knows now that I'm not Rakhal. If
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  Speaker 1: you didn't know it all along, Come on, girl, we're
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  Speaker 1: getting out of here this time. There was no pretense
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  Speaker 1: of normality as we dashed through the workroom. Fingers dropped
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  Speaker 1: from half completed toys as they stared after us toys.
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  Speaker 1: I wanted to stop and smash them all, but if
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  Speaker 1: we hurried, we might find Rakhal, and with luck, we
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  Speaker 1: would find Evarin with him, and then I was going
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  Speaker 1: to bang their heads together. I'd reached a saturation point
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  Speaker 1: on adventure. I'd had all I wanted. I realized that
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  Speaker 1: I'd been up all night, that I was exhausted. I
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  Speaker 1: wanted to murder and smash and wanted to fall down
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  Speaker 1: somewhere and go to sleep. All at once. We banged
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  Speaker 1: the workroom door shut, and I took time to shove
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  Speaker 1: a heavy divan against it, blockading it. Miellyn stared, the
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  Speaker 1: little ones wouldn't harm me. She began, I am sacrosanct.
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  Speaker 1: I wasn't sure. I had a notion her status had
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  Speaker 1: changed plenty beginning when I saw her, chained and drugged
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  Speaker 1: and standing under the hovering horror. But I didn't say so. Maybe,
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  Speaker 1: but there's nothing sacred about me. She was ad inside
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  Speaker 1: the recess where the toad god swatted. There is a
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  Speaker 1: street shrine just beyond the bridge of summer snows. We
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  Speaker 1: can jump directly there. Abruptly, she froze in my arms
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  Speaker 1: with a convulsive shudder. Evarin Hobby tight. He's jumping in
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  Speaker 1: quick space reeled around us. And then can you split
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  Speaker 1: instantaneousness into fragments? It didn't make sense, but so help me.
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  Speaker 1: That's what happened. And everything that happened occurred within less
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  Speaker 1: than a second. We landed in the street shrine. I
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  Speaker 1: could see the pylon and the bridge, the rising sun
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  Speaker 1: of Charin. Then there was a giddy internal wrenching. A
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  Speaker 1: blast of icy air whistled round us, and we were
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  Speaker 1: gazing out at the polar mountains, ringed in their eternal snow.
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  Speaker 1: Miellyn clutched at me. Pray, pray to the gods of terror,
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  Speaker 1: if there are any. She clung so violently that it
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  Speaker 1: felt as if her small body were trying to push
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  Speaker 1: through me and come out the other side. I hung
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  Speaker 1: on tight Miellyn knew what she was doing in the transmitter.
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  Speaker 1: I was just along for the ride, and I didn't
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  Speaker 1: relish the thought of being dropped off somewhere in that
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  Speaker 1: black limbo which traversed we jumped again, the sickness of
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  Speaker 1: disorientation forcing a moan from the girl, and darkness shivered
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  Speaker 1: round us. I looked on an unfamiliar street of black
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  Speaker 1: night and dust bleared stars. She whimpered. Evarin knows what
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  Speaker 1: I'm doing. He's jumping us all over the planet. He
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  Speaker 1: can work the controls with his mind psychokinetics. I can
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  Speaker 1: do it a little, but I never dared. Oh, hang
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  Speaker 1: on tight. Then began one of the most amazing duels
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  Speaker 1: ever fought. Miellyn would make some tiny movement and we
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  Speaker 1: would be falling, blind and dizzy through blackness. Half Way
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  Speaker 1: through the giddiness, a new direction would wrench us and
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  Speaker 1: we would be thrust elsewhere and look out into a
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  Speaker 1: new street. One instant I smelled hot coffee from the
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  Speaker 1: Spaceport cafe near the Kharsa. An instant later, it was
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  Speaker 1: blinding noon, with crimson fronds waving above us and a
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  Speaker 1: dazzle of water. We flicked in and out of the
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  Speaker 1: salty air of Shainsar, glimpsed flowers and a dailon street.
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  Speaker 1: Moonlight noon red twilight flickered and went shot through with
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  Speaker 1: the terrible giddiness of hyperspace. Then suddenly I caught a
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  Speaker 1: second glimpse of the bridge and the pylon. A moment's
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  Speaker 1: oversight had landed us for an instant in Sharin. The
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  Speaker 1: blackness started to reel down. But my reflexes are fast,
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  Speaker 1: and I made one swift, scrabbling step forward. We lurched, sprawled,
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  Speaker 1: locked together on the stones of the bridge of summer snows,
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  Speaker 1: battered and bruised and bloody. We were still alive and
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  Speaker 1: where we wanted to be. I lifted Miellyn to her feet.
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  Speaker 1: Her eyes were dazed with pain. The ground swayed and
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  Speaker 1: rocked under our feet as we fled along the bridge.
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  Speaker 1: At the far end, I looked up at the pylon.
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  Speaker 1: Judging from its angle, we couldn't be more than a
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  Speaker 1: hundred feet from the window through which I'd seen that
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  Speaker 1: landmark in the scanner. In this street there was a
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  Speaker 1: wine shop, a silk market, and a small private house.
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  Speaker 1: I walked up and banged on the door. Silence. I
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  Speaker 1: knocked again, and had time to wonder if we'd find
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  Speaker 1: ourselves explaining things to some uninvolved stranger. Then I heard
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  Speaker 1: a child's high voice and a deep, familiar voice hushing it.
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  Speaker 1: The door opened just a crack to reveal part of
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  Speaker 1: a scarred face. It drew into a hideous grin, then relaxed.
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  Speaker 1: I thought it might be you, Cargill. You've taken at
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  Speaker 1: least three days longer than I figured getting here. Come
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  Speaker 1: on in, said Rakhal Sensar, end of chapter fourteen,