Knowledge is power. When you can’t do anything else, try to collect information.
He scowled. “Call me Eli, an’ a devoted servant of the Legion of Argos. That will be enough. As for news of you and your flight, I didn’t hear nothing. The media, as you call them, are pure corruption.” His voice changed to a programmed chant. “ ’Attend not to their mindless babble of invented trivia, nor to the self-aggrandizing trumpeting of their own importance. They are the instruments of Satan. Reject them, and dismiss their posturing.’ We done that, even at the height of their power. Then God’s strike came, and they were smashed. That is a blessing.”
“So, Eli,” asked Wilmer, “if you didn’t get news from the media, how do you know anything about the Mars expedition?” He was leaning across Celine, and she knew that look. It was blind obstinacy combined with a lack of concern for consequences. Wilmer was as tired as she was, and at the end of his patience. If he started needling Eli it could be fatal.
“Wilmer Oldfield, shut up,” she said, and gave him a sharp elbow in the ribs. Before he could do more than grunt in surprise, she turned to the other man. “Forgive his lack of control — or my lack of control over him. I’m afraid that our party lacks the strong discipline of the Legion of Argos since the death of our original leader. I now serve as leader, but I am new to the task. I request that you ignore all communications from this group that do not come to you directly from me.”
She was taking a chance — among other things, on what Reza and Jenny might be saying in the other car. But Wilmer had understood the message of the elbow. He remained silent. And organizations generally approved of what they practiced. Eli was nodding with what might be approval.
“Without discipline,” he said seriously, “there can be nothing.”
He made no attempt to answer Wilmer’s question of how the Legion of Argos knew about the Mars expedition. Celine wondered if she could find a more tactful way to phrase the same inquiry, but the two cars were already moving into the A-frame barn. The wooden door swung closed, and Eli indicated with his gun that they should step down from the truck.
Celine descended with difficulty. Their original mission plan had called for them to be coddled and resting after the return to Earth, sitting in a quarantined facility while their bodies made a first readjustment to higher gravity and physicians tested them inside and out for evidence of un-Earthly organisms. Instead, after days of tension and sleeplessness they were forced to remain alert for new danger.
She stepped close to Jenny, waiting by the other vehicle, and said softly, “Anything I should know about while you were driving in?”
Jenny shook her head. “I think they must have taken vows of silence. Nobody spoke, so we didn’t.”
“Good. Take my lead, and tell Reza to do the same. Treat me as an absolute boss. Don’t say anything unless I ask you to. I’ll explain when we have privacy.”
“I’ll tell Reza, and hope. But he’s still acting weird. That guy giving you trouble, is he? Bet he’s not one of their top people. Pushy type.” But Jenny was turning away as she muttered the last words, so that the approaching Eli did not hear her.
Maybe he wouldn’t have noticed anyway. Celine saw that he was talking and listening on a black handset. At least some radio communication was still working — or more likely working again. The world was fighting back. Supernova Alpha was not going to wipe out civilization.
“Right,” Eli was saying deferentially. “Very good. I sure understand that.” Then, in quite different tones to Celine and the others, “As I said, your arrival was foreordained. Our leader, newly returned to us, confirms it. She says that she will meet with you and she will speak to you in person. It is a great honor.”
Celine saw Reza’s expression. Angry now, he seemed ready to say, Damn right it’s an honor. She’ll have the honor of meeting the members of the first Mars expedition. Jenny gave him a warning nudge.
“Meet here?” Celine asked, before Reza had a chance to speak.
Eli shook his head. “Six kilometers from here.”
“Which is where?”
He stared at her. “You don’t know where you are?” His smile for a moment seemed as though it might reflect an actual feeling of pleasure. “Oh, I like that. We got us one prize example of arrogance and folly. You fly across space, millions an’ millions of miles to no place, intruding upon the very domain of God. You come on back. An’ you tell me you don’t know where you are when you git here. Do I have it right?”
“We don’t know where we are. I am not from this part of the country, and the last step of the return to Earth was not as we had planned it. We landed somewhere in the northeastern United States, that I am sure, but I could not tell you where within a hundred kilometers. Where are we? And where will we be going?”
Eli turned to wood again. “I don’t believe I oughta answer that question, ’cept to say you’ll travel to the headquarters of the Legion. If the leader permits, you may ask questions. If she chooses, she may decide to answer.”
“How should I address her? Doesn’t she have a name, other than just being your leader?”
“If the leader permits, you may ask her name.”
And if she chooses, she may decide to tell me. We already went through that one. Celine was fishing again — and getting nowhere. If she couldn’t do better than this, she ought to hand over to one of the others.
“We are ready to go,” she said. Delay would do nothing but make them more tired, and she was beginning to feel giddy and nauseated. They were long overdue for food and sleep. The members of the Mars expedition had been chosen for cast-iron stomachs and physical stamina, but there were limits. “We all need rest.”
“After you meet with our leader.”
“When will that be?”
“Right soon. We’re heading there at once.”
Celine expected to be told to return to the vehicles. Instead, Eli motioned them forward. At the rear of the barn a wooden trapdoor had been lifted. An iron ladder descended from it. Wilmer followed a woman with a shotgun, climbing down backward but turning his head to see where he was going. Reza and Jenny went after him.
Celine stood on the brink, staring down. The ladder was not a long one, it had nine or ten steps and ended in a narrow space lit by hanging lanterns. The walls and floor, all that she could see of them, were dark-stained wooden boards. Celine smelled creosote, turpentine, and moldering earth.
“Don’t just stand there, lady.” Eli spoke from close behind her. “Git on down.”
Had it all been a lie? Eli had made his own feelings clear. He would kill them gladly. And the space below more resembled a grave than a meeting place with the Legion’s leader. For all Celine knew, the command had been “Get rid of them — at once.”
With the gun at her back, Celine had no choice.
She took a deep breath and climbed down the ladder.
24
Celine found herself not in a room but a tunnel, running away in front of her in a long arc until it curved out of sight to the left. The roof, like the walls and floor, was timber, heavily braced every twenty yards. Lanterns, located at the braces, did not use the oil that their appearance suggested. Their light came from electricity, carried by power lines looped to brackets on the walls.
Celine turned to Eli, who had arrived at the foot of the ladder. “I said that we need rest, but maybe I didn’t put it strongly enough. I don’t think you realize what my crew has been through. For the past six years, we have never lived in a gravitational field as strong as that of Earth for more than a few minutes at a time. Our bodies are exhausted. It is impossible for us to walk six kilometers — or even one kilometer — before we have had food and sleep.”