Balik said wonderingly, “First came the sand, and then came wind behind it. And the wind picked up all the sand that got dropped on us, picked it up as fast as it fell, and scooped it right on along to the south. A miracle, Siferra. That’s the only thing we can call it. Look—you can see where the ground’s been scraped, where the whole shallow upper layer of ground sand’s been cleaned away by the wind, maybe fifty years’ worth of erosion in five minutes, but—”
Siferra was scarcely listening. She caught Balik by the arm and turned him to the side, away from the main sector of their excavation site.
“Look there,” she said.
“Where? What?”
She pointed. “The Hill of Thombo.”
The broad-shouldered stratigrapher stared. “Gods! It’s been slit right up the middle!”
The Hill of Thombo was an irregular middling-high mound some fifteen minutes’ walk south of the main part of the city. No one had worked it in well over a hundred years, not since the second expedition of the great pioneer Galdo 221, and Galdo hadn’t found anything of significance in it. It was generally considered to be nothing but a midden-heap on which the citizens of old Beklimot had tossed their kitchen garbage—interesting enough of itself, yes, but trivial in comparison with the wonders that abounded everywhere else in the site.
Apparently, though, the Hill of Thombo had taken the fullest brunt of the storm: and what generations of archaeologists had not bothered to do, the violence of the sandstorm had achieved in only a moment. An erratic zigzagging strip had been ripped from the face of the hill, like some terrible wound laying bare much of the interior of its upper slope. And experienced field workers like Siferra and Balik needed only a single glance to understand the importance of what was now exposed.
“A town site under the midden,” Balik murmured.
“More than one, I think. Possibly a series,” Siferra said.
“You think?”
“Look. Look there, on the left.”
Balik whistled. “Isn’t that a wall in crosshatch style, under the corner of that cyclopean foundation?”
“You’ve got it.”
A shiver ran down Siferra’s spine. She turned to Balik and saw that he was as astounded as she was. His eyes were wide, his face was pale.
“In the name of Darkness!” he muttered huskily. “What do we have here, Siferra?”
“I’m not sure. But I’m going to start finding out right this minute.” She looked back at the shelter under the cliff, where Thuvvik and his men still crouched in terror, making holy signs and babbling prayers in low stunned voices as if unable to comprehend that they were safe from the power of the storm. “Thuvvik!” Siferra yelled, gesturing vigorously, almost angrily, at him. “Come on out of there, you and your men! We’ve got work to do!”
3
Harrim 682 was a big beefy man of about fifty, with great slabs of muscle bulging on his arms and chest, and a good thick insulating layer of fat over that. Sheerin, studying him through the window of the hospital room, knew right away that he and Harrim were going to get along.
“I’ve always been partial to people who are, well, oversized,” the psychologist explained to Kelaritan and Cubello. “Having been one myself for most of my life, you understand. Not that I’ve ever been a muscleman like this one.” Sheerin laughed pleasantly. “I’m blubber through and through. Except for here, of course,” he added, tapping the side of his head.—“What kind of work does this Harrim do?”
“Longshoreman,” Kelaritan said. “Thirty-five years on the Jonglor docks. He won a ticket to the opening day of the Tunnel of Mystery in a lottery. Took his whole family. They were all affected to some degree, but he was the worst. That’s very embarrassing to him, that a great strong man like him should have such a total breakdown.”
“I can imagine,” Sheerin said. “I’ll take that into account. Let’s talk with him, shall we?”
They entered the room.
Harrim was sitting up, staring without interest at a spinner cube that was casting light in half a dozen colors on the wall opposite his bed. He smiled affably enough when he saw Kelaritan, but seemed to stiffen when he noticed the lawyer Cubello walking behind the hospital director, and his face turned completely glacial at the sight of Sheerin.
“Who’s he?” he asked Kelaritan. “Another lawyer?”
“Not at all. This is Sheerin 501, from Saro University. He’s here to help you get well.”
“Huh,” Harrim snorted. “Another double-brain! What good have any of you done for me?”
“Absolutely right,” Sheerin said. “The only one who can really help Harrim get well is Harrim, eh? You know that and I know that, and maybe I can persuade the hospital people here to see that too.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. It creaked beneath the psychologist’s bulk. “At least they have decent beds in this place, though. They must be pretty good if they can hold the two of us at the same time.—Don’t like lawyers, I gather? You and me both, friend.”
“Miserable troublemakers is all they are,” Harrim said. “Full of tricks, they are. They make you say things you don’t mean, telling you that they can help you if you say such-and-such, and then they end up using your own words against you. That’s the way it seems to me, anyway.”
Sheerin looked up at Kelaritan. “Is it absolutely necessary that Cubello be here for this interview? I think it might go a little more smoothly without him.”
“I am authorized to take part in any—” Cubello began stiffly.
“Please,” Kelaritan said, and the word had more force than politeness behind it. “Sheerin’s right. Three visitors at once may be too many for Harrim—today, anyway. And you’ve already heard his story.”
“Well—” Cubello said, his face dark. But after a moment he turned and went out of the room.
Sheerin surreptitiously signaled to Kelaritan that he should take a seat in the far corner.
Then, turning to the man in the bed, he smiled his most agreeable smile and said, “It’s been pretty rough, hasn’t it?”
“You said it.”
“How long have you been in here?”
Harrim shrugged. “I guess a week, two weeks. Or maybe a little more. I don’t know, I guess. Ever since—”
He fell silent.
“The Jonglor Exposition?” Sheerin prompted.
“Since I took that ride, yes.”
“It’s been a little more than just a week or two,” Sheerin said.
“Has it?” Harrim’s eyes took on a glazed look. He didn’t want to hear about how long he’d been in the hospital.
Changing tack, Sheerin said, “I bet you never dreamed a day would come when you’d tell yourself you’d be glad to get back to the docks, eh?”
With a grin, Harrim said, “You can say that again! Boy, what I wouldn’t give to be slinging those crates around tomorrow.” He looked at his hands. Big, powerful hands, the fingers thick, flattened at the tips, one of them crooked from some injury long ago. “I’m getting soft, laying here all this time. By the time I get back to work I won’t be any good any more.”
“What’s keeping you here, then? Why don’t you just get up and put your street clothes on and get out of here?”
Kelaritan, from the corner, made a warning sound. Sheerin gestured at him to keep quiet.
Harrim gave Sheerin a startled look. “Just get up and walk out?”
“Why not? You aren’t a prisoner.”
“But if I did that—if I did that—”
The dockworker’s voice trailed off.
“If you did that, what?” Sheerin asked.
For a long while Harrim was silent, face downcast, brow heavily knitted. Several times he began to speak but cut himself off. The psychologist waited patiently. Finally Harrim said, in a tight, husky, half-strangled tone, “I can’t go out there. Because of the—because—because of the—” He struggled with himself. “The Darkness,” he said.