Greogi reported his squad gone and faxed away.
Edide reported and faxed away from her position on Bab al-Hadid Street.
Boman reported his squad gone from their position on Bab al-Ghawanima and then Boman was gone.
Loes reported from near the Lions Gate and flicked out.
Elle reported from the Garden Gate and was gone.
Kaman reported his squad successfully faxed away—Kaman seemed to be enjoying this military stuff too much, Daeman thought—and then Kaman redundantly requested permission to freefax home.
“Get your ass out of here,” radioed Daeman.
Oko reported her squad gone and followed them.
Caul reported in from below the Al-Aksa Mosque and flicked out.
Elian reported in, squad freefaxed home, and faxed himself away.
Daeman got his squad together, Hannah included, and watched as they flicked away, one at a time, from the growing shadows of the Western Wall Plaza.
He knew that everyone was gone, that the beam building had been emptied, but he had to check.
Tapping the repellor-pack’s controls on his palm with his middle finger, Daeman flew up, circled the beam building, looked in the empty beam building’s doorway to emptiness beyond, circled the empty Dome of the Rock and empty plaza, and then flew lower, wider circles, checking all the points in all four quarters of the Old City where his squads had held the perimeter while not losing a single human to the voynix and calibani attacks.
He knew he should go—the voynix and calibani were rushing in through the ancient, narrow streets like water into a holed ship—but he also knew why he was staying.
The thrown rock almost took his head off. The combat suit’s radar saved him—picking up the hurled object, invisible in the twilight gloom, and overriding the backpack’s controls, sending Daeman dipping legs and feet over ass, righting him just yards above the pavement of the Temple Mount.
He landed, activating all of his impact armor and raising his energy rifle. All of his suit senses and all of his human senses told him that the large, not-quite-human shape standing in the black doorway of the Dome of the Rock was no mere calibani.
“Daemannnnnn,” moaned the thing.
Daeman walked closer, rifle raised, ignoring the suit’s targeting system’s imperative to fire, trying to control his own breathing and thoughts.
“Daemannnnn,” the oversized amphibious shape in the doorway sighed. “Thinketh, even so, thou wouldst have Him misconceive, suppose this Caliban strives hard and ails no less, would you have him hurt?”
“I would have him dead,” shouted Daeman. His body was quivering with old rage. He could hear the rasp and scrape of thousands of voynix and calibani scuttling and scurrying beneath the Mount. “Come out and fight, Caliban.”
The shadow laughed. “Thinketh, human hopes the while that evil sometimes must mend as warts rub away and sores are cured with slime, yessssss?”
“Come out and fight me, Caliban.”
“Conceiveth, will he put his little rifle down and meet the acolyte of Him in fair fight, hand and claw to hand and claw?”
Daeman hesitated. He knew there would be no fair fight. A thousand voynix and calibani would be up here on the Temple Mount in ten seconds. He could hear the scrabbling and scratching in the Western Wall Plaza and on the steps already. He raised the rifle and clicked the targeting to Auto, hearing the target-confirmed tone in his earphones.
“Thinketh, Daemannnnnn will not shoot, noo,” moaned Caliban in the Dome of the Rocks’ doorshadows. “He loveth Caliban and his lord Setebos as enemies too much to draw—O! O!—a curtain o’er their world at once, yesss? Nooo? Daeman must wait for another day to let the wind shoulder the pillared dust, to meet death’s house o’ the move and…”
Daeman fired. He fired again.
Voynix leaped to the walls of the Temple Mount in front of him. Calibani scrambled up the steps of the Temple Mount behind him. It was dark now in Jerusalem, even the blue beam’s glow—constant for one thousand four hundred and twenty-one years—had gone out. The monsters owned the city once again.
Daeman didn’t have to look through the rifle’s thermal sites to know that he had missed—that Caliban had quantum teleported away. He would have to face the thing some other day or night, in a situation much less advantageous to him than today’s.
Strangely, secretly, in his heart of hearts, Daeman was happy at this thought.
Voynix and calibani both leaped across the ancient stones of the Temple Mount at him.
A second before their claws could reach him, Daeman freefaxed home to Ardis.
91
Seven and a half months after the Fall of Ilium:
Alys and Ulysses—his friends called him Sam—told their parents they were going to the Lakeshore Drive-in to watch the double feature of To Kill a Mockingbird and Dr. No. It was October and the Lakeshore was the only drive-in movie theater still open since it had portable in-car heaters on the stands as well as speakers, and usually, or at least in the four months since Sam had gotten his solo driver’s permit, the drive-in movie had sufficed for their passion, but tonight, this special night, they drove out through fields of harvest-ready corn to a private place at the end of a long lane.
“What if Mom and Dad ask me about the plot of the movies?” asked Alys. She was wearing the usual white blouse, tan sweater loose over her shoulders, dark skirt, stockings, and rather formal shoes for a drive-in movie date. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail.
“You know about the book To Kill a Mockingbird. Just tell them that Gregory Peck is good as Atticus Finch.”
“Is he Atticus Finch?”
“Who else could he be?” said Sam. “The Negro?”
“What about the other movie?”
“It’s a spy movie about some British guy… James Bond, I think the guy’s name is. The president likes the book the movie is based on. Just tell your dad that it was exciting, full of shooting and stuff.”
Sam parked his dad’s 1957 Chevy Bel Air at the end of the lane, beyond the ruins and in sight of the lake. They’d driven past the Lakeshore Drive-in and around the oversized pond that provided the “lake” for the theater’s name. Far across the water, Sam could see the small rectangle of white that was the drive-in movie screen and beyond that the glow of their little town’s lights against the low October sky, and much farther beyond that, the brighter glow of the real city to and from which their fathers commuted each day. Once upon a time, probably back during the Depression, there’d been a farm at the end of this lane, but now the house was gone—only overgrown foundations remaining, those and the trees lining the driveway in. The trees were losing their leaves. It was getting chilly as it got closer to Halloween.
“Can you leave the motor on?” asked Alys.
“Sure.” Sam started the engine again.
They began kissing almost immediately. Sam pulled the girl to him, set his left hand on her right breast, and within seconds their mouths were warm and open and wet, their tongues busy. They’d discovered this pleasure only this summer.
He fumbled with the buttons of her blouse. The buttons were too small and they went the wrong way. She let the loose sweater fall and helped him with the most troublesome button, the one under her soft, curved collars. “Did you watch the president’s speech tonight on TV?”
Sam didn’t want to talk about the president. Leaving the lowest buttons on her blouse buttoned, breathing rapidly, he slipped his hand inside her loose blouse and cupped her breast in its rather stiff little brassiere.
“Did you?” asked Alys.
“Yeah. We all did.”
“Do you think there’s going to be war?”
“Naw,” said Sam. He kissed her again, trying to bring her back to the passion at hand, but her tongue had gone into hiding.