The voices came again, but he understood now. A radio rested on the cluttered desk beside the window. Beyond it the room was empty.
Slowly he moved his head around, looking in, searching the big room with his eyes, the gun raised, ready.
No, not empty. There, on the floor in the far corner, lay one body, and there, behind the table to the right, was another. But there were five guards in all. Where were the others?
Coming around the comer of the blockhouse, he had his answer. A trestle table had been set up in front of the main doors. A jug of wine rested at its center. Chairs and broken wine bowls lay scattered all about it.
One guard lay slightly down the embankment, on his back, his mouth open in surprise. Another still sat in his chair, a neat hole through his forehead. Nearby, in the doorway itself, a third was slumped against the wall.
Ben walked toward the scene, his eyes taking in everything. He had known these men. Only yesterday they had sat behind the barrier and applauded him. And now they were dead.
He stood before the man in the chair, looking down at him. His name was Brock and he had been shot from close range. Ben put the rifle down and crouched, studying the wound, then moved behind the dead man, examining the mess the bullet's exit had made, putting his fingers into the shattered cranium. The flesh was cold, the blood congealed.
He went through, examining the bodies in the guardhouse, then came out again, looking about him, picturing it in his mind. The duty guard, Cook, had been strangled at his desk, the other, Tu Mai, had been knifed in the back. Had one man done that? An officer, perhaps? Someone they had no reason to suspect? Whoever it was, he would have had to have killed the duty guard first, quickly, silently, and then Tu Mai, gagging the young Han with a hand, perhaps, as he dragged him down.
Ben turned. Yes, and he would have needed to have had the door closed while he did it, too, else he'd have been seen by the men at the table.
He closed his eyes, seeing it clearly. The officer had come out and turned, facing Brock, drawing his gun, giving Brock no time to get up out of his chair. He had fired once, then turned to shoot the second guard, Coates. The last of them, the young lieutenant, Mo Yu, had backed away, stumbling back over the embankment. He had been shot where he fell.
Ben frowned, wondering why he had not heard the shots, then understood. He and Meg must have been down in the cellar, getting things ready. Which meant this had happened two, three hours ago at most.
But why? Unless, perhaps, Virtanen knew that Tewl planned to go in early. Knew and was using that to firm up his alibi. Ben had checked. These five were all that remained of the old guard. The others—in the guardhouses in the town and at the mouth of the river—were Virtanen's men.
Yes, it all made sense. This was the communications post for the valley: the Domain's main—if not only—link with the outside. Vir-tanen, questioned by an inquiry, would claim that Tewl's men had attacked and overrun it. Which meant in all probability that Virtanen intended to delay only long enough for Tewl's men to be successful before he counterattacked, sweeping the intruders from the valley, strengthening the evidence in his favor.
AH of which put pressure on Ben to tie things up quickly. The question was, how long would Virtanen delay? An hour? Two?
He went back inside. The duty officer's log lay there on the communications desk in the comer. It was open, the last entry noted but not initialed. Frowning, Ben scanned the record quickly. It was as he'd thought. They had to call in every four hours.
Every four hours . . . And yet the last message had been sent out thirty minutes back.
Virtanen? Had Virtanen himself been here? It was unlikely. No, in all likelihood Virtanen was at dinner right now, somewhere public and in the company of important people—ch'un tzu of the first level. Some place where he could be reached "urgently" and summoned back to deal with this. Where he might make a great show of his concern, his "anxiety" for the Shepherds.
No. Not Virtanen, but one of his servants. One of his Captains, perhaps. Someone who could sit there for two hours with the bodies of the men he'd butchered, waiting to send a signal.
Ben closed the log, then set to work, doing what he'd come to do. Moving back and forth between the sled, he positioned a dozen of the big flash bombs along the shore beneath the guardhouse, setting their remote-trigger combinations. Then, climbing up onto the roof of the blockhouse, he set up the two wide-angle cameras, focusing one upon the quayside, the other on the mouth of the river, looking out beyond the anchored junks.
Finished, he looked up, noting how high the moon had climbed since he'd last looked, how bright it had become. The light was dying. In thirty minutes it would be dark.
He turned, looking back at the silent figures on the terrace outside the blockhouse. It was strange how little he felt. He had liked the men, enjoyed their company, but now that they were dead he felt no sadness, no sense of outrage. It was almost as if ... well, as if they were merely machines now, like the morphs he used, or like Amos's automatons that peopled the town across the river. Whatever had animated them was gone. Had flown, like frightened birds.
No, what he felt wasn't sadness, or pity, but a fascination with their newly transformed state. A curiosity that was as powerful as it was new.
What was it like to be dead? Was it simple nullity? Or was there more to it than that? Placing his fingers within the guard's shattered skull, he had felt something wake in him; something dark and ageless.
He laughed, a strange, uncertain laugh, then bent down, picking up the rope. Darkness, he thought, setting off once more, making his way back down the slope toward the track. Ultimately there is nothing but the dark. > . , -
THE MOON was high. Ben stood among the gravestones in the churchyard, looking out past his sister at the broad sweep of the valley. Beneath them, the houses of the village fell away, following the steep curve of the road in a jumble of thatched roofs and chimney pots, their pale white walls gleaming brightly beneath the circle of the moon. Beyond lay the river, a broken sheet of silvered blackness, flanked by the soft roundness of the hills. Hills overshadowed by the vast, glacial presence of the City.
Meg sat on the old stone wall, her feet dangling out over the drop, her dark hair lustrous in the moonlight. It had been dark now for almost fifteen minutes, but still there was no word from Tewl, no sign of the intruders in the valley.
"What do you think it's like in there?"
"I don't know," he answered quietly. "Like hell, I guess."
She half turned, looking back at him. "I mean, what do they eat? Nothing grows in there. So how do they survive?"
"Insects," he said, smiling at her. "And slugs and other small things that crawl in from the outside." And one another, he thought, but didn't say it.
"It must be awful," she said, turning back. "The most awful thing there is. To be trapped in there. To know nothing but that."
"Maybe," he said, but her comment made him realize just how much the Clay was like his Shells. There, too, one was confined, cut off from normal life. In such conditions the senses grew hungry for stimulation—for the sweet water of dream and illusion. The mind was thrown inward. Untended, it fed upon itself, like the monsters of the deep.
He rested his good hand on the stone beside him. A tall, leprously pale stone, its tapered surface spotted with mold. "I wonder what they dream about?"
"Do you think they dream?"
He nodded, his fingers tracing the weathered lettering on the ancient stone. "I'm sure of it. Why, the darkness must be filled with dreams. Vivid, lurid dreams. Imagine it, Meg. Eternal night. Eternal blackness. Waking they must see their dreams. Live them."
"I'd go mad," she said quietly.