“It really happened?”
“Yes, it did. They all moved.”
“Thank God,” said George.
George was about middle height, thin, with features reddened and creased by long years on the desert. His hair was black and hung almost to his shoulders. He walked with a limp, imposed by a gunshot wound he had taken in one of numerous skirmishes during his youth. His smile was amiable, and his eyebrows bounced around when he spoke. He laughed easily, and heartily, and was a good traveling companion. Nobody knew the territory better, and he was a survivor. He could be moody when things weren't going well, but he always laughed at Marty's jokes. Marty could have brought any of several dozen guides with him. But he'd picked George.
The Navigators stood in their lines, silent, huge, massive, unsettling. “Did they really all move?” George asked.
“Yes. Maybe not all. Most.”
Some had gone awry, abandoning the precision and symmetry that marked this curious army. Like those who lose their faith, George thought.
When the sun rose, it was going to get hot. They'd passed sheltered ground about a mile back, a hillside that would provide reasonable protection. “We should get under cover,” George said.
Marty was examining the sky. The stars were beginning to fade in the east. “What do you suppose they're looking at?” he said.
It was a question that had no meaning for George. The bowls were only metal. How could they be looking at anything? He shook his head. “I have no idea, Marty.”
The strangeness of the place stirred old feelings. George had not been here for a long time. But he had visited other strange places, near Adelaide and Melbourne, and along the coast, where the desolation of the great malls and the empty avenues lefy him feeling haunted. In this place, the sense of loss was particularly strong.
If one day Iris truly called them, Come, follow me, the sign would be given here. If there was any truth at all to the ancient promise, it would be given here.
Something appeared at the edge of his vision.
Light.
Several lights, in fact. Four of them. Clustered toward the north. Faint, but visible all the same. On the other side of the Navigators. But they had not been there moments ago.
He reached inside his shirt, and touched his pistol. It felt warm and reassuring. Marty was looking through his binoculars. The lights gave off a steady glow, unlike the sparkle and flicker of a campfire. “It's the Chapel,” he said. “Someone's in the Chapel.”
Religious services had been held there years ago. Not in George's time. But his father had described them. Decades ago. “Best we leave,” he said.
“No, George.” Marty stroked Bonker. “Not yet.”
“It's dangerous,” said George. “They're probably thieves. Cutthroats.” Or dark gods. Things in the night. He didn't say that, of course, but he felt spooked.
Marty had gotten that look in his eyes that indicated he'd made up his mind. “I should have been thinking about that place,” he said. “I'd forgotten about it.”
“Why do you care? It's only a chapel. It isn't even that anymore.”
Marty stared at the lights. “It might be more than just a chapel,” he said.
“How do you mean, Marty?”
“Maybe it can tell us what these things are.” He looked up at one of the Navigators. “Anyhow, we've come a long way to leave with our tails between our legs. Without taking a good look around.”
“Okay,” George said. “But don't forget I wanted you.”
“George,” he said, “where's your faith?”
The structure stood bleak and dry. Its weatherbeaten front was pale in the gathering dawn. Stone walls were scored and blotched, unbroken by any decoration. In front, a fountain had long since gone to dust.
The lights were visible through four curtained windows on the third floor.
They sat and watched for several minutes, and saw no movement inside. “They could shoot us down,” said George, “and we'd never know what hit us.”
Marty nodded, but said nothing.
They dismounted and walked around front, stopping before a set of double-doors at the top of a wooden staircase. The stairs did not look safe. There were more windows, but they were all dark. The roof was a single large black panel, like a sheet of dark glass.
Such panels were a common feature of old buildings scattered across the Outback. Nobody knew why. There was a shed around back, and several devices that looked like (but were not quite) miniatures of the Navigators were mounted on its roof.
They saw no movement. No horses. No tracks.
George didn't like it. “Nobody's gone in or out in a long time,” he said. His voice wasn't working right.
Dawn was beginning. “A mystery,” said Marty.
George looked at the front doors. “Yes,” he said.
The horses stood very still.
“What now?” asked George.
Marty hesitated. “How far to shelter?”
“Not too far.”
“Why don't we use this place, since we're here?”
“Too dangerous.”
“We have guns. And lights. And there are two of us.”
“Yeah.”
“Whoever's inside doesn't even have a horse.”
“So what's your point?”
“George, there's nobody inside.”
The doors were locked.
George picked a window that looked into a small room. The glass was long gone, but the sash was badly split. Several wooden chairs were piled in a corner, beside a collapsed desk. The floor was littered with rubbish: shriveled pictures inside broken frames, a rusted metal pot, travel bags filled with rags. A plastic blind lay half-covered with sand.
He tried to extract the wood quietly, finally gave up and knocked it loose with his gun butt. “I'll open up,” he told Marty, and climbed in.
One door opened into an adjoining room. Another, into a corridor.
George climbed over the sill. The floor was covered with sand. He checked the adjoining room to make sure he was alone. Then he went out into the corridor. Moments later he was at the two big front doors. Neither worked well, but he was able to force one open.
Marty strode in, thanked him, took the lamp from him and aimed it down the passageway. “Have you heard anything?” he asked.
“No. Nothing. Listen: I'll check the building. You wait here. If anything happens, clear out. Okay?”
Marty shook his head. “We'll go together.”
“No. Two of us, we'd get in each other's way.” Truth was he didn't think Marty would be worth much in a fight anyhow. More to the point, he didn't think weapons would help against whatever it was they faced. “I'll be fine,” he said. He'd heard there were night things in the Outback that could steal a man's soul.
He was hoping Marty would call off this fool's errand. But he pushed past George and started down the passageway.
Several doors were ajar or open, and they peered into rooms that were the same as the one by which George had entered. A wide wooden staircase bisected the building. They looked again for prints, for evidence that anyone had passed through, and saw nothing.
They looked up the stairway. “Third floor,” said Marty, and started up. The stairs groaned. Shadows moved, and the wind blew against the walls. It was warm and oppressive.
George peered both ways at the second floor landing. Another passageway, more doors, and a lot of trash. Some of the doors hung open. Outside, the horses were getting restless.
They climbed to the top.
This time, egress to the corridor was partially blocked by a big cabinet which someone had dragged out onto the landing and left. They edged around it, looked toward the front of the building, and saw the light they'd glimpsed from the ground. It was coming through a pair of half-open doors. Still there was no sound that should not be there.