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Chapter Twenty-Three

Half an hour later by Zeb's reckoning, Gaby returned to the car with Harris. Two more fire engines had arrived in the meantime, and there was a steady stream of pedestrian traffic from the surrounding area toward the fire. The late arrivals, intent on the spectacle before them, paid no attention to the occupants of the car. Gaby and Harris climbed into the front seat. "It's gotten stranger," Harris said.

Doc, resting with his head back against the seat, nodded but didn't open his eyes. "Tell me."

"Alastair's up there with Ish and Noriko. He's been listening to news on the radio in someone's front window. Here's the short form: The god Volksonne called for the deaths of enemies of the Burian people, and his fireball dropped on the Temple of Ludana, killing a lot of treacherous foreign dignitaries like the Queen of Bolgia. It's being described as the most extraordinary mandate of the gods in a thousand years." Harris looked uncomfortable. "Prince Casnar is calling for a board of inquiry, priests, devisers, that sort of thing, to take a look at this manifestation and make sure that it's really divine. He was talking about you joining the board."

Doc offered a cynical smile. "He would. Let us start again. Who or what is Volksonne?"

"A sun-god. Apparently manifested himself at the Temple of the Suns tonight, which suggested that he's kicking out Sol and Sollinvictus. People saw a man made of fire at the temple and heard his words."

"Dalphina of Bolgia is being described as dead? Despite the fact that we saw her driving away from here?"

"Yep. And a bunch of the others you pointed out at the party the other night. All described as dead, killed by the god."

"And Casnar has been quoted, but made no mention of the fact that he was among those `enemies of the people' when the fireball showed up."

"Correct."

Doc opened his eyes. "I must accept my dear brother's invitation to be part of his board of inquiry. I think I'll get started tonight. Go get Alastair and Ish. We're visiting the Temple of the Suns."

* * *

They parked both cars two blocks from the temple, at the point the brilliance of the spotlights illuminating it had begun to fade. There was a steady stream of foot traffic up the street toward the gigantic building, curious pedestrians drawn by the talk-box news reports even at this late hour, and the Foundation members could see the tiny specks of distant people climbing and descending the temple's white stairs.

"I'm going to make a big, public entrance," Doc said. "I want most of you in there first. Ixyail, are you with me?"

She shook her head, making a face. "Doc Sidhe is not accompanied by women with big purpling bruises on their chins."

"No matter how beautiful."

She smiled. "No matter how beautiful. I'll stuff myself into that horrible blond wig again and be anonymous."

"Very well. You know what you have to do, if you get a chance." He looked at the others. "All of you."

They nodded, looking grave.

Doc turned to Zeb. "You'll have a hard time getting through the main door unnoticed, no matter what. Would you like to wait outside?"

"That never seems to work." Zeb stuffed his mask and gloves into his pockets, then struggled out of his overcoat. "Care for the next All-Out champion to accompany you?"

"That should prove to be diverting," Doc said. "And your prescience when it comes to solar devisement might be helpful."

"Admit it, Zeb," Harris said. "Just days ago, you never would have thought you'd be grateful to a burning sensation."

Zeb scowled at him, then turned his coat inside-out and struggled back into it.

Doc and Zeb waited until all the others left the sedan and a couple of minutes longer, then exited and followed them.

* * *

A crowd lingered in the street below the temple, men and women watching the building and talking among themselves, but Zeb could see no barricades barring their way; there was, in fact, a steady stream of people moving up and down the stairs, unimpeded by guards.

"Looks like some folk aren't too anxious to meet the god face-to-face," Zeb said.

Doc smiled. "For that matter, neither am I."

They moved through the press of the crowd. Moments later they passed between the columns and got their first close-up look at the temple. Zeb glanced between the circle of fire, the murals decorating the walls, and the groups of people standing by. "Lots of press," he said. "Lots of Sonnenkrieger."

"And plenty of the curious." Doc gestured toward the fire. "Look, there's Casnar. With the mislabeled cold fish."

When they approached the prince of Cretanis, his face lit up. He left the side of Edris and rushed forward to embrace Doc. "I'm so glad word reached you," he said. "I've been calling your quarters. No one was there."

"We went to visit the Temple of Ludana," Doc said.

Casnar's expression changed, became a mask of regret. "Gods, how awful. All those noble leaders dead."

"How did word come that the crowned heads of Europe were packed into that place?" Doc asked.

Casnar shrugged. "Valets, manservants to whom they'd entrusted the news of their rendezvous. My valet heard before I did." He turned to Zeb. "Goodsir Watson. I've had the pleasure of seeing you fight."

"And will again, I hope." Zeb shook his hand.

Edris, moving at a more stately rate, reached them. "Doctor MaqqRee. And it is Goodsir Watson, is it not? What do you make of it all?" Her gesture took in the entire temple interior, and she offered a mischievous smile. "Not the architecture or the ghastly art, I mean."

"Let's find out." Doc put his hand over his right eye and walked about. Zeb noticed two others in the chamber, one a small blond woman in a white formal gown, the other a very overweight man in a suit, incongruously accompanied by a servant who kept an umbrella positioned over his head, doing the same.

Doc was back moments later. He smoothed hair down on the back of his neck. To Zeb, he looked rattled. "There are definitely residual traces of godly devisement hereabouts," he said. "Solar in character, of course."

Casnar nodded. "Could it have been Sol or Sollinvictus?"

"I won't know until I've had an opportunity to examine sacred relics of those two faiths."

Edris said, "At last, something I can do. I'll arrange to have some brought here."

Casnar smiled. "I take it this means you're joining my little investigative panel."

Doc gave him a smile. "Did you imagine I wouldn't?"

* * *

Casnar and Edris moved off to speak to the man under the umbrella. Zeb said, "She does a good job of pretending not to share the Reinis' tastes."

Doc shrugged. "Alastair's researches say that her mother was Lorian, and she was raised for some years and educated in Loria, where the Reini attitudes are much less common. She may, in fact, not share them. What does your hand tell you?"

"About Edris? Just kidding." Zeb glanced at his palm. "I've had a steady itch since we got here. Very minor, though. Like some big solar devisement engine is just idling. Nearby, not exactly here."

"Let's take a walk about, then. To see if you can pin it down more precisely."

They did. They traded slight nods with Gaby and Harris, who affected to be fascinated with the mural of Sollinvictus, and with Alastair and Ish, who hovered near one of the broadcasting crews, listening to the live aether broadcast.

"It's strongest here, near the flame," Zeb said. He moved close enough to the fire to be uncomfortably warm. He slowly stretched, raising his hands as high as he could, then brought them down again. Then, just as deliberately, he knelt and put his palms to the floor. "It's underneath," he said.

Doc frowned. "Godly, and yet not godly."

Zeb stood. "What do you mean?"

"Godly manifestations tend to fix on places that are suited to them. A mountaintop, a cave, and so on. From the aether broadcast Alastair described, it seemed that Volksonne manifested here, in the fire. So the hearth itself should be the center of his appearance, and strongest in his personal emanations. Not the basement." He offered up a sigh. "I hate basements. I've seen so much wickedness initiated in basements."

"Okay. Let's assume it's a human thing in addition to a godly thing and the bad people are down there. How do we get to them?" Zeb took a look around the big chamber; he saw at least thirty doors on the long walls. "We can't just throw open doors until we find the one we want. Someone would notice."

"Astute of you."

Zeb frowned. "Hey, you have a basement."

Doc turned an innocent expression toward him. "That's true. I'd forgotten. I must be one of them."

"Not what I meant. What if they have what you have? A tunnel out?"

"My sally-port." Doc frowned. "They'd be fools not to. Let's find it."

They circulated among the crowd, Doc picking out his associates by eye contact, nodding toward the exit to indicate that it was time to leave.

* * *

Once they were gone, Rudi straightened, his head emerging from the collar of his overcoat like a turtle's emerging from its shell. "There's a relief," he said. He glanced up to where, on the mural immediately above, the foremost hoof of Sollinvictus' chariot horse was poised to come down on him, then returned his attention to his companions. "Let's be about it, then."

* * *

Doc saw Zeb's hand twitch. "Here, stop here," Zeb said.

They were all packed once more into the sedan. Now a block west of the temple, they could see the spotlights moving slowly across the sky, though the temple itself was hidden by the bulk of a government building in the way.

Noriko pulled the car over and parked it on the left side of the street, directly in front of an old building that, with the blocks of brown brick and gray concrete on its face, with its large windows but conventional design, looked very academic. Its doors were illuminated by an overhead light, but there were lights behind none of the windows.

They heard the roar of a car engine. Noriko shut off her lights. Ahead, out of what looked like an alley to their left, a dark car emerged. It turned away from them and its taillights receded.

Zeb glanced at his palm. "It's gone now."

"Was it in the car?"

"I don't think so, Doc. It flared up suddenly, then stopped just as suddenly. Not like fading with distance."

Doc opened his door. "Alastair, Zeb, with me. Everyone else wait here."

The three of them moved up to the alley mouth and peered in. It was a dark alley, short, with brick walls to either side, but it appeared to open up onto some sort of courtyard. Doc saw shadows that looked like piles of stone. The piles were faintly illuminated on the left side; there had to be a bulb lit.

Doc moved forward and waved the others on. Around the next corner, he got a much better view.

It was a courtyard. It had once been paved with flagstones in alternating colors, but now some of those stones were gone, leaving little pits behind, and other stones had been replaced by poured concrete.

Arrayed throughout the courtyard were statues and other examples of monumental decoration. Doc saw figures of noblemen, tombstones, Khemish-style pylons; there was a frieze showing gods of Panhellas at a dinner, but instead of being securely fixed to a building's summit it leaned against a brick wall. And, though some of the pieces were perfectly fine, others showed a lack of a grasp of anatomy, or, especially, composition.

Around the alley corner to the left, just a few paces in, was one spot of pavestone illuminated by an overhead bulb. Beneath it was an upright wooden chair and on it an old man. His head was bald, his features unlined, his clothing nondescript green; he wore spectacles. He held a book in his lap, but looked up as Doc peered around the corner. "Good evening, young man," he said in Burian.

Doc stepped out in plain sight. He gave the old man a smile and approached. "My apologies," he said, "for intruding. But I've become lost."

"It happens." The old man gestured back toward the street. "One block down in that direction is the Temple of the Suns. You can find your way to anywhere in Bardulfburg from there."

"True." Doc gestured at the artwork. "If I may ask, what is all this?"

"Student art." The man looked regretful. "That which the students didn't take away with them. This used to be the Bardulfburg Academy of the Arts. Now it's a warehouse, and I am its night guardsman."

"Not too dangerous a post, I hope."

The man laughed. "I spend my nights reading and keeping people from parking here. Sadly, I also spend my nights shooing away people I would otherwise like to hold conversations with. I hope you understand."

"Of course." Doc looked at the nearest section of wall. Then he punched the old man in the stomach.

The old man folded up over the blow, wheezing out the last of his breath. Doc moved behind him, grabbed him around the neck, and choked him to unconsciousness.

"My, my." That was Alastair, stepping out into the courtyard. "Remind me never to have a polite conversation with you."

"Come here and take a look at this."

Zeb and Alastair joined him. He pointed out a portion of the brick wall—one specific brick. The mortar above it was deeper than elsewhere, and the top of the brick featured an odd set of ridges, four grooves. Alastair frowned at it. "That's familiar."

"I get it," Zeb said. "Bitte."

"Correct," Doc said. "Alastair, get the others." From his pocket, he brought out a torch and snapped it on. In the brighter light, he took a closer look at the pavestones.

Dark patches on their edges, signs of tires having passed over them, led to a section of wall between two upright statues. The statues were twice the height of a man, artistically crude, with broad faces showing only slight indentations for eyes and a slight rise for a nose, with only suggestions of features elsewhere on their bodies. Doc found they were not actually standing before the wall; they were inset in it, with surrounding brick quite new, but painted to be a match for the rest of the wall.

The associates arrived. Doc waved Alastair toward the switch on the wall and the rest to take cover behind the pile of artless statuary. Then he frowned. "Where's Zeb?"

A voice just beside him said, "Right here."

Despite himself, Doc jumped. Against the wall beyond the second statue, Zeb, now in his dark outfit, was no more than a silhouette. "That's a good scare."

"I owed you one."

"Stay there." Doc moved to the opposite side of the first statue, then nodded to Alastair.

The doctor gripped the misshapen brick and said, "Bitte."

There was a faint rumbling. The left arm of Doc's statue and the right arm of Zeb's rose, swinging open a section of wall between them. Light spilled out into the courtyard. Doc and Zeb swung around the corners.

Beyond was a concrete tunnel leading down at a slight angle. It was lit by a succession of overhead light fixtures. To the right, on Zeb's side, was a booth. It looked like a checkpoint booth, but there was no glass in the windows. Within, a Sonnenkrieger soldier was grabbing at a talk-box with one hand, unholstering a pistol with the other, his expression alarmed . . .

Zeb stepped up and hit him once in the gut, followed through with a blow to his gun hand and, as the man bent forward in pain, to the side of his head. The soldier crashed to the floor of his booth. Zeb leaned in and hung up the talk-box handset.

"Everybody in," Doc said. "Bring the other guard."

* * *

The tunnel led them down and in a broad rightward curve, then back to the east. They heard the outer door grate down into place not long after they were out of sight of it. Harris sweated and swore under the weight of the outdoor guard, while Zeb and Alastair carried the soldier.

Once the tunnel was pointed eastward, they came across a heavy door in the side. Noriko took several moments to pick the lock and peered within. "Stairs, unlit," she said. "Going up. I think it's part of the school."

They stashed the guards there, binding and gagging them, and continued. Alastair looked more comfortable with his autogun in his hands, and Noriko had her long, scabbarded sword tucked through the scarf that served her as a belt.

The tunnel went arrow-straight for a block to the east—"Typical Burian engineering efficiency," Doc said—and then rose into what appeared to be a broader open area. The associates ascended that final ramp quietly, cautiously, Doc and Zeb in front.

They reached the opening and peered about. This was a garage; in it were a gold and black Alpenhaus taxi, two open-topped Sonnenkrieger staff cars in gleaming black, and an inconspicuous red sedan. One corner of the chamber was set off by light construction as an unroofed office; a door led into it, and a double door was set in the opposite wall. There were no people to see.

Beyond the double door was a corridor, dimly lit as if now were not the normal hours of occupation. The corridor went some distance right and left, and another corridor led straight ahead; at its end, they could see a poorly-lit stairwell leading up.

Doc sighed. "All right. Ixyail and I will take the left, Zeb and Noriko right. Harris, Gaby, Alastair, take the stairs ahead. Everyone, make your way upward; I hope we can find access into the temple proper rather than having to work our way back down again.

"Our priorities are finding out whatever we can, especially about the fireballs and how they might be stopped, and getting out alive to make some productive use of this information.

"And we have to do so quickly. The absence of those guards will be discovered soon enough.

"Go."

* * *

Noriko, quieter, took the lead. She left her sword in its sheath but kept one hand on its hilt and the other further back on the sheath, steadying and controlling it as she moved. Zeb stayed a few paces back, one pistol in hand, looking backward almost as often as forward.

The corridor they explored smelled of fresh paint and was lined with doors, all on the left, east, side. Most were not locked. Alternately, Noriko and Zeb eased them open to take a peek in. A storeroom whose shelves held cleansing agents, mops and buckets. Bathrooms that looked and smelled as though they'd never been used. A cage-style door that was made to slide open showed them the interior of an unlit freight elevator.

At the end of the hall was a set of double doors, and they were locked. Noriko knelt before them and brought out her picks. Zeb kept guard behind her.

She took a while. "Good lock," she whispered. "Ah, I've got it." She pocketed her things and got her hand on her hilt again before pushing the door open a fraction to peer within. "Come look." She opened it wider.

Zeb joined her. The chamber beyond was large. There was no one in it. It was something of a mess, in contrast with the Burians' usual neatness. He saw shelves with tools scattered on them, tables with mechanical parts in a state of partial assembly, a line of aluminum cabinets, a set of wooden shelves with curious glass appliances on them—

Zeb took a second look at that and at the cabinets. "This is where they put the bleaching cabinets together," he said. He followed her in. While she relocked the door, he took a look at the doors on the left-hand wall.

One led to a private office. It was unlit, but in the faint illumination spilling in from the main chamber, it seemed very messy. There was something familiar about the sloppiness, and then Zeb had it—the only other place he had recently seen such disorganization had been the laboratory of Dr. Niskin. He looked at the effects on the office desk and found what he was looking for: a framed cameo showing Teleri Obeldon, younger than he'd last seen her, with a woman who looked like a slightly older Teleri, both seated, smiling, on a wooden bench on a porch. The next door led to another long, dark chamber, this one featuring huge iron bucketlike apparati and, beneath them, devices that resembled huge stoves—stoves lacking grills or burners suited for cooking food. "Manufacturing," he said.

The last door in line led to a set of stairs leading only upward. By contrast with the room, it was brightly lit, and was not industrial in the least; the steps were wood, the railings of good craftsmanship. "Looks like we go up from here," he told Noriko.

* * *

The corridor Doc and Ish took had no side doors, just a right-hand turn forty paces from the garage. Doc peeked around the corner and saw only a set of double metal doors another five paces down. He signaled Ish forward and she joined him at the door.

He pressed an ear to it, then shook his head. Ish put her nose to where the doors met—they were so closely fitted that it could not be described as a gap—and sniffed, then lowered her head all the way to floor level, her nostrils flaring.

She straightened. She showed two fingers, then indicated an altitude near the top of Doc's head, then offered a Novimagos hand-to-chest salute.

Doc well knew her private code: two men, on guard.

Which was odd. They were guarding the door on its exit side rather than its entrance?

Above the door, in the wall, was a niche, two handspans wide by a handspan tall, with a couple of wires trailing from it. It looked to be a spot where the builders intended to add a sign or perhaps a viewer. It was in keeping with the unfinished appearance of this place, Doc decided. He removed his coat, dropping it in the corner, then put two hands beside his face as though he were suggesting sleep. Ish nodded.

Doc reached up to grab the niche and pulled himself up. Straining slightly, he brought his body parallel to the floor, holding it above the tops of the doors.

Ish lay down, assumed a fetching pose of unconscious helplessness, and gave out a bark of pain. She closed her eyes.

There was a moment of silence, then murmurs from the other side of the door. It opened outward, swinging beneath Doc's body. He couldn't quite see the man who stood there, but heard him speaking in Burian: "A woman!"

Another man, nearby: "They didn't say anything about a woman."

The first man moved out into Doc's sight: a Sonnenkrieger soldier, his rifle in both hands, approaching Ish, curious but alert.

Doc waited until the man stood almost over Ish. He swung down and dropped.

Just inside the door was another soldier. The man's eyes widened and he took a step back, trying to bring his own rifle to bear. "Delwin—"

Delwin was already moving, turning to aim. Ish kicked out, sweeping his legs out from under him. Doc lunged at the other soldier, sweeping the rifle barrel aside, and put a fist into the man's gut.

Doc wasn't a full-time student of hand-to-hand combat the way Harris and Zeb were. On the other hand, he'd had much longer than they to develop his skills. The soldier's left fist came up; Doc caught it with his right, got his left hand around the soldier's jaw, and drove his head into the wall. The soldier's eyes fluttered, but he still struggled; it took Doc two more fast impacts of head on wall to put him down.

He turned. Ish was up, the other soldier's rifle in her hands, butt toward the man, who was slumped on the floor. There was blood on the butt.

Doc turned the other way, down the hallway their intrusion had revealed. It was dimly lit, with metal double doors at intervals on the left, north, wall. Though it was difficult to make out, he thought the corridor turned to the right at the far end.

There were no more guards in immediate sight. Doc hoisted his soldier over his shoulder and moved easily to pick up Ish's by his collar. He carried both men through the double doors. Ish closed the doors behind him, then preceded him up the corridor.

* * *

Harris led the way up the stairs, Gaby a few paces back, Alastair and his autogun bringing up the rear.

It was a curious stairwell; there were no doors at the landings. He would have expected it to give him access to each level of what he assumed was a basement complex.

Eventually it ended in a small round room. Its walls were concrete, recently painted in gold. Three doors, heavy metal things, led from it. If Harris still had his sense of direction and hadn't miscounted the number of flights of stairs, one door led approximately north, the opposite one south, and the third to the east. He shrugged at Alastair.

The doctor covered his left eye and took a look about, then pointed at the eastern door.

Harris tried it. The handle twisted easily and he pulled the door open an inch.

Beyond was a circular chamber, perhaps ten paces across and ten or more high. Its curving walls seemed to be stone or concrete, and stairs inset in the walls, both to his right and his left, rose to a balcony level eight paces up. The balcony rails were of rounded metal, a style Harris associated with schools of his younger years, but were of a bronze color.

Doors led off the balcony level, three of them, each with frosted windows. The center window, across from the door by which they'd entered, was lit, and Harris could see the silhouette of a man standing before it. The two doors flanking it were dark.

Alastair whispered, "The place is alive with solar devisement. Godly solar devisement. The god was here not long ago."

"Comforting," Harris said. "What say we behave like complete idiots and ransack the place before he gets back?"

Alastair shrugged. "Suits me."

* * *

The fact that they had still run into no guards, heard no sounds of trouble, bothered Zeb. But when he exited the stairwell into the treasure room, he momentarily lost his qualms.

It wasn't really a treasure room. There were no chests full of gems or coins, no decoratively-arrayed displays of jewels. But there were some things Zeb would have traded a lot of wealth, if he had any, to find.

There was a model of Bardulfburg, for instance, with a newly-painted blast crater installed where the Temple of Ludana had once been.

There was a chart, a 3-D diagram of the Temple of the Suns and its basement levels.

Zeb spent some time looking at it. The diagram showed that the temple surrounding the main open chamber was divided mostly into offices. The uppermost basement level—which, because the temple itself was elevated, was actually at ground level, bordered by all those flights of steps—was temple warehouse, except for odd circular chambers immediately beneath the temple-level Eternal Flame; one circular chamber ran down into the ground twenty feet or so, if Zeb calculated the scale correctly, and was adjacent to another that was thirty or forty feet high. There was no access to these chambers from the uppermost basement level, just from lower levels.

Below ground level, portions of the basement complex on the north side looked like more storehouses, others like a hospital ward, others like an emergency shelter. Portions on the south side looked like private offices and warehouse again.

Stairs led from an office floor above the emergency shelter to the main temple level, and from a corridor in front of the larger circular chamber to a small room in the midst of offices at the main level. Only these two staircases provided access to the surface. No elevators led from the main or first basement levels to the underground levels, though there appeared to be one servicing lower floors on the emergency shelter side of the complex.

Zeb was able to find the tunnel and the garage, then trace his path to the bleaching cabinet assembly chamber and the room he was in now. He memorized what he could of the complex's layout.

Also in this room was an impressive chest of drawers. It stood taller than a man, with each drawer being only a handspan wide and tall. Zeb pulled one drawer open. Its contents were small pieces of stone and metal shavings, most the size of a thumbnail, each with a string attaching a paper tag to it. On each tag was written a street address.

He took a deep breath. Unless he missed his guess, every one of these pieces of rock had been chipped from a hearthstone or incised from a dedicatory plaque. Many of the drawers were empty; this was obviously a collection project that was far from complete.

A door led into a private office. It was larger than Niskin's, furnished with drafting tables and an impressive map case. He found Noriko going through the drawers of the map case; they seemed filled mostly with blueprints. "General Ritter's office, I expect," she said.

He nodded. "We ought to get Alastair or Doc in here to decipher the Burian tags on that map of the temple."

"Let us go, then."

He took a final look at the temple diagram. If Harris, Gaby and Alastair had taken their stairwell all the way to the top, it would have led them to the bottom of that curious circular chamber. From the office they were in, a trip down a corridor past rooms whose labels he could not decipher would bring them to the same chamber.

* * *

In the circular chamber, Harris and Gaby crept up the stairs to the left, Alastair those to the right. The guard outside the illuminated door remained motionless, apparently unaware of their presence.

When they reached the balcony level, Gaby, with Harris covering her, eased open the left-hand door and peered in. It was dark; she snapped her torch on and waved it around.

At the room's center was a raised dais, circular. Around the walls were arrayed a series of devices pointed toward the dais; to Gaby, they looked like machine guns whose barrels were made of glass. The walls of the chamber added to its mad-science appearance; she saw bank after bank of machinery and large switches that put her in mind of Frankenstein movies.

This, too, was a tall room. In fact, a metal ladder led up one wall to a platform just below the ceiling. There seemed to be bars and levers up there.

Against the wall to the right was a huge screen—not impressive by the large-screen TV standards of the grim world, but she'd never seen a screen this large in the fair world. Cautious, she moved in.

Harris followed. "Looks like the kind of talk-box the Leader of the True Race would use to address his people," he said, keeping his voice low.

She touched the screen, closed her eyes, felt beyond its surface. "It's not really a talk-box. I can't get to the communications grid or the aether, either one, from it."

"That's weird. Is anything hooked up to monitor it?"

"Not that I can feel."

"Turn it on, then."

With the slightest of mental exertions, she did. There was a snapping noise from the screen, then a white dot appeared at its center. A moment later, words swam into focus.

Harris sighed. "I am sick to death of Burian. Let's go back home where everybody uses Cretanis to threaten the world so you can understand them."

"Hush. I'll get Alastair."

She stepped back out the door. Down the curved balcony, Alastair, too, was exiting the room he'd chosen to search. He gave her an all-clear signal; she waved him over.

A moment later, he began translating. " `I am Volksonne, la la la. God of the people, god of the mostly hygienic, god of the better-than-everyone-else.' "

"I suspect," Gaby said, "that you're taking liberties with the translation."

"Never. I'm very circumspect about my translations."

Harris said, "This is just the speech from earlier tonight."

Alastair read on ahead. "No, it's not. `I return once more to cast purifying fire on the naughty, and this time I smite the fewmethead who would lead the Burian people into ruin.' "

Gaby gave him an arch look. "What?"

" `The fury of my you-can't-get-better-anywhere anger now descends on the house of Aevar . . .' " Alastair whistled. "This is a death sentence for the king."

Gaby touched the screen again and it went dark. "That probably answers the question as to whether this whole Volksonne thing is Aevar's plan."

"Great," Harris said. "So he's completely, utterly innocent of the other stuff. We can relax—he's just the pocket Hitler we've always assumed he was."

"Cynic." She moved to the door. "I think it's time for me to cause some trouble."

Harris took a prospective look up the ladder. "What do you plan to do, honey?"

"Make a phone call or two."

"There's a talk-box in the office I was just in," Alastair said. "I don't recommend you go through the building switchboard, though."

She gave him a confident smile. "You're talking to the goddess of the talk-box."

"I apologize most humbly, Great One."

* * *

Doc reached the nearest set of doors. The first one he opened led to a large room, a warehouse in miniature, its shelves loaded with cardboard boxes and wooden crates.

He carried the unconscious soldiers in. Ixyail closed the door, then bound and gagged the prisoners as Doc looked at the labels stenciled on the crates. "Canned food. Medical supplies." He reached a portion of shelves where there were no crates, just pieces of paper. He studied one. "This shelf is for baby formula."

"You're joking."

"No, I'm not. They're to lay in supplies in the middle of next year." He moved on. "Baby food here."

Ish rose from gagging the first soldier. "I thought this was a place of conspiracy. They should have ammunition. Listening devices. Tools of torture." She bent over the second man.

"Here we have boxes of books. Burian-language literature." Doc frowned again. "Primers and other children's books as well. Chalk. Erasers."

"It's a school, then."

"I hope the answer is that simple."

There were four rooms along this hallway, all storehouses. The first had been nearly full, the next two were partly stocked, and the last was echoingly empty. At the far end of the hall were a staircase to the right and a freight elevator to the left; both led only upward. They silently took the stairs up to the next floor.

Here they found a similar hall, but it was well-lit, with occasional viewing-style windows on the walls and in some doors on either side. From his angle, Doc couldn't see much beyond the windows—a suggestion of darkened chambers, large ones.

The first room they looked at, on the right, which would be the north wall, was small, with cold metal doors that opened onto metal-sided interiors—refrigerated pantries, not turned on, empty. Next on the right was an industrial-sized kitchen, dark, never used; an observation window allowed Doc to peer into it without entering.

Back across the hall, the next chamber down from the warehouse also featured an observation window. Within, the far wall of the long room was lined with tables, and on them, talk-boxes—triples, it appeared, with screens for viewing. They were all dark. Beneath each was a row of switches. Doc entered as Ish kept guard at the door. He turned on one of the sets; after a moment, its view swam into focus. The view was dark, hard for him to make out details, but it seemed to be an overhead look at a plain bedroom, furnished and very tidy, completely impersonal.

He flipped one of the switches beneath the set. The view changed to another dark scene, some sort of lounge with many sofas and comfortable chairs. The next scene was that of a dimly-lit dining room. No, it wasn't as personal as a dining room, more of a cafeteria, with long white tables with benches permanently attached.

"They have set things up," Doc said, "so that a whole community, including babies, might live here under constant observation."

"Why?"

"I don't know. And I don't intend to leave without finding out."

The next room down featured a second observation window, this one on its interior wall, facing southward. Through the window they could see a dim chamber, a huge one whose ceiling seemed to be on a level with this room's but whose floor was much lower. A few lights burned dimly out there, illuminating the tops of curtainlike partitions. There was also a door on the east wall. Doc moved into the room, tried the door, found it unlocked. He gave Ish a nod and opened it.

It opened out onto a metal catwalk, just a spare metallic grid with rails. It hung from the ceiling by metal supports, as did metal rigs that looked like scaffolding at the same level as the catwalk; light fixtures, only a few of them lit, hung from the scaffolding undersides.

The floor had to be eight or ten paces down. The chamber itself was huge, divided by hanging gold curtains into separate areas. One area had long tables and numerous chairs placed around them. Another featured several sofas and stuffed chairs. A third held the cafeteria tables Doc had seen in the talk-box screen. It all seemed very antiseptic.

"With the lights below the catwalk," Doc said, "whoever is down there couldn't see people up here. An ideal arrangement for what looks like a prison that is meant to be somewhat comfortable." He led Ish out further along the catwalk. "Now we just need to find out who is supposed to live here."

* * *

Harris clambered up onto the platform above the dais and looked around.

It was an odd little chamber. Stairs in the center led up to the low ceiling, in the middle of which was a hatch. To Harris it looked like a submarine's hatch, complete with a wheellike closing mechanism. He climbed up to the top stair, which forced him to stand bent over beneath the hatch, and carefully turned the wheel. It was new, well-machined, and well-oiled; it turned with a minimum of noise until the bars it moved were drawn in to the center of the mechanism.

He took out his revolver. There was no telling what might be beyond, or whether he might be noticed the moment he opened the hatch. Then, slowly, he straightened.

The hatch resisted his effort. He shoved harder at it, and the thing yielded—weight alone appeared to have been working against him.

The first thing he was aware of was brightness and heat—hot air rolled across him and he began sweating.

The thin line of sight the hatch afforded him showed only flame, as though he were emerging a few feet from a fireplace. He heard no noise but a quiet roaring.

He raised the hatch higher. There was flame all around and the heat grew worse, but still there were no cries of alarm.

He maneuvered the hatch high enough to allow him to peer up. It looked as though the hatch were capped by a slab of stone larger than the hatch itself. He could now see the tops of the flames on all sides of him. Above them to either side he could see the flickering forms of giant horses, painted in a cartoony style on tall walls . . .

He eased the hatch shut. He moved to the ladder opening and leaned over it. "Alastair!"

The doctor, examining one of the glass-barreled machine guns, looked up. "What?"

"This hatch opens into the middle of the temple's Eternal Flame."

"You stay there. I'll get steaks. We can grill them."

"No, no, you putz. Go tell Gaby about this. And then figure out some way to distract the people around the flame."

Immediately a ringing arose, like the world's loudest alarm clock, or a school class alarm stuck in the on position. It came from a metal disk high on the wall, but seemed to come from all around them.

Harris clamped his hands over his ears and glared down at Alastair. "That's actually sooner than I wanted."

Alastair's hands were over his ears, too. "What?"

* * *

Doc and Ish crouched on the catwalk above what looked like a curtained-off lecture area. Rows of padded chairs were arrayed before a table and a lectern. "Guess what," Doc said.

"You want to read those."

"Let's find the way down."

"Halt!"

Ahead a dozen paces, where their catwalk crossed another one at right angles, stood a Sonnenkrieger soldier. He must have moved up very quietly, and the darkness of his uniform had concealed his approach; now he held a rifle on them. At this range, it would have been difficult for him to miss.

"The usual," Doc said. He stood, arms up, a showy display of surrender—then twisted aside.

Ish's handgun boomed. He fancied he felt the wind of the bullet's passage just behind his back.

The soldier jerked and looked surprised. His uniform concealed the location of his injury, but Doc estimated from his reaction that he'd taken the shot to his chest. Ish fired twice more, and the soldier slumped against the catwalk rail. His rifle fell into the main chamber and made a loud crack as the wooden stock hit the floor.

There were shouts—distant, but probably from within the chamber. A moment later Doc saw heads bobbing as men ran toward them along the catwalk, and he heard the ringing of their boots against the metal.

Doc glanced at Ish. She was in her dark clothes, her wig discarded. The men probably hadn't seen her yet. "Get those papers, find out what you can," he said. "I'm going to draw them off."

"Kiss me."

He did. He waited while Ish kicked off her shoes and leaped over the rail to the nearest scaffolding supporting light fixtures; it swayed as she landed. Then she was moving at almost a sprint into the darkness.

Doc fired twice in the general direction of the oncoming soldiers, aiming into the ceiling, then turned and ran back the way he'd come as noisily as he could manage.

An alarm sounded, a loud, persistent ringing . . .

 

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