Dian stomped around the laboratory, sweeping glass beakers and petri dishes from the tables. They shattered with splintering jangles, and with each crash, she shrilled all the louder.

  Lakesh silently watched the outburst, fearing she would pick up a shard of razor-edged glass and use it on him or herself.

  Her mindless rantings finally wound down, and she panted between clenched teeth. She glared at him with the lust of murder in her eye, but he realized the crazed passion and venom was not directed solely at him. Gutturally she said, "I watched you, Mohandas."

  "When?" he asked, striving for a calm, reasonable tone.

  "Over the years when you came back here. I allowed you to take government property from the storage vault. You used the mat-trans to remove things from the installation. I lived for the times you visited, just to see you on the security monitors. I kept the others from killing you.

  "You were older, but you were still Mohandas. You were my dream walking. Then one day, you didn't come back. I always wondered if you thought about me while you were here."

  Very quietly, very sincerely, he said, "I thought about you all the time whether I was here or not. Why didn't you show yourself to me?"

  Dian stared at him as if he had gone insane. She placed her hands on her face. "I do not have the appearance that was once mine, that which you loved."

  "It wasn't only your face I loved, Dian. If I'd known you still lived—" He broke off, coughed and said, "I asked about you when I was revived. I was told—"

  "I know what you were told!" she cried angrily. "They told you what I commanded them to tell you!"

  She heeled about and kicked at the litter of broken glass on the floor. In a high, fierce half scream, she keened, "What fucking difference would it have made? You had your duties. I had mine. Duty! Service! Loyalty!"

  Lakesh tested the canvas straps, but they held him fast. "Dian—"

  "Out of duty, service and loyalty, I remained here. The few of us left behind died or went mad and we were forced to kill them. The keystone of the new world order, the future of humanity, became nothing but a tomb, a crypt for those of us who existed in a twilight state between life and death."

  She inhaled a slow, shuddery breath, making a sound like steel sliding along wet leather. Dian shrugged. "Duty, service, loyalty for the future. But you are here now, Mohandas and we can share our own future, make our own plans."

  Lakesh stiffened. "And what are your plans for me?"

  Dian stepped close to him and put a hand on his upper thigh. Her lips twisted in a rictus, in a grotesque imitation of a coquettish smile, she whispered, "We will fly from this tomb, into the sunlight again. The little man showed me the way. We can be together from here on out."

  Breathing hard, she offered an expression of icy calm. Then quite deliberately and horrifyingly, she began touching him.

  THE PAIN IN KANE'S HEAD throbbed right next to his mind. It took a long while for him to consciously register it, then he felt cramping pains shooting through his legs and forearms. A hot spasm burned in his side where the three bullets had struck him.

  Everything was a blur in his memory, the pain and sight and sounds mixed together. I've been shot in the head, he thought aloofly. No, struck. No, shocked.

  He wanted to just slip back into oblivion, away from the pain, away from the knowledge he had ignored his instincts and strolled blithely into a trap.

  Opening his eyes was an act of great resolve. He saw nothing but dim shapes at first, and he craned a neck that felt stabbed through and through with hot daggers. He looked around, not understanding why everything appeared unreal and strange. He blinked curiously at the two legs and feet suspended above him before realizing they were his own.

  Then Kane understood he hung upside down, hands bound together by nylon rope and tethered to an aluminum crossbar. His wrists were tied behind him He tugged at the bindings, but each movement sent needles lancing through his head. His hands and wrists were numb.

  He felt very cold and saw he was no longer wearing his coat. It lay wadded up on the floor beneath him. There was a stink in his nostrils, and when he took a deep breath he gagged on air that was thick and clammy and smelled like dead fish left in the sun.

  A pleasant voice, bubbling with genuine amusement, said, "The petty little mind rouses."

  Sindri's face filled his field of vision. He looked distorted, his head far larger than his body. Kane's sense of perspective returned in piecemeal fashion, and he saw Sindri was leaning forward, hands on his knees. He also saw the black rod of a Shockstick in his right hand.

  "My apologies for the discomfort, Mr. Kane, but it was the easiest way to both search you and make sure you wouldn't cause me any trouble."

  Adrenaline surged through Kane, and he bucked and twisted, trying to see all of his surroundings. As far as he could tell, he and Sindri were alone in a small, murky room. The only illumination came from a floor lamp in one corner. By the light it shed, he saw that the chamber was a treasure house. There were large open crates filled with jewelry, from pearl necklaces to gold ingots. Magnificent oil paintings leaned against the walls, and even bundles of predark cash and coinage were scattered carelessly on the floor.

  "My private hoard," Sindri said, voice purring with mirth. "The treasury of my new government taken from the old. They'll never miss it."

  Kane shook his throbbing head to clear it, failed and muttered groggily, "You're overplaying your hand again, Sindri."

  "It fooled you, didn't it?"

  Kane didn't respond to the question. "Where are Brigid and Lakesh?"

  "They're very safe, Mr. Kane. I have no reason to harm either one of them. You, on the other hand, are a different matter entirely."

  Forcing a note of disinterest into his voice, Kane stated, "So this trap was about revenge, for what happened on Mars and on the space station."

  Sindri pursed his lips and straightened up. "You consistently—and disrespectfully—ascribe the most base motivations to me. I don't waste my time and energy scheming to avenge wrongs. A reckoning always occurs. Years may pass, but it is inevitable. I could afford to be patient."

  Kane's temples continued to throb as the blood rushed poundingly to his head. "Then what's this about?"

  "What it's always about, Mr. Kane. Exodus, the survival of me and my people. A new world in which to live."

  "One in which you make all the rules."

  Sindri sighed. "I'm not a big man, as you can see.

  But you can even the odds if you have a big enough fulcrum." He lowered his voice and quoted, 'In every wound of Caesar that should move the stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.'

  "What the hell does that mean?" Kane's sinuses felt clogged, and his voice sounded congested even in his own ears.

  Patiently, patronizingly, Sindri said, "I have the weapon to wound the barons, overthrow the villes and inspire the people to rise and mutiny."

  "And rally around you?"

  "Of course."

  "Isn't that what you wanted to do the last time? Your philosophy of destroying the majority in order to save the easily ruled minority?"

  "That's still my philosophy," replied Sindri, "but now I have the means to visit a less indiscriminate form of destruction on the tyrants."

  Kane tried to snort in derision, but because of his stuffy nasal passages he couldn't quite pull it off. "Nukes and biological contagions aren't exactly precision weapons."

  Sindri's eyes flashed with irritation. "You keep going on about that. You're really starting to piss me off. I'm not insane, you know."

  "No," Kane said in a calm tone. "I didn't."

  Raising the Shockstick, Sindri passed the crackling tip back and forth in front of Kane's eyes. Thickly he growled, "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to fight the temptation to use this on you? To inflict upon you such agony that you'll scream and beg me for death?"

  Flatly, Kane said, "That'll never happen."

  "Probably not," he agreed in a deadly monotone. "Granted, there are scores to even between you and me. But I can put it on the back burner for a little while to get what I want."

  The Shockstick trembled almost imperceptibly within Sindri's grasp. His face contorted in sudden rage. "But I don't like the idea of keeping you alive, Mr. Kane. I don't like it one bit. But I can't take the chance—"

  He broke off, turning away, obviously trying to compose himself.

  "You can't take the chance," Kane finished for him, a hint of mockery in his voice, "if you're trying to convince Baptiste you're not the maniac I claim you are. You can't afford to indulge your taste for murder."

  Sindri thumbed the power switch of the Shockstick to the off position and faced him. He prodded his shoulder gently with the double-pronged tip, setting him swaying like a pendulum. "That's one consideration, I won't deny. But it might be I need you. The creatures here are unpredictable."

  "You're in cahoots with them, then?"

  "Yes."

  "Then why did they try to chill us?"

  Sindri shook his head in exasperation. "If you think I'm a maniac, Mr. Kane, you ought to try to hold a rational conversation with one of them. They were ordered to simply fire off a few guns, to make the state of hostility seem legitimate. Instead, they got carried away. Or they forgot their orders. At any rate, none of them will make much of a crew."

  "Crew?" Kane echoed. "Crew for what?"

  Sindri laughed, a sinister rattlesnake laugh that stood the hairs on the back of Kane's neck at attention. "Of my ship, Mr. Kane. The flagship of freedom sailing the skyways of the world, bringing terror to despots and hope to the despondent."

  Kane surreptitiously studied the little man's face, examining it for signs of complete dementia. Then he made a mental connection. "Death from above?"

  "Exactly." He tapped Kane's chest with the Shockstick. "See, you're not quite as dense as I think you are."

  He made a sudden, expansive wave with the rod, as if it were a scepter. "Let him down."

  Instantly the tension suspending Kane's weight disappeared and he plunged straight down. Only the cushion provided by his coat saved him from a fractured skull or a broken neck. As it was, he went rolling clumsily, cursing as his head swam with a sickening vertigo.

  He lay on his side, panting for a few moments until the dizziness abated and the blood no longer thumped in his ears. Then he struggled into a sitting position. He found himself face-to-face with a smirking Leland, holding the nylon rope in his hands. Kane kicked out at him with his bound feet, but the effort made him fall over. Leland chuckled snidely and watched him thrash to achieve a sitting position again.

  "Calm down," Sindri said. "Be thankful you're right side up."

  Glaring at him from beneath lowered brows, Kane demanded, "This whole deal, the tape, sending Leland to us, it was all a ruse."

  Sindri sneered. "Well, duh."

  "How'd you get these cadavers to go along with you if they're so fused out? What did you offer them?"

  "Wrong approach, Mr. Kane," Sindri answered smoothly. "The commander made an offer to me if I figured out a way to bring you here."

  Kane stared at him in disbelieving silence for a couple of seconds. "She wanted you to trap us?" "Essentially."

  "How did she even know about us?"

  Sindri wagged the Shockstick at him admonishingly. "The commander knew about only one of you."

  "Lakesh?"

  "Dr. Mohandas Lakesh Singh himself. When I and my party first arrived here, I thought this installation was abandoned many years ago. That initial assessment wasn't too far off the mark, either."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Apparently the Anthill suffered major damage a century or so ago. It was so severe the people here were never able to completely repair it. They were only able patch things up so as to forestall the inevitable catastrophic shutdown of its life-sustaining systems. It was like a row of dominoes. When one essential system failed, it affected others. Almost all of the personnel perished. Only a handful remain—diseased ragbags of rot, shadows of human beings."

  Sindri didn't even try to suppress a shudder of complete revulsion.

  "How do you know this?" Kane asked.

  "I hacked into their computer system, their personnel records, their maintenance and repair logs. That's when I came across the file on Dr. Singh and I recalled you, Mr. Grant and Miss Brigid mentioning his name when you were on Parallax Red.

  "I knew it couldn't be a coincidence, two eminent predark physicists with the same name...especially when I learned he had spent nearly 150 years hibernating in this place."

  Kane unobtrusively explored his bonds, but his fingertips were so numb he couldn't even be sure of the kind of material trapping his wrists.

  "Is that the file you encrypted?" he inquired.

  Sindri shook his head. "By no means. I was attempting to access a complete inventory of the items stored here. I came across one word, which then led me to another file and then to a monumental discovery."

  Kane grunted. "And what was that one word?"

  A slow smile creased Sindri's face, one full of satisfaction and triumph. "I doubt it will mean anything to you, inasmuch as your education regarding predark history is frightfully limited."

  "Tell me anyway," Kane suggested sarcastically. Sindri's smile became smug and superior. "Aurora, Mr. Kane. Aurora."

  "DIAN," LAKESH SAID, forcing himself to keep his eyes upon her face, fighting to keep the revulsion from sounding in his voice. There was no point in cringing away even if he surrendered to the impulse. "This isn't the way. Let me up, please."

  The woman continued to stroke him. "You'll leave me again."

  He shook his head. "You have my word I will not. I've found you again, beloved, after all these years. I won't leave you."

  Dian's hands stopped moving, then they slid over to the buckles of the straps. She worked the strap over his chest free of its buckle, but before Lakesh could push himself up, she thrust her face close to his. "Who is that girl with you? A lover? A wife? Who?"

  Her whispered question was full of suspicion and jealousy. The stench of necrotic tissue made Lakesh's skin crawl and his belly churn with cold nausea, but he said firmly, "Once you let me up, I'll tell you. And you'll be pleasantly surprised. Happy, even."

  "Happy?" Dian repeated, rolling the word around contemptuously. "Happy?"

  "Happy," Lakesh confirmed.

  Dian continued to stare into his face as if searching for any signs of duplicity and then undid the other two restraints. Lakesh sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the table. In as intimate a croon as he could muster, he said, "Dian, beloved, when I thought you were lost to me forever, I searched for any piece of you that might have survived. That girl is it. Her first name is Brigid. Her last name is Baptiste."

  Dian did not react in any way.

  "She is part of you," Lakesh continued. "Part of us. She is much like you—brilliant, curious, compassionate. In many ways, I look at her as the daughter you and I should have had."

  Dian remained silent for a tense moment. Then, in a steady, clipped and clinical tone of voice, she declared, "She is a product of my in-vitro genetic samples, on file with Scenario Joshua."

  Lakesh's heart gave a great leap of hope as echoes of the Dian Baptiste he remembered rose from the clouds of madness.

  "I often wondered if I had any descendants sharing my genotype, if my samples were ever put to use."

  "Brigid is living proof of it. I sought her out and looked after her."

  Dian sighed, shook her head. "Does she know of her lineage, of her connection to me—to us?"

  "She does. I told her after I saw you on the tape."

  Dian's face twitched in a macabre caricature of a shy smile. "You saw me?"

  "Yes."

  "You knew it was me and came anyway?"

  Lakesh nodded."The little man—Sindri—thought the tale of finding a terrible menace would be sufficient to lure you here."

  Earnestly, Lakesh stated, "If it was only that, I would not have come myself. It was the sight of you, beloved. Only that."

  Her right eye brimmed with tears, but she blinked them back. When next she spoke, her voice was vacant, distant, as if her clarity of thought had been only a temporary phenomenon, as capricious as her temper tantrum.

  "Now we can always be together, Mohandas. A family. You, me and our daughter."

  She extended a hand toward him, his eyeglasses held between her fingers. "Come. Let's go tell her the good news."

  Chapter 23

  The Shockstick attack didn't render Brigid unconscious, but the excruciating touch of voltage incapacitated her.

  Writhing on the carpeted floor of the office, she had watched with dazed eyes as transadapts leaped from concealed nooks and crannies, repeatedly stroking Kane and Lakesh with the crackling batons. Although she received only a fragmented impression of the figure seated in the chair, she heard a hoarse but unmistakably feminine voice shout, "Enough! He's not to be harmed!"

  Sindri's voice, carrying a surprising note of deference, replied, "I promised you he wouldn't be, Commander."

  When she felt tiny hands groping her, inserting themselves into her coat pockets, she struggled to rise and fight back, but her arms were jerked roughly behind her back. She recognized Leland's voice whispering near her ear. "I'm sorry about this, Miss Brigid."

  Two transadapts dragged her across the carpet, to an opening between a pair of tall bookcases. Only when she was inside a small elevator did they allow her to get to her feet. The trolls brandished their autoblasters in silent threats.

  After the door panel hissed shut, the elevator rose very quietly and only for a few seconds. Then their ascent stopped, the door opened and the transadapts urged her out with nudges from gun barrels. She entered a room that at first glance seemed much like the Cerberus ops center, but at least twice as large.

  It was filled with the most sophisticated electronic equipment she had ever seen, some of it so advanced and unfamiliar she could only guess at its function. But all the consoles and panels were dark and soundless. A bank of monitor screens ran the length of one wall, and they were dark, as well.

 

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