by James Axler
"True, but Kane is also the only person who ever shook up Balam enough for him to deviate from his patented speech about how superior he and his kind are."
Banks nodded, recollecting his astonishment when Lakesh informed him of the telepathic exchange between Kane and Balam a couple of months before. Humanity must have a purpose, Balam had said. And only a single vision can give it purpose… your race was dying of despair. Your race had lost its passion to live and to create. We unified you.
"Obviously," Lakesh continued, "something agitated Balam greatly, similar to when he reacted to the murder of Baron Ragnar."
Banks rose quickly to his feet, ruefully eyeing his state of undress. "I should probably check on him, then."
"I'll do it. He got to you once already. He won't get to me."
"I wasn't expecting it," Banks argued. "I'll have my defenses up now."
"Just the same, you shouldn't expose yourself to another opportunity As it is, I'll wager you feel enervated, have a headache and a great thirst."
Banks glanced toward him in surprise. "The headache is going away. I feel exhausted and I'm parched, though. How'd you know?"
"Standard postabduction symptoms, reported by contactees throughout the twentieth century. You're still too weak to completely screen out Balam's influence if he wants to make a second try at speaking through you."
They left the control center and walked down the corridor to the door of Balam's facility. Banks eyed it anxiously as Lakesh punched in the six-digit code on the keypad. The confirmation circuit buzzed, and the lock clicked open.
"Sir…" Banks began.
"Don't worry," Lakesh said reassuringly. "Go back to your quarters, get dressed, drink a jug of water. If you feel up to it, come back here."
Banks nodded. "Yes, sir."
Lakesh watched him walk away and turn the corner, then he pushed open the door. He stepped cautiously into the large, low-ceilinged room. He saw computer keyboards and medical monitors on their own individual desks. A control console ran the length of the right-hand wall, the multitude of telltales and readouts glowing green and amber.
Lakesh's nostrils recoiled from the astringent smell of chemicals. The room always smelled vaguely of antiseptic and hot copper as a result of the trestle tables loaded down with glass beakers, Bunsen burners and chemical-filtration systems.
The left wall of the room was constructed of heavy panes of clear glass, behind which was a deeply recessed room dully lit by an overhead neon strip, glowing a ruddy red. Balam's optic nerves were very sensitive to light levels much above twilight.
Lakesh stepped to the wall and peered in. He saw nothing but the crimson-tinged gloom.
"I know you're awake in there," he announced. "Otherwise, you wouldn't have pulled your ventriloquist act on Banks. You're not Edgar Bergen and he's not Charlie McCarthy. If you have something you want to communicate, then do it straight out."
Lakesh watched the blurred shape, a darkness within a darkness, shift like twisting mist in the hell-hued murk. He was able to catch only a glimpse of the entity's fathomless, tip-tilted eyes and narrow features before Balam erected his hypnotic screen, a telepathic defense that clouded human perceptions and concealed his appearance from the ape kin who held him captive.
When the nonvoice slid into his mind, he expected to sense the same message Balam had been imparting for over three years: We are old. When your race was wild and bloody and young, we were already ancient. Your tribe has passed, and we are invincible. All of the achievements of man are dust — they are forgotten…
We stand, we know, we are.
The words were less than rhetoric, more than a threat. It was the arrogant, scornful doctrine of a race so old that the most ancient civilizations on Earth were only a yesterday beside it. The underlying psychological message was always the same, stimulating panic, fear and despair in those exposed to it — you cannot win, we are undefeatable, bow to the inevitable. Surrender.
Instead of words, an image flashed into Lakesh's brain, so vivid it was almost a three-dimensional projection. He saw Kane as Balam had first seen him, nearly a year before, pale eyes glinting with hatred, face twisted by revulsion. A jumbled flood of emotions accompanied the vision of Kane — with fear, anger, respect and overlying it all, an almost desperate sense of need.
"Why do you need Kane?" Lakesh asked aloud, shocked almost into speechlessness.
For a chaotic instant, through Balam's mind he caught a flash of black malignity, an impression of something fearsome in a secret place, now spinning a vast web of great menace.
He realized the entity showed him this deliberately, to impress upon him the urgency of his need. Within Lakesh's mind, a series of separate geometric shapes appeared, then rushed together, interlocking to form first a polyhedron, then a trapezohedron.
The image vanished and Lakesh reeled, lungs laboring for air. Cold sweat filled the furrows on his forehead. For a very long moment, he could only stare, feeling fascination, incredulity and fear warring for dominance within him.
For the first time in over three years, Balam had actually communicated a desire and an emotion other than a cold, arrogant superiority. The creature conveyed a sense of a terrible lurking danger and at the same time requested — no, pleaded — for help. And not just anyone's help, but that of Kane, a human who loathed and despised him and everything he represented.
"Kane is not here at present," Lakesh croaked. "I hope he will return shortly. I will bring him to you when he does."
The mist faded, as if sucked back to the far end of the cell. The communication ended as suddenly as it had begun. Lakesh turned away from the glass wall, limbs trembling, but not in reaction to the telepathic exchange. His mind wheeled with conjectures. He couldn't understand what had chipped through Balam's armor and evoked such fear in him he would beg for help from one of the lowly ape kin who held him captive.
On a deep, visceral level, Lakesh knew if the haughty Balam was afraid, then he should be terrified.
And he was.
11
Domi punched in 3-5-2 on the keypad next to the vanadium sec door, grasped the lever tightly and pulled it up. Immediately came the whine of buried machinery, the prolonged squeaking hiss of hydraulics and pneumatics. With a grinding rumble, the multiton sec door opened, the massive panels folding aside like an accordion. She had been told that nothing short of an armor-piercing antitank shell could even dent the six-inch-thick slabs of metal.
She squeezed her slight body between the frame and the door and stepped out onto the plateau. The ragged remains of a chain-link fence clanked in the breeze that gusted up over the edge of the precipice. A telemetric communications array, uplinked to the very few reconnaissance satellites still in orbit, was nestled at the top of the mountain peak.
Domi raised her right hand to shield her sensitive ruby eyes from the dazzle of the noonday sun, wincing at the twinge of pain from her shoulder. Less than three months before, a bullet had damaged the joint, and DeFore had replaced it with an artificial ball-and-socket joint. Long, painful weeks of physical therapy followed the reconstructive surgery, but she had regained the full use of her arm in a remarkably short time. DeFore attributed her recuperative powers to her near feral upbringing in the wild hinterlands beyond the villes, where the victim of an injury either made a full recovery or died.
Scarcely topping five feet in height and weighing a hundred pounds, she looked too frail to have been born in the Outlands, the untamed wildernesses beyond the cushioned tyranny of the villes. Her ragged mop of bone white hair framed a piquant, hollow-cheeked face. Her sleeveless red tunic was belted at the waist, which left her porcelain-colored arms and legs bare and accentuated the insolent arrangement of her curves.
The average life expectancy of an outlander was around forty, and the few who reached that age possessed both an animal's cunning and vitality. Domi was nowhere near that age; in fact, she had no true idea of how old she actually was, but she possessed more than her
share of wits and vigor.
She didn't miss the short and often brutal life in the Outlands. She had quickly adapted to the comforts offered by the Cerberus redoubt — the soft bed, protection from the often toxic elements and food that was always available, without having to scavenge or kill for it.
Domi had enjoyed similar luxuries during her six months as Guana Teague's sex slave. The man-mountain of flab had been the boss of the Cobaltville Pits and he showered her with gifts. He didn't pamper her, though, since she was forced to satisfy his gross lusts.
Domi rarely dwelled on the past, but she often replayed how she had cut Guana's throat and how the blood had literally rivered from the deep slash in his triple chins. She always smiled in recollection of kicking his monstrous body as it twitched in postmortem spasms.
The only possession she had kept from those months spent in league's squat was the long, serrated knife that had chilled him.
Beneath her shading hand, she gazed at the mouth of the road opening up on the far side of the plateau. The trans-comm message from Grant had been received only a few minutes ago. She was less interested in learning that Auerbach and Rouch had been found than in hearing Grant's lion growl of a voice announcing their return.
Domi didn't list patience among her virtues, and waiting in Cerberus for the past five and a half days for word had been difficult to endure. The reasons why she had to stay behind in the redoubt were sound, and she tacitly agreed with them. The other exiles were ville-bred academics, and few of them dared to venture very far from the sec door.
If Grant and the others didn't return after seven days, her instructions were to come after them. A journey on foot down the rugged road leading down from Cerberus to the foothills would have been a hardship, but she knew how to live off the land. She also knew how to kill, quickly, efficiently and without remorse.
Faintly, borne on the wind, came the muted roar of laboring engines. Within moments the six-wheeled Hussar Hot Spur Land Rover hove into sight, followed a few seconds later by the armored, tank-treaded Sandcat.
The Sandcat's low-slung, blocky chassis was supported by a pair of flat, retractable tracks. Its gun turret, concealed within an armored bubble topside, held a pair of USMG-73 heavy machine guns. The hull's armor was composed of a ceramic-armaglass bond, which served as protection from not only projectiles, but went opaque when exposed to energy-based weapons, such as particle-beam emitters.
As the two vehicles rumbled onto the plateau and toward the redoubt's entrance, she saw Auerbach and Rouch in the Hotspur. Their faces locked in grim, unsmiling masks, neither of them seemed to see her. Domi was forced to step aside to keep her feet from being run over. She resisted the urge to give them an obscene gesture as they rolled past.
Through the open ob port of the Sandcat, she saw Kane behind the wheel. Grant leaned over from the codriver's seat to call out, "We found 'em." He spoke loudly in order to be heard over the steady throb of the 750-horsepower engine.
"Nobody hurt?" Domi called back, walking beside the vehicle.
"Nothing serious," Kane said. "The usual."
Domi saw the thin, scabbed-over dark red line on his cheek and grinned. "Yeah, so I see."
Glimpsing Brigid's outline in the rear passenger compartment, Domi stated, "Lakesh big-time wants to talk to all of you. Attendance as in mandatory."
Kane eyes flashed. "Good. I big-time want to talk to him, too."
He drove the Sandcat into the redoubt and braked as Auerbach stopped the Hotspur long enough for Rouch to disembark. Grant and Brigid climbed out while he was stopped, then he followed the Hotspur down the twenty-foot-wide main corridor to the vehicle depot, adjacent to the armory.
Wegmann waited for them to park the wags in their designated stations, on either side of the fuel pump. He eyed Auerbach sourly as the man climbed out of the Land Rover.
"How was your holiday Auerbach?" he asked snidely. "I wish I could go off for five days with Rouch — or any woman, for that matter. But no, I've got to hang out here, servicing the air circulators, mopping up grease, fixing toilets. As if I didn't have enough to do, now I've got to service both these wags. Thanks a lot."
"Fuck off, pissant," Auerbach snapped.
Wegmann widened his brown eyes in mock hurt. "I thought you'd come back all fit and rested, but hey, you're just as obnoxious as the day you left. What happened, Auerbach? Rouch wasn't as much fun as you hoped? Or was it the other way around?"
Peeling his lips back from his teeth in a snarl, Auerbach lunged for the much smaller Wegmann. Kane managed to insert himself between the two men. He elbowed Auerbach to one side. "Enough."
The red-haired man strained against Kane for a moment, then stepped back. "I'm not gonna take shit from that little asshole."
"You don't have to," Kane replied. To Wegmann, he said, "It'd be a real wise move for you to apologize before you start servicing the wags. I've got other business to attend to, and I won't be here to protect you."
Wegmann glared, not in the least intimidated by either man. In his mid-thirties, he was no more than five and a half feet tall, weighing maybe 140 pounds. He might look slight physically, but he was a scrapper and a mechanical genius. He also claimed to be a musician.
Heeling around toward the Hotspur, he snapped an insincere "Sorry" over his shoulder.
Kane guided Auerbach out of the depot with a hand pressed against the small of his back. "Go to the dispensary. Have DeFore take a look at that shoulder."
Auerbach nodded glumly, his anger replaced by shame. "I guess I'd better get used to that treatment. I'll be the laughingstock of Cerberus once the story gets around."
"You made a mistake," Kane said, slightly surprised by how sorry he felt for the man at the moment. "A time will come when you can make up for it."
Auerbach nodded again and walked away, head hung low, posture slumped, a defeated and weary man.
Kane entered the armory, pressed the flat toggle switch on the door frame and the overhead fluorescent fixtures blazed with a white, sterile light.
The big square room was stacked nearly to the ceiling with wooden crates and boxes. Many of the crates were stenciled with the legend Property U.S. Army.
Glass-fronted cases lined the four walls. Automatic assault rifles were neatly racked in one, and an open crate beside it was filled with hundreds of rounds of 5.56 mm ammunition. There were many makes and models of subguns, as well as dozens of semiautomatic blasters, complete with holsters and belts. Heavy-assault weaponry occupied the north wall, bazookas, tripod-mounted M-249 machine guns, mortars and rocket launchers.
All the ordnance was of predark manufacture. Caches of materiel had been laid down in hermetically sealed Continuity of Government installations before the nukecaust. Protected from the ravages of the outraged environment, nearly every piece of munitions and hardware was as pristine as the day it rolled off the assembly line. In the far corner, his and Grant's Magistrate body armor rested on metal frameworks, standing like grim black sentinels.
Kane went to a gun case and unstrapped his Sin Eater from his forearm. He felt a distant wonder when he realized he hadn't had to fire a shot or chill anyone on this mission. He had returned to the armory with the same full clip as when he'd left it.
However, he had been tempted to fire a few rounds during the three-day journey back to the foothills. Auerbach was silent and sullen and Rouch responded with spits and snarls whenever Kane or Brigid spoke to her.
He hadn't apprised Brigid of what passed between him and Rouch at the Indian village. If she was mystified by the open hostility Beth-Li directed at both of them over the past couple of days, she didn't comment on it.
Kane repressed a snort as he replaced the grens in their foam-cushioned cases. Life was becoming far too complicated in Cerberus lately, and he laid the blame squarely on Lakesh. The situation with Beth-Li had its amusing aspects, but all the entertainment value was squeezed out of it. He was honest enough with himself to be flattered by the young woman's atte
ntions and intents. No man could be otherwise.
Grant and Domi shared a superficially similar relationship. Domi claimed to be in love with Grant, viewing him as her savior from the chains of servitude forged by Pit boss Guana Teague.
From what Grant said, Domi had saved him when Guana was literally crushing the life out of him. Regardless, Domi had attached herself to Grant and for a time her blatant attempts to bed him made Beth-Li's actions seem cold and standoffish.
Although expressing jealousy of other women, it was obvious Domi loved Grant fiercely. Kane did not know if his friend had ever tired of resisting the albino girl's charms and surrendered to them, but he tended to doubt it. Domi could be sixteen or twenty-six. Grant was pushing forty and if he involved himself with Domi, he said he'd feel twice that.
He had spoken in jest, but Kane suspected the emotional wounds inflicted by his ruined affair with Olivia years ago in Cobaltville had yet to fully heal. Kane had never asked Grant about Olivia. The two men observed an unspoken understanding that it was a forbidden topic. Kane stepped into the corridor and made for the central control complex. He was sure he would find Lakesh there, but he forged a mental resolution not to be distracted by the old man's crisis of the day. He intended to have a final discussion on the matter of Beth-Li, then inform him of the pact he had struck with Sky Dog. He would not allow anything — no matter how urgent — to interfere with it.
His resolve faltered when he entered the huge chamber. Brigid and Grant stood over Lakesh at the main computer station, listening with rapt expressions as the old man spoke earnestly, gesturing with his hands.
When Lakesh caught sight of Kane, he waved imperiously. "Didn't Domi give you my message?" he demanded impatiently. "You were to report to me immediately."
Kane increased the length and speed of his stride. He saw Grant glance his way and distinctly heard him mutter "Shit" before discreetly sliding away from Lakesh and Brigid.
Lakesh was too caught up his agitated excitement to take notice of the expression on Kane's face or the icy gleam in his pale eyes. "As I was telling dearest Brigid and friend Grant, something unprecedented happened early this morning…"