She grabbed a gas grenade from her belt and threw it forward in the same movement. The gray fog of the explosion filled the air. When it cleared, no one in the elevator was left standing.
Celine turned to where the captain lay. She was relieved to see him struggling to his knees. As she moved to help him, she heard the rumble of an ascending elevator. The third one was on its way.
The captain was dazed. Given a choice, he might have stayed to tackle the next arrivals. Celine didn’t give him the option. She took his arm and steered him up the hill.
The driver and his companion had reached the van with their burden. They looked her way and shouted a warning. Celine did not stop, but she turned her head. Forty yards behind her, boiling out of the schoolroom like angry ants from a nest, came a score and more of people wearing Legion of Argos uniforms. They were all carrying rifles.
Celine didn’t wait to find out what they would do with them. She staggered the last few steps to the van and helped the driver to hoist the half-conscious captain inside. As she put her own knee wearily on the tailgate she heard the slap of sharp impacts on the vehicle’s side.
“Good,” the driver said. “We got her. But don’t stand there unless you’re tired of life.”
“How do you know we got her? What’s happening?”
“Because they didn’t shoot at you. The only way that makes sense is if we have their precious leader, and they’re hoping to put this van out of action. They know we’d never get her away from them on foot if they disable it.”
“Can they do that?”
“Not a prayer.” The driver was back in his seat, hands on the wheel and foot on the throttle. “The body and tires of this baby are fullerene-reinforced to hell and gone. They’d need armor-piercing shells to do us any damage. But come on, ma’am. Get your ass on board, and let’s move out of here.”
As Celine placed her other knee onto the tailgate she caught a glimpse on the television of President Steinmetz saying forcefully, “ — and survive the time of maximum danger.” Surely, that program had finished hours ago. It seemed more like days.
She heard a bullet hum a few inches above her head. As she ducked, the engine roared and the van rocketed forward. She almost fell out of the back, but saved herself by a frantic grab at the cloth bundle. It slid backward a foot toward the rear of the van.
“Hey, don’t give her back.” The captain had removed his helmet and gas mask. He had a bloody nose, but seemed back to full consciousness. “We don’t want to lose her after all our trouble getting her.”
The cloth had come partly loose from the tug that Celine had given it. She looked, and realized that it held Pearl Lazenby, tight-wrapped and unconscious. As Celine stared at her face the eyes slowly opened. The captain waved a gas bomb a few inches away from them.
“Try one funny move, ma’am, and you get this. It will put you out for four or five hours, and next time you won’t feel so good when you wake up.”
Pearl Lazenby did not speak. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and appeared to go to sleep.
“What happened down there?” Celine said. “It was supposed to be no violence and no casualties.”
“Of course it was.” The captain was feeling his right cheek, which was riddled with tiny slivers of metal. “It’s always supposed to be no violence and no casualties.”
“But you lost people.”
“Yeah. But some of them may not be dead, even though they’re still down below. We needed to make a fake attack. Turned out that the lady here didn’t rely on her own powers of prophecy to tell her when trouble might be coming, so she kept an armed guard around her quarters. Jake and Nancy and Sid lured them out of the way, and then the rest of us could go in.” The captain stared hard at Celine. “Didn’t I tell you to stay here in the van?”
“Yes.”
“So?”
“You don’t leave team members behind. Not where I come from.”
“I understand that. Nor do we, though it may not look that way to you. Our people all know the deal. First we complete the mission — that’s to deliver Sleeping Beauty here. Then we go back after Nancy and Jake and Sid — with lots and lots of reinforcements.”
“I had two friends in there — Jenny Kopal and Reza Armani — did you …”
“I know about them, ma’am. Mars expedition members, too. I really wish I could have done something. But we had orders, straight in, straight out, and a single target. I’m very sorry.”
“Captain, really.” Pearl Lazenby’s eyes had opened again, and she struggled to a sitting position. “With whom do you imagine you are dealing? Barbarians?”
To Celine’s surprise, he blushed and looked down at his boots. “I don’t know, ma’am. What I’ve heard—”
“ — is utter nonsense. Jenny Kopal and Reza Armani are perfectly safe. Reza, I am delighted to say, is now one of our most loyal and capable members. As for Jenny Kopal, I would like to think that she, too, will become a convert to our cause. But if she does not, and if she wishes to leave, I will order that to happen. I made it clear to everyone in the Legion of Argos that the Mars expedition members were honored guests, to be treated as such.” Pearl Lazenby looked reproachfully at Celine. “You and Dr. Oldfield were included in that category. It disappointed me grievously when you chose to leave — and destroyed our property into the bargain.”
Celine found herself saying “I’m sorry” before she realized how preposterous that was. Here sat the woman who demanded a “holy cleansing” of everyone who was not white and did not accept her views.
“I’m sorry,” Celine said, and continued, “but I regard you as the most dangerous and misguided person I have ever met.”
Pearl Lazenby smiled beatifically, “And I regard you, my child, as someone to be pitied because you were shown truth and did not recognize it.” Her eyes no longer looked at Celine or at anything else in the van. The bright gray irises seemed to film over. When she spoke, it was in a voice slower and deeper than before.
“Your departure from the Legion of Argos produced a great change in the world. That transformation continues, and it will continue for many years. I see ahead half a century of turmoil, of unceasing labor, of forced and unholy unions. Nature’s natural divisions will fail, pure blood will be tainted with impure, God’s domain will be invaded as never before. And at the end, at the end . . .”
She paused. The van raced on through the spring morning, while those inside became totally silent. The television in the background babbled on, but no one was listening to, it.
At last Pearl Lazenby continued, “At the end, disaster. In that final hour of chaos, the Eye of God will rise again. And we will triumph.”
Celine could feel the power, reaching out beyond the woman’s body. She didn’t know about the strike force members, but she could resist it. What she could not do was explain how Pearl Lazenby knew what was going on, now in Washington and soon around the world. Had Wilmer talked to her of the need for the great shield, of the size of the project, of the inevitable and massive global cooperation, of the implied social and racial mixing?
Or had Pearl Lazenby been listening with eyes closed to the television speech, still going on in the background? Saul Steinmetz had outlined what must be done, now he was introducing other speakers to give the Grand Design their personal endorsements. Celine saw Senator Lopez, with his broad and amiable face, shaking Saul’s hand and smiling into the cameras.