Gazing at him, Lotta whispered, "Now he can't help us."
"Maybe it doesn't matter," Sebastian said. The lives die, he thought. They have to, ours included. His. Even the assassin on his way here; eventually he will dwindle away and be gone, too--slowly, over years, or in an instant: all at once.
A knock sounded on the hall door.
Going to the door, shovel in hand, Sebastian opened it.
The black-silk figure with cold eyes standing there tossed something small into the living, room. Sebastian, dropping the shovel, grabbed the Offspring by the neck and dragged him from the hall, into the room.
The room exploded.
The body of the Offspring over him, Sebastian felt himself lifted up, as by a wind; he crashed against the far wall of the room, as in his hands, the assassin writhed. Now smoke filled the room. He--and the assassin--lay against a broken door; shards of wood projected from the assassin's back. The assassin had died.
"Lotta," Sebastian said, pulling himself free from the lolling, inert mass of body; now fire licked up the walls, consuming the drapes, the furniture. The floor itself burned. "Lotta," he said, and groped about for her.
He found her, still in the kitchen. Without picking her up he could see that she was dead. Fragments of the bomb had entered her brain and body. Had killed her more or less immediately.
The fire crackled; the air, consumed by it, became opaque. He lifted his wife up, carried her from the apartment and out into the hall. Already, people filled the hall. Their voices yammered and he felt their hands plucking at him--he shoved them away, still carrying Lotta.
Blood, he discovered, ran in trails down his face. Like tears. He did not wipe it away; instead he made his way toward the elevator. Someone, or several people, got the elevator for him; he found himself inside it.
"Let us get her to the hospital," voices--unfamiliar--said to him, voices accompanying the plucking hands. "And you're badly hurt too; look at your shoulder."
With his left hand--his right seemed paralyzed--he found the control buttons of the elevator; he pressed the top one.
Next, he wandered across the roof of the building, searching for his car. When he found it he placed Lotta inside, in the back, shut the doors, stood for a time and then, reopening a door, got in behind the wheel.
He then reached the sky; the car flew through the evening twilight. Where? he wondered. He did not know; he merely kept driving. He drove on and on as the evening became darker; he felt the evening settle about him and the whole earth. An evening which would last forever.
Flashlight in hand he searched among the trees; he saw grave stones and withered flowers and knew that he had come to a cemetery--which one he did not know. An old one, a little one. Why? he wondered. For Lotta? He looked around, but the car and Lotta had disappeared: he had gone too far from them. It didn't matter. He continued on.
The narrow, yellow beam of light carried him at last to a tall iron fence; he could go no farther. So he turned about and started back, still following the light, as if it were alive.
An open grave. He halted. Mrs. Tilly M. Benton, he thought; she lay here, once. And, not far off, the ornate monument under which the Anarch Peak had once rested. This is Forest Knolls Cemetery, he realized. He wondered why he had come here; he seated himself on the damp grass, felt the cold of night, felt the utter cold deep inside him: much colder than the night itself. Cold, he thought, like the grave.
Flashing the meager beam of his light on the Anarch's monument he read the inscription. Sic igitur magni quoque circum moenia mundi expugnata dabunt labem putresque ruina.s, he read, without comprehension. He wondered what it meant. He could not remember. Did it have any meaning? Perhaps not. He withdrew the yellow beam of light from the monument.
For a time, a long time, he sat listening. He did not think; there was nothing to think about. He did not because there was nothing to do. Eventually, his flashlight gave out; the beam shrank to a spot and then dimmed away and vanished. He laid the tube of metal and glass down, touched his injured shoulder, felt the pain and wondered about that, too. It, like the Latin inscription, did not seem to mean anything.
Silence.
And then, as he sat, he heard voices. He heard them from many graves; he detected the growing into life of those below-- some very close to it, some indistinct and far off. But all moving in that direction. He heard them coming closer; the voices became a babble.
Under me, he thought. One very near by. He could-- almost--make out its words.
"My name is Earl B. Quinn," the voice crackled. "And I'm down here, shut in, and I want to get out."
He did not stir.
"Can anybody up there hear me?" Earl B. Quinn called anxiously. "Please, somebody; hear me. 1 want to get out--I'm suffocating!"
"I can't get you out," he said, then. Finally.
Excitedly, the voice stammered, "C-can't you dig? I know I'm near the top; I can hear you real clearly. Please start digging, or go tell everybody; I have relatives--they'll dig me out. Please!"
He moved over, away from the grave. Away from the insistent noise. Into the babble of all the many others.
Much later the headlights of an aircar beamed down at him. The engine of the car roared as it set down in parking lot of the cemetery. Then footsteps, and the illumination of a large-battery light, a vast sealed headlight beam. The path of illumination swung from side to side; like a visible pendulum, he thought; like part of a clock. He waited, not stirring, but at last the light reached him, touched him.
"I figured I'd find you here," Bob Lindy said.
He said, "Lotta is--"
"I found your car. I know." Lindy crouched down, shone the heavy white beam on him. "And you're seriously hurt; you're covered with blood. Come on--I'll take you to the hospital."
"No," Sebastian said. "No; I don't want to go."
"Why not? Even if she's gone you still have to--"
Sebastian said, "They want to get out. All of them."
"The deaders?" Lindy gripped him around the waist, lifted him to his feet. "Later," he said. "Can you walk at all? You must have been walking; your shoes are covered with mud. And your clothes are torn, but maybe the blast did that."
"Let Earl Quinn out," Sebastian said. "He's the closest; he can't breathe." He pointed to the grave stone. "Under there."
"You're going to die," Lindy said. "Yourself. Unless I can get you to the hospital. Goddam it, walk as well as you can; I'll try to support you. My car's right over here."
"Call the police," Sebastian said, "and have the cop who patrols this area sink an emergency air shaft down. Until we can get back here and start excavation."
"Okay, Sebastian. I'll do that." They had reached the car; Bob Lindy tugged the door open, grunting and perspiring, got him inside.
"They need help," Sebastian said, as the car lifted and Bob Lindy put on the headlights. "It wasn't just one I heard this time; I heard them all." He had never heard anything like it before. Ever. So many at once--all of them together.
"In time," Lindy said. "We'll get Quinn out first; I'll call the police department now." He quickly picked up the receiver of the car's phone.
The car flew on silently, in the direction of the city receiving hospital.