Afsan found his body tipping far forward again. He forced it erect, forced his tail to touch the ground—
—and someone stepped on it—
—and that was it—
Afsan felt the change in his body, felt instinct rising up, taking hold.
He swung around, his torso coming forward as he did so, his tail lifting, his body bobbing up and down, up and down, the challenge upon him, dagamant seizing him.
They had called him The One in his youth, the greatest hunter since the Original Five. Even blind, even in a fury, even getting on to middle age, he still had the moves, still had the timing. He could hear the breathing of the one nearest him, short, sharp intakes, as if that person, too, was fighting to retain self-control. It was a male, Afsan knew at once, the pheromone unmistakable.
“Good Afsan,” said the voice, trying to sound soothing but the tone curdled by fear. It was a voice he recognized, a person he knew. Pod-Oro, aide to… to… Afsan’s mind was fogging, his intellect ebbing… to governor Rodlox of Edz’toolar…
So much the better.
Afsan lunged forward, arms outstretched. His hands connected. A shoulder beneath his left, a haunch under his right. Oro was completely horizontal himself, in a pose of challenge. His head would be right about—
Afsan felt his own skin tearing, Oro’s claws slicing through his upper arm. It didn’t matter; the pain didn’t really register. All that mattered now was the kill—
As long as he was in partial physical contact with Oro, as long as he could feel a limb or a bit of his torso, Afsan could extrapolate where the other’s vulnerable parts would be.
The One.
Afsan’s torso shot forward and down, bringing his head in low, jaws agape.
The crunch of neck bones.
Teeth popping from their sockets. And the taste of blood, hot and surging… Oro didn’t even scream as he died. His body just fell to the stone roadway with a dull thud.
And then Afsan felt hands upon his back.
He wheeled again.
The madness had begun.
*38*
Toroca had hoped at most to find a few more artifacts. He’d never expected anything like this. Whatever the vast structure was, it was still half-buried in the cliff face. It was big enough to be a large building or a temple or even a great sailing ship. Only one thing was clear at this point: the object was blue, the same cool blue as the small artifact Toroca had found earlier. Ignoring the stench of blackpowder, Toroca moved closer, the rest of his team following behind.
The structure was completely outside of Toroca’s experience, he kept staring at it, trying to fathom what it was, but it just didn’t fit anything he’d ever seen before. The thing was roughly ovoid, assuming the part still buried curved back the way the exposed part did, but it had many projections and its surface was corrugated in some places, fluted in others.
Just getting up the rock face was treacherous. So much new debris had been laid down, and it had had no time to settle. But he couldn’t wait.
Toroca and his surveyors spent the rest of the afternoon clambering around, examining the exterior of the vast blue structure. There was no direct way to associate such a massive object—some thirty paces high—with a single rock layer, but it was made out of the same blue stuff as the original six-fingered artifact, and that had been excavated from the layer immediateh below the Bookmark layer, so it seemed likely this vast structure dated from the same period.
Finally, a shout went up. “Over here!”
It echoed badly against the cliff face and had to compete with the sound of crashing waves from the beach below. At last Toroca located the source. Delplas was gesticulating wildly. She was perched at the edge of the visible part of the object, where the blue matenal jutted out of the cliff. Toroca scrambled across the rock to join her, almost tumbling down the embankment in his eagerness to get there.
She was pointing at an inlaid rectangle in the blue material. The rectangle was twice as high as it was wide—or twice as wide as it was high; no one was yet sure which way was up for this vast object. A prominent series of geometric markings appeared in a line embossed across the short dimension of the panel. Beneath it was an incised rectangle where, perhaps, a sign or note had once gone. “It’s a door,” said Delplas.
Toroca was elated. It did indeed look like a door. But his elation is short-lived. “Where are the hinges?” he said.
“I think it’s a sliding door,” said Delplas. Such doors were common on cabinets: two sliding panels could be staggered to cover the entire interior, or both pushed to the same side to leave the other half of the inside exposed.
“Perhaps,” said Toroca. “But how do we slide it aside? There’s no handle.”
Delplas’s face fell, too. “Hmm. That does pose a problem doesn t it?”
“We can’t blast through that material,” said Toroca. He drummed his fingertips on the hard blue surface, so solid, so unrelenting…
Something gave.
Just a little, a slight movement, as he tapped against the incised rectangle in the center of the door panel. There was a hollow behind it. The rectangle wasn’t inlaid in the door material, Rather, it was tacked overtop of it, held in place with the same clever little gray clips that had sealed the two halves of the original hemispherical artifact Toroca had found.
“Help me with this,” said Toroca.
Delplas stood there, not understanding.
“Come here,” snapped Toroca. “Help me open this panel.”
“There’s not enough room for both of us…” she said.
“Don’t worry about that, for God’s sake. It will only take a moment to try. Come here.”
She seemed dazed.
“Here! Come on. You can go hunt afterward, but this will take more than two hands.” At last she moved closer. “Thank you,” said Toroca. “Now, pry your fingerclaws in there, and there. No, like this. That’s right. Now pull.”
“Nothing’s happening, Toroca.”
“Keep trying. Pull!”
“It’s stuck—”
“Pull!”
“My claws are going to tear out—”
But at that moment that panel did pop forward, revealing a rectangular hollow within the door. It was filled with crumbling bits of corroded metal, at least some of which had been iron, or an iron alloy, judging by the orange color.
“Was that a lock of some sort?” asked Delplas.
“Whatever it was,” said Toroca, “it’s rusted away. Maybe it was some sort of recessed handle.”
Toroca placed his fingers on the lip of the depression and, bracing himself against the rocky slope, pulled to the left with all his might. Nothing.
“Maybe it slides the other way,” said Delplas.
Toroca tried pulling to the right. “I think—”
“It didn’t move,” said Delplas.
“I felt it move,” said Toroca. “It shifted, ever so slightly. But it did shift.”
There wasn’t room enough in the indentation for two pairs of hands. Toroca stepped aside and Delplas gave a healthy yank. “Maybe,” she said doubtfully. “Maybe it moved a little.”
Toroca leaned in close, examined the remnants of whatever metal device had been hidden behind the little panel. “Maybe the door’s jammed on the metalwork. Get Greeblo.”
Greeblo was the oldest member of the survey crew, and, therefore, the largest and strongest. Delplas returned with her a short time later.
“It’s seized up,” said Toroca. “Perhaps with your strength…”
Greeblo, about twice Toroca’s bulk, bent in low to examine the mechanism. The lip was fairly thin—no need for thick structures when building out of this fantastic material. “I’ll slice my hand off if I pull with all my strength against that edge,” she said. She fished a calibrated tape out of one of the pockets on her geologist’s sash and made some measurements of the little declivity, the lip, and so on. Then, without a word, she turned to leave.