"Stop right here, Patera, and I'll show you in a minute."
Hammerstone halted before a pair of wide double doors, standing with his broad body in front of the line at which they met, clearly to block Silk's view of some object.''
"Like I was saying, back three hundred years ago there wasn't all that many bios. A lot of the work was done by chems. Us soldiers did some, but mostly it was civilians. Maybe you know some. They don't have armor and they've got different software."
"They're largely gone now, I'm sorry to say," Silk told him.
"Yeah, and that's one place where I feel like old Pas sort of slipped up. Me and a fem-chem could make a sprat. You know about that?"
"Certainly."
"Each of us is hardwired with half the plans. But the thing is, it might take us a year or so if we're lucky, maybe twenty if we weren't, where you bios can do the main business any night after work."
"Believe me," Silk told him, "I wish with all my heart that you were more like us, and we more like you. I have never been more sincere in my life."
"Thanks. Well, anyhow, after awhile there got to be more bios and the tools were better, mostly 'cause there was still a lot of chems around to make them. Also, there was quite a few slug guns floating around in all the cities that'd had wars, 'cause the soldiers that had owned them were dead. A slug gun isn't all that tough to make, really. You got to have some bar stock and a lathe for the barrel, and a milling machine's nice. But there's nothing a milling machine can do that somebody careful can't do about as good with a set of files and a hand drill, if he's got the time."
Hammerstone included the entire armory m a gesture. "So here we are. Not near as steady as we used to be, and all set to lay the blame on poor old Pas the first time we lose."
"It seems a pity," Silk said pensively.
"Chin up, Patera. Right here's the best thing I got to show you, you being a augur, so I saved it for the last, or almost the last, anyway. Have you ever heard of what they - call Pas's seal?"
Silk's eyes went wide with astonishment. "Certainly I have. It's mentioned in the Pardon. 'Do my will, live in peace, multiply, and do not disturb my seal. Thus you shall escape my wrath.' "
Hammerstone threw back his head in another grin. "Have you ever seen it?"
"Why no. Pas's seal is-to the best of my knowledge at any rate-largely a metaphor. If I were to shrive you, for example, anything I learned during your shriving would be under the seal of Pas, never to be divulged to a third party without your express permission."
"Well, have a look," Hammerstone said, and stepped to one side.
Waist-high on the line where the double doors met, they were joined by a broad daub of dark synthetic. Silk dropped to one knee to read the letters and numbers pressed into it.
5553 8783 4223 9700 34 2221 0401 1101 7276 56 SEALED FOR THE MONARCH
"There it is," Hammerstone told Silk. "It's been there ever since we came on board, and whenever people talk about Pas's seal, that thing you're looking at's what they're talking about. There used to be a lot more of them."
"If this imprint is truly what is intended by the seal of Pas," Silk whispered, "it is a priceless relic." Bowing reverently, he traced the sign of addition in the air before the seal and murmured a prayer.
"If we could take it off and carry it up to one of those big manteions it would be, maybe. The thing is, you can't. If you were to try to get it off of those doors, that black stuff would bust into a million pieces. We broke a bunch after we got here, and what's left isn't a whole lot bigger than H-Six Powder." "And no one knows what lies beyond it?" Silk inquired. "In the next room?"
"Oh, no. We know what's in there all right. It's pretty much like this one, a whole lot of people in the rack. Only in there it's bios. Want to see them?"
"Bios?" Silk repeated. At the word, his dream of a few hours earlier returned to the forefront of his mind with an urgency and immediacy that were wholly new: the bramble-covered hillside, Maytera Marble (absurdly) sick in bed, the oversweet scent of Maytera Rose's blue-glass lamp, and Mucor seated upon the still water when the dream in which she had played her part had vanished. "It's drier farther on. Meet me where the bios sleep.''
"Sure," Hammerslone confirmed, "bios just like you. See, this one we're in right now had extra soldiers, and this next one, with the seal still on the doors, has extra bios. Old Pas must of been scared there might be some kind of a disease, or maybe a famine, and Viron would have to have more bios to get started again. They don't get to lie down like us, though. They're all standing up. Want to see them?"
"Certainly," Silk told him, "if it can be done without breaking Pas's seal."
"Don't worry. I've done this probably a couple dozen times." Hammerstone's steel knuckles rang against one of the doors. "That's not so somebody'll come and let us in, see. I got to stir up the lights inside, or you won't be able to see anything."
Silk nodded. "I doubt your hands are strong enough, so I'll have to do it for you." He wedged chisel-like fingernails into the crevice between the doors. "There's a button underneath of the seal and it's got them latched shut. That's the way a lot of them were when we first come aboard. So Pas's seal won't break even when I pull as hard as I can. But I can get this top part far enough apart for you to peek inside if you put your eye to the crack. Have a look."
There was a faint thrumming from Hammerstone's thorax as he spoke, and the dark line where the edges of the doors met became a thread of greenish light. "You'll have to sort of wiggle between me and the door to see in, but you got to get your eye up close to see anything anyhow."
With his body pressed against the hard, smooth surfaces of the doors, Silk managed to peer through the crevice. He was looking at a thin section of what appeared to be a wide and brilliantly illuminated hall. Here, too, stood racks of gray-painted steel; but the motionless bios in the row nearest the floor (in line with the crevice through which he peered) were nearly upright. Each was contained in what appeared to be a cylinder of the thinnest glass, glass rendered visible only by a coating of dust. With his vision constricted by the narrow opening between the doors, he could make out only three of these sleepers clearly: a woman and two men. All three were naked and were (in appearance at least) of approximately his own age. All three stared straight ahead, with open eyes in empty, untroubled faces.
"Lights on enough?" Hammerstone asked; he leaned forward to peer through the crevice himself, the tip of his chin well above the top of Silk's head.
"Someone's in there," Silk informed him. "Someone who's not asleep."
"Inside?" There was a metallic clang as Hammerstone's forehead struck the doors.
"Look at how bright it is. Every light in the room must be blazing. A few taps on the door cannot possibly have done that."
"There can't be anybody in there!"
"Of course there can," Silk told him. "There's another way in, that's all."
Slowly-so slowly that at first Silk was not sure he was seeing them move at all-the woman in the lowest row lifted her hands to press against the crystalline wall that confined her.
"Corporal of the guard!" Hammerstone blared. "Back of Personnel Storage!" Faintly, a distant sentry took up the cry.