Thibault had never liked the boy, anyway. The boy would not be a loss.
The Proctors took him to the makeshift stockade in the City Hall basement and locked him in a cell there.
Thibault, who hated confinement, paced his cage and remembered what Ellen had said.
They’ll burn up everyone, she had said. Even you.
Was that possible? It was true, there had been some muttering in the barracks and at mess hall—Thibault had never taken such things seriously. But there was the firebreak. That was real enough. And the tower in the forest. And his imprisonment.
Lukas Thibault’s head felt as if it had been cracked like a walnut. He wished he could see the sky.
Even you, my charming soldier.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Work at the test site peaked and ebbed, many of the civilian workers had been sent back to Fort LeDuc. A battalion of physicists and engineers remained behind to initiate the bomb sequence and study the results. The stillness of completion had descended on the circle of cleared land; the air was cold and tense.
Clearly, Demarch thought, these were the final hours. Censeur Bisonette had flown in from the capital for a one-day tour: Two Rivers, before the end. Demarch stood on the snowy margin of the test grounds while Bisonette marched about with his press of Bureau personnel, Delafleur unctuously proclaiming each tedious landmark. This was followed by a lunch in one of the freshly emptied tin sheds, trestle tables stocked with the only decent food ever to be trucked into town: breads, meats, fresh cheeses, leek and potato soup in steaming bouilloires.
Demarch sat at the Censeur’s left, Delafleur to his right. Despite this ostensible equity, conversation flowed mainly between Bisonette and the Ideological Branch attache. More evidence of a shift of patronage, Demarch thought, or an even deeper movement in the geology of the Bureau de la Convenance. He felt left out but was too numb to care. The wine helped. Red wine from what had once been Spanish cellars in California. Spoils of war.
After the meal he had Bisonette’s attention exclusively, which was really no improvement. Demarch rode in the Censeur’s car during what was meant to be a tour of the town itself, though it was difficult to see much beyond the bustle of security cars on every side. The procession wound eastward from the fragmentary highway, over roads full of potholes, past drab businesses and gray houses under a sunless sky. The wealth of the town and its impoverishment were both much in evidence.
Bisonette was unimpressed. “I notice there are no public buildings.”
“Only the school, the courthouse—City Hall.”
“Not much civic spirit.”
“Well, this wasn’t a city of any proportion, Censeur. You might say the same of Montmagny or Sur-Mer.”
“At least at Montmagny there are temples.”
“The churches here—”
“Aggrandized peasant huts. Their theology is impoverished, too. Like a line drawing of Christianity, all the details left out.”
Well, Demarch had thought as much himself. He nodded.
The cavalcade wound through Beacon Street and back to the motor hotel the Bureau had appropriated as headquarters. The chauffeur parked and stood outside without offering to open the doors. Demarch moved to get out, but Bisonette touched his arm. “A moment.”
He tensed now, waiting.
“News from the capital,” Bisonette said. “Your friend Guy Marris has left the Bureau.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. With three fingers missing.”
Demarch stiffened. Three fingers was the traditional penalty for stealing Bureau property. Or lying to a hierarch.
Bisonette said, “I understand the two of you were close.”
Nauseated, weightless, Demarch could only nod.
“Fortunately you have other friends. Your father-in-law, for instance. He’s fondly remembered. Though very old. No one would want to insult him or his family. Not while he’s alive.” Bisonette paused to let this wisdom sink in. “Lieutenant, I assume you want to keep your fingers.” He nodded again.
“You have the forged papers Guy Marris gave you?” They were in his breast pocket. Demarch said nothing, but his hand strayed there.
“Give them to me. No more need be said. At least for now.”
Demarch caught and held the Censeur’s eyes. His eyes were a mild blue, the color of a hazy sky. Demarch had wanted to find something there, the apospasma theion, or its opposite, the antimimon pneuma, a visible absence of the soul. But he was disappointed.
He took Evelyn’s pass papers from his breast pocket and put them in the Censeur’s ancient hand.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Bisonette’s visit was more troublesome than Delafleur had expected. It distracted his attention from the situation developing in the military barracks.
Two militiamen had been caught trying to bluff past the checkpoints out of town. Questioned, they admitted that they had heard the town would be burned with the soldiers still in it; that the Proctors had decided they were expendable.
Which was true but not for public consumption. It was a dangerous rumor and needed to be stopped. Today three more militiamen had disappeared on routine patroclass="underline" perhaps killed or captured by townspeople, more likely on the run.
All this would be taken care of in less than twenty-four hours, but a lot could happen in that time. If the soldiers rioted it would make everything problematic. Delafleur had taken over City Hall as his quartier general and made the basement storage rooms, into a kind of stockade; Lukas Thibault was down there, but Lukas was not the only font of this poisoned water.
Delafleur moved restlessly through what had once been the office of the mayor, with its commanding view of the town. The town was deceptively still. Motionless, except for the wind and the falling snow. The trouble was subterranean, but for how long? And the weather was a problem in itself. Would snow postpone the bomb test? He listened to the chatter on the radio monitor the military men had installed for him, but it was only technical caquetage. The countdown hadn’t begun.
Delafleur wished he could hurry time onward, push the hours until they tumbled over.
There was a knock at the door. Delafleur said, “Come in!” And turned to see a soldier waiting.
“The woman you wanted us to pick up was out, Censeur,” the man said.
“I’m not a Censeur,” Delafleur said irritably. “Call me Patron. It’s in your handbook, for God’s sake.”
The soldier ducked his head. “Yes, Patron. But the boy. We found the boy.”
Delafleur looked past the soldier and saw the boy in the waiting room: a nothing-in-particular marmot wearing spectacles and a rag of a shirt. So this was Clifford Stockton, Lukas Thibault’s nemesis.
“Lock him downstairs,” Delafleur said.
Perhaps the rumors could no longer be contained. Maybe it was too late for that. But it couldn’t hurt to try.
He shooed out the soldier. Then he picked up the telephone and called the military commander, Corporal Trebach, and told him to keep his troops confined to quarters today. There had been gunfire from the townspeople, he said, and he didn’t want anyone hurt. It was a lie, of course. Two lies: no gunfire, at least not yet, and he didn’t care who got hurt. Whether Trebach was fooled… who could say?
It was strange work, Delafleur thought, like plugging holes in a dike until the dike can be destroyed.
“It’s tomorrow,” Evelyn Woodward said. “I don’t know what time. Probably around noon. I heard him talking to Delafleur on the phone. There are some problems with the soldiers, so no one wants to wait.”
Dex nodded. Evelyn had shown up at his door for what he supposed was the last time, bearing this final nugget of information. She looked cold, he thought; gaunt, though there was no doubt plenty to eat while she was under Demarch’s wing. Her eyes took in the room without expression; she never smiled—but why should she?