He kissed the girl tenderly on the cheek and turned to the giant by his side. The huge man's impassive face showed nothing, yet I had the distinct feeling he was standing apart, making his own decisions. Perhaps it was the way his little eyes took in everything, glittering and vicious.
"Who are you leaving in charge?" Carlsbad asked, and the mountainous man gestured to a robed figure that stepped forward.
"Tumo," the giant said, and Tumo bowed deferentially to Carlsbad then shifted his eyes quickly to the huge man. Something passed between the two men, unspoken, fleeting, but nonetheless there. Tumo was in his late twenties, well-built, with a hard line of a mouth and eyes that almost matched Carlsbad's in their dark intensity. On his chest, bared by the loose-fitting robe, he wore a silver medallion with the human bone in the center. They all wore the piece, some as ankle bracelets, others had them suspended from their wrists.
"Tumo and I have carefully gone over exactly what he is to do," Sumo Sam said. "If anything should happen to us, he will carry on."
"Nothing will happen to us." Carlsbad smiled. "So long as I have the strain in my possession, they must take extreme care in their moves. Come, let us go."
Carlsbad kissed the girl again, this time on the forehead, and walked toward the doorway. The giant and the other two Japanese that had been with him right along followed. I had to give it a final try.
"The whole world's alerted, Carlsbad," I yelled after him. "You can't win. Call it off."
He paused in the shadows of the archway and smiled back at me. "You are wrong," he said. "I can't lose."
I cursed inwardly, knowing the truth of what he'd answered. The minute he let that strain loose, he'd made his point. But he wasn't content with just making a point any longer. He was going to use X–V77 to bring the world down around itself. I glanced up to see the man Tumo watching me. He abruptly turned and hurried away. The others had begun to drift off and disappear into the numerous corridors that led from the central portion of the crumbled old temple.
Rita Kenmore still stood there. She was about to say something when the sound of an engine made the walls of the temple reverberate. It was a helicopter. I knew that distinctive sound and I listened as the chopper took off and finally faded from hearing. Only the girl was left looking at me.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I am, really."
"Get me out of here," I said to her quietly. "Now, while nobody's around. Quick!"
The china blue eyes grew even rounder, mirroring her shock that I should even think such a thing. She didn't move but I felt her draw back.
"I can't," she said, keeping her voice low. "I'm sorry but I just can't."
"Look, what if I said I think your uncle is right but I know he can't win," I suggested. "Let me out of here and I will help him."
"I wouldn't believe you," she said, her eyes serious. "You don't think anything like that. But he is right, you know. And what he's trying to do is right."
I gritted my teeth. I didn't have time for philosophical abstractions, but I had to get through to her.
"All right, I'll admit I don't know whether he's right or wrong. But I do know this. You can't do the right thing in the wrong way. When you do that, you destroy whatever lightness there is, and that's what your uncle's doing. Unfortunately, he's not only destroying concepts, he's going to destroy people, flesh and blood people."
She was looking at me, biting her lower lip with her teeth and I held my eyes steady on her. I knew I was finally getting to her. Suddenly Tumo reappeared and got to her first. He had two men and two women with him.
"Take her," he said quietly, and I groaned. Rita looked up as the men moved quickly to her, seizing her arms. She was frowning, not really comprehending. But I knew damn well what was happening. Carlsbad's idealistic movement had a few crosscurrents in it.
"What are you doing?" Rita gasped as they twisted her arms behind her back. "Let me go at once!"
Tumo's answer was a resounding slap across her face that made her pretty head swivel. I saw the tears come into her eyes. "I… I don't understand," she choked.
"I'll explain fast," I answered. "Tumo, here, is your large Oriental friend's man and has his own ideas about running things when your uncle is finished doing his bit."
Tumo smiled, a deadly, evil smile, and kicked me in the chest. As I saw his foot coming and he wore only sandals it merely hurt like hell. He turned to Rita and ran his hands down over her breasts. She tried to twist away, but the other two men were holding her immobile. The woman stood by watching.
"Your uncle is interested only in making the world understand" Tumo said. "We who have suffered and been victimized by the world's misuse of science are interested in making it pay.
He turned to the women. "Prepare the altar first and then her," he said. The men had already finished tying Rita's hands behind her back and her ankles together, just as I was tied. They flung her down beside me and I heard her cry out in pain as she hit the wall. When she finally looked at me, Tumo and the others had padded silently away and her face was tear-streaked.
"What are they going to do with us?" she asked, fear in her voice.
"Kill us," I said flatly. I didn't say anything about doing it the hard way. She'd find out soon enough. In fact, she found out sooner than I'd figured when the two women returned. One went to the altar and began rearranging the candles, bringing them closer to the stone slab and putting them in a semi-circle behind it. The other woman came over to Rita with a small pen-knife and began cutting away the girl's clothes until she was naked. Her eyes met mine, pained embarrassment and fear sharing room in them. The woman had gone over to the altar.
Embarrassment gave way to a gasp of terror as the two women returned, pulled her to her feet and dragged her to the stone slab of an altar. With a flood of sudden horror I saw what had been rigged over the altar slab. Rita's lovely young body was strapped onto the altar, her ankles untied, her legs spread and then secured by ankle straps. Her arms were tied at her sides. Over the stone slab, the candles had been arranged to drip their hot wax into long metal strips suspended from balanced wires. The two women saw my eyes roving over the arrangement as they finished with Rita.
"That is right," one said, turning to me. "The candles are made of a special wax — one that stays boiling hot for a long, long time. As the wax fills the metal strips they will tilt and pour down upon her. By morning, she will be coated with wax from head to foot."
I knew she was telling the truth. The network of metal funnels and strips over the stone slab looked like a diabolical mobile.
"She will die little by little," the woman said. "She will be our sacrifice to the spirit of pain. Others may pray to the symbols of love and peace and goodness, but we who have been injured beyond repair, we pray to our guiding spirit pain. It is pain which has guided our lives, physical pain, emotional pain."
The other woman was busy lighting the carefully arranged candles that were part of the whole mad contrivance. I saw Tumo enter at the head of a procession, walking slowly, murmuring chants. The two women joined the group as they all knelt in front of the stone slab. As the women kept up the chant, the men, led by Tumo, stood on both sides of the stone and rubbed their hands over the girl's naked form. It was more fear than pain that made Rita cry out. The pain would be coming soon enough. Finally they withdrew from the girl and joined the women in further chants. The candles continued to burn steadily and I could see the metal strips starting to fill up with hot, liquid wax.