"In the guts." Altini writhed on the dirt, face silvered by the starlight. "Don't waste time." He beat at the hand Dumarest extended toward him. "This is no time to go soft. Take your chance- but leave me the laser."
He screamed as Dumarest raced on; the sound of an animal at bay, trapped, hurt, defying those who hunted him down. Deliberate noise which attracted attention, targets for his laser, as he provided a target in turn. Dumarest reached the last wall, sprang over it, crouched in the shadow at the far side. Luck was with him, the raft stood to one side of the great doors, the two men in attendance looking to where the thief had died.
The first fell beneath the hammer-blow of the pommel of Dumarest's knife. The second fell back, one hand lifted to the gaping slash in his throat, the other raised in futile defense. The body of the raft was empty. Dumarest threw himself at the controls, forcing himself to take his time, not to overload the initial power-surge. As men came running toward him the vehicle lifted, darted higher as he fed power to the generator and the antigrav units, which gave it lift.
From below a laser reached toward him and solid missiles from a tower chewed at the rail. He ignored both weapons, concentrating on height and speed, sending the raft hurtling toward the west.
Higher. Higher. Reaching toward the stars until sanity checked him and he dived, riding low, dropping beneath the peaks of hills, following valleys, keeping rock and stone between himself and the Temple.
Flinging himself down into the body of the vehicle as, with shocking abruptness, the night vanished to reveal the terrain with ghastly clarity. Stroboscopic brilliance streaming from behind where a sunburst flowered to create a searing mushroom against the sky.
"A bomb," said Rauch Ishikari. "An atomic bomb. I find it hard to believe."
He sat in the salon of the Argonne, his clothing disheveled, his face bearing the marks of tension and strain. He looked older than he had, robbed of sleep, the culmination of a dream. As he reached for the decanter to pour wine, his hand shook a little so that thin, delicate chimings rose from the contact of container and glass.
"It's true enough." Dumarest leaned back in his chair. His throat was sore from explanations and his body ached from Ellen Contera's administrations. Drugs and other things to treat his wounds and wash the absorbed radiation from flesh, blood and bone. "It's what you wanted to find out. The secret of the Temple. The object of their veneration. I wish I could give you more but Sanchez-"
"Sanchez was a fool! One blinded by greed. I should have recognized his weakness-such men are never to be trusted." Ishikari gulped at his wine. "But a bomb? They worshiped a bomb?"
"They worshiped the Mother," corrected Dumarest. The Earth Mother. The statue and the bomb were symbols and they may not have known it was a bomb at all. Once, maybe, but they could have forgotten. It had become a part of their ceremonies; the depiction of Earth cradled in the hands of the Mother. Both were radioactive substances which neared critical mass when brought close. When that happened there would be an intense blue glow."
"Radiation," said Ishikari. "Altini saw it."
And had seen it again without the protection of reflective surfaces. Dumarest wondered if the thief had guessed he was dying-that his body was doomed to rot just as those of the workers were rotting. Contaminated as the priests who had attended the Holy Place had been contaminated. Experiencing the affliction which had cursed a world.
Dumarest looked at the wine and saw in the ruby liquid images of an ancient horror. A planet riven with suicidal madness. One shunned, proscribed, set apart by those fearful of the contagion of insanity. One forgotten. A world deliberately lost.
Earth.
It had to be Earth.
"It's gone." Ishikari shook his head radiating his disappointment. "Everything I'd hoped to find. Now there's nothing left but a crater filled with radioactive slag."
"You blame me?"
"No, of course not."
But he would be blamed, Dumarest knew, if not now then in a week, a month, a year. When Ishikari had brooded long enough over the votive offerings now lost, the books, the gems, the cunning artifacts. The history which the Temple must have contained. The secret knowledge which he would be certain had been there to find. The power he yearned to obtain.
By that time they would have parted-already the Argonne was heading to a nearby world. One where he could take a choice of vessels.
Leaving the salon Dumarest made his way down the passage. Ellen was within her cabin, wine at her side, a plate of small cakes resting beside her on the bed. She smiled as he knocked and entered; then reached for the bottle, halting the movement of her hand as he shook his head.
"No? Well, you know best. I thought you could use it. I guess Rauch has pretty well sucked you dry."
"There wasn't that much to tell."
"I agree-if you told me all there was."
"You doubt it?"
"Does it matter?" Shrugging, she held onto the bottle and filled her glass to the brim. "Some secrets should remain just that-secrets. You know what I'm doing?"
"I think so. You're holding a wake." He saw she didn't understand. "A party to say farewell to the dead."
"You'd know about such things. Just like Kroy. He told me how mercenaries operate. How to stop your enemies haunting you and how to settle with your friends. The few I had are still around. I was too close to them for too long. Help me, Earl. What should I do?"
He reached for the bottle and filled an empty glass and lifted a cake from the plate at her side.
"You do as I do. You sip and take a small bite and eat and swallow and take another sip. Each time you do it you say farewell." To Kroy and Ahmed and Pinal the assassin. To Ramon Sanchez and the man he had killed. Watching the woman, counting, Dumarest wondered why she had included him also. A man she had never seen and could know nothing about. Who else had died? "Where is Karlene?"
"Earl-"
"Take me to her!"
She lay on her bed like a woman carved from alabaster, white, pristine, pure, with the face of a child. She lay on her side, knees drawn up to her chest in the fetal position, one hand at her mouth, the lips closed around her thumb. Her eyes were open, wide, as vacuous as the windows of a deserted house.
"Karlene?" Dumarest stepped toward her. "Karlene?"
"It's no good, Earl." Ellen drew him back as the woman made no response. "She can't hear you. She's locked in a world of her own. Her talent drove her to it."
"The Temple?"
"It dominated her when young and stayed with her all her life. She knew what was going to happen. She knew it! It kept coming closer and in the end she had to run from it. But it was always there and Rauch, the fool, had to bring her back. She couldn't rest. All the time you were away I kept her under sedation but it wasn't enough. When the Temple blew-Earl, can you guess how she must have felt?"
An entire community of men and women-how many he could only guess. All dying in a furious blast of ravening energy, seared, blinded, torn, broken-death had been fast but thought would have been faster. Each victim would have had a fraction of time to know the shock and fear of extinction.
The scent which had blasted Karlene's mind.
"She could only escape into the past," explained Ellen. "But, for her, the past was never a happy time. So she kept regressing until she went back into the womb. Catatonia. I may be able to do something with her eventually but she'll never be the woman you remember."
Another ghost to add to the rest. One who had smiled and held out her arms and embraced him with a fierce and demanding passion. A woman who had led him to the place where he had found the secret for which he had searched for so long.
The golden figures incised on the grey, metallic walls of the Holy Place.