Someone squeezed in behind him.
Another interloper? More probably someone had just relinquished the Divine Guide position for peeking. Bron shuffled on, losing his own voice on the thunderous web of sound, trying to judge their slow, headlong progress. He wouldn’t be able to get the ache out of his neck without putting his head straight up and (he suspected) stopping. His calves were beginning to ache too. His hip, at any rate, felt better. And his Mimimo-momizo ... had (he realized) degenerated to Blablabla-blabla ...
Someone on the other side of him tripped, stumbled against him; eyes still tight (and in violation of some sect canon, he was sure), he grabbed the bony shoulders (Bron wasn’t sure if they belonged to man or woman) to steady them. One was sticky, hot, and wet; as his hand hesitated on the swaying back, Bron wondered how anyone could have such knobby vertebrae.
Over the roar of mantras—how many were in the group? Thirty? Fifty? Seventy-five?—other voices were shouting.
He caught the shrieked phrase: “... mutilation of the mind! Mutilation of the body ...” The words “... catastrophe ...” and “... ultimate, seventh-stage catastrophe ...” separated out. And “... but the mutilation of die mind! The mutilation of the body ...”
Again mumblers jarred him.
Suddenly Bron opened his eyes and raised his head.
The darkness surprised him. Had they wandered into the u-1? He looked up. No: it was just that the shield was still out. Green coordinate letters glowed high on a wall ahead. Another mumbler lurched against him. Outside the group, people were shouting and ... fighting with the mumblers at the group’s edge! And there was a chalky smell among the unwashed bodies.
No, it wasn’t burning. But it made his throat feel funny.
“... in the wake of the ultimate, seventh-state catastrophe, we have no recourse but the mutilation of the mind, the multilation of the body ...” came loudly from beyond the mumblers. All Bron’s well-being left. Fear replaced it. He pushed between the mumblers, away from where the shouting was loudest—though there was shouting at the other side too.
A dozen feet off, between two ragged mumblers, stumbling obliviously on, he saw the overmuscled, fouled, and hairy figure, crouching and jeering with mutilated face (a woman, from the ragged mastectomy scars), saw her strike one of the mumblers (who fell to his knees), then turn, chains swinging from her neck, and shout: “... only the mutilation of the body, the mutilation of the mind ...”
Was this supposed to be meaningful ... ? meaningless ... ? He plunged out among them. A scabby fist glanced his jaw. Nobody else hit him directly, but he had to wedge between two sweating, naked creatures, who, he realized on his third push, were pressing together solely to keep him from passing. One growled, inches from Bron’s face, with fouled teeth and a jaw wet with lymph and pus.
Then he was through. Behind, shouting and mumbling made one ugly roar. He looked up, saw a set of green coordinates—
He was in the same unit as Serpent’s House! The e-girls, confronted with a sect who would not have responded to them anyway, not knowing what to do, had let them pass the cordon! Arriving as obliquely as fear was the sudden conviction that he had been incredibly clever. He couldn’t have thought of a more ingenious way of getting through the blockade!
Someone staggered into his back. He heard somebody else grunting rhythmically, under blows.
He didn’t even look but ran forward, turned the corner—to find the street wet, then wetter; finally he was splashing, in his sandals, through two inches of water.
As he crossed the intersection, wind shattered the black glaze along all five streets that converged here, obliterating his own widening ripples; momentarily, it threatened to grow strong enough to push him to his knees. Splashing and staggering, he gained the far side. But the gust had already begun to die.
The lights did not come on automatically when he stepped through the door, nor when he found the switch box—the cover swung open as though someone had already tried it—and played with the range of press-plates inside. There was junk all over the common room floor; and the glow of unshielded night above told him that the skylight opening was several times too big; and the wrong shape.
From across the room came a sound that might have been a moan. Bron stepped, stepped again, stepped again—and barked his shin, hard—blood trickled his ankle. He’d scraped himself on something he couldn’t see. Something he could, large and black and shapeless, blocked him anyway. He stepped aside on the rubbly rug, felt the wall brush his shoulder. He heard the sound again—it could also have been some piece of junk, sliding; it didn’t sound much like a moan ... A sudden scrambling, then something dodged past. Bron whirled, terrified, in time to see somebody dart out the door—a hand hit the jamb, a-glitter with gems: then the ringed fingers were gone.
“Flossie ... ?” Bron called, after count five. “Freddie ... ?” He didn’t call that loudly. After all (he took another breath and another step) whichever it had been was probably, by now, a unit away. He stepped forward again ... On the fifth step his knee struck sharply on what (probably) was an overturned chair leg. He went back to the wall. That sound again ... No, it wasn’t a moan.
An orangeish glow, above—flickering? No. But it was the balcony door.
His foot hit the bottom step. He grasped the rail—which gave under his hand, much too loose. Bron started up. Something small rolled from his foot and fell, clicking, back down three steps. Under his wet sole, next step, something else equally small cracked.
He reached the balcony, looked through the door. Someone had hung a light cube just inside, which, for some reason, was burning dim orange instead of yellow. Ahead, the left corridor wall sagged incredibly.
On the floor, spraddling the doorsUl (the speaker on the side still gave up the micro-shouts of micro-armies a-clash on micro-mountain ledges), opened out and inlay up, lay the vlet case—stepped on at least once and cracked, drawers loose, screens, cards, men and dice scattered. The astral cube was now only broken plastic lying among bent, brass struts.
Bron stepped lightly (frowning heavily) across the sill. The sagging wall made him dubious about the floor.
Outside, he heard a rushing with a few whistles in it—the wind again! Halfway up the steps to the next floor he saw that those dark blots on the carpet were blood—which either trailed up the steps or down, depending if the bleeding had been getting better or worse. (His ankle was only scratched and had a scab forming.) Halfway along his own corridor, he suddenly wondered why, in the midst of this wreckage, he was returning to his room.
Across from Bron’s door, Alfred’s door was ajar.
From it, a blade of light lay on the orange hall-carpet, swinging.
Bron went to the door, hesitated, pushed it in—it grated on junk over the floor. One wall was down, and half the ceiling; the light fixture dangled from its wires, swaying, a good-sized piece of ceiling still attached. Two of the bed legs were broken, or had gone through the floor. The bed was lopsided.
There were two people in it. (Bron swallowed, opened his mouth, started to step back, didn’t, started to step forward, didn’t do that either, closed his mouth.) A section of wall, and crumbled powdery stuff, had fallen across them.
Bron’s first thought: The woman, she’s my age!
It didn’t look that heavy!
It didn’t look that heavy at all!
A very dark oriental lay naked, on her back, one arm pinned. Her other had been trying to push the wall away. Her head had fallen to the side, her mouth and one eye wide.
Alfred lay on his stomach beside her, arms folded under his cheek.
Bron stepped forward.
Under straggly hair, Alfred’s ear was full of blood, mostly dried now. It had trickled his jaw, forked around his mouth, run across his wrist to make a rusty blotch on the sheet, the size of Bron’s hand.