“He worked here once. He knows the importance of what we have here. He must have had some love for the animals, don’t you think?”
“He swept out the cages, Yarmuz.”
“Even so—”
“He may be hungry himself, Yarmuz.”
“The situation is bad, but not that desperate. Not yet. And in any case what can be gained by eating a few scrawny sigimoins and dimilions and zampidoons? One meal, for a few hundred people, at such a cost to science?”
“Mobs aren’t rational,” Nayila said. “And you overestimate your dung-sweeper Coronal, I suspect. He may have hated this place—hated his job, hated you, hated the animals. Also he may decide that there are political points to be made by leading his supporters up the hill for dinner. He knows how to get through the gates, doesn’t he?”
“Why—I suppose—”
“The whole staff does. Where the key-boxes are, how to neutralize the field so that you can pass through—”
“He wouldn’t!”
“He may, Yarmuz. Take measures. Arm your people.”
“Arm them? With what? Do you think I keep weapons here?”
“This place is unique. Once the animals perish, they’ll never be restored. You have a responsibility, Yarmuz.”
From the distance—but not, Khitain thought, so distant as before—came the cry: “Thallimon! Lord Thallimon!”
Nayila said, “Are they coming, do you think?”
“He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.”
“Thallimon! Lord Thallimon!”
“It sounds closer,” Nayila said.
There was a commotion down at the far end of the room. One of the groundkeepers had come running in, breathless, wild-eyed, calling Khitain’s name. “Hundreds of people!” he cried. “Thousands! Heading toward Gimbeluc!”
Khitain felt panic rising. He looked about at the members of his staff. “Check the gates. Make absolutely sure everything’s shut tight. Then start closing the inner gates— whatever animals are out in the field should be pushed as far to the northern end of the park as possible. They’ll have a better chance to hide in the woods back there. And—”
“This is not the way,” Vingole Nayila said.
“What else can we do? I have no weapons, Vingole. I have no weapons!”
“I do.”
“What do you mean?”
“I risked my life a thousand times to collect the animals in this park. Especially the ones I brought in today. I intend to defend them.” He turned away from Yarmuz Khitain. “Here! Here, give me a hand with this cage!”
“What are you doing, Vingole?”
“Never mind. Go see after your gates.” Without waiting for help, Nayila began to shove the cage of dhiims onto the little floater-dolly on which it had been rolled into the building. Khitain suddenly comprehended what weapon it was that Nayila meant to use. He rushed forward, tugging at the younger man’s arm. Nayila easily pushed him aside, and, ignoring Khitain’s hoarse protests, guided the dolly out of the building.
The invaders from the city, still roaring their leader’s name, sounded closer and closer. The park will be destroyed, Khitain thought, aghast. And yet—if Nayila truly intends—
No. No. He rushed from the building, peered through the dusk, caught sight of Vingole Nayila far away, down by the east gate. The chanting was much louder now. “Thallimon! Thallimon!”
Khitain saw the mob, spilling into the broad plaza on the far side of the gate, where each morning the public waited until the hour of opening arrived. That fantastic figure in weird red robes with white trim—that was Thallimon, was it not? Standing atop some sort of palanquin, waving his arms madly, urging the crowd on. The energy field surrounding the park would hold back a few people, or an animal or two, but it was not designed to withstand the thrust of a vast frenzied mob. One did not ordinarily have to worry about vast frenzied mobs here. But now—
“Go back!” Nayila cried. “Stay away! I warn you!”
“Thallimon! Thallimon!”
“I warn you, keep out of here!”
They paid no attention. They thundered forward like a herd of maddened bidlaks, charging without heeding anything before them. As Khitain watched in dismay, Nayila signaled to one of the gatemen, who briefly deactivated the energy barrier, long enough for Nayila to shove the cage of dhiims forward into the plaza, yank open the bolt that fastened its door, and dart back behind the safety of the hazy pink glow.
“No,” Khitain muttered. “Not even for the sake of defending the park—no—no—”
The dhiims streamed from their cage with such swiftness that one little animal blurred into the next, and they became an airborne river of golden fur and frantic black wings.
They sped upward, thirty, forty feet, and then turned and swooped down with terrible force and implacable voracity, plunging into the vanguard of the mob as though they had not eaten in months. Those under attack did not seem at first to realize what was happening to them; they tried to sweep the dhiims away with irritated backhand swipes, as one might try to sweep away annoying insects. But the dhiims would not be swept away so easily. They dived and struck and tore away strips of flesh, and flew upward to devour their meat in mid-air, and came swooping down again. The new Lord Thallimon, spurting blood from a dozen wounds, tumbled from his palanquin and went sprawling to the ground. The dhiims closed in, returning to those in the front line who had already been wounded, and slicing at them again and again, burrowing deep, twisting and tugging at strands of exposed muscle and the tenderer tissues beneath them. “No,” said Khitain over and over, from his vantage point behind the gate. “No. No. No.” The furious little creatures were merciless. The mob was in flight, people screaming, running in all directions, a chaos of colliding bodies as they sought to find the road back down to Ni-moya, and those who had fallen lay in scarlet pools as the dhiims dived and dived and dived again. Some had been laid bare to the bone—mere rags and scraps of flesh remaining, and that too being stripped away. Khitain heard sobbing; and only after a moment realized that it was his own.
Then it was all over. A strange silence settled over the plaza. The mob had fled; the victims on the pavement no longer moaned; the dhiims, sated, hovered briefly over the scene, wings whirring, and then rose one by one into the night and flew off, the Divine only knew where.
Yarmuz Khitain, trembling, shaken, walked slowly away from the gate. The park was saved. The park was saved. Turning, he looked toward Vingole Nayila, who stood like an avenging angel with his arms outspread and his eyes blazing. “You should not have done that,” Khitain said in a voice so choked with shock and loathing that he could barely get the words out.
“They would have destroyed the park.”
“Yes, the park is saved. But look—look—”
Nayila shrugged. “I warned them. How could I let them destroy all we have built here, just to have a little fresh meat?”
“You should not have done it, all the same.”
“You think so? I have no regrets, Yarmuz. Not one.” He considered that a moment. “Ah: there is one. I wish I had had time to put a few of the dhiims aside, for our collection. But there was no time, and they are all far away by now, and I have no wish to go back to Borgax and look for others. I regret nothing else, Yarmuz. And I had no choice but to turn them loose. They have saved the park. How could we have let those madmen destroy it? How, Yarmuz? How?”
3
Though it was barely past dawn, brilliant sunlight illuminated the wide and gentle curves of the Glayge Valley when Hissune, rising early, stepped out on the deck of the riverboat that was carrying him back toward Castle Mount.