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communicate with you directly."
Nakamura stared at him silently. What titanic project could so occupy Arius
that he would be unable to take a few seconds for a simple communication?
Obviously this was a lie. But of what sort?
"Yes?" Nakamura said gently.
Collinsworth tasted his scotch again, aware of a slight movement behind him.
Damn Nakamura's zombie!
"A very special assignment. Gloria Calley and Oswald Karman have been located
on Luna. They are to be killed. Immediately."
Nakamura moved his fingers slightly on his desktop. The wood felt smooth,
greasy. "That's all? That's the message?"
Collinsworth nodded.
"Fine," Nakamura said. "Tell Arius I'll get started immediately."
"Not get started," Collinsworth pointed out. "Kill."
"Collinsworth, get out of here."
"Goodbye, Shag," the British assassin said, rising. "Good luck."
"That's Mr. Nakamura," Shag said to his back. But Collinsworth didn't turn,
didn't acknowledge him in any way.
"You heard him," Shag said to Oranson.
"I think we should kill that one, too," Oranson said slowly.
Nakamura rolled his shoulders in frustration. "Maybe later," he said.
She had been to the black room and discovered that God was missing. She
carefully checked the automatics which sustained the small, flawed body and
then, nodding to herself, carefully locked the door behind her. Two Wolves,
two Blades, and an Angel met her outside the door.
"Except for myself, kill anybody who comes down this corridor," she said.
The Angel, a very tall woman with glittering eyes and an explosion of black
hair, raised her head. "Of course," she said.
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The Lady stared at her. "Don't fail," she said.
The Angel turned away. The Blades, happy and deadly, escorted the Lady to the
end of the hallway. Her own escort, half a dozen Wolves, formed up around her
there. She paused for a moment, smiling. It would be like old times. Old,
bloody times.
"Let's get to it," she said softly. Her eyes flamed crimson. "Let's kill the
blasphemers."
Arius did not devote much time to the management of the huge underground
complex which sustained his physical manifestation.
The Lady had overseen it from the very beginning and so was not particularly
worried by the attack which was beginning to penetrate the outermost lines of
her defense. In fact, a fierce joy surged through her. If she had a destiny
beyond what she'd already done, it was to die in the defense of God, to die
with her hands on the hearts of his enemies.
She led the small pack of Wolves briskly into her own control center. The room
was relatively large, low-ceilinged, well lit. Sound was muffled here, as much
by insulation as by the fifteen centimeters of monomole-reinforced armor which
cradled them like an egg.
Technicians manned computer consoles. She strode to one group of them
clustered around a large screen on her left.
"What do the gaming programs say?"
A thin, harried woman with brittle skin and dry lips turned to face her. "It
is a type-B attack, mostly rabble from the local gangs."
"But why would they attack us now?" the Lady wondered. "We've had treaties
with them for years."
The tech nodded at the screen and whispered short instructions to an operator.
The screen, which had shown a schematic of the various tunnels and passageways
in the threatened sector flashed, then cleared on a new scene. The Lady
watched carefully, her eyes glowing.
"Give me higher contrast," she said. "I can't make out details."
These monitor screens were designed to provide infrared definition as well as
normal visuals. While the Lady might be half-blind in the everyday world, in
her own world she'd made her own arrangements. The monitor did not change
much, but a very sensitive heat processor would have detected minute
variations in the output. It was enough.
The Lady stared at the short, heavyset figure who seemed to lead the attacking
force.
"Toshi," she said. "Of course."
Over the next hour she tracked the advance of the invaders. She hissed when
her pickets went down. "Who is that woman?"
she wondered aloud.
One of the screens obligingly retrieved a dossier. "Sadie Blankenheim?" She
read the woman's history. "Ah. She was on the
Double En raid."
This congruence startled her. Toshi had led the raid when the Lunies had
stolen Calley and Berg's bodies from Nakamura. This had been done under the
control of the Arius part of God, before God had been truly born. Now the
former allies were enemies. Of course, Toshi had always been an enemy of
sorts. His loyalty was to Berg, as unwavering as her own to God. But Berg was
dead.
Why this last-ditch attack on the Labyrinth?
Unless it wasn't a final gasp of vengeance, she considered. Unless it was
something else. But what were the Lunies up to? What could they hope to gain?
She clicked her teeth in frustration. How could they even know?
"What the hell?" Sadie muttered.
She was crouched behind the dilapidated throne. Zebra huddled next to her,
babbling frantically into his mike beads. The fireteams were taking whatever
cover they could, scrambling across the dusty floor of the huge concrete room,
while light boomed and flashed around them. For some reason, hidden behind the
great chair, she and Zebra were relatively unaffected by this strange
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paralysis. The others were not so lucky, and many were dying on the floor.
She couldn't see Toshi. Thin screams wailed like birds across the smoky
half-gloom. In the direction of the door a brilliance began to glow, etching
strange shadows on the wall behind her. She wanted to peer out, but the
chug-chug sound of engines clawed at her nervous system. She started to shake.
"W-we we've got t-to..."
Zebra had given up trying to coordinate an orderly retreat. Whatever had come
into the vault was deadly, killing with sight and sound and the twisted
responses of human nervous systems.
Again, her muscles began to congeal. The blaze from the door grew stronger,
harsh and actinic, as if a child's sparkler, impossibly large, had suddenly
begun to burn. She closed her eyes. Heavy, thumping sounds pounded at her
ears, confusing her.
The screams had gone silent. She squeezed at the sides of her forehead, trying
to physically force some kind of order onto her frazzled brain.
After a moment she began, inch by inch, to move toward the edge of the throne,
dragging her rifle with her.
--------
*16*
THE PLACE WAS formless at first look. Only a deep blue glow beneath and
darkness above. Something like wind echoed here, a dull, thrumming background
noise. And finally there was a horizon of sorts, little more than a slow
shading from blue to black.
No one came here. Everyone lived here.
The sudden insurge of sparks was like a comet's fall, long and silently
whooshing. The bright flashes passed beyond the horizon and left a hazy form
behind. Now the sparks began to coalesce with echoing, popping sounds, into a
vastly tall, columnar shape.
The Shape dominated the horizon, illumined it. In its light the endless floor
of the Place was revealed. The blue glow lessened, resolved into countless
tiny globes.
The darkness above was split by the light of the Shape now steady. The blue
below shimmered in readiness.
The man came walking, walking.
Thunder shouted. The Shape burned incandescent.
The blue globes flared an unearthly glow.
_Maker! Master!_
The words hung as thunderous wordless sounds above the man's head. Now he
turned. A sun rose behind him, a pale, transparent filmy thing. An applique
against the night of this Place.
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