“Damn it, woman, you pick a fine time to remind me of my mistakes! And you call me Jimmy, do you hear?”
They reached the end of the street. The Hooded Ones and remnants of police units were fighting a desperate battle for control of the plaza, the police armed with carbines, the Hooded Ones with their small explosives. The police must have been immunized. They were shooting accurately and taking a deadly toll on their attackers. The frenzy of the Hooded Ones disregarded death. They drove the police back to the far edge of the worship platform. While the battle raged, Retha and O’Neill heard the noise of a huge crowd beyond the Central Building in the Great Plaza. The Festival orgy was continuing without any attention to the deadly battle. It was like a scene from a mad artist’s painting of hell.
The sound of carbine fire and explosions, the shouts and screams of smaller battles raging throughout the streets of the Old City, the continued hum of demented cries of pleasure and pain—this was the end of the Zylong that was.
Would there be a new Zylong?
The answer to that lay with Seamus O’Neill and a handful of brave but inexperienced kids.
If I were a betting man, which I am, come to think of it, I wouldn’t bet on us.
23
The final conflict would be fought where the City had begun, where the first colonists, pilgrims like the Tarans but with a very different faith, had built their tiny, fragile little village and set about the task of creating a free and just society. So much for human hopes and efforts.
While O’Neill and Retha watched with horrified fascination the scene before them on the worship platform, a new stream of Hooded Ones emerged from a street that emptied into the plaza only a few yards from where they stood. O’Neill pulled the tiny Lieutenant back into the shelter of their own flaming street. The Hooded Ones darted around the platform where the Great Globe of Zylong gleamed in the reflected light of the fires and ran in the direction of the Military Center itself. Uh-oh, thought O’Neill, they’re stealing our strategy. The refulgent globe dissolved in a powerful explosion, toppling into the pit in front of it. Then an even more powerful explosion split the night air. The whole center of the platform collapsed into the ground.
Retha gasped. “When the Globe falls, Zylong falls!”
“What?” he shouted over the roar of secondary explosions. He bent his head close to hers.
“It is an old axiom: ‘The Globe is the City and the People.’ If the Globe falls, so does the City. We are destroyed.” Her voice choked with terror.
“Not yet.” O’Neill shouted, conscious for the first time that the ancient Celtic battle lust was upon him.
The great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad.
His branch of the Gaels had come, long ago, not from any of the thirty-two counties of Little Ireland, but from a county in Great Ireland, which was an island far to the west. County Cook, as best as he could remember it, was the name of the place, though historians often confused it with the older County Cork.
Wherever his ancestors had come from, Seamus Finnbar O’Neill was now spoiling for a fight. And determined to win it.
The police had fallen back to the rear of the Central Building itself. The battle shifted across the Worship Plaza to the streets that led into the Central Plaza. Explosions were beginning inside the Military Center. There were intense danger signals in his brain.
“Run, Retha, run! Don’t argue! Back to the rest of them—top speed!”
Flames were beginning to lick the wood trim around the door panels of the Military Center. The first big explosion knocked him off his feet. O’Neill scrambled after Retha. He snatched her up and ducked into the doorway of one of the tiny shuttered shops. He was just in time. A great ball of flame exploded upward, the shock waves shook the building and flattened them against it. The deafening roar of the Arsenal of Zylong blowing up in spectacular destruction echoed in their heads for minutes after the sound itself was gone. Great chunks of rubble, metal, and rock fell all around them, and then it was silent except for the crackle of flames.
“All right, wee lass?” asked O’Neill softly, holding her tight.
“Yes, Geemie,” she muttered, her eyes wide and dull with shock and fear.
“Get back to Yens and Margie. Tell them to withdraw back into the underground and set up a defense perimeter at the corner beneath where they are now. I’m going to take another look around.” O’Neill watched her stumble back, his heart filled with compassion for her and all her compatriots.
Don’t worry, kids. Uncle Seamus is going to pull this one out.
He picked his way through the rubble to where the street opened onto the Central Plaza. He had to brace himself against a half-standing wall to recover from the shock of what he saw.
There was nothing left. The Military Center and the Central Plaza were one vast crater. There was no trace of the crowd that a few moments before had been “celebrating” on the plaza. The Central Building was a devastated ruin. Smoke and dust hung over the scene, flames were beginning to leap up among the ruins. Only the damaged Energy Building still stood. The center of Zylong no longer existed.
He hurried back to his followers. They were a discouraged and frightened-looking lot, his young soldiers, students, artists, technicians, writers, administrators. Not the kind to go to war with. He told them briefly what had happened, adding, “The Hooded Ones have done our work for us. The Committee doesn’t exist anymore. Unfortunately, we don’t have yet the kind of weapons we need to restore order in the City ourselves.” He stopped. They looked at him expectantly, but he could think of nothing more to say. He needed time to think.
Come on, Uncle Seamus, let’s go.
He had kept putting off making a plan. Now it was time to come up with one. He was tired, bleeding from cuts caused by small pieces of rubble; his head hurt from the explosion. He could not think what to do.
And his wife and child depending on him too.
The lights in the tunnel flickered. Horor, standing next to O’Neill, asked, “What of the Energy Building, Lord O’Neill?”
“Part of it is down. The rest of it can’t last long with the fires. There may be a few Hooded Ones left too. I’m sure they’ll hit it next.”
“It may not matter anymore … there is a nuclear reactor.”
Holy Saints, you’re an idjit! The computer was buried underneath the rubble of the Central Building, but the fission pile was beneath the Energy Building.
“If the City is to end, perhaps an atomic explosion is the best way for it to go,” went on Horor dispassionately. “Yet, if there is anything left afterward, it would prove unfortunate to have lost our principal energy source. There is a control room near the reactor with a mechanism for banking it down. I … I think I know how it works, and Ranon—the mate of Meena—is a mechanic. He can come with me should I need his aid with the device.”
“How do we get there? We can’t go down the streets.”
“One of the underground rivers which flow beneath the City provides the cooling for the reactor. We can follow it to the control room.” The lad’s voice was utterly detached. Though his civilization was falling apart, he spoke like he was in a seminar room.
The Young Ones left in Margie’s charge, Horor and Ranon, O’Neill in tow, prepared to depart for the underground river. The lights were flickering and dimming frequently. The Energy Center might be in its last agonies. Margie had been warned that the lights might go out anytime.
“Take care of yourself and the brat.” Seamus touched her face.
“You know?”
“The Lady Deirdre told me.”
Which was the honest-to-God truth.
The tall sturdy Ranon and the slight bookish Horor crowded into the hovercraft with O’Neill. They moved slowly down the street, avoiding the chunks of rock that had been dislodged by the great explosion. He longed for Margie’s presence.
Horor touched his arm. “We stop here, I think, Lord O’Neill. We should test our handlights because if we are successful, we will return in total blackness.”
They descended through a hatch in the rock floor of the street, down several sets of ladders, the last of which was in a shaft lined with black dripping rock. O’Neill heard the sound of rushing water.
“How deep is this river of yours, Horor?” he asked skeptically.
“Not very deep, but at this time of the year it will be very slippery.” The ladder went right down into the river, whose waters were icy cold.
They slipped and stumbled along the riverbed, supporting themselves on the tunnel wall. Horor led the way, occasionally flashing his light at the top of the tunnel to see where they were. Finally he stopped, announcing, “We are below the control room now, I think. Yes, there is the ladder. Exercise care, Lord O’Neill, it will be very slippery. We must climb up a long distance.”
“I’ll be careful, never fear!” he yelled.
Thirty feet on a ladder, you bet your life I’ll exercise care.
O’Neill’s care wasn’t enough. Fortunately, Ranon grabbed him as he began to fall. Probably the only Zylongi around who is strong enough to prevent a Taran from breaking his neck in a shallow river by falling twenty feet off a ladder, he thought.
“Favor returned,” he murmured to Ranon.
The big Zylongi laughed. “No, Lord O’Neill, much more will be required to repay. It is a good beginning, perhaps.”
When they reached the top of the ladder, Horor couldn’t budge the hatch to the control room. O’Neill pulled himself up on the same rung; with the two of them clinging precariously to the slippery ladder, they managed to shove the hatch open.
Explosions had shaken the Energy Building to its foundations. The safety center of the nuclear reactor was a tumbled mess of tables, chairs, charts, and pieces of machinery. Horor shook his head in dismay at the wreckage of the control panel. “I don’t know, Lord O’Neill. It is all badly damaged. We will have to try to repair the mechanism. What do you think, Ranon?”
“There is no machine made that cannot be fixed if you have the time.”
“You don’t have much of that,” said Seamus. “Do what you can. I’m going to have a look around. Where’s the fission pile? There?” he pointed uneasily at a sinister black wall.
“Yes—behind several feet of lead. We are in no danger from radioactivity now. Of course, if it were to be detonated, the lead would not be of much help, I’m afraid.”
Seamus O’Neill prayed hard as he prowled the corridors underneath the Energy Building, especially for his daughter, as he had decided the brat would be. It might be necessary to name herself Deirdre …
He smelt the thick, rancid smoke in the corridors; there were fires brewing someplace in the bowels of the building. It wouldn’t be very long before it went up in flames too. But the fission pile represented the future.
Uncle Seamus’s future.
And if the Hooded Ones, or a fire, moved it to critical mass, there would be no future for any of them anyway.
He opened a door into another corridor, and narrowly escaped running into a severed electrical cord that danced about, shooting sparks. The staff of the Energy Center must have abandoned the building—if any of its immunized custodians had survived.
Rounding a corner, he met a small group of Hooded Ones. The insurrectionists knew what they were doing. They had outflanked the police in the Worship Plaza battle and were now heading for the energy vitals of the City. O’Neill fired his carbine into them at point-blank range before they could throw an explosive his way. He ducked back around the corner and down a stairway. At the foot of the stairs he turned and raised his carbine just as three more of the black-clad hooded figures emerged at the top. He fired quickly, but one of them pulled the pin on a grenade.
He fought back into consciousness. His head ached even worse than it had from the concussion at the Central Plaza explosion; one of his arms wasn’t acting the way it should. Above him the stairwell was demolished—no sign of the Hooded Ones. Flames were eating the paint off the alloy walls. Staggering to his feet, he groped his way back to the control room. His poor battered head was clogged and musty; he couldn’t think, he couldn’t find his way, he wasn’t hearing or seeing too clearly. He stumbled into the control room.
“Lord O’Neill! What happened to you? We were afraid that you had been killed. Are you badly injured? You are covered with blood.”
“I’m surviving. Have you got this damn thing working yet?”
“Judging by the fire up there, we have about five minutes—ten at the most.”
Horor turned to Ranon. “What do you think?”
Ranon shook his head.
“We will acquaint you with the situation, Lord O’Neill,” said Horor calmly. “We may have found a way to shut down the reactor, but it is possible that an explosion will occur that could allow the nuclear reaction to … er … run out of control. The outcome would not be pleasant. If we had time—fifteen minutes—we could better guarantee a safe shutdown. What shall we do?”
There was no point in wasting time agonizing. “Shut the damn thing off.”
24
Horor flicked three switches. With a quick glance at Ranon, he shoved a rod on the wall over the control panel. Nothing happened for a few seconds. An indicator needle on a great dial swung from right to left. The lights in the room went out.
“Did it work?”
Horor answered, “I think, My Lord, that it is safe to say that it did. Let us light our handlights and rejoin our colleagues.”
O’Neill had to be supported on the way back. His injuries were not serious, nothing more than cuts, bruises, and a rather painful and disabling pulled muscle in his arm. But, for some strange reason, he could hardly walk.
Concussion, he supposed. One bang on the head too many. Like a hurley player who has been hit by the stick too often.
The chilly waters of the underground stream did nothing to dissipate his daze from the explosion. When they reached the hovercraft, he was in a state of incipient shock. The City was now completely black, the battered vehicle’s single headlight shone dimly through the streets. As they approached the street-corner defense perimeter that the Young Ones had set up, Horor flicked the light on and off several times to signal their arrival.
Yens was at the door of the hovercraft to greet them. “We were attacked by many Hooded Ones,” he began excitedly. “They came down the tunnel from the jail.”
“What happened?” O’Neill managed as they were helping him out.
“We defeated them and destroyed them—though the tunnel to the jail is now blocked by the rubble from their explosion.” He sounded exultant, as only the young warrior successful in his first battle can.
O’Neill thought, Poor Sammy. No way to get to her now. Aloud, he said, “What casualties?”
“Only three, Lord O’Neill, two of them not serious.”
“Who is serious?”
The young officer’s voice faltered. “I fear that Captain Marjetta has a broken leg.… All our medical equipment was destroyed in the blast. We cannot move her.”
Seamus elbowed his way through the dark to where his mate lay on the hard tunnel floor, her leg twisted and her face drawn with pain.
“How does it feel, my love?” he asked awkwardly, wishing he could drive the pain from her face.
“It hurts, you amadon,” she snapped. “How do you think it feels? It took you long enough to get back.” She reached out to touch his battered face. “Oh, darling, what happened to you? Are you all right?”
He was about to shout for someone—anyone—to come and help her when he remembered that he had taken the Taran medical kit along with the tranquillity pills when he left the Dev. As soon as the pain medication was in Margie’s bloodstream, he set her leg in the line the indicator on the portable template said it should be set and applied the thick plastic and metal strips. Then he injected ra
pid bone-mending serum. With any luck at all, she would be able to walk on it shortly—though it would be a painful effort for many days.
“The holy saints protect me,” he murmured ruefully, “if it has to be reset.… How’s the brat doing?”
“He’s not in my leg, you idjit,” she said through clenched teeth.
“She.”
“Really?”
“She’ll look like her mother, but she’ll have her father’s personality.”
“Poor child,” she sighed, a perfect imitation of his own sigh.
“Damn lucky thing for you, woman, that her mother has such a brilliant wonder-worker around.” He was busying himself putting supplies back into the medical kit.
“I keep asking myself, Seamus, where I would be now if it weren’t for you. I know I would not be here like this.” She nodded in the direction of her bound-up and useless leg. She grasped at the kit Seamus was filling. “Give me that medicine kit. I’m going to give you a dose of your own medicine.”
Seamus enjoyed the affectionate attention. As he was relaxing under her tender ministrations, Retha joined them. “I have just returned from a patrol at the City level, Lord O’Neill … er … Geemie. There is nothing left of the center of the City except fires.”
“Could you hear explosions from other parts of the City?”
“None. I think the Hooded Ones are gone.”
“All right. Tell Captain Yens to maintain the defense perimeter for the present. We will move on to the next phase shortly.”
“Yes, Lord O’Neill.” She hastened away.
Sure, we will move on to the next phase—as soon as I can figure out what it is.
His mate echoed his thoughts. “You’ll have to figure out what the next phase will be, won’t you, Geemie?”
“I will, woman. If you would stop disturbing me with your blather, I’ll do that very thing.”
25
It was hard to think. In fact, his thinking through the whole mission had not been too impressive, as the Cardinal would doubtless remind him for the rest of his life, should there be any of that.
The Final Planet Page 26
