by James Axler
"Yeah," Kane agreed, stepping quickly over to the wall, examining the slit-baffled vent. The metal frame rattled very faintly.
Grant inspected it with a critical eye. "Too damn small for me."
"Yeah," said Kane again, his gloved fingers exploring the area between the frame and the wall. "Damn tight squeeze for me, too."
"Think you can fit?"
"Let's find out."
Grant visually compared the breadth of Kane's shoulders to the width of the vent. "You'll have to keep your arms together in front of you, like you're diving."
Nodding distractedly, Kane dragged a chair over from the small dinette set, grabbing a plastic knife from the table. He stood on the chair, fitting the blade of the knife between the vent's frame and the wall and carefully pried at it.
"Do you really think this has a chance in hell of working?" Grant asked.
Trying not to exert too much pressure on the flimsy plastic blade, Kane answered, "The air is blowing from some kind of circulation station. Stands to reason that if I follow it, I'll come to the main pumping station, where there's an oxygen supply. If I can increase the mixture"
The frame popped out, nearly causing Kane to topple backward from the chair. He caught the frame and handed it down to Grant. "If I can increase the mixture," he repeated, "it ought to make the trolls so high they won't be much in the way of opposition."
"Will we be affected?"
Kane stood on his tiptoes, chinning himself up to peer down the square, narrow shaft of dark metal. "I can't say. If we are, not as much as them. Maybe a little light-headedness. Give me a boost."
Grant formed a stirrup with his hands, interlocking the fingers and placing them under the soles of Kane's boots. He heaved at the same time Kane kicked himself upward.
Kane managed to squirm his head and shoulders into the duct before he became lodged. Grant stood up on the chair and lifted his partner's legs, putting a shoulder against his feet and shoving hard. Kane cursed and wriggled, the zippers of his suit scraping loudly against the metal sheathing.
"Think you can make it?" Grant asked anxiously.
"Hell, I don't know." Kane's tense voice held a hollow echo. "This is like being inside a bodybag." He wormed forward a few feet.
"How will I know if you've made it?"
"You're going to have to take your best guess. Monitor the vent. You ought to be able to tell by the airflow and the smell if I've increased the oxygen content."
Grant started to replace the frame over the opening, then asked, "What do you figure the odds?"
"The usual," came the muffled, offhand response. "One percent."
Grant tapped Kane's boot sole with an index finger and slipped the frame back into place. The scratching, thumping sounds of Kane's belly-crawling progress along the duct slowly faded.
Stepping down from the chair, Grant plucked a book at random from the shelves and sat down beneath the vent to wait.
Chapter 26
Brigid wasn't really surprised when Sindri escorted her into a laboratory. He gestured for the transadapts to stay behind in the tunnel and sealed the hatch.
Brigid glanced swiftly around the maze of equipment glittering beneath the sterile light tubes on the high ceiling. She saw a pair of long, Wack-topped tables holding a glass blood-purification system and petri dishes.
A big electron microscope dominated one table. An oscilloscope, a fluoroscope and a stainless-steel liquid-nitrogen tank were arrayed against the walls. Past a glass partition, she saw a cylindrical hyperbaric chamber.
She recognized one of three cushioned examination tables and the pair of metal rods at one end, which had held her ankles in clamps.
Sindri pulled a pair of stools close to one of the tables. Hopping up on one, he pointed Brigid imperiously toward the other. Face completely expressionless, she complied with his silent command.
Sindri inspected her features with an intense gaze before saying, "Please do me the courtesy of explaining your unseemly display of mirth."
"Why should I?"
"I thoughtI hoped you and I had reached common ground based on mutual respect."
Tersely she said, "I experienced the kind of respect you hold me in."
He propped his chin up on his hand. "Necessity drove me to desperate measures. You've done the same for the cause of self-preservation. I didn't want you to remember it."
"You harvested ovum from me." She made a declaration, not an inquiry.
"Yes, in order to create recombinant gametes. Are you familiar with the terminology?"
"Gametes with new gene combinations of chromosomes," Brigid answered curtly, "formed as a result of crossing over. Do you know what polar bodies are?"
Sindri's eyebrows raised a trifle. "Nonfunctional cells resulting from unequal division during the maturation of egg cells. Why do you ask?"
"Because that's what you probably took from me. Your plan to splice Grant's, Kane's and my genes with those of the transadapts and implant them in a female won't work. Like the females here, I'm barren."
Sindri's body and face twitched, as if he had received an electric shock. He groped for something to say, then finally hissed, "You're making that up. You're lying to me."
She shook her head. "I'm telling you the truth. I found out about it right before we left for Parallax Red . Not even Kane and Grant know about it. You're the one who is lyingyou've been lying to us since the moment we met."
Sindri didn't respond to her last comment. "Is your condition treatable, reversible?"
"I don't know. I was exposed to radiation of an unknown type a couple of months ago."
"There are therapies, treatments, you know. Perhaps"
Brigid cut him off with a sharp, slashing gesture of her right hand. "What's your real agenda, Sindri? The truth behind all of your martyrdom and devotion to easing the suffering of your people?"
He bristled at her sarcasm, glaring at her. Brigid met his glare, matching it in intensity. Suddenly the little man threw back his head and laughed.
"Yes, I suppose the masquerade was wearing rather thin, wasn't it? I should've have realized that I couldn't gull you indefinitely. The company of transadapts has ruined me for a true test of my intellectual steel."
"What is it you want?"
Sindri shrugged. "What does any man want? Love, security, realized ambitions."
"Which are?"
"To be the master of my own fate, beholden to no one. Certainly you can relate to that, raised in the kind of life you were."
"Of course," Brigid replied. "But we differ on the means of achieving it."
"Perhaps." He reached out to touch her hand, but she pulled it away. She noted the quick flash of anger glinting in his eyes.
"You don't like to have your will, even your whims, thwarted," she observed.
"Who does?" he retorted.
"No one, but it's a simple fact of existence. Only spoiled children and sociopaths can't come to terms with it."
He groaned. "Now you sound like Pop."
"Is he really your father?"
A corner of Sindri's mouth quirked in a sour smile.
"Biologically, yes. In every other aspect of fatherhood, he failed miserably. Although I understand he truly loved my mother, which was in itself not a crime, but the physical expression of it certainly was. After my birth and her death, he accepted his exile gratefully."
"Once in the pyramid, he tampered with the transmitter's frequencies and set up disharmonious resonances in the humans here?"
"He did indeed." Sindri sighed. "He implies now he did it intentionally to punish the compound, so the transadapts could eventually outlive the humans and take over Cydonia."
"You don't believe him?"
He opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head. "For a long time, I did not. Now, especially after today, I'm not so sure. Regardless, the song must be stopped."
"How? I thought he tried many times."
"And failed many times. But a simple solution came to me
while exploring Parallax Red some months ago. I've yet to test it, because it will have the most deadly of consequences. Now that you've told me my plan to increase the population of the transadapts will fail, I have no other option. Once I embark upon this particular path, there is no turning back."
"Deadly consequences for whom?"
"Everyone."
Brigid lowered her eyebrows in a frown. "Everyone? You mean on Mars?"
Sindri threw his arms wide. "I mean everyone . Including the inhabitants of Earth."
She stared at him, confused and puzzled. "You've lost me."
He grinned. "Hardly, Miss Brigid. You've won me many times over."
Grimly she replied, "Stick to the subject"
The grin fled Sindri's face. "You accused me of being a liar, which is no accusation at all, since it is the truth. You told me my plan to revitalize the transadapt population will fail. I presume that is the truth, not a lie to mislead me."
He paused, waiting for her response.
After a moment, she said simply, "It's the truth. Test my egg cells if you doubt me."
"I don't. However, if that plan has failed, then there is no reason to continue the deception. I could give the proverbial rat's ass about the transadapts."
"I suspected as much," Brigid said dryly.
As if he hadn't heard, Sindri plunged on. "Stupid, filthy, childish creatures. The Committee of One Hundred was right. They cannot govern themselves, they should have no decision-making abilities. They are useful only as legs and arms and strong backs. Could you imagine a man like me mating with a subhuman troglodyte like Elle?'' He shuddered in genuine revulsion.
"Unfortunately," he continued, "they were the only followers I had available. The humans viewed me as a jumped-up transadapt and they refused to acknowledge my superior abilities. I had no choice but to seek the transadapts' aid to accomplish my goals. Despite their other shortcomings, they are easily led."
"What was your goal, to be king of the Fourth Planet?"
Sindri smiled. "Not bad. If I intended to stay here, I might adopt such a title."
"In other words," ventured Brigid, "you weren't concerned for the welfare of the transadapts due to humane reasons?"
"There is strength in numbers, Miss Brigid. And without sufficient numbers, I do not have sufficient strength to carry out my ambitions."
"Which are?"
He beamed at her, eyes twinkling impishly. "I'll bet you can guess."
She recognized the hungry gleam behind the twinkle and felt nauseous. "You think you can come to Earth and establish your own little empire somewhere?"
"Why not?"
"The barons may have something to say about that, not to mention the Archon Directorate."
Sindri chuckled conspiratorially. "Ah, yes, the barons. I learned from you and Mr. Grant and Kane they are hybrids of human and Archon genetic material."
"They claim to be," she said.
"They have reestablished the ancient god-king system of tyranny. What is needed to unseat them is a leader for disenfranchised Terrans to rally around. After all, from what you three told me, the outlanders aren't too different from my transadapts."
"Rebellions have been tried before," Brigid argued.
"But not in generations, yes? Not since the so-called 'baron blasters'?"
"True," she admitted. "That was nearly ninety years ago. The baronies are far more entrenched now than they were back then, their power bases completely solidified."
"A power base is no more solid than the foundation to which it is attached," Sindri said vehemently.
He jumped off the stool and paced up and down along the length of the table in excitement, tucking his cane under an arm. "What if that foundation shakes and crumbles beneath them? What if the barons had to turn all their resources toward coping with a host of natural disastersfloods, earthquakes, devastating meteor falls? Would they then not be vulnerable to a concerted, well-equipped effort to dethrone them?"
Brigid considered his words for a moment, trying to imagine how the secluded, pampered and fragile baronial hierarchy would react to unremitting disasters.
"I suppose they would," she said. "But how can these catastrophes be arranged?"
Sindri rapped the ferrule of his walking stick sharply against the floor. "Another bit of mendacity I must own up to, Miss Brigid. Thor's Hammer."
"Thor's Hammer? You mean the GRASER cannon on the station?"
"I told Mr. Kane it was inoperable."
"And it isn't?"
"Oh, it most definitely was when I arrived on Parallax Red . Over the last few months I've been recharging the dynamos that power it."
Brigid declared incredulously, "Earth is on the other side of the Moon from the station. You can't shoot through it."
"Actually, " he replied confidently, "I probably could. But I have no coordinates for strategic targets on Earth. Besides, the GRASER consumes such an appalling volume of power, I'll have only one chance for a single shot. I can't afford to miss."
Lifting his cane to his shoulder, Sindri sighted down it like a rifle. "I do have coordinates for a target on Mars, however. The pyramid. If my calculations bear out, and there's no reason why they shouldn't, one touch of ten million megawatts of GRASER energy will trigger corresponding and sympathetic vibrations within the transmitter."
"And then?" Brigid asked flatly.
"And over a period of weeks, perhaps only days, Mars will shake itself to pieces in a cataclysm of Old Testament proportions."
Sindri lowered the cane, twirled it jauntily and rested it on a shoulder. "Continent-sized pieces of the planet will tear loose and in the form of meteorites and asteroids be drawn in by Earth's gravity well. Their mass will cause slippages in the polar icecaps, creating the rise of oceans and tsunamis. The impact of smaller fragments will trigger earthquakes of immeasurable magnitude. Dormant volcanoes will erupt. It will be world under siege from the heavens."
Showing his teeth in a wide grin, Sindri added, "Real wrath-of-God-type stuff."
Brigid listened to his quiet, self-confident litany of catastrophes and the cold fingers of fear crept up, then down the buttons of her spine. If even a fraction of what Sindri said could be believed, then another round of devastation would ravage an Earth still recovering from the nukecaust and skydark.
"You've done no tests," she broke in, "you have no empirical data. You're dreaming."
Sindri snarled out a superior laugh. ' 'Think of scientific precedent cloaked by myth and legend. The Ark of the Covenant brought down the walls of Jericho when the Israelites gave a great shout. Why wouldn't they fall, if bombarded by amplified sound waves of the right frequency transmitted from the Ark?
"Merlin, who is reputed to be of half-Danaan blood, was said to have 'danced' the megaliths of Stonehenge into place by his music. What I propose is of the same order, but on a far grander scale."
Brigid struggled with visions of Mars breaking up, spewing millions of tons of its crust and bedrock into space. She said faintly, "Your philosophy of destroying in order to save."
"Very perceptive. Think of the long-term benefits, Miss Brigid. Not only will Mars be removed forever from the coveting grasp of the Archon Directorate, they will have no choice but to relinquish their claim on Earth. And I will have stopped the song, as they always wished."
"If what you say comes to pass," she stated, "there won't be much left to relinquish. The loss of life will be incalculable."
Smoothly Sindri replied, "As a point of fact, I have calculated it, at least in percentages. A few human beings will be left alive, of course. Humankind is too tough to be entirely killed off. Consider thisthe barons and the hybrids you told me about will suffer the most casualties, living in their villes, the Administrative Monoliths toppling over them. And they are used to acting on orders, but beyond the villes, the outland-ers still live by instinct.
"The villes will lie in ruins, overrun by vines and animals. The persecuted outlanders would make up the majority of
the survivors. They will be grateful to me, for removing the heel of their oppressors. They would follow me willingly, no matter what kind of empire I wished to build."
"Where will you be during the catastrophes?" asked Brigid.
"On Parallax Red . We will sit out the cataclysms that overtake both Mars and Terra."
"Won't you be in just as much danger from asteroids and planetary debris?"
Sindri smiled broadly. "There is an acceptable element of risk. The odds of something as small as Parallax Red speaking in celestial measurementsreceiving a direct hit are astronomically high. Pun intended. You and I will be safe, I give you my word."
A second passed before Sindri's last words penetrated Brigid's consciousness. She echoed, "You and I?"
"Well, of course. You don't think I'd leave you behind here or allow you to return to Earth, do you? That would be positively diabolical. You really must give me some credit. I'm not a monster."
He stepped closer to her, placing a hand lightly on her right knee, gazing up earnestly into her face. "All I ask in return is your love."
Brigid's poker face failed her. She felt the muscles of her face contorting and twisting in disbelief and repulsion. She was too shocked to speak.
Voice dropping to an intimate pitch, Sindri continued, "You have a deep wellspring of passion. I desire to plunge into it, to taste the physical love of a human woman. All my life it was denied me. I kept myself pure for a woman like you. I never once, regardless of the temptation, defiled myself with a transadapt female. If you cannot bring new life from my seed, the simple act of implanting it will grant me one of my most heartfelt desires."
Sindri's caressing fingers darted up her leg, toward her thigh. Brigid snapped up a knee, the point of it cracking solidly on the underside of his jaw.
Teeth clacking together, Sindri staggered back a few paces, caught himself on the corner of the table and recovered his balance. He bared his perfect teeth in a ferocious scowl, then by degrees, it turned into a rueful grin.
"Darling Miss Brigid," he said softly, "your assaults upon my person do not have the effect of dampening my ardor. Quite the contrary, I find myself even more aroused by the challenge. I am very accustomed to overcoming adversity when I desire an objective. Nothing has ever come easy to me."
