TELL THE CHILDREN

1563 4D

Bargaroth‘s fourteen Argazindari, silent shadows like their leader, seemed to float around Arlen in the corridor’s near-darkness on the approach to the Domehall. For a big man accustomed to comfort and easy movement, Arlen moved almost as noiselessly as the trained commandos around him. Toxgun and beamer rode his left shoulder.

Carchesme, dragged from her physics lab looking both annoyed and afraid, trailed uneasily behind him, wearing a loose black coverall stylesuit, the fabric on her long thighs making more noise than all the rest of the group did together. “Arlen,” she murmured, “This is a terrible idea. Don’t make me come with you.”

He shook his head at her. “I need your eyes to see the stuff on board, get samples where you can. We won’t be there long. Now be quiet. You’ll see things you’ve never dreamed of in your lab. Maybe you’ll get something to help you with the N-meter.”

Arlen stopped at the entrance to the larger street leading to the Hall’s primary atrium, and whispered to Bargaroth, “I was right. Frintar‘s left only a token guard.”

Flattened against the corridor wall in shadows, they scanned the street, and at its end the visible section of the atrium about fifty strides away. The street lay nearly as dark as their corridor. Four gray-clad soldiers moved past, purposefully, down the street away from the Hall: a routine patrol.

Two corpos wearing Rhin‘s insignia idled, laughing and throwing coins, at the side of the street nearest Arlen about twenty strides toward the Hall. Before the main doors to the Hall, many soldiers stood in the high-domed atrium, chatting, their weapons laid aside. “Escorts, between the hall and the ship,” Bargaroth said softly. “They’re just waiting for the meeting to end.”

The atrium light gave a dusklike feeling to the slowly-moving air. Bargaroth counted. “About nine hundred inside,” he said. “They’ve left the heavy gear for that many out here.”

Nine hundred. Given the deployed fighters currently in service, that would make at least eleven hundred. Where had they all come from? The recent transfer of andros could be part of the total, but that left many more. Arlen whispered, “What about others, without heavy gear?”

Bargaroth shrugged. “The Hall holds five thousand. That’s the best upper limit I can give you. After all, nobody supplied a caterer’s list for meals.”

Meals might offer a clue. Knowing Turiosten, some of those inside might well be on the menu. “Let’s assume three thousand five hundred at most. They can’t have many more at the ship.”

A wail rose in the atrium; the soldiers there froze and looked up, their eyes wide, as if the noise came from the air above them. It held in an atonal smear of high steady tones, then dipped and shattered into keenings that sprang up again through soprano to vanish into metallic hissing like blades of steel.

Carchesme squeaked. The soldiers near the hall entrances retrieved their weapons, then drew together, still looking up and around them, apprehension on their faces. “Amazing,” Arlen muttered. He tensed. From near the entrances, one soldier approached Arlen‘s corridor with a determined look, his gun slung on his arm.

Arlen drew his group back further; but the man turned and entered the corridor, looked back over his shoulder, and fumbled with the front seam of his gray coverall. Facing the side wall, he looked down at his feet. A spattering sound began. Arlen whispered to Bargaroth, “When he’s done, take him alive. I want to question him.”

Bargaroth beckoned one man forward, a man smaller than Bargaroth himself. Hand gestures passed silently between the two, then the small man slid forward in a flickering uncertain gait that seemed somehow to match the shapes and lines of the shadows in the space around him.

The soldier began to raise his eyes just as the small man, reaching him, made a small mewling noise. The soldier cocked his head in surprise and hesitancy. The small man flicked a hand up to the soldier’s collar, and drew him forward hanging from a small brown upraised hand, strangling without a sound. When they arrived in front of Arlen and Bargaroth, the small man dropped the soldier in a heap on the stone floor, and stepped back to join the other Argazindari.

Arlen squatted close to the soldier’s face. It contorted in pain; the breath came very slowly. Amazing. Apparently a quick blow had damaged the cervical spine, just enough to paralyze all but the head and the autonomic system.

“How many are inside? How many are outside? Tell me what you know.” As Arlen muttered, he smelled a bitterness in the man’s breath.

The voice came hard, just a ragged whisper. “Two detachments left, fifty each. Two left an hour ago. All the rest inside. Seven hundred naked andros. Why?” The eyes stared up at Arlen, pleading white. “Why? My children—“

“Which way did they come from the ship?” Arlen pushed his face so close that even in the darkness he could see on the forehead the fine-crafted facial writing of one of the country colls. “Which way?”

“East Radial, Ring Sixteen,” the voice gritted, sand on paper. “Why? Who are you? Are you one of them?”

In his hand Arlen cradled the head, dangling like a melon. “Guards for the ship? How many? Where?”

“Ten. Marissan,” the man said, and smiled. “Marissan, I love you. Tell the children—“

Arlen shook the man’s head. “Where?” The eyes closed. The breath hung stale and unmoving in Arlen‘s face. He dropped the head; it bonked softly as it hit the stone paving. “Let’s go,” he said to Bargaroth. “Take the body with us and find an old shaft for it.”