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The Goddess bit her fingernails! It made her more human and more frightening
at the same time.
"Arius didn't speak to you. He didn't tell you to sneak into the ward and
write down things. Admit it. Some stupid childish trick. Did you plan to sell
information?"
Again, the nurse shook her head. Her eyes slid away from the eyes of the Lady.
She was convinced that if she avoided speaking, this nightmare would go away.
She smelled fear in the room. At first she didn't recognize the odor. Now she
did, but she hadn't realized its source.
"I can cause you great pain. You profane this sacred place," the Lady said
softly. She seemed emotionally divorced from the conversation. The nurse
suddenly realized that whatever the Lady would do, she would take no pleasure
from it. It was a terrible kind of power.
"I swear to you -- " she blurted suddenly.
The Lady smiled. Her long face looked naked then, stripped of flesh, a skull
with burning eyes. "Yes, dear, speak to me."
The nurse's heart fluttered. She had always expected that if she was ever this
frightened her heart would pound, but it fluttered.
Weak and tentative. Her heart let her down.
And she had spoken.
"I -- he came to me."
"God came to you?" The Lady nodded dreamily to herself. "How did God come to
you?"
"On the comm screen. In my room." The nurse wanted to wipe the sweat from her
forehead, but her hands were pinioned by metal clamps to the arms of her
chair.
"Tell me."
The nurse closed her eyes. She tried to remember. It had seemed so clear if
she didn't try to think about it, but now, when she tried to recall specific
things, the images faded, became jumbled and hard to recognize. "White. It was
a white light on the screen, and then it turned red..."
The Lady began to hum to herself. It was an appalling sound.
Frederic Oranson's station was the first to receive the alarm. He lowered his
feet from the table where they'd been propped while he watched the darkness
outside, his mind spinning emptily in the kinship of the night.
He slapped several portions of his master touchpad and brought all the
security systems up to red. It was a massive process, all the more impressive
for its silence. At his command automated pillboxes all along the perimeter of
the estate shifted and groaned as armored walls grated aside to expose the
glittering snouts of heavy lasers.
Dogs with peculiar breeding histories burst from kennels and began to lope
down chain-link pathways, their tongues lolling, their eyes bright. Other
animals, less like dogs, more ferocious, snarled across the open spaces inside
the vast compound, followed quickly by trained handlers.
Six Blades, theirs by courtesy of the New Church, drifted out across the
night, their hands soft and loose with readiness.
A pack of Wolves went loose. They bayed silently at the stars and clicked
their Claws as they ran.
Other machines came on-line and began tasting, testing, sampling. Men moved
quickly, their faces drawn, their breath coming in shallow gasps. Two attack
helicopter platforms rattled into the sky, red lights flashing.
This took less then ten seconds. Oranson's feet slapped the floor as he
launched himself out the door and into the small command vehicle which awaited
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him. He glanced at the sky.
Only stars. He gunned the small car. For once he was glad the synapses inside
his brain which channeled emotion no longer existed.
He didn't need emotion now. Only strength and speed.
The lights had brightened in the small room now. The nurse barely noticed the
two Wolves who hovered near her chair. Her eyes were dull and empty. She
blinked once when one of the Wolves unstrapped her right hand, raised it from
the chair, and pinioned it to a device that resembled a large stainless steel
claw.
The Lady watched her silently. She felt afraid. It was an odd feeling. It had
been a long time since fear had shadowed the certainty with which she cradled
faith. This girl frightened her. Not so much from what she'd done -- the notes
were trivial, mere jottings of records already transmitted to a central
computer. And thence, she thought, to God himself, for he monitored that huge
room. The room was a womb, and God was in its every part.
The girl had no idea of this, of course.
But she'd seen something. Something had impelled her to this foolishness.
Perhaps she had no conscious knowledge. Drugs could search more deeply, but
they took time. There were side effects to consider as well.
Other ways would serve. The Lady knew many such ways.
She inspected the rigid hand, its fingers and thumb spread in a wide fan.
She nodded to the Wolves. One of them placed two derms on the inner part of
the nurse's forearm, near the elbow joint. Then he pressed the flat gray side
of a hypospray further down. His hand moved and a sharp hissing sound filled
the room.
The Lady waited a few minutes. The girl licked her lips and tried to swallow
but her mouth was too dry.
"I told you I wouldn't cause you pain," the Lady said. "I won't. You see?"
She stepped closer and took a needle from a silver tray and pricked the tip of
the girl's forefinger. A dot of blood welled there, round and shiny.
The girl stared at the blood.
"That didn't hurt, did it?"
The nurse shook her head. She felt the anesthetic take effect. Now her arm was
numb as butchered meat below the elbow.
"Good. Pain is unnecessary to many things," the Lady said.
She put the needle down on the tray and picked up a scalpel.
She looked at the blade and lowered her head. After a moment of prayer she
raised the scalpel and began to work.
The nurse screamed and screamed.
Frederic Oranson raced down the long hallway toward the tall double doors. A
sleepy servant, an old man in a nightshirt who rubbed his eyes, stood there.
He was knocking ineffectually on the wood.
Two Blades of God drifted from the other end, moving with deceptive slowness.
Behind them pounded three of Oranson's people, two men and a woman, assault
lasers at the ready. The old man seemed confused by the gathering mob. He
glanced both ways and resumed his knocking, louder now.
The Blades arrived first. Oranson went through them as if they didn't exist.
He shoved the old man out of the way. "Go back to bed," he said.
"Secure this hallway," he ordered the Blades. One went in each direction.
Oranson noted that each Blade had a faint smile on his face.
"Behind me," he said to the remaining three.
He faced the door and knocked. Nothing. He tried the ornate handles but they
didn't move. Of course. The doors were steel beneath their beautifully carved
veneers, and with the sounding of the alarm, extremely powerful magbolt locks
would have slammed
into place.
It would take a small tank to breach those doors. He imagined that blast
shields blocked the flimsy glass door on the outer side of the room as well.
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There was a small, slick plate just beneath the handle. He placed his right
palm on it, let it rest for a moment, then moved his fingers in an intricate
code. As he did so, he spoke another code aloud.
This procedure was to prevent anyone from opening the door by using his hand
alone. Hands had been known to become detached from bodies.
There was a sharp click. Oranson tried the handles again and they moved. He
pushed down, then pulled. The doors opened and he stood for an instant. Then
he plunged into the flickering gloom.
The Lady stepped into the high ward and moved to the bed closest to the end.
It was where the nurse had been making her notes. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]