Sweet Starfire (29 page)

“Where are all the kids that were always running around in the earlier scenes?”

He was right. Cidra searched the new pictures, looking for some sign of the laughing, playing, practicing young Ghosts. Once or twice a youngster appeared, but it was becoming increasingly rare. As rare as a child in Clementia. She did see more of the gold wristbands, though. They were becoming a common form of jewelry. Almost all the Ghosts wore them.

The interaction between the Ghosts had changed too. There was no longer evidence of hostility or rivalry, no more open warfare. A sense of peace and gentleness pervaded the mural.

“It’s beautiful, Severance. They became a people of harmony and grace.”

‘Two worlds full of Harmonics. Must have been kind of dull.”

“Damn it, Severance! Why do you have to be so cynical?”

“It’s in the blood. I’d still like to know what happened to all the children.”

“Maybe they developed a very long lifespan and had to control their population.”

“Or maybe, like Harmonics, the Ghosts simply lost interest in sex and the results thereof.”

Cidra shifted uneasily, the memory of her own recent interest in that field plaguing her for a moment. Severance was studying the graceful illusions closely.

“I think there’s more than just a few kids missing here,” he finally said. “The whole population seems to be declining. There aren’t as many Ghosts as there were earlier. No sense of huge cities or bustling economies. Just more and more of these quiet little parks.”

Cidra felt a sharp pang of regret. “What’s happening, Severance? Do you think we’re coming to the end?”

He nodded slowly. “The population level is falling. No evidence of children being born to replace their parents. Fewer and fewer towns.”

“Maybe species just get old and die the way individuals do,” Cidra suggested. Her pang of regret was turning into a pervasive sadness.

“Or maybe this particular species took a bad evolutionary road.”

“At what point?” For some reason she felt defensive. “When they stopped, spreading outward and started turning inward. When they stopped having children. When they became more interested in mental and spiritual development and stopped worrying about keeping the species alive physically.” “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Severance. We’re only looking at pictures. We can’t know what really happened. We can only draw inferences.” Even as she argued, the images were fading. It was obvious that the civilization they depicted was fading too. The last picture was of a circular building carved from a single block of translucent stone. In it five Ghosts sealed the history of a species and then clasped hands. The golden bands they wore on their wrists glowed in unison for a moment. Serenely, effortlessly, without any sign of struggle or regret, the five died. When the image on the wall vanished, so did the five figures who had been projected into the room earlier. Cidra wanted to weep.

“That last structure was this place,” Severance observed as the image flickered and faded into the wall. “You were right. This is an Archive. Saints in hell. We’re going to be rich.”

Cidra was astounded: She brushed the moisture from her eyes to glare at him. “Rich? What are you saying?”

“We can sell the location of this place to any number of research companies or to the Harmonics. There’s enough in here to keep investigators happy for fifty years.” He swung around to face her. “Don’t look so shocked, Cidra. What did you plan to do with the information we’ve found here?”

She hesitated. “I suppose it will have to be turned over to some company to analyze. But it seems wrong to sell it. This is a precious discovery.”

“Damned right. We’ll find out just how precious when we put it up for sale.” He glanced at the chronometer on his utility loop. “Sweet Harmony. We’ve been in here for hours. It’s already the middle of the afternoon. We’ve got to get going.”

“Wait, Severance. I want to see what’s at the back of the room.”

“Later. I don’t know how I lost track of time so completely. Hours. Hours. We should have called for help early this morning. As it is, it might be another full day before a skimmer can reach us. That means we’ll probably be spending another night here in the jungle. Damn it to a renegade’s hell. How could I have let this happen?” As he berated himself he was hustling Cidra toward the door.

“Still playing pilot in command, Severance? Why can’t you just calm down and admit that we’ve found something absolutely extraordinary. We’re safe enough for the moment. We’ve got time to explore further. If we have to spend another night in the jungle, we might as well spend it here. It’s obvious that nothing violent from outside ever enters. This is one of the last refuges. A safehold.”

“We have no way of knowing just how safe it really is.”

They were almost at the entrance. Cidra resigned herself to being force-marched back to the campsite. “All right, stop dragging me along like a sack of mail. I’m coming with you.”

He shot her an assessing glance and decided that she was going to be cooperative. Severance unholstered the pulser.

“What’s that for?” Cidra asked.

“Just in case we don’t get the same guided tour out that we had coming in. Stay close to me and don’t touch anything you pass if you can avoid it.”

“I’m sure we’ll have no trouble. Whatever protected us on the way here will probably protect us as we leave.”

“Uh-huh.” Severance checked the charge in the pulser. He obviously didn’t believe in the lingering protection of the Ghosts. “All set?”

Cidra reluctantly started through the door and then screamed at the sight of the huge Bloodsucker blocking the entrance. She stumbled backward, frantically trying to put distance between herself and the facet-eyed monster. It was far bigger man the Bloodsuckers she had seen in Desma’s lab.

“Severance!”

His hand closed on her shoulder, spinning her out of the way. The pulser came up, and he fired twice. Nothing happened. The Bloodsucker moved forward on its long spindly legs. The mandibles clicked together. Severance fired again, backing slowly. None of the shots were registering. It was as if they passed right through the creature.

“Get back, Cidra. Move toward the back of the room.” Slowly Severance edged backward himself, covering Cidra’s escape.

“They’re not supposed to be that big,” Cidra gasped.

“Maybe you’d better remind it.” He raised the pulser again and aimed carefully at the braincase. Once more the charge passed straight through without doing any damage. “Either this thing is absorbing the charge with no effort or it’s an image, just like the ones we’ve been watching.”

“Nice theory. How are we going to test it?”

The Bloodsucker was still approaching. Cidra and Severance kept backing toward the far wall. Cidra glanced behind her.

“There are some stones back here.”

“Toss one toward this Sucker and see what happens.” Cidra quickly examined the large triangular-shaped pile composed of five perfectly round stones. Each was slightly bigger than a human head. Experimentally she lifted the top one. It was pleasantly warm to the touch.

“It’s heavy,” she gasped, struggling with the weight of it. “But it’ll roll.” She dropped the stone to the floor and shoved with all her might.

The stone rolled right through two Bloodsucker limbs with no sign of any resistance. The creature didn’t appear to notice, either. It raised its forelegs and reached for Severance.

Cidra shouted, trying to yank him out of the way. Severance swung his arm out in a reflexive movement. The hand holding the pulser passed through the lowering head of the Bloodsucker as if it weren’t there.

“It is just an image, Cidra. Let’s go.” He reached around to catch her wrist with his free hand.

Cidra wanted to scream and claw free of that hold. The Bloodsucker was too terrifyingly lifelike. She had known that the moving mural of the Ghosts was an illusion from the start. But this thing seemed far more real. Its forelimbs were waving around in the air now, seeking the prey in front of it. But she followed Severance as he warily circled the image, tugging Cidra with him. The creature lunged at them, and Cidra shut her eyes, convinced that in another instant she was going to find herself just another victim of Renaissance.

Nothing happened. When she opened her eyes again, Severance had pulled her halfway back toward the entrance. The Bloodsucker had winked out of existence. They were almost at the door when an unnatural light filled the formerly dim room. This was no pale, translucent, filtered sunlight but a searing blaze. Instinctively Cidra closed her eyes, wondering if she’d been blinded. She felt Severance stop and knew it had affected him the same way. “I can’t see,” Cidra whispered.

“Neither can I. It’s probably another illusion, but I can’t see the door. Let’s find the wall. We can follow it around to the entrance.”

Cidra hooked her fingers into his utility loop, and together they groped blindly for the solid wall. The chamber was still filled with the searing light. Whenever Cidra risked a glance through slitted lashes, the unnatural brilliance overwhelmed her. She felt Severance pull up short and mutter a short, expressive oath.

“The wall,” he said grimly. “Now we’ll try following it.” A rush of screaming noise crashed into existence around them. Cidra reeled, feeling Severance stagger under the impact of the wild sounds. She let go of his utility loop to clutch at her ears, but it did no good. Once before she had tried to block out such noise. Frantically Cidra tried to remember when, but she couldn’t concentrate on anything but the agony in her head. “Don’t open your eyes, Cidra!” She heard Severance’s voice without realizing how she could over the strange cacophony. “The light?”

“It’s still there, but it’s full of things.”

“I can’t stand it, Severance. I can’t stand this!” He didn’t answer, and Cidra knew with a terrifying certainty that he wasn’t faring any better than she was. They were both helpless under the bombardment of sensations.

And then the crawling began on her skin. She sensed it first on her legs. Something had gotten under the fabric of her trousers. Something with white-hot pincers and venomous fangs. Screaming, she slapped at her legs. She could feel nothing under the fabric, but that knowledge didn’t lessen the pain.

Suddenly she remembered when and where she had faced this kind of assault.

“The Screamer,” she choked, stumbling against Severance. “It’s like the Screamer.”

“Something’s playing on our nerve endings. All of them,” he agreed.

He fumbled with his utility belt. Cidra didn’t risk opening her eyes, but she could feel him trembling as he fought to master himself. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to see if the Screamer can jam whatever is jamming us.”

Another burst of white-hot noise cascaded through the room, and Cidra groaned under the weight of it. The force of it drove her to her knees, and she was aware of Severance hunched down beside her. She sensed that he had the small Screamer remote in his hand. He leaned against her, assuring that their bodies were touching, and activated the remote.

The riot of sensation altered suddenly. For a few seconds everything disappeared—the noise, the light, the physical sensations, even the chamber itself. Cidra found herself in a gray limbo. She drifted mindlessly in the wonderful silence, drinking in the pain-free void, and then it was over.

A new kind of whirling terror shot through her. This time she recognized it. This was what the Screamer had done to her on board Severance Pay. She clamped her hands over her ears in agony, and then chaos faded back into grayness again.

There were a few seconds of peace before the white light and noise started to build again.

“We’ll have to move during the short periods when the Screamer wipes out the other stuff,” Severance said tensely. “I can only buy us a few seconds at a time. If I keep it up too long, the Screamer goes into effect.”

“I understand. The wall?”

There was a burst of blinding noise as the seconds of gray-ness faded back into violent sensation. She waited agonizingly for the next burst of grayness.

“The wall,” Severance agreed. He was already up and moving, keeping a hold on Cidra so that the Screamer’s effects worked on both of them.

It was a painful tightrope of a journey. Between bursts of staggering sensation Cidra and Severance found the curving wall and doggedly followed it to the entrance of the chamber. Cidra lost all track of time, just as she had when the murals had been in motion. But when she tumbled through the vaulted opening, all of the mind-numbing noise and light disappeared. The relief was awesome. Almost frightening.

She lay on the soft, green velvet ground cover of the protected circle and tried to regain her breath. Severance sank down beside her and dropped the Screamer back into the utility loop. They huddled together, knees drawn up, heads cradled on folded arms, and waited to regain some sense of normality. For long moments neither of them spoke. They stayed close, seeking silent comfort from each other while their nerves adjusted to the standard range of stimulation on Renaissance. “I never thought Renaissance would look ‘normal,’” Cidra finally said.

“After what’s inside that chamber, anything would seem normal. At least we’re not suffering too many aftereffects. It could have knocked us out the way the Screamer usually does when it’s used for more than a few seconds.”

“Mostly I just feel exhausted, as if I’ve been running for hours.”

Severance glanced at the sky and then at his chronometer. “We’ve lost more time. We’ve spent nearly a whole day in that damned place.”

“I’m aware of that. My body is starting to remind me that the facilities don’t include a lav.” Wearily Cidra got to her feet. “I’ll politely turn my back if you’ll turn yours.”

Severance managed a brief, amused grin. “It’s a deal.”

“I hope the Ghosts don’t mind us using their magic circle as a lav.”

“As far as I’m concerned, they deserve it.” Severance turned his back to her.

Cidra felt on the defensive again. “I can’t believe the Ghosts were responsible for all those awful illusions and that wall of noise and light.”