Justin Banks looked ghastly. His face had a greenish, gangrenous hue and was mottled with purplish, warty blotches. He looked something like a corpse that had clawed its way out from under a tombstone in a horror movie. Even Kieran was impressed as he took in the unhappy visage framed in an image window on one of the Juggernaut's screens. The codes that he and Dennis had figured out from the information supplied by Pierre had worked well enough indeedand then some.
Kieran himself, cast as the wild-eyed persona of Keziah Turle, was speaking from another window. "It is as the testaments of old describe: The Plague of Akhnaton has come upon ye! `And their skins became as the diseased flesh that clothes the undead; their eyes became as limpid, yellow swamps. . . .' You who would not heed the warnings passed down through the ages must now bear the price. . . ." It was the message he had sent earlier to Gilder personally, and which to his admitted surprise had evidently gotten through. Gilder, appearing alongside Thornton Velte in the two remaining windows, was replaying the message for Velte's and Banks's benefit.
"How do you know that anyone of old ever said it?" Velte challenged. "Turle could be making it up. I've got people checking for some other references. They haven't come up with anything."
"He does seem to be a man of obscure and specialized knowledge," Gilder commented.
"Too much of a coincidence," Banks mumbled. "Didn't you say you got this before any symptoms developed here?"
"How could he have known about it, Thornton?" Gilder asked Velte.
Velte's mouth twisted while he searched for an explanation. "Wasn't he in the vehicle there?" he said finally. "He could have spread something around. Who let him in? What kind of security are we operating down there?"
"Boy, if he only knew how close he is," Kieran murmured to the others with him, enjoying the show.
"Is Gilder going to buy it?" Harry asked.
"Someone like him doesn't bend so soon," Juanita said.
"He looks like he's taking it more seriously than Velte, though," Walter put in.
"Right now, he doesn't want to get involved," Hamil told them. "He's too preoccupied with his daughter's wedding."
On the screen, Gilder seemed to accept that this was not going to lead anywhere immediately. He glanced around moodily, as if searching for a different tack. "What's this about trouble among the military force down there?" he asked.
"Major Cobert says they're on edge over the interference problems we've been having, and the fluorescent effects down in the workings," Banks replied. "Also, the gas emanations. Somehow they've gotten it into their heads that we're all in a tizzy about it."
"Hm. So where are we?" Gilder asked.
"Clarence agrees that the fluorescence is surprisingbut it would hardly be the first time that a theory needed updating. Tran admits he's mystified by the emanations. They shouldn't be there."
"Can't somebody go up there and look?" Velte asked irascibly.
Banks raised a discolored face appealingly toward the camera. "It isn't something that's exactly top of our list right now, Thornton," he said, admonishing his immediate chief rather than the boss directly.
Gilder shuffled uncomfortably. "Well, I'm too wrapped up in other business right now. We've got those squatters out of the way, at least, so that's something. Thornton, can you take charge of this and get to the bottom of what's going on down there? Fly a doctor in from Lowell. It's probably just some kind of bug that's gone around. I've always said these small-scale systems are closed petri dishes. This idea about that Turle zealot bringing something in strikes me as too farfetched. From what I've heard, he doesn't have the coordination to get a hat on his head. Talk to Cobert too, and tell him that if he can't maintain discipline in his unit we'll have it replaced."
"Leave it to me, Hamilton," Velte replied.
An ambulance bearing medical specialists arrived from Lowell less than an hour later. On seeing the condition of the Mule's occupants, Farquist, the doctor in charge, confessed himself baffled. He'd never seen nor heard the likes of this before; neither did the literature contain a description of anything resembling it. Preliminary scans and biological tests using the equipment aboard the ambulance yielded nonsense results. After consulting remotely with various specialists and getting nowhere, Farquist told Banks that he proposed calling out a larger transporter to take all of the Mule's occupants back to Lowell and have them placed under observation there. By this time, Banks and the others were feeling too miserable to care. Then Major Cobert reported from the Venning carrier that he and his men weren't feeling or looking too spiffy either.
A grin of pranksterly delight adorned Kieran's face as he watched the latest exchanges within the enemy camp.
"What?" Banks managed, in the nearest he could manage that would otherwise probably have been close to a shriek. "He was there? You let him in? Why wasn't I consulted?"
"The health of the men of my unit was at issue," Cobert's voice replied distantly and primlyKieran didn't have a tap on the local link to the Venning, so he had to make do with a relayed transmission of the audio coming through inside the Mule. "I decided that the possible risk of undue delay by involving external parties was unacceptable."
"Do I have to remind you that you are under our commission?" Banks seethed.
"Matters subject to direct military orders are still my prerogative," Cobert retorted.
"Who was this doctor of theirs, again?" Farquist asked, from inside the Mule with Banks.
"You said his name was what?" Banks queried.
"O'Toole," Cobert answered.
"Never heard of him," Farquist growled.
"You don't mean Turle?"
"I said, O'Toole."
"What did he look like?"
"From what you can tell in a suit: tall, well built, lean facetanned, brown hair. Late thirties, maybe forties."
"Not graying hair, more fifties-ish?"
"No. I've just told you."
"Hmph."
"There isn't any pulmonary lenticular encolitis listed in the references," Farquist said. "It doesn't even make sense. And I've never heard of closed-cabin infection."
Velte, who had been following with rising exasperation on a link from Asgard, interrupted. "This isn't going to get us anywhere. Toole, Turle, whatever his name isget him over there and have him account for himself in person. It's the only way we'll make any sense out of this. The whole thing is turning into a farce."
"I'll call Hashikar and" Banks began.
"No!" Velte snapped. "Why tip them off and give them a chance to think up something else? Just send a squad out there and grab him. Are you there, Major?"
"I hear you," Cobert's voice answered.
"How bad are things with your men at the moment? Are they up to it?"
"Queasy, but soldiers have fought with worse. Best to do it now, before they deteriorate further."
"Let's get on with it, then," Velte directed.
At that moment another voice, sounding as if it were coming through on an internal speaker, announced, "Attention, attention! Possible hostile alert. Approaching radar contact thirty kilometers, one-ninety degrees low, not responding to ID INT. Fire team to stations."
Clad in a light orange flight suit, Lee Mullen sat up front in the folding jump seat behind the pilot and c-com op. Behind, in the main body of the Airchief pickup skimming in from the south, the ten armed heavies that he had recruited for the raid to seize Thane and bring him in sat in two impassive lines along the sides. It should be a cinch, all had agreed. A quick swoop; just a bunch of geekspeaks and schoolteachers on a caravan tour . . . They'd be on the ground, have him out, and be away before the first graybeard had finished talking.
The pilot turned his head and indicated forward with a nod. "Coming into view now."
"Squad ready," the c-com op said over the cabin intercom. "Target in sight. Helmets secure. Final kit and weapons check."
Mullen craned forward to look. The terrain was as they had seen on the graphic reconstruction from the information given by the people at Stony Flats: a high plateau with a steep side facing a broad, flat valley with hills beyond. The scientists' camp was where the contact had said it would be: on a rocky shelf halfway up, reached by a zigzag road.
"Three . . . no, four aircraft," the pilot commented. He sounded surprised. "Wasn't this supposed to be an overland trip?"
"They must be having visitors," the c-com op said.
"Too bad we'll have to spoil the party . . . So where are the trucks?"
"Aren't they the two square shapes at the back?"
"Those look more like portashacks to me." The pilot turned inquiringly to Mullen again. "Maybe we should circle first and check it out."
"Fast in and out," Mullen reminded him. "It's not worth losing surprise over. Stick to the plan. We're going straight in."
"You're the man who's telling it. Approach vector set. LZ select confirmed. Descent program activated. We're going on it."
"Thirty seconds. Release latches. Be ready to go." A short pause, then, "Somebody must be sick. That's an ambulance down there."
The plateau top flattened ahead of them, then rose above. The shelf grew and unfolded below. And then, suddenly, from the c-com op again, "Break off! Evade! Evade! We're taking fire! Bursts ahead, starboard!"
Mullen clutched at the seatback in front of him and his head swam as the pilot flipped to manual and sent the Airchief into a stomach-wrenching, climbing turn. Balls of flaring orange swept by outside. Confusion broke out in the rear as unrestrained bodies that had been poised ready to move fell and collided to the accompaniment of shouted curses. A pattern of crimson blotches appeared in the mid-ground between the veering craft and the rocky shelfdetonated short as warning shots. Even so, several scattered cracks sounded of fragments striking the structure.
"What kind of schoolteachers are those?" the pilot snarled over his shoulder. "I thought you said this was gonna be a picnic. The operation's off. We don't have anything to take on that kind of artillery."
Mullen found that his mouth had gone dry. It had been a long time since he'd been in any kind of firing line. "That little creep! Somebody else bought him! We were set up! He'll fry when I get back! Nobody crosses me and walks away! Okay, let's go home."
Kieran and the others had followed what they could of the action from the little that Gottfried, still perched on the slopes above the shelf, had been able to capture through his lenses. They were as unable to make sense of it as anybody at the Troy site, as the commotion coming in over the monitoring taps showed. To cap it all, in the midst of frantic calls from Banks to Asgard asking for instructions, Farquist joined in, making it shrilly clear that he and his medics hadn't come here to get involved in a private war and demanding to know what was going onas if anyone there could tell them.
Kieran decided that he had created about as much mischief here as he was likely to. It was time to carry the good fight to other quarters. He was fascinated by Pierre's self-assembling nano-synthesizers, and was certain that therein lay the means to make Gilder finally crack. But to do it he needed to get to Gilder directly, and the way to do that was not here. But possibly the wedding group assembling in Lowell might offer opportunities. Accordingly, he called Solomon Leppo and told him to get out to Tharsis in any kind of flyer he could lay his hands on and take Kieran back right away.
Leppo arrived with a partner called Casey, sooner than Kieran had dared hope, in a sleek flymobile "special" they had modified themselves. Kieran left with them for Lowell just as Cobert's snatch squad was taking off from Troy to come and get him. He told Hamil and Walter that he'd just have to leave them to deal with Banks and Cobert for the time being, and come up with something to account for his disappearance. But then again, a coherent explanation for the antics of an eccentric like Keziah Turle was hardly something that could reasonably be demanded. Like Jesus Christ, the twentieth century's General MacArthur, and the Schwarzenegger Terminator of the old movies, he assured them that he would be back.