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of Shambala, and maybe beyond.
"You won't mind, my husband, that when I return I will be a middle-aged woman instead of the way you
see me now?" Chime's mother, Pema, asked.
George Washington Merridew, formerly a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, now the sports instructor of all
of the children of Kalapa, said, "Don't be stupid, baby. I'm sixty years older than you already. She's our
little Chime, and we're the ones to go after her. It's okay for Lobsang and Viv to say that she and Mike
went on some big mission, thatthere's no signs of anybody being hurt in that cave down there, but I know
she's in trouble, same as I knew it when my men were pinned down at Medog. We're the logical ones to
help her. I'm in good shape and I know we can make good time. And you're young enough to survive
across the border if it can be done. If you don't survive, well, then, I don't care if I do either, and we'll
know our girl didn't make it. But I just have this feelin' that she did-only she needs our help."
At that moment there was a knock on their door. Lobsang Taring, Henri Thibideaux, Keith Marsh,
Dolma Yangzom, Pema's parents Tsering and Samdup, and four of the other elders plus their grown
children stood outside in mountain-climbing gear.
Lobsang looked a little embarrassed. "Please come with us, George, Pema. We are going to form a
search party and light signal flares in the mountains," he said. "I have believed for some time that my boy
was dead, but tonight I heard him call for help."
Chime had a momentary sense of panic as she slipped through the ghost hole, back inside the Hall of
Souls. What if Meru had replaced the apparatus broken by Eve and Mu Mao? What if she became
trapped in one of those bottles and was rendered useless for however long Meru cared to hold her
there?
But when she emerged inside the hall with the familiar rows of bottles, she saw that the glass was still
broken, the hole was in fact a little larger than it had been, and she was quite safe. She saw that the hold
chamber once more was solid ice, though now the ice covered only the supine corpses of the three or
four people whose souls had been irretrievable or whose bodies had died while in storage.
She felt a little stronger too, strong enough to check on the people hidden beyond the Hall of Souls.
They were all there, resting, but Inez was not. No one stirred or seemed to sense her presence, and she
saw neither Inez nor the cat.
In her weakened condition, she found it necessary to travel across the actual physical area between
where she was and where she wished to go rather than using the astral shortcuts, as she had been able to
do when she was stronger.
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Passing through the hold room now she had the impression of something out of place, off kilter, and in
the garden room she knew that the impression was not mistaken, for the plants near the waterfall were
trampled and bloodied, and two bodies lay sprawled across the path, one half in the stream. A smear of
blood with the marks of shoes imprinted in it was streaked all the way from the waterfall to the back
door of the building.
She came abreast of the bodies and examined them. The top one she recognized as one of those that
had not survived thawing in the hold room. Bloody holes pierced its back. It lay half concealing a horribly
mutilated corpse. The face was averted, and much cleaner except for the blood, but she recognized the
man who had murdered Mike. Neither body retained any aura whatsoever, though bodies frequently did
for some time after death. Both bodies seemed so vacant, she thought that if you thumped on them they
would be hollow.
Once inside the building, she learned where one of those souls was, at least. She felt a greater sense of
urgency as she passed through the door,an urgency so powerful that she did not pause to wonder at the
room full of nude people, bound and lying on the floor in the dining hall, shivering, swearing, and weeping.
She could not help these people in her present state, and she had an overwhelming premonition that she
was about to meet the entity responsible for their plight.
She was drawn to the room where she had viewed the film, where Art Murdock had cheerfully narrated
the end of the world.
She heard the sound of the film running, and inside she saw there were only three people. Meru, bound
and nude, was lying on the floor in front of a seated person, and Inez, also nude, ran the controls of the
film. Something was wrong with Meru's legs, and the person in the chair casually leaned the barrel of a
gun into Meru's upraised ear, while Inez frolicked about in the flicker of the hologram, adjusting the
controls and providing commentary in a strained, small voice unlike her usual full tones.
All three parties looked up when she entered, and Chime felt much stronger than she had out in the cave.
She knew why at once. Looking into the face she had seen reflected back at her from countless mirrors
and still waters throughout her life, she saw it register her presence and grin at her smugly. "Well, well,
well, if it ain't the wayward soul come home to roost," she heard her voice say with an unfamiliar accent.
"Sorry, baby, butfinders keepers, losers weepers, and I found this luscious little body and I mean to keep
it."
Meru's physical voice merely groaned, but she could hear him crying, "The pain is terrible. Help us,
please help us. Oh, you stupid girl, you led him straight to us."
From Chime's throat came an ugly laugh that she had never heard before, and she heard her strangely
accented voice saying, "First we finish the movie. Then we have a little surgery to perform. Meru can't
use those legs, and I'm feeling a little peckish. Now then, Inez, honey, I want to see what happened in the
NAC again. You don't mean to tell me you've got all these pictures of other places but nothing there?"
"We don't have any record of missiles landing there, but there were a lot of natural disasters. One of the
first missiles did land in TAPS- uh, the Tropical American Park Service," Inez added when Chime
looked irritated and puzzled. "What used to be South and CentralAmerica. "
"Oh, yeah," Chime's mouth said. "That. I've been in Asia too damned long."
"Anyway, the smoke from the burning rain forests obscured the sky," Inez continued, showing the
smoke-filled holos of North and South America again. "We also registered volcanic activity, earthquakes, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]