Charles Sheffield - Aftermath

Dana was waiting anxiously by the doors. Art shook his head. “I’m afraid that it’s bad news.”

She was much better at acting than he was. The change in her face from hope to grief was totally convincing. “Can I—”

“You don’t want to see him, Dana.”

Strasser nodded his agreement. “You really don’t. He’s . . . well, we’ll take care of the suitable disposal of the body. I’m afraid that in the circumstances there can be no formal funeral ceremony at this time.”

“We understand that. Thank you, Commander.” Art was itching to get away, before more questions were asked about his fictitious cousin, Desmond Lota.

He nodded and started to back off, but Strasser held up a hand.

“Excuse me, but there is one other matter that must be resolved. This is a government detention facility, and someone has broken into it. Now, you say that it was this way when you arrived—”

“It was.”

“But if that’s the case, it leaves open the question, who did break in? And why?”

“I don’t know,” Dana said. “But when we arrived there were marks around the side of the building as though something heavy had been pulled along the ground there. And when we came inside there were wet footsteps on the metal staircase.”

Art stared in disbelief. She was inviting them to explore the higher levels of the syncope facility, where otherwise they had no reason to go. Did she want Seth and Oliver Guest discovered? But she was staring at him in turn, expectantly, as though waiting for him to speak.

“They must have gone upstairs,” he said at last. He had it now. Dana couldn’t tell the Navy people about the empty body drawer of Pearl Lazenby, because there was supposedly no reason for Art and her to have gone up there. She wanted them to go up and “discover” it.

“I can help to check what’s going on there,” he went on. “The stink inside doesn’t bother me all that much.”

He had added the reference to the smell deliberately. Strasser nodded. He looked far from happy. He could order a subordinate to go with Art but apparently that was in conflict with his ideas of the proper duties of a leader. Finally he turned to the rest of the waiting group and said, “Any volunteers?”

The young civilian woman whose brother had been found dead stood alone, facing away from the building and apparently blind to everything. The others looked at each other. After a few moments two enlisted men, both approaching Art’s age, stepped forward.

“Pratt and Jarnile. Very good.” Strasser handed his flashlight to Art, the final statement that he himself would not be going. “Be as quick as you can.”

No question about that in Art’s mind; again, there was the problem of what Dana might be asked while he was gone. He walked back through the familiar double doors, half a step behind the two enlisted men. They ought to find the empty body drawer, but he must find a way to make them go straight to it. Leading from behind. It was a concept not totally alien to the military.

As the beam of his flashlight played on the steps of the staircase, he realized that there really were footsteps on the stairs — his, Dana’s, and Seth’s. He let Pratt and Jarnile discover the footmarks for themselves and lead the way. Only when they were coming to the twelfth floor did he push past them, flash his light in the right direction, and say, “Here. This way.”

After that he could follow and watch and take no further action. Jarnile spotted the open drawer along the fifth aisle, and led the way excitedly to it. While Art stood and watched, Pratt read aloud the name of its former occupant. It was obvious it meant nothing to him or to Jarnile.

“Get the ID number, too,” Jarnile said.

“I will. Do you think there might be others?”

“It would take ages to find out.” Art shone his flashlight up and along, to emphasize the spaciousness of the interior. “Didn’t your commander say to get back quick?”

“He did.” Pratt stuffed pencil and paper back in his pocket. “Come on, Nat. Any more decisions, they better come from above.”

Art trailed a step behind on the way down. His knee was sore again, and he didn’t want to steal Pratt and Jarnile’s moment of glory. As he emerged into sunlight he glanced at Dana. She winked. Everything’s all right!

Pratt was telling the story. Open body drawer, ID number, original release date. Strasser was nodding approval in a formal way. When it came to the name, though, the civilian woman swung around suddenly.

“Who was that?”

Art realized that he had read things wrong. Somehow, she outranked all the Navy people. She had been crying, but in a pent-up, tightly controlled way that made her face puffy but left no tear marks on her cheeks. When she was not so upset, with those features, eyes, and skin she would be beautiful in a foreign and exotic way.

“She’s a strong woman,” Dana said softly at his side. “No whining and moaning, even though it’s her own brother.”

He nodded. “Gorgeous, too.”

There was little chance that the comments would be heard. Pratt was again pronouncing the name on the body drawer, in a near shout as though volume added to clarity.

“Pearl Lazenby,” the woman said, far more quietly but with great intensity. “I had no idea that she is in this syncope facility.”

“Was,” Pratt volunteered, while Commander Strasser glared at him. “She’s gone. The drawer was empty when we got to it. Who is she?”

Strasser shot at him flames of coming retribution, but the woman answered as though indifferent to military protocol.

“Pearl Lazenby is the Divine Seer, the Eye of God. The head of the Legion of Argos. Now does she sound familiar?”

“Chief Loony in the Loony Legion,” Jarnile exclaimed. “Lordy. You mean that somebody let her out?”

“I mean exactly that,” the woman said. With the new information she was energized, freed for the moment from grief. “Not only that, I bet I know when it happened. Last night there was all that activity down this way on the river. Her followers came over the river and took her, dead or alive, conscious or unconscious. There’s supposed to be more than a million of them, scattered through Virginia and West Virginia and North Carolina. She could be absolutely anywhere by now. We have to let people know about this. I have to call, then I must get back to Washington.”

She turned to Art and Dana. “You must have been here first, after they escaped with her.”

Art’s faint hope that he and Dana would be overlooked in the new excitement and free to go their own way vanished. “I suppose we were.”

“Then you must come with me. You may be able to add important details. I can’t tell you how much trouble Pearl Lazenby might cause — especially now, after the supernova disaster.”

It wasn’t couched as an outright order, but it might as well have been. Art also realized that it was the fastest way to get the whole group away from the syncope facility. Seth might have Oliver Guest under total control, but they couldn’t lie squeezed in a body drawer forever.

He walked along the path away from the building, aware that Dana was following. In the road stood two purring gray behemoths. It was hard to know what they had been originally — troop carriers, dump trucks, heavy weapons transporters — but now they were buses, with rows of open metal seats below a blue awning of canvas.

Art made sure that Dana was right behind, then chose a half seat at the rear hardly wide enough for two people.

She smiled as she squeezed in next to him. “So far, so good.”

He couldn’t answer, because the other woman had moved to stand next to where they were sitting.

“I really appreciate your cooperation,” she said. “I only just learned of your own loss.”