The Dark Symphony
reprisals upon the Popular community in the days to come, or whether they would just strengthen their security over their own buildings, he did not know. All he could consider now, as he fell into a cave entrance and waited to watch the Musicians take his son away with the assumption he was one of theirs, was the future, the glorious future. He had divine power. He had a divine command to propagate this coming insurrection. His son was a prophet. What else could he be but a prophet? What else could ever explain the birth of a perfect child to Popular parents? A statistical law just now coming into actuality, deemed necessary by mathematics? No, that was the wrong thought train. He prayed that the gods would give him strength to overcome evil thought. He prayed that they would give him strength to live until the time for the revolution arrived, and to carry it out on the proper day.
And he prayed for patience to wait out the next seventeen years.
CHAPTER EIGHT
They returned to Strong's apartment and exchanged small talk with the women and each other over a dinner composed chiefly of three succulent, small roasts that tasted nothing like what Guil was used to eating in the city, tasted spicier and finer in some indefinable way. The talk of revolution was slight, almost nonexistent It seemed as if they had never even considered such violent political action. But the halcyon hour was interrupted even before they reached the final course, which was hard, yeastless bread and some sort of rich butter. Shouted alarms boomed down the corridors outside like cannon balls fired down a muzzle, and the meal was abruptly forgotten.
Strong got quickly to his feet, surprising Guil once more with the agility that lurked in that mammoth frame, hurried to the door and palmed it open, pressing against it as if he could not even bear to wait the short moment it took the mechanism to withdraw the portal into the wall. Beyond the door, a mangy bead, scarred and quite hideous, appeared, the mouth working agitatedly, though nothing seemed to be coming out of it. At last, the owner got control of his body. "Breakthrough!" he said almost hysterically. "Corridor F. Won't be long. Four—maybe five or six minutes."
"You stay here," Strong said to his son.
"What is it? What's going on?"
"It's too dangerous. Forget it."
But being denied information only made his curiosity sharper. "I'm not a woman," he said.
"You mustn't be hurt," Strong argued. "You are too valuable to us!" There was definitely nothing sentimental about that last statement; it was delivered coldly, sharply, and with the same evenness a businessman might employ when talking about his inventory. Strong could just as easily have been speaking of a valuable work animal or a piece of machinery now long out of production. That was exactly what he was, Guil thought, a machine, a tool, a valuable trained animal upon which all the dreams of this Popular were constructed, upon which Strong's immortality depended.
"I can handle myself," Guil said.
"Remember Nasty?"
"Yes," Guil said. "And I won that fight."
"You were chewed up pretty badly."
"But I won."
Strong sighed. This was no time for argument. Guil could see that, even though he could not determine what was causing all the excitement.
They left the apartment, running, turned three times into other corridors, and came to a place where a steel mesh net had been strung across Corridor F and sealed tightly to the walls with heavy staples. They had come to a complete stop before the net, when they realized Tisha was with them. She jerked to a halt, her long hair flying all around her head. "I'm not about to sit and wait for you to come back with more wounds," she said.
"You don't belong here!" Strong bellowed, eyeing the net, then the girl, then the net again.
"He's right, Tish," Guil said.
"Stuff it," she said sweetly. "You want to fight me to prove whether or not I belong here?"
He grinned. "No." He could remember her in the arena, the way she had disposed of sound monster after monster in an almost back-of-the-hand manner.
Strong shrugged. The other mutants eyed the girl curiously, the first real Musician they had seen who was fighting for and not against them. Guil, after all, was not a true Musician.
"What's happening here?" Guil asked Strong.
"Rats," Strong said simply.
"Rats?" Cold boiled over him like dry-ice steam.
"They live in the uncharted corridors, the bottom-most layers. Millions and millions of humans
Weitere Kostenlose Bücher