City of Golden Shadow (82 page)

"Good God." Jeremiah stared, goggle-eyed. "What is that?"

"Tell me what you see," urged Martine.

"It's a gate of some kind, about ten meters square, and looks like a single slab of concrete. But I don't see any way to open it." Renie got out of the car and laid her hand against the cold gray stone. "No handle, no nothing." A sudden thought filled her with gloom. "What if it's not a gate at all? What if they closed this facility and just sealed it up?"

"Look around. For God's sake, do you always give up so easily?" Singh's raspy voice made Renie stiffen. "See if there's a box or a recessed panel or something. Remember, it doesn't have to be right there on the gate."

The others climbed out of the car and joined Renie in her search. The twilight was thickening fast and the rain made it even more difficult to see. Jeremiah backed the car away and turned on the lights, but they were not much help.

"I believe I have found something." !Xabbu was ten paces to the left side of the gate. "This is not true stone."

Renie joined him. Holding her cigarette lighter's flame close to it, she could see hair-thin lines describing a square in the rock face. There was a small crevice in one seam that, although it appeared natural, might serve as a handle. Renie stuck her hand in and pulled with no result.

"Let me try, girl." Her father slid his large hand into the space and tugged. There was a heartening creak, but it still held fast. As if in answer, lightning flashed overhead, then thunder and its echoes came caroming down the mountainside. The rain grew heavier.

"I will get the jack from the car boot," said Jeremiah. "I might as well ruin that, too."

It took both Jeremiah and Long Joseph leaning on the jack, but the panel door finally popped open, long-unused hinges grating. Inside was a small panel crisscrossed with an array of tiny blank squares. "It takes a code," Renie announced, loud enough for Martine and Singh to hear her.

"Do you have a hizzy cable?" Singh asked. "HSSI?" When Renie said she did, the old hacker nodded. "Good. Pull the front of the panel off and hold the pad over where I can see. I'll tell you how to hook me up. Then I'm going to get funky."

Whatever Singh was doing did not pay immediate dividends. Once Renie had wired her pad into the control panel to his instructions, she propped it with a rock and returned to the car. The sun sank. A chill wind pushed the rain into a raking horizontal. Time seemed to pass very slowly, broken only by an occasional-and uncomfortably close-blaze of lightning above them. Jeremiah, despite Renie's cautions about conserving battery power, turned on some music, featherweight but piercing pop fluff that did nothing to soothe her ragged nerves.

"Why they put this here?" her father asked, staring at the gray slab.

"It looks like it's supposed to be bombproof or something." She looked up at the steep pitch of the mountain face above it "And they've got it recessed a little. Hidden from anyone flying overhead."

Long Joseph shook his head. "Who they trying to protect this place from?"

Renie shrugged. "Martine says it was a government military base. I guess the answer is 'everyone.' "

!Xabbu returned with an armful of wood, dripping wet but apparently unmindful of the downpour. "If we do not get in, we will need a fire," he explained. Stuck into his pants pocket and looking somewhat incongruous beside his old-fashioned coat and antique necktie, was a large sheath knife.

"If we don't get in, we're going to find us somewhere decent to sleep." Jeremiah was sitting on the hood of the car, arms crossed on his chest, looking thoroughly unhappy. "There isn't room in this car, and I'm certainly not going to sleep in the rain. Besides, there are probably jackals up here, and who knows what else."

"Where are we going to go with no money. . . ?" Renie began when a grinding noise even louder than the thunder made her start in alarm. The cement slab was rolling up, revealing a black emptiness inside the mountain. Singh's triumphant cry rang out above the noise of the gate's passage.

"Ichiban! Got it!"

Renie shut off the music and stared at the opening. Nothing stirred within. She walked forward through the streaming rain and leaned in to have a look, wary of booby traps or some other spyflick danger, but saw nothing except a concrete floor disappearing into the darkness,

"Actually, that was a bitch." The old hacker's voice crackled in the sudden silence. "I had to work hard on that-pretty much of a brute-force job. One of the old government key-codes, and they were always a bastard to crack."

"!Xabbu," Renie called, "you said you were ready to make a fire? Well, why don't you make one. We're going inside, and we'll need torches."

"Are you crazy, girl?" Her father eased his way out of the back seat and stood. "We got this car, and this car got headlights. What you want torches for?"

Renie felt a moment of irritation, but quelled it. "Because it's easier for a person with a torch to see, so we'll lead the car in. That way, if they've pulled out the floor or something, we've got a better chance of noticing before we drive Jeremiah's expensive motor into a fifty-foot pit,"

Her father looked at her for a moment, frowned, then nodded his head. "Pretty smart, girl."

". . . Just do not attempt to turn anything on," said Martine. "If there is still equipment here, even lights, electricity may still be connected also."

"But that's what we want, isn't it?" Renie was waiting impatiently for !Xabbu, who was kneeling beneath the overhang set fire to a long stick with its tip wrapped in dry brush. "I mean, we're looking for equipment, aren't we! We have to use the stuff, and I doubt any of it runs on good thoughts."

"We will solve that problem as soon as we can," Martine replied, a measure of strained tension in her voice. "But think. If this is a decommissioned base, as my research tells me, then will it not attract attention if it begins to draw power? Is that a risk you wish to take?"

Renie shook her head. "You're right. We won't touch anything yet." She was ashamed of herself for not having thought of it. Shaka Zulu, indeed!

"I will lead." !Xabbu waved his makeshift torch. "The rest follow in the car."

"But, !Xabbu. . . ."

"Please, Renie." He kicked off his shoes and set them down in a dry spot on one side of the doorway, then rolled up his pants legs. "There is little I have done so far to help. This is one thing I can do better than anyone here. Also I am smallest, and will be best at getting through tight spots."

"Of course. You're right." She sighed. It seemed everyone was having better ideas man she was."Just be very, very careful, !Xabbu. Don't go out of our sight. I mean that."

He smiled. "Of course."

As she watched !Xabbu move forward through the gaping emptiness of the doorway, a tremor of unease ran up Renie's spine. He looked like some ancient warrior going down into the dragon's den. Where were they going? What were they doing? Just a few short months ago, this flight and break-in would have seemed incomprehensible madness.

Jeremiah started the car and drove forward behind him, easing through the entrance. The headlights met nothing but murky emptiness; if !Xabbu had not been standing a few meters ahead of them, torch held high, Renie would have feared they were about to drive over the edge of some bottomless pit.

!Xabbu raised his hand, signaling them to stop. He walked forward a little way, torch swinging as he looked from side to side, up and down, then he turned and jogged back. Renie leaned out of the window.

"What is it?"

The little man smiled. "I think you can drive forward safely, Look." He held his torch near the ground. Renie stretched so she could look down. By the flickering light she could see a broad white arrow and the upside down word "STOP." "It is a parking lot," !Xabbu said. He lifted the torch high. "See? There are more levels going up."

Renie sat back in her seat. Beyond the headlights, the ramps led up into greater darkness. The lot was vast and absolutely empty.

"I suppose we won't have to worry much about finding a space," she said.

After hauling in a sufficient amount of firewood, and much against both Jeremiah's and Long Joseph's wishes, Renie connected Sagar Singh through her pad to the control panel on the inside of the lot so that he could close the great door. If someone should happen to discover them, she wanted every bit of protection the government's bomb-proof defenses could provide.

"I'm going to download the instructions for opening it again to your pad's memory right now," Singh said. "Because as soon as that door closes, you're going to lose me. If that's a hardened military site, an ordinary earphone connection isn't going to pass even a whisper out of there."

"There's a locked elevator with a different kind of code box on it," she told the old hacker. "I think it goes down to the rest of the installation. Can you get that open, too?"

"Not tonight. Jesus, let me get some rest, will you? It's not like I don't have anything else to do but play electronic butler for you lot."

She thanked him, then said good-bye to Martine as well, promising to open the door to make contact in twelve hours. Singh lowered the great slab. As it ground down, his beaky face on the screen dissolved into a flurry of electronic snow. Renie and her friends were cut off.

!Xabbu had a large fire burning, and he and Jeremiah were preparing some of the food they had picked up in the morning, making a stew of inexpensive vat-grown beef and vegetables. Torch in hand, Long Joseph was wandering around the more distant parts of the huge underground lot, which made Renie nervous.

"Just watch out for loose concrete or unmarked stairwells, or things like that," she called to him. He turned and gave her a look she could not quite make out by firelight, but which she assumed was disgusted. The shadowed ceiling was so high and the lot so broad that he seemed to stand far away across a flat desert; for a moment her perspective flipped and instead of inside they were outside, so completely outside that there were no walls anywhere. The sensation was dizzying; she had to put her hands down on the cool concrete to steady herself.

"This is a good fire," !Xabbu declared. The others, used to a larger selection of amenities, stared at him glumly. The meal had been satisfactory, and for a while Renie had been able to ignore their situation and almost enjoy herself, as if they were simply camping, but that had not lasted long.

!Xabbu studied his companions' expressions. "I think it would be a good time to tell a story," he said suddenly. "I know one that seems appropriate."

Renie broke the subsequent silence. "Please, tell it."

"It is a story of despair and what overcomes it. I think it is a good story to tell on this night, when friends are together around a fire." He flashed his eye-wrinkling smile. "First, though, you must know a little bit about my people. I have told Renie stories already, about Old Grandfather Mantis and others of the Early Race. The stories are of long ago, of a time when all animals were people, and Grandfather Mantis himself still walked the earth. But this is one story that is not about him.

"The men of my people are hunters-or were, since there are almost none left who live in the old way. My father himself was a hunter, a desert Bushman, and it was his pursuit of an eland that led him out of the land he knew to my mother. I have told Renie that story, and I will not tell it again tonight. But when the men of my people went out to hunt, often they had to travel far from their women and children to find game.

"The greatest hunters of all, though, are the stars up in the sky. My people watched them crossing the sky at night, and knew that the Bushmen were not the only ones who must travel long and far through difficult places. And the mightiest of all those great hunters is the one that you call the Morning Star, but we call the Heart of Dawn. He is the most tireless tracker in all the world, and his spear flies farther and more swiftly than any other.

"Back in the ancient days, the Heart of Dawn wished to take a wife. All the people of the Early Race brought their daughters in hopes that the greatest hunter of all would pick one for his bride. Elephant and python, springbuck and long-nosed mouse, all danced before him, but none spoke to his heart. Of the cats, the lioness was too large, the she-leopard covered with blotches. He solemnly dismissed them all, one at a time, until his eyes fell upon the lynx. She was like a flame to him, with her bright coat and her ears like the glimmering tongues of fire. He felt that she, of all those who had passed before him, was the one that he should marry.

"When her father agreed to Heart of Dawn's request-as of course he did-there was a feast and dancing and singing. All the people of the Early Race came. There was some jealousy among those whose daughters were not chosen, but food and music helped to ease that evil in most hearts. The only one who did not join in the celebration was Hyena, from whose daughter the Heart of Dawn had turned away. Hyena was proud, and so was his daughter. They felt themselves to be insulted.

"Once they were married, Heart of Dawn came to love his Lynx more and more. She conceived a child and soon a son was born to them. In his joy with his new wife the great hunter brought her back fine things from his journeys in the sky-earrings, bracelets for her arms and ankles, and a beautiful cape made of hide-and she wore them with happiness. Since she was a proper married woman, and so did not leave her fire at night while her husband was away hunting across the sky, her young sister came to visit with her. Together they spoke and laughed and played with Lynx's baby son while they awaited Heart of Dawn's return.

"But Hyena and his daughter still felt anger sour in their stomachs, and so old Hyena, who was cunning beyond almost any other, sent his daughter in secret to the camp of Lynx and Heart of Dawn. There was a food, ant eggs, that Lynx enjoyed more than any other. If she had any fault, it was that she was a little greedy, since before she had married Heart of Dawn she had often been hungry, and always when she found the sweet white eggs, which look like grains of rice, she would eat them all. Knowing this, Hyena's Daughter gathered a pile of ant eggs to leave where Lynx would find them, but first she took her own musk, the perspiration from her armpit, and mixed it with them. Then Hyena's Daughter left the eggs and hid herself.