Kane uttered a short, bitter laugh. His hand trembled, and the glowing end of the cigar between his fingers shook ashes all over it. He stubbed it out on the floor. “One last thing, then, before you change addresses. The proof.”
Abruptly Lakesh stood up. “Follow me.”
They filed out of the office into the corridor. Grant, his voice subdued, said to Kane, “This may be our chance.”
“For what?”
“To get our blasters and get the hell out of this jolt-hole.”
Brigid overheard and whispered impatiently, “We’re not prisoners.”
At that moment, a man carrying an SA80 fell into step behind them. Grant muttered darkly, “You could have fooled me.”
Kane couldn’t deny Grant had a point. He lengthened his stride until he was abreast of Lakesh. “How many people are in this redoubt?”
“Counting you four, a baker’s dozen.”
Seeing the confusion in Kane’s eyes, he added, “Thirteen. Of course, only twelve of them are human.”
“What?”
Lakesh stopped before a door. Unlike the others, it bore no knob or handle. Instead, a square keypad device was affixed where they should have been. He punched in six digits. There was a buzz, and the lock clicked open. The door was pulled inward by a tall, skinny black man. He looked very young, very earnest and sincere.
Lakesh said, “How is he today, Banks?”
Banks shrugged, eyeing the four people behind Lakesh curiously. “About how he’s been for the last three years. Maybe he’ll enjoy seeing some new faces.”
He stepped aside. With an ironic smile, Lakesh turned to Kane. “You should always be careful what you wish for, friend. Now you’ve got it.”
He stepped through the doorway and indicated the others should follow him. They walked into a large, low-ceilinged room with several desks, most of them covered with computer terminals and keyboards. A control console ran the length of the right-hand wall, consisting primarily of plastic-encased readouts and gauges. Kane’s eyes took in at a glance the heavy tables loaded down with a complicated network of glass tubes, beakers, retorts and bunsen burners. The smell of chemicals cut into his nostrils.
The left wall was constructed of panes of glass, beaded with condensation. Behind them was a room, deeply recessed and dimly lit by an overhead neon strip that cast a reddish glow. Banks moved to the wall, rapping on a sheet of glass. “We call him Balam.”
“Call who Balam?” asked Brigid.
On the other side of the pane, shadows slid beneath the ruddy luminance. “Him,” said Banks.
A shape shifted in the red-tinged gloom, like a swirl of seething mist, a deep dark against the very dark. Then the mist became even more dense before Kane was aware of a pair of eyes flaming out of the blood-hued murk. The eyes were overpowering, large and tilted like a cat’s, completely black with no pupil or iris. Reflected light glinted from them in burning pinpoints.
Kane stared, transfixed, into those eyes. He heard a faint, agonized groan, and distantly he knew it had been torn from his own lips. A long, tormented moment passed before he recognized the emotion flooding through him as terroran unreasoning, undiluted fear such as he had never known. He felt frozen to the spot, as if he stood in the icy blast of an arctic wind gusting from some nightmarish cosmic gulf between the stars.
The black, fathomless eyes held his captive, peering deep, deep through them into the roots of his soul. In those obsidian depths blazed intelligence, cold and remote.
We are old , came the words into his mind. When your race was wild and bloody and young, we were already ancient. Your tribe has passed, and we are invincible. All of the achievements of man are dust they are forgotten .
We stand, we know, we are. We stalked above man ere we raised him from the ape. Long was the earth ours, and now we have reclaimed it. We shall still reign when man is reduced to the ape again. We stand, we know, we are.
Suddenly Lakesh was there, standing in front of the glass, blocking his view of that narrow face and those black, depthless eyes. He raised a hand and snapped his fingers twice.