Kane mentally shook himself, feeling cold perspiration trickling down his face. His entire body was clammy with it. Around him, his three friends stirred, as if awakening from a nap.
He tasted bile in his throat and he wiped his face with a shaking hand. “What happened?”
“I apologize for not warning you,” Lakesh said, “but you needed to experience Balam’s patented telepathic speech for yourself. The creature has it on continuous loop for newcomers. The rest of us are immune to it, so we can tune it out. Even though we’ve had him in here for three years, he’s still remote and superior. Balam simply can’t adjust to his situation. He’s incapable of accepting that we apes can and do hold him prisoner. The fellow suffers from a nearly terminal case of denial.”
“Why is he in the dark?” Grant asked.
“He’s uncomfortable in higher light levels,” answered Lakesh. “His optic nerves operate differently than ours. We don’t deliberately want to cause him pain.”
“What does itheeat?” Domi’s voice was a quavery whisper.
“Balam doesn’t eat exactly,” replied Banks. “He absorbs a mixture of cattle blood and peroxide through his skin. We synthesize the stuff here, and he more or less bathes in it.”
“A form of osmosis,” put in Lakesh. “He does ingest food normally on occasion. He’s very fond of ice cream.”
Kane only half heard the old man. He sensed the words were directed more toward Balam, anyway. He turned away, breathing with difficulty. He desperately wanted to run out of the room, out of the redoubt, into the fresh clean air and wholesome sunlight, into a world where even the horrors of muties and Dregs could not compare to this.
Kane and Grant’s glances met. A savage light shone in his friend’s eyes, and he knew the same primal light gleamed in his own. It was as if the two men were primordial hunters, deciding to make common cause against an inhuman enemy.
“Chill that little fucker,” Grant rasped. “He’s worse than a stickie.”
“That’s everyone’s initial reaction,” Lakesh explained. “A very visceral, xenophobic response. Quite primal and natural. But executing Balam will not solve anything.”
Voice high and strained, Brigid demanded, “How can getting rid of that thing possibly make things worse?”
“Balam is our only link with the Directorate. Even after all these years, we still don’t know much about them. We do know this much, thougheach Archon is anchored to another through some hyperspatial filaments of their mind energy, akin to the hive mind of certain insect species. Balam cannot communicate to his brethren his plight, but if he is killed, the absence of his mind filament would be instantly sensed by all Archons everywhere.”
Kane turned around carefully, looking slowly toward the recessed room. This time all he saw was a shapeless mass of thickening red shadows.
“You get used to his mind games,” said Banks with a grin. “You know what the oddest thing about him is? He smells like wet cardboard.”
The young man’s remark helped dispel a bit of the fear and tension. Everyone managed a short, uneasy laugh.
“How many Archons are there?” Grant asked.
Lakesh pursed his lips and shook his head. “We don’t really know, but we calculate there are only a few. Perhaps less than a thousand. Evidently they were a race on the verge of extinction long before the nukecaust. The hybrids are a different matter. Their numbers are growing exponentially.”
“How did you get your hands on Balam?” inquired Kane.
Lakesh peered at him over the rims of his spectacles. “Appropriate that you should be the one to ask that question, friend Kane. Balam was brought to us by your father.”
Kane felt his mouth falling open. Before any words came out, Lakesh moved quickly to the door. “Let me give you a tour of our retreat. You’ll find it edifying.”
Back out in the corridor, Kane moved in a daze, grappling with everything he had seen, done, smelled and heard over the past three days. It seemed like ages ago since he had palmed the computer disk in Reeth’s slaghole. It was almost incomprehensible that the entire chain of sanity-staggering events had been triggered by that single impulsive act.