Harwin ignored the harangue. He shuffled a few feet closer, the weight of his stare almost palpable. “Are you really from Earth?”
“Where else could they be from?” Sindri demanded, no longer sounding patient, but definitely aggrieved. “You fucking knew everybody in the compound. Do these three look familiar?”
Tears brimmed suddenly in Harwin’s eyes. Haltingly he said, “I was taught from infancy that my great-great-grandparents came from Earth. They survived its destruction, but they could never return because there was nothing to return to. It broke their hearts.”
In a remarkably gentle tone, Grant said, “Earth’s still there. Not exactly the same one your folks came from, but it’s still there.”
Harwin doddered forward, reaching out with palsied fingers to lightly touch the side of Grant’s face, as if he were a work of art. His whispery voice sounded like wind-stirred ashes. “You’ve come to take me back? Please tell me you’ve come to take me back.”
Sindri placed the end of his walking stick against Harwin’s chest and pushed him back half a pace. “You’re embarrassing me in front of my friends, Pop. Do what I saidfocus. Show them you’re a demented old philanderer only part of the time.”
Two pairs of blue eyes locked on each other. Tension seemed to crackle around Sindri and Harwin in an almost physical aura of commingled anger, resentment and hatred. But there was a deeper emotional connection between the two of them, a mutually shared grief that neither could acknowledge.
Kane couldn’t help but be reminded of Baron Sharpe and Crawleror himself and Salvo.
Micah Harwin drew himself up in what passed as a posture of indignation. To Sindri, he said, “You keep coming back here. I told you not to, and I meant it. This is my place.”
Sindri smiled thinly. “As I keep telling you , it’s my place. You live here at my sufferance.”
Harwin returned Sindri’s smile, but there was a hint of amused contempt in it. “That, Little Bubba, is nothing more than your insufferable arrogance.”
Kane tried to repress a chuckle, but it came out as a laugh. “Little Bubba? That’s your name?”
Harwin smirked. “His childhood nickname, bestowed upon him when he was still dimpled and cute. His full name is William Paulo, but ‘Little Bubba’ fitted him best.”
Sindri stood motionless, but flickers of raw, soul-deep fury and shame passed through his eyes. “Enough, old man. You know why I’ve come. Stop the song, goddamn you. Stop the song.”
Chapter 24
Harwin’s smile didn’t alter, but at a slow, dignified pace, he turned around, facing the dais and the network of strings. “You know I’ve tried to stop it. I’ve tried every day for a year. What I did, I cannot undo.”
Sindri snorted out a scornful laugh. “And you dare to speak to me of arrogance.”
To the others, he announced coldly, “As I told you, my father was exiled from the compound. Having few choices of where to go, he came here, hoping to solve the mysteries of the pyramid, which had eluded generations of colonists.”
Without turning his head, Harwin declared, “I came far closer to accomplishing that than any before me.”
“That I cannot deny,” Sindri retorted. “He reasoned out that a science was at work here, the mastery of the vast and subtle forces of nature. He knew that here on Mars, for uncounted centuries, had been those who manipulated them. He had to find out if even a scrap of their knowledge remained.
“In doing so, Pop experimented with the frequencies of the transmitter. And in experimenting, the song of the Danaan became a death ditty for all of us, not just the Archons.”
Kane’s eyes traveled up and down the mass of stretched-out strings, to the tiny lights sparkling along them. The filaments vibrated gently, continuously, producing the bass note that he sensed rather than heard.
“Pop was here when the revolt broke out in the compound,” Sindri went on. “Safe from the blood and death he had caused. I’ve allowed him to live only on the off chance he can stop the song.”
Micah Harwin laughed, a gargling cackle. “I’ve told you and told you that I cannot. I’ve told you to go ahead and kill me. But you never do. You keep coming back here to torment me with demands that I do the impossible. I’ve challenged you, the clever Little Bubba, to stop it. But you haven’t even the courage to try.”