Sindri pointed the end of his cane at Harwin’s back, shouting angrily, “It’s your responsibility to rectify your error!”
Harwin laughed again, shaking his head in pity. “As I’ve asked you, ad nauseam, why do you assume I made an error?”
“What do you mean?” Grant demanded loudly. “You deliberately caused infertility in the colonists with your tinkering?”
“He’s lying,” Sindri barked. “It’s the cowardly way of avoiding blame, like some kid who screwed up while trying to be smart and saying ‘I meant to do that.'”
“How do you know for sure he didn’t mean to do it?” Brigid asked.
“Because he’s not intelligent enough to control Da-naan technology for his own purposes.”
Harwin said, “So you keep saying, Little Bubba. Say it often enough, and maybe you’ll finally be able to convince yourself. You can’t tolerate the notion that someone anyone may know more than you, may have an agenda that you can’t pick apart. You’re a textbook example of overcompensating for an inferiority complex that you disguise with overweening pride and ego.”
“Spare me the sandbox psychoanalysis, old man,” Sindri snapped. “Stop the song.”
“You stop it, you little freak bastard.”
Sindri glared at the man’s robed back, lips writhing over his teeth in a silent snarl. His body trembled. Then, with an inarticulate roar, he lunged forward, cane raised like a bludgeon.
For a helpless second, the outlanders thought he intended to club Micah Harwin to death. Instead, Sindri roughly shouldered the old man aside, bowling him off his feet. He fell to the floor with a bleat of surprise.
Sindri rushed along the stone walkway circling the room and down a narrow passage to the dais. He scrambled up a short flight of steps and began hammering the metal shaft with the knob of his walking stick, holding it in a two-fisted grip like a sledge.
A deep, gonglike chime rang, and the webwork of filaments shivered furiously. Another note, discordant with the first, echoed throughout the huge room. Before it died into silence, another sounded and another, so that the walls filled with vibrating chimes, the dim light glittering from the strings.
Kane was aware that his body resonated to the conglomeration of notes flooding the room. He shook with a jarring dissonance. He felt it as little prickles of pain that would have been torture had they lasted longer. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Brigid and Grant jerk in reaction to the shock wave of sounds. Kane caught a glimpse of the three trolls twisting in acute pain. One of them opened his mouth to voice a howl no one could hear, clapping his hands over his ears. A trickle of blood crawled from his right nostril.
Sindri shrieked as he beat his cane against the shaft, his face frozen in a mask of fury and frustration. They couldn’t hear a word, but they saw spittle flying from his lips. Micah Harwin hiked himself up on his elbows and watched the little man impotently flailing and pounding away. He threw back his white-haired head and laughed uproariously.
At length, Sindri’s wild blows became weaker. Finally he stopped altogether and sagged panting against the shaft, his arms at his sides.
The music in the tiered room reached a crescendo and hung there on a long chord. It didn’t end, but simply hummed down in pitch, achieving the same bass register note all of them had heard upon entering.
Sindri dragged a sleeve across his sweat-beaded brow. Harwin continued to laugh from his place on the floor, an ugly vocalization with no mirth in it at all.
“Goddamn you, old man,” Sindri said between harsh breaths. “Goddamn the Committee of One Hundred. Goddamn the Danaan.”
Grant helped Harwin climb stiffly to his feet. The old man muttered a word of thanks then called, “Come away from there, Little Bubba. Tantrums won’t change the way things are.”
Sindri pushed himself away from the shaft, fingers caressing its gleaming surface. “There’s a conductive force inside this metal,” he said in a strained voice. “There’s got to be a way to tap into the right combination of notes.”
“Beating on it like a workman isn’t it,” said Harwin. “Face facts. It’s all over, Little Bubba. Finished. Your future has left the building. Even if you go to