The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

She almost dropped her cigarette. “Firebrass! But he … !”

Cyrano nodded. “Exactly. He would seem to be one of these agents whom the Ethical mentioned but did not explain. I never saw the Ethical again, so I did not get any answers to my many ques­tions. But I think, though I can’t be sure, that he would have been surprised to learn that Firebrass claimed to be one of the twelve. Perhaps Firebrass was an infiltrator. But that does not explain Thorn and Obrenova.”

“Did Johnston or Firebrass add anything to your knowledge?”

“Of the Ethical? No, Johnston was visited only once. Firebrass, of course, was not one of the twelve chosen. I doubt that the Ethical knew he was an agent. How could he unless he himself had been disguised and in our midst? Which perhaps he may have been. But if he knew that Firebrass was an agent, he had reasons not to tell us.

“What worries me, among many things, is that the Ethical hasn’t visited us again.”

Jill sat upright.

“Could Piscator be an agent?”

Cyrano stopped walking, lifted his shoulders and eyebrows, and spread out his extended palms upward.

“Unless he returns, we may never know.”

“Purposes, cross-purposes, counter-cross-purposes. Wheels within wheels within wheels,” Jill said. “Maya lowers seven veils of illusion between us and them.”

“What? Oh, you are referring to the Hindu concept of illusion.”

“I don’t think Piscator was an agent. If he had been, he wouldn’t have said anything to me about his suspicions that something dark and secret was going on.”

A knocking on the door startled them.

“Captain! Greeson here, head of Search Group Three. All areas in this section except for the chart room have been searched. We can come back later.”

Jill, rising, said, “Come on in.”

To Cyrano she said, “I’ll talk with you later. There’s so much to puzzle out, so many questions.”

“I doubt I’ll have any answers.”

62

Three twenty-four-hour periods had passed.

The dead had been buried at sea, their cloth-wrapped bodies resembling Egyptian mummies as they were tilted outward through an aperture. As Jill stood in the klieg-lit fog and watched the corpses slide, one by one, through the arch at the base of the wall, she calculated the time of their fall. It was not callousness which made her indulge in the mental exercise. It was habit, and it was also a barrier against the horror of death.

Death was for real now; the hope of resurrection in this world was gone. Death seemed even more all-present and always threatening in this place with its cold, wet winds and dark, swirling clouds. She only had to walk a few paces into the mists, and she would be out of sight and sound of all living beings and their works. She could not see her feet or the metal on which she walked.

If she went to an aperture and stuck her head out, she could not even hear the cold, dead sea crashing against the tower. It was too far away. Everything was too far away, even if it was only a few meters distant.

It was truly a wasteland. She would be glad when she could leave it.

So far, Piscator had not come back. She did not think it likely that he would. Under no circumstances would he willingly have stayed so long in the tower. Either he was dead, hurt badly, or held prisoner. In any event, those on the outside could do nothing for him, and the proposed seven-day wait now seemed far too long. Therefore, Jill had announced to the crew that the airship would leave at the end of a five-day period.

They received the news with evident relief. Like her, their nerves were pulled tightly, overtightly, on a rack. So much so that she had been forced to change the four hours of guard duty at the dome to two. Some of the guards were hallucinating, seeing ghostly forms in the fog, hearing voices coming from the corridor. One man had even fired at what he thought was a huge form running at him from the mists.

The first search of the ship had found no bombs or transmitters. Fearing that the crew might not have covered every square centimeter, and also wanting to keep them busy, she ordered another search. This one was extended to the outside surface of the dirigible, too. Men went to the top and prowled the walkway, shining their lamps alongside it. Others swept their lights across the exteriors of the tail structures.