Fingers reached into his breast pocket and came out with his recall plate. Instead of removing it, the acolyte bent Daniel’s fingers around the plate so that he held it in both hands. Another man wound the tip of a second rootlet around Daniel’s hands and wrists. The rootlet had a spongy tension, just enough to grip without either jerking free or pulling Daniel off his feet.
The hands released him. Daniel remained where he stood, held in place by the Tree. He could feel hair-fine cilia penetrating his skin; the contact was warm but not unpleasant. He’d thought the Tree might suck him dry for its own nourishment, but now he realized that the rootlets’ purpose was to inject traces of the Tree’s serum into his bloodstream.
The acolytes linked hands. The Prior murmured a prayer; the others responded by rote, their voices a sibilant echo in the great room. They walked out of Daniel’s line of sight, returning to the long stairwell upward. The door closed with a clang, shutting off the beams of their lanterns.
In the cavern’s unrelieved darkness, Daniel’s mind began to shine with the light of all the universe.
* * *
Four spacers with sub-machine guns surrounded Adele at the console she’d taken for her own. They were angry and frustrated, as dangerous as live grenades. If they had a target or even the hint of a target, they’d blast it without the least compunction.
Adele knew exactly how they felt.
Nearby in the stacks an acolyte was making handwritten excerpts from a gardening book printed on Blaise a hundred and thirty years ago. Adele didn’t know why or really care, but she’d checked to make sure of what the fellow was doing just in case it would help find Daniel.
It didn’t, of course. Nothing thus far had helped. Possibly nothing would.
Woetjans and a group of spacers had gone off to the northern arc of the Tree. She and five of the others marched into the library looking tired, scruffy, and very angry.
“Nothing, ma’am!” the bosun snarled. “The Countess ferried forty of us in the aircar up the coordinates you give us, and we hiked back. We checked every nook and cranny on the map. There’s no sign of the Captain and no sign of anydamnbody in the past hundred years.”
They were treating Adele as though she were in charge now that Daniel was gone. As a result she was in charge. She wasn’t sure she was a good choice for the task of locating Daniel, but she couldn’t think of anyone better at the moment.
A squad of acolytes with static brooms entered from the corridor to sweep the large chamber. Adele grimaced at the use of charged pickups around the consoles, but if they were properly grounded there wouldn’t be a problem. Windblown dust got everywhere in the complex, especially with so many angry Sissies stamping in and out paying scant attention to whether or not they were closing the outside doors.
“No sign?” Adele said, glancing around to see if the Prior was visible. No, not from where she sat at least. “Yesterday we were told that there were still hermits—”
One of the sweepers was the girl who’d accompanied the Prior yesterday. “Mistress!” Adele called. “Sister Margarida. Will you come here, please?”
Woetjans and two of the spacers guarding Adele—which Tovera, also present, had fortunately chosen to take as a joke rather than an insult—stepped toward the girl with one hand open to grab her and a weapon ready in the other in case she gave them an excuse to shoot. Instead the novice dropped her broom and came to Adele with her empty hands raised. One of the guards would’ve seized her arm anyway if Woetjans hadn’t growled, “Don’t be a bloody fool, Platt—she’s coming.”
“Mistress?” Margarida said. Her eyes were frank and open. There was a degree of reserve as well, but the girl would have to be an imbecile not to know how very dangerous the situation was for her and all her fellows until Daniel was found.
“Yesterday you said that there were hermits living here apart from your community, did you not?” Adele said. She didn’t raise her voice, but nobody looking at her would’ve been in doubt that she was angry.