“You must understand,” one of the older male acolytes said, “that this is greater than a single man.”
Barnes punched him in the kidneys with the butt of his impeller. The man screamed and flopped forward.
“Guess it’s greater than you, anyhow,” Barnes growled. He and Dasi bent as if they’d practiced the maneuver. Each of the big men gripped the acolyte’s elbows. They carried him with his feet and occasionally knees dragging, moaning softly.
“This is the original Sanctum,” Adele said as they entered a moderate-sized room, this time set off the corridor instead being an expansion of it. There were no glowstrips in this section, but several of the spacers carried floodlamps. “Supposedly it’s been abandoned.”
Boxes and kitchen appliances, presumably non-functional, were piled in the center of the floor. Dug into the dead wood of one wall was a closet, empty but partly closed by a curtain.
“We been here before,” said one of the men who’d been with Woetjans. “We searched it yesterday, right?”
“The door is in the back of the closet,” the Prior said. “It slides to the left.”
A spacer ripped the curtain down. Adele started to feel for a catch on the back wall of the closet.
Woetjans moved her aside, said, “Careful,” and smashed the heel of her boot into it. Wood splintered, springing the panel free. Woetjans kicked again, sideways this time, and slid it open. Behind the panel, a set of stairs went downward.
Hogg led the way with a floodlamp in his left hand and an impeller slung muzzle-forward beneath his right arm. “Leave a couple of your boys up top, Woetjans,” he called back. “Just in case our friends get ideas.”
Several spacers muttered curses as they started down the long stairwell. Adele smiled coldly. Only those who’d been close enough to hear and understand the section from The Institutions would know how really long the stairs were, but they’d all have come anyway. The guards Woetjans picked for the stairhead complained bitterly that they weren’t going to be part of the rescue party.
If it was a rescue party. . . .
Adele looked over her shoulder, past Tovera who was even more ghastly than usual in the hard shadows that the handlamps flung. Lamsoe and Claud carried the Prior with an arm over each of their shoulders. He had to move his feet to keep from stubbing his toes—neither Sissie was especially tall—but he wasn’t supporting his own weight.
“Is Captain Leary all right?” Adele said.
“I don’t know,” said the Prior, his answer as blunt as the question had been. “Physically, he should be after so short a time. Mentally . . .”
He tried to shrug and couldn’t, so he grimaced instead. “No one has ever been released before.”
They continued down. Near the surface the treads were of wood. Pieces had been inset into the substance of the Tree when the original steps wore deeply concave. After the first landing the stairs were cut into stone, but even here plastic caps were sealed onto treads which had worn or crumbled.
“We should have waited,” the Prior said. Adele looked back. She couldn’t tell whether he was speaking to her or if he was just unburdening his conscience to the world at large. “He must not have been fully one with the Tree yet. He sent a message instead of merely being the Intercessor between the Tree and the querent. It was my fault.”
“But where is the Earth Diamond?” called Count Klimov. He and his wife were close enough behind to hear the Prior’s voice over the echoing susurrus which boots scraped on stair treads.
“I haven’t any idea,” the Prior said. “There’s nothing on New Delphi except the Tree and the Service.”
“Don’t count on either of them being around after we lift from here,” a motorman snarled. “I figure we could get a bloody good bonfire going if the Sissie hovers right over the woody part, right?”
An acolyte began to sob. The spacer holding his wired wrists raised her sub-machine gun for a blow, then lowered the weapon and growled, “You shoulda thought about that when you grabbed the Captain.”