It was as if stillness deepened. With a shiver, he took forth the key that Lars Rydberg had secretly made and brought back with him. He laid it against the lock. The program remembered the code. A pointer turned downward. At his pull, the leaves of the door swung ponderously away from an inner night. He stiffened his heart and trod past them.
At first he was blind, alone with his pulse. Then his eyes adapted. Light drifted in, barely touching an altar block at the middle. His right hand rose to his helmet, a Fireball salute.
But hurry, now, hurry. He unslung his pack, set it down, fetched a lamp, turned it on and left it at his feet. Luminance leaped, cut by sharp-edged shadows. Two objects stood on the block. One was a funerary urn, slim and graceful; he thought again of Kestrel. The other was a download in its case.
Hurry, hur-y. Observe, work by helmet light, carry out the necessary violation and crush the guilt beneath your heel; later it shall arise unbruised.
A meter showed that the downlead’s energy pack was drained but intact, a relief to Kenmuir although he had a replacement. He attached an accumulator to recharge it, by a jack handmade to fit the obsolete socket. While that went on, he set about reactivating the neural network. Disguising what he had not done, Lars Rydberg had slipped in a bypass program. At Guthrie House, a counteractive module had been prepared, which Kenmuir applied. Thereafter he laid a radio communicator on the altar, found the appropriate spot on the case, and made linkage. Now he and she could speak through the hollowness around them.
He touched the final switch, stepped back, and shuddered.
Light glared from below, off the face of the block, throwing urn and download into murk. Out of this, centimeter by centimeter, the eyestalks wavered upward. Lenses gleamed, searching about and about the tomb.
After an endlessness Kenmuir heard the voice, awoman’s voice, faint, as if it reached him across an abyss, dragging and stumbling. “ ‘Mond … No, Lars, oh, Lars … ”
He had not forseen how pain would cramp him together. “Forgive me,” he croaked.
“Uncans!” Dagny screamed.
“Wh-what?”
“Dark, dark, and dark—” Despair swept away before tenderness. “Don’t cry, darling. Mother’s here.”
Kenmuir gripped his will to him. “My lady Beynac, forgive me,” he got out, as best he could utter her language. “I’ve had to call you back.”
“Where are my arms?” she moaned, while the eyes talks threshed to and fro. “I’ll pick you up and cuddle you, baby, baby mine, but where are my arms? My lips, ‘Mond?”
“I’ve called you back for your people’s sake,” Kenmuir said, “your blood and his,” and wondered whether he lied.
“The blood ran out. When they got my spacesuit off. It was all over everything.”
“That happened—long ago—”
“Little Juliana, she was all blood … No, not Juliana. She’d never be, would she? Not now.” The download wailed.
She was remembering something old, Kenmuir knew. But what? Could she remember more? “My lady Beynac, please listen. Please.”
“It roars,” Dagny mumbled.
A damaged circuit, Kenmuir thought. It must be generating a signal the mind perceived as noise, whatever was left of the mind.
The sound in his earplugs softened. “The sea roars. Breakers. Wind. Salt. Driftwood like huge bones. Here, a sand dollar. For you, Uncans.” She laughed, quietly and lovingly.
“My lady,” Kenmuir pleaded, “do you know where you are?” Who you are?
“Lars—“ The eyestalks came to rest. He felt her peer at him. He felt knives in his flesh. “But you’re not Lars,” she said without tone. “You’re nobody.”
“My name—”
“Lars, you ended me. Didn’t you?”
Hope flickered, very faint. Kenmuir drew breath. “I have to tell you—But I’ve come as a friend. They need your help again on the Moon.”
Chill replied. “There wasn’t going to be any again.”
“I’m afraid—”
Sudden gentleness: “Don’t be afraid. ‘Mond never was. ‘Bloody ‘ell!’ he’d shout, and change ahead.”
Snatching after anything, Kenmuir responded, “Like Anson Guthrie. Also after he became … like you.”
“Sigurd was never afraid either,” Dagny crooned. “He loved danger. He laughed with it. Not at it, with it. That’s Kaino, you know.”