[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

of the chamber, surrounding a columnlike dais raised six feet from the floor.
From it, a metal shaft rose straight up to the shadow-shrouded ceiling.
Rising from the base of the dais, extending at ever increasing angles into the
high
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James Axler - Parallax Red shadows, was a taut webwork of silver filaments,
hundreds, perhaps thousands of them.
They were all connected to the se-ries of circular tiers. A dim glow came down
from the pointed roof, glittering from the strings.
Kane had the impression of vast energies being drawn down from the metal spire
and disseminated through each one of the silvery threads.
Sindri rapped the tip of his cane sharply on the floor. "Hey, Pop! Where are
you?
You've got visitors."
A robed figure shuffled out of the murk, leaning heavily on a walking stick.
The silver knob and ferrule glinted dimly. With a slight start, Kane
recognized it as a mate, albeit a longer one, to Sindri's walking stick.
The man who stiffly approached them was stooped and gaunt, his face but a pale
blur in the shadow of his cowl. "Who are you?" he demanded, his voice brittle
and hollow.
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"What are you doing here?"
"Focus, Pop, focus," Sindri retorted patronizingly. "It's me. Your boy."
The man halted abruptly. Incisively, in a tone that brooked no debate, he
declared, "Bullshit. I have no son."
Tightly Sindri said, "I told you to focus, old man."
A narrow, trembling hand flung back the cowl. Kane, Grant and Brigid were all
slightly startled by the man's appearance. Even by Lakesh's standards, he was
old. His face was a network of deep wrinkles, his toothless mouth a straight,
slightly quivering line. An untidy mop of white hair that resembled a snarl of
thread topped his liver-spotted skull.
Only his bright blue eyes showed any sign of vitality.
"This is the esteemed Dr. Micah Harwin," said Sin-dri with a cryptic smile.
"Biologist, psychologist and a self-styled musician. Pop, these are friends of
mine, recently arrived from Earth by way of
Parallax Red
."
Harwin's unblinking gaze darted across their faces, his eyes blazing with a
cobalt flame.
"Earth?" he said scornfully. "Bullshit. A dead world, nuked to a cin-der."
In a tone of aggrieved patience, as if he were talking about a not very bright
child, Sindri said, "Please for-give Pop's manners. He's fairly inflexible
about some matters he's particularly so about his paternal rela-tionship to
me. He denies he sired me, but the DNA tests proved otherwise, didn't
they...Pop?"
Harwin ignored the harangue. He shuffled a few feet closer, the weight of his
stare almost palpable. "Are you really from Earth?"
"Where else could they be from?" Sindri de-manded, no longer sounding patient,
but definitely ag-grieved. "You fucking knew everybody in the com-pound. Do
these three
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James Axler - Parallax Red look familiar?"
Tears brimmed suddenly in Harwin's eyes. Haltingly he said, "I was taught from
infancy that my great-great-grandparents came from Earth. They survived its
destruction, but they could never return because there was nothing to return
to. It broke their hearts."
In a remarkably gentle tone, Grant said, "Earth's still there. Not exactly the
same one your folks came from, but it's still there."
Harwin doddered forward, reaching out with palsied fingers to lightly touch
the side of
Grant's face, as if he were a work of art. His whispery voice sounded like
wind-stirred ashes. "You've come to take me back? Please tell me you've come
to take me back."
Sindri placed the end of his walking stick against Harwin's chest and pushed
him back half a pace. "You're embarrassing me in front of my friends, Pop. Do
what I
said focus. Show them you're a demented old philanderer only part of the
time."
Two pairs of blue eyes locked on each other. Ten-sion seemed to crackle around
Sindri and Harwin in an almost physical aura of commingled anger, resentment
and hatred.
But there was a deeper emotional connec-tion between the two of them, a
mutually shared grief that neither could acknowledge.
Kane couldn't help but be reminded of Baron Sharpe and Crawler or himself and
Salvo.
Micah Harwin drew himself up in what passed as a posture of indignation. To
Sindri, he said, "You keep coming back here. I told you not to, and I meant
it. This is my place."
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Sindri smiled thinly. "As I keep telling you
, it's my place. You live here at my sufferance."
Harwin returned Sindri's smile, but there was a hint of amused contempt in it.
"That, Little Bubba, is noth-ing more than your insufferable arrogance."
Kane tried to repress a chuckle, but it came out as a laugh. "Little Bubba?
That's your name?"
Harwin smirked. "His childhood nickname, be-stowed upon him when he was still
dimpled and cute. His full name is William Paulo, but 'Little Bubba' fit-ted
him best."
Sindri stood motionless, but flickers of raw, soul-deep fury and shame passed
through his eyes. "Enough, old man. You know why I've come. Stop the song,
goddamn you.
Stop the song."
Chapter 24
Harwin's smile didn't alter, but at a slow, dignified pace, he turned around,
facing the
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James Axler - Parallax Red dais and the network of strings. "You know I've
tried to stop it. I've tried every day for a year. What I did, I cannot undo."
Sindri snorted out a scornful laugh. "And you dare to speak to me of
arrogance."
To the others, he announced coldly, "As I told you, my father was exiled from
the compound. Having few choices of where to go, he came here, hoping to solve
the mysteries of the pyramid, which had eluded gen-erations of colonists."
Without turning his head, Harwin declared, "I came far closer to accomplishing
that than any before me."
"That I cannot deny," Sindri retorted. "He reasoned out that a science was at
work here, the mastery of the vast and subtle forces of nature. He knew that
here on Mars, for uncounted centuries, had been those who ma-nipulated them.
He had to find out if even a scrap of their knowledge remained.
"In doing so, Pop experimented with the frequencies of the transmitter. And in
experimenting, the song of the Danaan became a death ditty for all of us, not
just the
Archons."
Kane's eyes traveled up and down the mass of stretched-out strings, to the
tiny lights sparkling along them. The filaments vibrated gently, continuously,
pro-ducing the bass note that he sensed rather than heard.
"Pop was here when the revolt broke out in the com-pound," Sindri went on.
"Safe from the blood and death he had caused. I've allowed him to live only on
the off chance he can stop the song."
Micah Harwin laughed, a gargling cackle. "I've told you and told you that I
cannot. I've told you to go ahead and kill me. But you never do. You keep
coming back here to torment me with demands that I do the impossible. I've
challenged you, the clever Little
Bubba, to stop it. But you haven't even the courage to try."
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.
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"Because he's not intelligent enough to control Da-naan technology for his own [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]