alien belief system. He supposed the crux of whether or not one believed in the way of the Ahloi was how one viewed their power of bringing the dead back to life. Did their ability necessarily mean that their belief system was correct?
He stopped himself there. What proof was there that the aliens
They climbed the steps, and they saw that now the chamber was bathed in torchlight. The obsidian walls reflected the bright orange flares of a hundred flaming brands. As they emerged into the chamber, Bennett halted and stared about him. The Ahloi stood in a great circle, their gaunt forms thrown into stark relief by the flickering torches held aloft by every other individual.
Those without torches stepped forward to form a smaller, tighter circle. Carstairs moved to the central stone. He was joined by two of the tall, stiffly articulated aliens. The Ahloi bent their knees and lowered their long heads as if to speak to him. Bennett heard a rapid series of clicks and whistles. Then another Ahloi came hurriedly into the chamber, moving with the spry articulation of an insect. The alien approached Carstairs, bent and hurriedly addressed the human.
Carstairs swung around, facing the corridor down which they had originally entered the chamber. He hurried back to Mackendrick and the others.
“You have been followed,” he said. “Already he has slain many Ahloi.”
They turned and stared. Bennett wondered what Carstairs was talking about. Who could have possibly followed them all this way?
Seconds later a figure emerged from the mouth of the opposite corridor. Bennett stared at the intruder, who paused on the threshold of the chamber. His face, in the light of the flames, was soaked in sweat and appeared just a little insane. He held a laser pistol in each hand and raised them as he took in the gathering.
Beside Bennett, Rana gasped. “Klien!”
Bennett recognised the security chief who had interviewed him in Calcutta four months ago, and knew then how Klien had managed to follow them here.
Carstairs stepped forward, arms raised in a gesture of reconciliation. “Klien?” he said. “Is it you, Klien? I never thought we would meet again.”
“We watched their ceremony of rebirth, Carstairs,” Klien said, his voice cracking, “and I couldn’t allow you to spread the word. So I killed you, and then these… these
it was no trick, Klien,” Carstairs interrupted. “The Ahloi possess the ability to heal the sick, bring the dead back to life.” He paused, then spread his arms. “Look at me, Klien. I live.”
“No!” Klien cried, raising a pistol and taking aim at Carstairs.
“Please!” Carstairs said. “Please, no violence. I beg you.”
“I will kill you first,” Klien cried, “and then dispose of the Ancients.” He looked around at the group of humans. “You have been deceived by the ways of the devil and you will repent at your leisure in hell.”
Bennett almost wept. How banal Klien’s punitive theology seemed in light of what he had heard from Carstairs. He would rather believe neither, in his ignorance and materialism, but if pressed he would have no hesitation in siding with Carstairs and his alien cohorts.
Carstairs took a step forward, and Bennett could only watch as Klien casually pulled the trigger of his pistol. The laser fire lanced instantly across the chamber, bright as lightning, and in the dark aftermath of the shot Carstairs crumpled to the ground.
Then Klien cried and began firing at random. The effect was gruesomely beautiful, as sapphire spears of laser light criss-crossed the chamber and illuminated the falling figures of the Ancients. At that second Hans Hupcka yelled out and charged. He was almost upon the assassin before Klien reacted. He fired, the bright flash dazzling Bennett. He grabbed Rana and dragged her to the floor. When his eyes adjusted, he saw Hupcka lying dead— obviously, horribly dead—beside the central stone.
Klien continued with the slaughter, and for long seconds a series of flashes snapped on and off around the chamber. Oddly, the Ahloi stood unmoving, facing Klien’s insane rage with the fatalism of true believers. Klien was turning like a homicidal dervish, crying out as he fired. One by one the Ahloi tumbled grotesquely, their cries high- pitched and inhuman, and hit the floor with a chitinous rattle of limbs.
Bennett shook Rana from him, but she grabbed his hand and would not let go. “No!” she cried. “He’ll kill you!”
Brutally he pushed her away and scrambled around the chamber in the brief periods of darkness between the bursts of laser fire, attempting to get on Klien’s blind side. He was overcome with the need for vengeance, a rage he had never before experienced.
He leaped towards Klien, and at that precise second the madman turned and fired. The charge tore past Bennett’s head, the heat burning his hair, and a second later he impacted with Klien and knocked him from his feet. They struck the stone floor and rolled, Klien roaring with rage beneath him as one pistol skittered away across the polished stone floor. Bennett wrestled with Klien for the second pistol, pulled it from him and tried to roll away and shoot. Klien dived after him, pinning him to the floor and reaching for the laser.
Bennett felt a painful grip on his wrist, and then Klien was forcing the pistol little by little towards Bennett’s head. Klien seemed possessed with the strength of the insane, and Bennett felt his resistance weakening as the bulbous barrel of the laser pistol moved closer to his face.
He closed his eyes, heard the quick hiss of a shot, and Klien spasmed on top of him.
When he opened his eyes he saw Rana standing nearby, frozen in contemplation of the enormity of her actions, the laser pistol Klien had dropped now gripped in her outstretched hands. Klien toppled from him, the lower half of his skull a shattered gourd spilling the viscous liquid of his brains.
Rana ran to Bennett’s side and helped him to his feet. Mackendrick joined them, taking his daughter in his arms without a word. The humans huddled in a group in the centre of the chamber and watched the activity of the Ahloi all around them.
More Ancients were hurrying into the chamber, their clicking legs working like stilts; they gathered about the dead and fallen, lifting the lifeless bodies and carrying them down the steps and away. They seemed to approach Carstairs with especial reverence, half a dozen Ahloi lifting him with care, caressing his body with their long- fingered hands.
Bennett was aware of movement behind him. When he turned he looked into the attenuated, insectoid visage of an Ancient. Its swollen ruby eyes regarded him without discernible emotion. It opened its mandibles, and beneath its clicks and hisses Bennett made out the whispered aspiration of words.
“Bennett…” it said in a hot rushing breath. “They will be taken… resurrected. In time they will live again.”
Bennett shook his head, turned and watched the dead as they were carried from the chamber.
Hupcka’s great body was lifted by four Ahloi and borne away, his leonine head hanging lifeless, his chest a charred mess where the laser had impacted. Next came the perpetrator of the killings; three Ancients hurried away with Klien’s macabre remains.
He looked at the Ahloi beside him. “What will happen to Klien?” he asked.
“Like the others,” the alien breathed, “he too will be brought back to life.”
“But he will be punished?”
The alien regarded Bennett with all the expression of a praying mantis. “Punish?” it breathed, as if that word were missing from its vocabulary.
Perhaps, Bennett thought, an indefinite period in which to contemplate the error of his ways would be punishment enough for Klien. He checked himself. He was taking for granted something that hours ago he would have considered impossible.
“Is it really possible?” he asked. “I mean, how can you… ?”
“No injury is beyond our ability to repair,” the alien whistled. “It will take longer to effect their transcendence, but we have time in abundance. And now…” The tall Ahloi turned to Mackendrick. “Carstairs informed us that you were ill, that you sought the truth.”
The alien moved to the centre of the chamber and stationed itself beside the nub of stone. It was joined by
