The Lotus Eaters

placed over it, and overhanging the sculptures on the sides. Along with the roof two narrow sets of marble steps lead off, at right angles to the steps that led inside. The building that had once housed it and protected it from the air pollution was gone. With so few cars and so little industry operating, it was no longer needed.

Moore didn't bother to look right away. Marguerite, however, did, and was surprised—perhaps better said, shocked—to see rivulets of red running down the Altar's creamy marble sides. She looked up and saw five muscular men in outlandish garments, all gold and feathers, two of them holding a sixth who was naked but for a loin cloth.

'It's an Azteca day,' Moore explained, though the bare words explained little. 'Those come only a few times a year.' He added, 'Some objected, of course, to using the Altar of Peace for human sacrifice. On the other hand, the Azteca have or influence a significant block of votes within the Consensus. And the Orthodox Druids were on their side since they wanted to have burnings and hangings here.'

Marguerite gulped as she watched the sixth, near naked man forced down to the stone roof and flipped over. A black, jagged obsidian knife, the hilt wrapped in cloth, in the hand of one of the other five flashed down. Out came a dripping heart, probably still beating, which was held aloft. As the heart was squeezed out and then tossed over the side of the altar, she looked away. Even so, however repulsive the scene, it was still fascinating. She turned her eyes back to the Altar.

'Just thought you might find it interesting,' Moore said.

'Where do the victims come from?' Wallenstein asked.

Moore shrugged, saying, 'Some are political prisoners from Central America. It's been in a state of near rebellion for years. Some, too, supposedly, are genuine volunteers.'

The next victim was a beautiful, young, brown-skinned girl. She wept and screamed and struggled pitifully with the larger men dragging her to her death. Even through the sealed windows of the vehicle Wallenstein heard the girl's screams. She heard, too, when they were abruptly cut off.

'The Azteca insist it's a necessary terror against the lowers,' Moore said, just as the car left the area and drove off. 'And if you think this is a bit much, you ought to go to The Burning Man this year.'

Casa Linda, Balboa, Terra Nova

'The problem, gentlemen,' Carrera said, 'is that I am terrified of taking command again.'

'Terrified?' Jimenez asked. 'You?'

'Yes . . . terrified . . . for my soul.'

He held up both his hands, thinking, as he always did, miserable, dainty things. 'See these. These are the hands of the greatest one-day-mass-murderer in the history of our planet and the second greatest in the history of the human race. I'd had friends in Hajar . . . children I'd held in my lap. And I murdered them.' He shook his head. 'Somebody who can do that? He's got no business being in command of anything.'

'T'at may be true,' McNamara said in English, 't'e first part, anyway. But it ain't t'e whole trut'. You know what, boss? T'em fockin' Yit'rabis ain't had no more truck with t'e Salafi mot'erfockers since Hajar. T'ey ain't had no money to give t'em cause t'ey had to spend it decontaminating and rebuildin' t'eir fockin' capital city. T'ey ain't had no sympat'y for t'e mot'erfockers, neit'er, since t'e Yit'rabis are sure it was t'e hand of God t'at set off t'at bomb. So maybe, yes, you killed a million people. But maybe, too, you saved ten or twenty million of 'em.'

Carrera nodded slowly before answering, 'The one is speculation. We know for sure about the other, though.'

Jimenez snorted. 'So we have to be sure about things before we can act, do we, Patricio? Fine. Let me tell you about some things we can be sure of. We can be sure of them because you set them up, and what you didn't set up you allowed. One of those things is that my country—I would have said our country but you've abandoned it—is bisected by a foreign occupier. Another is that a chunk of it is ruled by as vile a cabal of self-seeking corruption as ever went unhanged. We've got fifty thousand regulars under arms, and twice that in reservists, willing and eager to fight to free that occupied portion.

Jimenez stood angrily, jabbing his finger in Carrera's direction. 'This is no speculation, Patricio. There's a war coming and it's your fault. You can't duck it. There are people going to fight that war because you formed them and you trained them. You can't duck that, either.

'Your soul, friend?' Jimenez sneered. 'Screw your soul; you've got responsibilities.'

Carrera sighed, then lifted and sipped at his drink. 'You're a bastard; you know that, Xavier?'

* * *

'He's just been a bastard lately,' Lourdes said to Artemisia,

sitting across the wooden kitchen table from her. 'Grouchy . . . inconsiderate. Cold to me and to the kids . . . and being cold to the kids tears my heart out.'

Sitting next to the two, the green eyed, light skinned Alena stifled a harrumph. Being cold to Hamilcar, Iskandr to her, who was to her mind and by her upbringing an avatar of God, was just beyond the pale. Even so, Alena was one of those odd people whose guesses were so good that she might as well have had second sight, if, indeed, she didn't have it. She had a very good idea of why the duque was so distant.

'Sex?' the younger and far more statuesquely built black woman suggested. Artemisia was inarguably the prettier of the two, as well, if not by much. Even so, Lourdes had eyes so large and so beautifully shaped they ought to have been against the law . . . of God if not of man.

'Oh, Arti . . .' Tears sprang to Lourdes' eyes. 'He hasn't touched me since he came back from the war.'

'Another woman?'