ascending,' she whispered. 'The whole thing is infinitely more complex
than I first assumed.'
'It must be constructed like one of those nuclear models of some
complicated carbon atom,'Nicholas agreed with awe. 'It interlinks on all
eight planes. Quite frankly, it's terrifying.'
'Now I have some- inkling what those extraneous symbols signify,' Royan
muttered. 'They set out the levels.
I We are going to have to rethink the entire concept.
matic rules.
'Three'dimensional bao, played to enig What chance have we got against
him?' Nicholas shook his head ruefully. 'What we really need is a
computer. Taita.
without good reason. The wasn't Puffing his own virtues old hooligan
really was a mathematical genius.' He shone the lamp back down the
tunnel from which they had come.
'Even when you know it's there you cannot actually see the fall in the
floor level. He designed and built it without even a slide rule or a
spirit level in his back pocket. This maze is an extraordinary piece of
engineering.'
'You can form Your fan club later,' she suggested. 'But right now let's
start grinding those numbers again.'
I am going to move the lights and the desks up here, on to this central
landing of the staircase.'Nicholas agreed, I think we should work from
the centre of the board. It may help us to visualize it. Right now he
has got me thoroughly confused.'
The only sound in the room was the soft on the sobbing of the
woman who lay curled Milan floor in a puddle of her own blood and urine.
Tuma Nogo sat at the long conference table and lit a he looked
cigarette. His hands trembled slightly, and gh the sickened, He was a
soldier, and he had lived through Mengistu terror. He was a hard man and
accustomed to violence and cruelty, but he was shaken with what he had
just witnessed. He knew now why von Schiller placed such The man was
barely human.
reliance on Helm Across the room Jake Helm was washing his hands in
tediously and then dabbed the small basin. He dried them fas at the
stains on his clothing with the towel as he came back and stood over
Tessay.
'I don't think there is anything else she can tell us,' he said calmly.
'I don't think she held anything back.'
Nogo glanced down at the woman, and saw the livid burns that spotted her
chest and her cheeks like the running ulcerations of some dreadful
smallpox. Her eyes were closed, and her lashes were frizzled away. She
had held out well. It was only when Helm had touched her eyelids with
the burning cheroot that she had at last capitulated, and gabbled out
the answers to his questions.
Nogo felt queasy, but he was relieved that it had not been necessary to
hold her lids open, as Helm had ordered, and to watch as he quenched the
flame of the cheroot against her weeping eyeballs.
'Watch her,' Helm ordered, as he rolled down his sleeves. 'She is a
tough one. Don't take any chances with her.'
