In his vantage point in the cliff, Malinari allowed his fingers to drift over the array of switches and pondered his choice. By now the girl was being absorbed into his garden, and that was a shame… that he hadn't been able to stay with her, within her mind, to explain what was happening to her and feel her terror; but no, for he had other things to do.
His mist was up; it lay knee deep, swirling through Xanadu from one end of the resort to the other. It was like a spider's web, that mist, carrying every faintest tremor back to its master and maker. A medium for his probes, it allowed him to touch the human flies who were 'trapped' within it; he knew the location of every man in Xanadu. But there were those for whom no mist was needed.
The locator for one: injured, holding his head, he sat inside that car down there… such a pity the area wasn't mined. Then there was the so-called precog, and Ben Trask, together in the bubble. At this close range their talents were like magnets drawing Malinari's attention to the topmost dome; he could feel them there! But the bubble was mined; all it wanted was a touch on a certain switch in his array.
And again his hand hovered tantalizingly over that central switch… But no, he must stick to the original plan, let them know the error of their ways before they died. First the perimeter, to let them see how truly he had trapped them, and then he would work inwards, leaving the bubble itself until the last.
And now his fingers were sure and fast, as one by one they tripped the outer ring of switches…
Through the wound-down window of the car, the locator was suddenly aware of a strange figure approaching out of the mist. The mist was very bad here, drifting over the car and obscuring his vision. But Chung had been in far worse places, and he was equipped with a machine-pistol.
The strangely lumbering, mist-wreathed figure came closer, and the sights of Chung's weapon were centred upon it. Then he saw the blaze of a reflective patch, sighed and allowed himself to slump a little. It was a soldier — an NCO, carrying another soldier in the fireman's-lift position, which accounted for the many-armed, monstrous silhouette. As that fact dawned, so Chung was out of the vehicle, calling out:
'Over here! Bring him to the car.' Then, behind the two, a third figure came weaving, on his feet but barely so. Recognizing the staggering loner as Warrant Officer 'Red' Bygraves, the locator went to meet him. 'Are you okay?' He got under the other's left arm, took his weight. 'Can I help you?'
'I'll live,' Bygraves growled. And then, seeing the eagerness, the urgency in the locator's eyes: 'What is it?'
'Your radio,' Chung said. 'Is it working, and can you call the chopper down? I know where the bastard is! I know where Malinari's hiding!'
Bygraves's eyes lit up with a fierce, fighting light. Gritting his teeth, and flicking his face mike with a fingernail to get Chopper One's attention, he told the locator, 'Oh, I'll get him down okay. Just tell me where you want him to lay down his fire, that's all…'
From what little Trask, Goodly, and the SAS Major could see of the interior of the bubble dome, it was a sumptuously-appointed split-level affair of marble, chrome, and tan-coloured leather. Five marble-clad stanchions surrounded the single elevator tube and supported the high ceiling. The elevator opened into a central well, with concentric steps climbing to the living or work area. The place was lit, however dimly, by a sprinkling of tiny blue lights which formed, against the ceiling's jet-black backdrop, miniature constellations in a fair imitation of the night sky. Blue-tinged, the dusky velvet atmosphere reminded Trask of nothing so much as a Starside night, which made the bubble seem even more an aerie.
That, however, was the extent of Trask's and his colleagues' knowledge of the place; for from the moment of their arrival when the elevator doors had hissed open, they had been under fire and pinned down. In fact their exit from the elevator cage — which in any event had been planned as a rapid deployment — had been hastened by a volley of shots that had sounded as soon as the doors were fully open, and a spray of bullets that chipped splinters from the marble columns where the three had taken shelter. All of which had felt very wrong to Trask.
He and the others had made such ideal targets in the elevator's confined space, he just couldn't imagine anyone missing his aim… especially someone who had been waiting for them to emerge from that precise spot! Yet no one had been hit, though for several nerve-racking minutes now they had been obliged to keep their heads down to avoid sporadic single shots.
Thus, deep down inside Trask sensed (or his talent advised him) that he and his colleagues were being played with; or that they were simply being played, reeled in, like so many sardines on a single line. And he knew they daren't allow this stalemate to continue to the enemy's prearranged conclusion.
Now, as he glanced across the well of curving steps at the dark figures of the precog and the Major crouching behind their individual columns, he wondered what to do next.
As for the sniper (if anyone so inept was worthy of such a title), it seemed that he must be a man or a vampire alone. All of his weapon's muzzle-flashes had been sighted in just the one location on the higher level, and there had been no other sound or movement from anywhere else. And Trask sensed, he just knew, that whoever this was it wasn't Malinari.
But then it came to him that indeed there had been another sound: muted, repetitious music that came from one glowing spot, an antique jukebox, in the velvet darkness of the higher level. And the music — a plaintive song — was only repetitious in that it had been playing when first they'd arrived, had played again while they were pinned down, and was now into its second encore, curtain call, or whatever.
But curtain call? A farewell? Some kind of message, maybe? And for the first time Trask listened to the song. A moderately fast-paced and yet bluesy ballad, it was sung by Ray Charles, a favourite from Trask's youth:
'Sunshine, you may find my window but you won't find me…'
And now it seemed to Trask that the coffee, sex, and cigarettes voice mocked not only the sun but also Ben Trask himself. For indeed sunshine might find the high blind windows of Malinari's aerie, but it certainly wouldn't find Malinari! Nor would Trask. The song was a message; but more yet, it was the mocking laughter of a monster! It mocked Trask, E-Branch, the military, and all their combined efforts.
So that now, in the heightened anxiety of this sudden knowledge, he used the temporary lull between shots to shout across to the Major: 'We have to get done here. So what's next?'
The Major had not been idle; he'd been working out the sniper's position for himself, and now believed he'd got it right. Lighting a flare, and a moment later pulling the pin on a grenade, he called out, 'This is what's next. Hit the deck — now!'
The warning was timely. Even with his eyes tightly closed, and sheltered by the column, still Trask saw the blinding white light blossoming through the membrane of his eyelids… and at the same time he heard and indeed felt the terrific report that shook the floor and shattered glass fixtures into flying shards. Then there was a stunned silence and cordite stench, and at the last a mewling whimper rising to a scream.
A tattered male figure came staggering, wreathed in smoke, himself smoking. His eyes were feral in the gloom. And the Major, Trask, and Goodly didn't wait to see what he would do or if he was capable of doing anything, but cut him down in a withering crossfire.
'We got him! We got Malinari!' The Major stood up, started forward up the marble steps. But as the precog and Trask joined him, the latter was already shaking his head.
'That isn't Malinari,' Trask coughed a denial into the now smoky atmosphere. 'And this isn't over yet. The elevator's gone and we're trapped. Trapped by the very creature we're trying to destroy…'
His words were portentous of the sudden thunder, the gouting fire and blazing light that at once rocked the night beyond the shattered windows. The three men looked at each other, then hurriedly crossed the floor to look out and down on a scene out of Dante's Inferno. On the far perimeter of Xanadu, disintegrating chalets erupted in red and yellow ruin, and fireballs lifted dieir mushroom heads to the night sky. But Trask was right: it wasn't over yet.
For as the three stood there watching, impotent to act, so midway between the burning perimeter and the casino a second series of terrific explosions, then a third, ripped through the shattered resort. Concentric rings of destruction were closing in on the Pleasure Dome, hurling flaming debris aloft and turning night to day.
'Now he springs the trap,' Trask husked. 'Xanadu is no use to him now and he'll destroy it, and us with it. So this is it. We're next!'
'The place is wired, mined!' The Major's face was ashen. 'I should have know it from the very first explosion, the one that took one of my men.'
'Don't blame yourself/ said Trask. 'We've all been equally stupid. And that bastard is sitting somewhere
