have the right to be jailed.” Michelis and Liu both stared at him. Then comprehension began to break over Michelis’ face.
“You think it will be that bad?” he said.
“Yes, I do. Do I have your promise?”
Michelis looked at Liu and nodded grimly. They went out The collapse of the Shelter state had already begun.
XVIII
The beast Chaos roared on unslaked for three days. Ruiz-Sanchez was able to follow much of its progress from the beginning, via the Michelises’ 3-V set. There were times when he would also have liked to look out over the sun porch rail, but the roar of the mob, the shots, explosions, police whistles, sirens, and unnamable noises had driven the bees frantic; under such conditions he would not have trusted Liu’s protective garments for an instant, even had they been large enough for him. The UN squads had made a well-organized attempt to bear Egtverchi off directly from the broadcasting station, but Egtverchi was not there—in fact, he had never been there at all. The audio, video and tri-di signals had all been piped into the station via coaxial cable from some unspecified place. The necessary connections had been made at the last minute, when it became obvious that Egtverchi was not going to show up, by a technician who had volunteered word of the actual situation; a sacrifice piece in Egtverchi’s gambit. The network had sent an alert to the proper UN officers at once, but another sacrifice piece saw to it that the alert was shunted through channels. It took nearly all night to sweat out of the QBC technician the location of Egtverchi’s studio (the stooge at the UN obviously did not know) and by that time, of course, he was no longer there either. Also by that time, the news of the attempted arrest and the misfire was being blared and headlined in every Shelter in the world.
Even this much did not get to Ruiz-Sanchez until somewhat later, for the noise in the street began immediately after the first announcement had been made. At first it was disconnected and random, as though the streets were gradually filling with people who were angry or upset but were divided over what, if anything, they ought to do about it. Then there was a sudden change in the quality of the sound, and instantly Ruiz-Sanchez knew that the transformation from a gathering to a mob had been made. The shouting could not very well have become any louder, but abruptly it was a frightening uniform growl, like the enormous voice of a single animal.
He had no way of knowing what had triggered the change, and perhaps the crowd itself never knew either. But now the shots began—not many, but one shot is a fusillade if there have been no shots before. A part of the overall roar detached itself and took on an odd and even more frightening hollow sound; only when the floor shook slightly under him did he realize what that meant.
A pseudopod of the beast had thrust itself into the building.
Ruiz-Sanchez realized that he should have expected nothing else. The fad of living above ground was still essentially a privilege, reserved to those UN employees and officials who knew how to get the necessary and elaborate permissions, and who furthermore had enough income to support such an inconvenient arrangement; it was the twenty-first century’s version of commuting from Maine—here was where they lived.
Ruiz-Sanchez checked the door hastily. It had elaborate locks—left over from the last period of the Shelter race, when the great untended buildings had been natural targets for looters—but they had gone unused for years. Ruiz-Sanchez used them all now.
He was just in time. There was an obscene shouting in the corridor just outside as part of the mob burst into it from the fire stairs. They had avoided the elevator by instinct—it was too slow to sustain their thoughtless ferocity, too confined for lawlessness, too mechanical for men who were letting their muscles do their thinking.
Somebody rattled the door knob and then shook it.
“Locked,” a muffled voice said.
“Break the damned thing down. Here, get out of the way—”
The door shuddered, but held easily. There was another, harder thump, as though several men had lunged against it at the same time; Ruiz-Sanchez could hear them grunt with the impact Then there were five hammerlike blows.
“Open up in there! Open up, you lousy government fink, or we’ll burn you out!”
The spontaneous threat seemed to surprise them all, even the utterer. There was a confused whispering. Then someone said hoarsely: “All right, but find some paper or something.” Ruiz-Sanchez thought confusedly of finding and filling a bucket, though he could not see how any fire could be introduced around the door—there was no transom, and the sill was snug—but at the same time a blurred shout from farther down the hall seemed to draw everyone outside stampeding away. The subsequent noises made it clear that they had found either an open, empty apartment, or an inadequately secured, occupied one where nobody was at home.
Yes, it was occupied; Ruiz-Sanchez could hear them breaking furniture as well as windows.
Then, with a shock of terror, their voices began to come at him from behind his back. He whirled, but there seemed to be nobody in the apartment; the shouting was coming from the glassed-in sun porch, but of course there was nobody out there either—
“Jesus! Look, the guy’s got his porch glassed in. It’s a goddam garden.”
“They don’t let you have no goddam gardens in the Shelters.”
“And you know who paid for it. Us, that’s who.”
He realized that they were on the neighboring balcony. He felt a surge of relief which he knew to be irrational. The next words confirmed its irrationality.
“Get some of that kindling out here, “No, heavier stuff. Something to throw, you meathead.”
“Can we get over there from here?”
“If we could throw a ladder across there—”
“It’s a long way down—”
The leg of a chair burst through the glass on the sun porch. A heavy vase followed.
The bees came pouring out. Ruiz-Sanchez had not realized how many of them there were. The porch was black with them. For a moment they hovered uncertainly. They would have found the gaps in the glass almost at once in any event, but the men on the next porch, who could not have understood what it was they were seeing, gave the great insects the perfect cue. Something small and massive, possibly a torn-off piece of plumbing, shattered another pane and whirled through the midst of the cloud. Snarling like an old-fashioned aircraft engine, the bees swarmed.
Ruiz-Sanchez pushed at it, but it was partly locked. He got it open about six inches and wormed through.
The contorted man on the floor, his incredibly puffed, taut skin slowly turning black, his eyes glassy with agony, was Agronski.
The geologist did not recognize him; he was already beyond that. There was no mind behind the eyes. Ruiz-Sanchez fell to his knees, clumsily in the tight protective clothing. He heard himself begin to mutter the rites, but he was no more hearing the Latin words than Agronski was.
This could be no coincidence. He had come here to give grace, if such a one as he could still give grace; and before him was the most blameless of the Lithian commission, struck down where Ruiz-Sanchez would be sure to find him. It was the God of Job who was abroad in the world now, not the God of the Psalmist or the Christ. The face that was bent upon Ruiz-Sanchez was the face of the avenging, the jealous God—the God who made hell before He made man, because He knew that He would have need of it. That terrible truth Dante had written down; and in the black face with the protruding tongue which rolled beside Ruiz-Sanchez’ knee, he saw that Dante had been right, as every Catholic who reads the Divine Comedy knows in his heart of hearts.
There is a demonolater abroad in the world. He shall be deprived of grace, and then called upon to administer extreme unction to a friend. By this sign, let him know himself for what he is.
After a while, Agronski was dead, choked to death by his own tongue. But still it was not over. It was necessary now to make Mike’s apartment secure, kill any bees that might have got in, see to it that the escaped swarm died. It was easy enough. Ruiz-Sanchez simply papered over the broken panes on the sun porch. The. bees
