[The movement of feet in the dirt, Chaney’s short-windedness as he climbs the temple’s steps, the groaning utterance of a heavy door. From this point on, Chaney’s each word has the brief after-echo, the telltale hollowness imparted by the empty volume of a large building’s interior.]
It’s cold. You wouldn’t believe how cold it is in here, Ben. Cold and dark. There’s no light filtering through the high, jewellike windows, and the chandelier – the chandelier’s out! My eyes aren’t accustomed to . . . [A bump.] Here’s a cabinet. I’ve scraped my elbow. The shelves are down, and I scraped my elbow on one of the shelves. The cabinets give off their own faint light, a very warm faint light, and I’ll be able to see a good deal better if I just stand and let my pupils adjust. [A scraping sound, somewhat glassy.*] Wait a minute. The bottom petals of this cabinet have been broken off, torn away. I’m standing in the shards. And I’m not the vandal, Ben. That little bump I gave the cabinet couldn’t have done this. Someone had to work energetically at these shelves to break them away. The Bachelor, maybe? The Bachelor’s the only one in here besides me. Did he want an axe to stalk me with? Did he need one of his ancestors’ ornamental knives before he felt brave enough to take on the pink-fleshed Asadi outcast who killed his huri? [Shouting]: Is that it, boonie? You afraid of me now? [Echoes, crashing echoes. When they cease, Chaney’s voice becomes huskily confidential]: I think that’s it, Ben. I think that’s why the globe lamps are out, why this place is so dark. The boonie wants to kill me. He’s stalking me in the dark . . . Well, that’s fine, too. That’s more heroic than the cord, an excellent death. I’ll even grapple with him a little, if it comes to that. Beowulf and Grendel. It shouldn’t take very long. The lady he killed felt amost nothing, I’m sure of that. [Shouting]: Over here, boonie! You know where I am! Come on, then! I won’t move!
[A forceful crack, followed by a tremendously amplified shattering sound, like a box full of china breaking.]
My God! The pagoda’s flooded with light now, flooded with light from the three globes in the great iron fixture that yesterday hung just beneath the dome. It’s different now. The iron ring’s floating almost two meters from the floor, it’s humming oddly, you can hear the hum if you listen, and The Bachelor’s inside the ring stabbing at one of the globes with a long-handled pick . . . He’s already chipped away a big mottled piece of its covering, and that piece has shattered on the floor . . . All three globes are pulsing with energy, angry energy, they’re filling the temple with electricity. A deadly chill. Anger . . . I’m sure they’ve generated the field that’s keeping the iron ring afloat, the ring hovering like a circular prison around The Bachelor’s shoulders . . . The plumb line whips back and forth as he jabs, it’s damn near entangled him, and he’s caught inside the ring and keeps jabbing at the foremost globe with his pick . . .
[The jabbing sounds punctuate Chaney’s headlong narrative. Apparently, another piece of the globe’s covering falls to the floor and shatters.]
What’s he doing? Why the hell doesn’t he duck out of there? Is he trapped in that field? I can see he’s too damn busy to be worried about me, gang. Too damn busy to want to kill me. Instead, he seems to want to kill the pagoda, to destroy its energy source and free himself from the odd hold it has over him.
I think his actions are having precisely the opposite effect, though. All the cabinets are open, all the shelves are down. I can see them. The temple seems to be alive again. Angry. Indignant. All it took was the dark and a little violence . . . The foremost globe’s split wide open; The Bachelor has knocked the crown off it, and spilling from that artificial caldera in the globe, erupting from it and flowing into the pagoda’s central chamber with us, is a terrible, violet radiance! It’s almost more than I can look at . . . He persists, though. The ring is canting to one side, and his shaggy body is a flaming silhouette behind that hellish radiance! What does he think he’s doing? . . . There’s a smell in here, an odor that seems almost to be a concomitant of the light. It’s like . . . like the smell when I ground out the guts of The Bachelor’s huri. Terrible!
[A fluttering which is distinctly audible over both Chaney’s voice and the persistent tapping of The Bachelor’s pick.]
Lord, they’re driving him out of the lofty darkness of the dome – two or three enraged, murder-intent huri. Clumsy beasts a little larger than the one I killed. They’re stooping on The Bachelor as a raptor stoops on a field mouse, diving upon him with their claws wide and their wings canted so as to slice him up maliciously each time they pass. He’s trying to fight them off, waving the pick overhead, swinging it madly – but they perceive its presence and somehow compute the length and direction of its arc and thereby manage to elude its blows and inflict their anger physically upon The Bachelor. Despite their seeming clumsiness, he’s no match for them, no match for them at all . . .
I’m getting out of here, Ben. I’m going to go tumbling down the steps and out of this place while it’s still within my power to do so. What a madhouse, what a sacred, colossal