‘What d’you think he’s got in there?’ Tasmin gasped.
‘We know what he has. I’ve picked up some of the original construction workers, and they’re happy to tell us everything they ever knew. He’s got over a hundred pretargeted chemical rockets without any fancy electronics at all. No seeker components. No hunters. They’re aimed just as you’d aim a projectile rifle. By aiming the launch tubes.’
‘He’s going to set them off,’ Tasmin said definitely.
‘He may, yes.’
‘Not may. Will. That’s exactly what he’ll do. He’s like an animal when you corner it. He’ll go down fighting with everything he has.’ Tasmin’s mind spun, jittered. He knew his perception of Justin was true. ‘Justin’s theory would be he could always pick up the pieces. Break Jubal into enough pieces, no one else will care about it, then he’ll salvage what’s left. Or he’d think that if he committed enough destruction, he could get away in the confusion. Either way, Rheme, he’s going to set them off.’
‘How do we stop him?’ Rheme asked helplessly.
Tasmin concentrated, his nose wrinkling almost like an animal’s. ‘Evacuate the area around the BDL building,’ he demanded. ‘Move. Right now. Get the troopers away from there.’
‘What do you …’ Rheme stopped as he saw he was talking to Tasmin’s fleeing back. He was headed away at a run, toward the Eminence. Cursing briefly, Rheme turned to do what Tasmin had suggested.
Tasmin found Don and Clarin beside the Eminence, together with Bondri Gesel. He hailed them breathlessly.
Two verbal acknowledgments, one quaver of song, and a deep musical tone that was somehow interrogative.
He blurted out what Rheme had told him, what he himself suspected, repeating and stuttering, trying to make both Bondri and the Eminence understand projectiles, what they were, where they were, what they might do. ‘There!’ he pointed. ‘Behind the BDL building wall.’
‘More destruction?’ queried the Eminence, the mighty voice trembling, shivering. With fear? Apprehension? Fury? It was the Eminence that had told them the Eagers were gone, the Enigma, Redfang, the Amber Axe – the list had seemed endless.
‘It can be stopped if you can move the rockets. Or break down the installations where they are. Or break the controls that go to them …’
Silence. Then a voice almost gentle, speaking words Tasmin did not understand.
‘The Great One wishes to know if there are any individuals – persons – near that place,’ Bondri asked.
From where they stood, they could look down into the city. Rheme had taken Tasmin seriously. The area around the BDL building and Government House had been evacuated of civilians when the troopers surrounded it. Now even they were retreating, moving away quickly, herding a few stubborn civilians before them.
‘Tell the Great One no one is there except those evil ones who have caused the destruction,’ Tasmin told Bondri.
‘The Great One used our language because he needed to know what is true,’ apologized Bondri.
‘Tell the Great One that I understand.’
There was further conversation in the viggy tongue, then Bondri gestured toward the long eastern slope above the city. ‘The Presences will try to stop further destruction. You could watch from up there,’ he suggested. ‘That place should be safe.’
Tasmin moved in the direction the viggy had indicated. He felt hollow, burned out inside, as though his perceptions formed a thin shell around vacancy. Clarin and Don were behind him, leading their mules and his. The animals had been grazing at the foot of the Eminence, no more concerned by its size or the noise it made than by any other on Jubal. Bondri and some of his troupe went off to one side. It was nearing dawn. Only one full day since the Eminence had heaved itself up out of the cracking Deepsoil. One day since the Eagers had gone. Tasmin cursed. From behind him, Clarin reached out, then dropped her hand. There was nothing anyone could say to him now. Since he had heard about the Eagers, he had been shut down, almost as he had been when Celcy died. It was as though everything that had happened had been focused on one point somewhere inside him. Only that one point had validity for him now.
They came to a rocky ledge about half a mile from the edge of the city. A narrow belt of farms lay west of them, then a short street lined with low storage buildings, another street of small stores, and finally the wall that marked the eastern boundary of the three great structures: Government House, the empty citadel, and the BDL building. Around this wall, Captain Verbold’s troops had been established in a solid line, well protected behind hastily built barricades. Now the barricades were abandoned. The troops were on building tops and at street corners some distance away. There were none on the near side at all.
Tasmin glared at the wall as though it were his enemy. Behind the wall was Harward Justin. If something happened to that wall, if that wall came down, Harward Justin would run. He would run. Tasmin licked his lips, amazed at the flavor of that thought, the flavor of seeing Justin run, skittering like a crystal mouse, dodging, evading, eventually being caught. Oh, the catching. Tasmin’s muscles tensed, as though he prepared to leap. Adrenaline poured into his veins, and he tasted it, tasted the thought of doing something himself instead of sitting idly by while everyone and everything else acted.
Oh, yes, Justin would run. And if he did, it would have to be in this direction.
Tasmin stared around himself, searching the ground between where they were standing and the city, peering here and there, his head twisting, eyes glittering.
‘What makes you so sure
