Brenner looked at the makeshift spear, the pointed stick he held. If the thing was indeed within, somehow, what good would the stick be?
So he was a champion to Pons, he thought, towering above them, many of them coming only to his waist.
What would it be doing in this place, wondered Brenner.
Did they hold it within, with torches?
“Kill,” said one of the Pons.
Of course, it must be killed, thought Brenner. It has tasted flesh.
He sobbed.
But how could he kill it? He did not have the rifle. And if he had had it, he was not even certain of its operation. Insert the charge in the wrong fashion, and it could blow up in his hands, taking him, and the roof of the temple with him. Too, he was not certain as to how to free the rifle. Certainly its freeing would not be obvious; it would be subtle, at least; it was probably designed with the idea of slipping undetected through customs. Too, he did not know the sequence which prepared the rifle for firing. There must, too, be a safety mechanism. Rodriguez had handled such things. Brenner had not even wanted to know anything, really, about the rifle. It was a sort of thing against which he had been conditioned. This put him, of course, and others like him, at the mercy of those to whom such devices were familiar. But, in any event, he did not have the rifle.
He had, of course, tried to communicate with the Pons pertaining to the shiny tube, the putative optical instrument, even attempting to suggest its latent capacities, but they had, apparently, understood nothing. It was not a pointed stick, not a sharp-edged scarp. How could one explain a rifle to a people unfamiliar with the bow? Would it not be easier to explain fire to a fish? And those with him seemed to know nothing, even about a shiny tube.
And so Brenner, with a pointed stick, with fear, and rage, and desperation, guided by the Pons clustered about him, with their wailing, and torches, had come to the door of the temple.
Several Pons, others from the village, who, it seemed, had been waiting, swung open the doors of the temple.
Brenner could see light within, that of other torches.
He then entered the temple, Pons behind him, those who had come to fetch him in the forest, with torches, those who had opened the doors, and others, too, from the village.
Chapter 29
Brenner proceeded down the corridor.
The last time he had been in this corridor he had been with Rodriguez.
The torches behind him made his shadow seem long and before him.
He was descending now, and must, by this time, be outside the perimeter of the palisade.
Before him he could see two torches, one on each side of the double doors, within which was the hall of the temple, which he had, only last night, discovered with Rodriguez.
To his surprise there were several Pons at these doors.
The beast, if it is here, must be trapped inside, somehow, thought Brenner. It might have come in here, through the village, frightened by torches within the ring of the palisade, the portal would be large enough. Perhaps it thought the opening was like a den mouth, or a cave, a place to hide. But there seemed no marks in the corridor, the print of moist pads on the floor, strands of hair caught against the wooden walls, to suggest such a journey. Or it might have come in, somehow, from the rear, through the tunnel, that which last night had been blocked by the great gate of logs, with the sharpened spikes, pointing outward. Perhaps that gate had been opened, and then closed behind the beast.
The Pons at the hall doors began to swing them open.
“No!” said Brenner, putting his hand out. “Do not open them widely!”
A beast like that which had taken Archimedes could force its way, fierce head first, then shoulders and haunches, through such an opening with the ease of quicksilver.
But the Pons, nonetheless, swung open the doors.
Within, Brenner surveyed the great hall of the temple. It was bright with the light of more than a hundred torches. Within there were many Pons. Counting those behind him the entire population of the village must be here.
Brenner stood within the double doors, at the height of the aisle leading downward toward the platform.
This was not what he had expected to see.
He had thought there would be nothing here but a frenzied, restless,