She has raised the alarm. Things will be bloodier now.
—A whim. I’m rather surprised myself, to be honest.
—Kill her now, then.
—No. I think not. She may be useful to us.
He wrapped a surgical rag around her mouth and dragged her by her arm. When she struggled and moaned, he took a little green bottle of chloroform from his pocket and waggled it significantly in front of her eyes. She stopped struggling. Dragging them by their arms, poking them in their backs, he herded Liv and the General down the hallway.
The stooped form of Mr. Root Busro stepped into Creedmoor’s path from an adjoining corridor and turned sad eyes in Creedmoor’s direction. Busro looked neither frightened nor particularly surprised. Creedmoor gestured him out of the way, and he stepped mildly aside.
Creedmoor stopped in passing. “If I shot you, Mr. Busro, what would happen to me? And all the other things in your head? Where would we live if I unhoused us?”
Busro shrugged.
“To break the world. It’s a tempting proposition.”
—Kill him or don’t, Creedmoor. We have places to go.
“Ah—go on, then, Busro. Keep yourself well, for all our sakes. Come on, Doctor.”
Busro wandered away, and Creedmoor dragged Liv and the General down the stairs, down the hall, and toward the stables.
Aha! Footsteps, rushing; then at the other end of the hall, a half dozen men came running or, in some cases, limping.
Renato was at the fore. He wasn’t stupid, Renato: he sized up the scene quickly. Renato was an old soldier, Creedmoor recalled—Renato, too, had probably dragged more than a few women struggling away from their homes in his time.
“Cockle, have you gone mad? Let her go. The old man too.”
“Or what, Renato? I am armed and you are empty-handed. I will be passing through.”
Renato looked so disappointed! Or so Creedmoor thought; it was hard to be sure, with the scars on Renato’s face, and the red domino covering his maimed mouth. But Creedmoor was well familiar with other people’s disappointment.
Renato folded his arms and stood in the middle of the hallway. The other men stood beside him. Arms folded—those who had two arms—they blocked the hallway. They stood calmly.
Renato sighed. “You may’ve gone mad, Cockle. But you’re not a fool. You know the rules. You know what would happen if you fired. But you won’t. Put it down. Let’s talk.”
—Kill him.
—Must we?
—Of course. He is dangerous.
The gun fired, and the greater part of Renato’s head burst bloodily across the wall.
—Did I do that or did you?
—It makes no difference, Creedmoor.
The other men fell to the floor, hands over their heads, and waited for the Spirit to strike.
Nothing happened.
Nothing happened—because of what the Kid had done, a little over an hour previously.
Creedmoor had given him the master keys to the House.
“From the office of the Director himself. Consider yourself honored. Now, go do it. As we discussed. Quickly.”
“What about you?”
“Smashing their rifles. Administering sedatives to their horses. And so on. Two-man operation. Quickly, quickly, poor Daisy’s funeral can’t keep them busy forever, and it isn’t every day a much-loved vegetable dies. Run! Or your best approximation. Go on.”
Panting, cursing, the Kid limped from door to door, knocking and calling the occupants out. The keys gave him a certain authority. Besides, the inmates needed little persuasion. They were always eager to see the Spirit.
Some of the near-catatonics and depressives had to be dragged out and damn near shoved down the corridor, but the Kid was determined; he was deadly keen to prove himself to Creedmoor.
The Kid collected some thirty or forty of them. Creedmoor had said that should be more than enough.
The Kid led them down through the hallways and the basement corridors and into the tunnels in the rock, where the wheelchair-bound had to be lifted and carried over the shoulders of their fellows.
As they neared the Spirit’s cave, some of the more eager of them ran or limped on ahead.
The Kid loathed them: their crippled flesh—their craven need—their cowardice and ugliness.
They crowded past him and into the Spirit’s cave. They sat or slumped in reverent silence around its pool. They bathed in its soft red light, the gentle drip-drip of the waters.
The Kid felt the Spirit’s touch as a softening in his bowels; a coolness in his mind; a warming pleasant itch in his scars and his stump. He resented it; he was damned if he would let that thing feed on his essence, lap at his wounds, steal his bitterness from him. He gritted his teeth so hard, he opened