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Prote and Mentamorpha ought to be near the Farm by now, he reminded her. If
they re coming.
Which meant that the stone lion would have to be unblocked for them. But then
blocked up again, for good. Perhaps cemented in position.
I ve got an interception team out on the road, and the chopper s up. They ve
got the licence number of that camper. But there s no sign of them.
Was it possible that Prote and Mentamorpha could take off on their own, as a
husband and wife team? If that happened, Thelma would still have a couple of
fingers stuck in the pie of the outside world. Two fingers weren t sufficient
to exert very much leverage. Not enough to topple the stone lion.
Yet it would mean that a shape-shifter was loose in the world &
Robina crossed herself, devoutly.
Listen to me, Reuben: if they aren t back by tomorrow you will hire a
detective agency to look for
Mentamorpha. Don t bother describing Prote he could look like anyone.
Anyway, I m sure those two ll stick together. They re complementary. But keep
the agency at it till they find Mentamorpha, even if it takes the next five
years.
Will do. Now, other matters, Robina. I ve locked Shiba and Ohira up in the
old chimp compound, as instructed.
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That s where those hands of Satan will stay.
I personally wrecked the lab. I burnt all the records. I poured all the Diet
Pepsi into a bath of nitric acid.
Excellent. Have you checked the access codes I gave you for the rest of King
Enterprises?
By way of answer, Maccoby grinned broadly.
In effect, you re the head of the whole operation now, Reuben. You control
the voting stock. But please remember this: you are not a very clever head.
Robina snapped her fingers, and rapped out sharply, Egnach! Egnach! (which
was change, backwards).
This was Maccoby s cue phrase. He lolled obediently with zombie stare.
If ever you fail me, Ariel comes up like an imp out of Hell. He will be most
angry with you, Reuben.
You will always fear this. But I shall keep Ariel safely locked away from you.
Thus you can enjoy your reign. You will call us every Sunday morning regularly
at ten a.m. for special therapy. And give thanks to the Lord that your shape
is still the same, and your soul untwisted. Now, Reuben, gaze into Gorgo s
eyes &
Gorgo humped his stool around next to Robina.
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PART FIVE
Perhaps a Year Later
Chapter 32
Sun lamps shone from the cavern roof upon pleasantly green terrain.
The lamps were powered by a small nuclear energy source. Once they had been
switched on by the fleeing tribe, and once the roof sprinklers had delivered
rain, the greening of the cavern floor had proceeded apace. All the pelleted
seeds scattered across the sterile compost lying till then in cool, dry
darkness had quickly yielded grass and vegetables, flowers and seedling
trees.
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For here was the late Bruno King s lavishly thought-out survival shelter,
inherited by his avatar Ariel. It was a cavern measurable to man, but by no
means cramped. It was a space colony: an asteroid ark buried underground.
Bruno King had conceived it as this from the beginning, modelling its
mechanics and ecology upon the dreams of the space colonization lobby, the
High Frontiersmen, the L-Fivers. Those dreams, unfulfilled (as yet) in the
world at large, had been realized here in secret beneath the uplands of the
Farm.
Unlike any steel or stone eggshell in the sky (a species which still only
existed in the imagination), this bubble in the Earth s crust came already
equipped with gravity, and air, and radiation-proof walls. And with hot and
cold running water. The air was pumped in through a filter system. The hot and
cold H O
2
rose from wells sunk to different levels. Yet the cavern was still a space
colony designed to sustain human life in a hostile environment for at least
half a century. It was this in concept, if not in cost (though this hadn t
been negligible). Only, its orbit lay not through space, but time.
Five stone temples were scattered about the cavern floor, miniatures of those
up on the lost estate. For: as outside, so inside &
One temple enclosed a well-stocked library; a second held gardening tools; a
third was a kitchen, built over a vault of canned and freeze-dried foodstuffs
which came with a hundred-year guarantee the suppliers, Survivalism Inc,
being 51% owned by King Enterprises.
And the grass grew lush; and flowers bloomed; and saplings thrust towards the
artificial suns.
As yet the only sizeable tree was Silvester. Now that he could no longer lure
raw meat to fuel his ambulations (for there were neither birds nor squirrels
in the ark), he had sunken his roots permanently.
He grew near the banks of a stream flowing past the little Temple of Ancient
Virtue, at a point where this stream broadened into a deep, clear pool.
Thus at last Silvester had become a fully-endowed tree. His legs had fused
together to form a single trunk.
Bark disguised his features now; extra branches sprouted from his shoulders.
He had begun to stretch up and out. Yet he still retained the power of speech.
To celebrate the first anniversary of their descent underground, the tribe
held a festival on the lawns of the
Temple of Ancient Virtue.
To celebrate their exile?
Yes, indeed! For melancholy might creep over them in subsequent years, as one
by one they died. (Not to be replaced by any changed children. During their
flight, prompted by he knew not what, Ariel had electrically fused each
person s spermatic ducts or fallopian tubes. Man had fitted out this cavern;
and those who lived here were now beyond Homo: transhuman. Yet Homo would
outlive them all & ) But at this early stage in their subterranean life the
tribe felt no pangs of nostalgia for the world they had lost. It
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