Chapter 9 chapter eight

Martin Silenus, Saul Winterberg, and the Consul trudged up the dunes, toward the Sphinx, while Braun Lamia and Feldman Ka Sade was on his way back with Father Hoyt's body.Winterburo wrapped his cloak tightly around him, trying to protect his baby from the raging sand and flashing light.He watched Kassad come down the dune, the Colonel's long black legs looking comic book above the electrified sand, Hoyt's arms and hands dangling with Kassad's every swipe And every step is swaying slightly. Silenus was yelling, but the wind blew away all the words.Braun Lamia pointed to the tent that was still standing; the rest had been destroyed or torn apart by the storm.So everyone rushed into Silinas' tent at once.Colonel Kassad came in last and set the body down gently.Inside, over the slap of the fiberglass sheets and the tearing of paper from the lightning outside, their cries could finally be heard.

"Dead?" the Consul yelled, pulling Kassad's cloak from Hoyt's naked body.The cross glowed pink. The colonel pointed to the blinking device on the priest's chest, which was a military medical kit attached to his body.The lights turned red, except for the yellow lights on the fibers and nodules that signaled the system was functioning normally.Hoyt's head tipped back feebly, and Winterberg could see the jagged edge of the severed throat, where a long line of sutures held together like a centipede's foot. Saul Winterberg felt for his pulse, but missed it.He leaned forward and put his ear to the priest's chest.There was no heartbeat, but the cross-shaped scars on Sol's face were warm.He looked at Braun Lamia. "What did the Shrike do?"

"Yeah...I think...I don't know." She pointed to the antique pistol she still held in her hand. "I'm out of ammo. Twelve shots at it...whatever it is." "Did you see that monster?" the consul asked Kassad. "No. Ten seconds after Braun entered the tomb, I went in, but I didn't see anything." "Where's your fucking armament stuff?" Martin Silenus said.He was huddled in the back of the tent, curled up like a fetus. "Don't those military shit show anything?" "No." There was a slight alarm from the medkit, and Kassad removed another plasma cartridge from the ammunition belt, loaded it into the chamber of the medkit, and squatted down hastily, pulling down his goggles to peer closely at the opening of the tent. .His voice came from the horn of the helmet, as if he had changed into a different person. "He's bleeding a lot and we don't have supplies here. Does anyone have emergency equipment?"

Winterberg rummaged in his pack, almost turned it upside down. "I had a basic medical kit. But it didn't work that well for this situation. Whatever it was that slashed his throat, everything was cut." "It's the Shrike," Martin Silenus whispered. "It doesn't matter," Lamia said, wrapping her arms around her shoulders to keep herself from shaking. "We have to help him." She looked at the consul. "He's dead," said the Consul, "and not even the ship's doctor's room could bring him back to life." "We've got to try!" Lamia yelled, reaching over and grabbing the front of the consul's coat. "We can't leave him with these...things..." She pointed to the gleaming cross on the dead man's chest.

The Consul rubbed his eyes. "We can destroy the body. With the colonel's rifle..." "If we don't get out of this damn storm, we're all going to die!" Silenus yelled, as the tent shook and the poet's head and back were slapped violently with every churning of the fibrous plastic.There was a loud sound of sand against the tent cloth, and it sounded like a rocket was going up outside. "Call that damn ship over here. Quick!" The Consul pulled his backpack closer, as if to guard the ancient comlog inside.Beads of sweat glistened on cheeks and forehead.

"We can find a tomb and stay in it until the sandstorm subsides," Saul Winterburo said. "Maybe, we can go to the Sphinx." "Fuck you," said Martin Silenus. The scholar turned around in the cramped space and stared at the poet. "You came all the way here looking for the Shrike. Now do you mean to say you've changed your mind, when it's just moved?" Silenus wore a beret with the brim pulled down, and his eyes gleamed in the back. "I didn't say anything else, I just said, I want his goddamn ship here, and I want it to come now."

"That might be a good idea," Colonel Kassad said. The Consul looked at him. "If there is an opportunity to save Hoyt's life, we should take it." The Consul was in pain. "We can't leave," he said, "not now." "Yes," Kassad agreed, "we're not going to leave here in a ship. But the consultation room might help Hoyt. We can stay in the ship and wait out the sandstorm." "Maybe we can figure out what's going on here," Braun Lamia said, her thumb pointing suddenly to the top of the tent. Rachel began to cry shrilly.Winterbureau coaxed her, resting her head in his broad hands. "I agree," he said, "if the Shrike wants to find us, it will have no trouble finding us, whether we're on the ship or here. We want to make sure no one leaves." He touched Hoy special chest. "It sounds scary, but the clinic will be able to tell us how nematodes are derived, which will be invaluable to the Ring."

"All right," said the Consul.He pulled out the ancient comlog from his backpack, put his hand on the touch display, and whispered a few words. "Will it come?" Martin Silenus asked. "It has confirmed the order. We have to load our equipment and prepare for the transfer. I have given the order to land above the entrance of the valley." Lamia was surprised to find that she was crying all the time.She wiped her cheek and smiled. "What are you laughing at?" the Consul asked. "All of it," she said, pinching her face with one hand behind her back, "seeing all of this, the only thing I could think about was how nice it would be to take a shower right now."

"It would be nice to have some wine," Silenus said. "If only there was a place to hide from the sandstorm," Winterberg said.His baby is sucking milk from a milk pack. Kassad leaned forward, head and shoulders out of the tent.He raised his weapon and pulled the safety catch. "Signals show," he said, "that something is moving over the dunes." The goggles swiveled toward the rest, mirroring a huddle of pale people, and Rainer Hoyt more Pale corpse. "I'm going to go out and have a good look," he said. "You wait here until the ship arrives."

"Don't go," Silenus said, "it's like that old fucking holo-horror movie where people leave one by one... Hey!" The poet fell silent.The entrance to the tent becomes a triangle full of light and noise.Feldman Kassad was gone. The tent began to fall apart.The sand particles have been softly grinding and foaming on the sides of the stakes and line anchors, and finally achieved the goal.The Consul and Lamia huddled together, shouting under the roar of the wind, and worked together to wrap Hoyt's body in his cloak.The vital sign light on the medical kit continued to flash red.Blood was no longer flowing from the roughly stitched centipede-like wound.

Saul Winterburo put his four-day-old into the chest cradle, wrapped her in his cloak, and crouched down over the entrance. "Colonel out of sight!" he cried.While observing carefully, a lightning strike struck the outstretched wings of the Sphinx. Braun Lamia moved to the entrance and picked up the priest's body.She was deeply surprised that the body was so light. "We'll take Father Hoyt aboard and put him in the examining room. Then we can send a guy or two back to Kassad." The Consul pulled his cocked hat down, then shrugged so that his collar turned up. "The ship has depth radar and motion sensors. It can tell us where the colonel has been." "And the Shrike," Silenas said, "don't forget our lord Boss." "Let's go." Lamia said, standing up.She had to fight against the wind to barely move.The hem of Hoyt's loose cloak flapped and flapped in the wind around her body, and her own cloak flew in a long strip behind her.In the intermittent flashes of lightning, she cut a path ahead and set off toward the front of the valley, looking back only once to make sure the others followed. Martin Silenus walked away from the tent step by step, carrying Heite Masteen's Moebius cube in his hand, and his purple beret flew up under the strong wind, climbing all the way to the sky.Silenus stood there, swearing in unintelligible words, pausing only for a couple of seconds when his mouth was filled with sand. "Come on," cried Winterberg, putting his hand on the poet's shoulder.Thor felt the sand hitting his face, attacking his short beard.His other hand covered his chest, as if protecting something infinitely precious. "If we don't go fast, we won't be able to see Lamia." The two supported each other and walked forward against the wind.Silenus circled to the lee of a dune, trying to retrieve the beret he had dropped there, his fur coat flapping wildly and wrinkling all the way. The Consul was the last to leave, carrying his own and Kassad's packs.After leaving for a minute, the wooden stakes crumbled and the cloth walls were torn apart in the narrow shelter.The tent flew into the night sky, surrounded by a halo of static electricity.The Consul stumbled along the footsteps of the crowd for three hundred meters. Occasionally, he could catch a glimpse of the two people in front of him, but most of the time he still went astray, so he had to make many detours until he finally returned to the correct path. on the way.The sandstorm had eased a little now, but the lightning bolts followed each other with shorter intervals, and the Tomb of Time was clearly visible behind him.The Consul saw the Sphinx, still glowing in the relentless flashes of lightning, and behind them the Emerald Tombs, whose façades glowed coldly, and behind them the obelisks, now also shining. The light was on, and the back was leaning against the pure black cliff wall, like an epee stuck vertically.In the back is the Crystal Monolith.While the shifting dunes, the dancing sand, and the sudden flashes of lightning make it seem like a lot is moving, Kassad just isn't there. The Consul looked up and could now see the wide mouth of the valley and the low clouds rushing over it, with some anticipation that he would see his ship trailing a glowing blue molten trail from these things. fell from the sky.The storm was violent and terrifying, but his ship had landed in worse conditions before.He guessed that it might have landed, and others were waiting for his arrival at the bottom of it. But when he came to the saddle between the cliffs at the entrance of the valley, the wind picked up again and hit him.He saw the four huddled together at one end of the wide, flat plain, but the ship was nowhere to be seen. "Isn't it time for the spaceship to arrive?" Lamia shouted as the consul walked towards the group of people. He nodded, knelt down and took out the comlog from his backpack.Wen Tebo and Silinas stood behind him, bent down, trying to block part of the flying mad sand for him as much as possible.The Consul took out the comlog, then paused, looking around.The sandstorm made them feel as if they were in a crazy room. The walls and ceiling were changing every moment. For a moment the roof was very close to their heads, and the four walls were only a few meters away. Retreating to the distance again, the roof floated upwards, like the scene in Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker", where the house and Christmas tree swelled rapidly for Clara. The consul pushed aside the touch display with his palm, bent down, and then spoke softly towards the voice area.The ancient machine whispered back to him too, barely audible over the scratching of the sand.Finally he straightened up and faced the others. "The spaceship is not allowed to leave port." There were protests. "What do you mean 'not allowed'?" Lamia asked after the others had quieted down. The Consul shrugged and looked up, as if he would see a blue molten trail, the ship would still come. "It did not have permission to leave Keats Airport." "Didn't you say you had the fucking Queen's warrant?" Martin Silenus yelled. "Didn't the old guy Yue Shi send it to you herself?" "One night stone's charter is stored in the spaceship's memory," said the consul, "both the military and the airport authorities know this." "Then what's going on?" Lamia wiped her face.Her cheeks were originally covered with a layer of sand, and when she shed tears in the tent, there were two traces of mud on it. The consul shrugged. "Pleasant Stone withdrew her previous license plate. Here's a message from her. Do you want to hear it?" No one answered for a full minute.Ever since their journey had begun a week earlier, the thought of contact with anyone other than Seven had become so inappropriate that no one would even really consider it; The occasional explosions in the middle of the world almost ignore the existence of the outside world. "Okay," said Saul Winterberg, "let's listen." The sandstorm fell silent for a moment, and the words sounded like a frantic clamor. They squatted in a circle, with the old comlog next to it, and Father Hoyt in the center of the circle.They hadn't tended to him for a little while, and the sand had started to collect around his body, forming a small dune.All indicators are now red except for the extreme vital sign measurement monitor which is still glowing amber.Lamia armed another plasma cartridge and made sure the filter breather was securely fastened over Hoyt's mouth and nose, filtering in pure oxygen and keeping the sand out. "Okay," she said. The Consul turned on the touch display. The message is a transluminal stream, recorded by the ship about ten minutes ago.The air, filled with data columns and spherical colloidal images, is slowly fading away, the hallmark of comlogies of the time of the exile.Pleasant Stone's image shimmered, millions of sand grains blown by the wind frantically shuttled among the images, her face contorted weirdly, and then became funny again.Even with the volume turned up, her voice was almost drowned out by the sandstorm. "Sorry," said the familiar image, "I can't allow your spaceship to fly towards the Tomb of Time just yet. The temptation to leave is too irresistible, and your mission is too important. All other factors must obey one premise, that This is your mission. Please understand that perhaps the fate of all planets rests in your hands. Please rest assured that my hopes and prayers will always be with you. Pleasant Stone. Over." The image gathers from both sides, then recedes.The Consul, Winterberg, and Lamia all stared wide-eyed, unable to utter a word.Standing there, Martin Silenus suddenly threw a handful of sand into the now-empty air where Pleasant's face had been reflected only a few seconds ago, and screamed, "God damn bitch politician Paralyzed idiot pretending to be a masculine queen bitch!" He kicked the sand in the air with his foot.Everyone else turned to stare at him. "Well, this is really quite a vent." Braun Lamia said softly. Silenus waved his arms in disgust and walked away, still kicking the dunes along the way. "Is there any other news?" Winterberg asked the consul. "Gone." Braun Lamia crossed his arms and frowned at the comlog. "I don't remember you saying how this thing works. How do you even get through with all the interference?" "When we disembarked from the Yggdrasil, I placed a pocket comsat, and I'm communicating with it now through dense light," said the consul. Lamia nodded. "Then if you want to send a report, just send a brief message to the ship, and it will stream a clairvoyant signal to Pleasant Stone...and your Ouster contacts." "right." "Can't the ship take off without permission?" Winterberg asked.The old man sat securely, with his knees arched and his arms hanging above them, in a posture typical of extreme fatigue.His voice was also tired. "Can't you ignore Yueshi's ban?" "No," the consul said, "Once Yueshi says no, the military department will set up a third-level airtight field at the take-off shaft where our ship is parked." "Contact her again," Braun Lamia said, "explain it to her." "I tried." The consul held the comlog in his hands and put it back in his backpack. "No response. I also mentioned in the original signal stream that Hoyt was seriously injured. We need medical help. He's ready." "Badly wounded," repeated Martin Silenus, striding back to where they stood together, "shit. Our parson friend is as dead as a dog at Glennon High." He put The thumb snapped at the cloaked corpse.Now all the monitors are showing red. Braun Lamia lowered his head and body, and touched Hoyt's cheek.icy cold.The biomonitors of the comlogs and the medical kits all started chirping brain death alarms.Although the filter mask was still pumping pure oxygen into his lungs, and the medical kit stimulators were still working on his lungs and heart, the chirp became higher and higher and turned into a scream, and then fell down again. Into a steady but terrifying tone. "Loss of blood," Saul Winterberg said.His eyes were closed, his forehead drooped, and he touched the dead priest's face. "It's awesome," Silenus said, "it's fucking awesome. According to Hoyt's own story, he's going to break it down and put it back together, thanks to the goddamn cruciform... on this guy And with two of those damn things, there's plenty of resurrection insurance... and then he'll come staggering back around like the ghost of Hamlet's father, only this version's out of his mind. By then, should we How to do it?" "Shut up," Braun Lamia said.She was wrapping Hoyt's body in a tarp she had brought from a tent. "You should shut up," Silenus yelled, "there's a monster lurking around us. Old Grendel himself is out there somewhere, grinding his nails for his next meal, you Really want Hoyt's zombies to join us in the fun pack? Do you remember how he described Bikura? They've been brought back to life by means of the crucifix for thousands of years, talk to any of them No more answers than talking to a liquid sponge. You really want Hoyt's body to travel with us?" "Two people," said the Consul. "What?" Martin Silenus turned sharply, staggered, and fell to his knees beside the corpse.He leaned over to the old scholar. "What did you say?" "There are two crucifixes," said the Consul, "Hoyt's, and Father Paul Durley's. If his story about Bikura is true, they will both be...resurrected." "Oh, it's really bad luck in eight lifetimes." Silinas said, and sat down on the sand. Braun Lamia had wrapped the priest's body.She looked at the figure. "I remember Father Durley's story about the Bikura named Alpha, and mentioned this," she said, "but I still haven't figured it out. This kind of thing goes against the law of conservation of mass." "They'd turn into short zombies," says Martin Silenus.He wrapped his fur coat tighter and punched the desert. "If that spaceship came, we must have figured out a lot of things," the consul said. "The automatic diagnosis and treatment system should have..." He paused and gestured. "Look, there's not so much sand in the air anymore. Maybe the sandstorm has..." Lightning flashed and it began to rain, icy raindrops beating their faces more violently than the fury of the sandstorm. Martin Silenus began to laugh. "Damn the desert!" he cried to the sky. "We'll all be drowned in the flood." "We've got to get out of here," Saul Winterberg said.His cloak was unbuttoned, revealing his baby's face.Rachel was crying, her cheeks flushed, and she looked little bigger than a newborn. "Going to Time Fortress?" Lamia asked, "It will take an hour or two..." "It's too far away," said the consul. "Let's choose a burial to sleep in." Silenas laughed again.He opened his mouth and chanted, "Who are these people? Are they all going to sacrifice?"The sacrificial calf, howling to the sky, where will you lead it, mystic priest?Garlands of flowers adorn its smooth waist. "You mean you agree?" Lamia asked. "That fucking verse says 'Why not?'" laughs Silenas. "Why make it difficult for our icy muse to find us? We can watch our friends disintegrate while we wait for the ship. The Bikura, in the Dure story, after death disturbed their glazed gaze , How long will it take for him to return to his companion?" "Three days," said the consul. Martin Silenus patted his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Of course. How could I have forgotten? What an astonishing resemblance. Just. In three days, maybe our Shrike will kill some of us. If I borrow the priest a crucifix just in case, Do you think he would mind? I mean, he has an extra..." "Let's go," said the Consul.The rain dripped continuously from his three-cornered hat. "We can stay in the Sphinx until morning. I'll help Kassad move his extra gear and the Moebius cube. Braun, you take Hoyt's luggage and Sol's backpack. Sol Er, you keep the baby warm and don't let her get wet." "What about the priest?" asked the poet, pointing his thumb at the corpse. "You carry Father Hoyt on your back." Braun Lamia said softly, turning around. Martin Silenus opened his mouth wide, saw Lamia holding the pistol in his hand, shrugged, and bent down to lift the body on his shoulders. "Who will carry Kassad when we find him?" he asked. "Of course, maybe he's been chopped up so that we all—" "Shut your mouth," Braun Lamia said wearily. "Don't make me kill you. I don't want us to carry one more thing. Just go." With the Consul leading the way, Winterburh following, Martin Silenus staggering a few meters behind, and Braun Lamia at the rear, the group descended the low pass once more toward the Heading towards the valley where the tombs are located.

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