"You have a husband, I believe," he pointed out.
She nodded. "I knew him for less than three weeks. I've been with you far longer than F ve been with him. I married him on an impulse, in some ways to gain security and status, I guess-I'd just been pulled out a few weeks earlier from the most horrible experience I'd ever had in the field-until now-but, mostly, because he had money and position and he could save the team from going bankrupt Most of all, I did it to save the team, keep everyone together. Now look what's happened! Tris blows his brains out, the Durquist is melted into goo, and I'm sitting here, stark naked, in the middle of a place I don't understand and that wants to finish me as well. And what if, by some miracle, I did get out, get back?
To what? For what? It's all gone, now."
"There you are again," he told her in a stern tone of voice. "Wallowing, like I used to wallow. Oh! Woe is me! 'Twould be best if I were never born than to suffer this way. Well, it's crap. It was crap when I did it and it's crap when you do it. It'll destroy you, and you have enough other things to destroy you without having to give it more pushes. I may not have known you since you was a wee little girl, but I am part of this team. So is Molly. You hurt Lankur, yes, but you didn't kill him.
He killed himself. You think that's normal behavior for someone who is lovesick and heartsick? It's not. You may want to, but you don't do it You go on, and you find someone else. Maybe you take on the world, or get sloshed a lot, but you manage, and, sooner or later, you figure a way to something else. In truth, from what I'm hearing, you did make the wrong choice, since neither you nor Lankur were mature enough to make it together."
His comments raised anger within her, and that was a start. He wouldn't be surprised if he got slapped before this was done, if he had to go that far, but this was survival.
"The Durquist, now-he's like you and me. We volunteered. We came because it was a team decision, a team vote if you will. Maybe it was a wrong vote, and maybe there wasn't another way out of there and maybe there was, but we didn't have to join this thing. I know at least the Durquist and I both felt that there was a quick way out. Coin' right, perhaps, all the time. It was a problem we could work on once we got the system, but it was a problem we never actually did work on because we weren't going to leave the team. We got warned about the clouds, whatever they are. The demons at the gate warned HS, and we got confirmation from the Mycohl. If we're too bloody stupid to listen to two warnings, then terrible things are gonna happen-not because of fate, or even the Quintara, damn then- hides, but because we're so damned full of ourselves we don't listen and we make mistakes. And, in this business, mistakes kill and it's only blind luck that saved us. You know bloody well the Durquist would never have taken off that suit or dropped that gun. He was a solid rationalist with faith only in what he could see, touch-or wear. He went well, defending the team and doin' his duty.
I'll not cry for that I may regret, and I may wish it hadn't happened, but I won't cry for that honorable a death."
She stared at him, more puzzled than angry now. This was a new Jimmy McCray, one she hadn't met, or, perhaps, hadn't noticed before. "You sound like a cross between the old Tris Lankur and one of those Mizzle priests back there," she noted. "Just what do you want of me?"
"Nothing," he said firmly. "Nothing except the same sort of team support that I'd give you. Somewhere in this mess there is an explanation for all this. Whatever those researchers unlocked, it's powerful beyond anything we could imagine, and it's damned dangerous.' Whoever, whatever is behind this, it knows about us. Not just we individuals, but everything-our people, our worlds, our past and present.
That's what those demons were doing before and after ravaging the place. They were standin' there, quiet and playin' dead, while they telepathically got all the information they needed from the researchers' own minds, right up to our current level of knowledge. When they were freed, or caused themselves to be freed-we'll never know the answer to that one-they finished off the ones they didn't need any more and then they went for that cymol and they read out all the data in her robot mind. Then they finished off everybody as easy as you please and came in here to report that information to somebody. They know more about us and our civilizations than we do.
"But we-the remnants of the three teams still going here-we, now, are the only ones who know about them."
She nodded. "But they could have killed us at any time," she pointed out. "Why go through all this?"
"Why, indeed? The Mycohl and your Mizzie friends aren't dummies, either. The ones that make it through will be the survivors. Perhaps we'll consider the dead the lucky ones when those of us who do survive get to the answers, but I'll give no one the satisfaction of killin' me until I face them down. You and me, we're well suited for this. We got nothin' left to lose."
Modra gave him a wry sort of smile, and Molly leaned over and whispered in his ear, "Jimmy gonna marry her, too?"
He laughed, possibly the first laugh he'd had in ages. "She's already spoken for, my dear," he responded, getting to his feet, then helping Modra up as well.
He made a grand gesture, pointing off in an essentially random direction.
"All right, me lovely beauties. The finish line's right over there someplace, more or less, and all we have to do is sneak past some ugly buggers to reach it What's past is past. We start again right here, right now. No power in Heaven or Hell can withstand an Irishman with a beautiful woman on each arm, but, if something could, what a way for an Irishman to go!" "Oh, shut up, Jimmy!" both the women responded, almost in unison.
The city was ancient; so ancient that no calendar devised by any of the folk of real space had any meaning at all here: Its broad avenues and tall, sleek structures were silent as a tomb, untrod and uninhabited for thousands upon thousands of years. And yet, within the Great Pyramid that was the centerpiece and heart of this great, silent city, sleepers stirred, black wings flexed and an excitement ran through the place where the Princes stood.
Soon now, very soon, they will take the keys to Chaos itself and bring forth our new age, our new time. We grow stronger and stronger, and with the passing of inconsequential moments, our liberation is at hand. Soon we will embark upon our greatest adventure, as our Master had foretold so long ago, and, this time, the Gates of Heaven shall not prevail against us!>