Mysterium

The employees’ entrance was unlocked. Dex stepped inside with his pistol drawn, then beckoned Linneth after him. He listened for voices but heard only the rush of the wind through some distant vent. To his left, stairs led upward. He followed them to the second floor and out into an empty broadloomed hallway.

He passed doors marked OMBUDSMAN, LICENSE BUREAU, LAND MANAGEMENT. All these doors were wide open, as if the rooms had already been searched. “All abandoned,” Linneth whispered. She was right. Papers had been strewn everywhere, many with the letterhead of the Bureau de la Convenance plainly visible. Some of the office windows were broken; the wind rattled vertical blinds and rolled plastic cups like tumbleweeds over the carpet.

Dex touched Linneth’s arm and they both stood still. He said, “You hear that?”

She cocked her head. “A voice.”

He held the pistol forward. A marksmanship course in the Reserves had not prepared him for this. His hand was shaking—a gentle tremor, as if an electric current were running through him.

He located the source of the voice in the anteroom of the Office of the Mayor: it was a radio… one of the Proctors’ radios, an enormous box of perforated metal and glowing vacuum tubes. It was plugged into a voltage converter that was plugged into the wall.

It spoke French.

“Quarante-cinq minutes.” And a continuous metallic beeping, as of a time clock, once per second. Dex looked at Linneth. “Quarante-quatre minutes,” the radio shrilled. He said, “What is this?”

“They’re counting down the time.”

There was another burst of speech, indecipherable with static, but Dex heard the word detonation. He said, “How long?”

She took his hand. “Forty-four minutes.” Quarante-trois minutes. “Forty-three.”

∞

Clifford recognized the man who came through the FIRE EXIT door. This was the Proctor the others had called Delafleur. An important man. Lukas Thibault drew a sharp breath at the sight of him.

Delafleur wore an overcoat nearly long enough to touch his ankles, and he reached into the depths of that garment and took out a gun— one of the long-barreled pistols the Proctors sometimes carried; a revolver, not an automatic weapon like the one Luke once showed him. The handle was polished wood inlaid with pearl. None of these refinements seemed to matter to Delafleur, who was sweating and breathing through his mouth.

Luke said, “Patron! Let me out of here, for God’s sake!”

Delafleur looked startled, as if he had forgotten about his prisoners. Maybe he had. “Shut up,” he said.

There was the sound of more gunfire outside the building, but was it growing more distant? Clifford thought it might be.

Delafleur stalked down the length of this basement room between the stockade cages and the wall with his long coat swinging behind him. He carried the pistol loosely in his left hand. In his right hand was a pocket watch, attached by a silver chain to his blue vest. His eyes kept traveling to the watch, as if he couldn’t resist looking at it— but he plainly didn’t like what he saw.

He pulled a wooden crate under one of the high, tiny windows, and stood on the crate in a vain attempt to look outside. But the window was too high and louvered shut. Anyway, Clifford thought, it opened at ground level. There wouldn’t be much of a view.

Delafleur seemed to arrive at the same conclusion. He sat down on the crate and fixed a baleful stare at the door where he had come in.

Luke said, “Please, Patron! Let me out!”

Delafleur turned in that direction. In a prim voice he said, “If you speak again, I’ll kill you.”

He sounded like he meant it. Luke fell silent, though if Clifford listened carefully he could hear his labored breathing.

Luke had often been silent in the last few hours. But never for very long. Would Delafleur really shoot him if he made a sound? Clifford was sure of it. The Proctor looked too frightened to make idle threats.

And if he shot Luke, would he then shoot Clifford? It was possible. Once shooting started, who could tell what might happen?

But he didn’t want to think about that. If he thought about it, the cage began to seem much smaller—as tight as a rope around his neck —and Clifford worried that he might make a sound, that the terror might leap uncontrollably from his throat.

Time passed. Delafleur looked at his watch as if he were hypnotized by it. At the sound of each fading gunshot he cocked his head.

“They’re going away,” Delafleur said once—to himself.

More fidgeting with the watch. But the Proctor seemed to regain a degree of composure as the seconds ticked past. Finally he stood up and adjusted his vest. Without looking at the cells, he began to walk toward the FIRE EXIT.

Lukas Thibault panicked. Clifford heard the soldier throw himself against the bars of his cage. “FUCK YOU!” he screamed. “DON’T YOU LEAVE ME HERE! GODDAMN YOU!”

And that was the wrong thing to say, because Clifford saw Delafleur hesitate and turn back.