Chapter Eight

Martin and Rachael were physically ill. Nausea overcame them both and left them gagging. The main sewer line was filled with an odor that was sickening enough to be explosive. It reeked of natural gas, sulfur, excrement, and things neither of them wanted to think about. Weakened by their reaction to the smell, they first became aware of the water somewhere in the back of their minds. The noxious fluid rose to the knees, offering fresh breezes of poisonous vapor every time they broke its stagnant surface.

Rachael continued to gag, choking at every breath. Martin eased the impossible situation by inhaling through his mouth and exhaling through his nose. The last affliction to beset them was the absolute black of the tunnel. No light filtered into the solid casing, no mist or glow relieved their blindness. Rachael balked immediately.

"Oh, God.....Martin? I can't stand this, there's something in here with us, I know it. Let's go back, please."

Rachael shivered in his arms, her eyes closed tight. Calming her as best he could, Martin started moving in what he thought might be the right direction. There was no way to be sure.

"We can't go back, Gateman sealed the opening. Our only way out is through the sewer main to the crossroads. OH GOD!"

Martin jumped aside as his hand touched the side of the tunnel. An oily slime stuck to his hand, making his skin crawl. Martin shook his hand violently, then wiped it against the leg of his jumpsuit until he was certain that it was gone.

"I'm alright," he bellowed nervously, "I just touched the wall. Straight ahead now, slowly."

With Rachael tucked against his side, he began to shuffle deeper into the blackness. Their footing was dangerous at best, a greasy fungus threatening to slide them into the tepid stream of filth. Somehow, in their fear of the dark, the smell became bearable and Rachael calmed herself enough to walk hand in hand at Martin's side. A whispered splash behind them brought her hard against his side again.

"What was that," she grunted?

"I don't know, maybe it's a burglar." Martin's attempt at humor was accompanied by his shaking, and did little to ease his own fear or Rachael's temper.

"Damn you, Martin, that's not funny....."

Frozen to the spot, they listened for sounds of a pursuing phantom, but none was to be heard. They started off again with Rachael peering behind them, but no human eye could breach the inky blackness. Martin's shoulder bumped the wall, and he pushed back toward the center of the tunnel unwilling to reach up and feel what might have brushed off on his jumpsuit.

Martin shrugged his shoulders in irritation as the itching on his neck grew worse. Water trickled down into the top of his jumpsuit, and he reached up to wipe it away.

"Oh, God, it's on my neck!"

Martin flung the tentacle of fungus behind them, rubbing his skin where it had been burned raw. Hopping around in a tight circle, he pulled the thin stinger from his sore flesh. Rachael held his arm, trying to keep him from running off down the tunnel.

"No! Calm down, it's alright."

"It crawled up my shoulder and stung me," he groaned.

Martin grit his teeth in absolute distaste, imagining a grotesque form still creeping on his body. Rachael moved with him as quickly as she dared, but his panicked stumbling threatened to topple both of them into the tepid water.

Martin stopped short and turned his head to one side. Rachael heard the gentle splash like a rain drop on a pond's quiet surface. In the darkness of the sewer it was a dread sound. It was followed by another and then a dozen more.

Rachael jerked forward as the back of her leg began to itch, and then burn. Spinning, she slapped at the spidery tendrils as they climbed her legs. A stinger found her hand in sharp rebuke.

"They're all over me.....get them off! Get them off!"

She ran forward with Martin beside her, forgetting the smell and the darkness of the sewer. Fear drove them forward, splashing noisily through the tunnel until the biting stopped. Soaked with the vile fluid, Martin and Rachael finally stopped long enough to pull the stingers they could find from their bodies.

"Like a nest of yellow jackets," Martin gasped. "We must have stumbled over it, stepped on it....."

"I hurt everywhere," Rachael moaned. "Stingers in my legs....." She stopped in mid-sentence.

"Martin, I see a light up there." He squinted.

"I don't see anything."

They started forward again, gliding their feet across the slippery floor. Rachael shivered as the thick water stirred, releasing its heavy fumes in a new assault of foul smells. Martin's groin ached, adding to the uncomfortable pounding in his crippled hand. He felt the bile rising in his throat, but Rachael's cry drove the sickness away.

"There is a light!"

Martin thought he could actually see her arm as it waved toward a distant glow. It was pale, a sickly color that hung in the distance taking the oval shape of the sewer.

"Let's not rush," he cautioned. "It's a long way off, and I don't feel like falling into whatever it is we're walking in."

Their desire to run toward the light was uncontrollable. Fear of the dark and knowing that something was creeping toward them pressed Martin and Rachael forward. He slipped, dropping to one knee, then bolted up and turned his head away from the cloud of sickening odor that rose from the waters. Holding his breath, Martin waded away from the spot as quickly as he dared.

"The water's getting shallower," He noted.

"And the light is closer. Come on," Rachael urged.

Martin could make out her smile, see the shape of her body, and he gloried in the return of his sight. They moved easily as the water lowered to their ankles and then became a muddy trickle underfoot. Looking back, Martin was surprised to see the tunnel diminish into a pinpoint of light far behind them. the concrete rose at least ten feet above their heads with long strands of fungus hanging from the ceiling. They were moving gently as in a stirring breeze. He decided not to tell Rachael.

"This must be the crossroads."

She breathed with relief as they stood at the intersection of four large openings. Three of them led back into absolute blackness, the fourth dimmed to a sickly gray, but showed no signs of losing all its light. The tunnel went to the right, straight, dry, and toward a marble stairway.

"Gateman said to the right," Martin noted. "We can rest on the stairs."

Rachael followed him down the dim tunnel, wiping a gray, crusting slime from her arms and legs. Where bare skin showed, large red welts swelled with the threat of infection. Martin was in no better shape. Their clothes were stained, hands and faces streaked with drying mold.

The landing at the end of the tunnel was quite wide, and very brightly lit by banks of floodlights recessed in the ceiling. Marble walls and stairs reflected the harsh glare, though it gave them the first sense of security they had enjoyed since the beginning of weekend.

Sitting wearily on the first step, Rachael tried to soothe her aches and bruises, pulling the last stingers from erupting flesh. Martin continued to stand, looking around innocently as Rachael made an attempt at cleaning her face. She looked up at him and nodded toward the tunnel.

"You can go back to the crossroads if you're bashful. I won't look."

Martin nodded politely and hurried away, unzipping his jumpsuit as he went. Rachael shook her head, watching his spotlighted figure shrink into the distance and then disappear. Rachael blinked, knowing he had not gone that far. It was as though every step he took moved him ten steps away.

'This place is insane,' she thought. 'God, what I wouldn't do for a mirror and one tissue.'

Having done what she could to repair herself, Rachael stared down the tunnel, but Martin was nowhere in sight. She looked behind her at the stairs wondering where they led. There were only ten, but the stone appeared to have been cut by a mason with no eye for the human stride. Each step would take two or three strides to climb.

Rachael stood up and mounted the second ledge, curiosity getting the best of her. When she reached the fourth, she looked back down toward the tunnel. Martin was running toward her, waving as he limped toward the stairs.

"NO! Rachael, wait!" He reached the bottom of the stairway gasping for air.

"Wait, the tunnel," he held up his hand. "The sewer we came from is gone, there are only three passages now, not four. God knows what Gateman has got us into, but it looks like more of the same crazy dimensional doorways that we found in the Great Tower." He sat on the first stair, still breathless as Rachael joined him.

"There's no telling where these stairs lead. For all I know we could find ourselves standing on level-ninety, or worse. Going off alone down here could separate us for good." Rachael looked up, her brow furrowed.

"You're right," She muttered, "we'd better stay together from now on, at least until we get to someplace solid. Are you feeling any better?"

"No worse than you look," Martin quipped.

He wiped a black smudge from the tip of her nose, and Rachael snapped playfully at his finger. Exchanging smiles, they faced the stairway with a quiet resolve. It was the only way out of the sewer. They climbed together, craning their necks to see above the final, polished stair.

Martin and Rachael stood in the midst of a dead city. Devastation stretched before them as far as the eye could see, a ruin as large as the body politic's metropolis. Smoke rose from gigantic piles of rubble, brick, smashed masonry, and shattered wood covered every inch of free space between the buildings.

The beams of the city were twisted beyond recognition, trembling with their own unbalanced weight. Shards of glass hung perilously from windows in the upper levels that were no more than broken frames. Whatever heights the city had once scaled, none of it rose more than three beam levels high.

Martin looked behind them and found more of the same. Broken architecture and the smoldering fumes of what had once been a modern city stood in ruins. The stairs were gone.

"Talk about burning your bridges behind you," Rachael muttered.

"Look!"

Martin pointed at the ruins, picking out the figure of a small child as it scampered through the maze of shattered steel. Their eyes grew accustomed to the subtle shades of light, and began to see individual figures, stooped, but not asleep. Movement greeted them as they started down what might have been a dirt path. Its direction proved unsure, disappearing under cracked stone and the rubble of utter destruction. Before them, stretching out on a plain of immense proportion, thin columns of smoke rose up from the remains of the dead metropolis.

The people they saw were as human as any of the beam-walkers. They camped under the foundations of collapsed girders in shacks made up of larger pieces of wreckage. Most were near naked, the rest barely clothed in rags that clung to their starved bodies like death shrouds. Martin and Rachael wandered, staring and being stared at, but the eyes they found were always passive. Martin did not care to acknowledge what they reflected.

"This is unbelievable," Rachael groaned.

She knelt slowly to lift a small rag doll from the street. Wiping the dirt from its dress, she held it up with a frown. Something stirred deep in Rachael's mind, goading her toward remembering. Martin stopped and laid a hand on her shoulder.

The child stood in their path, her eyes fixed on the doll. Squatting, Rachael held the filthy toy out.

"Is this yours?"

The sallow faced child said nothing but her eyes told everything. Rachael's chin trembled as loneliness struck at her mind. Sorrow joined it, welled up in Rachael's heart, but the most painful was the feeling of emptiness the child reflected. The little girl clutched the piece of rag to her breast and walked away into the shadows of a half-wall. Eight stairs clung to the center of the brickwork, eight steps that began abruptly and led nowhere. Rachael stifled a sob.

Martin helped her up, feeling the same emotions in himself. Moving along the path again, they made their way toward the center of the city. Complete desolation lay everywhere. An increasing mass of wreckage indicated that they were moving in the right direction. Passing beyond beams that were so mangled together they could not move between them, Martin and Rachael came to a huge, blank space between two buildings. Broken concrete heaved up out of the ground for a mile, some of the sections a hundred yards across. Martin stopped, his eyebrow raised quizzically.

"This is very familiar," he noted bluntly.

"The east-side landing," Rachael asked?

"If the layout of this city and the body politic's are the same, yes! The Great Tower would be," Martin hesitated, "there!"

As if to prove him right, the tip of an enormous spire rose up from behind the contorted girders of the buildings in front of them. They moved faster, hoping to find something intact where the halls of the council had once stood.

"The path we're on must be this dimension's version of the macadam road. My little trek with the guard taught me the way to the west-side landing, maybe we can find Gateman."

"Or this dimension's version of him," Rachael warned.

Passing beyond the foundation of a building, Martin and Rachael walked headlong into the line of delvers. They were standing in single file, hobbling toward a steel building so bright in all the gray that its polished shine made Rachael blink. They stopped quickly, slipping behind the nearest beam.

"Slummers!"

"Uniforms too," Rachael gasped.

They watched the line of delvers move past a small desk where armed guards stopped and searched each of them. A child reached the check point. The slummers laughed and then allowed the tiny figure to pass into the building with the others. None of them came back out.

Martin began crawling beneath the distorted girders of the building, keeping piles of debris between himself and the uniforms.

"Martin, where are you going?"

Dragging himself forward, Martin waved his hand in an effort to silence Rachael's protests and then peeked over a stack of crumbled bricks. Martin found himself much closer to the building than he expected. He ducked his head abruptly to avoid being seen. A scuffling sound told him that Rachael had caught up.

"Are you trying to get yourself killed," she whispered gruffly?

Martin slid to the right until he could stare through a slender trench in the ground. The small building was only a few feet away, not much larger than Gateman's shack. Martin realized that it was far too small to house all the delvers who had entered.

"Another doorway," he grunted.

"One we are not going through," Rachael threatened. "God knows what we might find in there."

"Don't worry, we couldn't get past the guards," Martin assured her.

He would have gone on but one of the slummers was moving toward them, studying the line of delvers. He patted a short club against the palm of his hand and squinted at the endless column. The slummer stopped less than three feet from their hiding place. Martin held his breath as the man looked toward them, then jerked his head back toward the building and his laughing cohorts.

Martin dared to look up as the slummer moved away, his back toward them. Martin caught sight of the woman as uniforms circled her at a respectful distance. It was as though they did not want to be defiled by her touch.

She was no more than a skeleton with an old, ragged dress hanging from its parched bones. She paced beside the building, ignoring the men who taunted her. She glided back and forth between them, her head turning toward each delver as they passed by without looking at her and entered the small structure.

By some chance, her eyes caught hold of Martin. It was all he could do to keep from crying out in absolute anguish. Agony seared through his mind in an emotion so strong it was beyond his understanding. It filled him with desperation, an anxiety that screamed with the deepest sorrow he could imagine.

The woman's skeleton-like fingers clung to the familiar rag doll, its dress little more than a filthy, torn rag. Martin wanted to cry.

"Come on," he whispered. Rachael was sobbing, her head buried against Martin's shoulder.

Moving away from that cursed spot, they headed back along the line of delvers toward the landing. Passing on to open ground, Martin rose and pushed the loose dirt from his jumpsuit.

"You there, get in line!"

A uniform started toward their hiding place, two slummers running ahead of the guard. Martin grabbed Rachael by the arm and plunged beneath the foundation of the nearest building, scurrying between boulders of concrete and twisted steel girders. A whistle blew somewhere behind them as they sank into the darkening shadows. Delvers, squatting in groups of two and three, stared at the ground in front of them, unmoved by the chase.

The debris thinned as Martin saw the clearing in front of them. They were heading back toward the east-side landing. Turning sharply, he dragged Rachael into the darkest shadows. He could see one of the slummers moving to head them off, his tall figure slipping through the broken maze with the speed of a cat. Martin slowed, turning helplessly.

"Hey, in here....."

The hoarse whisper led them toward a solid concrete slab half buried in the dirt. It tilted dangerously, towering above them like a sentinel. It dwarfed the rag covered figure beside it. Martin led Rachael up the steep hillock, following the shadow behind the boulder and down into a cramped burrow.

"Rats," Martin grumbled, "just like hunted rats."

He squeezed through the opening after Rachael and stumbled down a tunnel that twisted into the earth below the east-side landing. Squinting, Martin tried to find his way in the darkness, but soon lost sight of Rachael. He ran faster, reaching out for her as he tripped and fell headlong into a dimly lit room. Rachael hurried to his side.

Crawling to his hands and knees, Martin sat back and wiped at the scrapes he had suffered. He grit his teeth against the sting of scraped flesh and the burning welts that covered his legs.

"Not on your pants," Rachael scolded. He almost laughed with the absurdity of her remark.

Martin blew on the wounds and then appraised his bloody knee through a torn jumpsuit. Shaking his head, he looked up to find the room empty except for a small table and one chair. Whoever their benefactor was, he had left them alone in the dirt chamber.

Martin studied the room in a red-brown light, but found no entrance other than the one they had used. From where he sat on the floor the room appeared square. The bare sliver of a shadow gave away the builders secret. Rising to his feet, Martin discovered that the wall before him was actually two walls so blended together in the dim light, they appeared as one. They formed a narrow corridor leading out of the room.

Wiping at the dirt embedded in his jumpsuit, Martin started out of the chamber with Rachael behind him. Both were stopped short by the old man's smile. Holding his arms wide in front of Rachael, Martin started backing into the room.

He appraised the bent figure, noting a face that looked more beaten than aged. The lines crossing the heavy brow formed a thousand scars that added to the unique character. The man's eyes held a glow that he had seen before in the tailor's eyes, but these had less sorrow in them, even a bit of defiance. Martin felt the anger welling up inside his mind and then it faded, turning back into a tired smile.

"Don't be surprised, Martin." The voice was hypnotic. "The body politic steals dreams, we give them."

"More than dreams," Rachael gasped.

"My way of expressing our ability to transmit emotions to others. You have been influenced by them ever since you came out of the sewer. The emotions which overcame you were not your own, they were given to you by those you encountered. The body politic has none so they steal from others. We can shape, they cannot. Won't you have a seat?"

Three chairs had been set around the table, but the old man did not sit with them at once. He pulled a small tin can from the wooden shelf Martin had not seen before, and set three thimble-sized cups on the table beside it. Martin and Rachael stared in disbelief. The gaunt delver was a magician, pulling things out of thin air and making objects appear where there had been none before.

Sitting at last, the old man poured several drops of water into each miniature cup and set the tin can down. Martin and Rachael eyed the absurd offering with suspicion.

"You may drink it if you wish, or you may want to follow the delver custom."

"They watched the old man dip the tip of his pinkie into the water and then touch his finger to his tongue. Cool satisfaction radiated from his face. The shard of bread he placed before each of them would not have fed a small bird, but the delver placed one tiny crumb into his mouth as though it were a feast.

"Use your imagination, Martin, as you did on level-ninety."

Martin dropped his cup, spilling the drops of water, watching them run over the table. Water ran freely from the edge and formed a small puddle on the floor, more than a glass full.

"What's going on here?"

Martin backed away from the delver as he rose from his chair, straightening a weary figure until it was taller than Martin. Rachael sat frozen, a look of dumb astonishment on her face.

"What is it, Martin, are you hungry? Thirsty? Perhaps you are just puzzled. Sit, and I will feed you."

"This is crazy, all mixed up." Martin refused to sit.

"Why? You shaped taste in the great hall of the body politic. This is no less, it is just more important. It was a game on level-ninety, but now it is a matter of life and death."

Martin sat begrudgingly, staring at the scarred face in confusion. Rachael took his hand, trying to calm the rising fear she felt in Martin's mind. The timid smile on her face said that she understood, and for the first time since the delver had appeared, she spoke.

"You know a great deal about us. I have a feeling you knew we would end up here." The delver's eyes penetrated Rachael's demure expression and a gentle smile eased across his face.

"When you shape the present, you also shape the future. Actions taken now form reactions in times to come. Your arrival here was inevitable. Unfortunately, you brought others with you."

"The slummers," Rachael asked?

"And the Governor's army. Fairmont has been able to penetrate our stronghold for the first time in the history of the city. We are delivered to the brink of annihilation."

"Wait just a minute," Martin protested. "The body politic was bent on your destruction long before we arrived. The plans for this invasion were already made, the orders given."

The delver chuckled under his breath and leaned across the table toward Martin. The old man chose his words carefully, gnarled fingers entwining as he spoke.

"The body politic has always been planning to destroy us. After all, how else could a playwright hope to have his story last forever without an ending? The drama must repeat over and over again. With no escape from an endless cycle, there is little damage the body politic or the slummers could do." Martin breathed heavily.

"We worked long and hard to keep a fragile balance, but you gave them the chance to deviate from the written line. You offered them variety, new possibilities that they were able to act out. As each new path was explored, the boundaries of their roles expanded into never ending new avenues." Rachael cleared her throat.

"As long as they were kept from discovering anything new, you were safe." she muttered. "Martin and I became their source of creativity, they stole our thoughts and our dreams." The delver nodded, admiring Rachael's logical mind.

"You are to be applauded," the old man smiled. "Few minds could have reduced the situation to its basic premise. The body politic never considered coming down into the sewers before, they merely sealed this entrance or that. Our dimension was safe until Martin came up with the idea of a secret tunnel. That one thought broke into the play, rewrote its paragraphs so that Fairmont had always invaded the sewers."

Martin shook his head, trying to fit all the pieces together. He could think of a thousand remarks, actions, that might have led to these catastrophic results. Rachael squeezed his hand.

"I played my part too," she muttered. "Suggestions I made to Margo, thoughts I should have kept secret. She reported everything to Blake, and he to Fairmont. We are both guilty." Her voice faded away.

"Can it be repaired, reshaped?" There was a quality of desperation in Martin's voice.

"No, we cannot undo what has already been made fact, but now there are a myriad of possibilities available for the future. Before this point, there was no future, now the total and complete destruction of the delver race is only one of many conclusions. That end has not yet been accomplished, however, you two are of a more immediate emergency. Neither of you belong here. You must be returned to your own world."

"You know," Rachael gasped?

"Of course, any intelligent mind could see it in a moment. Fairmont knew because he is as aware of dimensions as I am. We exist in a world of doorways, bisecting levels, entrances and exits. We are also aware of the consequences involved in transferring things from one to another. At this point, even Shaper has lost control, and this world is his creation."

They heard the explosion as a distant thud that shook the ground under them. Small rocks began to trickle through the tunnel entrance, growing in number and size as the delver jumped from the table. He ran down the side passage, leaving Rachael behind with Martin, choking on a cloud of silt.

Shouts and angry cursing echoed into the room from high above them. Men slid, tumbled down the passage toward them as Martin and Rachael finally realized what was happening. They fled through the narrow opening after the old delver and found themselves outside, racing through the ruined city.

Open space contrasted with the underground chamber they had occupied only seconds before. But there was no smoke in the ruins now, only rubble and hulks of destroyed buildings. They jogged down a mountain of debris, sliding and hopping from place to place. The old man was always ahead of them, moving with the agility of a young sprinter.

Groups of delvers, entire families, camped amid the shadows of well-formed, angular beams. Small fires burned here and there, assailing Martin's and Rachael's minds with the odor of burned meat. Their stomachs ached with hunger as they ran past a disinterested population. Others sat on first level beams, dangling their feet as Rachael stumbled and plunged headlong down a hill of smashed brick. Her hand, clasped in Martin's, pulled him down with her.

Pain erupted as they fell still clutching desperately to each other. They struck the ground at the same time, Martin on top, their legs tangled together. Stunned, they could only gasp for air, fumbling to break free of each other and the debris falling down the hill behind them.

When they finally rose, the delver was no where in sight. A maze of beams surrounded them hiding all sign of the old man. In this part of the city, the buildings were almost in tact, and off to the left, Martin could see the entire west-side landing square. The elevator was just coming into sight, slummer and uniform faces peering over the edge of the platform.

As they stared up, light exploded into their minds, blinding them with the million lights of city's night-face. Time and place began to flicker around Martin and Rachael as they ran down the macadam road toward the west-side gate. The level-one they knew surrounded them with its gambling booths and crowded thoroughfares. Slummers stepped toward them, joining the hundreds who came from the elevator. The hunt was joined, a rumble of feet closing the distance behind them.

Rachael's legs lost their strength, muscles burned with fatigue from the undo exertion. Beside her, Martin was barely able to take the next breath, his head shaking as their pace slowed to a fast walk. They were near collapse, turning as their vision blurred, to see the crowd behind them. Gurst's figure sped in front of the mob with his arms reaching out toward Rachael.

Martin bolted, dragging her with him as they rushed past the last of the girders and into open space beside Gateman's shack. The screaming throng closed the distance behind them, only seconds away as Martin and Rachael passed the hut. The roly-poly figure shuffled out behind them, cutting off Gurst and the Governor's corps. The pursuing horde slowed its pace and then stopped as the front runners gathered around the groundling.

Martin and Rachael stumbled past the end of the road, falling to their knees in the gray dirt beyond the limits of the city. Arms pointed toward them as an unheard conversation went on between Gurst and Gateman. Angry gestures became evident when Gurst pushed the round figure backward. Rachael crawled into the darkness of the plain, leaving Martin as he sat cross-legged on the ground, air searing into his lungs.

"C-come on," she gasped. "He can't.....stop them....."

Martin shook his head, unable to get to his feet. Looking back, it seemed to Martin that the entire population was flowing from the city, their enraged shouts rising into the night air with a bellow. Gateman raised his stubby arms and it subsided slowly, faded away into the whispering of a breeze. Martin watched the groundling turn and waddle toward them. The mass of figures did not follow, but Gurst took several steps along the road before stopping.

"Rachael, Gateman's coming. Rachael?"

Martin turned, but she had disappeared into the black night, crawling away from danger. Gateman's voice came to him as a calming sound, driving away the fear.

"Rachael, come back. I must speak with the two of you."

Several seconds passed before she came back into sight, stumbling in her panicked weariness.

"You stopped them," Martin breathed.

"Only for the moment. They expect me to bring you back under arrest. Of course, I cannot do that, nor can I go back without you."

Thumbs under his wide suspenders, Gateman eyed the darkness beyond them and spoke under his breath. Gurst was edging down the road, moving ever closer to their huddled meeting. Several of the corps had also left the mob, rifles unslung and at the ready.

"Just behind you there is a light," he whispered. "No, don't look. We must make a run for it. It will be close, too close, but if you gather your strength we can make the front porch." Martin rose to his feet, wavered, and then stood straight.

"What front porch?"

"Shaper's temple, of course."

Rachael took Martin's arm and held it tight as Gateman turned and waved toward Gurst.

"Are you ready," he smiled?

Dashing past them, the groundling ran off into the dark with amazing speed. Martin and Rachael followed with a howling riot at their heels. Outraged, the guards fired blindly into the night. Gurst, his blade drawn, came after them with blood lust filling his mind. Martin could see nothing except a dull spot in the night. He headed for the blur with Rachael beside him, a new strength born of utter terror driving them on.

"How far,' Rachael gasped.

Martin threw his arms up, unable to answer as the pain in his groin suddenly made itself felt once again. Each step pounded the agony into his mind. His hand ached, a secondary throbbing that robbed him of his strength. Rachael moved past him, then slowed to his pace as the light grew into a distinct point.

A shape became visible in the darkness, a slender needle of a building rising from the emptiness of the plain. Gateman waited on the solitary step, the door flung wide open.

"Quickly," he shouted. "They are right behind you, quickly!"

The rifle exploded near them, its missile penetrating the stone of the temple beside Gateman's head. Martin and Rachael lunged through the doorway and threw themselves to the floor inside. The heavy door slammed, its bolt clanking shut with a sound of finality. Quiet surrounded them.

"You saved us," Rachael panted.

"Only for a time," Gateman replied. "A mere respite in your flight, but a moment to be taken advantage of. When you have regained your composure I shall introduce you to, Shaper."

Martin and Rachael stared at the groundling as he waddled passed them. He stopped, a slight smile fashioned on his round face. Martin sat up unsteadily and stared into the bright eyes as they appraised his weary, disheveled figure.

"Are you telling us that Shaper, your god, actually exists?" Gateman shook his head sorrowfully.

"God? I know nothing of gods. He is Shaper, and that is all there is to it. Why would I speak to you of something that does not exist?"

It was Martin's turn to shake his head. Getting to his feet, he helped Rachael up and followed the groundling through the small foyer. They entered a large chamber filled with burning candles whose colored lights flickered off the pale, white walls. They shed a soft, pastel light over the entire room.

"I know this place," Martin whispered. "You," he stared at Gateman, "you called me from here on the service phone. I saw the lights behind you." Gateman nodded.

"No secret," he admitted. "I come here quite often, though Shaper seldom indulges in conversation. It is my place of silence, the one moment of sanity I spoke to you about. Thought is allowed to stop and the quiet of mind encourages new strength and understanding."

With a gentle moan, Rachael sagged. If Martin's arm had not been around her waist, she would have fallen to the floor. As it was, her weight dragged Martin to his knees. Gateman lifted the unconscious form into his arms with little effort and nodded to Martin.

"I believe you will both be better off if you heal yourselves first and then meet with Shaper. It might also help if you had something to eat."

"Food," Martin breathed. God, that would be a miracle."

Gateman shook his head again, carrying Rachael into a small bedroom. Laying her on the feather soft mattress, he watched Martin sit beside her and then lay on his side. His eyelids fluttered, and then closed, and the groundling knew he was only seconds from sleep.