That night, Matsushida dreamt that he was floating down a long corridor full of mist and hazy light. At the end of the corridor was a large fist, blockily carved out of stone, with three triangles on its back like the symbol Provost Wynn had gotten from her scrying. The sight of the fist filled him with fear, and though he wanted to investigate it, he fled involuntarily, back into the waking world.
It being Sunday, the religiously inclined members of the group, and those who wished to be seen as such, attended Mass in the Basilica. The Eskatonic rites were very impresssive, involving many candles for the proper effect of light beleagured by darkness on every side, and hymns that obviously contained deeper meanings. Magus Moore, the head of the Eskatonic order, lead the services personally.
While everyone else was at confession, Halley was visited by Whiskers, who explained that some associates of his had seen two people leaving the hotel the previous evening, and had followed the one with the large bag into the Gimel quarter, to a certain address owned by an Alexander Gil. Fortunately this information was written down, as Halley would never have remembered it in her frenzy of invention.
The church-goers stopped by the Naos on their way home, for Jaana to check on some books of Carter Feriel's she had requested. Unfortunately, those books were restricted to Eskatonics of a much higher level than Jaana. While there, they ran into Philosophus Maya, who didn't feel that she could violate Naos policy to make an exception for Jaana. Matsushida asked her to interpret his dream, but no useful results were gained thereby.
Emerging from the Naos, they bumped into Thane, who told Matsushida that his father, Carlos Upect, was interested in seeing Kish and perhaps moving there permanently to raise draga-beasts. Matsushida promptly phoned Master Upect and arranged to stop by his ranch in Cima the following afternoon.
Returning home, the church-goers found that someone had been there, and managed to extract the information about Alexander Gil from Halley.
Matsushida did some research on Alexander Gil and found out that he was a well-known author of Scientific Romances set in the Second Republic, even known off-world. In the meantime, Jaana had told the police about their lead, and then gone to stake out Gil's house.
After a while, a police detective showed up at Gil's and went inside. A bit later, there was a burst of automatic weapons fire from inside the house, a few individual shots, and another burst. A few moments later, there was another burst, and then silence. Jaana phoned the police, and the rest of her group. She went inside to see if she could help, but found the detective already dead, so retreated to await reinforcements.
The police showed up first, did the small-unit tactics routine, and found no terrorists. When our heroes arrived, they pulled rank until they got to go in and look around. They found the detective lying dead in the doorway of the study, riddled with bullets. Sitting in the chair of the study was the mostly-headless corpse of a man, submachine gun trailing from one lifeless hand. The Visions of Doramos (now soaked in blood) was in the corpse's lap, and the other four stolen books were stacked on the table. The official police hypothesis was that the man in the chair (presumably Gil) had shot the detective and then committed suicide. The only other concrete piece of evidence was a pendant on the body's neck, engraved with the same three-triangle symbol Provost Wynn had drawn.
Matsushida and Gwen pulled rank to get their books back right away, and to be put on the CC list for any findings. Matsushida took the blood-soaked book to be cleaned and restored, while Jaana and Gwen took the borrowed books back to the Naos. Halley went around to jewelry stores to see if she could track down the origin of the pendant. All she discovered, unfortunately, was that jewelers commonly sold blank pendants which the buyers then engraved or had engraved themselves.
On her way out of the jeweler's Halley ran into Arcadia, who seemed much more serious than previously. She announced that it was time for Halley to meet her dad, and took her through a maze of obscure streets to a small second-floor room where a very old and ill man lay hooked up to even older life-support equipment. This was Arcadia's father, who she said didn't have a name yet. When Halley asked what she could do to help, Arcadia explained that his health depended on Thane making the right decisions. If Thane decided properly, Arcadia's father would get better; otherwise, he would die, and Arcadia and everyone would die too.
That evening, our heroes flew to Taurus to visit Baron Renato. Matushida told Renato the story of the past few days, and put the question of what happened with his mail to him, but mostly good food was eaten and good wine was drunk. Matsushida and Renato underwent male bonding late into the night, and apparently Royo underwent another sort of bonding with Lucia Hazat.
The next morning the group took their leave of the good baron, Matsushida promising to write and also to deliver the bottle of '68 wine his other self apparently owed Renato. Jaana commented aside on the metaphysical unwisdom of Matsushida assuming his doppleganger's debts, but Gwen pointed out that this was a relatively safe debt to assume.
The Upect ranch outside Cima contained a great many draga-beasts, for the very good reason that draga-beasts only thrive in groups. Matsushida was somewhat distraught to find that out, but the Upects had a solution. They wanted to see Kish, and would be able to fund their own move and the shipping of a small pack of draga-beasts, if Matsushida could guarantee them a greater income on Kish than they had on Pentateuch. Matsushida was willing to offer them somewhat more than they were making currently for a year's trial period on Kish, and if things worked out the contract could be renegotiated for more money and percentages and so forth. Since the success of the project would leave the Upects Senior Dragamasters to a count of the Li Halan, they accepted the offer. Carlos would travel ahead to Kish to make the arrangements there, while Lizzy sold off the ranch and packed up their draga-beasts and Matsushida's for transport.
After returning to Heliopolis, Jaana, Halley, and Matsushida went to see if more information could be obtained from Whiskers. (Gwen stayed behind because this was a seedy job, and her innate nobility could not be disguised. Really.) Whiskers hooked them up with Hank, the actual witness, who was able to describe the two men he saw fleeing. The one with the bag of books was identifiably Gil, but the other, a man with darkish skin and red hair, was unknown. Hank thought there might have been a third man acting as lookout, but hadn't gotten more than a glimpse of him if so. Whiskers also warned our heroes that there was a new cult on the streets, and their leader, Strong, was referred to within the cult as Clover, with the three triangles as his symbol.
Tuesday was mostly spent buried beneath piles of paperwork, as Matsushida made the arrangements for the Upects and their dragas to travel to Kish and be given visas and salaries and such.
Jaana sought out a member of the Sanhedrin (the Eskatonic Order's internal affairs division) to ask about Clover, and was informed that it was a cult dedicated to bringing about the End Times, when the cultists expected to rule as living gods etc etc, and that it was not confined to Pentateuch.
The next morning, Matsushida contacted Renato, but no further information had come to light. They promised to keep in touch.
Finally, at 1400 Heliopolis time, our heroes lifted off for Delphi.
With no other demands on her time, Halley finally got the explosive bullet press working, and didn't even compromise hull integrity in doing so. That fundamentally boring task out of the way, she turned her full attention to the lightning shield. With Arcadia's blueprints, she made amazing progress, and had a working model before they reached Delphi.
Barter was still in Delphi orbit, but the captain refused to dock there despite Halley's entreaties, and landed at his scheduled port. Halley would have to take a shuttle up later.
This file was last modified at 1635 on 22Jun99 by trip@idiom.com.