Nightfall Read Free Page B

listening. She caught Balik by the armand turned him to the side, away from the main sector of their excavation site.
    “Look there,” she said.
    “Where? What?”
    She pointed. “The Hill of Thombo.”
    The broad-shouldered stratigrapher stared. “Gods! It’s been slit right up the middle!”
    The Hill of Thombo was an irregular middling-high mound some fifteen minutes’ walk south of the main part of the city. No one had worked it in well over a hundred years, not since the second expedition of the great pioneer Galdo 221, and Galdo hadn’t found anything of significance in it. It was generally considered to be nothing but a midden-heap on which the citizens of old Beklimot had tossed their kitchen garbage—interesting enough of itself, yes, but trivial in comparison with the wonders that abounded everywhere else in the site.
    Apparently, though, the Hill of Thombo had taken the fullest brunt of the storm: and what generations of archaeologists had not bothered to do, the violence of the sandstorm had achieved in only a moment. An erratic zigzagging strip had been ripped from the face of the hill, like some terrible wound laying bare much of the interior of its upper slope. And experienced field workers like Siferra and Balik needed only a single glance to understand the importance of what was now exposed.
    “A town site under the midden,” Balik murmured.
    “More than one, I think. Possibly a series,” Siferra said.
    “You think?”
    “Look. Look there, on the left.”
    Balik whistled. “Isn’t that a wall in crosshatch style, under the corner of that cyclopean foundation?”
    “You’ve got it.”
    A shiver ran down Siferra’s spine. She turned to Balik and saw that he was as astounded as she was. His eyes were wide, his face was pale.
    “In the name of Darkness!” he muttered huskily. “What do we have here, Siferra?”
    “I’m not sure. But I’m going to start finding out right this minute.” She looked back at the shelter under the cliff, where Thuvvik and his men still crouched in terror, making holy signs and babbling prayers in low stunned voices as if unable tocomprehend that they were safe from the power of the storm. “Thuvvik!” Siferra yelled, gesturing vigorously, almost angrily, at him. “Come on out of there, you and your men! We’ve got work to do!”

[3]
    Harrim 682 was a big beefy man of about fifty, with great slabs of muscle bulging on his arms and chest, and a good thick insulating layer of fat over that. Sheerin, studying him through the window of the hospital room, knew right away that he and Harrim were going to get along.
    “I’ve always been partial to people who are, well, oversized,” the psychologist explained to Kelaritan and Cubello. “Having been one myself for most of my life, you understand. Not that I’ve ever been a muscleman like this one.” Sheerin laughed pleasantly. “I’m blubber through and through. Except for here, of course,” he added, tapping the side of his head. —“What kind of work does this Harrim do?”
    “Longshoreman,” Kelaritan said. “Thirty-five years on the Jonglor docks. He won a ticket to the opening day of the Tunnel of Mystery in a lottery. Took his whole family. They were all affected to some degree, but he was the worst. That’s very embarrassing to him, that a great strong man like him should have such a total breakdown.”
    “I can imagine,” Sheerin said. “I’ll take that into account. Let’s talk with him, shall we?”
    They entered the room.
    Harrim was sitting up, staring without interest at a spinner cube that was casting light in half a dozen colors on the wall opposite his bed. He smiled affably enough when he saw Kelaritan, but seemed to stiffen when he noticed the lawyer Cubello walking behind the hospital director, and his face turned completely glacial at the sight of Sheerin.
    “Who’s he?” he asked Kelaritan. “Another lawyer?”
    “Not at all. This is Sheerin 501, from Saro University.