Baal

WHEN THERE IS no sound for the brain to register it must invent one of its own, a fierce dry buzzing, to keep the nerves active, the electric impulses crackling.

In Virga's ears the buzzing had become a roar of deprived nerve endings. He and Michael walked a few dozen yards behind Zark, who would occasionally hold up his hand for them to remain still and then crouch down on the ice plain, sniffing the air, his head moving from side to side to catch any trace of sound.

They had left the sledge when the light beyond flickered and vanished. They had covered more than a hundred yards on foot and still there was no break in the blackness ahead. Virga felt his flesh crawling; fear had filled his mouth with the taste of blood. Beside him, Michael moved as quietly as a shadow.

Zark held up his hand, crouched, and listened. Virga could hear nothing. Around them the rocks and upturned ice chunks were ominous markers on a path that fell off into the dark. They were large enough to hide a building; they were large enough to conceal any number of men who might be even now watching their progress. In fact, Virga suddenly had the feeling of being observed, though he thrust it aside as a fancy of his fearful imagination. Around him there was angry black rock and smooth glistening ice, nothing more.

Zark rose to his feet.

There was the sound of metal against metal.

At first Virga thought the sound had come from Zark but when the hunter turned his head violently to the left, Virga realized there was a man hidden in the rocks.

The men threw themselves to the ground even as the shot echoed back and forth, off blue ice and jagged stone. Ice kicked up less than a foot to Zark's left and the man rolled for cover. Michael was on his feet and running. He reached out and with one hand wrenched Virga up, dragging him along into an outcropping of ice-glazed rock. Another shot rang out. Sparks exploded over Michael's head. In another moment Zark, holding his rifle before him and crawling on his stomach, had reached them. He worked his way into a crevice so his entire body was protected. "One man to the left," Zark said, "and another moving in behind us. We'll have to worry about the man on the left first; the other bastard won't be within range for a minute more."

A rifle cracked. The bullet, whining wildly, scattered ice chips. "Ha!" Zark shouted, then lowered his voice. "That cocksucker can't get us, but he's pinning us here for the man behind." He eased up over the rock and positioned his rifle so the barrel was firmly supported. He did not fire; he was waiting.

The man on the left fired again. Virga could see the orange flame spit from the muzzle. The bullet sang over their heads and on toward the Pole.

"All right," Zark said softly. "Once more, you bastard. Once more."

Fire exploded again from the man's rifle. Before it had vanished Zark had it pinpointed. Even as the bullet hit rock in front of him and screamed off, Zark's finger pulled the trigger. His rifle bucked. Then he whirled about, firing at the fur-clad man who had been climbing on the rocks behind them. The man, twenty feet away, was thrown backward and fell, open-mouthed, into a cluster of ice and rock. His rifle clattered down and slid, spinning, onto the ground a few feet from Virga.

Zark waited, his eyes narrowed and his senses throbbing. He said, "That's it," and stood up. He reached beneath his furs and felt for the kerosene lamp he was carrying from a short rope at his waist. The glass was cracked but no fuel had escaped.

"You knew they were there," Michael said.

"I knew they were there. I had to offer myself as a target. And that bastard nearly blew my head off, too." The man laughed abruptly at the expressions on Virga and Michael's faces. "You can't shoot a man if you can't see him. If you can't see him you take the next best target - the muzzle flash. You care to stroll over there? I'll show you the hole at his heart."

"I'll take your word for it"

"I thought you would. All right. We're all in one piece. Holy Man, if you'll pick up our friend's rifle and carry it along we can move on. It won't bite. Good. Just strap it across your shoulder."

They moved onward around the outcroppings of rock. Everywhere Virga thought he saw black shadows sliding around them, men looking for clear shots. He had only fired a gun, a pistol, long ago and then only at paper targets. He understood very little about firearms but he felt somehow more secure with the weapon slung across his shoulder. Its weight reassured him.

No one spoke. Snow crunched dryly beneath their boots. Around them the great slabs of ice grew larger. Here jagged fingers of rock swept up toward the sky; here skeletal blue ice, phantom faces, watched them pass. Zark still crouched and listened at intervals; Virga looked from side to side as Michael watched the rear.

Like an animal sniffing game, Zark stopped. Michael stepped beside him.

Ahead, as the great hulks of ice and stone gave way to a new smooth plain, was a long high-roofed prefab structure. The walls and roof were coated with ice. There were wide doors, like those of an aircraft hangar, that opened outward. The doors were cracked and there was a dim glimmer of light from within. To the right of the prefab structure was a thin-spired radio tower. Beyond that an ice pathway led off into a new burst of rock.

Motioning for the others to remain silent, Zark paused for a moment. He took the kerosene lamp from around his waist and relit it. Then he tied the lamp to the barrel of his rifle, holding it at arm's length ahead of him. They followed its light across snow pitted by many boots. Zark reached the long structure and carefully, quietly, pulled at one of the doors until they could slip through. Ice along the door seam cracked.

He stood on the threshold and shined the lantern inside. There was an unmarked black helicopter amid rows of stacked crates. At the far side of the structure was a small room, lit by three kerosene lamps, and the men could hear the crackling static of a transceiver. Zark took the lantern from the rifle muzzle and walked beneath the fan of helicopter rotors toward the radio room with the men following behind.

Virga's eyes were so accustomed to darkness that, once inside the room, he squinted. A chair stood before the transceiver and there was a small table with a coffeepot and a cup.

Zark touched the pot. "Still warm," he said.

There came the sound of someone running across the hangar floor. Zark pushed roughly past the two men and stood in the radio room doorway with his rifle upraised. Beyond him a man had just reached the hanger entrance and was running out into the snow. Zark's weapon barked hollowly. The man cried out before he fell.

Michael reached him first. He rolled the body over and saw that the bullet had torn away the top of the man's head. The face was gaunt and terror-struck. It was no one he had ever seen before. "Do you recognize him?" he asked Virga over his shoulder.

"No."

"The bastard must have been hiding behind a pile of crates," Zark said. "That was the radio operator."

"Killing him was unnecessary," said Michael, rising to his feet. For the first time Virga saw a deep red glimmer of anger burning in his gaze. "He could have told us where to find Baal."

Zark was startled by the fierceness in Michael's face. He regained his composure, his muscles coiling beneath his thick furs. "Shit!" he said. "If he's one of the men who destroyed that Eskimo settlement he deserved to die! I don't ask questions of dead men!"

"It seems to me," Michael said firmly, "that you do most of your thinking with your trigger finger."

The hunter's face darkened. His hands curled into fists and he started to step forward.

"Baal is still here," Virga said sharply. "There's no need for argument. If the helicopter and radio operator were still needed then Baal is here."

Zark looked at Virga for a few seconds and then back at Michael. "He's right. So back off."

The anger drained visibly from Michael. He seemed displeased that he had shown any emotion. He said, "All right. If he's here we'll find him."

Zark gestured toward the path that led away into the forbidding rocks. He started up it, mindful of his footing on the slick surface. They had gone no more than a hundred feet when Zark held up a hand for them to stop. The hand trembled.

Ahead there was a maze of ice and prefab materials. Huge ice blocks supported a roof glazed with snow. Corridors wound off in all directions. It was a sprawling, nightmarish structure that seemed to have neither shape nor purpose; it was a winding labyrinth of ice-walled tunnels.

But it was not the structure itself that had stopped Zark. He had thrust his lantern forward; the light glared off the ice on both sides of the pathway. Now he stared wild-eyed past the light, unable to move.

Something was buried in the ice.

It was a small dark form; its shape chilled Virga to the marrow. He dared not look but was forced to all the same, hypnotized by its obscenity. Zark was stepping forward, the breath ragged between his teeth. He held the lantern against the ice. The yellow light showed clearly the open eyes, the gaping dark-spattered mouth, the curled fingers of an Eskimo child. And the light showed bodies to the right, bodies to the left. The ice was filled with corpses of children, frozen like butterflies under glass. The men had walked into a horrible museum of death. Virga felt weak and sick; he staggered backward before Michael turned and caught him. It seemed that the eyes were all imploring his mercy, the mouths shrieking the word revenge.

Revenge.

Revenge.

Virga shook his head violently to clear it.

"Christ!" Zark breathed hoarsely, putting a hand against the ice to steady himself and then jerking it away as he realized his fingers had covered a glaring pair of eyes. "Christ!"

"I told you," Michael said, still with a grip on Virga's arm, "to prepare yourself for this. The ancient cults of Baal sacrificed children and buried their bodies in the walls of dwellings as a pagan protection from harm. I told you to be ready."

Zark shook his head in disbelief. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the awful scattered forms. It was beyond anything in his experience. Caught off balance, his senses reeled.

"We must go on!" Michael said. "They're dead and beyond help." He took the lantern from Zark and continued along the pathway, then stopped to wait for the men to compose themselves. Virga was quietly sick. He wiped his face and then went on.

They entered the ice corridors. The lantern threw a solitary splash of light on the prefab floor and glimmered from the open eyes of the children on each side. Zark cringed from the bodies and kept to the center. They continued on, reaching countless dead ends and retracing their steps through one death-littered hall after another. The corridors wound in circles, split into twos and threes, ended in empty vaultlike rooms. The determination in Michael's face became more dark and grim with each blank wall they reached. And on and on they searched, avoiding the imploring faces, through the halls and through a hundred more until Virga knew they could never find their way out again. They would be lost forever, searching, and no man would find their frozen corpses even in a thousand years. Virga felt that the walls were closing in, the corridors steadily narrowing until the frozen fingers would reach from the ice and drag them into it with them. His nerve was breaking; he feared for his sanity. I can't go on, he said to himself. Oh dear God, I can't go on.

And then the corridor turned sharply to the right and there was someone sitting in a chair in a huge ice-gleaming room.

Michael stopped, the frozen breath bursting in clouds from his nostrils.

The man was sitting in darkness. Michael held his arm out and the lantern illuminated burning eyes above a savagely twisted mouth. He wore a heavy coat of dark fur. His hands rested along the arms of the chair.

Baal said softly, "So. You've found me."

"No, you sonofabitch!" raged Zark, bursting past Michael and raising his rifle to fire point-blank. "I've found you!"

"WAIT!" Michael said. The command rocked Zark back on his heels. He shook his head as if he'd been struck. Slowly he brought the rifle barrel down and stood looking across at Michael.

Baal laughed, a cold quiet laugh without mirth. "Go ahead, Michael. Let him use his weapon. You! Come here!"

Zark stirred. He blinked his eyes and looked into Baal's dark gaze. He stepped forward and immediately Michael turned in front of him to hold him back. Michael said forcefully, "You will not go forward. Both of you will stand exactly as you are, do you understand? I want this very clear. You will always keep yourselves at a distance from Baal; keep myself between you and him. You will avoid looking into his eyes. You will by no means touch him or let him touch you. Do you understand?" He shook Zark. "Do you?"

"Yes," Zark said thickly. "I understand."

"And the same for you, Dr. Virga."

"All right. Yes."

"Dr. Virga?" Baal had looked in his direction but the other man cast his eyes away. He laughed harshly. "Well, well. My good Dr. Virga. I see you injured your hand. Isn't that unfortunate? You probably won't ever be able to use it again. Tell me, can you beat off with your left?"

Above the lantern Michael's eyes were glittering gold and alert. He said, "Your time has finished. I've seen your name spread a burning evil trail. Now it is finished."

Baal bent forward slightly. He said, "Never. You're too late. Oh, you've found me. But now that you've found me, what can you do? Nothing, you goddamned whoreson fool, nothing! Even now my disciples are in America, Africa, South America; they spread the news of the Messiah's resurrection. In the Middle East the crowds clamor for war against the bastard Jews in retribution for what they thought was my assassination. Soon the superpowers will be involved. There is no way they can avoid involvement; the area is too strategically important, the oil fields too necessary for the continuation of their civilization. It will start with only a few rockets, perhaps, or a heated rush of infantry..." He smiled, slowly and mockingly. "So you see? You can do nothing. I will have my pleasure dealing with the bastard Jews; my master will strike in the midst of chaos."

"Who was the man sacrificed to the crowd in Kuwait?"

"An American Jew, a newsmagazine correspondent. We were able to 'persuade' him to fire the shots. Then my disciples spread the word through the mass that it was a Jewish-American plot. On the following day the television and radio networks released the news that Baal had died of two gunshot wounds at the hands of a Jew assassin. Response in Beirut was predictable anguish, peaking now toward holy revenge. The body - a body - was cremated and the ashes placed in a golden urn. The Arabs are armed with what I taught them; there will be no stopping their fury at the death of the living Muhammad. No, Michael... you're too late."

"I've come prepared this time," Michael said.

Baal nodded. "Yes? How?"

"Like all those who have given themselves to the dark forces, you cannot withstand the power of the Cross. It burns you with its purity. You're reduced, like all Satanists, to make mockery of it by inverting it."

"Oh?" Baal said quietly. "Watch yourself. You underestimate me. You judge my present strength by my past weaknesses."

"I won't underestimate you," Michael said. "Not again."

"What are you going to do? Burn a cross in my flesh? Stake me to one and leave me in the snow? No good, Michael. I wouldn't make a very good Jesus. I will only find a different method of approach."

"I know that."

Zark had recovered himself. He said in a still-weakened voice, "Leave him to me. I'll rip out his guts."

Baal laughed. "Yes, Michael. Yes. Leave me to this stupid man. Then turn your back with the assurance that you'll never again have to deal with me. He'll do a good job, Michael."

"No. You're coming with us. You're going to lead us out of here."

"Why? I could refuse to go and let you wander here until you become too weak to go on. Then..." He grinned, his cold stare unyielding.

"You'll lead us out because one of your great weaknesses is curiosity. You want to know how I've readied myself for you."

"When last we met, in Nevada, I was weak compared to this," Baal said menacingly. "I am warning you now. I have the strength of a million - no, more than a million. Are you very sure you wish to challenge me?"

Michael remained silent.

"Think," Baal said. "Think. If you were to aid me instead of opposing me. Think what we would have! Everything! Instead of being the mercenary of bastards like these, you would be the master! How can you turn your back on such power?"

"And what of your master? When you have given him what he desires do you actually think he will share the spoils with you? Do you actually think Israel will be yours for the taking?"

Baal spoke in a guttural growl. "It will be mine again."

"Stand up," Michael commanded.

Baal remained seated. His black eyes began to take on a tinge of deep red. They glowed in his white skull-like face. Very slowly and carefully he rose from the chair, his gaze flickering between Zark and Virga. "I am in need of amusement," he said.

Michael stepped forward until his face was only a few inches away from Baal's. He said grimly, "You will show us the way out of here. You will walk ahead of us."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then the end will come here."

Baal nodded. "So finally you've decided it has come to that? Like the noble pissing martyrs you try to emulate, you would do it that way?"

"If need be."

"You stinking sonofabitch," Baal said in a low growl. "You cocksucker, you coward."

"I said you will move ahead of us. Dr. Virga, step aside and let us pass."

Virga gave Michael and Baal a wide berth. As Baal passed him he felt a terrible repulsion and, yet, a sudden sharp impulse to reach out and touch the man. Michael stepped beside Baal and Virga felt the impulse fade. Baal had seemingly been aware of the reaction he'd caused. He turned and grinned, his eyes bright and scorching-red, into Virga's face before moving out into the corridor.

As Michael held the lantern to watch Baal, Virga and Zark followed behind. Zark kept shaking his head, as if struggling from a daze, and muttering to himself.

"Are you all right?" Virga asked him.

"Leave him to me," he said. "Leave him to me."

They reached the clean cold air outside the awful death-frozen maze. Passing the radio tower and hangar, they started through the rocks on the path that would lead them back to Zark's sledge. In the cold Zark's senses sharpened. He kept his rifle at the ready and watched the rear for another attack. When they reached the sledge the dogs growled a greeting to Zark before they caught Baal's scent. Instantly they whimpered, backing away from the approaching figures. The dogs cowered, their tails dragging, and even the lead dog trembled.

Zark walked ahead to calm the animals.

"Beasts of burden," Baal said. "That's what you are, Michael. And you'll be a beast of burden until you have the courage not to be."

Michael retrieved a canvas bag from the load of equipment on the sledge. From it he withdraw a pair of manacles joined together with a short chain. He approached Baal, who watched him incuriously and even thrust out his wrists to be bound. Michael clamped the manacles on and snapped them shut.

"You fool," Baal said into Michael's face. "You stupid, pitiful fool."