Free Watchers of the Dark by Lloyd Biggle jr. Page B

Supreme? He should have asked.
    Perspiration was streaking his face and burning his eyes. Behind him, EIGHT called out something. He stopped and looked back, and EIGHT called again, “Keep going!” He staggered forward. A few feet ahead of him he could make out the blank end of the tunnel.
    A high-pitched vibration had been with him from the beginning, like a dull ache just above the threshold of pain. Suddenly it crescendoed to a piercing shriek that ended in a whir and a loud click. His weight was normal. He opened his eyes, found himself in a circular alcove off a curving corridor. His skin continued to tingle painfully.
    EIGHT stood beside him. Darzek glanced down at the pass that still lay on his perspiring hand. It was shriveled and blackened.
    “Great!” he exclaimed. “Now how do I get out of here?”
    “No pass is necessary to leave a meeting of the Council, but once you leave you cannot return without another pass. Now I’ll show you to your accommodation.”
    On one side of the corridor regularly spaced arches led into a large, circular room. Opposite each arch was a door. They passed four doors, and EIGHT rippled open the fifth and led him into a suite of rooms. There were elliptical glass-less windows in a curving outer wall, and an open arch that led out onto an attractive terrace.
    Darzek dropped his suitcase, made himself comfortable on a chair, and remarked companionably to EIGHT, “The Dark isn’t the first crisis that’s threatened the Council.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “These security arrangements weren’t devised for the fun of it. Obviously the Council once met in the Hall of Deliberations. Either its secrets were vulnerable there, or it feared for its physical safety, or both. That room was converted into a massive transmitter, tamper-proof to the n th degree, and made a security check on the route to the real meeting place, whose location is probably the best-kept secret in the galaxy. Exactly where are we?”
    “It has no name,” EIGHT said.
    “But where is it? Where in relation to the Hall of Deliberations?”
    “I do not know,” Eight confessed.
    “You see? So secret that not even the members of the Council know where they meet. It would have required a crisis of monumental proportions to inspire such elaborate precautions.”
    “And yet I have never heard of such a crisis,” EIGHT said politely.
    “It happened before your time. The architecture of this building is proof of that. I recommend that you read up on it. It should be consoling to know that Supreme has already weathered one severe threat.”
    EIGHT gaped at him bewilderedly. “I’ll tell the others that you have arrived,” he said.
    As soon as he was alone Darzek went to look at the terrace. It was flooded with sunlight. Spacious lawns stretched to a shallow horizon. Exotic flowers lined the walks and ringed the terrace. Curious, he touched one of them, touched it again, bent over it. It was artificial. The horizon was artificial. The sun was artificial, and so was the sky.
    “All of it under a dome,” Darzek told himself. “At a guess, a bombproof dome. Any kind of bomb. That really was a first-rate crisis, and if I were a member of the Council I’d be grateful. The Dark won’t be breaking in here very soon.”
    He examined the circular building and quickly confirmed that the crisis was, indeed, ancient history. The meeting place of the Council of Supreme was built of—wood!
    “There must have been better materials available,” he mused. “Probably this was an architectural fad at the time. With the temperature and humidity controlled, and with no exposure to the elements, I suppose wood will last forever. The whole setup seems ancient. A meeting place built of wood, the eight transmitters for eight Councilors—now they would design one that could do the same job—and that chamber of horrors, which probably is something out of their equivalent of the Middle Ages. It must have happened millenniums