Free Catacombs by John Farris Page A

snow-field beneath the transiting moon.
    Perhaps it was all nonsense. But he was fascinated with the concept of a civilization whose leaders had built their memorials in the earth and not on it, to endure for a hundred centuries and then a hundred more.
    Catacombs.
    Rubbing his fingertips lightly over the facets of the bloodstone, Morgan could just feel the tiny pictographs etched there. He was overcome with a sense of imminent danger, the folly of disbelief.
    "General Timbaroo?"
    The mercenary came briskly forward, three paces, and clicked his boot heels together.
    "Yes, sir!"
    "If a car is ready for me, I'd like to start for home now."

Chapter 3

    KINGDOM MISSION
    Ivututu, Tanzania
    April 29

    I n the mission hospital Erika Weller worked with a mind-numbing intensity until well after sunset, trying to keep up with the needs of critically ill men and women. She was certain it would not be long before she heard the boots of Colonel Ukumtara's askari on the stairs outside. No doubt her punishment for plotting an escape would be mild: an elaborate, scornful dressing down from the colonel himself, then close house arrest during those hours when she couldn't be at the hospital. No community meals. Perhaps she would also be deprived of morning Mass.
    Raymond Poincarré had returned just before dusk from the airstrip with many cartons of supplies that had to be unpacked and put away; he'd been busy in the hospital storeroom and hadn't come upstairs for his evening rounds. Her only company, aside from a couple of nurses who were virtually sleep-walking, was Father Varnhalt, who had arrived dutifully after vespers with communion wafers for those patients able to accept them. At least his phonograph had been silent for a while. But the mourning drums of the neighborhood villages had begun, along with the yaps and chortles and bloody howls of jackal and dog baboon in the rocky hills and ravines behind the mission.
    The only sound she had been listening for, and hadn't heard, was the engine of the Bonanza as it took off for the return hop over the mountains to Mbeya town.
    That was significant. It could mean that Bob Connetta had succeeded in temporarily disabling the plane before Dr. Poincarré arrived. Bob was a twenty-three-year-old graduate student in archaeology, the son of an American colleague of Chips'. The Chapman/Weller expedition had been Bobby's first major venture into the field, and one that would make him famous out of all proportion to his experience. That is, if he lived. She couldn't condemn Chips for having delegated him to sabotage the Bonanza–no one else had the opportunity. But she was worried.
    Chips had been fitfully asleep for more than an hour. She replaced his IV bottle, a five-percent dextrose solution in water, and tried to rouse him; but when she spoke he replied deliriously, replaying some yacht race or other he'd been involved in years ago. Erika couldn't cool him down and was worried about his breathing. She wondered if she should insert an endotracheal tube.
    Father Varnhalt, wearing a purple-and-white surplice over dust-smudged khakis, was down on one knee, mumbling in Latin at the bedside of another patient. When she turned around, tears squeezing from her eyes, she saw Raymond Poincarré at the door, watching her.
    "He's worse," Erika groaned. "It's just consuming him, like a fire in a hollow tree."
    "Sometimes it happens that way. Then there's a remission. We'll try more procaine penicillin."
    "Useless! Nothing . . . bloody . . . works, only the grace of God is going to save the lot of them."
    "Erika!"
    She struggled to control herself. "Yes. All right. Nothing good's going to come of carrying on, is it? I'll . . . prepare an injection,   or do you want to drip it?"
    "Injection," he told her.
    Erika opened the pharmaceuticals cabinet and took out the little bottle of penicillin, broke the cellophane pack of a fresh disposable syringe. While Raymond looked at Chips' chart, Erika administered the