“Salamanders, yes,” Hastings said. “But that’s about the only one a man can see and survive. That’s why we speak of the ‘chimera’—that’s what the word means. Imaginary monster. But we sure as Chthon didn’t imagine that.” His eyes flicked toward the corpse.

“It was a doctor,” Aton said judiciously. “He was quite mad—but free.”

Heads turned in his direction. Conversation stopped.

“A doctor?” Hastings breathed.

Aton held out his hand for a garnet, and everyone laughed. “About five years ago, I think. They never found out how he managed to escape. They had to put him in a mental hospital.”

“Bedside!” someone cried.

“He swore he’d get out—”

“That means there is a trail.”

“You sure about that?” Hastings asked Aton. “You remember the name?”

Do I remember the name I pried so carefully from the prison librarian, knowing that this was the word that might free me? “It wasn’t Bedside,” he said. “Something like Charles Bedecker, M.D. Of course he lost his license when they sent him down.”

“Yeah,” Framy agreed. “They defrocked him.”

“I knew him,” Hastings said. “I had almost forgotten. We never called him by his real name, of course. He stayed about a month; then he set out with hardly more than his doctor’s bag. He said he’d make a trail for the rest of us, if we had guts enough to follow. But he was such a small, mild character. We knew he’d never get far.”

“How come you let him go?” the woman asked. “Him a doctor—”

“No sickness down here,” Hastings pointed out. “Apart from what the garnet dust does to our lungs. We’re sterilized—by the heat, perhaps. And death is usually too sudden. And he was a bad man to offend. Small, but what he could do—”

“That’s not surprising,” Aton said. “Didn’t you know what he got sent down for?”

Hastings cut him off. “You remember a lot, all of a sudden. We never ask that question here. That’s none of our business.”

“But there’s a trail,” Framy said, savoring it.

“A trail to madness, Hastings pointed out. “That’s as bad as death.”

“But a trail...”

The magic word was out. Aton knew that it would spread like the hot wind through the caverns. Proof—proof of a way out. They could never be fully satisfied now, until they found it.

9

Ten chows later Bossman called the meeting. Since the meals were distributed every twelve hours or so, governed roughly by the schedule of delivery through the elevator above, this meant five days, outside time. Aton found the distinction pointless; short intervals were measured in chows. Seven hundred chows came to about a year.

“Must be something big,” Framy said as they gathered. “Awful big. We never had no blowout like this before.”