This Day All Gods Die Read Online Free PDF Page A

small role to play at the moment. Opposite her stood Chief Mandich.
    The two of them approximately bracketed Warden's desk.
    Obviously the UMCPED Security Chief was here to account for his own inadequacies in person; but he also represented Min Donner by proxy. His discomfort was plain in his refusal to accept a seat. Although his back was to the wall, he did nothing so casual as lean on it. He stood with his hands clasped behind him and his shoulders stiff. The heat which had mottled his face and neck earlier had subsided, but it remained apparent.
    Warden sat behind his desk with his forearms braced on the desktop and his palms flat. His single eye glittered with penetration, complementing the resources of the IR prosthesis hidden by his patch. He was not an especially large man, but the strength of his frame and the immobility of his posture made him appear carved in stone; as unreachable as an icon.
    Hashi shuffled quickly into the room, strewing apologies in all directions, although he hardly listened to them himself.
    The door closed behind him: he heard the seals slot home, metallic and final. That sound gave him the unsettling impression that he'd entered the presence of ultimate questions.
    When he neared the front of Warden's desk, he stopped; glanced around him for a chair. But he didn't presume to sit until Warden made a gesture of permission with one blunt hand.
    "Don't apologize, Hashi," Warden said harshly. "Explain. Tell me why we've been twiddling our thumbs here for the past ten minutes as if we didn't have anything better to do."
    Warden Dios, Hashi noted, was not in a good mood.
    With an effort he stifled his impulse for obfuscation.
    "Lane Harbinger has been studying the kaze's remains." His glasses had slid too far down his nose to muffle him from Warden's gaze, but he didn't push them up. "I waited as long as I could—
    until I received your summons. Then I took the time to obtain a preliminary report."
    For the sake of his own dignity, he declined to comment on whether or not Lane's report had been worth hearing—
    or
    worth waiting for.
    Warden studied Hashi as he spoke, then nodded once, brusquely. "All right. We're in a crisis—
    the worst crisis any
    of us has ever seen. But the fact that the rest of us have just wasted ten minutes probably doesn't increase the danger."
    Hashi blinked owlishly. Did Warden consider Imposs/

    Alt's attack "the worst crisis any of us has ever seen?" Impossible. Surely he could not be so entirely divorced from the world of the real. To call that attack anything less than an emergency was foolish: to call it anything more was madness.
    "You think we're here to discuss Suka Bator," Warden rasped. "And some of you"-- he seemed to concentrate briefly on Hashi—
    "are wondering why I took so long to summon you. Well, we are going to discuss Suka Bator. I want to know what happened. More than that, I want to know what it means.
    "But an attack on the Council is only one side of our predicament. Before we go on, I'll tell you what else has happened. Then you'll understand why I didn't call for you right away."
    What else has happened. Hashi smiled his relief, despite the grimness of Warden's tone. After some anxious moments, he felt suddenly sure that the UMCP director was about to justify the confidence Hashi had placed in him.
    "Crudely put," Warden announced as if he were full of a bitterness he could neither contain nor release, "the situation is this. For all practical purposes, we are at war."
    Chief Mandich stiffened. He took a step toward the director's desk, perhaps without being aware of it. His blunt features became as hard as Warden's.
    Koina leaned forward, her lips parted slightly. Her eyes were dark with shock and dread; with a human being's essential genetic horror of the Amnion.
    War? Hashi's heart skipped a beat, then started rattling in his chest like an electron barrage. At war? With some difficulty he refrained from asking, Is this why you accepted Milos