Mosaic - Jeri Taylor [47]
And then the woman threw the candelabrum at them. Kathryn felt it whiz past her head, a heavy presence displacing air, a rank smell of burning tallow, and then it thumped onto the stairway, candles still burning. Cheb, slightly behind them, sidestepped it; Kathryn slowed to wait for him, and as she turned to look up the stairs, she saw the draperies burst into flame.
They knew the mansion had been built before firesuppression technology had become mandatory; they knew the old, dry drapes and furnishings would be like tinder. Already the flames had climbed the drape and it was smoking profusely. Kathryn glanced up and saw the woman, fist at her mouth, staring at the fire and retreating down the hallway.
"We have to put this out, Cheb," she said quietly. The panic she had felt earlier was beginning to wane as a sense of purpose and duty overtook her. "She'll be trapped up there and die."
Blake and Anna had stopped running and were climbing the stairs back toward them. The fire had now engulfed most of one drapery. "Let's do it," said Cheb, and they all ran back up toward the flames. "Pull down all the drapes-we can use them to beat the fire out." Blake and Anna began to do that, while Kathryn and Cheb turned to the burning drape and, grabbing hold of still-hot chunks of the cloth, tried to tug it from its moorings. Soot and charcoal smeared their hands, and thick smoke made it hard to breathe; they both coughed desperately and their eyes watered. Suddenly the burning material ripped loose and came tumbling down toward them. Cheb shoved Kathryn hard and she stumbled down the stairs as he jumped after her to avoid being trapped under the flaming drape. An edge of it caught him on the head, however, and Kathryn saw with horror that his hair had begun to burn.
She leaped toward him, spreading her hands on his head, blotting out the fire. There was a moment's registration of pain, but she shut it away, refusing to focus on it.
"Let us through!" Blake and Anna were hauling one of the drapes they had managed to pull off its tracks, and they flung it on top of the one that was burning; then they jumped on top of it, jumping and stomping on it to smother the fire underneath. Within minutes, a pall of bitter smoke hung in the air, but the fire was extinguished.
Sooty and adrenaline-fed from the ordeal, the young people sat on the stairs, drawing ragged breaths. Then Kathryn looked up toward the landing and saw the pale face of the old woman as she stood silently, watching them. Kathryn's eye caught the woman's, and she saw terror and vulnerability. Then the woman drifted backward, out of sight. The fire, the danger, the success of their efforts-all these had vanquished the earlier anxieties she had felt, and now she rose, staring after the woman.
"What are you doing?" Cheb's voice was challenging, authoritative. "I'm going to find out who she is and what she's doing here."
"We've got to get out of here."
"You were the one who wanted to go see who was in that room." Kathryn was beginning to feel annoyed with Cheb; he wanted to be in charge of everything.
"We have to be at our beam-out site in fifteen minutes. That doesn't leave any extra time."
"Go ahead without me. You can come back for me later."
"No, I can't. Not without someone knowing about an unauthorized transport."
"Then maybe someone will have to know. I can't leave that old woman here, after the fire, without knowing who she is and if she's all right." She held Cheb's look for a hard moment, realizing as she did that she had never confronted him about anything, had always deferred to what she felt was his superior decisionmaking capacity. For a moment, she doubted herself. Was he right? Was it foolish to stay here when the safety of home was only minutes away? When they could be out of this place without