Marooned in Realtime

TWENTY-THREE

The door slid back. Wil stuck his head into the forest air. And jerked it back even more quickly. Phew: take mil dew and add a flavoring of shit. He took another breath, and tried not to gag. Perhaps it was the abrupt transition that made it seem so awful; the flier's air was full of alpine morning.

They stepped onto the forest floor. Gray-green humus lapped around their ankles. He was careful not to kick it up. There was enough junk in the air already.

Della walked a large circle tangent to their landing point "I've mapped all the rocks. They're not as big as Marta generally used, and not as well shaped. But backtracking their trajectories..." She was quiet for second. "... I see they were piled in a pyramid at one time. The core is intact, and I think there', something-not rocks or forest dirt-inside. What do you want to do?"

"How long would a careful dig take-say as good as a twentyfirst-century archeologist could do?"

"Two or three hours."

Now that they really had something, they had to protect V, — and get themselves off ground zero at the same time. "We could bobble the whole thing," he said.

"That would be awkward to haul around if shooting starts.

Look, Marta never left anything of importance outside the core. That's less than a meter across in this case. We could bobble that and be out of here in just a few minutes."

Wil nodded agreement, and Della continued with scarcely a pause. "Okay, it's done. Now stand back a couple of meters."

Dozens of reflections of Wil and Della suddenly looked up from the forest floor; the ground between them was covered by close-packed bobbles.

She walked back, around the field of mirrors. "Bobbles are hard to miss against the neutrino sky; if the enemy has decent equipment, he noticed this." Sonic booms came from beyond the treetops. "Don't worry. That's friendly."

The new arrivals slipped through the hole Della had made in the canopy. They consisted of one auton and a cloud of robots. The robots settled on the bobbles, rooting and pushing. The top layer came off easily, revealing more bobbles beneath. These were pushed aside to get at still deeper layers. On a small scale, Lu was using the standard open-pit mining technique. In minutes, they were looking into a dark, slumping hole. The bobbles were scattered on all sides, glowing copies of the forest canopy above.

One by one, the robots picked them up and flew away.

"Which one is... ?"

"You can't tell, can you? I hope the enemy is similarly mystified. We've supplied him with seventy red herrings." He noticed that not all the bobbles were flown directly out. One had been transferred to the auton, and one to Della's flier.

Della climbed aboard the flier, Wil close behind. "If our friend doesn't start shooting in the next few minutes, he never will. I'm taking all the bobbles to my home. That's a million kilometers out now. From there we can see in all directions, shoot in all directions; no one can get us there." She smashed straight through the forest's roof, kept rising at multiple g's.

Wil sank deep into the acceleration couch. All he could see was sky. He squinted at the sunlight and gasped, "He may not attack at all. He may still think we're bluffing."

She chuckled. "Don't you wish." The sky tilted, and he saw green horizon. "Twenty thousand meters I'm going to nuke out."

Free fall. The sky was black, except at the blue horizon They were at least one hundred kilometers up. It was like video cut: One instant they had been at aircraft altitudes, the next they were in space. Something bright and sunlike glowed beneath them-the detonation that had boosted them out of the atmosphere. He wondered fleetingly why she hadn't nuked out from ground level. A technical reason? Or sentiment?

The sky jerked again, the horizon acquiring a distinct curve

"Hm. I have a low-tech on the net, Wil. She wants to talk to you."

Who? "Hold off on the next nuke. Let me talk to her."

Part of one window went flat. He was looking at someone wearing NM fatigues and a display helmet. The space around. the figure was crammed with twenty-first-century communications gear.

"Wil!" The speaker cleared the face panel on her helmet It was Gail Parker. "Thank God! I've been trying to break out for almost an hour. Look. Fraley has gone nuts. We're going to attack the Peacers. He says they'll wipe us if we don't. He says there's no way the high-techs can prevent it. Is that true? What's going on?"

Brierson sat in horrified silence. What was the killer's motive, that he would contrive such a war? "Part of it is true, Gail It looks like someone's trying to wipe the entire colony. This war talk must be part of it. Is there anything you can do to —"

"Me?" She glanced over her shoulder, then continued in the lower voice. "God damn it, Wil, I'm at the center of our C and C. Sure. I could sabotage our entire defense system. But if the other side really does attack, then I've murdered my own people!

"None of us will make it otherwise, Gail. I'll try to talk sense to the Peacers. Do... do what you can." What would I do in her place? His mind shied away from Gail's choices.

Parker nodded. "I —" The picture smeared into an abstract pattern of colors. A screeching noise rose past audibility.

"Signal jammed," said Lu.

"Della? Can you get through to the Peacers?"

Lu shrugged. "It doesn't matter. Why do you think Parker called just then? She thinks she finally broke out of NM security. In fact, the enemy has taken over their system. Letting her through is part of a distraction."

"Distraction?"

"One we can't ignore; he's going to start 'em killing each other. I see ballistic traffic going both ways across the Inland Sea.... Someone's blocking my wideband link to Yelén."

A section of window suddenly showed Yelén's office. Korolev was standing. "Both sides are shooting. I've lost several autons. Both sides have high-tech backing, Della." Disbelief was mixed with rage and fear. Tears glinted on her face. "You'll have to do without my help for now; I'm going to divert my forces. I can't let my peo- I can't let these people die."

"It's okay, Yelén. But get the others to help you. You can't trust your system alone."

Korolev sat down shakily. "Right. They've agreed to bring their forces up. I'm starting my diversion now. There was a moment of silence. Yelén stared blankly, swapped out. The silence stretched... and Yelén's eyes slowly widened. In horror. "Oh, my God, no!" Her image vanished, and he was looking into empty sky.

Wil flinched, the motion floating him against his restraint harness. "More jamming?"

"No. She just stopped transmitting." There was a faint smile on Della's face. "I guessed this might happen. To shift her forces, she had to run control routines that the enemy could not start — but which he had perverted. He's finally shown himself in a big way: Yelén's forces are coming out for us. What she has in far space is moving to block our exit.

"Another minute and we'll know who we've been fighting all this time. Yelén can't take me alone. The killer is going to have to stand up with his own equipment...." Her smile broadened. "You're going to see some real shooting, Wil."

"I can hardly wait." He tucked his data set in the side of his acc chair.

"Oh, don't expect too much; with the naked eye, this won't be very spectacular." And she was humming!

Please God that this insanity does not affect her performance.

The horizon jerked once again. There was no acceleration, no sound. It was like botched special effects from an old-time movie. But now they were better than a thousand kilometers up, the Inland Sea a cloud-dotted puddle. And the Earth was visibly falling away from them; they were moving at dozens of klicks per second.

Surely — even without Yelén-the others could protect the low-techs from a few ballistic missiles? Malicious fate gave him quick answer: Three bright sparks glowed on the southern coast, a third of the way from West End to the Eastern Straits. Wil groaned.

"Those were high air bursts, at Town Korolev," said Della.

If the Dasguptas spread your warning, there may not be too many casualties." There was puzzlement in her voice.

"But where are Chanson and Genet and Blumenthal? Surely —"

"Surely they could prevent this?" Della finished the question. She swapped out a moment. Then: "Oh... wow!" Her words were almost a sigh, fiIled with endless wonder and surprise. She was silent a moment more. Then her eyes focused on Wil. "All this time, we were expecting to flush the killer into the open. Right? Well... we have a little problem. All the high-tech forces have turned on us."

Like a gruesome short story Wil once read: Detective locks self in room with suspects. Detective applies definitive test to suspects. All suspects guilty.... Unmarked grave for detective. Happy ending for suspects.

"We are now outgunned, Wil. This is going to be very interesting." The smile was almost gone from her face, replaced by a look of intense concentration. Sudden light and shadow flickered across the cabin. Wil looked up, saw a pattern of point lights glowing, fading in the blackness. "They have a lot of stuff at the Lagrange zones. They're bringing it down on us-while their ground-based stuff comes up. No way we can get to my quarters just now."

And they were back at low altitude, the horizon spread flat around them, the Indonesian Alps drifting by below. His restraint harness stiffened and the flier surged forward at multiple g's, then slammed to the side. Wil's consciousness faded into red dimness. Somewhere he heard Della say, "... lose realtime every time I nuke out. Can't afford it now." They were in free fall for almost a second, then more crushing acceleration, then free fall again. Brightness flashed all around them, lighting sea and clouds with extra suns. More acceleration. Things don't get this exciting when they're going right.

The horizon jerked, and acceleration reversed. Jerk, jerk. Now each translation of the outside world was accompanied by changed acceleration, the agrav being used in concert with the nukes. Della's words came in broken gasps. "Bastards." Around them the horizon rose, kilometers per second. Acceleration was heavy, spacewards. "They're past my defenders." Jerk. They were lower, hurtling parallel to the vast wall that was the Earth. "They're zeroed on me." Jerk. "Seven direct hits in —" jerk. jerk.

Jerk. Free fall again. This last had taken them high over the Pacific. All was blue and ocean clouds below. "We've got about a minute's breather. I regrouped my low forces and nuked into the middle of them. The enemy's breaking through right now." To the west, point suns flashed brighter and brighter. In the sky below, weirdness: five contrails, a dozen. The clouds grew like quick crystal, around threads of fire. Directed energy weapons? "We're the king piece; they're trying to force us out of this era."

Somewhere, Wil found his voice. Even more, it sounded calm. "No way, Della."

"Yeah... I didn't come this far to fade." Pause. "Okay. There's another way to protect the king piece. A bit risky, but- —"

Wil's chair suddenly came alive. The sides swung inward, bringing his arms across his middle. The footrest moved up, forcing his knees to near chest level. At the same time, the entire assembly rotated sideways, to face a similarly trussed Della Lu. The contraption tightened painfully, squeezing the two of them into a round bundle. And then

TWENTY-FOUR

There was an instant of falling. The acceleration spiked, then stabilized at one g.

The chair relaxed its grip.

The sunlight was gone. The air was hot, dry. They were no longer in the flier! The "one-g field" was the Earth's. They were sitting on the ground.

Della was already on her feet, dismantling part of her chair. "Nice sunset, huh?" She nodded toward the horizon.

Sunset or sunrise. He had no sense of direction, but the heat in the air made him guess they were at the end of a day. The sun was squashed and reddish, its light coming sickly across a level plain. He suddenly felt sick himself. Was that disk reddened by its closeness to the horizon, or was the sun itself redder? "Della, just-just how long did we jump?"

She looked up from her rummaging. "About forty-five minutes. If we can live another five, we may be okay." She pulled a meter-long pole from the back of her chair, clipped a strap to it, and slung it over her shoulder. He noticed shiny metal where the bobble had cut the chairs away from Della's flier. That bobble had been scarcely more than a meter wide. No wonder he had been cramped. "We need to get out of sight. Help me drag this stuff over there." She pointed at a knoblike hill a hundred meters off.

They were standing in a shallow crater of dirt and freshly cracked rock. Wil took a chair in each hand and pulled; he backed quickly out of the crater, onto grass. Della motioned him to stop. She grabbed one of the chairs and tipped it over. "Drag it on the smooth side. I don't want them to see a trail." She leaned back against the load, dragging it quickly away across the short grass. Wil followed, pulling his with a one-handed grasp.

"When you've got a minute, I'd like to know what we're up to.

"Sure. Soon as we get these under cover." She turned, took the load on her shoulders, and all but trotted toward the stony hill. It took several minutes to reach it; the hill was larger and farther away than he thought. It rose over the grass and scrub like some ominous guardian. Except for the birds that rattled out as they approached, it seemed lifeless.

The ground around it was bare, grooved. The rock bulged over its base, leaving shallow caves along the perimeter. There was a smell of death. He saw bones in the shadows. Della saw them too. She slid her chair in over the bones and waved for Wil to do the same. "I don't like this, but we've got other hunters to worry about first." Once the equipment was hidden, she scrambled up the rock face to a small cave about four meters up. Wil followed, more awkwardly.

He looked around before sitting beside her. The indentation barely qualified as a cave. Nothing would surprise them from behind, though something had used it for dining; there were more well-gnawed bones. The cave was hidden from most of the sky, yet they had a good view of the ground, almost to the base of the rock.

He sat down, impatient for explanations-and suddenly was struck by the silence. All day the tension had grown, reaching a crescendo of violence these last few minutes. Now every sign of that struggle was gone. One hundred meters away, birds flocked around a stunted tree, their cries and flapping wings clear and tiny in the larger silence. Only a sliver of the sun's disk still glowed at the horizon. By that light, the prairie was reddish gold, broken here and there by the dark scrub. The breeze was a slow thing, still warm from the day. It brought perfume and putrescence, and left the sweat dry on his face.

He looked at Della Lu. Dark hair had fallen across her cheek. She didn't seem to notice. "Della?" he said quietly. "Did we lose?"

"Unh?" She looked at him, awareness coming back to her eyes. "Not yet. Maybe not at all if this works.... They were concentrating everything on you and me. The only way we could stay in this era and still survive was to disappear. I brought my whole inner guard toward our flier. We exploded almost all our nukes at the same time, and vanished as thousands of meter-sized bobbles. One of those bobbles contained you and me; seventy of them are from the cairn. They're scattered all over now-Earth surface, Earth orbit, solar orbit. Most of the surface ones were timed to burst minutes after impact."

"So we're lost in the turmoil."

Her smile was a ghost of earlier enthusiasm. "Right. They haven't got us yet: I think we brought it off. Given a few hours they could do a thorough search, but I'm not giving them the time. My midguard has come down, and is giving them plenty of other things to worry about.

"We, here, are totally defenseless, Wil. I don't even have a bobbler. The other side could take us out with a five-millimeter pistol — if only they knew where to do the shooting. I had to destroy my inner guard to get away. What's left is outnumbered two to one. Yet... yet I think I can win. Fifty seconds out of every minute, I have tight beam comm with my fleet." She patted the meter-long pole that lay on the ground between them. One end consisted of a ten-centimeter sphere. She had laid the pole so that the ball was at the cave's entrance. Wil looked at it more closely, saw iridescence glow and waver. It was some kind of coherent transmitter. Her own forces knew where they were hidden, and needed to keep only one unit in line of sight for Lu to run the battle.

Della's voice was distant, almost indifferent. "Whoever they are, they know how to pervert systems, but not so much about combat I've fought through centuries of realtime, with bobblers and suppressors, nukes and lasers. I have programs you just couldn't buy in civilization. Even without me, my system fights smarter than the other side's...." A chuckle. "The high-orbit stuff is dead just now. We're playing 'peek and shoot': 'peek' around the shoulder of the Earth, 'shoot' at anything with its head stuck up. Boys and girls running round and round their home, killing each other.... I'm winning, Wil, I really am. But we're burning it all. Poor Yelén. So worried that our systems might not last long enough to reestablish civilization. One afternoon we're destroying all we've accumulated."

"What about the low-techs?" Was there anybody left to fight for?

"Their little play-war?" She was silent for fifteen seconds, and when she spoke again seemed even further away. "That ended as soon as it had served the enemy's purpose." Perhaps only Town Korolev had been wiped. Della sat against the rear wall of the cave. Now she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

Wil studied her face. How different she looked from the creature he had seen on the beach. And when she wasn't talking, there were no weird perspectives, no shifting of personalities. Her face was young and innocent, straight black hair still fallen across her cheek. She might have been asleep, occasional dreams twitching her lips and eyelids. Wil reached to brush the hair back from her face-and stopped. The mind in this body was looking far across space, looking down on Earth from all directions, was commanding one side in the largest battle Wil had ever known. Best to let sleeping generals lie.

He crawled along the side of the cave to the entrance. From here he could see the plains and part of the sky, yet was better hidden than Della.

He looked across the land. If there was any way he could help, it was by protecting Della from local varmints. A few of the birds had returned to the rock. They were the only animal life visible; maybe these bone-littered condos were abandoned property. Surely Della had brought handguns and first-aid gear.

He eyed the smooth shells of the acceleration chairs and wondered if he should ask her about them. But Della was in deep connect; even during the first attack she had not been concentrating like this.... Better to wait till he had a certifiable emergency. For now he would watch and listen.

Twilight slowly faded; a quarter moon slid down the western sky. From the track of the sun's setting, he guessed they were in the Northern Hemisphere, away from the tropics. This must be Calafia or the savanna that faced that island on the west coast of North America. Somehow, being oriented made Wil t eel better.

The birds had quieted. There was a buzzing he hoped was insects. It was getting hard to keep his eyes on the ground With the coming of night, the sky show was impossible to ignore. Aurora stretched from north horizon to south. The pal,. curtains were as bright as any he had seen, even from Alaska The battle itself danced slowly beyond those curtains. Some of the lights were close-set sparkles, like a gem visible only where its facets caught some magic light. The lights brightened an( dimmed, but the cluster as a whole didn't move: that must b: a high-orbit fight, perhaps at a Lagrange zone. For half an hour at a time, that was the only action visible. Then a fragment of the near-Earth battle would come above the horizon-the "peek and shoot" crowd. Those lights cast vivid shadows, each one starting brilliant white, fading to red over five or ten seconds.

Though he had no idea who was winning, Will thought h;. could follow some of the action. A near-Earth firefight would start with ten or twenty detonations across a large part of the sky. These were followed by more nukes in a smaller and smaller space, presumably fighting past robots towards a central auton. Even the laser blasts were visible now, threads of light coruscating bright or faint depending on how much junk was in the way. Their paths pointed into the contracting net a detonations. Sometimes the net shrank to nothing, the enemy destroyed or in long-term stasis. Other times, there was a bright flash from the center, or a string of flashes heading outward Escape attempts? In any case, the battle would then cease, or shift many degrees across the sky. Aurora flared in moon-bright knots on the deserted battlefield.

Even moving hundreds of kilometers per second, it took time for the fighters to cross the sky, time for the nuke blasts to fade through red to auroral memories. It was like fireworks photographed in slow motion.

The land around them was empty but for moving shadows, silent but for the insect buzz and occasional uneasy squawking. Only once did he hear anything caused by the battle. Three threads of directed energy laced across the sky from some fight over the horizon. The shots were very low, actually in the atmosphere. Even as they faded, contrails grew around them. After a minute, Wil heard faint thunder.

An hour passed, then two. Della had not said a word. To him, anyway. Light chased back and forth within the ball of her communications scepter, interference fringes shifting as she resighted the link.

Something started yowling. Wil's eyes swept the plain. Just now his only light was from the aurora: there was no near-Earth firefight going, and the high-orbit action was a dim flickering at the western horizon.... Ah, there they were! Gray shapes, a couple of hundred meters out. They were loud for their size — or hunkered close to the ground. The yowling spread, was traded back and forth. Were they fighting? Admiring the light show?

... They were getting closer, easier to see. The creatures were almost man-sized but stayed close to the ground. They advanced in stages-trotting forward a few meters, then dropping to the ground, resuming the serenade. The pack stayed spread out, though there were pairs and trios that ran together. It all rang a very unpleasant chord in Wil's memory. He came to his knees and crawled back to Della.

Even before he reached her, she began mumbling. "Don't look out, Wil. I have them worn down... but they've guessed we're on the surface. Last hour they've been trying to emp me out, mainly over Asia." She gave something like a chuckle. "Nothing like picking on the wrong continent. But they're shifting now. If I can't stop 'em, there'll be low-altitude nukes strung across North America. Stay down, don't look out.'' The yowling was even closer. When bad luck comes, it comes in bunches. Wil took Della by the shoulders, gently shook her. "Are there weapons in the ace chairs?"

Her eyes came open, dazed and wild. "Can't talk! If they, emp me —"

Wil scrambled back to the cave entrance. What was she talking about? Nothing but aurora lit the sky. He looked down. She must have weapons stored in those chairs. Climbing down would expose him to the sky for a few seconds, but once there he could hide under the overhang and work on the chairs. The nearest of the dogthings was only eighty meters out.

Wil swung onto the rock face, and — Della screamed, a tearing, full-throated shriek of pain. Wil's universe went blinding white, and a wave of heat swept over his back, burning his hands and neck. He vaulted back into the cave, rolled to the rear wall. The only sound was the sudden keening of the dogs.

There was a second flash, a third, fourth, fifth.... He was curled around Della now, shielding both their faces from the cave entrance. Each flash seemed less bright; the terrible, silent footsteps marched away from them. But with each flash, Della spasmed against him, her coughs spraying wetness across his shirt.

Finally darkness returned. His scalp tingled, and Della's hair clung to his face when he leaned away from her. A tiny blue spark leaped from his fingers when he touched the wall. Lu was moaning wordlessly; each breath ended in a choked cough. He turned her on her side, made sure she wasn't swallowing her tongue. Her breathing quieted, and the spasms subsided.

"Can you hear me, Della?"

There was a long silence, filled with the mewling of the animals outside. Then her breathing roughened and she mumbled something. Wil brought his ear close to her face ". .. fooled 'em. They won't come sniffing around here for a while... but I'm cut off now. .. comm link wrecked."

Beyond the cave, the whimpering continued, but now there were sounds of movement, too. "We've got local problems, Della. Did you bring handguns?"

She squeezed his hand. "Acc chairs. Opens off my signal... or thumbprint... sorry."

He eased her head to the ground and moved back to the entrance. The comm scepter didn't glow anymore; the sphere end was too hot to touch. He thought about the gear Della had in her skull and shuddered. It was a miracle she still lived.

Wil looked out. The ground was well lit: the residue of the nuke attack shone overhead, a line of glowing splotches that stretched to the western horizon. Five of the dogthings lay, writhing in the near distance. Most of the others had gathered in a close-packed herd. There was much whimpering, much snuffling of the ground, sniffing of the air. The brightness had burned their eyes out. They drifted toward the rock and hunkered beneath its overhang, waiting for the dark time to pass. Most of them would have a long wait.

Nine dogs paced along the edge of the herd, baying querulously. Wil could imagine their meaning; "C'mon, c'mon. What's the matter with you?" Somehow, these nine had been shaded from the sky; they could still see.

Maybe he could still get the guns. Wil picked up the comm scepter. It felt heavy, solid-if nothing else, a morningstar. He slipped over the edge of the rock and slid to ground level.

But not unnoticed: The howling began even before he reached the ground. Three of the sighted ones loped toward him. Wil backed into the overhang that hid the chairs. Without taking his eyes off the approaching dogthings, he reached down and pulled the nearest chair into the open.

Then they were on him, the lead dog diving at his ankles. Wil swung the scepter, and met empty air as the creature twisted away. The next one came in thigh-high — and caught Wil's backswing in the face. Metal crunched into bone. The creature didn't even yelp, just crashed and lay unmoving. The third one backed off, circled. Wil raised the chair on end. It was as seamless as he remembered. There were no buttons, latches. He slammed it hard against the rock face. The rock chipped; the shell was unscratched. He'd have to get it up to the cave for Della to touch.

The chair massed forty kilos, but there were good fingerholds on the rock face. He could do it — if his friends stayed intimidated. He slid the scepter through the restraint harness and pulled the chair onto his shoulder. He was less than two meters up the wall when they charged.

He really should have known better; these were like the near-dogs Marta had met at the West End mines. They were as big as komondors, big enough they needn't take no for an answer. Jaws raked and grabbed at his boots. He fell on his side. This was how they liked it; Wil felt an instant of sheer terror as one of them dived for his gut. He pulled the chair across his body, and the creature veered off. Wil got the next one across its neck with his scepter.

They backed off as Wil scrambled to his feet. Around the side of the rock, the blind ones growled and shouted. The cheerleaders.

So much for the acc chairs. He'd be lucky now to get himself back to the cave.

There was motion at the corner of his eye: He looked up. Unlike dogs, these creatures could climb! The animal picked its way carefully across the rock face, its skinny limbs splayed out in four directions. It was almost to the cave entrance. Della! He stepped back from the rock and threw the comm scepter as hard as he could. The ball end caught the creature on its spine, midway between shoulder and haunch. It screamed and fell, the scepter clattering down behind it. The creature lay on its back, its hindquarters limp, the forelegs sweeping in all directions. As Wil darted forward to grab the scepter, one of its clawed fingers raked his arm.

Wil was vaguely aware of shooting pain, of wet spreading down his sleeve. So the cave was not safe. Even if he could get back there, it would be hard to defend; there were several approaches. He risked another glance upwards. There was another cave still higher in the rock. The approach was bordered by sheer walls. He might be able to defend it.

The sighted ones circled inwards. He pushed the chair under the overhang, then ran to rock face, jumping high. The dogthings were close behind--only this time he had a free hand. He swung the scepter pact their noses then crawled upwards another meter. One of the creatures was climbing parallel with him. Its progress was slow, no more agile than a human's. Was it coming after him — or trying to get to Della? Wil pretended to ignore it. He paused again to swipe at those who harried him from below. He could hear the climber's claws on stone. It was sidling toward him, fingerhold to fingerhold. Still Wil ignored it. I'm an easy mark, I'm an easy mark.

One of the lower dogs bit into his boot. He bent, crushed its skull with the scepter.

He knew the other was less than a meter away now, coming down from above. Without turning his head, Wil jammed the scepter upwards. It hit something soft. For an instant man stared at dogthing, neither enjoying the experience. Its jaws opened in a hissing growl. Its claws were within striking distance of Wil's face, but the scepter was pushing against its chest, forcing it off the cliff. Brierson tucked his head against his arm and pushed harder. For a moment they were motionless, each clinging to the rock. Wil felt his hold giving way. Then something crashed into the dog from above, and its growl became a shriek. Its claws scraped desperately against stone. Resistance abruptly ceased and it fell past him.

But the others were still coming. As he scrambled higher, he glanced up. Something was looking down at him from the cave. The face was strangely splotched, but human. Somehow, Della had beaned the dog. He would have shouted thanks, but he was too busy hustling up the wall.

He hoisted himself over the cave's edge, turned, and took a poke at the dog that was coming up right after him. This one was lucky, or Wil was slowing down: It snapped its head around Wil's thrust and grabbed the shaft of the scepter. Then it pulled, dragging Wil half out of the cave, tearing the scepter from his hands. The creature fell down the cliffside, taking several comrades with it.

Wil sat for a moment, gasping. What an incompetent jerk he was. Marta had lasted four decades, alone, in this sort of wilderness. He and Della had been on the ground less than four hours. They had made all sorts of stupid mistakes, now losing their only weapon. More dogthings were gathering below. If he and Della lasted another hour, it would be a miracle.

And they wouldn't last ten minutes if they stayed in this cave. Between gasping breaths, he told Della about the cave further up. She was lying on her stomach, her head turned to one side. The dark on her face was blood. Every few seconds, she coughed, sending a dark spray across the stone. Her voice was soft, the words not completely articulated. "I can't climb anywhere, Wil. Had to belly crawl t'get here."

They were coming up the wall again. For a strange instant, Wil considered the prospect of his own demise. Everyone wonders how he'll check out. In a policeman's case there are obvious scenarios. Never in a million years would he have guessed this one-dying with Della Lu, torn to pieces by creatures that in human history did not exist.

The instant passed and he was moving again, doing what he could. "Then I'll carry you." He took her hands. "Can you grab around my neck?"

"Yeah."

"Okay." He turned, guided her arms over his shoulders. He rose to his knees. She held on, her body stretched along his back. He was fleetingly aware of female curves. She had changed more than her hair since that day at the beach.

He wiped one hand on his pants. The nick on his arm was only oozing, but there was enough blood to make him slippery. "Tell me if you start losing your grip." He crawled out of the cave onto an upward-slanting ledge. Della massed more than the acc chair, but she was doing her best to hang on. He had both hands free.

The ledge ended in a narrow chimney heading straight up. Somewhere behind them, a firefight glowed. It brought no anxiety to his mind, only gratitude. The light showed breaks in the rock. He stepped in one on the left side, then one on the right, practically walking up the slot. He could see the entrance to the upper cave, scarcely two meters ahead.

The dogs had made it to the first cave. He could hear them clicking along the ledge. If this was easy for him, it was easy for them. He looked down, saw three of them racing single file up the slot.

"Hold tight!" He scrambled for the top, had his arms hooked over the entrance the same instant the lead dog got his boot. This time, he felt teeth come straight through the plastic. Wil swung his leg away from the wall, the animal a twisting ",eight on his foot. Its forelegs clawed at his calf.

Then he had the right angle: The boot slipped from his foot. The dog made a frantic effort to crawl up his leg, its claws raking Wil's flesh. Then it was gone, crashing into its comrades below.

Wil pulled himself into the cave and lay Della on her side. His leg was a multiple agony. He pulled back the pants leg. There was a film of blood spreading from the gashes, but no spurting. He could stop the bleeding if given a moment's peace. He pressed down on the deepest wound, at the same time watching for another assault. It probably didn't matter. His fingernails and teeth weren't in a class with the dogs' claws and fifteen-millimeter canines.

... bad luck comes in bunches. Wil's nose was finally communicating the stench that hung in the cave. The other one had smelled of death, bones crusted with fragments of desiccated flesh; the smell here was of wet putrefaction. Something big and recently dead lay behind them. And something else still lived here: Wil heard metallic clicking.

Wil leaned forward and slipped his remaining boot onto his fist. He continued the motion into a quick turn that brought him up and facing into the cave. The distant firefight lit the cave in ambiguous shades of gray. The dead thing had been a near-dog. It lay like some impressionist holo-parts of the torso shrunken, others bloated. Things moved on the body... and in it: Enormous beetles studded the corpse, their round shells showing an occasional metallic highlight. These were the source of the clicking.

Wil scrambled across the litter of old bones. Up close, the smell stuffed the cave with invisible cotton, leaving no room for breathable air. It didn't matter. He had to get a close look at those beetles. He took a shallow breath and brought his head close to one of the largest. Its head was stuck into the corpse, the rear exposed. That armored sphere was almost fifteen centimeters across. Its surface was tessellated by a regular pattern of chitin plates.

He sat back, gasped for air. Was it possible? Marta's beetles were in Asia, fifty thousand years ago. Fifty thousand years. That was enough time for them to get across the land bridge

.. also enough time for them to lose their deadly talent.

He was going to find out: The dogs were yowling again. Louder than before. Not loud enough to cover the sound of claws on stone. Wil thrust his hands into the soft, dead flesh and separated the beetle from its meal. Pain stabbed through a finger as it bit him. He moved his grip back to the armored rear and watched the tiny legs wave, the mandibles click.

He heard the dogs coming along the ledge to the chimney.

Still no action from his little friend. Wil tossed the creature from hand to hand, then shook it. A puff of hot gas hissed between his fingers. There was a new smell, acrid and burning.

He took the beetle to the cave entrance and gave it another shake. The hiss got louder, became almost sibilant. The armored shell was almost too hot to touch. He kept the insect excited through another ten seconds. Then he saw a dog at the bottom of the slot. It looked back, then charged up the chimney, three others close behind. Wil gave the beetle one last shake and threw it downwards, into the cliff face just above the lead dog. The explosion was a sharp cracking sound, without a flash. The dog gave a bubbling scream and fell against the others. Only the trailing animal kept its footing-and it retreated from the chimney.

Thank you, Marta! Thank you!

There were two more attacks during the next hour. They were easily beaten back. Wil kept a couple of grenade beetles close to the edge of the cave, at least one near the bursting point. How near the bursting point he didn't know, and in the end he feared the beetles more than the dogs. During the last attack, he blew four dogs off the rock-and got his own ear ripped by a piece of chitinous shrapnel.

After that, they stopped coming. Maybe he had killed all the sighted ones; maybe they had wised up. He could still hear the blind ones, down beneath the overhang. The bowling, had sounded sinister; now it seemed mournful, frightened.

The space battle had wound down, too. The aurora was as bright as ever, but there were no big firefights. Even isolated flashes were rare. The most spectacular sight was an occasional piece of junk progressing stately across the sky, slowly disintegrating into glowing debris as it fell through the atmosphere.

When the dogs stopped coming, Wil sat beside Della. The emp attack had blown the electronics in her skull. Moving her head caused dizziness and intense pain. Most of the time, she lay silent or softly moaning. Sometimes she was lucid: Though she was totally cut off from her autons, she guessed that her side was winning, that it had slowly ground down the other high-techs. And some of the time she was delirious, or wearing one of her weirder personalities, or both. After a half-hour silence, she coughed into her hand and stared at the new blood splattered on the dried. "I could die now. I could really die." There was wonder in her voice, and fascination. "Nine thousand years I have lived. There aren't many people who could do that." Her eyes focused on Wil. "You couldn't. You're too wrapped up in the people around you. You like them too much."

Wil brushed the hair from her face. When she winced, he moved his hand to her shoulder. "So I'm a pussycat?" he said.

"... No. A civilized person, who can rise to the occasion.... But it takes more than that to live as long as I. You need single-mindedness, the ability to ignore your limitations. Nine thousand years. Even with augmentation, I'm like a flatworm attending the opera. A hundred responses a planarian has? And then what does it do with the rest of the show? When I'm connected, I can remember it all, but where is the original me? .. I've drifted through everything this mind can be. I've run out of happy endings... and sad ones, too." There was a long silence. "I wonder why I'm crying."

"Maybe there's something left to see. What brought you this far?"

"Stubbornness, and... I wanted to know... what happened. I wanted to see into the Singularity."

He patted her shoulder. "That still may be. Stick around."

She gave a small smile, and her hand fell against him. "Okay. You were always good for me, Mike."

Mike? She was delirious.

The lasers and nukes had been gone for hours. The aurora was fading with the morning twilight. Della had not spoken again. The rotting dogthing brought warmth (and by now Wil had no sense of smell whatsoever, but the night was cold, less than ten degrees. Wil had moved her next to the creature and covered her with his jacket and shirt. She no longer coughed or moaned. Her breathing was shallow and rapid. Wil lay beside her, shivering and almost grateful to be covered with dogthing gore, dried blood, and general filth. Behind them, the beetles continued their clicking progress through the corpse.

From the sound of Della's breathing, he doubted she could last many more hours. And after the night, he had a good idea of his own wilderness longevity.

He couldn't really believe that Della's forces had won. If they had, why no rescue? If they hadn't, the enemy might never discover where they were hidden — might never even care. And he would never know who was behind the destruction of the last human settlement.

Twilight brightened towards day. Wil crept to the cave entrance. The aurora was gone, blotted out by the blue of morning. From here he wouldn't see the sunrise, but he knew it hadn't happened yet; there were no shadows. All colors were pastels: the blue in the sky, the pale green of the grassland, the darker green in the trees. For a time nothing moved. Cool, peaceful silence.

On the ground, the dogthings rousted themselves. By twos and threes they walked onto the plain, smelling morning but not able to see it. The sighted ones ran out ahead, then circled back, trying to get the others to hustle. From a safe distance, and in daylight, Wil had to admit they were graceful-even amusing--creatures: Slender and flexible, they could run or belly crawl with equal ease. Their long snouts and narrow eyes gave them a perpetually crafty look. One of the sighted ones glanced up at Will, gave an unconvincing growl. More than anything, they reminded him of the frustrated coyote that had chased a roadrunner bird through two centuries of comic animation.

In the western sky, something glittered, metal in sunlight. Dogthings forgotten, Wil stared up. Nothing but blue now. Fifteen seconds passed. Three black specks hung where he'd seen the light. They didn't move across the sky, but slowly grew. A ripple of sonic booms came across the plain.

The fliers decelerated to a smooth stop a couple of meters above the grass. All three were unmarked, unmanned. Wil considered scrambling to the rear of the cave-but he didn't move. If they looked, they would find. Loser or winner, he was damned if he'd cower.

The three hung for a moment in silent conference. Then the nearest slid, silent and implacable, up the air towards Wil.