Wizard

31 Heat Lightning

"Just how smart do you think those things are?" Chris asked, watching the lone buzz bomb bank to the left for another high circling pass.

Gaby looked at it and scowled.

"It never pays to underestimate the intelligence of anything you meet in Gaea. A good rule of thumb is to assume it's at least as smart as you and twice as mean."

"Then what's it doing up there?"

Gaby patted the barrel of her borrowed weapon. "Maybe it heard about the one Robin shot down." She looked at the sky once more and shook her head. "But I don't think that's the whole reason. I don't like it. I don't like it at all." She looked at Cirocco.

"Well, you've convinced me. I don't like it either."

Chris looked from one to the other, but neither had anything more to say.

Above, the buzz bomb continued to circle. It seemed to be waiting for something, but for what? Periodically the arrows of the wraiths rained down in flights of three or four dozen. Fired almost straight into the air, the arrows had lost their lethal speed by the time they reached the ground. One had hit Hornpipe in the hind leg. It penetrated five or six centimeters into the muscle: painful, but easily plucked out since the point was not barbed. The barrages seemed designed to keep them pinned down more than anything else. Chris had read somewhere that in a war, millions of rounds were expended for just that purpose. But if the wraiths wanted them to stay put, there must be a reason for it. They were preparing some surprise, or a larger force was on the way. In either case Chris thought the logical move was to make a dash for the cable. They surely would have done so if not for the presence of the buzz bomb.

"Do you think the wraiths and the bombs are working together?" he asked.

Gaby looked at him and did not answer immediately.

"I certainly doubt it," she said finally. "So far as I know, the wraiths have never worked with anybody but other wraiths, and not very well then." But when she looked back at the sky, she seemed thoughtful. She caressed the butt of Robin's gun and trained it on the distant target, keeping it in her sights, coaxing it down with soft, cajoling whispers.

"The arrows have stopped," Valiha said.

Chris had been aware of it for several minutes but had not mentioned it in the illogical fear that the barrage would begin again out of pure spite. But it was true; for the half hour since they had dug their community foxhole the arrows had come in at one- or two-minute intervals, and now they were not.

"Maybe I'm a pessimist," Gaby said, "but I don't think I like that either."

"They could be gone," Hornpipe ventured.

"And I could be a half-assed Titanide."

Chris could contain himself no longer. There was no point anymore in reminding himself that Gaby and Cirocco were much older, wiser, and more experienced in this sort of thing than he was.

"I think we should make a run for it," he said. "Hornpipe is already hurt. If we wait for them to start shooting again, it could get much worse." He waited, but though everyone was looking at him, no one said anything. He plunged ahead. "This is just a feeling, but I'm worried that the buzz bomb is waiting for something. Possibly reinforcements."

He might have expected the Wizard to call him on that one. He had nothing to base it on except the fact that the buzz bombs had acted in concert once, in the attack that had killed Psaltery.

To his surprise, Cirocco and Gaby were looking at each other, and they both looked troubled. He realized that beyond a certain base of knowledge, it was impossible for even the Wizard to know just what Gaea might throw at them next. So many things were possible, and even the things you thought you knew could change overnight as Gaea created new creatures, changed the rules that governed the old ones.

"That's a very lucky man saying that, Rocky," Gaby said.

"I know, I know. I'm not discounting his feelings at this point. I don't have much more to go on, myself. But it could be that's just what that bastard up there is waiting for. No matter how fast we go, he'll have time for at least one shot at us, and the ground out there is flat as a pancake."

"I don't think I'll be slowed down," Hornpipe said.

"I can take care of Robin," Hautbois said.

"Damn it, it's you Titanides who have the most to lose out there," Cirocco shouted. "I think I could dig into that sand in a few seconds, but when you people lie down flat, your butts stick up a meter and a half."

"I'd still rather make a run for it," Hornpipe said. "I don't fancy lying here and becoming a pincushion."

Chris was beginning to think no decision would be reached. Cirocco, faced with two unreasonable choices, had suddenly lost the assurance she had gained during the trip. He did not really think that leadership, in any sense but that of fostering morale, was her strong point. Gaby needed time to gear herself up to assume a role that was basically distasteful to her. Robin was paralyzed, and the Titanides had never shown a tendency to dispute the commands of first Gaby, then Cirocco. As for Chris, he had never been the captain of his childhood sports teams or the one who decided where he and his friends would go or what they would do when they got there. In his troubled adulthood no one had ever asked him to be the leader of anything. But an urge to take control was growing in him. He began to think that if something were not resolved very quickly, this might be his hour at last.

And then, in an instant, everything was changed. There was a deafening explosion, as if lightning had struck no more than ten meters away, followed by the hollow, receding rumble of a buzz bomb.

Everyone flattened reflexively. When Chris dared look up, he saw the silent approach of three more, skimming the tops of the dunes, shimmering and unreal in the heat-distorted air. He pressed his cheek to the sand but kept his eyes on them as they blossomed from points bisected by lines into voracious mouths with enormous wingspans. The wings had a slight camber, so that viewed head-on, they looked like frozen black bats.

They passed overhead at an altitude of fifty meters. Chris saw something fall from one of them. It was a cylindrical object that wobbled through the air to land behind a dune to his left. When the fountain of flame appeared, Chris could feel its heat on his skin.

"We're being bombed!" Cirocco cried out. She had half risen. Gaby tried to pull her down, but she was pointing to a third flight of buzz bombs coming from the northeast. They were far too high for the ramming tactic, and just before they were directly overhead, they lifted slightly, exposing ebony underbellies with landing legs drawn up tight. More of the deadly eggs were released. Hornpipe combined with Gaby to pull Cirocco down just as the bombs exploded, sending a shower of sand over the prone bodies.

"You were right!" Gaby shouted over her shoulder as she leaped to her feet. Chris took little comfort from it. He got up, turned to find Valiha, and was lifted bodily before he quite knew what was happening.

"To the cable!" Valiha called. Chris almost dropped his water gun as she sprang forward. He looked over his shoulder and saw a river of flame running down from the dune behind them, and out of it emerged all the denizens of hell.

There were hundreds of them, and most were on fire. The wraiths were disorganized clusters of tentacles, tangled snarls that bore no resemblance to anything Chris had seen. They were the size of large dogs. They scuttled like crabs, and just as rapidly, all at once with no wind-up. They were translucent, and so were the flames, so that, burning, they became writhing areas of violent light that cast no shadows. Chris's ears were tortured with an almost supersonic screeching and metallic pings like red-hot metal cooling.

"That was great bomb placement," Gaby shouted, suddenly appearing to his right, mounted on Hautbois. The Titanide had Robin cradled in her arms. "It's hard to think the buzz bombs are working with the wraiths."

"I wouldn't count on them being on our side, though," Chris said.

"Neither would I. You got any ideas on what to do next?" She pointed to the sky, where Chris saw two flights of three buzz bombs wheeling around for another pass.

"I'd say keep running," Valiha said before Chris could get anything out. "It looks to me like they're not used to dropping bombs. They had two chances while we were helpless and they missed both times."

Hornpipe and the Wizard had matched the pace of the other two Titanides and now galloped along beside them.

"Okay. But they could change tactics. If it looks like they're coming in low, hit the dirt. And if we're going to run, don't do it in a straight line. And spread out a little. More targets might confuse them."

The Titanides put the orders into effect. Valiha began a zigzag progression toward the cable, totally different from her usual effortless glide. Chris had to hold tight to stay on her back. When the buzz bombs were positioned for another run, she redoubled her efforts, sending up great sprays of sand as she leaned into her turns, hooves churning.

"They're keeping high," Chris told her.

"Good. I'll keep-"

"Turn toward them!" he shouted. Valiha obeyed instantly, and Chris ducked as three bombs sailed over his head, seeming close enough to touch. Yet they hit fifty meters away. Chris saw that he had been right. The momentum of a bomb that fell short could still spray them with the liquid fire. His ears rang, but the main force of the devices was expended in incendiary effects rather than concussion.

"That's napalm," Cirocco shouted as for a moment Hornpipe and Valiha drew close in their erratic paths. "Don't let it get on you. It sticks and burns."

Chris wanted no part of it, sticky or not. He was about to say so when Valiha shrieked and stumbled.

He was thrown forward against her back, hitting his chin and snapping his teeth together. He sat up, spit blood, and looked over her shoulder. Glassy tentacles had wrapped around her left foreleg. They seemed too ephemeral to exert the force that was tearing her flesh and pulling her down into the sand. Yet they were doing it Her knees were already buried.

His hand had no feeling in it as he aimed the gun and squeezed a stream of water over the wraith. It released Valiha, backed off half a meter, and began to shake. Chris thought it was dying.

"The water's not hurting it!" Valiha shouted. She was using her club to flail at the thing. Two tentacles broke off and slithered independently before slipping into the sand. "It's shaking it off."

Chris could see it. Injured, the creature nevertheless began to close on Valiha again. It was a nest of glass snakes. Somewhere near the center, not held to a defined spot, was a large pink crystal that might have been an eye. It more nearly resembled one of the invertebrate chimeras of the sea than any land creature, yet it had the supple strength of a whip.

Valiha reared on her hind legs while Chris held on only by winding his fingers in her hair. She didn't seem to notice. She came down on the creature with her front hooves, reared and did it again, then jumped over the twitching remnant and hit it so hard with her hind legs that pieces were still rising when she leaped forward again.

Chris looked up, and the sky was filled with buzz bombs.

Actually there were no more than twenty or thirty of them, but one was too many. Their pulsing exhaust rattle shook the world.

The next thing he knew, Valiha was kneeling in front of him, shaking his shoulders. His ears were ringing. He noticed that Valiha's hair was singed on one side and that her left arm and the left side of her face were bleeding. Her yellow skin was nearly invisible behind a coat of sand which adhered to the sweat.

"You're not bleeding too badly," she said, causing him to look down and see tears in his clothing and redness beneath. A patch on his pants was smoldering, and he quickly slapped it out. "Can you understand me? Can you hear me?"

He nodded, though he was very shaky. She lifted him again, and he fumbled with his feet, trying to straddle her back. When he was in place, she took off again.

They were only a hundred meters from the first of the cable strands. Just before they arrived, Chris heard a subtle alteration in the sound of Valiha's hooves. Instead of the muffled thumps of deep sand, it was turning into a satisfying clop-clop as they emerged onto hard rock. Soon they were close enough to touch the massive strand. Valiha wheeled around, and they looked out over an empty expanse of desert. Nowhere could they see Cirocco and Hornpipe, Gaby, Hautbois, or Robin. Though they could hear the distant thunder of pulsejets, the sky was clear of buzz bombs.

"Over there," Valiha said. "To the east."

There was a commotion on the sand. Many wraiths created a shifting cloud over something lying motionless.

"It's Hautbois," Valiha said quietly.

"No. It can't be."

"But it is. And over there, to the right of the remains. I fear that is our companion Robin."

The small figure had come into view from around the curve of the cable strand. She was three or four hundred meters from the two of them. Chris saw her stop short of the carnage. She crouched. She put her hands to her mouth, then straightened, and Chris was sure he knew what she was about to do.

"Robin! Robin, don't!" he shouted. He saw her stop and look around.

"It's too late," Valiha called out. "She no longer lives. Come to us." She turned to Chris. "I'm going to get her." He held her wrist tightly.

"No. Wait for her here." It felt like a damnably unheroic thing to say, but he couldn't help it. He kept seeing the tentacles of the wraith pulling Valiha down into the sand. He looked at her legs and gasped. "That thing..."

"It's not as bad as it looks," Valiha said. "The cuts are not deep. Most of them."

It looked awful. Her left leg was covered in drying blood, and at least one of the gashes had torn loose a flap of her skin. He looked away, helplessly, back to where Robin was running toward them. She was unsteady, her legs and arms flying without much control. Chris ran out a short way to meet her and hurried back, supporting her under one arm. She collapsed on the rock, gasping, unable to speak but clutching the hard surface to her like an old friend. Chris turned her over and took her hand. It was the one without a little finger.

"We were here," she finally managed to say. "Here under the... cable. Then Gaby saw the buzz bomb, and ... and it was coming in low. The first one. And she shot it down! And something came out of it in a parachute ... and she ran off after it. The water didn't kill them! They came up right in front of us, and ... and-"

"I know," Chris soothed. "We saw it, too."

"... and then Hautbois ran off looking for Gaby and ... didn't take me. I couldn't move! But I did move, and I got up and went ... after her. She was out there, and then you called me... and Gaby's out there somewhere. We've got to find her, we-"

"Cirocco and Hornpipe are missing, too," Chris said. "But they might be under the cable. You must have come in farther to the west than we did. Cirocco might be in the other direction. We ... Valiha, how long was I out?"

The Titanide frowned. "We were under the cable, too," she said. "We made it to safety, then saw Gaby running alone, and we went to help her, and that is when we were nearly hit. I was out myself for a short time, I think."

"I don't remember any of that."

"It has been possibly four or five decirevs ... possibly thirty minutes, since the bombing began."

"So Cirocco has had plenty of time to make it to the cable. We should search the outer cable strands first." He did not add that he felt sure anyone still out there on the sands was dead.

They all felt a sense of urgency, yet found it difficult to move from their hard-won refuge. They managed to use up some time in the examination and treatment of wounds. Robin was the least injured, and Chris had nothing wrong that a few bandages would not cure. Valiha's treatment took more time. When the torn leg was bound up, she did not seem eager to put much weight on it.

"What do you think?" Chris asked them. "Any of them could be just on the other side of this strand, looking out over the sand, trying to locate us."

"We could split up," Robin suggested. "They'd be around the edge. We could search in both directions."

Chris chewed his lip. "I don't know. Every movie I ever saw, splitting up happened just before the big disaster."

"You're basing your tactics on movies?"

"What else do I have? Do you know more about it?"

"I guess not," Robin admitted. "We have drills for different sorts of invasions, but I don't know how much of that would apply here."

"Don't split up," Valiha said firmly. "Division is vulnerability."

But they did not have time to make the decision. Robin, looking out at the desert, saw Gaby appear over the top of a dune. She was bounding in the long, easy low-gravity lope which no longer looked odd to Chris. He knew it well enough by now to be able to tell she was tired. She was bent slightly, as if favoring a stitch in her side.

She gradually closed the distance. When still half a kilometer from them, she waved one hand and shouted, but no one could hear what she said.

And she could not hear them when all three began to shout frantically, trying to warn her of what she could not see because it was approaching her from behind.

Valiha was the first to start running. Chris followed quickly, but the Titanide quickly outdistanced him. She was still 300 meters from Gaby when the buzz bomb tilted its nose up and released its deadly cargo. Chris watched it tumble slowly through the air, his feet pounding the sand, oblivious to what might be under it. It came down just in front of her, and she threw up her hands as a wall of flame appeared in her path.

She came out of it running fast. She almost seemed to fly.

She was on fire.

He saw her hands slapping at the flames, heard her scream. She no longer knew where she was going. Valiha tried to grab her but missed. Chris did not pause. He smelled burning hair and flesh as he hit her with his shoulder and knocked her sprawling; then Valiha was holding her down as she thrashed and cried out, and Chris used both hands to throw sand on her. They rolled her, held her down, ignoring the pain as their own hands were burned.

"We'll suffocate her!" Chris protested when Valiha pressed Gaby down with her entire body.

"We must smother the fire," the Titanide said.

When she stopped struggling, Valiha scooped her up and grabbed Chris, almost pulling his arm from its socket. He swung onto her back, and she flew toward the cable, holding Gaby, unconscious or dead, in her arms. They caught up with Robin, who had already turned back, just short of the cable strand where they had watched most of the drama. Chris caught her hand and pulled her up behind him. Valiha did not slacken her pace until they were on hard rock again.

She was about to set Gaby down when she looked back and saw yet another buzz bomb on its approach. Incredibly, it was aiming at the cable at high speed, on a course that would deposit its bombs just where Valiha stood. As it nosed up to release them, its engine bellowing at full thrust as it reached for the power to climb fast enough to survive, Valiha headed deeper into the darkening maze of monolithic cable strands.

There were explosions behind them. It was impossible to know if one signaled the death of the buzz bomb. Valiha did not slow down. She raced deeper into the strand forest and paused only when the darkness had deepened to gloom.

"They're still coming," Chris said. He had never felt so hopeless.

Behind them, silhouetted against a thin wedge of sky visible between strands, were the convex slivers of shadow that marked buzz bombs seen head-on. He counted five, knew there were more. One banked right, then left, threading its way through the strands with suicidal speed. There was an explosion far behind them, then one nearer, and the creature roared overhead. In the darkness its blue exhaust flame was once more visible.

There was a monstrous explosion ahead of them, and the cable interior suddenly flared orange. The shadows of the strands danced in time to the unseen flames; then, for a brief instant, Chris saw the broken body of the buzz bomb dropping. Valiha ran on.

A second creature came up behind them, and they heard the crash as a third hit a cable strand to their left. Burning napalm dripped down the strand to splash a hundred meters away from them, like wax from a candle. More bombs exploded ahead of them.

The concussion began to shake large stones and other massive debris from the narrowing spaces between the unwinding strands far above. A boulder as big as Valiha crashed in a shower of sparks twenty meters ahead of them. Valiha went around it as they heard another buzz bomb impact, followed rapidly by two more, punctuated with the lesser sounds of released bombs.

Valiha did not stop until she saw the stone building that marked the entrance to the regional brain of Tethys. She halted, unwilling to enter. Only the driving force of the buzz bombs had brought her this far, into a place traditionally avoided by her kind.

"We've got to go in," Chris urged her. "This place is falling apart. One of those things is going to get us if a falling rock doesn't kill us first."

"Yes, but-"

"Valiha, do as I say. This is Long-Odds Major talking to you. Do you think I'd make you do something that wasn't a sure bet?"

Valiha hesitated one second more, then trotted under the arched doorway and across a stone floor until she reached the beginning of the five-kilometer stairs.

She started down.