Chapter Sixteen

The legs of Sparrow's dragonfly clicked delicately as he set the vehicle down on the shingle beach. Jade-green waters swelled in the sunlight, bubbling over the pebbles. Similar white ruffs in the distance marked other islets.

Above the surf lapping toward the dragonfly hung the image of a swamp, glimpsed as though through a frosty mirror: a discontinuity into Plane Three.

Sparrow's dog leaped from the cradle of his arm. She darted forward and yapped at the waves, then ran back with a curve of foam pursuing her. The omnipresent rustle of water against air and stone thinned the barking to chirps indistinguishable from those of distant gulls.

Sparrow opened his vehicle's side compartments. Ordinary dragonflies were fitted with the electronics necessary for them to carry out the tasks North set his Searchers. Sparrow used the space to haul limited amounts of cargo.

Birds circling the island dropped lower. Their wings were jointed crescents against the clear sky. The metal braces which gleamed like fishscales as the smith and his dog moved drew their interest.

The dog hopped up on her hind legs, snapping at the gulls as opponents she could understand. The big birds shrieked disdainfully, then flared their wings to rise again.

Sparrow laid a ground sheet over the shingle. He took out the first parcel and unwrapped the soft leather covering of a bell-muzzled energy weapon, a mob gun. It had a sling and a short stock, but it could be fired as easily with one hand.

When Sparrow asked Hansen for advice about weapons which were not in use in the Open Lands, the god had suggested this one. Hansen's careful neutrality cloaked obvious doubts about anybody who chose to enter a dangerous situation carrying arms which—however effective in themselves—were not natural to him.

Sparrow set the mob gun on the ground sheet. The second parcel contained a pair of gauntlets. He tried them on. They were massive, heavier even than they would have been if the smith had fashioned them entirely from steel. The wrist flares covered half the length of his forearms.

The gauntlets' thumb and finger joints slid like miniature waterfalls when Sparrow clenched his fists and opened them. He could pick an egg out of a nest and not break its shell.

Sparrow clashed the gauntlets together and laughed. His dog sprinted toward him from where she had been chasing waves.

Her feet spurned pebbles as she barked in concern.

Hansen was right. Sparrow had practiced with the mob gun. He'd been impressed by the way its discharge converted cubic meters of landscape into a fireball . . . but the mob gun would stay here, and Sparrow would wear the gauntlets into Plane Three.

The smith wore a sleeveless shirt and short breeches of undyed wool. His sandals were laced halfway up his calves. They had heavy soles with hobnails, though he didn't suppose the studs would help his footing in the soup to which he was headed.

He'd been in swamps before. He'd killed a bogged mammoth once, moving cautiously because he was as much at risk as the beast which screamed and tried to twist enough to wrap the tiny human in its trunk. The water had been cool, even though it was midsummer when the sun set for less than an hour. Gnats had covered Sparrow like a black skin as he eased forward with his spear poised. . . .

The dog jumped up, barking worriedly as she clawed Sparrow through his thin breeches.

"North gut you!" the smith swore by habit and reached down; but the mass of the gauntlet slowed and reminded him. He rubbed the base of the animal's ears with his armored fingertip, then patted its flank in reassurance before he stepped to the compartment on the other side of the dragonfly.

There was only one object in this compartment. Because of its delicacy, Sparrow had fastened it with dozens of flexible restraints instead of trusting a padded wrapper. Now he undid the clips one by one until finally he removed the ovoid construct of metals and semi-metals grown as monocrystals rather than being pulled through a drawplate.

The wire egg was about twenty centimeters through the long axis and some fifteen across the center of the swell. It flexed slightly and began to glow in the violet-magenta range as the smith held it by the ends.

A pattern of water droplets shimmered above the breaking waves. As Sparrow concentrated, Brownian motion drew a corridor through the mist. Merely a pocket in the fabric of random chance. . . .

Sparrow sighed and hung the probability generator from the pair of hooks he had worked through his supple bearskin belt. The device was as sturdy as he could make it and still retain its powers. It that wasn't sufficient for field use, then Sparrow would succeed without it.

He grimaced. When he used the device, it felt as though a cat drew icy claws across the surface of his mind.

Through the discontinuity, heat bent horizontal waves across horsetails growing from the mud of the swamp. Sparrow flexed his gauntlets. It was tempting to consider letting the dragonfly carry him across the muggy wasteland to his destination—

But the dragonfly would trip alarms all over Plane Three's single continental land mass. They would come for him, the androids, with force he could not withstand.

The discomfort of the trek would be only an incident. Sparrow's face and arms had swollen to twice their normal size from gnat bites after he slew the mammoth in the bog, but he hadn't noticed the insects until after his spear thrust home. . . .

Sparrow stepped into the surf. It foamed suddenly to knee height, then dropped back. The dog ran back and forth along the tide line, yapping frantically.

Sparrow turned. "Come on, then!" he shouted. "Or stay, I don't care. I'll be back for you."

The dog tested the salt water with a paw. A wave licked forward. The animal tumbled over herself scrambling backward. She sat on her haunches and yowled piteously.

"You damned fool," the big smith said. To an outsider, he appeared to be talking to his dog.

He waded back onto the shingle and scooped the animal up in his left arm, cradling her carefully so that she didn't kick the wire egg on his belt. The bitch raised her muzzle and began to lick Sparrow's ear. Her canines were white and powerful.

Sparrow splashed into the surf, carrying the thirty-kilo animal as though she weighed no more than the sunlight on his cinnamon-gold hair. As he neared the discontinuity, frost thickened across its surface. The scene beyond was lost in diffracted light.

Sparrow lurched forward. The waves advanced to meet him, but when they drew back, the man and his dog were gone.