CHAPTER TEN

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A suffused pink glow on his closed lids brought Gunnar Holt into a limbo between sleep and wake. Warm, velvet skin under his hand hooked him into the here and now; still, however, confused identity-wise, he said, "Shesha," and opened his eyes.

Wide, blue-gray ones under level brows looked disappointed. Joanna had every reason to expect he would know her again.

Holt said, "It's morning," heaved himself out of the nest, and padded over to the window. Now it was clear that the farm was sited on rising ground, and there was a long view of the city. Even at the distance, it was incredible that it could have been built by human labor. Seeing it in morning sunlight, Holt could understand that the legend "The dream takes shape" had not been so banal to the men who had planned and carried it out in well-cut stone. They had engineered a mountain, no less.

Now it was a hollow mountain filled with dead, and its gigantic mills were beating to support a race of metal parasites. Even men themselves had not measured up to the grand design. Architecture too big for people.

Shesha ought to have been with him. What had happened with Joanna was an irrelevance. It meant nothing. It was self-contained, with no ongoing commitment; a terminal, not a point of departure. There was still a faint spiral of smoke from the scrub at the foot of the city. Shesha's funeral pyre. They owed him for that, as a personal thing. He, Gunnar Holt, without application in triplicate and an appeal through regular channels, had something to do with his own hands to see that retribution went home. Also, in some sense, he was a representative of the builders of the city. They would not have believed that it could come to this. The mood of the night before, when he had seen the car burst into name, recreated itself.

Joanna, a glowing Boucher nude, came up behind him close enough to touch and breathed delicately on the back of his neck. She might as well have tried tickling an android. Holt said, "Where is your boat?"

It was like an undeserved slap, and a hot flush of color ran from her throat. The effect was all gain, but the iron man had other fish to fry. He left her standing, grabbed up his clothes, and was at the door before she had organized a reply.

He tried again, "Where is your boat?"

"Wait for me. I'll take you."

"I'll be downstairs."

The hall was empty and he went out through a short vestibule, with a reeded glass door, into a courtyard flanked by outbuildings. Carter himself was coming out of a stable through a curious door, split so that the top and bottom halves could move independently.

It seemed a completely bizarre arrangement, unless it was designed for people of different heights. But it was a detail that could wait for analysis.

Carter called across, "We can defend this place. There's an armory here." He led the way back inside like a breeder showing off his prize stock, and Holt was sidetracked from his mission.

The outer wall was reinforced, and horizontal embrasures showed a thickness of at least a meter. It was a blockhouse designed to cover the estuary side of the farm.

People had been busy. Davies and Hadfield—the other Delta survivor—were doing a rapid assembly job on tripod-mounted machine guns of a heavier caliber than anything they had seen before. On a raised platform, there was a console with a long, oblong scanner screen. Carter said, "We can power this board for a brief spell with a hand generator. If the pictographs speak true, there's a minefield around the site. Choice of detonation on pressure or selective control. No joy as of now." Certainly the switchgear was dead. There was an improvised air about the setup that triggered off a line of thought Holt was thinking aloud when he said, "Definitely not part of the original plan. I'd say this was installed within the last twenty years. Taubman making his castle safe against minor civil disorders. Probably came across this obsolete gear in a local dump. It would stop any of the regular android units." Aloud, he went on, "Any idea where this stuff might have come from?"

"Under your feet. There's a natural cave. Stacked to the roof. And a hand-cranked freight loader to bring it up."

"It's not going to do any good against Beta androids. The mines might bury the first wave. After that they'd use their ramps, and these peashooters wouldn't hold them. We have to go another way to work. I want all the mines we can find. Even if it means digging up that lot."

"To do what?"

"There's a sea-going boat. I'll take her across river and work up the outflow channel for the tidal power sluices. I thought at first that I'd sink her where it could block the flow. But this is better. Fill her with explosive and detonate when she's right up that defunct mausoleum's glut." There was a general silence. Davies and Hadfield had stopped working, convinced that it was wasted labor. Carter was looking at Holt with his mouth set in an unsmiling line. When he spoke, it was slow and deliberate. "A Samson syndrome. Pull the bastards down on your head. Don't you want to go on living?"

"As of now, I can take it or leave it. I've backed off as far as I go for androids or anybody else. I'll need help, but I reckon I can take her in the last stretch."

"It owes me. I'll join you. As I recall, there's more than one craft moored in the river. Using two, there'd be a chance to get clear."

"The sooner the better, then. I'm surprised they haven't made a move yet. They must be sure they have us taped."

Davies said, "There's a shelf of manuals down below. Bone up on the mechanics of it. Meanwhile, we'll use the shuttles to ferry the gear you want down to the quay."

"We?"

"Stella can organize the women to help. I reckon we should all go. Like Nick says, use two boats. Then sail down the coast."

"Okay. Find Joanna Taubman and she'll go with the first load. She knows the boat and can pick out another one. Where's the rest of the Alpha set?"

"As soon as it was light, they went on foot. I reckon they weren't trusting a car. One of them has a place up in the hills with a power supply run from a stream. They aim to sweat it out there until the Regional Council takes action."

"A nice friendly lot."

Nick Carter said, "They've had it too soft for too long. We're better off without them. What about the girl?"

She spoke for herself from the doorway, answering Carter but looking at Holt. "We deserve your suspicion. But surely at this stage, there's only one enemy. I'll do all I can to put the balance right." Gunnar Holt said, "That's fair enough. Let's get on with it then." Giving credit where credit was due, Shesha Haddon had to concede that the Alpha girl could handle a boat. Volunteering for the draft, she had gone out to Dolphin in a small bouncy tender launched from the slipway and held steady for her by Joanna, standing calf-deep in surging tidal water. Single-oar rowing from the stem with Joanna standing feet astride and looking out ahead was another new slant. Personal melancholy took a downward spiral. Instead of Holt being sorry in the long term, it was likely that he had found a worthy partner on all counts.

Dolphin, up close, looked bigger than she had expected. She was long and silver gray, flush decked, with a streamlined charthouse and square transom. Sleek and powerful. In spite of the urgency, Joanna Taubman's first care was to break out a blue dolphin pennant from the stern-post as a morale booster. They were in business as a sea power. Then she took the crew into the compact engine room and went into a concentrated session of explanation.

Working together, they established a new bond of respect. Shesha's grasp of information was quick and sure. In five minutes by the chronometer, she had it taped, and Joanna was saying from the companion,

"I'm sorry to give you this job. You could do the navigating; but it would take practice and we haven't time. It has to be this way."

"I understand. I like this. Good luck."

From the charthouse, Joanna signaled for power, and the twin screws began to turn. First, she nosed out to a high-built cabin cruiser with Raven in condensed Gothic on its counter. She was ten minutes taking up the tow, then they were heading in for the quay, where there was a meter of water under the keel and the deck was level with a worn, sandstone parapet.

Raven was hauled in and made fast. Shesha heard Holt's voice directing stowage of the long mound of oval canisters that had grown on the quayside. There was not much to do, with no further calls from the bridge, but she was diffident about meeting him again. Maybe she ought to be helping, though looking out from a small port, it seemed likely that any more hands would be in the way. There was a limit to traffic on Raven's narrow deck. She settled for a folder of pull-out diagrams about the engines under her charge.

It was a long session. Holt drove his working party flat out for two hours, until Raven was inert as a log, with under half a meter of freeboard. Then he made a last trip to the farm with Carter. From the roof, they scanned the long shimmering wall of the city. Nothing stirred. The Director was consolidating progress. Bringing up the bulk of the modules, no doubt, and organizing defense. Carter said, "The bastards are sure of themselves. They don't see us as a menace, and that's a fact." Ready to go, Holt turned to the ground, where the car had hit. There was no smoke, and the wreckage was hidden. Then he saw movement: a column of round, shiny beads, strung out, and moving toward the overgrown sand bars of the estuary. The Beta overlord had spared at least one detachment to carry the final solution to any fugitives in the area.

He handed the glasses to Carter. "They're on their way. Leave the minefield set to detonate on pressure. I've got a hunch it's not going to be as easy as we think to go through the back door." Confirmation came in mid-afternoon when the fleet left shelter and met an authentic swell of a sea that tilted like a plate of wine-dark glass. Holt had taken Hadfield and gone aboard Raven. Her bluff bows lifted tardily and sank deeply into the following trough. Any heavier weather and she would founder. Joanna came around in a tight turn with Dolphin's pennant streaming alongside. "Ditch some cargo. You're too low in the water."

"I'll manage. Hadfield can join you. Go ahead and size up the channel. Save time to know what we have to do."

Hadfield jumped the gap and Dolphin slipped away, building a spectacular bow wave, as the engineer answered a call for Full Ahead.

With even that small weight off her deck, Raven was easier to handle. Holt was glad to be alone. He looked east at the coast, as though it was a new land, that he was seeing for the first time. A flat, dilapidated shore for a landfall. What traveler would believe that it could contain people, and in particular an exotic like Shesha Haddon?

West, there was open sea, and the reality of distance, which had only been an intellectual notion until now. That, and the huge, heroic bulk of the city, were mortar and pestle to grind an individual down to size.

After incredible luck and some exertion, he was alive in the sun, when millions were dead. But the outside, except for its physical splendor, was no greater catch than the microcosm of Horizon Delta. High endeavor was long gone. It was rubbing along on the unconsidered trifles of a past age. Urgent as a log. Only someone who had lived through his kind of personal history could appreciate how he felt Shesha would have been the one. Maybe, even, she would have made it worthwhile to try for a new start. Dolphin was coming back out of a sun that hung like an orange-red disk over a point of the promontory. Carter, using a speaker, called, "We've seen the place. Outfall like a fjord. But there's a boom and a filter system to keep debris out of the channel. It'll take time to get through."

"We have it. Go back and pick out a soft spot. Good chance to try out a mine." Dolphin wheeled away, and a succession of percussive thuds came out across the sea from the harbor they had left. A low pall of dust was shrouding Fairfield Farm. Whatever happened, there would be nothing to go back for.

There was a flash of silver across the high parapet of the city and a car planed out in a direct line for the farm. The Director was sending a spotter to make a survey.

It flew low over the target, then turned out to sea to check on the convoy. Holt saw it veer and shift until it was plumb on Raven's course. Then it was running down the line as if he were standing still. When it was half a kilometer off, he had an intuition of how it would be. They would take no chances. It would be the easiest thing in the world for one of them to lean through the freight hatch and carve the boat into fagots. In fact, any thermal beam that cut two centimeters through any part of the skin would settle the business. Raven would go up like a water spout.

He waited for the last second, judging speeds, and slammed the tiller over for a fall due. Raven toiled around like a half-tide rock, and a boiling white line marked out the reference she had lately filled. The car climbed and banked. Dolphin left her station in a crash burst and came around to meet Raven head on.

By the time the car was set for another run, Dolphin was five hundred meters distant and streaking in on a collision course for the fire ship. It put the car dead on target for Carter, who was sitting with his back to the charthouse, in a driving screen of spray, with a tripod-mounted projectile gun aimed like a fixed cannon over the stemhead.

He began to fire as Holt started a turn, and Joanna held on for a count of ten. In a confused sequence, Holt believed that they were finished anyway. Dolphin was bearing down on him and would strike him precisely amidships. Pieces of the car appeared to be falling off. Noise reached a climax.

Joanna spun Dolphin away on her heel with a centimeter of sea room, and the wash laid Raven on her beam ends. Sea sluiced into the cockpit as Holt fought to turn her head. When the situation stabilized, Raven was still floating with an android arm stuck like a quarrel-bolt in the cabin roof. The car had disappeared. Dolphin was sidling up at zero thrust to see how he had made out. Joanna had a charthouse window wound down and called across, "Gunnar. Do you need help? There's a pump line I can rig."

He could see that even in her role as brisk executive, she was anxious about him.

"Not now. Get to the barrier. Pump out while we deal with that."

"Check."

Dolphin surged away, and Holt, calf-deep in sea water, wondered whether he had judged right. If Raven foundered under him, the project was out like a damp squib. A breeze was coming off the sea from the point. Water was lipping the deck as Raven wallowed along like a stiff tub. Whatever had been heroic in the mission had long gone when he finally tied up to Dolphin's stern and heaved himself aboard to get the sitrep.

The design of the city was as plain as a diagram, with clean-cut lines, seemingly unsmudged by time. The wall was set back a kilometer from the coast, and a broad inlet, at least a kilometer wide, tunneled in to half that width, where the city was carried over it on massive, streamlined piers. At the sea end, there was a semicircular boom that ran from bank to bank in a complete seal. Davies, black hair flattened in a wet skullcap, leaned over the rail to report his findings. He reckoned the depth to the sea bed was not more than six meters. There had been shoaling over the years, and the arch supports were silted up. But there was still a free flow of water in and out of the creek. Distance of the keystones below water was under a meter at this state of the tide.

Other faces made a line, leaning over, watching the reaction. It was plain enough that the size of the operation was beginning to strike home. Enthusiasm for the project was wearing thin. Holt said, "Good work, Hal. We'll blow two arches to be sure. Joanna, get that pump rigged and clear Raven. Nick, you and Hadfield get two mines wired up, I'll go down and look for a site. Get somebody aboard here in case she drifts off."

The astringent buoyancy of the sea was a novelty in itself. On Delta, swimming had been a routine training, but the heated pools had been desalinated. Salt stung his eyes, already oversensitized by natural light, and the massive reservoir of cold drained heat from a deep level. It was an exercise that would have to be brief and sure. He found what he wanted by touch, a shallow recess between two structural ribs that would hold the charge in the head of the arches.

They stood off, Raven farthest away, paying out a thin cable, and Holt detonated the fuses from Dolphin

. For a count of five, he believed that the gear was spoiled and that they were wasting their time. Then the sea erupted in twin columns that swept the decks with spray and lifted a sea like a moving wall. Through the gap, the lagoon was sheltered and the water clear to a sandy bottom. With half the distance gone, Norah Greer suddenly called out from the lee of the charthouse. "Cars. Two, I think. Coming from the farm."

Holt used the loudhailer to Raven. "Head in. All the power she's got. Don't follow us." Nick Carter was already in place with a fresh clip in the machine carbine. Holt took a second gun and went aft. Dolphin began a protective circling movement to screen Raven from a direct run. Now the banks of the channel were noticeably narrowing, and with every meter the city took on greater bulk. Close in, the walls were not so perfect. The years of standing four square to Atlantic gales had taken a toll. Huge patches of discoloration like a blight disfigured the stone. One advantage of the ground was that the cars could only come one way if they aimed to make a low run.

Holt and Carter fired together as the leader tried it, and they saw the plexiglass floor panel drop away in shards. The car climbed to turn out of the narrowing valley and planed down to land on a triangular apron that projected from the wall of the city beside the inlet. The second one appeared to receive new orders. It checked its dive and turned to follow.

Then Holt saw why. Where the tongue of sea probed into the city, there was a broad ledge, like a catwalk, spanning the full width of the gap. From above, the androids could hardly miss. But the computers had it wrong. In going for a certainty, they had missed out human judgment. Raven's observed speed had seemed to be fixed. Holt boosted it by taking up the two and shoving Dolphin along until every dial in the engine room ran into the red.

She fairly surged under the parapet as the first monoped began to trundle along the ledge. From outside, they had all been struck silent by the impeding mass of the wall-rising sheet overhead. Now there was a new factor. The underbelly of the city had a quality that numbed the mind. Joanna switched in a headlight, and the beam probed out a vista of glittering black slime. Through the arches there was a confusing regression of a maze of waterways. The air was dank, cold, and heavy with the stench of marine decay. The chill of it struck to the bone. Even Stella Morton was still, eyes wide copybook patterns for a mime of nervous dread.

The screws lifted an oily swell that hardly broke against the stalactite columns. Vibration loosened a heavy swath of encrusted sludge from the roof, and it fell with a dead smack between the two craft. Some of the atmosphere had already filtered down to the engine room, the noise shoved over a last relay in the engineer's head, and she decided it was time she joined the navigators on deck. Now a sophisticated operator, she set the gear for auto response and went smartly up the companion to the charthouse.

It was already overfull. All hands had crowded in on a bid for human solidarity, and Stella Morton had found her tongue to ask a question that was no help. "What happens if the tide begins to flow through?" She was across the hatch from Holt, and Shesha rose between them. Joanna turning from the wheel for his answer was well placed to see his face.

For a count of five, he believed that the flux was at it again and the phenomenon was strictly in the inside of his own head. Then he lifted her out of the trap as a touchstone that she was solid through. "Shesha! I thought you were in that car."

There was no mistaking the look or the tone. Joanna Taubman turned soberly to her navigating chore.

"Why should you think that?" Banal question and answer, but underneath there was an interchange of knowledge about each other. It did not greatly matter whether the time left was long or short. They were on the same side of the equation.

It was a bad time for sorting out angles. Stella, not as involved, brought him back to the main line. "Will somebody tell me what happens if the tide comes through?"

Holt reluctantly relaxed his grip and faced the speaker. One tiling was suddenly clear to him. Finding Shesha alive made no difference. In the few seconds they had shut out the scene, it was clear enough that he had a vote of confidence at a deep level, however surface ripples might cloud the issue. He said, "Let's hope we don't have to find out. Another ten minutes and we're deep enough in. Keep your fingers crossed or anything else you might think useful."

In the event, he was three minutes in hand. First there was a sense that the tideway was constricting. More echo from the motors was beating back. Then Dolphin's probing beam found a new feature. A barrier wall of sluice gates crossed the way ahead.

Water was beginning to flow sluggishly through the narrow openings between the leaves. Carter said, "The tide's turning. Anytime now the gates will close. Then the reservoir fills up. At some stage they open and the catchment area drains out."

Raven came up alongside, Hadfield and Rosemary Norris—a ginger-haired girl with buck teeth—looked up from the cockpit. Holt needed no pollster to tell him they were anxious for out. The group had gone as far as it would go.

Holt said, "It couldn't be better. We ram Raven into a gap. When she blows, she'll make a hole that nothing could plug." He jumped down to join the crew.

She was two-thirds in a narrowing funnel when she held fast, screws churning in a frenetic burst of overload. Dolphin came up slowly, stem first, to take them off. Hadfield and the girl wasted no time, and the others, lining the deck, waited for Holt. He took his time, making fast the first reel of line. Then he handed it to Carter and climbed in. For the first hundred meters he took it at dead slow, then he allowed a fractional increase, slowing again as the reel emptied.

At the fifth and last reel, light ahead had opened to a narrow bar, and Dolphin was stopped again. Holt said, "That's as far as we can go. Launch the outboard. I'll detonate it from here." Nobody moved. Carter said slowly, "We've worked together so far. There'd be more chance to stick to the power boat and go like hell."

"Not so. We don't know what effect it will have. We can't risk the whole group. You know that."

"Draw for it, then."

"Not so. It's my business."

"We won't let you do it."

Joanna Taubman left the charthouse with Holt's blaster making its own addition to the argument. "Do as he says. Launch the raft or there won't be anybody to detonate anything." She was speaking out of character in a tight voice that showed emotional stress and was clearly programed to carry out what she said.

Even then there was no rush, but Holt helped himself and had the inflated life raft over the side before there was a move. He hauled it on its rope and was ready to pick up the hand generator when the girl spoke again. "Leave it or I'll drop you first. This is my business. If there's blame to be handed out, I should take most. Nothing can turn back the clock, but when you think about it, you'll remember that somebody from Alpha tried to square the account. Stand away."

Holt was moving slowly to make a grab for the gun and had his back to Carter. The blow that took him in the nape of his neck dropped him where he stood, and Joanna stepped over him without a downward look.

From the raft, she said, "Thanks, Nick. I know you understand me. I'll give you five minutes to get clear. If I can get out, I will. This outboard has a fair speed. Good luck." In all, it had taken less than five minutes, and Shesha Haddon, in the engine room, took the call for full ahead as a routine phase of the stop/go sequence that she had been following. Dolphin fairly picked up her foot and slammed off for the distant light.

Left alone on her small swaying platform, Joanna focused her mind on the dial of her time disk. She cut off all thought of what the end product of her action would be. In spite of surface control, her subconscious worked on it and she found she was trembling. She took a small square of silk from her breast pocket, rolled it in a ball, and bit on it. The indicator crawled around. At sixteen twenty-nine on the nose, she began to crank the generator. Gunnar Holt got to his knees and was weaving his head from side to side like a bemused dog as Dolphin stormed from the inlet into the lagoon.

Recall flooded in and he heaved himself to his feet, intent on getting to the charthouse and turning the boat. Then he saw the long arc of the boom.

In the interim, Beta androids had gone out from either shore and spaced themselves every ten meters along its length. Sections of their useful clip-together beams sealed off the gap they had made to get inside. Suicide was unnecessary. The Director had arranged it. Dolphin was neatly centered in a ring of fire.

Carter, at the wheel, had sized it up. There was no chance; but the temporary plug in the dyke was clearly its weakest point. He took Dolphin in a tight turn, with her pennant streaming like a signal for general attack, and lined up for a wrecking run at the android standing in the center. The androids were programed to wait for the good time. Every arm tracked around and picked up the target.

Only Holt looking back, saw the eruption of water and smoke ribbed with flame that sprang from below the city, and the racing bore that fanned out like an instant wall.

Dolphin was picked up like a straw and hurled over the barrier with a clear meter under her thrashing screws. When Carter regained control, they were two kilometers offshore with a wide-spreading oil slick gushing from under the city like dark blood and damping down the sea. The boom was a crazy tangle with slabs poking every which way, and the only surviving Beta android was balanced precariously on a jutting spar and firing conscientiously at the point where Dolphin was expected to be.

Persistence brought some reward. The bright line of the beam blossomed into a red flower where it hit the sea, and fire mushroomed under a black smoke cloud.

Dolphin drifted, with the whole company lining the rail. Shesha stood with Holt, eyes full of tears. "I am ashamed. I was jealous of her. She was a truly beautiful person."

"She did what she had to do. Human solidarity is still a force to be reckoned with." A small patch of white floated under the counter, and Stella Morton fished it in. It was a handkerchief, and she held it out for all to see. There was the outline of a dolphin and J.T. in a neat monogram. She passed it to Shesha—next in line —who hesitated, then handed it on to Holt as the likely guardian of a sentimental relic.

Gunnar Holt weighed it damply in his hand. He needed no aid to memory, and if her liberated ka was knocking about, he reckoned it would understand. He rolled it in a tight ball and threw it overarm into the spreading flames. He said harshly, "Back to your engine room, Shesha. Time to get clear." In the charthouse, he ran a line to the nearest point on the Irish coast. "First we'll go there. Take a little time to think this through. But we'll be back. While there's a city like this left anywhere, because this can't be the only one, we'll be back."

Before it was lost below the horizon, they saw that the whole western sector of the city had folded in on itself. When it was no longer in sight, a broad column of fire, like a beacon, marked the spot. Without power, the Beta androids were dead as any resident on Gamma or Delta. There was no organized force to stop the fire spreading through the whole city. Joanna Taubman had a sufficient funeral pyre. Holt handed over to Nick Carter and went below to join the engineer. Coming behind her, he pinned her against the bulkhead with one hand either side. Shifting a swathe of dark silk hair to speak into her left ear, he said, "I said I'd wait until you were spoiled for choice. That isn't possible. So it might as well be now. What answer do I get?"

It was difficult to turn around, but she managed it, and her eyes saved a formal answer.

"You're trifling with the safety of the ship. Let me go."

When she was free, she set the auto system to Full Ahead and held out both hands, palms upward in the universal mime of acceptance for whatever ongoing course might be set.