Bleys could not tell it. The surface, hidden by tussocks of a dried-out grasslike plant, was uneven, and he quickly discovered that a foot incautiously planted on the edge of one of those clumps of vegetation was likely to slide sideways into a hidden narrow patch of bare dirt. Henry turned to warn the others of the danger of a twisted ankle, and they slowed their pace; but Henry himself seemed to move as fast as before over the broken footing.

The going was made even more difficult in those spots where the tussocks were obscured by the longer, still-green blades of a different plant that sprang up around and among them. Three of the party, at least, quickly found that the green blades were sharp-edged and needle-pointed, able to work their way through the light material of trousers meant for urban wear. The three younger ones began to weave so as to avoid the worst-looking patches, but Henry's strides never wavered from the direct line he seemed to be set on. The others only caught up with him when he stopped.

They came up behind Henry as he looked down on a foot-high block of pale gray granite, roughly hewn on the sides but polished on top. For the first moment, the others stood in a row behind him, but as he continued to stand without sound or movement, they moved up beside him.

A simple cross had been incised into the polished top surface of the stone. Beneath it was a legend:

Here lie 27 men of the Militia of Association, who were blessed with death in the service of our God.

In the silence, a stiff breeze fluted softly among the reedlike weeds. Bleys had prepared himself to deal with some sort of emotional reaction when this moment came, but he found he was numbed, as if his feelings had been removed from his body and deposited on the other side of the planet.

The stone before them seemed to connect to nothing, to be only a neutral and dead object. It had nothing to do with his young cousin—and with that thought, he remembered the day it had been abruptly decided that he, Bleys, must leave Henry's farm and move into Ecumeny.

Will had reached up to hug his tall cousin, and Bleys had returned the hug—so strange a thing for him to do ... and with that memory the reaction Bleys had feared rose up in him after all. But it was far worse than he had imagined, and he was totally unprepared for the chaos that fell on his mind.

It was as if he had been treacherously abandoned by that rational watcher in the back of his head, who in the past had always guided him, shielded him from the dangers of emotional crises, by keeping him separate from the world. His vision blurred, and his mouth flooded with saliva, so that he had to gulp to keep from choking; the effort made his nose burn inside.

His legs trembled with a wild impulse to turn on his heels and walk away, and he knew if he did so he would have to discipline his steps, to keep that walk from turning into a run. He was vaguely aware that his breathing had become rapid and shallow, and he could not seem to order his eyes to come back into focus ... and as he hung there, motionless and struggling, some thoughtless level of his mind futilely tried to pick a tune out of the sound of the wind in the weeds.

His memories, out of his control, skipped from that leave-taking through a series of fragments, bits and pieces that he felt rather than saw: Henry holding a gun on the crowd in the churchyard . .. his mother turning from her mirror to look at him with murder in her eyes . . . the sound of a sword searching for him in a darkened corridor ... They popped into his head and then blew away, without being worked on by his rational mind at all; as if it had all happened to someone else, and he was held immobile, forced to watch someone else's life story.

Looming like a wall behind all those memories lay the searing experience of the night he had received Joshua's letter telling him of Will's death—but that memory, too, was like a story related by a stranger. He could not really remember his emotions of that moment—he remembered the fact of them, and that he had found his fist in the wall of his hotel room; but the emotions themselves were gone, as if consigned to lie here with Will.

He did not want to remember. His mind was a repugnant jumble . . . but his rational watcher still failed to reach out with a comment that could serve as a lifeline to his accustomed control.

Immobilized, afraid to react, he stood there in an agonized eternity ... and after a while he found his mind was noting the way the breeze tugged at his clothing. The tide of emotion had swept over him and passed on; he had survived it unchanged, and could begin to look outside himself once more.

In his peripheral vision he could see motion that was Toni's hair being ruffled by the breeze; something kept him from looking directly at her face. Henry was beyond her, but Bleys did not try⁷ to look at him.

After a few moments, Henry spoke, softly: "Thy will be done— that day, now, and forever."

What remained of the spell broke. Bleys looked at Toni, to see a tear creeping down her cheek. There must have been an earlier one, he thought, because this one was following a moistened track.

Bleys still saw no sign of emotion in Henry's face, or in his body-language.

Henry turned without another word, and started back to their vehicle, Dahno beside him. Toni put a hand on Bleys' arm, holding him back.

"Is this all there is?" she asked. She seemed to be trying to whisper, but anger made her words carry farther than she intended, and Henry stopped and looked back at them.

"What do you mean?" Bleys asked.

"Look at this!" she exclaimed, her arm swinging out in a great semicircle that took in the whole of the weed-overgrown field. "They buried these young men and just went away, and no one even bothers to—to mow these, these weeds!'"

She blinked, looking up into his face, her eyes filling with moisture.

"They never even put those boys' names on that stone!" And she sobbed, once, so quietly that it seemed almost a gulp.

As Bleys stood there, at a total loss for words, Henry spoke.

"I know you speak out of your heart, Antonia," he said. "But you are mistaken."

He shook his head, a gentle smile on his face.

"Such things as this monument are mere vanities, placed here as a sop to our weaknesses," he continued. "These young men need them not. They have carried out their duty to the fullest extent of their abilities, and now rest with their God, Who is well-satisfied with them. And His embrace is all they need."

He smiled directly at Toni, raising a hand—almost in blessing, Bleys thought.

"If these young men lay in unmarked graves," Henry said, "unknown to all the human race, it would make no difference. For the Lord knows them, and that is all that will ever be needed."

He started to turn away; but stopped once more, turning to look at Toni again.

"I understand that your concern is for me, Antonia," he said. "And I would not have you think me ungrateful. But there is no need for concern in this matter. God has blessed my human weakness by bringing me to this place, for some purpose of His own. I am grateful, yet it changes nothing."

On their way back to their vehicle, its driver popped out of its door, waving at them.

"Hurry!" she yelled. "Move it! Emergency!"

Seeing them speed up, she turned back to the limousine; and by the time they reached the vehicle its doors were open, the engine was running, and a comm channel was being piped through to the rear compartment's speakers.

"—not return the way you came," a voice was saying. "We're working out the fastest way to get an escort to you, but get moving right now! Go north, and then take the first east you come to. By that time we'll have instructions for you."

"I've got it," their driver said. She looked back at her passengers through the now-open privacy window that usually screened off the rear compartment.

"Secure yourselves," she said; and almost immediately a burst of acceleration blew them up above the roadway and down it in the direction they had been facing, the initial cloud of dust their fans threw up quickly dying down behind them as they rose to greater height.

"Driver, what is it?" Bleys asked. He put into his question all the authority he could muster, not wanting to let her take total control of the situation.

"Your convoy was attacked," the driver said, keeping her attention on the forward windscreen. "A bomb blew up the front of the Hotel Monaco as your convoy drove up. The government's sending an escort to take you to a safe place."

"Is there any word on casualties?" Toni asked.

"No one told me anything about that," the driver said. "Hang on—turn coming up!"

She took the turn at speed and managed to keep control even though they slid far enough off the roadway to bounce off the fence on their left side.

"Carl," Bleys heard Henry's voice say from beyond Toni, "what is your situation?" After a few seconds Henry's second-in-command answered:

"Henry, we're all right," Carl said. "A few bumps and bruises, but the blast occurred before we had fully pulled up, and we were partly shielded by a local delivery van ... there were a number of casualties among the locals."

"God be with them," Henry said. "We need a rendezvous. I understand—"

"Get off the air now!" a new voice interrupted them. "This is Area Command, New Francisco, ordering you to stand down and maintain radio silence!"

Bleys gestured Henry to silence even as he leaned across Toni's front to grasp his uncle's left wrist and lift it before his own face.

"This is Bleys Ahrens," he said, using his authoritative voice, "First Elder of the United Sects of Harmony and Association. We are here—" He was cut off.

"We understand, First Elder," the voice replied. "An armed escort is on its way to you now, and we request that your—" The voice paused for the briefest of moments. "—staff please avoid interfering with military operations."

Henry reached over to silence the comm link.

"They mean it," he said. "They've been embarrassed."

"So what should we do?" Bleys asked.

"Nothing," Henry replied. "Carl can't beat the military to us, so we might as well cooperate." "Do you need to tell Carl that?"

"No," Henry said. "He'll understand what to do—interactions with the military are always included in our contingency planning."

"So he'll just wait for the military to reunite us?" Bleys asked.

Henry touched the control that closed the window into the driver's compartment, then reached under his seat for the traveling case in which he carried a variety of useful items. He quickly pulled out a monitor and scanned for listening devices, then activated its inhibiting field, just in case; he had scanned the vehicle before they entered it, but they all understood he was determined to take no further chances.

Next to him, Dahno reached into a pocket and pulled out a small silver device. He held it out before the rest of them, looking a question at them.

"No," said Bleys. "Not here and now. It's not really meant for a confined space like this."

Bleys was referring to a device they had obtained on Newton, some time back. Activated, it would generate a force-bubble preventing anyone from overhearing their words.

"Yes and no," Henry said a moment later, responding to Bleys' question. "Carl and a number of the Soldiers will likely stay visible enough to let the locals think they've got them under control; but he'll probably send some of them undercover—perhaps with the aid of some of the people from Favored of God, who of course are not known to be with us—and put them to monitoring our situation at a distance. And he'll already have alerted the people we left in Ceta City."

"All right," Bleys said.

"Can we trust these military people?" Dahno asked.

"No," Henry said. "Not in everything. But chances are very good that whoever planted that bomb had no backup attack ready to go. It will have taken them some time just to learn they didn't get you, in any case—and they won't know where you are unless they have ears in the military."

"Which they might," Dahno said.

"Which they might," Henry agreed. "But until we return to an urban area and some independent transportation, we have no better option."

"We need to figure out who would have done this," Dahno said. "Yes," Bleys added. "And we need to think about changing our plans."

"Security is what we need above all," Henry said. "I have a few ideas...."

They spent the next twenty minutes comparing ideas and making plans, breaking off when the driver signaled for their attention.

"You probably can't hear it because of the soundproofing back there," she said over the intercom, "but we've got two helicopters overhead. Our escort is here."

"Are you sure they're with our escort?" Dahno asked.

"It's confirmed by Area Command," the driver replied. "They tell me the armored cars will be coming into sight in a moment." After a moment's pause she spoke again.

"They're serious," she said. "I mean, there aren't very many helicopters on the whole planet. They're just too expensive and too vulnerable. ..."

"I know," Bleys said, hoping to forestall a lecture on the shortage of metals on the Younger Worlds. "Are we going to stop here?"

"No," said the driver. "I've been told to just keep going, and they'll fit the escort in around us as we go."

As she spoke, the ground component of their escort came into sight ahead of them; and by activating the video screen that gave them a forward view, those in the passenger compartment were able to watch as the first four armored cars pulled off the roadway, leaving a lane up which their limousine could proceed without slowing. Ahead of them, the last four armored cars in the group could be seen spinning end for end, to take up station preceding them and accelerate.

CHAPTER 8

The escort sent by the New Franciscan government led them to a small town about seventy kilometers from the burial site, where they stopped in a public park that was bordered on two sides by the town's tiny commercial district. As their escort's weapons menaced the nearby buildings, it was strongly suggested they abandon their limousine and proceed, riding inside the armored cars, to the security of a government facility.

Bleys' initial refusal raised enough consternation among the New Franciscans that no one noticed when Henry slipped away; in fact, Bleys, Toni and Dahno went on to make such a production out of agreeing to be split up for the trip, and then of agreeing on a destination, that Henry was not missed when they all loaded up and left town.

As they drove away Bleys could see their limousine being left behind, its driver casually lounging on a small bench nearby. She had removed her dark green tunic, perhaps because of the warmth of the sunlight, and her white shirt gleamed in the brightness, startling above her green livery trousers.

Too casual, he thought.

On their arrival at the border with Andrade, a neighboring state, they were met by officials of the governments of both Getan states, as well as by people from the nearest Friendly consulate. No one seemed to know who had carried out the bombing, and it was not even considered certain that it had in fact been intended for Bleys and his party. But the assembled officialdom agreed it would be the wisest course for Bleys to withdraw from his itinerary and return to the safety of Ceta City.

Bleys, however, insisted that his visits to the troops would go on; and at last, as a concession, he agreed to alter the originally scheduled order of the visits, and to accept the military escorts that would be provided by the governments of every state they entered.

"The last thing I want is for these people to hover over me," he told Toni. "I still have work, to do here."

Bleys' bodyguards could be brought along, they were told, if they agreed to be disarmed. Bleys declined the offer, pointing out that unarmed bodyguards were of little value. However, he requested that at least two of his staff people, along with his personal medician, Kaj Menowsky, be allowed to join them; but that request had been anticipated, and three of the staff arrived even as they prepared to leave.

Kaj Menowsky, the staff reported, had been concussed in the bombing, and had been hospitalized. Such medical care as Bleys and his party might need, the locals informed him, would be immediately provided by their hosts.

Unwilling to explain about his unusual medical condition, Bleys decided not to press the issue.

Early the next morning they were placed aboard a shuttle that took them more than a third of the way around the planet, arriving late in the day at a sizable, and well-guarded, encampment of Friendly Militia. This visit was kept out of the Cetan media, but was recorded for later broadcast; and thereafter they spent the night in the secure, if less than luxurious, midst of the troops.

In the morning they moved on in a couple of civilian vehicles, again surrounded by an escort provided by the local government.

It was only after they had left the Friendly unit some distance behind that trouble arose once again.

The Cetan state they had spent the night in, the Solomon Hills Republic, although an independent entity, had been part of an alliance during the recent war; and since the allied states had acted together in hiring the Friendly troops that had bolstered their own military establishments, units of those Friendly forces were deployed in a number of locations. But the escort the Cetans insisted on providing was made up of local troops; no one, Dahno suggested wryly, wanted armed Friendly troops moving freely about the countryside, for all that they were supposed to be on the same side and there was a truce in place.

They were roughly halfway to the unit they were to visit next when their escort, a full company from the best mechanized infantry division among the Solomoni forces—or so they had been told—came to a halt, pulling off the wide, paved trafficway to park in a lushly green field, one of the few flat spots in a region of low, rolling hills. Bleys, Toni and Dahno climbed out of their limousine, hoping to learn why they had stopped.

In a few moments they were approached by the captain in charge of their escort, an older man who had largely ignored his charges up to this point. Now he seemed pleased to report there had been a flare-up in the fighting nearby; he was, he said, taking his unit off in pursuit of a party of raiders that had just attacked a small outpost behind the line of truce. For the protection of Bleys and his party, he was leaving them two armored cars—and also sending the two civilian limousines back; Bleys and his people were to continue the trip inside two armored troop carriers.

The company had formed itself, and the two limousines were vanishing down the road, when the captain returned to speak to them one last time, a nasty grin on his face.

"I didn't trust those people from the beginning," he said. "And now they're gone I'll tell you your escort is going to change its route, too. You're going off the road and directly cross-country toward your destination. These ducted-fan vehicles don't need the road, so while it'll be a little uncomfortable, you'll be safe."

He turned away, ignoring attempts to engage him in a dialogue, and strode aggressively over to his command vehicle. Ducking inside it, he immediately popped out of the hatch in its topside, giving a hand signal that started the unit in motion.

The company was already disappearing over a thinly treed rise when an apologetic junior lieutenant appeared, to repeat that they were ordered to leave the trafficway. He shepherded them into the two troop carriers; and in moments the vehicles rose on their fans and crossed the paved road, tilting alarmingly for a moment as they slid down the embankment on the other side, before leveling out on the rock-strewn terrain that fell away unevenly from the road.

Inside one of the carriers, Bleys found himself becoming distinctly uneasy. Dahno was clearly thoroughly irritated by these events, as well as by the cramped, dusty conditions, but Toni, Bleys saw, was calm and watchful.

They shared the carrier's center compartment with six young soldiers; and all of them were reduced to perching on the small benches that lined the carrier's interior, their hands clutching straps as the vehicle, for all that its fans kept it above the rough ground, bounced and swayed in crossing the terrain at a relatively high speed.

Bleys was beginning to wish his medician had been able to join them. He could feel a headache coming on, accompanied by a sick, feverish achiness. Apparently it showed enough that Toni was concerned about him.

Bleys tried to make an unobtrusive check of his wristpad, to be sure it was continuing to emit the periodic homing signals Henry had suggested. He noticed that Dahno and Toni did the same thing.

They appeared to be making good time, but the young officer now in charge of this detachment was in one of the armored cars, and would not communicate with them beyond having a subordinate tell them they were less than an hour from the Friendly unit they had intended to visit next.

Bleys' feeling that something was wrong got all the confirmation it needed when the lead armored car exploded ahead of their own vehicle. The blast front caused their own carrier to rear like a frightened animal and then plunge down the side of a narrow gulley; they never learned whether the driver did so in order to avoid further attack, but as they went over the edge a bolt from some sort of power weapon caved in the roof above them, despite its armor.

The carrier hit bottom almost on its side, but Bleys managed to hang on to his strap, to avoid falling across the width of the vehicle's interior, while swinging out an arm to help Toni keep her seat on his left side. Across the vehicle, Dahno had been thrown back against the wall, entangled with soldiers who were thrown at the wall in the same moment.

The gyros whined, righting the carrier enough that the fans could level it out, and the vehicle began to move forward down the length of the gulley. But almost immediately a series of bolts slammed into its front, opening the driver's compartment and shredding its interior, and its crew, back to the firewall that protected the passenger compartment. All power went off, and the vehicle settled to the dirt floor of the gulley even as it nosed into the bank on their right side.

Dahno pushed a body away and lunged for the hatch's manual controls, but Bleys grabbed his shoulder, trying to hold him back.

"I don't think it's a good idea to go out there," Bleys said.

"We have to," his brother shouted. "We're sitting ducks in here!"

"At least in here we have some armor," Bleys said. He was trying to keep his voice low so as to defuse the emotions they were all feeling now.

"That won't last long," Dahno said, more quietly. "There's only one exit left here, and if it's not already covered it soon will be. Outside, we might be able to make it to some cover."

Before Bleys could respond there was a sudden burst of firing from above them. "That's coming from where we fell over the side," Toni said.

"Yes," Bleys said. "And it doesn't seem to be directed at us."

"It's the other armored car," one of the young soldiers said. He was looking out now through one of the weapons apertures from which their vehicle, although now disabled, could normally be defended. With the power off, the video screens were no longer working, but there was light both from the emergency lighting system and a narrow opening where a seam in the distorted roof had pulled apart.

As the soldier ceased speaking they could hear a rapid series of ticking noises, like an irregular drumroll on the side of their vehicle. The soldier ducked down, turning to look for instructions, or perhaps reassurance; the corporal in charge of their detail had struck his head in the fall, and was just starting to regain consciousness.

"Cone rifle fire," Bleys said; and Dahno sat back down.

"It can't possibly penetrate our armor," Bleys said reassuringly; and at that moment they heard a renewed series of bolts from the power cannon of the armored car. The cone rifles went silent.

In a moment there came a loud rapping on the hatch of their vehicle. Bleys reached for the manual override.

"It'd better be our guys," Dahno muttered.

Bleys chose not to respond as the hatch unsealed, then popped forward in its track and slid to the side.

"Are you all right, sir?" It was the young lieutenant who had been refusing to speak with them, now looking in at them from the brightly sunlit gulley floor.

"Yes, Lieutenant, I think so," Bleys replied. "What's the situation, please?"

"We've been attacked," the young man replied. Then he blushed.

"Of course you knew that... I'm sorry." He seemed, Bleys thought, to have loosened up with the action.

"Don't be," Toni said. "We're very glad you got to us before those people managed to open us up."

"Is anyone hurt in your carrier?" the young officer asked.

"I don't know about the people up front," Bleys said, "but your soldiers were tossed around, and the corporal's just coming to—"

"I'm fine, sir," the corporal said from somewhere behind Bleys.

"I'll take a report in a minute," the lieutenant said; and turned his gaze back to Bleys.

"I think this vehicle isn't going to be moving for a long time," Bleys said. "We need to transfer to another vehicle and get away from here, unless you're confident you've driven off whoever attacked us."

"That's not going to be easy," the young officer said. He seemed to have recovered his composure. "Our communications are jammed, and the only vehicle we have left is my armored car, which can't hold all of us."

"Where are the enemy?" Bleys asked.

"My sergeant is out scouting right now," the lieutenant said.

"Have you taken many casualties?" Toni asked.

"Yes," the officer said, his face tightening and turning a little pale. There was a sort of longing in his eyes as he looked at Bleys, as if he were wishing that the uncomfortable questions were coming from a superior officer rather than a female civilian. "They took out the lead armored car with some sort of rocket, and another one took off the back half of the other troop carrier. Sergeant Lemoyne got out of it, along with about a dozen men, a couple of them wounded. One of your staff people got out, too, but I'm afraid he ran right into the sights of the cone rifles." "Oh, no ...," Toni said softly.

"What do you suggest we do?" Bleys felt he had to ask, despite being unsure of how much he could trust this young officer's judgment.

"Your party will get inside the armored car immediately," the lieutenant said. "We can get some, possibly all, of the wounded in with you. We'll have to take a chance and send the car off in whatever direction seems to be safest in light of my sergeant's report."

"And the rest of you?" Toni asked.

"That will depend on the situation." The lieutenant was evading her question, Bleys thought. His estimate of the young man began to rise a little.

"Meaning you intend to leave some of your force—including yourself, I suspect—behind," Toni said flatly.

"They may be needed to provide cover," the lieutenant said. "And the car would have to be slowed to a walking pace if it tried to stay with us. Speed is your best defense, I think."

"He's right, Toni," Dahno said. She looked dissatisfied, but had no response.

"Sergeant Lemoyne is coming back, sir," a soldier yelled down from above the gulley.

"In any case, let's get you up to the car," the officer said. As they scrambled out of the hatch he directed a couple of his men to help them climb the gulley side, using a narrow, less steep, connecting ravine.

Their escort, making use of power pistols to blast a series of shallow steps in the steeper parts of the slanting walls, soon had them up on the rolling grassy surface from which they had fallen. As Bleys, the last one up, came over the edge, he could see the smoldering wrecks of the two ruined vehicles, as well as several sprawled bodies. He also saw the lieutenant return a salute from his sergeant, who turned away and began organizing the nearby soldiers.

"If you would all get in the armored car, please?" the lieutenant said.

"What did your scouts find?" Bleys asked, ignoring the order for the moment while waving Toni and Dahno forward.

"The enemy seem to be in force back the way we came," the officer replied. "And we expect they'll be looking for us to continue on the shortest line toward protection—the way we were going, I mean."

"That's to be expected," Bleys nodded.

"Yes, sir," the lieutenant said. "So I'm sending the armored car on a perpendicular axis to the right of our line of travel. That will take you over the rise there—please don't look in that direction."

"You think someone might be watching us?" Bleys said.

"Frankly, I don't," the officer said. "But I'd rather not take chances."

Bleys nodded, impressed.

"Please continue," he said.

"This area was fought over last year," the lieutenant said. "That was before I was activated, but the sergeant went through this area during that campaign, and he believes there were some light fortifications in that direction. There might be a chance of finding some landlines we can tap into and call for help; and if nothing else, it might give us a place where those of us on foot can be under cover while the car moves on to send back help."

"All right, Lieutenant," Bleys said. "Tell us what you want us to do."

"Get into the car, please," the officer said.

"Are you coming with us?" Bleys said. He was pretty sure he knew the answer by now.

"No," the young man said. "I'll stay with my men."

"Aren't you afraid someone might say you should have stayed with the people you were assigned to protect?" Bleys was now genuinely curious, intrigued by the unexpected maturity he was seeing in this very young officer.

"No," the man said now. He looked at Bleys more closely. "I don't think you're asking that to try to get me to go with you, are you?" he said.

"No," Bleys said, "I'm not."

The young man nodded, seeming satisfied.

"We're leaving the car in the hands of its normal crew," he said. "The rest of us are going to fan out in a double arc to provide cover when the car takes off. I'll take charge on one side of the arc, Sergeant Lemoyne the other."

"I'll leave you to your work, then, Lieutenant," Bleys said. He nodded, and turned to climb into the armored car. In the doorway he paused, looking back at the young officer, who was already moving away.

CHAPTER 9

The inside of the armored car was crowded, and Bleys, Dahno and Toni, all wearing bulky blast protection jackets, were confined to the vehicle's central well. The two tall men had to stand, crouching under the hatch that opened to the car's topside. Toni had been given a padded helmet, but there were none large enough for the heads of the two men. Dahno's protective jacket would not close over his chest.

The six wounded soldiers had taken up so much space that the car's driver and one gunner were the only healthy soldiers who could be fitted in. The driver was carrying out his orders to move as fast as he could, with the result that everyone was tossed about, the conscious among the wounded crying out involuntarily at the worst bounces.

The speed did them no good. They had gotten less than a mile when an explosion tore up the front of the armored car, bringing it to a sudden halt that threw everyone around, and leaving it tilted sharply down toward the front.

Toni, who had been sitting awkwardly on the coated polyfiber floor at Bleys' feet, was pitched sideways into his legs, and he fell over her, taking a blow on the side of his head from the edge of the central well; but he managed to get his arms down as he fell, taking most of his weight on them rather than on her. The car began to fill with smoke.

Bleeding from a cut on the side of his head, Bleys regained his balance and pulled himself over Toni and between two of the wounded soldiers, who appeared to be unconscious. Reaching the hatch at the rear of the armored car, he threw it open and scrambled out, turning to help Toni, who had crawled right behind him and,

lying on her stomach partially out of the car, was scrabbling to pull herself through the tilted hatchway. He set her on her feet and reached back to give Dahno a hand as he dragged an unconscious soldier to the opening.

"What about the rest of them?" Bleys asked.

"The driver's dead," Dahno replied, stooping forward to get his head out into the cleaner air. "And most of the others were closer to the driver's compartment and took more of the blast than we did ... I think there can't be more than one or two still alive—" At that moment a secondary explosion rocked the vehicle again, pitching Dahno out the hatch onto Bleys, who, hampered by his hold on the wounded man, was knocked down again. A fresh wave of toxic smoke poured from the hatch.

"Forget it!" Dahno yelled now, struggling to his feet. "I think some ammunition went off, and between that and the smoke, no one can be alive in there anymore."

"Over here!" Bleys heard Toni call. He needed a moment to locate her.

She had found a cluster of low, flat rocks and was crouching in an opening between two of the largest of them, waving at them. Bleys and Dahno scrambled over the rough ground in her direction, struggling to carry the dead weight of the unconscious man between them; and threw themselves down into whatever low spots they could find among the rocks, just as cone rifle fire opened up from beyond the smoking ruin of the armored car.

"We're in trouble now!" Dahno gasped. Incredibly, he sounded almost cheerful about it. Even as he spoke there was a new burst of firing—this time from power weapons. They ducked as low as they could and kept quiet, but Bleys was unable to keep himself from trying to look in the direction from which the firing had come.

In a few minutes he was rewarded by the sight of soldiers led by the young lieutenant. They came on rapidly in a skirmish line that swept to and beyond the ruined vehicle, spreading out in a great arc about Bleys' position. The lieutenant turned and began to trot in Bleys' direction; but when he saw Bleys looking at him, he stopped and waved for them to move toward him, half-turning to point in the direction in which their vehicle had been heading, at a small ridge that made the horizon seem startlingly near.

"There's a trench and a bunker just over that rise," he yelled as Bleys stood up. The young officer had lost his helmet and his face was smeared and dirty, as if he had been thrown into the dirt repeatedly. The whites of his eyes stood out against the dirt, seeming to be wide-open and glaring. He turned to trot in the direction he had indicated.

"Come on!" Bleys said, turning to look for Toni. She was already up, and Dahno was rising, trying to pull the wounded soldier up with him. Bleys stepped over to help, and found himself interrupted as several more soldiers showed up, rounding the rocks to both sides of the civilians.

"Thank you, but we'll take care of him," one of the soldiers, a corporal, said. "Head for the lieutenant, there. We'll be behind you."

"Thank you," Toni said; and for a short instant Bleys marveled at the politeness everyone was displaying. Toni pulled at his arm, and he found himself running beside her. Turning his head, he saw Dahno—not exactly running, but moving at a fast walking pace that managed to cover ground effectively. He seemed to be breathing hard. The small group of soldiers behind them were also in motion, but more slowly.

The lieutenant and several of his men had stopped, crouching cautiously at the top of the rise and apparently trying to ascertain what might be on the other side. As Bleys ran he saw three of the soldiers get up, trot over the top of the rise, and disappear. Their officer waited, looking back as his three civilian charges neared, puffing.

"Just wait here for a moment," the lieutenant said. "My men are checking out the bunker ahead."

"Will we use that, if it's safe?" Toni asked.

"I don't think we have much choice," the lieutenant said, looking back in the direction from which they had come. They turned to look with him, in time to see a line of armed figures close in on the armored car they had just left. Some of the figures raised long, slim weapons, and cones began whistling in their direction.

Bleys found himself being pushed backward, over the top of the rise; and looked to his side to see that the young lieutenant had him by one arm and was yelling at him ... strangely, Bleys could not seem to understand what the man was saying.

That realization jolted his mind back into action, and he turned his back on the enemy and plunged ahead in great lunging strides that totally cleared much of the most uneven parts of the reverse slope. He could see Toni and Dahno a short distance ahead of him. Toni was looking back at him frequently as she ran, which slowed her down to Dahno's pace; and Bleys was catching up to them quickly.

"Keep your eyes forward," he yelled at her, waving one hand as if to push her faster. He wanted to tell her they could not afford it if she lost her footing, but he had no breath to spare.

The two ahead of him were nearing a kind of ditch, above which two soldiers were standing, waving them ahead.

Bleys had lost track of the lieutenant again, but another soldier, a very young woman, had caught up with him—he could hear her gasping as she ran, hampered by the kit that bounced at the top of her back every time a foot hit the ground. But she turned to look into his face as she drew ahead of him, and grinned. He realized he was grinning back.

Ahead of them, Toni and Dahno had reached a ramp that sloped down into the ditch. The two soldiers he had seen before were coming back in Bleys' direction, their weapons, held diagonally across the fronts of their bodies as they ran, looking like black slashes over their mud-stained gray-green uniforms. A third soldier had appeared, and seemed to be giving directions to Toni and Dahno as he headed back past them, toward Bleys. Toni and Dahno both stopped, looking back.

At that moment whistles ripped the air above him. He recognized them as a close hearing of the distinctive sounds made by the shaped propellants packed inside the long, slim, hollow needles fired by cone rifles. Something thumped the back of his blast jacket, and instinctively he tried to duck as he ran; but he lost his stride, almost falling sideways into a low patch of thorny brush. To his right and a bit ahead of him, the young soldier who had just passed him seemed to jerk in midstride, blossoms of bright red growing in two places on the back of her right thigh, below the hem of her uniform tunic. She buckled at the knees, and fell, her weapon flying off in front of her as if thrown, to tumble down the slope for a few feet, until its momentum died on the rough ground.

Bleys recovered his balance and lunged forward, reaching the young soldier even as the three soldiers who had passed Toni and Dahno ran, gasping, past him, heading back up the slope.

As he reached the wounded soldier, Bleys became aware he was winded, breathing now in great sucking gasps while clawing to clear sweat that was clouding his eyesight. He crouched beside the young woman and found her still conscious, and cursing. Her helmet had stayed on, but as he bent down one of her hands clawed at its catch, then threw it to the side before reaching back to paw futilely at the back of her thigh.

"Come on!" Bleys gasped, trying to yell. "You can't stay here!"

For a second she looked at him, her blue eyes wild and glaring; and then the skin around those eyes seemed to relax a little. She grinned again, and started to say something—but at that moment there was a loud outburst of power weapon fire behind them, and as one they looked back.

At the top of the slope behind them, a long line of their pursuers had appeared, strung out along the crest. Bleys did not try to count them, but he guessed there might be several dozen of them. He saw arms pointing in his direction, and then they leaped in pursuit down the slope . .. but now they had walked into an ambush themselves, as the young lieutenant and his men, using whatever cover they could find in the uneven terrain, had successfully avoided being noticed until the enemy had skylined themselves, within easy range.

"We've got to go!" Bleys yelled at the wounded soldier. It escaped his notice that his windedness of a few moments ago was gone. She turned to look back at him, and nodded; but when she tried to rise, she cried out, grimacing in pain.

Beyond her, Bleys saw, Toni was coming back toward them. He raised one arm and waved it, making a pushing motion as if trying to physically push her backward into the ditch. She stopped, and he rose up, pulling the young soldier with him by her shoulder, with a grip on the cloth of her uniform. The soldier cried out again, but then broke off the cry and pushed herself up from the ground; and together they began to stumble down the last portion of the slope toward the ramp.

Behind them, the power weapon fire had broken off; but he had no energy to spare for a look back. He was having to hold the soldier up as they moved, and she seemed near to passing out. Someone yelled behind him, and as he reflexively turned to look over his shoulder he lost his grip on the soldier; she slid down to the ground, giving a short cry.

Toni was running up the ramp as he reached down for the wounded woman, but even as he got a good grip on her weapons harness, Dahno appeared, seeming to pull the young woman up from the ground as effortlessly as some trained weightlifter might snatch a set of weights in a match.

"You're going to get us all killed yet!" he said; and turned, cursing, to stride down the ramp with the young woman in his arms. Toni reached Bleys and grabbed his arm.

"I'm fine!" he gasped. "I'm fine! Go!" He pushed at her, trying to turn her around and propel her ahead of him; but they ended up hurrying down the ramp and into the shelter of the ditch side by side. Ahead of them, Bleys could see his brother's broad back nearly filling the space between the vertical walls of what was, in fact, not a ditch at all, he realized, but the remains of a military entrenchment.

The soil that made up the walls of the trench was light in color, a sort of yellowish brown that he found distasteful. The floor of the trench was muddy, slippery and sticky.

Dahno had reached some sort of doorway set into the left side of the trench, in the middle of a stretch faced with crudely mortared rocks and logs. He seemed to be trying to turn in to the doorway, but was having trouble negotiating the turn, encumbered by the unwieldy form in his arms. He stopped, and started to shift the soldier's body into a more vertical position—and at that moment cones whistled from a point further down the trench. Dahno half-turned toward Toni and Bleys—and then fell backward, the young soldier sliding from his arms, down into the opening he had been trying to enter.

As he tried to throw himself to the ground, Bleys' feet slipped in the mud, and he fell sideways into the wall of the trench, his grip on Toni's arm pulling her with him, so that she fell on top of him.

Power rifles roared twice—three times—from behind them, and he saw a figure, beyond Dahno's body, tumble backward as if kicked in the stomach by some invisible god.

"Up!" he heard a voice yell; but he and Toni had already untangled themselves and begun to rise. They ran, crouching and gasping, to where Dahno lay, reaching him even as several soldiers came running up behind them.

"Get him inside!" Bleys heard the lieutenant order; and hands reached from behind him to take hold of Dahno's body. Toni stood up, and backed away.

"I think there's someone down in the doorway," Bleys yelled.

"Clear the doorway, Stanton," the lieutenant ordered. A soldier looked into the doorway, while the others lifted Dahno from the mud.

"Hurry!" the lieutenant yelled. Whistling noises punctuated his order, and two power rifle blasts could be heard from behind. Someone screamed shrilly—and then Bleys was at the doorway, Toni disappearing into it ahead of him.

He ducked his head to get under the wooden beam that formed the top of the entrance—and immediately found he had to take an unexpected long step downward just inside the doorway, only to be immediately faced with a wall of sandbags shaped by a timber frame. He turned right, to take two more deep downward steps into what appeared to be some sort of dugout bunker.