8

The Christian Democrats and the General Staff are gentlemen: they never remind us that they have the bomb. They know that we know. Knowledge is power.

—Harrison, ibid., p. 180

The wild charge surged into the compound, up the ramp to the closed double doors of the main building. There it halted, quivering under a murderous fire from windows, breaking as the gangers scrambled for cover.

"Nothing's touching those doors!" John shouted to Hochmeister. The admiral nodded as another antitank round exploded harmlessly against the dull gray metal.

"You! You! You!" He pointed to three blaster-toting Vipers. "Concentrate your fire centerpoint on the door."

It took twenty minutes, but a hole was forged, a hot, jagged opening the width of two men. Following up a grenade and missile volley, John and zur Linde took the first squad in. An hour later, the building was clear of the surprisingly few S'Cotar.

The insectoids fought desperately, materializing among their attackers, dying in point-blank firefights with the humans. Casualties soared.

John was the first into the amphitheater housing Maximus, blasting a warrior as it whirled to fire. Heather, Malusi, Hochmeister and a hundred gangers were seconds behind him.

The floor of the cavernous room sloped down to a round, still pool of unbroken black. To one side two transmutes stood beside a small console. They watched unmoving as John shot the sentry, then vanished as the rest of the humans entered. Guan-Sharick's loyalists? he wondered, advancing to the pool.

"This is it?" said Malusi, pointing his blaster at the pool.

"That's it," said Heather. "The Maximus gate. Just as it was discovered. This shrine," she waved her hand at the building, "was built around it."

The pool held their eyes, an unmoving, deep-hued blackness, a stillness emanating a sense of rippling, primordial energies somehow held in check and channeled by the slim console.

No biofab had built that device, John was sure. The S'Cotar were probably the most efficient killers the galaxy had seen in millennia. And they were competent engineers. But a work of genius such as this was beyond them. Another miracle of the old Empire?

"Area secured," zur Linde reported over the radio. "There were only about fifty of them."

Hochmeister shook his head. "Illusions. All those troops and lights—illusions." He looked down at the portal.

"They must have come through and wiped out everybody as they slept."

He looked up. "We've got to close this down, now. Imagine not fifty, but fifty thousand of those things loose on this world. As a species, we'd be extinct in a month."

"He's right," said John.

Heather frowned at the console. "How do we shut it down? I feel like a Neanderthal visiting Brookhaven."

"No time for experimentation," said Malusi. "Blow it up. They could come swarming through from wherever any second."

Don't blow it up yet! John wanted to scream. Wait till I'm gone. You got the last of the S'Cotar. There's just a handful on the other side. He stepped toward the pool.

Harrison!

John froze. Guan-Sharick?

Don't jump, Harrison. You'd be butchered.

What . . .

Shalan-Actal's allies have changed the portal's terminus. You'd come out in their underground nest, below Maximus. Shalan's regrouping. Hundreds of warriors and killer machines are about to counterattack.

Why from the portal? Why not just appear outside?

The machines can't teleport. And the logical German is busy positioning your gangers facing away from the complex. Shalan-Actal is a very competent Tactics Master.

John stepped back from the portal. "Malusi's right," he said. "But let's find a way to turn it off. Touch off plastique and we could wipe out New England."

"Unlikely," said the admiral. "Anything this sophisticated must be failsafe."

"Care to gamble a few hundred square miles, Admiral?" said John. "Or maybe a continent?"

"No."

Heather reached gingerly toward the console. An invisible something stayed her touch inches from the surface. The harder she pushed, the harder it became. "Force field," she said.

Imperial, thought John. The secret of miniaturized force fields had died with the Empire.

"I've got to get at it," said Heather, raising her blaster.

"No!" cried John.

She fired point blank at the console, holding the trigger back.

A pulsating golden aura encased the machine, its edge darkening to red as the weapon shrilled.

Heather was still firing when the blades came.

Flat, silver, keen-edged, perhaps four feet across, three of them soared from the pool, multiple blaster fire snapping as if by magic from their unbroken surfaces.

John ducked as the blades flashed by, knifing into the nearest gangers, severing heads from torsos with surgical precision, blasters firing at those further away. Each execution took half a second.

"Blasters!" shouted John, firing from behind the console. Bullets were ricocheting from the blades back into the humans.

Most of the alien weapons were held by zur Linde's group. They burst through the doors, firing, just as the machines rose to regroup. The machines crashed to the floor, exploding in eye-searing bursts of blue, scorching the concrete.

Half a hundred gangers lay dead. The few wounded were from the ricochets. Where the blades had touched, they'd killed.

"Good God," said Heather, rising from beside Chin Lee's body. A perfectly centered blaster hole pierced the ganger's forehead. "They didn't waste a shot." The air reeked of smoldering metal and charred flesh. Blood trickled in small streams over the portal's rim.

A flash of gold caught John's eye. Kneeling beside a shattered machine, he carefully retrieved the jagged square of metal.

"What's that?" asked Heather.

"Something that shouldn't be here," he said, slipping the warm piece of metal into his pocket.

He turned to Heather. "Get everyone out. I'm going to blow this before we're overrun." Even if I have spend the rest of my short life on this pisshole world, he thought, pulling flat gray packets of plastique from his fieldjacket.

"He's right," said Hochmeister. "Let's go."

No one moved. "Not your show, Admiral," said the Malusi, turning to Heather. "Well?"

"Pull everyone out. Get that defense line turned around, facing the building."

Malusi nodded curtly, issuing orders that sent the gangers running for the doors. He, Hochmeister and zur Linde followed. The Bantu turned at the door, waved and was gone.

Alone with their dead and the hiss of burning machines, Heather and John rimmed the console and its force field with plastique and set the detonators. Running best they could on the blasted, blood-slicked concrete, they were almost to the door when S'Cotar stormed from the portal, flicking ahead to block their retreat. Warriors intercepted them, dragging them back to the console, where a transmute waited, antennae weaving impatiently.

Disarm that, it ordered, dipping a tentacle toward the detonator. Wave after wave of warriors were pouring through, flicking almost as they appeared. Gun and blaster fire filtered in.

"Do it yourself, v'org slime."

Harrison, you will live long enough to curse the day you met the K'Ronarins or our traitorous Illusion Master. I am Shalan-Actal.

"You're the traitor," said Harrison. "You betrayed all sapient life in two universes."

Those baleful red eyes turned on him for a second, then to the console.

Obeying an unspoken order, a warrior stepped forward, tentacles reached for the detonator.

John pivoted, kicking his guard hard in the genital sac. As the warrior folded, he grabbed its blastrifle.

The warrior holding Heather shoved her toward John and raised its rifle. John sidestepped, firing. Arms flailing, face wild with fear, Heather lost her balance and fell backward into the portal. Leaping after her, rifle high, John took a blaster bolt in the back as the plastique exploded.

Pain, pain, falling, falling . . .

We have MacKenzie, Glorious. She arrived in the breeding vault an instant before the explosion. What of Harrison?

No trace. He is probably just so many scattering atoms. Probably?

Our knowledge of the machine is slight, Glorious. It might have a failsafe. He may be alive?

And on Terra One, if the machine reverted to its last inter spatial setting before shutdown. It was never designed for intraspatial transport. The Imperials had matter transporters.

Clean this mess up, see to the machine. I will be with allied commander. We must move quickly.

* * * *

A delicate green-red fantasy copied from the Han dynasty, the dragon kite rose a few yards, trembled, then dove into the soft earth.

"Run faster, Jason!" the old man called to the boy. "Into the wind!"

The Mall in front of the Smithsonian was alive with tourists, bicyclists, joggers and kite flyers, all reveling in the sudden glory of Indian summer.

"Let Melaine try, Jason," said McShane, tugging his khaki shorts back up over his comfortable belly.

Pouting, the auburn-haired eight-year-old relinquished the string to his sister. Standing by his grandfather, he silently willed her to fail.

She almost made it, expertly holding the string between spread fingers, running toward the Capitol on fast, sturdy legs. Trailing up behind her, the dragon soared, dipped, soared, then barrel-rolled down out of sight into the Sculpture Garden's walled pit.

Melaine stomped her foot, saying something no nine-year-old of Bob's generation would have said.

McShane laughed and began winding in the string. "OK, gang, let's try again. Jason, would you kindly rescue Puff from the Rodin?"

The boy took off around the shrubs and down the stairs. He was back in a moment, empty-handed. "Grampa!" he said wide-eyed, pointing to where the string disappeared. "A man came out of the air! He's got a gun!"

McShane suppressed a sudden rush of fear. Finishing with the now-taut string, he set it down and searched his baggy pockets. "Maybe I'll talk with him while I get the kite. You two get something at the refreshment stand." He handed Jason a five-dollar bill. "Large lemonade for Gramps."

Bob gauged the line of tourists at the distant green-and-white kiosk—ten minutes. Long enough.

The kids ran off. Waiting till they were in line, McShane turned for the Sculpture Garden. Fool, he thought to himself. Why not just call a cop? Because you taught political philosophy most of your life, and know what Machiavelli meant by civic virtue. Besides, it might just be another of Jason's invisible friends, like the large talking toad that guarded the basement. Even if it was a S'Cotar, it was probably miles away by now.

Walking across the grass, he stumbled and fell. A jogger broke stride, helping him back to his feet. Clumsy old man, he thought, thanking the woman as she handed him his blackthorn Irish walker. Third time this week. Suddenly tired, he stepped carefully down the stairs and into the garden.

The man sat on a bench beside a Henry Moore, head buried in his hands, black uniform singed and torn. It was the weapon, though, that stopped Bob cold, heart pounding: a S'Cotar blastrifle, gleaming dully where it rested against the bench. There should be no S'Cotar weapons left on Earth, at least, not in human hands.

As Bob forced himself forward, the man staggered to his feet, raising the blaster. His were the wide, glazed eyes of someone in shock.

"John!"

"Bob!" The rifle dropped. "Home?"

"Home," said McShane. "But how?"

He moved quickly, catching John as the other fell. Only then did he see the blaster wound, a charred two-inch hole running from below the left shoulder and out the left side, where ribs had been.

"You!" he shouted at a young couple coming down the stairs, baby asleep in a backpack. "Get an ambulance." They stared at him.

"Across the street, in the Smithsonian. Tell the guard to call an ambulance. Move!"

The woman turned and ran up the stairs as the man hurried over. "What can I do?"

"Help me treat for shock. Prop his feet up."

"He ... he doesn't seem to be breathing."

Bob dropped to the ground, ear to John's chest. There was no heartbeat.

The baby started to cry.

Kneeling in the gravel, Bob moved through the measured cadence of CPR, not hearing the baby, not seeing his grandchildren. Until the medic gently shook his shoulder, there was nothing but his hands and lungs ministering to the dead.