NETFEED/NEWS: Another Killing Mars Utah Peace

(visual: wreckage of Eltrim car, Salt Lake City, Utah)

VO: The car-bombing that ended the life of Joachim Eltrim, an attorney who worked for the mayor of Salt Lake City, also threatens to end the shaky peace established between the state of Utah and the radical Mormon separatist group known as the Deseret Covenant. The mayor's office and the Salt Lake City police say the finger of suspicion points straight at the separatists, who have denied responsibility.

(visual: Deseret spokesman Edgar Riley)

RILEY: "I'm not saying there aren't a lot of our people who want Eltrim and all other interfering, treacherous lawyers like him dead, I'm just saying we didn't have anything to do with it. . . ."

 

The bramble-choked streets of More Very Bush were alive with pale, skittering shapes. Even seeing them from of the middle of the stone bridge, Renie felt such powerful terror and disgust wash over her that she swayed and almost tumbled into the swiftly moving river.

"I . . . have to go there," Renie said, although everything in her screamed otherwise. "The strangers that are trapped—those might be my friends."

The Stone Girl could only sob and hide her face behind her stubby hands.

It was like the Jinnears on the hillside all over again—worse, because of the sheer numbers of the things. Only the knowledge that !Xabbu and the rest might be in that tower near the center of town, under siege by the ugly things swarming like giant termites, kept her standing. That and the little girl kneeling on the stone beside her, who was clearly even more frightened than she was.

"I can't leave you here," Renie told her. "And I can't go away and leave my friends by themselves. Can you make it back across on your own?" The Stone Girl's shoulders heaved. Renie reached down to lay her hand on the girl's back. "I promise I'll wait until I see you make it to the riverbank."

"I can't!" the Stone Girl wailed. "I said the King's Daughter words! I can't go back."

So many incomprehensible rules! It seemed pretty obvious by now that teaching fairy tales to an AI might not be the most efficient way to program it. "But if we can't go back, we have to go on," Renie said as gently as she could, hiding her own terror for the child's sake. "We have to."

The Stone Girl could not stop crying. Renie looked up at the darkening sky. "Come on." She tugged at the girl's arm, trying desperately to remember what she used to do when she couldn't get Stephen to move. "Just . . . just do what I do. I'm going to sing a song. You just do what I do every time I sing a verse, okay? Just watch and step when I step, okay?" God knows, it ought to be a nursery rhyme, she thought, but could not for the life of her summon anything suitable. Desperate, she snatched at the first tune that came to her mind, the theme from some Asian game show her mother had liked to watch:

"If you are a know-it-all,"

she chanted,

"Come on down to Sprootie Hall. . . .

"Yes, you can do it," she encouraged the Stone Girl. "See, just keep moving, like this." She sang slowly, emphasizing the beats, "If you are a know-it-all. . . ."

The little girl finally looked up, face full of misery . . . and something else. She was silently begging Renie, in the way children did, to be right. To make the impossible happen. To make all the little lies true.

Renie swallowed hard and started again.

"If you are a know-it-all,

Come on down to Sprootie Hall!

Can you survive the Knowledge Kniche?

Then you will soon be Sprootie Rich!"

Slowly, as though she waded through air as viscous as melted caramel, the Stone Girl matched her steps to Renie's cracked, almost tuneless singing.

"If you have a thirst for cash,

Come on down and have a bash!

If your brain is extra healthy,

You will soon be Sprootie Wealthy!

Eduformative!

Infotacular!

Sprootie Smart is brainiacular. . . !"

She sang it through six more times to get them across the bridge, getting more and more quiet as they neared the last stone pier, even though the nearest of the pale things was still a hundred meters away and had shown no sign of interest. Renie scrambled down onto the grassy bank and reached up to take the Stone Girl's small, cool hands and let her swing down. It was only when the girl had landed beside her that Renie saw that the child's eyes were pinched tightly shut with fright.

"It's okay," Renie whispered.

The Stone Girl looked around her, clearly struggling not to cry again. "Who . . . who's Sprootie?"

"Just some stupid . . . it doesn't matter. We should be quiet so they don't hear us."

"Ticks don't listen. Ticks watch."

Renie was relieved, but only for a moment. "Is there anything we can do to keep them from seeing us?"

"Don't move."

Renie could feel the horror of the pallid, scuttling things even more strongly now that the river was behind her, inhibiting escape. "We can't just stay here. Is there anything else that will help besides not moving?"

"Move real, real slow."

Renie squinted across the shadowy townscape, trying to make out the lay of the land between them and the tower which seemed to be the focus of the Ticks' attention. The streets and buildings were a uniform brambly green, as though they had all been put to service as trellises in some madcap gardening experiment, but if so, it had been a long time since there had been a tending hand: the corners and edges of the buildings were shaggy with leaves. Creepers had made their way from one high place to another, and now hung between towers and gables like great sagging spiderwebs.

"It's getting dark," Renie said quietly. "We have to start moving."

The Stone Girl did not reply, but stayed close as they took their first cautious steps forward. They made it up the riverbank to a low wall at the edge of town without attracting attention. As they huddled behind it, Renie found herself wishing desperately for a weapon of some kind. All she was carrying was the lighter, and the idea of trying to set a flabby-looking creature like a two-meter cuttlefish on fire with a Minisolar was a joke she couldn't much appreciate just now. A torch was a possibility, but the nearest trees were still a long trot away.

"Are Ticks scared of anything?" she asked. The Stone Girl's look of incredulity answered her question for her, but Renie reached into the leafy vegetation covering the wall, thinking that she would at least feel a little better with a large rock in her hand. She found herself digging into the scratchy tangle tar deeper than she would have believed necessary to find a loose stone, then was even more surprised when her hand pushed through and out the other side. It was all bramble.

"Where's the wall? Isn't there a wall under here?"

The Stone Girl had gone an ashier shade than her normal clay color. She looked at Renie nervously. "That is the wall."

"But . . . aren't there . . . things under all these leaves?" She had a sudden, confounding thought. "Are all those houses and whatnot just made of plants?"

"This is More Very Bush," the little girl explained.

"Shit." So much for sticks and stones to use as makeshift weapons. It also meant that if her friends were truly besieged in that tower building near the center of town, they had no real walls to keep the creatures out.

In fact, what was keeping the creatures out?

Renie took another deep breath, finding it harder than ever to make herself go forward. Something like a cloud of terror seemed to hang over the whole town—not just her obvious and justified fear of the strange Ticks, but something deeper and less explicable. She remembered the wave of panic that had seized her while she was being chased by Jinn ears.

We're inside the operating system. Are we feeling its fear? But what would an artificial intelligence fear?

She led the Stone Girl to a place where the wall was low and they could scramble over it easily, although not without Renie getting scratched quite a few more times. They stopped on the far side. A Tick was moving toward them, undulating across the low vegetation like something swimming along the ocean floor. Despite the Stone Girl saying that sound did not matter, Renie found her throat choked to silence.

The Tick paused a dozen meters away. It did not have legs, but each point of its scalloped sides ended in something like a pseudopod; they rippled gently, in sequence, even when the thing wasn't moving. Dark spots swam beneath the translucent skin, as though the creature were filled with billiard balls and jelly. It was only as the dark spots one after another pressed out against the skin and then receded in turn that she remembered the Stone Girl's words: Ticks had too many eyes.

"Jesus Mercy!" It was a strangled sound.

Whether because it actually could not see them without movement, or because they were too far away to be worth bothering with, the Tick turned and made its way back up the main street. Several of its fellows bumped it as it passed; some even crawled over it. Renie could not tell if they were communicating through touch or were simply terribly stupid.

"I don't want to be here," the little girl said.

"I don't either, but we are. Just hold my hand and keep moving. Do you want me to sing the Sprootie Smart song again?"

The Stone Girl shook her head.

Slowly, they made their way deeper into the town, freezing in place every time one of the Ticks came near, trying to stay behind cover as much as possible. Renie found herself actually grateful for the advancing twilight: if the creatures were dependent on sight, then darkness must be her friend. Still, she definitely wanted to get away from these crawling things before full night if she possibly could.

They reached the first of the houses, a cottage of green leaves and snaking vines. As Renie stole a look inside—even the furniture was composed of vegetation—she couldn't help whispering a question. "Who lived in this town?"

"Bears, mostly," said the Stone Girl in a tight little voice. "And some rabbits. And a big family of hedgehogs called Tinkle or Wrinkle or something, I th–th–think. . . ." Tears seeped from her eyeholes.

"Ssshhh. It's okay. We'll be. . . ."

Three Ticks glided around the corner of the next house and wriggled across the bramble-choked alleyway, heading right toward them. The Stone Girl gave a little squeak of horror and sagged. Renie grabbed her, holding her upright and as still as she could with her own limbs trembling badly.

The Ticks paused and lay pulsing gently atop the vegetative carpet, a mere half-dozen meters from the spot where Renie and the Stone Girl stood. Only their elongated shape gave them a front and a back; both ends seemed identical, but Renie had no doubts from the Ticks postures that they were facing her. They had sensed something, and now were waiting.

One of the Ticks scuttled a little way forward toward the house. Another eased forward and slid over it, then they parted and again lay parallel. Ripples of lighter and darker color ran up and down their bodies. The eye-spots bunched at the things' front ends, three or four dark orbs visible in each creature, pressed up against the membranous skin.

A tiny whine of panic escaped the Stone Girl and Renie could feel the child's arms go taut. Any moment now her panic would become too much and she would bolt. Renie tried to keep a tight grip, but terror was rising fast inside her, too.

Suddenly, with a loud, swishing rattle that almost stopped Renie's heart, something leaped out of the carpet of brambles just in front of the Ticks—a blur of wild, shiny eye and gray fur—then sprang away across the dooryard heading for the open street. The Ticks flowed after it with terrifying speed, moving so quickly they barely seemed to touch the brambles. The child-sized rabbit in the tiny blue coat reached the street but had to dodge away from another Tick that reared up, its mouth a jagged rip on the underside of the head. The sudden change of direction ran the terrified fugitive right into its pursuers. The rabbit let out a single all-too-human scream of horror, then the Ticks fell on it in a squirming, fleshy mass.

Renie pulled the Stone Girl around the side of the house, away from view of the street and the wet sounds of feeding. They were lucky; no other Ticks were waiting there. She shoved the stumbling little girl in front of her, across the alley full of knee-high vegetation and into the shelter of the house next door.

Inside there was just enough light coming in through a small window to make out a quantity of household objects all made from living leaves and vines—chairs, a table, bowls, and even a candlestick; otherwise the little hut was empty. Renie clenched her fists in fear and frustration. She could actually see the church tower through the window, festooned with vines like a maypole, but although it was only a few dozen meters away it might as well have been a thousand. The ground between their temporary refuge and the tower was full of the pale things.

"I'll think of something," Renie declared. "Don't give up. I'll get us out of here."

The little Stone Girl took a deep, shaky breath. "Y–you w–w–will?"

"I promise," Renie said firmly, even as she hugged herself to still the trembling. What else could she say?

 

 

Three empty squeeze bottles of Mountain Rose lay on the floor in front of him like bleached bones. Long Joseph contemplated them with a feeling only a small distance from despair.

Knew it was going to happen, he chided himself. Drink it a drop at a time, still going to finish some day. . . .

And the hell of it was that there was absolutely nothing he could do. At the moment when he most needed a supply of the healing, warming liquid, with men that wanted to kill both him and his daughter just a short distance above him, after he had been trapped for weeks in a cement tomb under a mountain with no company but boring, disapproving Jeremiah Dako—and adding Del Ray Chiume to the mix hadn't helped much—now of all times he had nothing to drink.

He wiped his hand roughly across his mouth. He knew he wasn't a drunk. He knew drunks, saw them all the time, men who could barely stand, men swaying outside the shebeens with old, dried piss stains on their pants and breath that smelled like paint thinner, men with eyes like ghosts' eyes. That wasn't him. But he also knew he could dearly use some comfort. It wasn't so much that he wanted a drink, not the taste, not even the little glow of satisfaction when the first few swallows made their way into the belly. But it felt like his entire body was a little loose and ill-fitting all over, his skeleton not quite sitting right in his meat, his skin the wrong size.

Joseph grunted and stood up. What was the point, anyway? Even if Renie came back, stepped out of her electrical bathtub like that what-was-his-name, that Lazarus man from the Bible, healthy and happy and proud of her papa, they still weren't going to get out of this mountain alive. Not with four killers up there, cruel hard men determined to dig them out like an anteater on a termite nest.

Joseph took a few stiff steps over to the bank of monitors. The men upstairs had not finished fanning out the smoke, but the atmosphere up there was much clearer. They would be getting back to work soon, chipping out the rest of the concrete floor. Then what—grenades? Flaming petrol dumped down on top of them, so they burned like rats? He counted the shapes in the murk. Yes, four. So at least they had killed one of them with Sellars' bonfire. But that would only mean the rest would be even nastier when the time came.

Nastier? You must be joking, man. This would never have been one of those simple Pinetown shake-outs after too many beers, fists and boards and maybe a knife just before people started running away, not even the bad kind with the young men and their guns, that terrible noise like a stick dragged along a fence and people stopping, faces slack, knowing something bad had just happened. . . . No, this was always going to be something far worse.

The itch was bad now, a need to move, to get out, to run as fast as he could under open sky. Maybe they could find another way out, a heating duct like he had found before. They would have to take Renie and the little man out of those bathtubs, those wired-up coffins, but surely whatever they were doing in there was not more important than their lives.

Then do what? Run across the mountains while those men come after in their big truck all armored up like a tank?

He smacked his hand down on the console and turned away. All he wanted was to pour something down his throat. Was that too much to ask for a man condemned to die? Even in Westville Prison they gave the poor bugger a last meal before they killed him, didn't they, a beer or a little wine?

Joseph stood, flexing his fingers. Surely in all this big place, there must have been someone who liked a drink, who kept a bottle hid while he was on duty—just one bottle that got left behind when everyone moved out. He looked to the alcove where Jeremiah was discussing supplies with Del Ray, the glow of the light spilling out onto the cement floor that ringed the large chamber. They didn't need Joseph. They didn't even like him, a man of his hands, a man who didn't put on airs so he could work for rich Boers. If it weren't for his daughter, he would say the hell with them both and find himself an air shaft out.

He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth again and, without really thinking about it—because if he thought he would know it was hopeless and foolish, that he had searched the whole place from top to bottom a half-dozen times—wandered off to look for that bottle of beer some faceless soldier or technician had stashed away for the long hours of the watch.

No—wine, he thought. If he was dreaming a hopeless dream, why not make it perfect? A whole bottle of something good, something with kick. Not even opened. He hid it away there, then the orders came and they all had to go. He saluted his anonymous benefactor. You did not know, but you put it away for Joseph Sulaweyo. In his hour of need, like they say.

 

His skin prickled. The filing cabinet lay on its side against the wall of the service closet, as wonderful as a treasure chest from a pirate story.

In a fit of nervous energy brought on by fear and frustration, he had unstacked a pile of folding chairs he had passed many times, working at it with no more hope than when he had once more opened cabinets and drawers already searched a dozen times in the last month—but to his astonishment, he had discovered the tipped cabinet hidden beneath the chairs. Now he hardly dared move for fear it would vanish.

Probably just full with papers, a small, sensible voice told him. Or spiders. If they are full with anything at all.

Nevertheless his palms were sweaty and it took him some moments to realize that it wasn't merely his slippery grip on the handles that kept the drawers from opening. Don't work lying down, he realized. Thing needs to be standing up.

It was a huge, cumbersome cabinet, the kind meant to survive fires and other disasters. As his muscles protested at the strain he was putting on them, he thought for a moment of calling Jeremiah for help, but could imagine no believable excuse for wanting to get the cabinet upright. At last, with much grunting and swearing, he dragged the top end off the ground. He got it as high as his waist before his back would not take any more, then had to squat and let the full weight of the thing rest on his thighs while he prepared himself to heave it the rest of the way. It felt like it was full of rocks. He thought he could feel his ankle bones grinding down into powder from supporting it, but the solid heft of it gave him hope—there had to be something in it.

Joseph braced himself and lifted again, grimacing as the corners dug into his forearms, pulling it up until he could slide his whole body under the top end and really put his back and shoulders into the job. It tottered for a moment—he had a sour picture of lying underneath it with his back broken while Jeremiah and Del Ray chatted on, unaware, a hundred meters away—before he managed to rise from his crouch and shove it almost upright. It caught the edge of a heating vent screen in the cement wall and stuck. Back quivering and arms trembling, sweat running in his eyes, Joseph shoved until the bolts holding the screen tore loose and it clattered to the ground, allowing the filing cabinet to slide past and thump down square on its bottom.

Joseph bent from the waist, panting, sweat now dripping straight to the floor. The little room was small and hot, the light dim. The reflexive need for secrecy warred with discomfort. Secrecy lost. Joseph pushed open the door into the main hall, letting in a waft of cooler air, before trying the top drawer.

It wasn't locked. But his luck ended there.

Who wasted this cabinet by crowding it all up with files? A dull, helpless sort of rage filled him like a purpling bruise. The cabinet was heavy because it was filled with papers, meaningless papers, personnel records, some nonsense like that, drawer after drawer stuffed to the brim with old-fashioned folders.

Joseph had only a moment to savor this deep misery before something fell on him from above.

For a moment, wildly, he thought that part of the roof had given way, as had happened to Del Ray, that the Boer bastard and his henchmen upstairs had drilled through just above him. Then, as the strangely sagging weight pulled him down to the floor and fingers clawed at his face, he thought instead that Jeremiah had come and attacked him, was for some reason trying to hurt him.

Just looking for a drink, he wanted to shout, but the fingers clamped on his throat, squeezing him silent. In a panic, Joseph rolled hard to the side and banged himself painfully against the standing cabinet but managed to dislodge the choking hands. He scrabbled backward, shaking his head, coughing, and managed to whisper the word, "What. . . ?" before his attacker was on him again.

Whoever it was seemed more octopus than man, all arms and legs, grabbing at him, trying to pin him, throttle him. Joseph struggled and tried to shout, but now an arm was across his throat, pressing down until he thought something inside his neck must tear and his head part company with his body. He kicked out wildly. His feet met the cabinet hard; he felt it give and heard it fall back against the wall, then scrape against the concrete and crash to the floor. He got a hand up under the arm that was crushing out his breath and pushed back hard enough to drag a little air into his lungs, but there were still sparkling lights in front of his eyes. Something moved over him, leaning in close, a demon's mask of black and red and whitely-shining clenched teeth. Joseph kicked again but touched nothing and the weight on his neck was now too much to resist. The devil-face began to retreat down a black tunnel, but the grip was growing stronger. He still did not know what had happened, who was killing him.

And then, just as the light-streaked blackness had become almost complete, the pressure lessened and then was gone—or almost gone, because he could still feel a crimp in his throat. He rolled over onto his stomach, wheezing and choking through a windpipe that felt like it would never open again.

Someone was shouting and something was thumping like a heavy weight being dragged down stairs. Joseph felt cool concrete against his cheek, felt the even cooler air rushing down his ragged throat like the finest of all wines. He dragged himself toward the wall of the service closet then turned around, lifting his quivering hands in self-defense.

It was Jeremiah, with a look on his face like nothing Joseph had ever imagined, a look of terrified rage. But what was he doing? What was he hammering on with that stick of his, that steel chair leg, that club he had carried since Joseph's return? And why was he crying?

Jeremiah seemed to feel Long Joseph's dazed stare. He looked at him with brimming eyes, then down at a dark bundle on the floor. The thing lying there was a man—a white man, although in his whole smoke-blackened, bloodied face only a pink curve of ear gave that away. The back of his head was a ruin, bits of bone showing through the wet red. The end of Jeremiah's chair leg was dripping. Jeremiah looked up from Joseph to the wall overhead and the dark hole there that had been covered by the screen. Now Del Ray appeared in the closet doorway.

"My God," he said. "What happened?" His eyes widened. "Who's that?"

Jeremiah Dako held up the bloody chair leg, stared at it as though he had never seen it before. A sickly smile pulled up the edges of his mouth—maybe the worst thing Joseph had seen so far.

"At least . . . at least we've still . . . got two bullets left," said Jeremiah. He laughed. Then he began to sob again.

 

"He's the fifth one," Del Ray said, "I can still see four of them on the monitor. He's the one we thought got killed when the smoke got them."

"What does that matter?" Jeremiah said listelessly. "That just means there are still as many up there as we thought this morning."

Joseph could only listen. He felt as though someone had ripped his head off and put it back on in great haste.

"It means they probably don't know about the vent," Del Ray said. "He probably crawled in there to get away from the smoke—he may have been cut off by what he thought was a fire, trapped on the other side of the building from the others. Then he just kept crawling until he got to that vent and could get air from our part of the building. Maybe he was even stuck there." He looked at the corpse, which they had dragged out into the better light of the open hallway. "So the rest of them aren't going to be coming down the vent on us in our sleep."

Jeremiah shook his head. He had stopped weeping, but still seemed miserable. "We don't know anything," His voice was almost as raspy as Joseph's.

"What do you mean?"

"Look at him!" Jeremiah shoved a finger at the body, although he did not look at it himself. "He's bloody all over. Dried blood. Burns. Scrapes and cuts. There's a good chance he got them getting into the vent in the first place, hurrying to get away from the smoke. He probably left marks of where he got in—maybe even left a screen lying on the ground. When the smoke clears up there, they'll find them. They'll go looking for him."

"Then we'll . . . I don't know. Weld that, vent in the storage closet closed. Something." Jeremiah and Del Ray had already struggled to hammer the screen back into place, with limited success.

"They can just poison us—pour poison gas down it, smother us." Jeremiah stared at the floor.

"Then why haven't they done that already?" Del Ray demanded. "They could probably find our air intake if they wanted to. If they only wanted us dead, surely they could have done that already."

Jeremiah shook his head. "It's too late."

Joseph was disturbed to see the man so unhappy. Was it because he had killed someone? How could anyone, even a sensitive soul like Jeremiah Dako, regret killing the man who had been trying to kill Joseph?

"Jeremiah," he said softly. "Jeremiah. Listen to me."

The other man looked up, eyes red.

"You save my life. We fight sometimes, you and me, but I never will forget that." He tried to think of something that would make things right. "Thank you. Truly I mean that."

Jeremiah nodded, but his face was still bleak. "A postponement. That's all it is." He sniffed, almost angrily. "But you're welcome, Joseph. And I truly mean that, too."

No one spoke for a while.

"I just thought of something," said Del Ray. "What are we going to do with a dead body down here?"

 

 

"They look like bottom-feeders," Renie said. "If it's more than just appearance, maybe we'll get lucky." She was talking mostly to herself. Her companion the Stone Girl was too frightened to be paying much attention.

Renie took another look out the window at the church spire made of brambles, achingly near, but still on the far side of several dozen Ticks, creatures so pale they almost seemed to glow in the dying evening. But at the moment it was a forest of vines and creepers that stretched away from the tower like guy-ropes had her attention.

"Come hold this steady," she said as she climbed cautiously onto the table, which like everything else in this strange little subworld was made entirely from living plants, densely intertwined. It wobbled but held; apparently the furniture was indeed meant to be used, if not for the purpose Renie had in mind. The Stone Girl came forward and did her best to brace it.

Renie stretched up until she could get her hands into the vegetation of the low ceiling and began digging at the tangled branches, pulling aside that which could not be broken or torn until she had made a hole through which she could see the velvety dark sky, and the faint early stars. Reassured, she quickly began to widen the hole until it was big enough for her shoulders. She pulled herself up, grunting with the effort, and took a quick look around the rooftop. Satisfied that none of the scuttling things were waiting there, she let herself down again.

"Come on," she told her companion. "I'll lift you up."

The Stone Girl took some convincing but at last allowed herself to be boosted through the hole.

"There," Renie said as she lifted herself onto the roof beside the girl. "On the far side, see? Those vines will get us to the house nearest the tower, then we can go up from there."

The Stone Girl looked down at the Ticks swarming on the ground, then eyed the sagging creepers with mistrust. "What do you mean?"

"We can climb them—put our feet on the lower ones and hang onto the ones higher up with our hands. It's how they build bridges in the jungle." She did not feel as confident as she sounded—she had never actually crossed such a bridge, in a jungle or anywhere else—but it was surely better than sitting in the little house waiting for the Ticks to notice them.

The Stone Girl only nodded, overtaken by a sort of weary fatalism.

Trusting because I'm a grown-up. Like one of those stepmothers. It was an unpleasant burden, but there was no one to share it. Renie sighed and moved to the edge of the roof. She beckoned the Stone Girl and then lifted her up to the thick vine that stretched upward at an angle beside them, not releasing her grip until she was sure it would bear the little girl's weight. "Hang on," she told the child. "I'm climbing up now."

For a long moment after she swung herself up Renie had to cling with her hands and legs until she could get in position to grab the higher vine and stand. The lower vine swayed alarmingly beneath her bare feet until she got her balance straight. "Go ahead," she told the Stone Girl as she helped her stand and reach the upper vine. "Just go slowly. We'll get off and rest at that roof there—the tall house between us and the tower."

Going slowly turned out to be their only option. It was hard enough to keep their feet on the slippery vine while stepping over knots of tangling, leafy branches. Although the Ticks did not exactly seem to have noticed them, Renie wondered whether their senses were as limited as the child had suggested: those lurking just below seemed to be growing increasingly agitated. She couldn't help imagining what the creatures' response would be if she and her companion were suddenly to drop down into the brambles, right in their midst.

It seemed like a good idea to stop looking down.

The light was now almost completely gone. When they reached the roof of the tall house, halfway to the spire, Renie began to think that resting could be a bad idea—that they might be better off using the last light to help in the difficult climb. The Stone Girl stopped, still several steps short of the roof.

"What's wrong?"

"I c–can't go anymore."

Renie cursed silently. "Just get to the roof, then we'll rest. We're almost there."

"No! I can't go anymore! It's too high."

Renie looked down, confused. It was less than half a dozen meters to the ground. She was a little girl, of course. Renie couldn't afford to forget that, but still. . . . "Can you just make it a little bit farther? When we get to the roof, you won't have to see the ground anymore."

"No, stupid!" She was almost crying with anger and frustration. "The vine is too high!"

The Ticks seemed to be gathering beneath them. Distracted by their churning, it took Renie a moment to see that the child was right. The higher of the two vines they were using for their bridge had been rising more steeply than the lower. The Stone Girl had stretched her arms almost to their capacity just to keep a grip on it, but another few paces and it would be beyond her reach.

"Jesus Mercy, I'm sorry! I am stupid, you're right." Renie struggled against panic. The Ticks were now swarming over each other just below them like worms in a bucket. "Let me get closer and I'll help you." She inched forward until she could take one arm off the upper vine and wrap it around the little girl. "Can you hold onto my leg? Maybe even stand on my foot?"

The Stone Girl, who had clearly been keeping a worried silence for some time, now burst into tears. With help, she managed to wrap herself around Renie's thigh and grip Renie's ankle with her feet—it was an awkward and undignified position, but Renie found that if she was careful she could inch upward. Still, by the time they toppled off onto the cushiony safety of the roof perhaps another quarter of an hour had passed and the last daylight was gone.

"Where's the moon?" Renie asked when she had finally caught her breath.

The Stone Girl shook her head sadly. "I don't think they have a moon in More Very Bush anymore."

"Then we'll have to make do with starlight." Sounds like a song title, Renie decided, a bit giddy with exhaustion and the very temporary respite from climbing over the Ticks. She sat up. The light was minimal, but it was enough to see the silhouette of the tower and even a glow from the belfry. Her heart leaped. Could it be !Xabbu? She longed to shout out to him, but was much less certain now about the deafness of Ticks.

"We have to go," she said. "If I wait any longer my muscles will cramp up. Come on."

"But I can't reach!" The Stone Girl was on the verge of weeping again.

A brief instant of irritation dissolved quickly. My God, what I've put this child through! The poor little thing. "I'll carry you on my back. You're small."

"I'm the biggest kid in my house," she said with a shadow of indignant pride.

"Yes, and you're very brave." Renie crouched. "Climb up."

The Stone Girl struggled up onto Renie's back, and from there was boosted onto her shoulders so that her cool, solid little legs lay on either side of Renie's neck. Renie stood and swayed a bit, but found the girl's weight manageable.

"Now the last part," Renie said. "Hang on tight. I'll tell my friends how much you helped me."

"I did," the Stone Girl said quietly as they moved out onto the vines again. In a rare stroke of good luck, the bottom vine hung a little lower than the rooftop, so that Renie could step down instead of having to climb up with the child clinging to her back. "I did help you. Remember the Jinnear? I helped you hide, didn't I?"

"You certainly did."

The last part of the climb was the hardest, and not just because of the added weight and clumsiness caused by her burden. Renie's muscles had been worked too hard for too long, with too little rest, and her tendons all seemed to be pulled tight as piano wires. If not for the nagging fear that time was running out, that any moment now the Other might stop fighting and the very world might evaporate under her, Renie might have crawled back down to the roof to sleep, even with her friends only a stone's throw away.

Each step an agony, the angle of the vines growing steeper as the tall tower grew nearer, she did her best to distract herself.

What the hell are Ticks anyway? Why should a machine be afraid of bugs? And Jinnears? What are they?

And Jinnears. The phrase stuck in her mind, an indigestible lump. And Jinnears. . . ! Startled, she almost lost her grip. The Stone Girl gave a squeak of alarm and Renie tightened her aching fist on the vine. The Ticks swarmed in agitation below. And Jinnears—engineers! Who works with machines? Engineers and . . . and techs. Jinnears and Ticks.

Renie let out a hysterical giggle. But that means I'm a Jinnear, too—I have a degree and everything. Why didn't the Other make me a killer ghost-jellyfish as well?

"Why are you laughing?" the Stone Girl demanded in a quavering voice. "You're scaring me!"

"Sorry. I just thought of something. Don't mind me." But oh my God what did the techs and engineers do to this Al or whatever it is to make it think of them like that. . . ?

The vegetable firmness of the tower wall was startlingly close now. She could see the open window only two or three meters above her head, glowing against the dark sky, but the vines, which hung from the very top of the protruding roof, would not bring her very close, and the angle was soon going to be too steep anyway.

"We're going to have to get off the vines and try to climb up the wall," she said as lightly and calmly as she could. "I'm going to lean over as far as I can before I let go, but I'm going to have to jump. Will you hold on tight?"

"Jump. . . ?"

"It's the only way I can reach it. I'm sure the bushes will hold us," she said without actually being sure at all. She got a good grip on the upper vine, then stopped so she could gently but firmly pry loose the fingers of the Stone Girl, who had decided to hold on as well. "You can't do that. If you're still holding on when I jump . . . well, we're in a lot of trouble."

"Okay," the small voice said in her ear.

She trusts me. I almost wish she didn't. . . .

Renie braced herself, then set the vine swaying, figuring even a few extra inches would help. On the fourth wide swing, she jumped toward the shadowy wall.

For a moment, as the dry leaves tore beneath her hands like paper and they slid downward, she was certain they were dead. Then she caught at something stiffer and more substantial and grabbed hard, digging her toes in as well, insensible of what she was doing to her bare feet and fingers. When they stopped sliding she clung for a moment, gasping.

Can't wait. Can't hang. No strength.

She forced herself up, grip by difficult, hard-won grip. What had looked like two or three meters to climb from the relative safety of the branch now felt like a hundred. Every muscle seemed to be writhing in agony.

The glow of the window was hallucinatory in its brightness. She pulled herself over the brambly sill and slid down to the brambly floor, gasping for breath, moaning as her muscles knotted, as star-flecked blackness rolled across her eyes.

 

The first thing she noticed when she could see properly again was the source of light in the tower room, a great, nodding flower hanging at the apex of the vaulted ceiling, glowing a waxy yellow at the heart of its petals. She heard the Stone Girl stirring behind her and sat up. Someone was sitting on the far side of the small room, half-hidden by leaves and shadows. It was not !Xabbu. It was Ricardo Klement, the Grail Project's only success, such as he was—handsome, young, and brain-damaged.

"Is that your friend?" the Stone Girl asked quietly.

Renie gave a sharp, cracked laugh. "Where are the others?" She could barely muster the strength to speak. "My friends. Are they here?"

Klement looked at her incuriously. He held something small cradled in his arms, but she could not make it out. "Others? No others. Only me . . . us."

"Who?" She was getting a very bad feeling. "Us who?"

Klement slowly lifted the thing he was holding. It was small and unpleasant to look at, a sort of blue-gray, eyeless blob with rudimentary arms and legs and head, a loose gape for a mouth.

"Jesus Mercy," Renie said in disgust and misery. "What the hell is that?"

"It is. . . ." Klement hesitated, his face blank as he sought for the words. "It is me . . . no . . . it is mine. . . ."

After all that, to find nothing but Klement and this inexplicable little monstrosity. . . ! Every bit of her was afire with pain, but worse than anything was the disappointment, a stunning blow like a bullet wound in the chest. "What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for . . . something," Klement said tonelessly. "Not for you."

"I feel exactly the same way." Despite herself, Renie began to cry. "God damn it all."