“It’s all right. Come on out,” he said. “You don’t have to hide. I’m here to help you.” I wonder how much of that she understood. She’s only a clone. How long could he have had her, anyway? Half a year, if he arrived when he said he would. Maybe much longer, if he wanted to case the system first.
Footsteps stamped down the back stairs. He raced into the sudden night to see her disappear down a path. He looked over the small hillock and caught sight of her when a square beam of light arced across the farm.
“Hold it! Stop. I’m not like him!”
She tried climbing a terrace. He bounded after her and seized her by the waist, pulling her down on top of him.
Up close, she looked truly filthy. Dust and scars covered her naked body. Her hair hung in matted clumps. Her breasts were black and blue, as were her wrists and thighs. She tried scratching at him with nails split and broken to the quick.
“Leggo,” she screamed, her voice a high-pitched imitation of the hairy man’s speech. “Gotta runaway.”
“You’re safe and you’re coming back with me. I’ve got someone waiting for you.”
“Not I!” she screamed, looking about her. “I tried hurt You.”
“No you didn’t.”
She pounded against his chest. “Not You,” she said, pointing to her groin. She pointed away from them. “I! I!”
Brennen and she were the only ones alive. “You” and “I” were the only names he needed to use, so she learned those names and he was too crazy to bother correcting her. “You”—he pointed at her—“and I”—he pointed down the pathway toward the figure of the other man, gripping his legs and whimpering.
“Yeah! I. Who?” She nodded at him.
“Jord.”
She tugged at his arm. “Fast, Jord and You. We hide. Hide!”
Baker felt his consciousness slipping away at the sound of the word. He jerked his head back, screaming. “No!”
Her damned voice was all I needed to free myself was a single word and now I’m no longer watching but—
“Delia!” “Who?” Virgil spun around, witnessed the insane display of light and darkness cascading about, and trembled. Carnival! And Death Angel has been through all the rides.
A howl caught his attention. He saw Brennen in the pathway and shouted, “Mad Wizard! You brought me here?”
“No,” the woman said, tugging at his arm. “You take Jord and hide.”
“I’m Virgil,” he said, pointing toward his heart.
“No. I tried”—she made an explicit gesture—“to You.”
“No, you didn’t—” wait, wait. Something that just happened when the dead man was... Right. She’s all screwed up, confused by Master Snoop’s light show.
“Mad Wizard”—he pointed at the man—“I won’t get You. Virgil will protect You now.” He pointed at his chest. “Virgil.”
“Virgil, Jord. We go.” She ran off, her thick, matted hair slapping against her back. She led him toward the equator.
Poor dirty Death Angel. Take you out of Mad Wizard’s house and back to Circus. “This way,” he said, leading her up the curving meridian pathway. “It’s easier.”
“No,” she pleaded. “I live there. I take You there!”
“I is Mad Wizard. Call I Mad Wizard.”
She looked at him, frowned, and said, “I is Mad Wizard. Mad Wizard live there?”
“Yes. But Mad Wizard is hurt—” he pointed back to the path. Brennen had managed to crawl to a utility cart.
“Mad Wizard gone?” She pointed toward the small cart bumping across the cluttered pathway toward another meridian.
“Don’t worry. He’ll have to get out and climb after a bit anyway. And even in low gravity, he’s got two bad legs.” The dead man inside me is good with a rifle. “I can get— Virgil can get You away from Mad Wizard.”
Her eyes brightened and she nodded. “Take You away!”
They ran up the pathway, passing dead men, women, and children. Children die the worst. They have the imagination, but not the means or skill. Most must have just starved to death or been killed. Maybe by Mad Wizard.
He looked across to the neighboring meridian. Brennen had abandoned the cart, but his powerful arms possessed enough strength to propel him at a fast clip up the side of the sphere toward ever-decreasing gravity. Virgil disconnected his rebreather.
“Death Angel, follow me! Mad Wizard wants to get somewhere fast!”
The air stank, dry and stale. The humidifiers and treatment units had broken down years before from disrepair. The woman reeked of unwashed flesh and greasy hair. He ignored the assault of odors, ignored the confusing flashes and beams of misguided light and concentrated on climbing the steepening hill, following the retreating Brennen.
Nearing the north pole, almost weightless, I watch her fall back, Coriolis taking her stomach by the inner ears and twisting. And Mad Wizard speeds up where muscle counts. Death Angel grabs my leg to drag me down but I pull her up with it and we’re through the hatch.
“Where you going, Mad Wizard?” he yelled down the axial tube. “You think I can’t catch you?”
“You got her she’s mine!” the voice called back.
Virgil reached into his pouch and withdrew a stun grenade. Twisting into position as he hurtled down the circular passage, he heaved the activated ball of plastic explosive toward the fleeing man. “You want Death Angel? Take Nightsheet!” Virgil shouted. His own velocity added to that of his throw; the charge sailed past its target in a few seconds and kept going. Brennen watched it whiz past and desperately tumbled to stop his own forward momentum.
Virgil and the clone hit a solid wall of air. Like swallows in a hurricane they stopped, blasted backward by the explosion. In an instant, the force
had spent itself and Virgil grabbed at a support brace.
“Delia!”
He saw her sprawled farther down the tube, her leg caught in a hatch recess. He clambered toward her.
“Wanderer, Hunter” Brennen’s nearing voice wheezed. Virgil spun around. A ripped, bruised body floated slowly past him, one leg broken and gyrating in bloody circles. Brennen glared at him with eyes demonically red from broken veins. Hoarsely, he asked: “Why you make the Black One cradle me?”
Virgil hovered face to face with the shattered industrialist for a moment. Brennen’s face, seen up close, revealed lines of worry, fear, and—finally—insanity. Virgil felt that if he could have watched that map over time, he might have some clue to his own future.
“Mad Wizard,” Virgil whispered. “You think you can be God just because you can die; I fixed you because you didn’t know your limitations.” Brennen continued to drift back toward the habitat’s main sphere. He raised his voice to reach the receding figure. “Wizard, Nightsheet takes people like you easy. Mad Wizard!” He turned back to the woman above him. “Come on.”
She breathed in shallow whimpers, her eyes closed.
Death Angel hangs by her foot, bent and purple in the hatch. Why is everyone so hurting, Death Angel? Even you.
He pulled her broken foot free and tugged her toward the docking bay. Setting her inside the nearest lock with full pressure, he looked for a space suit for her. When he found one, he cursed. Mad Wizard you went too crazy. Why’d you empty all the air tanks and break the rebreathers? Now I can’t get her through the vacuum. Or—wait.
Virgil remembered something from his past not his own.
The dead man did something once. Breathed his own suit air that lasted him long enough. She breathes so lightly in her marrow slumber.
He stuffed her into the pressure suit and made certain that it shrank down evenly. Sealing her up, he let her float while he connected his headgear, leaving hers open for the moment.
Airlock’s half blown. Must have been the dead man’s work, straight. How to get Mad Wizard away from me for good? Kill him? What if Nightsheet has other plans for him? Then send him to Master Snoop. Go now.