Out of harm’s way—
The words seemed to resonate inside her. And as she blinked, tears of happiness washed away those splashy colors, which thinned and merged and finally spread aside to resolve a black cosmos, overlain by a soft blanket of unwinking stars.
Teresa sobbed in sudden realization. It felt exactly as if gentle arms were carrying Atlantis home again. The instruments she had carefully restored now chuckled and hummed around her, glowing green and amber. She looked out through a windshield that had been cleansed by fire and saw the moon rise over Earth’s soft, curving limb.
In order to get rid of her foe’s chief pivot, Daisy has temporarily forsaken her selective, “antibody” approach, using cruder, more decisive force. In seconds, the island is no more.
Ah, well. There hadn’t been much of a natural ecosystem left there anyway. Small sacrifice.
More important though, now the Wolling witch has no anchor! Her surprisingly powerful programs — so formidably represented by the tiger icon — might be a match for Daisy’s down below. But they can’t accomplish much without a link to the surface world, to the net. And now that has been cut!
“Very impressive, Wolling,” Daisy murmurs in satisfaction. “You surprised me. But now it’s good-bye.”
Sure enough, the holo shows her dragon in advance now, forcing backward a strained, disheveled cat, which yowls defiance.
•
At the bottom of the old Kuwenezi gold mine, Jimmy Suarez knew he was a privileged observer. Not only could he watch the battle of two metaphors, which dominated every major holo channel, but he could also use the instruments of this abandoned facility to follow something of the real struggle, down below.
For instance, he saw the exact moment when four resonators fired all at once to blow Rapa Nui completely out of the South Pacific. Another force seemed to precede that driving gazer beam by mere moments, but it might have been just a shadow, cast ahead of the decisive bolt.
From that instant, in fact, the tide began to turn. More and more filaments and finely meshed channels seemed to come under control of the force he now recognized as the enemy. The turn of events was horrifying to watch.
It would probably be wiser not to. Just sitting here was risky. Although Kenda’s thumper lay inactive now, only a few meters away, even using it on passive detector mode was taking an awful chance. What if the horror — whoever it was — picked up the machine’s faint echo? The fate of Easter Island could be his, any time.
Was it curiosity, then, that kept him here instead of smashing the cylinder and fleeing? Or had it been the old lady’s last request… to leave it turned on till she died? Well, she’s been dead some time, he thought. The body lay under a tarp behind him as he’d found it, twisted and disfigured, still connected to her console. I don’t owe her anything now. I should take a hammer to the thumper and…
And what? The surface world was certainly no safe place. Kenda and the others might be dead even now, if this part of Southern Africa had already been targeted for culling. Unlikely, since teeming cities and military bases seemed to be the principal victims so far. Still, it was only a matter of time.
Stay down here, then? If I wreck the machines, the death angels might miss me altogether. It was a depressing thought, though. Oh, there was food enough for months. Other isolated snippets of humanity might be as “lucky,” holding out in nooks and crannies for some time after the dragon won. But at this point, Jimmy wondered if he should have taken his chances with Kenda and the others after all.
So mired was he in self-pity, it took some moments to harken to a new sound, a gentle humming that added layers as machines throughout the abandoned hall began coming to life. He looked up, staring blankly as the towering crystal resonator swiveled in its bearings, giving off a rising tone. “What the hell?” he asked, standing up. Then, in full, terrified realization, “No!”
He ran to the master control station where the main cutoff switch lay. But as he reached for it, a voice quietly said to him,
What really made him halt, however, was the brief, almost tachistoscopic image of a face that flashed before him and then was gone again.
“But I thought you were dead!” he whispered hoarsely. Then, when there was no answer to that, he blurted, “Let me help, at least!”
As the dormant machines warmed up around him, that momentary visage returned, and he knew this both was and was not the woman whose former body lay covered just a few meters away.
In real life they had exchanged maybe a hundred words, total. And yet, right then Jimmy didn’t even wonder why her approval filled him so with joy. All he did was leap to his old work station. Rushing through all the diagnostic checks, he fine-tuned the tool she needed — her link between the worlds above and below.
Soon the humming reached a steady pitch. Then, with a twang of tidal force, it fired.
In meeting houses and churches, in the meditation glades of the NorA ChuGas, under the sloping hand-carved roofs of the Society of Hine-marama, from cathedrals and countless homes, prayers peal forth.
“Help us, Mother.”
On the Net, there remain islands of cynicism. Sides are taken, even bets laid down. Dragon over tiger, odds of ten to one.
For the most part, however, humanity’s surviving masses just hold each other close, watching their holos fearfully as the now one-sided battle surges on. Meanwhile, they glance to the horizon, toward any strange glimmer or ripple in the air, anxiously awaiting the first agonized scream or any other announcement that death’s own reapers have arrived.
Another blow hammers North America.
How much more? People ask the skies. How much more can our poor world take?
•
“Daddy!” Claire cried as tremors shook the house. Her feet slipped out from under her and she slid along the roof tiles. Logan barely managed to hold on himself, by grabbing one of Daisy’s many antennas as the temblor made trees and canefields sway. Horrified, he saw his daughter slip toward the edge.
In a blur the boy, Tony, launched himself face-first, arms and legs splayed for friction. His slide halted short of the brink, just in time to seize Claire’s wrist and help her hold onto a groaning rain spout.
The quake continued for what seemed forever — the worst in Logan’s memory — until at last subsiding to the staccato rhythm of debris hitting the concrete walk below. Fortunately, those crunching sounds didn’t involve Claire. Somehow, she and Tony held on. “I’m coming!” Logan cried.
“You’re back?” Daisy clutches the arms of her chair as her citadel rocks from side to side.
Fortunately, this place was built well, and there’s a limit to what her enemy can accomplish with just one device, even operated by surprise.
She deciphers this desperate gambit, to strike at her here, in her very home. “Not bad, Wolling. I’m impressed. After you’re extinct, I’ll see to it the tribes sing about this battle round their camp fires. You and I will be their legends.
“Only I’ll still be around. The goddess that won.”
She prepares commands to transmit to her massed resonators. This will be the final act.
•
Logan had to find a way to help the kids. So on impulse, he grabbed one of the antenna cables, yanked it free of its staples, and used the loop to lower himself toward the straining teenagers. At last he could reach out and grab Tony’s ankle. “I’ve got you,” he grunted. “See if you can—”