SoliS

the stone poverty of the land. All mind is but a tear in the fabric of nothingness, like a rip in water that quickly heals over.
Munk laughs. With his final thought, he understands why this is the laughing life. Life is the laugh of the actual in the face of nothing. There is so much to sense, think, and emote about, so much life to endure, such fullness of good and bad-and all of it, suddenly, nothing. Only laughter fits the gap. And he laughs luminously with the great swell of being nothing.
Androne Munk, you have satisfied the reviewer that you are validly fulfilling your contra-parameter programming. You are herewith released from all allegiance to the Commonality. Go in freedom and focus.
The sound of breaking glass stops. Immediately, his attention is flung into his anthropic model, and time lunges forward. Flailing the area with a siren scream, his body abruptly resumes spinning, jetting a rooster tail of sand into the sky. The distorts cringe. The semblor frantically jabs his signal device at Munk, while Rey scuttles backward beneath a ragged cry toward the caravan.
With a slashing blow, Munk strikes the semblor, and it explodes in a hissing thrash of lightning. Laser fire from the handguns of the crouching distorts kicks against his breastplate and heaves him backward. He sits down, and the sand around him turns to glass under the hacking laser light.
A sick feeling of power-cell depletion whims up in Munk, and he lurches to his feet, wrapping his reflectant cowl about him. With deft tilts of his shield, he mirrors the laser fire back, and one of the distorts erupts, the scarlet wings of his ribs splaying apart like a cocoon bursting into a brilliant butterfly.
Munk attacks. Ignoring the widening exhaustion in his body, he lopes among the firing distorts, swiping at them with a blindingly swift but lethal economy of movement. In moments they are strewn among the rocks, slovenly rags in a greasy mess. And there is suddenly again only one moment left. The laser fire has exhausted his power cells.
Rey clambers toward the open wing-hatch of his rover and steals a terrified glance over his shoulder. Munk commits the last of his power to snatch a gun from the limp hand of a distort and levels it on the pilot in the hatchway.
Rey quails, and the console behind him shrieks with metal ripping. The androne missed! Disbelieving, he peers with dread and caution through the weave of his fingers.
Munk stands unmoving, shooting arm extended. A thick moment passes before Rey realizes that the androne has gone dormant. The lens bar in the featureless puzzle of his face is unlit. Rey's amazement distracts him from the fact that an androne could not miss at this range.
"Raza," Grielle croaks from inside the rover.
In rumpled, clumsily donned desert gear, the pilgrims stumble from the vehicles. Rey can see the heat leaking from their loose seams like blood. Then the self-seals kick in, and the faces behind the dear statskin veils flush warmer.
Rey recognizes their shock and acts with impulsive indignation. "Those creatures almost killed us! We have to disconnect the archaic head. It's tainted wetware."
Shau faces away from the mangled bodies of the dead but holds his recorder on the corpses a moment longer. "What is he talking about?" he asks, looking to the others.
Mei gazes in mute and revulsed candor at the dead distorts. Buddy walks over to Munk and stares down the length of the androne's aiming arm.
"The brain we're carrying is tainted," Rey insists. "The anarchists programmed it like a machine, and I stupidly installed it in the console. At the anarchists' signal, it must have usurped your air supply and knocked you out. It would have gotten me, too, if I hadn't been in the latrine, near an emergency statskin. I saw it all. Munk killed them, but the heat from their laser fire sapped his power. I was in here fighting the console, trying to override the wetware's domination. I finally shut him down, but I couldn't clean the air. Munk saw my problem, and with his last act, he blew open the console and freed you."
"It's true," Grielle gasps and steps groggily from the rover. "He was in the
latrine when it happened."
"Mr. Charlie is not tainted," Mei declares, shaking her head.
"He might be," Shau says. "I mean, his file says he was held on Earth for quite a while by lewdists and anarchists."
"What are you saying, Pilgrim Nili?" Rey asks with feigned anger. "I nearly got killed trying to save you!"
"If Mr. Charlie were tainted," Mei persists, "he would have detonated the explosives on Phoboi Twelve when he still had the codes. Anarchists destroy. He hasn't destroyed anything."
"He called those distorts down on us, I'm sure of it," Rey insists.
Grielle throws her hands up in dismay. "We don't need Mr. Charlie to go on. Let's leave him shut down and get away from here."
"But what about Munk?" Mei asks. "We can't leave him here."
Rey looks shocked. "We can't lug a deep-space patrol-class androne. He's made of supermassive alloy. It'll take a full rover moving at half speed to carry him anywhere."
"The dune climber could handle him," Buddy states.
Grielle, who is staring at Rey with a perplexed impatience, hands on her hips, says, "I'm the caravan director, and I will not dump a fortune in psyonic core units to haul a rundown androne."
"He just saved your life," Shau points out, catches the sudden wry cock of her head, and shrugs. "Though I guess for a passager that doesn't mean a whole lot."
Grielle passes an apologetic look to the others and says, "I am grateful that Munk saved our lives. For myself, I want to die on the Walk of Freedom in Solis, in the traditional way. But if I had died here, I would be as free. I say we dump the androne and get on with our trek."
"Well, I'm not leaving Munk," Mei says, crossing her arms.
"Are any of us leaving?" Grielle asks with exasperation. "Do the rovers still run, Rey?"
"Yes, I'm sure of it," he says, glad to divert the conversation away from culpability. He pokes his head into the cabin and calls back, "The androne's shot was precise. It destroyed only the remote air controller."
"Then I say we go now," Grielle presses, "before any more distorts find us."
Buddy steps past Grielle and peeks into the cabin. "Looks to me like Munk's shot also burned out the laser cannon controls. That right, Rey?"
"Hmm, yes," Rey admits, having already vainly tried to activate those weapons to cauterize all witnesses. "I guess he figured the wetware could have used the cannon against us."
"His shot was precise," Buddy observes softly. His hard, dolorous stare seems an indictment, and Rey is about to protest when the man says, "We'll need your help mounting Munk to a rover."
"Okay," Rey concedes, not relenting his mean squint for an instant. "I'll have the handroids load him on the third rover. But Grielle and I are going ahead. We're not slowing down for the androne."
"Mei," Buddy asks, "can you pilot a desert rover?"
"In my sleep."
"I'm the director of this caravan," Grielle protests. "My decision is what counts."
"I don't think so," Shau says and pans from Grielle in her outrage to the scattered skull shards and pink brain sludge glistening among the rocks. "We're in the wilds now. I don't think anything counts here except survival."
The handroids crab-swarm over Munk and within the hour have him securely strapped to the roof of the third rover. While they work, Rey Raza examines the vehicles, acting concerned about damage. A boiling mix of dread and anger seethe in him, and he's glad when the others go off to look over the distorts' trundle-carrier. Enraged that his business deal with the Commonality has been undone by the androne, he is determined to destroy the pilgrims. They will join Grielle on her death-passage sooner than she expected. Under the engine manifold of the second rover, he loosens a critical deck plate.