"That was me," he said, shuddering. "That was me in there."
He sat up, drawing his feet under him, then shook his head in disbelief. And yet he had to believe. It had been too real—too personal—for disbelief.
He swallowed deeply. Drake had warned him. Drake had said it would be like this. One day fine, the next the whole world totally different; like some dark, evil trick played on your eyesight, making you see nothing but death. Well, Drake was right. Now he, too, could see it. Death. Everywhere death. And he a servant of it.
There was a knocking at the door.
"Go away!"
The knocking came again. Then a voice. "Tong Chou? Are you all right?"
He turned and lay down, facing the wall. "Go away ..."
Y w E H A o had never run so far, or been so afraid. As she ran she seemed to balance two fears in the pit of her stomach: her fear of what lay behind outweighing her fear of the dark into which she ran. Instinct took her toward the City. Even in the dark she could see its massive shape against the skyline, blotting out the light-scattered velvet backdrop.
It was colder than she had ever thought it could be. And darker. As she ran she whimpered, not daring to look back. When the first light of morning colored the sky at her back she found herself climbing a gradual slope. Her pace had slowed, but still she feared to stop and rest. At any moment they would discover her absence. Then they'd be out, after her.
As the light intensified, she slowed, then stopped and turned, looking back. For a while she stood there, her mouth open. Then, as the coldness, the stark openness of the place struck her, she shuddered violently. It was so open. So appallingly open. Another kind of fear, far greater than anything she had known before, made her take a backward step.
The whole of the distant horizon was on fire. Even as she watched, the sun's edge pushed up into the sky; so vast, so threatening, it took her breath away. She turned, away from it, horrified, then saw, in the first light, what lay ahead.
At first the ground rose slowly, scattered with rock. Then it seemed to climb more steeply until, with a suddenness that was every bit as frightening as anything she had so far seen, it ended in a thick, choking veil of whiteness. Her eyes went upward . . . No, not a veil, a wall. A solid wall of white that seemed soft, almost insubstantial. Again she shuddered, not understanding, a deep-rooted, primitive fear of such things making her crouch into herself. And still her eyes went up until, beyond the wall's upper lip, she saw the massive summit of the shape she had run toward throughout the night. The City . . .
Again she sensed a wrongness to what she saw. The shape of it seemed. . . seemed what? Her arms were making strange little jerking movements and her legs felt weak. Gritting her teeth, she tried to get her mind to work, to triumph over the dark, mindless fear that was washing over her, wave after wave. For a moment she seemed to come to herself again.
What was wrong? What in the gods' names was it?
And then she understood. The shape of it was wrong. The rough, tapered, irregular look of it. Whereas . . . Again her mouth fell open. But if it wasn't the City . . . then what in hell's name was it?
For a moment longer she stood there, swaying slightly, caught between two impulses, then, hesitant, glancing back at the growing circle of fire, she began to run again. And as she ran—the dark image of the sun's half circle stamped across her vision—the wall of mist came down to meet her.
IT was just after DAWN when the two cruisers lifted from the pad and banked away over the compound, heading northwest, toward the mountain. Chen was in the second of them, Drake at the controls beside him. On Chen's wrist, scarcely bigger than a standard Security field comset, was the tracer unit. He glanced at it, then stared steadily out through the windscreen, watching the grassy plain flicker by fifty ch'i below.
"We're going to kill her, aren't we?"
Drake glanced at him. "She was dead before she came here. Remember that."
Chen shook his head. "That's just words. No, what I mean is that we are going to kill her. Us. Personally."
"In a manner of speaking."
Chen looked down at his hands. "No. Not in a manner of speaking. This is real. We're going out to kill her. I've been trying not to think about it, but I can't help it.
It seems . . ." He shook his head. "It's just that some days I can't believe it's me, doing this. I'm a good man. At least, I thought I was."
Drake was silent, hunched over the controls as if concentrating, but Chen could see he was thinking; chewing over what he'd said.
"So?" Chen prompted.
"So we set down, do our job, get back. That's it."
Again Chen stared at Drake for a long time, not sure even what he was looking for. Whatever it was, it wasn't there. He looked down at the tiny screen. Below the central glass were two buttons. They looked innocuous enough, but he wasn't sure. Only Drake knew what they were for.
He looked away, holding his tongue. Maybe it was best to see it as Drake saw it. I As just another job to be done. But his disquiet remained, and as the mountain grew larger through the front screen, his sense of unreality grew with it.
It was all so impersonal. As if what they were tracking was a thing, another kind of machine—one that ran. But Chen had seen her close; had looked into her eyes and stared down into her face while Debrenceni had been operating. He had seen just how vulnerable she was.
How human...
HE HAD put ON the suit's heater and pulled the helmet visor down—even so, his feet felt like ice and his cheeks were frozen. A cold breeze blew across the mountain now, shredding the mist in places, but generally it was thick, like a flaw in seeing itself.
There was a faint buzz on his headset, then a voice came through. "It's clearing up here. We can see right up the mountain now, to the summit."
Chen stared up the slope, as if to penetrate the dense mist, then glanced back at Drake. "What now?"
Drake nodded distractedly, then spoke into his lip-mike, "Move to within a hundred ch'i. It looks like she's stopped. Gustaffson, you go to the north of where she is. Palmer, come around to the east. Tong Chou and I will take the other points. That way we've got a perfect grid."
Drake turned, looking up the mountain. "Okay. Let's give this thing a proper test."
Chen spoke to Drake's back. "The trace ought to be built into a visor display. This thing's vulnerable when you're climbing. Clumsy too."
"You're right," Drake answered, beginning to climb. "It's a bloody nuisance. It should be made part of the standard Security headgear, with direct computer input from a distance."
"You mean wire the guards too?"
Drake paused, mist wreathing his figure. "Why not? That way you could have the coordinator at a distance, out of danger. It would make the team less vulnerable. The runner couldn't get at the head—the brains behind it. It makes sense, don't you think?"
Halfway up, Drake turned, pointing across. "Over there. Keep going until you're due south of her. Then wait. I'll tell you what to do."
Chen went across, moving slowly over the difficult terrain, then stopped, his screen indicating that he was directly south of the trace, approximately a hundred ch'i down. He signaled back, then waited, listening as the others confirmed they were in place. The mist had cleared up where he was and he had eye contact with both Gustaffson and Palmer. There was no sign of the runner.
Drake's voice sounded in his headset. "You should be clear any minute. We'll start when you are."
Chen waited, while the mist slowly thinned out around him. Then, quite suddenly, he could see the mountain above him, the twin peaks of Kibo and Mawenzi white against the vivid blue of the sky. He shivered, looking across, picking out the others against the slope.