"Where are the dogs, Joel?"
"They're close." His eyes sought me. His tongue licked his lips again. "I know-you got to go now, Jones. I'm sorry I yelled and all."
I whirled on the broken man-thing. "How far away are they?" I snapped. "You called them; how long before they'll be here?"
It looked at me with the one eye that remained in its battered head, and said nothing. I kicked it in the side, sent the limp body skidding two yards.
"Talk, damn you!"
It merely looked at me, as impersonally as a morgue attendant taking inventory. Its gaze went past me; it seemed to be listening…
Then I felt it-the greasy, gray feeling of unreality that meant the demons were closing in. I keened my hearing…
I heard the lope of demonic hands galloping across frozen ground, brushing against brittle, leafless twigs, coming closer.
"You… gotta… hurry… up…" Joel's voice croaked. "G'bye, Jones. You was… a good friend. I guess… you was… the only friend… I ever had…"
He was dying; I knew nothing I could do would save him. And a few feet away the heli waited, fueled and ready. I wanted to go.
But I couldn't do it.
"Take it easy, Joel," I said hoarsely. "I'm not leaving. I'm staying with you."
He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
There was a crash of underbrush. As I whirled, a dark dog-shape bounded from the shadow of a giant tree, turned, and charged into the circle of light. I set myself. As it leaped, I threw my weight into a straight-arm blow that met the bony face in midair, drove it back in pulped ruin into the shattered skull. The thing hurtled past me, struck, threshing in its death-fit.
Two more of the beast-things leaped into view, sprang at me side by side. I caught one by the neck, crushed bone and hide together, hurled it aside. I turned to drive a kick into the chest of the second as it rounded on me. I jumped after it, smashed its head with a left and right as it rose up, snapping.
There were more of them around me now. I spun, kicked at one, struck another down with my chromalloy fist, shook a third from my right arm, fended off another… It was a nightmare battle against leaping creatures almost impalpable to my PAPA-reinforced blows; they came at me like bounding ghost-shapes, red-eyed and gape-jawed. I struck, and struck, and struck again.
A white-hot bear-trap closed on my leg. I tried to shake it off. It clung, dragging at me. Jaws snapped an inch from my throat. I hammered at a skull-face, saw it crumble-and another sprang up. One struck me from behind. I stumbled, felt jaws like a saw-edged vise clamp on my thigh. There was one at my left arm now; I heard its teeth break against the steel rods. With my free hand, I struck at it; then two of the things leaped at once, fastened on my good arm I twisted away from jaws that lunged for my throat, felt myself falling. Then I was down, and the weight on me was like heaped mattresses set with needles of fire; I was like a man drowning in a sea of piranha-razor teeth stripping the flesh from the living bone…
I was on my back, a cluster of demon faces over me like surgeons over an operating table; teeth snapped, ripped at my throat; I felt the tearing of flesh, the gush of scalding blood. As if in a dream, I heard the gabble of demon voices, the slap of beast hands. Then blackness closed over me. I knew it was death.
Chapter Twelve
Somewhere, I dream in a sunless emptiness where the years arch like ancient elms over the long avenue of time-a path across eternity, without a beginning and without end.
Into the static universe, change comes: a sense of subtle pressures, of energy-fields in transition. An imbalance grows-and with the imbalance a need-and from the need, volition. I sense movement, the slide and turn of intricate components, and the tentative questing of sensors, like raw nerves hesitantly exposed. Light, form, color impinge on delicate instruments. Space takes on dimension, texture.
All around me, a broad plain of shattered rock and black shadows stretches away to a line of fire at the edge of the world, under the glare of a sun that rages purple-white against bottomless silver-black.
A shape moves, small with distance-beyond it, others. I am moving too, driving forward effortlessly over the rough ground, throwing up dust in heavy clouds that drop back with a curious quickness. Rock-chips fly, twinkling as they fall. I sense vibrations; the thunder of my passage, the whine and growl of meshing metal, the oscillation of electrons.
Abruptly, from beyond the jagged horizon, an object comes, a glittering torpedo-shape tipped with blue fire, flashing with a swiftness that swells it in a movement to giant size. I feel the closing of relays within me; circuits come alive. My back arches; I lift my arms and thrust Fire lances from my fingertips, a silent stuttering of brilliance across the sky. I pivot, trailing the shattered projectile as it gouts incandescence, breaks apart, falls in fragments beyond a distant stony ridge. A growl of thunder rolls, dies. I rake my eyes across the desolate spread of fragmented shale around me, mark a flicker of movement among up-tilted rock-slabs, point and fire in one smooth, coordinated motion…
And still I plunge on, charging to a blind attack against an unknown enemy.
I grind down a long slope, dozing aside rock-chunks, jolting across crevasses. A vast shape swings from an inky shadow to my left, pivots heavily, trailing a shattered tread-dreadnaught of the enemy, damaged, left behind in the retreat, but with its offensive power intact. I see the immense disrupter grid swing to bear on me, glow to red heat I lock full emergency power to my prime batteries, open my mouth, and bellow-and bellow again…
Then I am racing off-side, driving for the crest of a ridge, over, down the far slope as molten rock bubbles behind me. The shock wave strikes and I am lifted, flung down-slope. I catch myself, claw for purchase; the limping monster appears on the ridge and I hurl my thunder at it and see its exposed grid shatter, explode…
I turn back to rejoin my column, aware of the drive of mighty gears and shafts, of curving plates of flintsteel and chromalloy, of the maze of neurotronic linkages that run to command-ganglia, and from these secondary centers to the thousand sensors, controls, mechanisms, reflex circuits that are my nervous system. Far away, I feel a momentary stir of remote phantom memories-faint echoes of a forgotten dream of life… but the recollection fades, is forgotten.
I swing up across a slanting rock-shelf, take up my position on the flank of a fire-spouting behemoth bearing the symbol of a Centurion. The battle continues…
I fight, responding automatically to each emergency with the instant reaction of drilled reflexes-but in among the incisive commands of my response circuits, meaningless wisps of thought flash like darting fishes:
Wheel left into line, advance in file… dry-looking country; a long way between bars… Main battery, arm; primary quadrant, saturation fire… What is this place? A hell of a strange sky… Defensive armor, category nine; blank visual sensors for flash at minute twelve microseconds, mark… Air-bursts all around, looks like a battle going on; what am I doing here? Advance at assault speed; arm secondary batteries, omega shields in position… The dust-it's thick as Georgia clay-but I seem to see through it, beyond it "UNIT EIGHTY-FOUR! DAMAGE REPORT!"
The words flash into my mind like the silent blow of a bright ax, not spoken in English, but spat in an abbreviated Command code of harsh inflected syllables. I hear myself acknowledge the order in kind, as in instant compulsive response my damage sensors race through a fifty-thousand-item checklist like rats scurrying among filled shelves. "Negative," I hear myself report. "All systems functional."