Once, the door opened and closed. Daisy sensed Claire leave a tray by her elbow and recalled vaguely saying something to her daughter. She went through the motions of eating and drinking as she worked. Sometime later, the tray disappeared the same way.
Yes! Wolling’s the perfect subject, Even if she finds out, she won’t complain to the law. She’s not the type.
Then, after I’ve tried it out on her, there’s all sorts of others. Corporations, government agencies… bastards
so big they could hire software guns smart enough to keep me out. Until now!
Of course, the program was structured around a hole where the keystone — Light Bearer — would go. If she could coerce it from her cousins in exchange for information.
There! Daisy stretched back and looked over the entity she’d created. It was something new in autonomous software. I must name it, she thought, having already considered the possibilities.
Yes. You are definitely a dragon.
She leaned forward to dial in a shape from her vast store of fantasy images. What popped into place, however, amazed even her.
Emerald eyes glinted from a long, scaled face. Lips curled above gleaming white teeth. At the tip of the curled, jeweled tail lay a socket where Light Bearer would go. But even uncompleted, the visage was impressive.
Its tail whipped as the creature met her gaze and then slowly, obediently, bowed.
You will be my most potent surrogate, Daisy thought, savoring the moment. Together, you and I will save the world.
It is told how the brave Maori hero Matakauri rescued his beautiful Matana, who had been kidnapped by the giant, Matau.
Searching all around Otago, Matakauri finally found his love tied to a very long tether made from the skins of Matau’s two-headed dogs. Hacking away with his stone mere and hardwood maipi did Matakauri no good against the rope, which was filled with Matau’s magical mana — until Matana herself bent over the thong and her tears softened it so it could be cut.
Yet Matakauri knew his bride would never again be safe until the giant was dead. So he armed himself and set off during the dry season, and found Matau sleeping on a pallet of bracken surrounded by great hills.
Matakauri set fire to the bracken. And although he did not wake, Matau drew his great legs away from the heat. The giant began to stir, but by then it was too late. The flames fed on his running fat. His body melted into the earth, creating a mighty chasm, until all that remained at the bottom was his still-beating heart.
The flames’ heat melted snow, and rain filled in the chasm, forming Lake Whakatipua — which today bears the shape of a giant with his knees drawn up. And sometimes people still claim to hear Matau’s heartbeat below the nervous waves.
Sometimes, whenever the mountains tremble, folk wonder what may yet awaken down there. And when.
• CORE
“ so for the third time they untied Cowboy Bob from the stake and let him speak to Thunder, his wonder horse.”
June Morgan’s eyes seemed to flash as she leaned toward Alex and Teresa.
“This time, though, Bob didn’t whisper in Thunder’s left ear. He didn’t whisper in the right. This time he held the horse’s face, looked him straight in the eye, and said — ‘Read my lips, dummy. I told you to go get a Posse! ”
As June sat back with an expectant smile, Alex had to bite his lower lip to contain himself. He watched Teresa sitting across the room, as her initial confusion gave way to sudden understanding. “Oh! Oh, that’s awful!” She laughed while waving at the air, as if to fan away a bad odor.
June grinned and picked up her glass. “Don’t you get it, Alex? See, the first two times, the horse brought back women…”
He held up both hands. “I got it, all right. Please, Teresa’s right. It’s bloody offensive.”
June nodded smugly. So far, she was having by far the best of it. No joke he or Teresa told was delivered half as well or elicited such approving groans of feigned nausea. Probably, her skill came from being Texan. The only nationality Alex knew who were better at this odd ritual were Australians.
As bearer of good tidings, June could hardly be begrudged. This party in Alex’s tiny bungalow was to celebrate an end to weeks of tension.
At least one hopes it’s over. I still feel twinges of paranoia, looking over my shoulder for men in snap-brim hats and trench coats.
June had arrived on Rapa Nui this morning with word of Colonel Spivey’s complete agreement to their terms. In exchange for their cooperation — and especially Alex’s expertise — all charges would be dropped against Teresa and Easter Island would be left alone.
Naturally, Spivey will smuggle in a spy or two. But at least Teresa and I are no longer on the run.
It was still an open question whether there was any place to run to. The struggles against Beta weren’t over yet. Still, even the most fatalistic of Alex’s technicians were starting to act as if they thought there might be a planet under them by this time next year.
Now if only they can convince me.
Things had changed since theirs was a tiny, tight-knit cabal, wrestling subterranean monsters all alone. Now they were part of a large official enterprise, albeit one still veiled under a “temporary” cloak of security. June was here to cement the partnership, conveying the determination of both Glenn Spivey and George Hutton to make it work, for now. In that role as emissary, she would leave again tomorrow with Alex’s chief token of cooperation — a box of cubes with fresh data for the other teams. Her courier route ought to bring her back every week or so from now on.
Teresa, for her part, had gone to great pains to make things clear to June — that her new, close friendship with Alex wasn’t sexual.
Not that the two of them hadn’t thought about it. At least he had. But on reflection he had come to realize that anything intimate between them would demand more intense attention than either could spare right now. For the time being, it was enough that they had a silent understanding — a link that had never been severed since they emerged hand in hand from that odyssey underground, like twins who had gestated together and shared the same act of being reborn.
For her part, June Morgan’s outwardly relaxed posture and easy humor surely overlayed anxiety. Alex’s relationship with her had been a wartime affair, mutual, uncomplicated. He had no idea where it stood now and didn’t mean to push it.
At least the two women appeared to have buried whatever tension once lay between them. Or most of it, at least. Alex was glad. For one thing, it meant he could stand up now and leave them alone together for a little while.
“If you ladies will excuse me,” he said, stepping to the door of the little bungalow. “I have to go see someone about an emu.”
June nodded briefly at him, but Teresa was already leaning forward in her chair, almost touching the other woman’s arm. “All right then,” she said. “Here’s one for you, while he’s out playing fire drill with the bushes.”
Moving quickly, Alex made it outside before she started telling the joke. A long one might have snared him and set off a crisis in his kidneys.
It was a balmy night, though winter had lingered a long time, turning this desolate island even more windblown and sere. Apparently spring would be late and blustery. Even the trees at the experimental reforestation zone up at Vaiteia seemed to shiver and cower whenever the gales picked up.
He didn’t bother walking downslope to the shower-commode, shared by five of the prefabricated cottages. Instead, he climbed the hill a ways to where the view was better. As he watered the scrub grass, Alex looked westward toward the lights of Hanga Roa town, just north of Rano Kao’s towering cliffs. The solitary jet runway glittered palely next to five compact tourist hotels and a moored cargo zeppelin. Nearer at hand lay the Atlantis monument, bottom-lit so that at night the ancient, crippled space shuttle .actually seemed caught nobly in the act of taking off.