They came at them fast, swept-wing creatures with tails of bright blue fire and staring malevolent eyes, pinpoints of dark, glowing crimson. The eight stood again together as the assault force went into a wingover and dive, a strafing run. There seemed to be no time to do anything but gape. The first winged being swept over them, guns stuttering a staccato roll. Streaks of tracer white stained the air and it was gone by. Little explosions marked the hillside, turf and earth thrown from little craters, and Demogorgon suddenly staggered, pierced by a dozen flaming rounds. He fell to the ground, gasping, and lost all touch with the battle. Another being made its run over the little group, rattling off a story of mayhem and blood.
Demogorgon lay on the grass face down, isolated from the inner world and drifting away into gray nonexistence. He wanted to run slides of all times past, to have his little death experiences and be done with it all, but the electronic lifelines held on and would not let him go. He was compelled to go on thinking, to call out in his pain.
What should it be? Yes: Brendan, if you are anywhere now, if you can hear me, please help. We are here for you.
A roar of rage tore the sky back into daylight and green eyes flamed, a frosty thunder that stopped the world. A hand swelled above their heads, immense, swatting the flying things from the air, crushing them back into an electronic nether place, ignoring their little cries of strident dismay. It struck at the walls of the castle, folding them back in upon themselves, tearing away at Centrum's outermost circuits, blinding Mother Ocean's God in the process.
Night fell suddenly and then more; the world went black and they moved on, transported and healed.
They ran down the dark corridors of Centrum's mind, surrounded by a glowing pool of liquid light that kept pace with their every step. They fled, and blackness enveloped fore and aft, surrounding them on all sides. They ran in a compact group, eight together, afraid to separate to any distance for fear of getting lost, and as a result they kept bumping into each other, caroming off walls, constantly in danger of falling down. They were afraid to stop.
Demogorgon was in the lead, slim, muscular legs pumping effortlessly, clenched fists swinging on the ends of balancing arms. His breath rasped in his throat, an aftershock of some deathlike experience, but he felt no pain. The cool air surged in and out, feeding him, urging him to go on. To what end? he thought. We're in here now, without plan or preparation. It mirrors our lives, like the lives of all men. We go on and on, running blindly toward the unknown until we stumble and fall. Where can he be? Can anything help me find him? I'll know what to do then. The notion was comforting.
Krzakwa came last, lumbering, trying to keep up, wobbling with fatigue. Thin worms of pain crawled through his sides, demanding rest, but he couldn't stop. The others would go on without him. I laid careful plans for what we were to do and none of it has happened, he thought. Only the interactive processes of Bright Illimit keep us rolling. "Throw in the kitchen sink!" I said. A good thing, too. So much unpredictability would have overwhelmed us in an instant! He ran on, moaning softly as his feet thudded heavily upon the unforgiving stone.
Ariane ran in the middle, thankful for the superb physical conditioning that she'd unintentionally kept all her life. How is it so? Bright Illimit, she realized, must have some reason for making us suffer like this. It could give us unlimited endurance, or at least take away the pain!
How many factors impinged upon them? In the old days, when the wires were simple and processes were clean, programs had warred upon each other for the edification of men, for their delight and amusement. In that time, as now, the programs were still at the mercy of their hardware. They could do no more than the machine would allow. And they were in a machine, its capacities unknown. They came to a sudden stop, jumbling together comic-opera fashion, limbs entangled, bodies sprawled across the hard, dusty floor. They were still, hearts pounding, breaths wheezing into slow silence. There was a light ahead, and theirs had gone out.
Linked into the past through a series of memories connected by a single thread of emotion, Beth sat, seeing herself as a small dark eleven-year-old, on the ledge of the transparent solar panel of the family farmhold, watching the dust devils of this last day of November sweep across the fallow, stripy field which extended to the dim blue humps that defined the horizon. She kicked her feet and let the plastic flip-flops loosely flap against her soles. It was cold, though not cold enough to mist her breath, but the sun, a light so intense it blanched the most intense sky she could recall, seemed to sear her skin. Kentucky had already grown too small for her. She wanted to see the world, not just be in it through Comnet.
She wished her fathers would dream the same dreams she did. Theder was totally lost to the 'net, especially when there were fullsense programs, and Anselm was off most of the time, studying the lightning-quick evolution of the toxin-dominated ecosystems that sprouted among the fields. Neither had any time for her, though Theder did make love to her once or twice a week. She had heard that was the reason her mother had left, a month after the first time. It was fun,though, and the physical contact that it provided was a comfort. She didn't like the mess, though. When she had brought forth blood, the day before yesterday, that really had been messy. Of course, she had expected it for a month or two, and it really wasn't a surprise, but she knew that it was time for her to get herself together and get out of this situation. The school up in Canada had sent her a prospectus, indicating a scholarship would be no problem, and she supposed that was where she would go.
It was Anselm who made most of the decisions for the family. Her mother had chosen his last name, Toussaint, for her. Anselm was the person to speak to.
A whirlwind appeared almost at her feet, scouring up dust and dead leaves like an invisible sweeper. Beth hopped down and ran into it, giggling as the hot wind turned about her and pelted her with weightless debris. Suddenly it swung to the left and headed off toward the hills, leaving her to watch. She turned wistfully and skipped toward the entrance portico of the Station, maneuvering the lithe smallness of her body up the dirty concrete stairway, halfway up onto a massive balustrade. The warmth of the air seeping from the energy curtain ushered her in.
It wasn't difficult to find Theder Sabin. As usual, he was curled up on the watercouch in the darkened viewing room, head encased in the complex helmet which transmitted 'net sensory input. A look of amusement had somehow oozed out onto his face. Beth cleared the control tablet and wrote "Break" on the metallic surface. Though no physical change was obvious, Theder's body began to straighten, and his smile hardened into a grin. His eyes, after a minute, opened.
"Hello, dear Libbie. You should see what they've done. Another breakthrough in preparing films from the early days for a four-sense presentation. It's fantastic what they can do. I've just been watching something called Wings, from 1927. What color! And to imagine that they could get stuntmen to do those things. You know, there's a difference between real action and matte-pastiches. Care to join me?"