Then Washen admitted, “The Master hasn’t found us. Not yet. But this time she has a starting point. Someone will eventually come here, and who knows what they’ll find…?”
“A silent, obvious point. Thank you.” He passed his weapon from hand to hand, explaining, “Because of you, I will close the access tunnel from below. And keep it closed forever, perhaps. A series of antimatter charges will obliterate every trace of its existence. And even if the Master guesses right, which is doubtful, it would take centuries to dig to Marrow again.”
“With you trapped down there,” Washen offered.
Diu shrugged again. “How does that old story play? It’s better to rule in one realm than serve in another-?”
There was an abrupt, soft squeal.
The false Master had stopping moving, eyes staring back toward the center of the habitat, something seen and the machine repeating the squeal again. Louder this time, and more focused.
If there was an echo, Washen couldn’t hear it.
Irritated, Diu asked, “What is it?”
Then he turned and stepped toward the robot, asking, “Is something wrong?”
With the Master’s voice, it said, “Motion.”
“From the entranceway?”
“Along the line, yes.”
“What about now?”
“Nothing.”
“Watch,” was Diu’s advice. Then he faced his prisoners, and with an odd little smile, focused on Miocene. “You’ve done something else surprising,” he decided. “Am I right? You’ve fooled me in another way. Haven’t you, darling?”
“I didn’t build one escape pod,” Miocene confessed. “There are two pods. Both serviceable.”
The man took a breath, then held it. Then he said, “So,” with a low, contemptuous voice. “Two more captains have followed you up here. So what?”
He turned to the false Master.
“Shoot—” he began to order.
“No,” Miocene interrupted, taking a step and lifting both hands. “I didn’t invite any captains. And believe me, you don’t want to open fire on them.”
The false Master was aiming at a target too distant for human eyes.
Diu growled, “Wait.”
He turned back to the women, his expression merely surprised. He seemed to be just a little angry. Then he lifted his kinetic weapon, fingers to the trigger as he said, “Who, then? Tell me.”
“My son,” said Miocene.
The false Master was still as a statue, waiting for the correct word.
“Till,” Miocene whispered. “I hoped he’d be curious enough. Through his spies, I sent a message. Virtue was under orders to launch Till to the bridge. I gave him the codes to awaken a second cap-car. I just wanted him to have this chance to see the Great Ship for himself.”
“Well,” Diu said softly, defiantly. Then he looked off into the distance, contemplating that narrow infinity, and after a few moments of hard thought, he told his machine, “Kill them. I don’t care who they are. Kill them.”
The laser gave a sharp, sudden crack.
Miocene ran, screaming now, hands reaching as Diu turned and calmly shot her in the chest, a fat explosive charge burrowing through bone and the wildly beating heart, then detonating with a wet pop.
She collapsed into a shockingly red pool of blood.
Following protocols, the robot turned, ready to defend its master. For that simple instant, Washen knew she was doomed. She ducked down, by instinct, and watched the lasers barrel swing for her, charged again and ready to turn her water and flesh into an amorphous, lifeless gas. But when the next crack shattered the silence, the beam missed. She felt the heat pass overhead and watched in amazement as the false Master panned up and up, aiming at nothing, the golden face turning bright as it absorbed blistering, unrelenting energies.
Quietly, with an eerie grace, the face collapsed into a molten goo.
The barrel of the laser dropped and pulled sideways, then fired again, punching a hole in the wall behind Washen, holding steady until that vast body and its weapon turned to a duck liquid, the robes burning as a Marrow-like pond melted its way into the gray floor.
Diu was screaming and backing up as he fired twice.
Washen tackled him from behind.
They wrestled, and she threw a forearm into his exposed throat, and for a delicious moment she thought she could win. But her body wasn’t perfectly healed. A thousand weaknesses found her, and Diu bent her back, hard, then gave her a smooth strong shove, and when she tumbled, he aimed his weapon at her heaving chest.
“Till heard you,” she sputtered. “With these leech acoustics—”
“So,” he replied.
She said, “He knows everything-!”
Diu hit her with one explosive round, pushing her back against the window.
“What’s changed? Nothing’s changed!’ he roared. Then he shot again, and again. As if from a great distance, Washen heard him shout, “I have a million sons!,” and the next round punched through one of the gaping holes in her body, cutting deep into the insulated window before detonating with a dull, almost inaudible thud.
Quietly, with the blood filling her mouth, Washen said, “Shit.”
Diu was aiming again. Aiming at her head.
Washen blinked and fell to the floor, watching with a thin interest and a genuine impatience, thinking this wasn’t how it was meant to be.
This was wrong.
Behind Diu, a running figure appeared. Legs and arms and a familiar, welcome face came sprinting out of the grayness, a laser drill clasped in one hand.
He wasn’t whom she expected. Instead of Till, she saw her son.
Locke called out, “Father.”
Startled, Diu turned to face him.
And Locke shot him with the drill, emptying its energies into that jittery body, that old metaphor of the flesh ready to boil coming true.
In a moment, Diu evaporated.
Vanished.
Then Locke stepped toward Washen, his face torn with compassion and a wild fear. He dropped the drill and blurted, “Mother.” But she couldn’t hear his voice. Something louder, and nearer, interrupted him. Then came the sensation of motion, sudden and irresistible, and Washen felt herself being sucked through a small hole, her ravaged body spinning and freezing, and falling, the blackness everywhere, and a tiny voice inside her whispering:
“Not like this.
Not now.
No.”
Twenty-seven
There was a screaming wind and the harsher, nearer wailing of a lone man.
Miocene pried open her eyes and found herself miraculously sitting upright, her chest ripped open and her uniform splattered with dying blood and bone and the shredded and blackened muscle of her dead heart. Diu and the false Master had vanished. But the newcomer was running straight for her, sprinting with the roaring wind… a Wayward man, half-naked and barefoot, shorn of his hair and every dignity, his miserable voice screaming, “Mother, no…!”
Was this her child?
Miocene couldn’t place his face. But just the same, she tried to grab him, aiming for one of his legs and losing her balance as a consequence, dropping to her side and the man leaping over her helpless body, again screaming, “No…!,” with a voice as pitiful and lost as she was feeling now.
For a moment, or a year, the ancient woman shut her eyes.
The wind fell away to a whistling murmur. The leech habitat was repairing its damage, and she realized that her miserable carcass was trapped here. The screaming man was near the wall, sobbing now. Slobbering. “I should have… done it faster… fired at him sooner…!’ he was complaining to someone. Then with a massive disgust, he confessed, “But he’s my father, and my hand froze-!”