caught at his theft.
Paolo peeled camo plastic from the launch room's secret al-
cove. The bodies of Senators 1 and 2 already floated within it,
killed by Agnes and Paolo. They shoved the other dead inside,
reluctant to touch them. "They'll know they're here," Agnes
said. "They'll smell them." She sneezed violently.
"They'll think it's themselves," Paolo said, smoothing the filmy
false wall back into place.
"To the tokamak," Kleo said. "I'll take the candles; Agnes, you
take point."
"All right." Agnes stripped off her blouse and heavy hairnet.
She attached them together with a few loose stitches. Puffing out
in free-fall, they looked like a human form in the dimness. She
slipped into the narrow corridor, pushing the decoy ahead of
her with her extended arm.
The others followed, Nora as rear guard.
At each intersection they halted, listening, smelling. Agnes
would push her clothes ahead, then peer quickly around the lip
of the opening. Kleo would pass her the candle and she would
check for ambushers.
As they neared the tokamak power plant, Agnes sneezed loudly again. After a moment Nora smelled it as welclass="underline" an appalling
alien stench. "What is it?" she whispered to Kleo, ahead of her.
"Fire, I think. Smoke." Kleo was grim. "The Reshaped one is
smart. I think she has gone to the tokamak."
"Look!" Agnes whispered loudly. From the corridor branching
to their left, a thin gray stream undulated in the candle's light.
Agnes ran her fingers through it, and the smoke broke into
dissipating wisps. Agnes coughed rawly and caught herself
against the wall, her naked ribs heaving silently.
Kleo blew out the candle. In the darkness they saw a feeble
gleam reflected along the bends and curves of the tunnel's
smooth stone.
"Fire," Kleo said. For the first time, Nora heard fear in her
leader's voice. "I'll go first."
"No!" Agnes brushed her lips against Kleo's ear and whispered
to her rapidly. The two women embraced, and Agnes sneaked
forward, leaving her clothes and pressing herself against the
tunnel wall. When Nora followed the others she felt Agnes's
smeared sweat cold against the stone.
Nora peered behind her, guarding their back. Where was
Abelard? He wasn't dead, she thought. If only he were here
now, with his incessant glibness, and his gray eyes glowing with
an animal's determination to survive. . . .
A sudden sharp clack echoed up the tunnel. A second passed,
Agnes screamed, and the air filled with the sharp metallic
stench of acid. There were howls of pain and hatred, the snap of
Paolo's slingshot. Nora's back and shoulders tightened so suddenly that they cramped in agony and she scrambled head first
down the tunnel, deafened by her own screams.
The rogue genetic whirled in the red gleam of firelight, slashing Agnes across the face with the spout of her weapon, a
bellows. The air was full of flying globes of corrosive acid,
drawn from a wetware tank. Steam curled from Agnes's naked
chest. To the side, Kleo grappled, slashing and kicking, with the
stocky Rep 2, whose arm was broken by Paolo's shot. Paolo was
pulling another heavy stone from his belt pouch.
Nora yanked the sash from her waist with a silken hiss and
launched herself at the enemy Shaper. The woman saw her
coming. She wrapped a leg around Agnes's throat, crushing it,
and swung forward, arms spread to grapple.
Nora swung her weighted sash at the woman's face. She caught it, grinned with her crooked teeth, and darted a hand at Nora's face, two fingers spread to spear her eyes. Nora twisted and the nails drew blood from her cheeks. She kicked, missed, kicked
with the other leg, felt a sudden searing pain as the combat-
trained pirate sank her fingers into the joint of her knee. She
was strong, with a genetic's smooth, deceptive strength. Nora
fumbled at the other end of the sash and smashed the weight
against the pirate's cheek. Rep 1 grinned and Nora felt some-
thing snap as her kneecap soggily gave way. Suddenly blood
sprayed across her as Paolo's slung shot broke the woman's jaw.
Her mouth hung open, bloody, in the firelight, as the pirate
woman fought with the sudden wild strength of desperation. The
back of her heel slammed bruisingly into Nora's solar plexus as
she launched herself at Paolo. Paolo was ready; his bola
whipped overhand from nowhere with the force of a hatchet,
taking the woman's ear off and slashing deep into her collar-
bone. She faltered and Paolo stamped her body into the wall.
The pirate's head cracked against the stone and Paolo was on
her at once, slashing into her throat with the bola's cord. Be-
hind him Kleo and the other woman struggled in midair, the
pirate flailing with legs and a broken arm as Kleo's braced
thumbs pressed relentlessly into the woman's throat.
Nora, winded by the kick, struggled for breath. Her whole rib
cage locked in a sudden radiating cramp. Somehow she forced a
thin gasp of smoky air into her lungs, wheezed, then breathed
again, feeling as if her chest were full of molten lead. Agnes
died before her eyes, skin steaming from the acid spray.
Paolo finished the Shaper woman. Kleo was still strangling the
second woman, who had died; Paolo slammed his bola into the
back of the dead woman's head and Kleo released her, yanking
her stiffened hands away. She rubbed them together as if
spreading on lotion, breathing hard. "Put out that fire," she
said.
Paolo approached the flaming, gluey mass of hay and plastics
carefully. He shrugged out of his heavy blouse, which was
speckled with pinholes of acid, and threw it over the fire as if
trapping an animal. He stamped it vindictively, and there was
darkness. Kleo spat on the sodium tip of another candle, which
sputtered into life.
"Not good," she said. "I'm hurt. Nora?"
Nora looked down at her leg, felt it. The kneecap was loose
beneath the skin. There was no pain yet, only a shocked numb-
ness. "My knee," she said, and coughed. "She killed Agnes."
"There's just three left," Kleo said. "The Speaker, her man,
and Senator Three. We have them. My poor precious darlings."
She threw her arms around Paolo, who stiffened at the sudden
gesture but then relaxed, cradling his head in the hollow at
Kleo's neck and shoulder.
"I'll start the power plant," Nora said. She drifted to the wall
panel and tapped switches for the preliminary sequence.
"Paolo and I will cover the entrances and wait for them," Kleo
said. "Nora, you go to the radio room. Raise the Council, report
in. We'll regroup there." She gave Nora the candle and left.
Nora stuck the candle above the tokamak's control board and
got it up into stage one. A bluish glow seeped through the
polarized blast shield as magnetic fields uncurled within the
chamber. The tokamak flickered uneasily as it bootstrapped its
way up to fusion velocities. False sunlight flared yellow as the
ion streams collided and burned. The field stabilized, and suddenly all the lights were on.
Holding it warily, Nora snuffed the candle against the wall.
Paolo brushed petulantly at the acid blisters on his unprotected hands. "I'm the one, Nora," he said. "The one percent destined for survival."
"I know that, Paolo."
"I'll remember you, though. All of you. I loved you, Nora. I
wanted to tell you one more time."
"It's a privilege to live in your memory, Paolo."
"Goodbye, Nora."
"If I ever had luck," Nora said, "it's yours."
He smiled, hefting his slingshot.