He hurled the gun, watched it tumble end over end, arcing out and down until it disappeared into the eye-warping haze, the way Gundhalinu’s flung vial had disappeared.
He turned back, his eyes burning with the vision, his hands trembling. “Ilmarinen…” he whispered. He fell to his knees, lifting Gundhalinu’s hand, pressing it against his face, his lips. He looked down, saw Gundhalinu staring up at him in anguish and incomprehension through the shadow-bars of his nerveless fingers. Ilmarinen— And his mind imploded, as the black hole at its heart tore coherent thought limb from limb.
He staggered to his feet, looking toward the Lake and back again with sudden fury. “Why did you make me do that? I have to kill you—!” His hand jerked the knife from his belt as if it had a will of its own; his body kneeled down again beside Gundhalinu’s. He pressed the blade to Gundhalinu’s throat. His entire body was trembling now. He held himself that way, unable to finish the act, paralyzed as completely as his victim by the anguish of unbearable loss.
He fell back, the knife dropping from his hand to clatter on the hot surface of pitted stone. Beneath his hands he felt the pressure of countless screaming mouths and mindless eyes. “Get up!” he shouted, shouting at himself now. “Get up and do it! Do it! Do it!” He picked up the knife again.
“Reede!”
Reede looked up, feeling something that was almost disbelief as he saw Ananke appear at the mouth of the canyon; as he remembered that he and Gundhalinu were not alone in the universe, the last two men alive.
“Reede! Come on!” Ananke waved his arm, his voice almost shrill as he gestured toward camp.
“What?” Reede shouted furiously, climbing to his feet with the knife in his fist
“Kedalion says we have to get out of here now!”
“Why?”
“Because he called in the army!”
Reede swore in disbelief. He forced himself to look down at Gundhalinu one last time … seeing the trefoil that shone like a star on Gundhalinu’s chest, hearing the harsh sound of his labored breathing. Reede touched the solii pendant hidden beneath his own shirt. “Live, then, damn you—” he said, his voice shaking. “It won’t matter anyway. We have what we need.” He brought his heavy boot back, kicked Gundhalinu in the side with all his strength; felt dizzy with relief as he made Gundhalinu cry out, feebly, involuntarily.
Reede began to run, only stopping when he reached the place where Ananke waited. He struck Ananke’s shoulder, jarring the boy out of his slack-faced staring.
“Is he dead?” Ananke asked weakly, still gaping at Gundhalinu’s motionless body.
Reede did not answer, forcing him back down the canyon, driving him ahead toward the camp.
“Niburu!”
Niburu stood waiting beside the rover as they reached the campsite, his arms folded, as if this were only another visit to town. He had the second stun rifle slung over his shoulder. Reede didn’t believe the expression of calm control on his face for a second. Saroon was nowhere in sight; Niburu must have sent him away somewhere. Reede was beyond caring, now. Trooper Saroon was no more than a nuisance, a detail, a loose end in a net that had suddenly sprung vast, gaping holes….
Reede strode across the camp to Niburu, the knife still clutched in his fist, not caring that Niburu had a stun rifle and he did not. Niburu watched him come without making a move to unsling his weapon.
“Did you call in troops?” Reede snapped, looking down into Niburu’s upturned face.
Niburu’s body shrank in on itself as Reede loomed over him, as if he suddenly faced an avenging demon made flesh. “Yes,” he said, faintly but evenly.
“Why?” Reede shouted, and saw him flinch.
“Because if I didn’t, you’d hunt him down and kill him.” Saroon.
Reede sucked in a breath of burning air. “What makes you so sure I won’t kill you—?” he whispered, letting Niburu face his own reflection in the blade of the knife.
Niburu looked away from it, with an effort. “Because I’m your pilot,” he said, his eyes clear, his voice calm. “Because you need me.”
Reede glared at him, not speaking, not moving.
“Boss, it’s time we got out of here.” Niburu jerked his head at the rover. “Everything important’s on board, except us.”
“So you really are willing to die to save that pathetic, puling bastard,” Reede murmured. “In fact, you’re actually going to kill all of us, just so he can live, and the Four government can go on giving it to him up the ass for the rest of his miserable life.”
Niburu stared at him blankly.
Reede smacked him with an open hand, knocking him to the ground. “Did it ever occur to you,” he shouted, “in your eagerness for justice, that the Fours are going to track this vehicle and shoot it down?”
Niburu looked up at him, glassy-eyed. “They can’t track us here—” He shook his head.
“You don’t know that.” Reede rubbed his sweating face. “You can’t be sure of anything here, you know that—! Gundhalinu vaccinated the Lake with the microviral, you shitbrain! The gods only know what’s going to happen here now.”
Niburu blanched. “I—”
“How did you propose we survive outside World’s End, until we reach Foursgate, anyway—not to mention reaching orbit and our ship, now that you’ve so effectively drawn their attention to us? Why do you think I wanted no witnesses!”
“I thought—”
“No, you didn’t think,” Reede snarled. “You miserable cretin, you didn’t think, you didn’t think at all!”
“But we can still get away. We have the stardrive.”
“It’s not enough—” Reede broke off, half frowning. They had the actual unit; Gundhalinu had shown him the programming. There was barely enough sane smartmatter plasma suffused through the unit to replicate itself, let alone make the drive function … not nearly enough to transport a ship across interstellar space. But if he could get it to respond, then maybe it was enough to get them halfway around one world in a spacetime eyeblink, to a specific track in planetary orbit. . He felt the jangling filaments of his mind begin to find harmony as he focused on the possibilities; letting him think with blinding clarity, in the way that only confronting a problem whose answer lay in pure logic ever did.
He dragged Niburu up, shoved him roughly toward the rover’s doorway. “You’d better hope you’re smarter than I think you are, pilot. Because if you’re wrong, you’re dead. We’re all dead.”
TIAMAT: Carbuncle
“Gods, what a relief to eat something ordinary again!” Tor Starhiker sighed as she stepped out of the small Summer eatery only two street levels above the docks. “I never thought I’d get hungry for fish stew again, but after eating Shotwyn’s cooking for three years, sometimes I even get a taste for seahair…. One step down, Fate.”
“That was delicious.” Fate Ravenglass found the step with her cane, and then her foot She took Tor’s arm for guidance as they started out into the teeming foot traffic of the alley, most of it fisherfolk and deckhands in drab, heavy clothes, with a few brightly colored Winter merchants among them, picking over produce and goods just in from plantations along the coast.
Tor guided Fate through the milling bodies with a skill born of long practice Anyone they encountered who noticed the trefoil hanging against Fate’s tunic of faded periwinkle-blue gave way of their own accord. Fate clung to her wardrobe of exotic, aging offworlder clothes, most of them made of satin or velvet or other fabrics that were pleasant to touch. She didn’t care what they looked like, she said, because she couldn’t see them. She only cared how they felt; like old friends.
“But I thought you loved Shotwyn’s cooking,” Fate said, sounding mildly astonished. “Isn’t that why you went into business with him?”