Context (62 page)

That was long ago.

But it was not just their sensory
capabilities which made Jacks a breed apart. Either one of the two individuals
overhead was capable of laying waste to this entire platform, and all the
people on it, and that would have been true even if the mass of panicking
civilians were magically replaced by professional enemy troops, armed and
armoured, and looking for a fight.

A
tingling spread across Tom’s entire skin. He grew aware of the mass of people
behind him, jostling and muttering; of the soldiers pressed against him,
weapons cold against his throat; of the two Jacks high overhead. Of the
glistening, hardened membrane which separated the restless throng from safety.

His ear grew hot. The fake
ID-stud sparked ruby red.

Tom held his breath.

‘OK. Let him through.’

Pressure behind him, as the
membrane pulsed. The force of it spat him through, and he nearly fell flat on
the dock beyond.

‘Over here, friend.’ Someone
reaching down.

He clambered aboard the
dangerously overloaded levanquin—filled with wide-eyed families who did not yet
believe themselves safe—and stared around at the rest of the flotilla,
wondering when they would begin to move.

Almost as if that were a signal,
the first lev-platforms rose higher, then forwards, and the great evacuation
commenced.

Three
days later, in an inn called the Lair Of The Silver Slug, Tom was reunited with
Kraiv and Draquelle.

‘I prayed to Rikleth you’d be
safe, my friend.’

‘Come here, Tom, and let me kiss
you.’

They hugged him simultaneously;
he squeezed his eyes shut, determined not to cry.

~ * ~

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<Story>>

[10]

When
Ro walked into the village from the desert, the notion of salvation took a
moment to register. There was orange-red sand still beneath her feet. A small
tan dog ran towards her, barking with impossible energy in the blistering heat.

Her skin was burned, her tongue
parched; but she was walking, buoyed up by the water from yesterday’ s storm,
and her memory of the power inside her.

‘Come inside, girl.’

It was a flat-faced Navajo woman,
her grey hair bound in braids, wearing a man’s shirt knotted at the waist. She
gestured back towards her home, a pale peach ceramic hogan. Behind, a tiny
robot crabbed its way along her neat vegetable plot.

This was a long way from any
sizeable town, but the woman was already speaking into the silver-and-turquoise
bracelet on her left wrist, then pointing it at Ro: transmitting her image.

If they’ve got scanAgents in
Every Ware
—

But she had to leave the burning
desert—regardless of who ‘they’ might be.

It
was an hour later when she jerked awake, sitting in a hard-backed rocking chair—she
had refused to he down—and saw, through the polarized window, a whitish
desert-stained flyer kicking up dust clouds as it descended.

There was a red cross emblazoned
on the hull, but it wasn’t until the hatch slid open and Sergeant Arrowsmith
poked his head outside that she—

<INTERRUPTED>>

A
woman’s scream, oddly attenuated by distance and the twisted rock channels—a
klick away? More?—echoed around the small cavern. Tom, sitting, wiped the holo.

He was sealing up his stallion
talisman, mu-space crystal secreted within, when Draquelle stumbled into the
cavern.

‘Tom, did you hear?’

‘Of course I—’

‘It came from that direction. The
way Kraiv went.’

After five days hiking through
raw, interstitial territory, their supplies were lasting well; but Kraiv had
offered to scout ahead for water while Tom and Draquelle put together a
makeshift camp.

Crouching down, Tom unsealed
Kraiv’s discarded pack -heavier than anyone but the huge housecarl could have
carried—searching quickly for weapons.

Found none.

Doesn’t matter.

He stood up, noted Draquelle’s
compressed lips, the paleness of her skin.

‘Show me.’

~ * ~

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