Gordon R. Dickson (24 page)

In
that second, while the world waited, Kil turned at last, meeting the eyes of
Toy who stood like some great bulldog-man, pillar-legged beside Mali. The
shielded candle-flame of hope within Kil leaped out, caught, and flared up
afresh on the answer in those black eyes. Across the short space their gazes
met in final, open understanding; heart bared to heart, the chalice and the
sword.

And
so
the
second
one
was
convinced.

So
in that same moment it was accomplished, what Kil had set out to do; and the
giant swung about and stooped. Like a mother lightly snatching up her child,
Toy caught Mali to his breast. His great arms locked beneath the outflung arms
of Mali, hugging the smaller man to him, holding the slippery, intangible
surface of Mali's body armor fast against the slip-periness of his own, locking
the box and button away behind walls of muscle, from the frantically scrambling
fingers.

And
both
mens
armor
flared—
into white and fiery violence. Arcing on
contact, forced and held together by the enormous strength of Toy, the equal
and opposed magnetic fields flashed into violent electronic flame, shooting out
in all directions so that an eye-searing nimbus of sparks coruscated from the
clasping figures.

Locked
together, they stood, two men straining in unheard struggle, motionless as statuary
in a furnace, cooking in their armor. Now black smoke rolled upward on the tips
of red flame as the overloaded insulation of the body circuits went, mixing in
with the pale brilliance of the magnetic aurora.

Silent
in the roaring midst, body to body, face to face, slayer and slain swayed in a
deadly embrace. For a fractionary moment in the second of their dying, Toy's
face showed clear of the ruddy smoke, his great head flung back,
his
eyes closed, his face a white offering to the god of his
purpose. There was
a calmness
on his features, a look
of peace, like that of someone who wins at last to his heart's desire. And then
the burning insulation parted, the inner shields touched and coalesced in a
sudden, flaring explosion of inconceivable heat that burnt them both like paper
dolls and left the auditorium drifting with white smoke.

"This
was fate," croaked Chase, "on our side. This was fate or great luck.
This was—" his voice died as Kil's eyes
raised
to
look at him. Kil's face was ravaged with pain and sorrow and his voice came
emptily from the flat wasteland beyond all cries and whimpers.

"This
was this," said Kil, with his fingers still on the carbonized shoulder
before him, white with life against its blackness, "This was Toy. He was
a man."

i

EPILOGUE

The
warm air of the mountain meadow rocked in the
drowsy heat of a June afternoon, and the weathered driver of the all-purpose
bug, emerging from the hillside's small belt of pines into sunlight and the
sound of shrilling crickets, stopped in surprise beside the young man and woman
standing there. He thumbed aside the window and looked out. "Hey!" he
said.

"Give
us a'ride?" asked the girl.

"Sure." He stared hard at the
craggy face of the tall young man, his own brown visage deepening into sharper
lines and wrinkles with the effort of memory. His eyes, burned blue by the sun,
considered them as he rolled the door of the bug open. "Don't I know
you?" he asked as they climbed up into the seat beside him."

"You gave me a ride to
Duluth once," answered the young

man
, closing the door. "I'm Kil Bruner.
This is my wife, Ellen."

"Pleased
to meet you," said the old man, looking at the aquamarine eyes and blonde
hair of the girl between them. "Sure, I remember now." He geared the
bug and they started forward with a jerk. "What're you two kids doing way
up here?"

"Talking
to people," said Kil. He held up one tanned, bare wrist for the old man to
see. "About their Keys. . . ."