point.
But even the most stubbornly disapproving come to see that we're wise and we're right.' He looked at the programmers standing around the group of chairs. 'Isn't that so, Chip?' he said. 'Tell them.' He looked about, smiling.
'Chip went out,' Deirdre said, and someone else said, 'After Anna.' Another programmer said, 'Too bad, Deirdre,' and Deirdre, turning, said, 'He didn't go out after Anna, he went out; he'll be right back.'
'A little tired, of course?' someone said.
Wei looked at his cigarette and leaned forward and pressed it out. 'Everyone here will confirm what I'm saying,' he said to the newcomers, and smiled. 'Excuse me, will you?' he said. 'I'll be back in a little while. Don't get up.' He rose, and the programmers parted for him.
Straw filled half the kit, held in place by a wood divider; on the other side, wires, tools, papers, cakes, whatnot. He brushed straw away—from more dividers that formed square straw-filled compartments. He fingered in one and found only straw and hollowness; in another, though, there was something soft-surfaced but firm. He pulled away straw and lifted out a heavy whitish ball, a claylike handful with straw sticking to it. He put it on the floor and took out two more—another compartment was empty—and a fourth one. He ripped the wood framework from the kit, put it aside, and dumped out straw, tools, everything; put the four bombs close together in the kit, opened the other two kits and took out their bombs and put them in with the four—five from one kit, six from the other. Room for three more remained.
He got up and went for the fourth kit by the elevators. A sound in the hallway spun him around—he had left the gun by the bombs—but the doorway was empty-dark and the sound (whisper of silk?) was no more. If it had been at all. His own sound, it might have been, reflected back at him.
Watching the doorway, he backed to the kit, caught up its strap, and brought it quickly to the other kits; kneeled again and brought the gun close to his side. He opened the kit, pulled out straw, and lifted out three bombs and fitted them in with the others. Three rows of six. He covered them and pressed the kit closed, then put his arm through the strap and lodged it on his shoulder. He raised the kit carefully against his hip. The bombs in it shifted heavily.
The gun with the kits was an L-beam too, newer-looking than the one he had. He picked it up and opened it. A stone was in the generator's place. He put the gun down, took one of the knives—black-handled, pre-U, its blade worn thin but sharp—and slipped it into his right-hand pocket. Taking the working gun and holding the kit with his fingers under its bottom, he got up from his knees, stepped over an empty kit, and went quietly to the doorway. Darkness and silence were outside it. He waited till he could see more clearly, then walked to the left. A giant telecomp clung to the display wall (it had been broken, hadn't it, when he had been there before?); he passed it and stopped. Someone lay near the wall ahead, motionless.
But no, it was a stretcher, two stretchers, with pillows and blankets. The blankets Papa Jan and he had wrapped around them. The very same two, conceivably. He stood for a moment, remembering.
Then he went on. To the door. The door that Papa Jan had pushed him through. And the scanner beside it, the first he had ever passed without touching. How frightened he had been! This time you don't have to push me, Papa Jan, he thought. He opened the door a bit, looked in at the landing—brightly lit, empty—and went in.
And down the stairs into coolness. Quickly now, thinking of the boy and the woman upstairs, who might soon be coming to, crying an alarm. He passed the door to the first level of memory banks. And the second.
And came to the end of the stairs, the bottom-level door.
He put his right shoulder against it, held the gun ready, and turned the knob with his left hand. He eased the door slowly open. Red lights gleamed in dimness, one of the walls of transmitting-receiving equipment. The low ceiling glowed faintly. He opened the door wider. A railed refrigerator pit lay ahead of him, blue arms upreaching; beyond it, a pillar, a pit, a pillar, a pit. The reactors were at the other end of the room, red domes doubled in the glass of the dimly lit programming room. Not a member in sight, closed doors, silence—except for a whining sound, low and steady. He opened the door wider, stepping into the room with it, and saw the second wall of equipment sparked with red lights.
He went farther into the room, caught the door edge behind him and let it pull itself away toward closing. He lowered the gun, thumbed the strap up off his shoulder, and let the kit down gently to the floor. His throat was clamped, his head torn back. A green-silk elbow was under his jaw, the arm crushing his neck, choking him. His gun-wrist was locked in a powerful hand and 'You liar, liar,' Wei whispered in his ear, 'what a pleasure to kill you.' He pulled at the arm, punched it with his free left hand; it was marble, a statue's arm in silk. He tried to back his feet into a stance for throwing Wei off him, but Wei moved backward too, keeping him arched and helpless, dragging him beneath the turning glowing ceiling; and his hand was bent around and smashed, smashed, smashed against hard railing, and the gun was gone, clanging in the pit. He reached back and grabbed Wei's head, found his ear and wrenched at it. His throat was crushed tighter by the hard-muscled arm and the ceiling was pink and pulsing. He thrust his hand down into Wei's collar, squeezed his fingers under a band of cloth. He wound his hand in it, driving his knuckles as hard as he could into tough ridged flesh. His right hand was freed, his left seized and pulled at. With his right he caught the wrist at his neck, pulled the arm open. He gasped air down his throat. He was flung away, thrown flat against red-lit equipment, the torn band wound around his hand. He grabbed two handles and pulled out a panel, turned and flung it at Wei coming at him. Wei struck it aside with an arm and kept coming, both hands raised to chop. Chip crouched, his left arm up. ('Keep low, Green-eye!' Captain Gold shouted.) Blows hit his arm; he punched at Wei's heart. Wei backed off, kicking at him. He got away from the wall, circled outward, stuffed his numbed hand down into his pocket and found the knife handle. Wei rushed at him and chopped at his neck and shoulders. With his left arm raised, he cut the knife up out of his pocket and stuck it into Wei's middle—partway in, then hard, all the way, hilt into silk. Blows kept hitting him. He pulled the knife out and backed away. Wei stayed where he was. He looked at Chip, at the knife in his hand, looked down at himself. He touched his waist and looked at his fingers. He looked at Chip. Chip circled, watching him, holding the knife.
Wei lunged. Chip knifed, slashed Wei's sleeve, but Wei caught his arm in both hands and drove him back against railing, kneeing at him. Chip caught Wei's neck and squeezed, squeezed as hard as he could inside the torn green-and-gold collar. He forced Wei off him, turned from the railing, and squeezed, kept squeezing while Wei held his knife-arm. He forced Wei back around the pit. Wei struck with one hand at his wrist, knocked it downward; he pulled his arm free and knifed at Wei's side. Wei dodged and spilled over the railing, fell into the pit and fell flat on his back on a cylindrical steel housing. He slid off it and sat leaning against blue pipe, looking up at Chip with his mouth open, gasping, a black-red stain in his lap.
Chip ran to the kit. He picked it up and walked back quickly down the side of the room, holding the kit on his arm. He put the knife in his pocket—it fell through but he let it—ripped the kit open and tucked its cover back under it. He turned and walked backward toward the end of the equipment wall, stopped and stood facing the pits and the pillars between them.
He backhanded sweat from his mouth and forehead, saw blood on his hand and wiped it on his side.
He took one of the bombs from the kit, held it back behind his shoulder, aimed, and threw it. It arched into the center pit. He put his hand on another bomb. A thunk sounded from the pit, but no explosion came. He took out the second bomb and threw it harder into the pit.
The sound it made was flatter and softer than the first bomb's.
The railed pit stayed as it was, blue arms reaching up from it.
Chip looked at it, and looked at the rows of white straw-stuck bombs in the kit He took out another one and hurled it as hard as he could into the nearer pit A thunk again.
He waited, and went cautiously toward the pit; went closer, and saw the bomb on the cylindrical steel housing, a blob of white, a white clay breast.
A high-pitched gasping sound came sifting from the farthest pit. Wei. He was laughing.
These three were her bombs, the shepherd's, Chip thought. Maybe she did something to them. He went to the middle of the equipment wall and stood squarely facing the center pit. He hurled a bomb. It hit a blue arm and stuck to it, round and white.
Wei laughed and gasped. Scrapings, sounds of movement, came from the pit he was in.
Chip hurled more bombs. One of them may work, one of them will workl ('Throw and boom,' she had said. 'Glad to get them into the can.' She wouldn't have lied to him. What had gone wrong with them?) He hurled bombs at the blue arms and the pillars, plastered the square steel pillars with flat white overlapping discs. He hurled all the 'bombs,' hurled the last one clean across the room; it splattered wide on the opposite equipment wall.
