with their every step. They fled, and blackness enveloped fore and aft, surrounding them on all sides. They ran in a compact group, eight together, afraid to separate to any distance for fear of getting lost, and as a result they kept bumping into each other, caroming off walls, constantly in danger of falling down. They were afraid to stop.
Demogorgon was in the lead, slim, muscular legs pumping effortlessly, clenched fists swinging on the ends of balancing arms. His breath rasped in his throat, an aftershock of some deathlike experience, but he felt no pain. The cool air surged in and out, feeding him, urging him to go on. To what end? he thought. We're in here now, without plan or preparation. It mirrors our lives, like the lives of all men. We go on and on, running blindly toward the unknown until we stumble and fall. Where can he be? Can anything help me find him? I'll know what to do then. The notion was comforting.
Krzakwa came last, lumbering, trying to keep up, wobbling with fatigue. Thin worms of pain crawled through his sides, demanding rest, but he couldn't stop. The others would go on without him. I laid careful plans for what we were to do and none of it has happened, he thought. Only the interactive processes of Bright Illimit keep us rolling. 'Throw in the kitchen sink!' I said. A good thing, too. So much unpredictability would have overwhelmed us in an instant! He ran on, moaning softly as his feet thudded heavily upon the unforgiving stone.
Ariane ran in the middle, thankful for the superb physical conditioning that she'd unintentionally kept all her life. How is it so? Bright Illimit, she realized, must have some reason for making us suffer like this. It could give us unlimited endurance, or at least take away the pain!
How many factors impinged upon them? In the old days, when the wires were simple and processes were clean, programs had warred upon each other for the edification of men, for their delight and amusement. In that time, as now, the programs were still at the mercy of their hardware. They could do no more than the machine would allow. And they were in a machine, its capacities unknown. They came to a sudden stop, jumbling together comic-opera fashion, limbs entangled, bodies sprawled across the hard, dusty floor. They were still, hearts pounding, breaths wheezing into slow silence. There was a light ahead, and theirs had gone out.
Linked into the past through a series of memories connected by a single thread of emotion, Beth sat, seeing herself as a small dark eleven-year-old, on the ledge of the transparent solar panel of the family farmhold, watching the dust devils of this last day of November sweep across the fallow, stripy field which extended to the dim blue humps that defined the horizon. She kicked her feet and let the plastic flip-flops loosely flap against her soles. It was cold, though not cold enough to mist her breath, but the sun, a light so intense it blanched the most intense sky she could recall, seemed to sear her skin. Kentucky had already grown too small for her. She wanted to see the world, not just be in it through Comnet.
She wished her fathers would dream the same dreams she did. Theder was totally lost to the 'net, especially when there were fullsense programs, and Anselm was off most of the time, studying the lightning-quick evolution of the toxin-dominated ecosystems that sprouted among the fields. Neither had any time for her, though Theder did make love to her once or twice a week. She had heard that was the reason her mother had left, a month after the first time. It was fun,though, and the physical contact that it provided was a comfort. She didn't like the mess, though. When she had brought forth blood, the day before yesterday, that really had been messy. Of course, she had expected it for a month or two, and it really wasn't a surprise, but she knew that it was time for her to get herself together and get out of this situation. The school up in Canada had sent her a prospectus, indicating a scholarship would be no problem, and she supposed that was where she would go.
It was Anselm who made most of the decisions for the family. Her mother had chosen his last name, Toussaint, for her. Anselm was the person to speak to.
A whirlwind appeared almost at her feet, scouring up dust and dead leaves like an invisible sweeper. Beth hopped down and ran into it, giggling as the hot wind turned about her and pelted her with weightless debris. Suddenly it swung to the left and headed off toward the hills, leaving her to watch. She turned wistfully and skipped toward the entrance portico of the Station, maneuvering the lithe smallness of her body up the dirty concrete stairway, halfway up onto a massive balustrade. The warmth of the air seeping from the energy curtain ushered her in.
It wasn't difficult to find Theder Sabin. As usual, he was curled up on the watercouch in the darkened viewing room, head encased in the complex helmet which transmitted 'net sensory input. A look of amusement had somehow oozed out onto his face. Beth cleared the control tablet and wrote 'Break' on the metallic surface. Though no physical change was obvious, Theder's body began to straighten, and his smile hardened into a grin. His eyes, after a minute, opened.
'Hello, dear Libbie. You should see what they've done. Another breakthrough in preparing films from the early days for a four-sense presentation. It's fantastic what they can do. I've just been watching something called
'No, Dad. I have something I want to talk to you and Dad
Anselm about. Something important. I am going away to school.'
'Uh-hah. Well, it's really about time. I'll miss you, though. We both will. Let's get Ans on the phone.' It was only an hour before the family's car came crunching up out of the dust to the west, casting a hazy shadow before it. The smell of oxidized metal preceded it. The big soft wheels conformed to the shallow troughs of the field and deflated into withered blue prunes as the vehicle came to a stop in front of the Station. Beth and Anselm both came out and hugged their third silently, and began to walk back up the stairs, hand in hand in hand. Anselm dropped their hands and sat on the top step, wiping his forehead with a dusty hand. Beth sat between her two fathers, resting her dark hands on the two knees, one pale and pudgy, the other sallow, scarred, and knobby. If the world could have stayed the way it was at that moment, she wouldn't have wanted to leave. Together with the two of them, the center of attention, she could see no winds in the field.
'You know I love the two of you,' she began, feeling awkward, almost unable to tell them what they already knew. 'But I've decided to leave. I'm eleven now, and I'm going to the Macallister School in Yellowknife. That's in the CFE, nowhere near the Sosh Old Zone, and they have offered me a scholarship.'
