“And it isn’t good . . . You know the merchants? The ones camped by the number two pillar?”
“The ones with the fancy crossbows?”
Norr knew from long experience that the runner had a tendency to describe people by the way they looked, or the artifacts that they carried, rather than how they felt, or acted. “Yes,” she replied. “The ones with the crossbows. Two of them went out to explore the ship and never came back.”
“It’s a big ship,” Rebo said neutrally. “Maybe they got lost.”
“That’s what I fi?gured,” the variant agreed, “until one of the missing merchants appeared right next to the man I was talking to.”
The runner raised an eyebrow. “Dead?”
“Very.”
“Did you tell the person you were talking to?”
Norr shook her head. “No . . . I wasn’t sure what to do.”
Rebo frowned. “So, how did he die? Could you tell?”
The lamp lit the sensitive’s face from below. It gave her features a spectral quality. “Yes, I could. The spirit didn’t say anything, but he was holding his head in his hands, and it was screaming.”
The city of New Wimmura, on the Planet Derius
As Shaz, Phan, Dyson, and four metal men stepped out of the decontamination lock on Derius and began the process of pulling their damp clothes back on, it quickly became apparent that something was wrong. They could hear the insistent pop, pop, pop of gunfi?re for one thing, accompanied by yelling and the muted beat of unseen kettledrums. Then the entire structure shook as a team of fanatical antitechnics carried a palanquin loaded with black powder into the building’s lobby and blew themselves up. The idea had been to bring the two-story structure down, but the supports were too strong for that, so the building still stood.
The combat variant’s fi?rst instinct was to retreat to Anafa via the star gate, but it quickly became apparent that it was too late for that, as the power went off. Fortunately, the emergency lights, which were powered by a battery, fl?ickered and held. “You’d better arm yourselves,” Shaz said grimly, as he slipped into the two-gun harness. “It looks like the building is under attack. We may have to fi?ght our way out.”
Phan was a professional killer, and therefore received the news with aplomb, but Dyson was frightened. He looked from one person to the other. “I don’t have any weapons.”
“No,” the combat variant observed, “you don’t. . . . So, I suggest that you stay close to Phan—and do whatever she tells you.”
The sensitive fi?nished putting his shoes on, shouldered his pack, and wished that the empty feeling in his stomach would go away.
Having armed themselves with stout wooden cudgels, the heavily robed robots made their way out into the offi?ce area beyond, followed by Shaz, Phan, and Dyson. Smoke swirled as a disheveled-looking man whirled to aim a double-barreled shotgun at the group of intruders. His face lit up when he spotted Shaz. “By all of the blue devils it’s good to see you, sir! How did headquarters know we were in trouble?”
“They didn’t,” the variant answered fl?atly. “What’s going on?”
“It’s those damned antitechnics,” the functionary responded angrily. “Come on, I’ll show you what I mean.”
Shaz and the rest of the team followed the local past a landing where two norms and a metal man were busy defending a staircase and into one of the offi?ces that fronted the second fl?oor. It was dark outside, or would have been, had it not been for a multitude of torches. The light they generated combined to illuminate what looked like a crowd of at least three hundred seething bodies. Most were lower down, but some had succeeded in climbing up onto the same level as the building and were busy hurling stones at it. The missiles rattled as they hit the wooden facade. “Be careful,” the functionary cautioned. “The Antitechnic Book of Abominations limits their warriors to smoothbores, but some of those bastards are damned good shots, and one of them nailed Kavi. . . .”
As if to illustrate the norm’s point, a sniper chose that particular moment to send a .30-caliber slug whizzing past Phan’s head. That was a mistake, because the assassin spotted the telltale muzzle fl?ash, and it was only a matter of seconds before the woman brought the scope-mounted rifl?e up to her shoulder and fi?red in response. The sniper never knew what hit him as the .300 Magnum slug blew a hole through his chest. “You were saying?” Phan asked sweetly, as she worked a second round into the chamber.
“Nice shot!” the local said enthusiastically. “That should slow the bastards down. It all started about two hours ago, when the holy men ambushed A-63127, and tied him to a stake. Then they piled fl?ammable materials around the poor bastard. A crowd gathered, the fanatics began to preach all their usual antitechnology bullshit, and that’s when a priest lit the fi?re.”
Though conscious of the fact that there were bound to be snipers other than the one that Phan had neutralized, Dyson edged his way up to the shattered window and was amazed by what he saw. After the original city of Wimmura was slagged during the techno wars, the survivors had been able to found a new settlement within the embrace of the nearby open-pit mine, and constructed dozens of one-and twostory buildings on the benchlike contours that surrounded the hole. One end of the kidney-shaped basin was fi?lled with water, but the rest had come to function as New Wimmura’s central plaza, and that was where the unfortunate metal man had been set alight. Dyson didn’t know if androids could experience the electronic equivalent of pain, but judging from the way that 127 continued to writhe within a cocoon of orange-yellow fl?ames, it seemed all too possible.
“Kill it!” the sensitive insisted, as he turned toward Phan.
“Kill it now!”
The assassin looked at Shaz, saw the operative nod, and brought the rifl?e back to her shoulder. The second shot was just as effective as the fi?rst. The metal man jerked convulsively as the heavy slug tore through his badly blackened alloy torso, which slumped against the wire that bound him to the fl?aming pole. Dyson nodded gratefully. “Thank you.”
But the decision to let Phan terminate the robot had nothing to do with compassion, a fact that soon became apparent. A howl of protest went up from the crowd gathered on the plaza below as the subject of their hatred was
