'Sheelagh-' Carl's voice cracked. 'I infected her.'
'Yes, and two others in the apartment building you bought her have also caught light in the last two days.'
Carl wanted to speak, to explain himself, but his mind was tenanted with grief. 'I didn't want this to happen-' he managed lamely. The guard nudged him beyond the cindered room, and anguish turned in Carl like a sense. 'I'm sorry-believe me.'
'We believe everything now,' the commander said. ''Mat's why we've gotten you up.'
They came to an open elevator. It closed behind them and with a barely perceptible hug silently carried them up. 'Your actions have threatened all life on earth,' Leonard spoke. 'You're a selfish, thoughtless man, Carl, and you should be punished for what you've done. But for now, we need you. And maybe bur need is punishment enough.'
Terror bristled in him. 'The zotl.'
The commander's lizard eyes nodded. 'The lance has been calling for you. It started at midnight. Listen.'
Carl heard it: a rumbling, inchoate as thunder.
The elevator stopped, the doors parted, and the thunder became a bellowing that forced hands over ears. The guard pushed Carl into the withering roar. The cacophony stopped instantly.
Carl looked around. He was in an amphitheater ringed with computer panels and viewscreens. The floor of the chamber was a maze of consoles. People in uniforms and lab suits were coming out of the soundproofed siderooms where they had been waiting. At the center of the electronic labyrinth was a gray velvet pedestal on which lay the gold lance and the electricitycolored armoring chip. A technician .in a green smock picked them up in surgery-gloved hands and began working his way through the maze to them.
The viewscreens came on, revealing a milky dawn
sky. Pins of cold light flashed on the monitor screen with the glinting swiftness of rapiers.
'Needlecraft,' Carl clattered more than said.
'If you can't stop them,' Commander Leonard said stiffly, 'the spore you infected us with won't have its chance to kidnap us.'
One of the screens displayed an array of missiles with makeshift warheads. Their exhaust fires redshadowed the sky as they crossed the space where the needlecraft had been moments before. 'Radar-where are they?'the commander queried.
'They're not showing up on radar,' the reply came.
The technician with the lance and the chip stood before them.
Commander Leonard looked into Carl sternly. 'You're the criminal who caused all this evil. None of us wants you to have your power back. But you're the only hope of stopping this invasion. Do you want to help us?'
'Yes-I'll do anything to make up for what's happened.' He bustled with sincerity.
'Turn around, Carl,' the commander ordered. 'Let's hope this works.'
Carl' couldn't believe it. They were giving his armor back to him. But could they? They, weren't Rimstalkers. They were just desperate. Carl prayed with all his vital fibers and the hollowness they held, praying for connection. Please, God-give it back to me.
1 won't trip up this time. Please!
The gloved technician peeled off the thick bandage at the back of Carl's head and inserted the chip in the plastic-prised incision there.
Dazzling pain kicked Carl forward, and the guard holding him staggered. A red-blue spark jumped from the incision like a viper, and everyone stepped back.
Carl's headache wisped away. Colors seemed to go brighter.
Space became translucent with energy. Some thing like a steel, spring coiled tightly inside him, and the inspiriting began. The fires of his body gusted with the internal force of the armor, and when he turned about and faced the commander, he had the visage of a chieftain.
'Where are we?' the armor asked through him.
'At a missile-firing range on the tip of Long Island,'
Commander Leonard responded. She took the lance from the technicians and handed it to him. 'We're a thousand feet underground. The elevator will take you out.'
The touch of the lance quickened him with bright force, intoning the urgency of his mission with the drive to move. He strode into the elevator and jabbed the top button.
On the ride up, he caught himself in the gap between his feeble humanity and the armor's power. He felt like the muddy center of the universe. How had he come to this? He was Carl Schirmer, the avatar of ennui, the eternal ephebe, always more eager for ambience than destiny. He had never expected, much less asked, for his fate, least of all the ravishments of Evoe. It was losing her that had driven him mad. He was a false hero, a fool at the limits of reality. But his love for her was real. And he was thinking of her when the elevator stopped and the door opened.
Dawn gashed the sky. Carl settled into the embrace of his ribs, leaned back against his spine, and stepped out of the bunker onto the wide, saltgrass-tufted field. His armor came on, and like a piece of the sun, he lifted into the blue sky.
Needlecraft flitted in every direction, and the armor spun him, punching out with laserlight. The sky erupted with blue and green roses as each of the zotl craft was hit. The rumble of their destruction zeroed in
all directions. Carl circled about, waiting for more craft to come through the lynk.
