Rafik, then Willametta, then Amnon place rocks to display flame-colored ponchos and shorts against dark wet rock. The others were getting the idea.
Andrew was painting a picture of climbers scattered over a cliff face. 'We're halfway up and frozen in fear, right? And that's the way it is until they get here themselves, and look. Right?'
'Andrew,' Jemmy asked, 'do you think they can see us?'
Andrew's teeth flashed in lightning. 'Not yet. All set? Come!'
'Andrew, there's too many!' Andrew looked at him, and Jemmy shouted, 'Me! I'm one too many! They're looking for thirteen ponchos, not fourteen, and if we meet a spectre or something, someone has to pose!'
And after they found Shar they'd be looking for twelve ponchos, not thirteen... still one too many... unless Shar talked.
Andrew said, 'One of us should have started naked. Damn damn. Ansel, you look cold-'
Ansel Tarr dressed again in flame colors.
Jemmy looked around at them. 'Willya?' He gave her Shar's swim shorts and windbreaker. She looked no more skeletal than the rest.
Andrew led off again, leaving twelve posed ponchos.
The ledge was straight, hard to lose in the flashing dark, but it wasn't a split in rock. It was a frozen flow of lava, naked of plants, and slippery. There were holes etched by rain for handholds and footholds. Jemmy stayed on hands and knees even where he could stand, because those behind him were copying his style.
Jemmy, Henry, Andrew, Willametta, Barda, and Amnon wore swim trunks and windbreakers. Ansel wore the last poncho. The rest were naked and not liking it.
He barely heard the scream, but he turned quick and shouted down. 'Who fell?'
He heard: 'I caught something. Caught a plant.' Amnon's voice. 'Thorn.'
'Can you climb up?' Oh, Earth and Moon, Amnon was in a windbreaker and trunks! If proles found those on a gatherer's corpse, they'd guess there were more.
'I can't move! It's like two handfuls of hypo needles!'
'I've got rope, Jeremy.' Andrew hurled a coil of rope at him. He leered atJemmy and said, 'Anchor me.' Plan? Where's your rope?
Jemmy tied the rope to a low, knotted Destiny tree. He could hear Amnon whimpering. The rope didn't seem to be finding him.
The sky lit like a sun.
It hurt the eyes... like the light that burned over the speckles field after Shimon's death. Jemmy blinked. 'What on Earth-?'
'Quicksilverrr!' Andrew's bellow was all triumph. He trolled the rope toward Amnon, who was clinging to a double armful of thorn on a sixtydegree slope. The rope was too short. 'Jeremy!'
It was long enough when Jemmy had untied it from the tree, but the only anchor now was himself and Andrew. Amnon didn't want to let go of the bush.
Andrew shouted, 'Take it, you damned fool!'
Amnon moaned and snatched at the rope, lost his grip and had only the rope. He clung and swung while Andrew and Jemmy pulled hand over hand. At the end he lay sobbing at their feet, his hands full of needles and blood.
And Jemmy asked again: 'The light?'
'It's Quicksilver, you Crab-shy dropout! And the date is late summer, and Quicksilver rises just an hour before sunrise. And we are right on schedule, Jeremy, but we should move!'
'Quicksilver's bright, but this bright?'
'Settler magic. That's what you call it, isn't it? Argos flew past Quicksilver. They dropped a metal and plastic turtle-I've seen pictures-it makes solar-electric plates, and lasers to beam the power, and more little mining turtles. Now it's hundreds of years later and Quicksilver's covered in solar collectors. That's why it's so bright.'
An entire planet covered in Begley cloth.
Jemmy began to understand that Destiny Town had power undreamed by the towns along the Crab. They could light up a mountain range. Launch ships into space. Andrew had known. Did they all know? Did they all take this for granted?
Lightning flickered dimly against a sky like a hazy noon. The rock slope was etched in detail. It looked to be four hundred meters to the ridge, and there, that crack might be a way up.
But-'They're looking at us. How?'
'Amnon? Got your nerve back? Ready to move?'
'Dammit, Andrew! How are they watching us? From the sky?' Light like this had burned behind them this afternoon, lighting the proles' investigation of Shimon's death.
The others gathered around Andrew and Jemmy and Amnon. Andrew said, 'All right, Jeremy, but we don't have forever. Now, that light isn't for us. They're looking for firebird ponchos-Ansel, get that off now, ball it up and hide it!-and those are upRoad. They're looking through video-you understand video cameras?'
'In Spiral Town we still have a few that work.'
'Video from orbit. So they can't see us unless the clouds break, but there's a way to split light into colors. They'll look for firebird colors. They'll match every firebird in the area, but firebirds don't gather the way Our ponchos are gathered-'
Willametta said, 'Andrew?'
'The light's on us. It isn't on the ponchos. Can't you see? The mountain's lit up all around us, but it fades going back toward the barracks. Fades toward the fields too.'
The others murmured. Jemmy saw that she was right. But Andrew said, 'You're imagining that. Why would they be looking at us?'
'I thought they might be focusing on this.' Jemmy held up the prole gun.
'Why?'
But Willametta asked, 'Jeremy, how long has that light been blinking?'
A blinking green light in the butt of the gun. Jemmy said, 'It's been doing that all along. Why? Because they wouldn't want a gun like this wandering loose! If they've got phones-'
'Prole guns don't blink when we're harvesting. They didn't blink after the proles shot the birds,' Willametta said. 'Andrew, when did it start blinking? After you killed a prole for it?'
'Maybe. Damndamndamn. It's sending a help call, isn't it, Willya?'
'Throw it away, Andrew!'
'Daaamn! Damn. Jeremy, do it.'
Jemmy hurled the evil thing back the way they'd come. It flew not far, struck bare rock and spun away downhill. Andrew screamed at the sky.
Andrew climbed as if possessed. This part of the range was new to them all. The plants were gone; it was naked rock. In the weird light they could see him far above, while Jemmy moved about helping the slower climbers and the ones who froze in fear.
Dennis Levoy was sliding. He'd lost the crack they were following. It was out of his reach now and he couldn't even scream. Jemmy scrambled down to reach him, but Dennis was sliding faster now, still silent, naked against a slick slope that wouldn't hold him. In the acid light Jemmy saw Henry flatten himself to avoid being knocked off. Dennis bounced against him and snatched at Henry's ankle. Henry kicked him free. He was falling, falling, gone.
Dennis had been naked. Jemmy felt shamed that he'd thought to look, but he looked around and ticked them off: his own and five other sets of windbreakers and shorts, all climbing well.
A rift in the blazing clouds showed as a black canyon and a terrible light within. Blinded, they froze against the hillside, under a blazing eye in a black sky.
The rift closed before they moved again.
As they climbed, the light crawled away from them, back toward the firebird ponchos.
Andrew was coming back down. 'Not this way. Stop them.' He edged sideways along the hillside and tried another path. Jemmy got the rest of them to where they could cling, and they waited until Andrew shouted.
Now the sky blazed upRoad, above the ponchos they'd left behind, lighting them until proles could come to see what they were. That ought to take hours. The Windfarm's felons climbed in the fringes of the light, with no
