“What will we do when we get them all in the middle?” someone asked.
“Capture them,” said Orimar Breaze, full of panic fire and eagerness. He wanted to get this over with so he could do something more interesting. “Put them in pens. Teach them to obey. Kill the bad ones.”
“Why are you going to kill any of them?” the small intrusive voice asked, that same voice that had been asking too many questions recently! “Why will you do that? You’ve already killed too many people on Elsewhere. Why are you doing that?”
“No, no,” Orimar snarled. “We haven’t killed that many. There are plenty left here, in different places. It’s just there, where the bad ones went. The ones that didn’t obey us. We have to kill those ones, who don’t obey us.” Orimar could not remember why this was true, but it had become the truest thing he knew. Himself was to be obeyed. Unquestioningly, immediately, to the death.
The small questioning voice, that of Jordel the Engineer, did not speak again. At his last awakening, he had exercised two of the options he had bribed those long-ago technicians to install: he had ordered a body cloned for himself and he had chosen to stay awake until it was ready—very soon now. The others didn’t know. The others had been too busy out in the world, like a pack of dogs chasing chickens. Blood all over everything and still not enough!
The process of reembodiment would take place inside the Core, as it had been designed to occur. Once embodied here, inside, he could intervene on behalf of the people of Elsewhere, if any of them were left. Until then, he could only ask questions, cause small doubts and even smaller delays. He snarled and fumed, knowing the delays wouldn’t be enough. At least two more days until his body was ready. Clore and the others would reach the massif of Panubi sooner than that.
Clore said they would kill only some, but killing was like a fever in them. They compared totals, like hunters shooting birds. Jordel visualized himself a game warden, prowling desperately through the hunt, unable to protect what little was left.
• • •
“Well, so time comes to leave this place,” said Nela, being very brave because what she had become required bravery as a becoming part of itself.
Fringe leaned toward the old woman. “Are you coming, Jory.”
Jory, who had been sitting very still in her rocking chair for some little time, looked up and said, “Yes, of course, child. I’ll ride one of the horses.”
“Asner?” asked Bertran.
“Do you think I’d let her go alone?” Asner asked.
“Great Dragon?” asked Fringe, looking around.
“Do you think I’d let her go alone?”
The voice reverberated in Fringe’s mind. Like a blow on an anvil. Like a tocsin, vibrant with foreboding. Fringe shuddered to her boot tops, struck dumb by this voice.
“How about Haifazh?” asked Danivon, who had heard nothing.
“I’ll come along behind,” said Haifazh. “But for a little time I will stay here, where I have had joy. Here beside the river with my child.”
“Good-bye, then,” Fringe said, giving Haifazh her hand. “Good-bye.”
Good-bye, good-bye. Nela and Cafferty and Latibor. Good-bye, good-bye. Jory and Asner and Danivon. Good-bye, Alouez and Jacent too. Good-bye.
“How far away are the Brannigans?” Nela whispered to Danivon.
“Not far behind us,” he said, struck almost motionless by her beauty. Was this Nela? Little spidery Nela? He cleared his throat. “They’re moving almost as fast as we are. Just as fast as the Arbai Device is retreating.”
Nela dried her eyes on her sleeve and looked up to find someone had brought the horses, already saddled, and both Jory and Asner were dressed for riding.
Fringe moved forward to lift Jory into the saddle. It was the only way she could travel. The old people couldn’t walk fast enough to keep ahead of the Brannigans.
Then they moved away down the meadow, Nela beside Jory, Danivon beside Asner, Fringe striding along with Bertran at her side. Bertran, booted and cloaked and with a great plume in his hat, was full of questions about Enarae, about her training as an Enforcer. Such a little time, he felt, to learn everything he wanted to know about everything!
Cafferty and Latibor were nearby; Alouez and Jacent were somewhere ahead: all of them staring forward as they marched, as though there was something they were going toward. If they looked forward, they avoided looking back. Fringe saw them, or imagined them, as a carved frieze on some great temple of man, marching toward the corner of a mighty structure. They would march forever, turning the corner at the sunset. Not one among them was cowardly or craven. Not one among them was unworthy. Even old Jory, high upon her horse, sat proudly and held the reins like a queen.
So they went, not quickly but steadily, and behind them came the whine and yammer of the machines.
A considerable distance west of Jory’s house, at the top of a low hill, Fringe stood aside to let the others go by while she checked her weapons. From this height she could look across the intervening valley to the place they had so recently left. She saw the meadow and the great tree and even the two stones, gleaming whitely, but there were no horses. No house.
Jory and Asner had ridden on ahead. Danivon was nowhere near. “Bertran …” Fringe called softly.
“I know,” he said as he came to stand beside her.
“Where is the house?” she murmured thoughtfully. “Where are the horses?”
“In the network, I suppose. In the Arbai Device. House, horses, cats probably—I imagine they were all created and maintained by the device. When the device withdrew, it took its creations with it.”
“But the stones are still there,” she murmured to herself. And when he turned to follow the others, she stayed behind for a long moment, staring at the stones.
They went forward again.
