Greg Bear - Mariposa

"Hot," he said.

Six other canisters waited their turn, lined up to the left side of the black-draped bar.

"It's just Coke," the female bartender insisted once more, face pinched. So many tips just lined up and waiting.

The catering supervisor ran with short, quick steps from the rear of the hall-like a small, unhappy dog-and stood aside, chin in hand, as the male bartender filled him in.

The supervisor looked provoked. "There can't possibly be a problem," he announced. "All our supplies go through half a dozen security checkpoints. This is the most secure place in Los Angeles."

The canisters had frosted over-all seven of them.

Rebecca saw it happen.

Cycling.

Had she been a spaniel, she would have gone on point. The guard had the same reaction-not ESP, just a prickle of cop sense.

She stood beside the guard and said in a low voice, "Let's clear the hall."

The catering supervisor listened in dismay and was about to pitch a fit, but the guard nodded agreement with Rebecca and held up a thick strong brown hand-right in the supervisor's face.

Then he pressed a red button on his old-fashioned lapel mike.

"Shit!" the supervisor shouted, throwing up his arms.

An alarm sounded throughout the building.

A loud, female robo-voice echoed under the steel beam roof. "This is an emergency. Leave all personal belongings and evacuate the convention center immediately. Proceed to any exit marked by a flashing green light. Gather at staging areas designated by mall security and await-"

"Get out of here," the guard said to the bartenders and wait staff. Looking pointedly at Rebecca, he added, "You too. Everybody."

The female bartender squeaked "What the fuck?" and then broke into a run. The catering supervisor held his ground, his jaw muscles practically convulsing.

Rebecca swiveled to face the booth and Stan and the five men waiting for her talk. She gestured to Stan-an emphatic, double-handed wave.

"Clear out!" she called, then ran for the far exit.

Her left pump wobbled and the heel snapped.

She kept running.

Something intense going on in those cylinders. Probably nothing. Just Coke. But endothermic, exothermic.

Her broken heel and something like instinct jigged her left and she got the black LAPD bomb truck between her and the bar.

She remembered a cat she had seen as a child, hunkering wide-eyed in the middle of a dirt road just before it was run over by a taxi. Not enough time. A kind of curious, helpless calm.

Rebecca got down on her knees and then fell on the shiny concrete floor, the edge of red carpet.

She drew her arm over her face.

Sound.

No other word for it.

It came as a rocky wall, bigger and hotter than she could have imagined. The windows and meeting rooms and the roof above them lifted and vanished in a gray pall of smoke pierced by white flame.

The big black truck parted the blast wave.

The searing hand of a very bad thing scooped her up and flipped her over like a burger. People, tables, booths to either side simply whisked away.

The last thing Rebecca Rose remembered, before the man with the ginger hair came back to find her, was that huge truck and three or four men in black uniforms flying and twisting over her head.

The truck bent in the middle and fell on her.

Ribs snapped like sticks under a boot.

The pain was unbelievable.

Nathaniel felt the concrete dust sift and settle on his head and shoulders, cake around his eyes. This time he imagined nothing. It had happened for real, almost exactly as he had pictured it-including the puffs from the shattered atrium windows.

Gray and black people rushed past, trying to escape the falling chunks, the wailing sirens and automatic alarm voices.

Nathaniel's senses jammed with observations, like a flood under a bridge carrying sharp, spiky logs. The flood keyed into his innate sense of self-preservation-so many fright bells ringing.

As he walked under the twisted beams, feet crunching through diamonds of glass-and as he climbed the groaning, shuddering escalator and the cracked concrete steps, counting each step, he again felt a surge of deep somatic fear-this time warning against the sharp draining of his physical and mental energy, like a dying battery-as well as the noise and the darkness.

All that imagining had worn him down and might have cost him what needed to stay alive.

I can't stop thinking. There won't be enough blood sugar left to keep my heart pumping.

The roof over the main exhibit hall had collapsed. Fire and rescue teams pushed through the fog of smoke and dust. Nobody was interested in keeping people out. Cordons had not yet been established.

Nathaniel walked steadily toward the center of the chaos. He could see the causal knots loosen, then tighten again. All of it made weird sense. His body screamed outrage that he would have to experience everything awful twice from now on.

But he knew who had done this. He knew who was ultimately responsible.

The Quiet Man-or Jones, if that was possible-had anticipated problems and assigned Nathaniel a task: to pass along something important. He had done so.

But all of it would be futile unless Rebecca Rose was still alive.

Rebecca couldn't take a deep breath without something driving into her chest, like a belt of nails cinched tight.

Water underneath.

Dark behind, light in front.

She had somehow crawled into a cave and got stuck.

Awful noisy, for a cave. Too confused.

She tried to open her eyes but got grit in them, and then keeping them shut hurt as well.

People were banging and turning on big motors and there was lots of yelling and even screaming.

At first, she could not bring her hands up to her face to rub her eyes. She kept wriggling. The scariest noise of all was the sound of metal above groaning like a huge dog.

The belt cinched tighter and she gasped.

All right. She was not getting out of this place-cave or whatever-without assistance. She needed to pull her arm around and push it forward. Someone at the mouth of the cave might see her fingers twitching-they must be close, she could see light.

More motors, engines, very big, and a banshee screech of cut metal. She imagined circular saw blades and sparks flying and then it struck her this couldn't be a cave. Her mind just couldn't fix on where she was, where she had been before, how she had gotten into this fix.

The water was warming. She smelled smoke. A lot of smoke and heat. Okay, definitely not a cave-a roof had collapsed. She had been in her office or maybe her hotel room. She had been in the gym, strapping on her new pumps, the ones that had been comfortable at first, but then the soles had squeaked and the heel had come loose and she had walked in circles to the left…

Los Angeles. She was on the west coast.

Earthquake seemed likely. The floor was still trembling. Big earthquake and a collapsed building. Concrete dust. Heat from a fire.

Periglas. The executive officer of the Robert Heinlein. He had looked nervous, seeing her. Maybe we shouldn't all be in the same place.

Why had he said that? Had he said that?

They had been in the food court of the convention center. She had seen him there for just a few minutes, touched his hand, moved on…

Ended up here.

Flat as a bug.

No. They had got together for dinner. A late dinner. She had placed a call to the adoption center. Everything was on track. She had told Periglas about her wish to adopt-she had spoken of it while they were in bed.

He had looked at her and smiled.

Ah, Christ, she thought. Stupid, stupid!

A hideous noise very close vibrated everything and made her teeth hurt.