Attanasio, AA - Solis

"Then I say we go now," Grielle presses, "before any more distorts find us." Buddy steps past Grielle and peeks into the cabin. "Looks to me like Munk's

shot also burned out the laser cannon controls. That right, Rey?"

"Hmm, yes," Rey admits, having already vainly tried to activate those weapons to cauterize all witnesses. "I guess he figured the wetware could have used the cannon against us."

"His shot was precise," Buddy observes softly. His hard, dolorous stare seems an indictment, and Rey is about to protest when the man says, "We'll need your help mounting Munk to a rover."

"Okay," Rey concedes, not relenting his mean squint for an instant. "I'll have the handroids load him on the third rover. But Grielle and I are going ahead. We're not slowing down for the androne."

"Mei," Buddy asks, "can you pilot a desert rover?" "In my sleep."

"I'm the director of this caravan," Grielle protests. "My decision is what counts."

"I don't think so," Shau says and pans from Grielle in her outrage to the scattered skull shards and pink brain sludge glistening among the rocks. "We're in the wilds now. I don't think anything counts here except survival."

The handroids crab-swarm over Munk and within the hour have him securely strapped to the roof of the third rover. While they work, Rey Raza examines the vehicles, acting concerned about damage. A boiling mix of dread and anger seethe in him, and he's glad when the others go off to look over the distorts'

trundle-carrier. Enraged that his business deal with the Commonality has been undone by the androne, he is determined to destroy the pilgrims. They will join Grielle on her death-passage sooner than she expected. Under the engine manifold of the second rover, he loosens a critical deck plate.

"I think we should at least talk with Mr. Charlie," Mei Nili is saying as she

returns with the group from the trundle-carrier.

"He's an abomination." Grielle Aspect says with a revulsed sneer. "Think on him: a wad of brain tissue intent on only one thing-flesh. I told him, flesh is darkness. Though the flesh is in the light, the light is not in the flesh. It would be far better for him if we broke him open on the rocks."

Shau Bandar, walking a wide circle around the two, objects. "Doesn't it count that he's a thousand years old? He's a living piece of our history."

"What did you find in that rusty box?" Rey asks from where he is supervising the handroids' rock burial of the distorts.

"It's a dangerous piece of junk," Mel says. "It's corroded throughout. The compression ducts could blow anytime."

"We should get away from it soon," Rey concurs. "Others may be tracking it." "There was a semblor in the carrier." Buddy reports. "We found a plasma

booster pump that has just been used."

"Yes, yes, that's tight," Rey murmurs, rocking back on his heels, submerging his anxiety as he studies Buddy's face. There are none of the telltale

heat-blotches of anger, so Rey is convinced he knows nothing, though there is a furrow of suspicion in the man's blockbrow. "I saw a semblor emerge. Munk burst it right away. Then the laser fire began."

"The handroids are done," Grielle notices, standing with one hand on the jut of her hip as she assesses Munk. The androne's limbs have been loosened and his body mounted prone on the rover's roof in the shape of a humanoid swastika. "We can still fulfill most of our nycthemeral journey if we depart now."

"Leave those guns here," Rey warns Shau, who is hefting the laser pistol the handroids removed from Munk's grip. "It's probably tainted and could be used by other distorts to target us."

"I want to talk to Mr. Charlie," Mei says.

"You can ride with that wetware if you want," Rey responds sternly, "but I won't activate him on this caravan. Forget it." He turns on one toe and motions for Grielle to follow.

"We're all corpses-to-be," Grielle says blithely as she strolls past the burial mounds of orange rocks. "Better to give oneself to the light than be taken by the darkness."

Under the weight of the androne, the third rover crawls only half as fast as the others, and the crate-laded dune climber and the lead rover with Rey and Grielle in it ride far ahead. Mei, who pilots the second rover in full desert gear in the event of another accident, loses sight of them and slows down so as not to lose her rear view of Munk.

"I think Raza betrayed us," Buddy speaks sadly from the deck chair beside the jumper. Like the others, he too, wears a statskin cowl and sealed togs, his fabric ruddy and smudged on the side where he crawled under the trundle-carrier to find the plasma booster pump. "A semblor wouldn't come into the desert to stalk a signalcarrier. Distorts can do that. The semblor was here to meet with someone."

"If we could speak to Munk," Mei says, "we'd know for sure. But I think you're right. Raza probably cut a deal with the Commonality for Mr. Charlie."

Shau looks down from his perch in the observation bubble behind the forward cabin. "We don't know that. So Rabana says Raza's story is plausible." He holds a hand to his left ear, catching a message in his timpan-com. "When the Commonality found out Softcopy was covering Mr. Charlie's trek, they sent her some officious report warning that the archaic brain had been tampered with by the, ah, let's see-Friends of the NonAbelian Gauge Group. That's what Ananta charged in the Moot. But who are these Friends?"

"A clade on Earth," Mei answers. "My understanding is they branched into people with an emotional craving for a certain mathematics-"

"Right, here it is," the reporter indicates with an abstracted expression, calling up a file on his corneal display. "They branched a hundred and

fifty-eight terrene years ago-enjambed limbic and cortical plexes-blah blah blah-ah, here's what we want: They abide no authority at all, not even reservation strictures, and are general troublemakers for the Commonality. I don't see any record of violence, though. They seem to be more mischievous and

insubordinate than destructive."

"They would have the know-how to trigger wetware," Mei accedes, "but I can't believe that those number-dreamers would do that to an archaic brain. Maybe-"

"Hold up!" Shau shouts. His frantic face glares down between his knees from his sling in the bubble. "Stop the rover! The local office is hearing an ultrahigh pitch over my comlink. The androne dispatcher says it's a pressure whistle. It's coming from under us, in the drive-train. The rover's going to blow!"

Instantly, Mei Nili shuts down the engine, stops the third rover by cutting off the autopilot, throws open all the hatches, and exits through the port companionway, all with the fluid ease of her long training. Buddy barges out the starboard side, and Shau lifts himself through the popped-open bubble, leaps

from the top of the rover, and lands in a dust-splash among the cauterized rocks.

Running is swift and easy over the gravelly desert, and Mei and Buddy bound toward the shelter of talus rocks that have spilled from the scorched slopes of a crumbling crater rim. Awkward in his cumbersome desert gear, Shau trails behind. In a twinkling gust of static sparks and a thump of thunder, the second rover explodes. Chunks of white hull roll flashing into the sky, and a spray of flйchettes cut iridescent tracks in the pink atmosphere. One fragment strikes the back of the reporter's mantle as he bolts over the cold ancient ash, and he flops forward, his neck cleanly broken.

Mei rushes toward his fallen body but stops when she sees the queer angle of his head and the lifeless gape of his face.

Buddy passes Mei, kneels over Shau, and rips open the reporter's statskin cowl. "The cold will preserve him," he explains, gasping with exertion. "He's intact. If we get him to Solis soon, he can be revived."