Vigilant

NANO SLUDGE

Another hangover headache. I rated this one a honking great 7.2 — either I’d got hit with more stun power than’the last time, or I was slipping out of shape. There’s a downside to not getting blind drunk at least once a week.

This time, my hands were lashed up behind my back: one of those plastic slide-ties, cheap, common, unbreakable. The only way to get the blasted thing off was to cut it.

Of course, that brought to mind the scalpel in my purse… except that I wasn’t wearing my purse anymore. Big surprise. The dipshits were chumps, but not quite so witless as to leave me an obvious weapon. At least they hadn’t stripped me buck naked… which I’d half expected, considering how Mouth in particular had a love for the melodramatic. Thank God, the Muscle was around to keep things on a more professional kidnapper-kidnappee basis.

Forget that now, Faye. Assess the situation.

All I could see at the moment was a blank wall, painted forest green, bang in front of my nose. I was lying on something soft, a bed with musty unaired blankets. When I tried to roll away from the wall, I bumped into something thud behind me; after some wiggling, I got myself turned enough to see Festina lying on the bed too. She was unconscious but her breathing sounded healthy — just stunned harder than I was, because she’d been closer to the window.

Speaking of windows, there was one not far from the foot of the bed. Our kidnappers had stashed us in a smallish but comfortable room, not so different from the hotel room at the guest home: a nancy-pine dresser, a frilly little table and chair, windows on two walls. The windows had slat-shutters closed over the outside, and the window glass had been set to frost-opaque; still, sunlight managed to sneak its slatty-frosty way in. The whole bedroom had that "afternoon-nap" feel, darkened but not dark. In other circumstances, it might have come off as a fair cozy ambience… if my head hadn’t felt crawling-full of beetles.

So? Get the obvious over with.

World-soul? I called on my link-seed. No response.

Peacock? Nothing there either.

Festina and I were on our own.

I nudged her with my knee. She didn’t react; and now that I moved my legs, I realized they were hobbled up with a short strap of plastic, ends cuffed around my ankles leaving a stretch of half a meter between. Enough to let me shuffle like a person in leg irons, but no chance of kicking any more knees to splinters.

Pity.

The door opened. My old friends, Mouth and Muscle, swaggered in… which means the Muscle swaggered, while the Mouth only managed a swaggery-staggery limp. His one leg was locked stiff, though the knee cast was hidden by his uniform.

"Surprised to see us again?" the Mouth asked.

"Not under the circumstances," I told him.

"But you didn’t expect us to be hanging close to the guest home," he gloated. "You walked straight in without the slightest suspicion. And we knew you’d end up there eventually; you had to come back to Sallysweet River, and we were waiting, tapped into the police database. As soon as you filed your report, we knew where you were."

"You knew I’d head back to Sallysweet River?" I sure as sweat hadn’t intended to see the place again — not with pictures of Dads staring out from every shop marquee.

"We couldn’t be certain you’d come," the Muscle said before the Mouth thought up another boast. "But when you got away from the smuggler’s house, Sallysweet River was the closest place you might run. And the safest place for us to wait for you. Your home in Bonaventure has cops all around it."

"If you picked up my latest report," I said, "you know the peacocks are gone. So there’s no earthly reason for you to keep after me."

"Come on," the Mouth scoffed, "you think we believed that crap you told your bosses? Lovey-dovey Sperm-tails reunited after three thousand years, then vanishing into the sunset? Sperm-tails are physical phenomena, not conscious beings."

I wished the peacocks were still around. They could have transported this clot-head into an active volcano.

"My report was the truth," I said. "It doesn’t matter whether you believe it."

"It doesn’t matter whether you believe it," the Muscle answered, dead calm. "As we’ve said before, Ms. Smallwood, with that link-seed in your brain, your thoughts may not be your own. Enemy powers may have implanted false experiences into your mind, to sow disinformation with the Admiralty."

Enemy powers? Disinformation? Christ Almighty. What fairy-tale universe were these guys living in?

"When Admiral Ramos wakes up," I said, "she’ll confirm everything I reported."

"So what?" the Mouth sneered. He did love to sneer, that boy. "Ramos is hardly a reliable witness. She’s always been openly hostile toward her superiors. For all we know, she may be the one plotting insurrection — using you as a pawn to shake public confidence in the fleet. Not to mention the navy’s confidence in itself. After all, how can we trust starship security if any of our Sperm-tails could be telepathic aliens, tapping into the minds of fleet personnel?"

Fleet personnel with minds? These guys were living in a fairy tale. "So I suppose we’re back where we started," I said. "You want to rip open my brain, hack inside, blah-blah-blah."

"That’s the only way to be sure," Muscle replied. "If Ramos has been filling your head with false input, we’re doing you a favor finding out."

"Some favor," I muttered. "I’ve got a better idea. Suppose I show you real evidence."

The Mouth gave a beady-eyed glare. "What do you mean?"

"Are we still close to Sallysweet River?" I asked.

"A tourist chalet on the outskirts of town," Mouth replied. "It’s secluded, the owners aren’t home, and the security system was a joke."

"Then I’ll show you a Greenstrider bunker," I said. "Just minutes away. And I’ll bet it’s the bunker where the Peacock kept his headquarters three thousand years ago. The best place on the planet to find peacock information."

"If you mean the bunker by Lake Vascho," Muscle said, "it’s still crawling with police."

"No," I told him, "this is different. Once the Peacock fused with that Greenstrider, he dug bunkers all over Great St. Caspian — maybe to house his people, maybe just decoys, I don’t know. But I’ve figured out where the real central headquarters was… and I didn’t mention it in my report."

"Why not?" the Mouth asked.

I looked back and forth between them, wondering if I should tell the truth — that I’d just doped out the solution a moment before they attacked. No. The truth was too innocent. These chumps were only going to believe something sordid.

"This site is the mother lode," I said, hushing down my voice. Mom-Faye telling goblin stories to the tots. "In the Greenstrider war, how do you think the Peacock kept charge of his tribe? How do you think he intended to make ‘peace’ with enemy factions?"

Muscle looked at Mouth. Mouth looked at Muscle. "Weapons?" the Mouth asked.

"What else could it be?" I lowered my voice more. "Think about it: after the Peacock locked up Xe, why did he keep cooling his heels on Demoth for thousands of years? Especially since it was centuries between the last strider dying and the first Ooloms showing up to colonize. Why did the Peacock hang around, with nothing to Ride but leaners and siren-lizards?"

I waited for them to make a guess. They didn’t. Unimaginative sods. "Because," I finally said, "the Peacock couldn’t leave for fear of the League! He was every bit the murderer Xe was. They were two of a kind, making weapons to slaughter each other’s people. The only difference is, Xe beat my Peacock to the punch; she cobbled together her germ factory, after which everything else meant bugger-all. But the Peacock’s whole arsenal is still intact. Practically under our feet. When I show you this bunker, I guarantee you’ll find a whole slew of goodies you can commandeer for the Admiralty."

"Why should we believe you?" the Mouth asked. Not "I don’t believe you." He damned well wanted to believe; he just needed an excuse.

"Because I don’t want you prying my brain open," I replied. "And because it’s dick-easy for you to check whether I’m telling the truth."

"How do you know about this place?" the Muscle asked… just as eager to believe as Mouth was. The two must be panting-desperate for something to show their superiors; they’d screwed up and given the Admiralty a bad name, not just on Demoth but on every planet that hated the idea of military bullyboys running roughshod over civilians. The High Council had bailed Mouth and Muscle out of jail because admirals are obliged to stand by their people… but my captors were in deep dip-shit with their bosses, and finding a cache of high-tech goodies would go a long way toward saving their rumps.

"I’ve known about this place for a long time," I lied. "You’ve checked my reports. How did we learn about Maya in the first place? Because she wanted Chappalar to help her get an excavation permit. But why did she care about a permit? She and Iranu were already working plenty of sites illegally — they didn’t mind breaking laws when they were hot on the scent. So why was a permit important this time?"

I waited. Neither Mouth nor Muscle had a guess. Christ, when I made up stories for the kids, they always had a guess.

"Maya needed a permit," I said, "because she wanted to work a site in a reasonably public place. Somewhere folks would see her coming and going, and wonder what she was up to. Her letter to Chappalar said the site was owned by Rustico Nickel… and the only mine that fits all the criteria is a place I know, out on the edge of town."

"You never told anyone about this?" the Muscle asked.

"A smart woman always keeps an ace in the hole."

The Mouth gave a short chuckle… and it galled me to hear how it was tinged with admiration. "You’re a shark, Ms. Smallwood. I knew you couldn’t be the goody-goody you pretended. Not with your previous history."

Bastard.

Mouth put a hand on his partner’s arm and drew him back toward the door. They both went outside to discuss their next step. Me, I didn’t even try to overhear what they were saying — I was too dazed, half by the rampaging headache banging the inside of my skull, and half by the words that’d come out of my mouth on the spur of the moment.

Why had it taken me so long to figure out what Maya’s letter meant? The story I told the dipshits had completely nailed the explanation; she wanted to investigate a bunker that was so public she knew she’d need a permit. The only possible site was the mine where we’d buried the Ooloms during the epidemic.

I’d gone down that mine dozens of times playing little-girl Explorer, and had never found bugger-all. But that was before we’d filled the tunnel with corpses, and some drunk touched off a gas explosion. What did the kaboom open up? What had the Dignity Memorial androids seen the day they carried out the dead?

Iranu senior must have suspected they’d find something; that’s why the Iranu group sent the androids in the first place. But our local authorities had closed up the shaft as soon as the bodies were removed, to make sure no more little-girl Explorers risked their lives down there. After that, no archaeologist, Maya or the Iranus, could do much around the place without attracting attention. Maybe a few forays in the middle of the night, but even that was risky — in a town full of miners, people working odd shifts might well go for a stroll at four in the morning.

Which is why Maya needed a permit. I should have figured that out long ago.

As for what I said about the Peacock — that he’d made weapons, that he didn’t dare leave Demoth, that my noble protector was as much a murderer as Xe…

I thought of that moment beside Lake Vascho, snow falling thick, when the Peacock appeared gloomy as a ghost above the water.

"What are you?" I asked.

Botjolo.

Cursed.

Damned.

The Mouth and the Muscle came back into the room. They looked as iron-jawed serious as ever, but now it seemed put on — as if they were gleeful little boys pretending to be rough-tough customers. The dipshits were all bubbles, now that they saw a chance to get out of the Admiralty’s bad books: open the Peacock’s bunker, find tech that would dazzle the High Council. For all Mouth’s talk about Festina planting disinformation in my brain, neither of these pissheads believed their own conspiracy theories; they’d just been grasping at straws till I offered them something better — a whole bale of hay.

"We’ll go to this bunker," the Mouth said. "Tonight, after dark. And you’d better not be lying."

"I’m not," I replied. "Can you handle a Class 2 security lock? The Mines Commission bolted a steel cap-shack over the entrance to the bunker… like a hut sitting plunk on the tunnel mouth, and you have to open the door before you can head down. Of course," I added, "if you can’t open the lock, I can do it myself with one call to the world-soul. Any door the government locks, the Vigil can unlock."

"That won’t be necessary," the Muscle said, giving me a "How stupid do you think we are?" look. "We can open any lock up to a Class 5."

"In our sleep," the Mouth added, never one for a simple statement when he could twist it into a brag. "And speaking of sleep…" He drew a stun-pistol and aimed it at me. "Nighty-night."

In the last second, I pictured my fist connecting with his face. Maybe the image would give me sweet dreams.

Clawing myself awake was harder the second time — like a trick I’d forgotten how to do. I kept fumbling to get it right, then flopping back into blackness.

When I finally managed to grapple up to consciousness, I fiercely regretted it. It’s flat-out amazing how many ways you can feel god-awful at the same time — the hammer-thud headache, the rock-in-your-gut nausea, the scritchy-knife stab in your bladder. Festina had told me the average stun-blast put you out for six hours… which meant I’d gone twelve hours with no water, no bathroom break, and damned if I could remember the last time I’d eaten. Not that I wanted to eat; the thought of food brought me close to the heaves. But my body was running toward empty on blood sugar, and I felt like a mashed dog turd.

"Guys!" I shouted. At least it rasped like a shout in my croaking throat, and sounded loud to my headachy ears. I rolled onto my back and tried again. "Guys! Come on!"

Seconds crept by. As I lay staring at the ceiling, I could see the room was dark again. Night. Festina lay beside me, still breathing but now with a sandpaper edge when she inhaled. I wondered how often you could have a stunner frazzle your neural connections before you developed permanent nerve damage.

"Peacock?" I whispered. Silence.

Then Mouth and Muscle came through the door, and I tried not to sound whiny as I demanded a trip to the toilet.

We’ll skip past the hot-cheek/hard-face indignity of pouring pee while two men watch and you’re bound hand and foot… except to say I was glad the Muscle was there. He kept the whole operation businesslike; unlike Mouth, who was precious near licking his lips with the urge to play lord-and-master games while I was manacled. Sick-minded toad. If I got a chance to break his other knee…

Cherish that thought.

After my one-woman show on the John, the dipshits gave me water and some protein jelly… all my stomach was likely to hold down. They were dash-ahead eager now to make for the bunker as soon as possible, but Festina was still out cold — put down hard by two heavy stun-blasts, and a willowy little thing compared to yours truly. Gymnasium-tough, but not hardened by boozing, brawling, boozing, brawling. The Muscle wouldn’t leave her behind unguarded and the Mouth refused to lug her unconscious body around the countryside. They began to whisper together in the far corner of the room; and with a cold jolt of dread, I knew they were debating whether to kill her.

"Don’t be witless!" I snapped. "If you cork her in cold blood — if you even consider it seriously — the League will never let you off Demoth. Which means a heap of trouble, not just with the police; there’s a plague coming, and it’s going to be a vicious old bugger. You don’t want to be trapped and go Pteromic, just because you didn’t wait for someone to wake up."

"Admiral Ramos is already infected," Mouth said. "Isn’t that right? So putting her down painlessly now is just a mercy killing."

"Odds are that you’re infected too, you crazy buggers. You’ve been breathing our air, haven’t you? If you’re hot for a mercy killing, start with yourselves."

Mouth turned away from me and whispered something to Muscle. Despite input from our esteemed Proctor Smallwood, the proposed homicide was still on the table, being discussed in committee.

"Come on, Festina-girl," I said. After my trip to the bathroom I was sitting on the edge of the bed, Festina splayed out beside me. I twisted till I could touch her with my tied-up hands. Grabbed her knee and shook it. "Come on, wake up. Don’t give them an excuse."

Nothing. Her breathing hadn’t changed, and her face still had a nobody-home emptiness. I shook her leg harder, squeezing her knee. "You have to wake up now, Festina."

Sheer blank nothing.

I gave her leg a full-strength yank, and roared, "Explorer Ramos, atten-shun!"

Suddenly, I wasn’t sitting on the bed anymore. I was flying across the room, jet-propelled by a pair of feet slamming into my back with a double thrust-kick. For a second, I thought I’d plow headfirst into the wall; but I tucked enough to hit with my shoulder, denting the plaster before I toppled to the floor.

Stun-pistols slapped out of their holsters — I’d fallen with my face to the wall, but I could recognize the sound. "Stop!" I shouted. "Everybody stop!" Then I added, "Ow."

"Sorry, Faye," Festina said behind my back. "It’s a reflex."

"I’ll remember that next time we share a bed. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow."

My shoulder was going to have a grand old bruise. I contemplated the throb of pain while Mouth and Muscle impatiently processed Festina through the bathroom. They gave her a grudging sip of water but no food; I wondered if they were cranked at Festina herself or admirals in general.

Then: out to their skimmer in the chalet’s garage. The temperature was balmier than ever — soft spring. As the garage door opened, I caught sight of a night sky heaped with fast-moving clouds.

Mouth took the driver’s seat, and I sat beside, giving directions. In the two minutes we took to get to the bunker, Mouth must have said a dozen times, "You’d better not be lying about this."

His way of making conversation. Men.

The dipshits weren’t half as handy with the Class 2 lock as they thought they’d be: cocky-assed city boys who hadn’t expected the jet-black of night on the tundra, with clouds blocking the sky and no nearby lights. The closest home was the Crosbie family compound, a hundred meters off… and the Crosbies had always been crazy-cheap, never leaving a yard lamp burning once everybody was inside for the night. When I was seventeen, I sometimes parked Egerton plunk in the middle of his family’s lawn and with both of us bare-assed to the stars…

Never mind.

The dipshits fumbled and swore at the lock for a good five minutes, not daring to spark up a light for fear the Crosbies might see. While they were busy, I considered hobbling over to their portable radio-jammer and jumping on it a few times. If I broke it, who cared if the dipshits whazzed me with their stun-guns? The world-soul would pick up low-level link-seed activity from my unconscious body. Heaven knows, the authorities must be scanning for me by now — the world-soul would have raised the alarm as soon as I lost radio contact in the guest home. But Mouth and Muscle had obviously got me away before the cops arrived…

The Class 2 lock snicked open. So much for pulling a fast one behind the dipshits’ backs. Mouth picked up the jammer and slung its carrying strap over his shoulder, while the Muscle grabbed Festina and me by the arm, hustling us into the tunnel.

They locked the entrance behind us again, just in case some local wandered by. No one would be able to tell we’d come down here. And if Festina or I tried to run for it, the locked door would make it that much harder for us to get away.

Nothing I hate more than a dipshit who thinks ahead.

We started downward. Our light came from a torch-wand the Muscle had strapped to his upper arm to keep his hands free. As he walked, his arm swung… and our shadows shifted back and forth, back and forth, along the tunnel walls.

The shaft here was made of the same false granite we’d seen in Mummichog. Or maybe it was real granite — the Great St. Caspian shield. Hard to tell, considering how there were black scorch marks covering most of the stone. I tried not to dwell on the thought that all this carbonization came from burning Oolom corpses. Even after twenty-seven years, the air was filled with a strong whiff of charring… the smell that never leaves a place where there’s been an uncontrolled fire.

The ash streaks on the walls grew thicker the farther down we went. Somewhere under the black stains, I’d once painted my initials in stolen yellow paint: F.S. loves… I forget who I loved that day. Probably one of my future spouses. I’d only liked a few people in Sallysweet River, and I’d forced them all to marry me.

Damn, I missed them. It hurt. And at that instant, I realized I could never go home for fear of making them sick.

"Are you all right?" Festina whispered.

"It’s the smell of smoke," I said. "Making my eyes water."

The tunnel ended in a standard pithead: flat floor, blank walls, empty elevator shaft leading down. In the early days of the plague, this is where we’d gingerly laid out the dead… but that was before the flash gas explosion. After that, we just wrapped the corpses in body bags, stood at the tunnel’s entrance, and tossed the stiffs down as far as they’d go.

As I expected, the explosion had blown a hole in one wall of the room — a jaggedy rupture in the stone, opening into a room we’d never known was there. Sometime since the explosion, a lot of the fallen rock had got cleared to one side. I wondered when that happened. The day the androids removed the bodies? Or just recently?

Maybe Maya knew how to handle Class 2 locks too. I hoped so. That was the whole point of bringing the dipshits down here.

Muscle unstrapped the torch-wand from his arm and led us across the room to the hole in the wall. The floor underfoot was gnubbly, covered with hard specks of grit. Not sand or dirt — the grit was dried gobbets of Oolom, scattered by the explosion and left to mummify over the years. I could see the stuff everywhere, flecks daubing the walls and even the roof: preserved for nigh-on three decades in this cold dark vault.

The Mouth moved forward to join the Muscle, peering through the hole into the next room. I arm-wrestled my conscience a moment, then said, "You realize we found killer androids in Mummichog… in a place exactly like this."

"Are you trying to scare us?" the Mouth asked with his trademark sneer.

"I’m trying to warn you. Maya Cuttack left Mummichog in a fast skimmer more than twelve hours ago. Plenty of time for her to get here ahead of us. And if she thought people might come after her, she could have set traps."

"We’re supposed to worry about traps set by a little old lady?" The Mouth snorted. "I don’t think so."

"Okay," Festina muttered, "that man is plant mulch. A terminal case of stupidity. Fill out the death certificate and paint Oh Shit on his forehead."

The Mouth gave her one last sneer, then turned to his partner. "Let’s go." Muscle discreetly stepped back as Mouth straightened the jammer on his shoulder and clambered through the hole in the wall. "All you have to do," the Mouth continued, "is watch where you step in case there are trip wires…"

His gaze was focused on the ground, watching his feet. He didn’t look right or left… which is why he didn’t see the acid coming till it whapped against him.

Two impacts, split-splat, shot by androids on either side of the hole. Most of one blob slapped harmless against the jammer… but the other wad caught Mouth smack across the face.

"Stop, you’re making us allergic!" Festina and I shouted in unison. The Muscle only watched, as if he’d be ever-so-fascinated to see what happened next.

Mouth turned to see what hit him — no sign of pain, just pure dumb wonderment. His cheek billowed smoke; the hair on his left temple disappeared under the smear of acid like a magic trick, and blood spilled down as skin corroded away. He lifted his hand toward his face, as if he were curious to touch the goo that was eating him alive. The hand got as high as his chin. Then Mouth slumped with barely a sound, crumpled into a smoking heap.

We held our breaths, waiting. Me thinking that if the androids turned my way, I couldn’t dodge or hobble out of range. But the magic words had once again frozen robot fingers on their jelly guns. Some other time, I’d have to decide if I felt guilty for not speaking sooner.

"Idiot," the Muscle said, staring at the steaming Mouth with no apparent emotion. "What did he expect?" Muscle looked our direction as if he wanted us to agree with him. "The man thought everything in the world would just fall together to make him a hero. As if that was the whole point of the universe, to glorify him. What can you do with someone like that?"

Right there at the end, Muscle’s voice had a teeny catch in it. Not enough to make me think kindly of him, but still a slight trace of humanity.

"I don’t suppose you’re going to call an ambulance," Festina said to Muscle.

"We have higher priorities."

He drew his stun-gun and aimed at the Mouth. Mouth was still breathing, but dabs of acid had already begun to polka-dot his throat. Soon some droplet would eat through his windpipe… or jugular vein, or carotid artery, or some other indispensable piece of anatomy. I wondered if I should say a quick prayer; but Festina opened her mouth first, offering a prayer of her own.

"Hey," she said to the dying man. Her voice was soft and gentle. "This is what ‘expendable’ means."

Muscle pulled the trigger, and his stun-pistol went whir. As far as I could tell, nothing changed — Mouth had already drifted away into unconsciousness. But I guess the Muscle wanted to make some kind of gesture.

Festina and I had a hard time getting through the hole into the next room, but Muscle didn’t offer to untie our hands or feet. He just waited on the far side, his eyes moving constantly, trying to watch us and the darkness looming deep beyond the torch-wand’s light. Any fool could see that was impossible; soon, he was concentrating on what lay ahead, ignoring two hobbled women except for the occasional glance back in our direction.

He missed Festina edging toward the dying Mouth. She’d gone through the hole ahead of me, and when I saw what she planned to do, I made an extra great fuss clattering my way over the rubble. The Muscle rolled his eyes, peeved at the clunky-chunky old broad… which meant he missed Festina maneuvering the plastic strap that bound her ankles, touching it against a blob of smoking acid that was chewing through the Mouth’s throat.

Some of the goo came off onto the plastic. Straightaway, Festina edged back again. By the time Muscle looked in her direction, there was nothing to see.

Seconds later, Festina returned the favor for me by setting up another distraction — she shuffled over to one of the androids that ambushed us. It happened to be a handsomish African man, tall, dressed in white-on-white clothing: Oolom colors of mourning, exactly what the Dignity Memorial robots wore when they emptied the mass grave. I guessed this artificial man had been down here ever since that day; Iranu senior programmed these two to stay behind as guards. Now they were working for Maya, just as all the others had been.

Probably, none of the robots had left Great St. Caspian after bringing out the corpses. They’d been shipped to the nearest handy holding area, that bunker by Lake Vascho; and they’d stayed there till Maya and Iranu junior reactivated them years later.

Question: how many more androids did Maya have down here in this bunker? One or two at most; if too many robots had stayed behind after clearing out the mass grave, someone would have noticed. Maybe the androids in this room were the only ones in the whole bunker, and there’d be clear sailing from now on.

Ever the optimist, our Faye.

But Festina had caught Muscle’s attention as she strayed too close to the pseudo-African man. "Get away from that!" the Muscle snapped.

"I’m just making sure it’s shut down."

"And it never crossed your mind to grab its weapon." The Muscle lunged across the room and seized her by the arm. "Don’t underestimate me, Admiral. I’m not my partner."

"It was worth a try," Festina said, shuffling away from the robot again. She didn’t even look at me; she obviously had full confidence that while she kept Muscle busy, I’d pressed my plastic leg irons against Mouth’s acid blobs.

Festina was right. Tiny wisps of smoke were curling up from the plastic, as corrosive goo ate through the strap binding my ankles. In the dim light, I hoped Muscle wouldn’t notice.

"Let’s move," he said. Festina and I hobbled after him like good little captives… trying not to smile at the thought of kicking Muscle’s teeth out when the acid freed our feet.

The room we’d entered was almost empty — blank granite walls, with the usual rusty lumps junked about the floor. All the easier to notice the one thing that hadn’t moldered into anonymity: a palm-sized keypad embedded on the far wall. Sixteen white plastic push-buttons in a four-by-four grid. To my eye, it didn’t look modern, or even human — the buttons were too finicky small to be convenient for Homo sap fingers, and labeled with odd squiggles that didn’t look like any language I recognized. But if this was original Greenstrider technology, it was miraculously well preserved.

The Muscle peered at the pad. "What do you want to bet," he said, "if you key in the right sequence, one of these walls has a hidden door."

Neither Festina nor I bothered to answer. Obviously, this bunker was like the one in Mummichog; some hunk of wall was actually nano, ready to open for anyone who knew the right code. The door probably still worked too — if this bunker had enough self-maintenance capabilities to keep the keypad in good shape, important things like doors would stay in decent repair too.

The Muscle looked at me. "I don’t suppose Xe told you the right key sequence."

I shook my head. "This wasn’t Xe’s bunker; it belonged to the Peacock, her out-and-out enemy. Xe wouldn’t know the codes."

"Pity." The Muscle looked at the keypad again. "If I had enough time and the right equipment, I could crack this baby. But I’m not carrying tools for being delicate, so we’ll do this the messy way."

He strode back across the room and wrenched a jelly gun from one of the robots. "You might want to stand clear," he told us, taking aim on the keypad. Festina and I beetled away, as far as we could get from the pad… which was the opposite side of the room and still not far enough for my liking.

"This is a military base," I reminded the Muscle. "If you spew acid all over a security pad, don’t you think you might set off some defense mechanism? Like an explosion that’ll roast all three of us?"

"The defense mechanisms are thousands of years old," Muscle answered. "They’re bound to be dust by now."

"Oh sure, bound to be," Festina said. Out the side of her mouth, she whispered, "Get ready with another death certificate."

I whispered back, "Let’s hope we don’t need three."

The Muscle fired. His first shot was low: acid wad smacking the wall a handbreadth beneath the keypad. Some of the spatter glooped upward, but only a bit; the rest just hung from the granite, a few jelly drops plopping down to the floor.

Two seconds for the gun to repressurize, then Muscle fired again. This time he’d corrected his aim bang on — a gooey blob struck the keypad dead center, splotching thickly over the press-buttons. I could hear sizzle all the way across the room: buttons melting like wax, the metal container dissolving in heat shimmer.

For half a minute, nothing happened. Then an entire section of wall suddenly turned from stone to molasses, a thick fluid of nanites dribbling to the floor. The fluid was runny granite gray, with the slimy texture of raw egg-white gushing over the ground. Nano sludge.

In the gap where the nanites had been, there was now a dark passageway leading forward.

Muscle stepped back as the egg-whitey juice trickled toward him. "Admiral," he said, waving the jelly gun toward Festina, "if you’d be so good as to go to the doorway. Just to check what happens."

"You want to see if the sludge attacks me."

The Muscle smiled. "Exactly. It’s wicked-looking stuff."

Festina hesitated. Muscle gestured with the gun again, the smile gone from his face. Before either of them did something daft confrontational, I hopped forward myself, slopping into the slushy gray gumbo spreading across the floor. Nice puppies, I thought to the nanites, don’t hurt your old Mom-Faye. With Xe gone, the nanites didn’t answer… but they didn’t attack either. No dissolving my boots or climbing up my legs. Festina moved a second later, following in my gooey wake; with nothing more than sodden shoes, we both made it to the doorway.

"Happy?" I asked the Muscle.

He waited another full minute, giving the sludge time to take action. What scared me wasn’t the chance of nanites attacking… the problem was Muscle staring so precious keenly at my feet. By now, the acid from Mouth’s throat had eaten clean through the strap holding my ankles; if Muscle had good eyes, he might notice. Lucky for me, he kept well back, staying out of the nanite pool. And there wasn’t much light on my legs — Muscle still had the torch-wand rigged to his own arm, and its glow scarcely reached as far as me. I kept my feet tight together, looked chump-helpless, and hoped that would be good enough.

It was. The Muscle didn’t notice the corroded split in my ankle strap; and after a minute, he accepted that the sludge wasn’t going to turn homicidal. Delicate as a bird, he tiptoed through the pool and joined us staring into the passageway forward.

I could have kicked him that very second — broken his knee or swept his feet out from under him. But I couldn’t guarantee I’d take him straight out of the fight, and he had that jelly gun in his hand. Better to wait for a sure thing… especially if I could coordinate an attack with Festina.

Patience. Why do so many things demand goddamned patience?

"On we go," Muscle said. He waved the jelly gun to show who was boss, then led the way forward.

The corridor was only a dozen meters long. Then we came to the bottomless pit.

Oh, all right… it wasn’t honest-to-God bottomless. But it had to be at least ten stories deep, because torchlight didn’t reach the pit’s floor. Ten stories was still plenty enough that I didn’t want to take the dive; and diving was clearly what the Greenstriders had in mind when they built this place. A long stone bridge led forward across the pit, like a drawbridge across a moat. At the far side of the bridge sat another blank granite wall with another entry-code keypad.

Simple arrangement: to move forward you had to cross a narrow bridge over a fatal drop. In Greenstrider days I bet there were gun slits on the far side, ready to strafe unfriendlies if they tried to charge forward. Once you were on the bridge, you were bare-ass exposed… and the way across was only wide enough for attackers to dash up single file.

Cute little killing ground. If the defenders on the far side didn’t like you, either you got shot or you fell.

Or you turned back the instant you realized that going forward was utterly nuts.

"End of the line," I said, slipping back into the corridor. "If Maya’s holed up across the bridge, it’ll take an army to pry her out."

"Not so fast," Muscle told me. "First of all, we don’t know Maya’s here — she may be holed up in some other hiding place. Second, there’s not much chance the old Greenstrider defenses are still operational. Sure, this would have been a death trap three thousand years ago; but everything’s rusted, hasn’t it?"

"Not the prison that held Xe captive," Festina pointed out. "That was built by the Peacock, with self-repair mechanisms far beyond human capabilities. And this whole bunker belonged to the Peacock too. A lot of the equipment must have been standard Greenstrider stuff, but some had to be made by the Peacock himself. Those keypads, for example — not a speck of age on them. For all we know, the Peacock built automatic shrap-guns to cover this bridge; if we try to cross, we’ll be shredded."

"That’s a possibility," the Muscle admitted. "But I refuse to retreat without testing the theory." He gave Festina an ugly smile. "Tell me, Admiral: what’s standard navy policy when you think something might be lethal but you can’t be sure?"

She stared back at him evenly. "Send in an Explorer."

The Muscle waved his gun toward the bridge. "You’re on."

I said, "Stop."

They both looked at me. "Are you volunteering to go instead?" Muscle asked.

"I’m serving as a member of the Vigil," I replied. "And our job is to prevent people from getting carried away with their own momentum." I turned to the Muscle. "What do you think you’ll accomplish, sending Festina across the bridge?"

"I’ll find out if any defense mechanisms are active."

"But why bother?" I asked. "Where’s the gain? Do you really think there’s anything down here that will help you?"

"You said there might be high-tech—"

I interrupted him. "I was leading you on, so you wouldn’t muck about with my brain. Buying time till you made a mistake."

"Still," he said, trying to look unflappable, "there might be useful things down here. You mentioned weapons—"

"Which are dick-useless, you know that. If you find a lethal weapon down here, or even plans for a lethal weapon, you can’t take it home to Admiralty headquarters. The League won’t let you carry killing devices across interstellar space. You knew that, but you ignored it, because you wanted to believe you could squeak out of the mess you were in. Grasping at straws, sacrificing your partner for some false hope…"

"I think," he said clamp-jawed, "you’re trying to make me angry. You want me to do something rash."

"You’ve already done something rash, you chump! The three times you came to kidnap me. Did it ever occur to you to work within the system? You could have flashed your credentials at our government, and said, Top admirals are interested in this case, we’d like to get in on it.’ Most politicians would be flattered. ‘Ooo, the Admiralty is interested in little old Demoth, let’s keep these guys in the loop.’ You would have been part of every investigation team; you’d get up-to-the-minute reports, invitations to planning sessions, tactical operations, the works. But no. You have some witless notion that acting like a lone wolf is more efficient or smart or sexy than playing with the team. What crap! What pathetic macho crap!" I took a deep breath. "Do you know the only high-tech artifact we’ve seen since we got here? A keypad that can last three thousand years. And you turned that to slag. Brilliant thinking, you mook."

He took an angry step toward me. I don’t know whether he intended to hit me, shoot me, or just scream in my face. It didn’t matter — he’d come into kicking range.

Festina snapped his knee, while I knocked the jelly gun out of his hand. After that, it was as easy as stamping grapes.

We freed our hands the same way we’d freed our feet: picked up the jelly gun, shot a blob against the wall, and warily dabbed our plastic wrist ties against the smallest drop of acid we could find. Both Festina and I managed the trick without burning ourselves — something of a miracle considering we were doing all this with hands behind our backs, and me half-shaky from pure relief.

As we stood around after, rubbing the pins-and-needles tingle out of our fingers, Festina said, "All right. We head back, smash the jamming machine, and call for help, right?"

"We may need to get closer to the surface," I told her. "My link-seed might not have enough radio power to transmit through all this rock."

"Closer to the surface is good." She scooped up the jelly gun and tucked it under her belt. "I’ll be delighted to put more distance between us and this death trap. If someone wants to know what’s on the other side of the bridge, maybe we can reprogram those androids from Lake Vascho. Let them lead the charge."

Festina bent to pick up the Muscle — he was unconscious with a broken jaw, but generally intact thanks to our ladylike restraint. I put my hand on her shoulder, and said, "This time let me carry the body."

"Oh sure, take my fun."

She unstrapped the torch-wand from Muscle’s arm and held it as I hefted the man up. Once more, I thanked Our Blessed Mother Mary for Demoth’s .78 gravity; the dipshit was heavy enough as it was. When I had him in a secure grip, I waddled with him down the corridor, Festina keeping pace beside me…

…till we reached a dead end. A blank wall of granite where there should have been a doorway to the next room.

"Oh shit," I whispered.

"Don’t say that!" Festina snapped.

"The nanite sludge… it flowed back into place."

"I can see that." Festina held the torch close to the wall, running it around the edges of the doorway to look for a gap. I couldn’t see the skimpiest irregularity — the door had neatly fused itself to the surrounding rock.

And Muscle had melted the control panel on the other side. Even if rescuers thought to search for us down here, they couldn’t break through with anything less than a laser cutter or high explosives.

"But this wall is made of nanites, right?" Festina said. "And in Mummichog, we could just push through."

"That was when Xe inhabited the world-soul," I told her. "Things are always easier if you have friends in high places."

"At least try."

I set down the Muscle and pressed my hands against the cold false granite. Not the tiniest budge — like pushing against a mountain.

"This isn’t…" I stopped. Something was humming somewhere. In my fingers? My brain? I planted my hands on the wall again and shoved with all my strength.

The wall shoved back. Starting to inch our way.

"Uh-oh," I said.

"Uh-oh what?"

"The Greenstrider defense system has another trick up its sleeve."

"Uh-oh."

"I already said that."

The wall kept advancing — up the corridor, forcing us back toward the bottomless pit. Nano-granite nudged against the Muscle where I’d set him down; in no great hurry, it started to push him along the stone floor, scraping him over the rock. I picked him up again, as if I cared whether he got raspberry rug burn from the rough surface. Lugging him along, we retreated as the wall plugged forward.

"Pity the Muscle isn’t awake," Festina muttered. "He was the one who wanted to find out what defenses were still working."

"If we’re forced onto the bridge," I said, "and guns shoot at us from the far side, would it be god-awful non-sentient to use this chump as a shield?"

"Tough call," Festina replied. "If we convince ourselves he’d want to die nobly, defending his fellow humans…"

I thought about it. "No. He’s not the hero type. But he was definitely interested in learning about Greenstrider weaponry."

"Best way to learn is firsthand," Festina agreed.

When the wall finally forced us out onto the bridge, I was holding the Muscle between us and the line of fire.

The wall stopped moving, right in the mouth of the corridor. That sealed off our only retreat, leaving us vulnerable and exposed on that narrow bridge across the abyss. Festina and I exchanged looks — one of those moments when you hope your eyes are saying something because you know speech won’t work. If we were about to be chopped to chutney by gunfire, I didn’t want to die with banal last words like, "If only we had more time together…"

At the far end of the bridge, the wall slowly dissolved into another doorway. A tall man in white stepped out: a perfect twin of the African android back in the other room. Another robot, naturally; he carried a jelly gun.

Behind him was a shortish woman with white hair. She stared straight at me, and said, "So, Faye, we finally meet. Bitch."