Vigilant

THE PEACOCK’S TAIL

The Vigil left me two weeks free after mushor. Recovery time. Rearrangement time. A chance to clear the decks.

I no longer needed the electronic nurse perched over me, but data tumor was still a possibility. A white-knuckled looming terror if the truth be told. And data tumor was just the messiest way I could stop being me; there were other more subtle ways the link-seed could wipe out the Faye Smallwood I’d known. Facts and memes infecting my unprotected brain. Long-loved perceptions swept away, erased by casual input… because I deep-down believed I was so full of crap, when pure truths started coming in, not a drop of the old Faye would be able to stand up for itself. Of course, I’d fretted over the same dreads before getting the link-seed… but my old brain could repress the fear, pretend things wouldn’t be so bad. I could watch the doc-chip of that data-tumor victim spewing blood out his eyes, and I could say, "He must have been a weak-willed mook." Ignoring that the dead man had slaved through the same Vigil training I had, and passed the same tests to prove he was ready for a link-seed.

But now that I’d gone through mushor… my altered brain had lost the knack of shying away from uncomfortable truths. And I was scared, scared, scared.

The day I came back from the Proving Center, Angle’s son Shaw asked me to do a trick — to show off what the new Mom-Faye could do, tell what the weather was like right now in Comfort Bight. (The biggest city on Demoth, ten thousand klicks to the southwest, sprawled around the mouth of the only major river running through the Ragged Desert.)

Shaw was just curious, an eight-year-old boy making a let’s-see request… but I broke down in flash-flood tears. I didn’t want to let anything into my brain unsupervised, even a simple "Force one sandstorm, toxicity B, expected duration two hours…"

Uh-oh.

The weather report had seeped in from the world-soul without me consciously asking for it. My bout of the weeps got swallowed by cold, cold terror.

I couldn’t control the seed. Data tumor coming up.

But nothing dramatic happened. Not this time, I thought after a full minute of waiting. Maybe the next.

That night I got out my scalpel — the one I’d used when I cut off my freckles all that time ago. In the angry dark days of my teens and twenties, I’d sometimes just rest the blade against my skin, or trace little patterns… very lightly, more of a game than serious intent. I lost points if I actually drew blood.

It’d been years since I last took out the knife. I’d pulled myself together, hadn’t I? There was nothing driving me to hurt myself now. And if I was scared to shivers about data tumor, surely I could find a more comforting talisman to hold than razor-sharp steel. Something I could sleep with under my pillow and not worry about accidentally nicking a vein.

I sat naked on the edge of my bed and slowly laid the back of the blade onto my bare thigh — not the sharp side, just the back. That was all right, wasn’t it? That was only goofing around.

A link-seed means you can’t lie to yourself.

I found my eyes filling with tears as I thought, "It was supposed to be all better now. I’ve fixed everything, I’ve passed mushor, I shouldn’t still be crazy."

Gradually, the cold scalpel warmed to the heat of my skin. After a while, I couldn’t feel it anymore — light, thin metal, matching my body temperature… as if it still knew the trick of becoming part of me, after all these years.

Eventually I managed to put the scalpel away, without ever touching the sharp edge to my flesh. But I couldn’t bring myself to stash it back in its dark, hard-to-reach hiding place at the rear of my closet. The poor knife would be so lonely back there.

I put it in my purse.

The time came for me to stop hiding mopey at home and get out to work: on City Council docket 11-28, "A Bill to Improve Water-Treatment Facilities in Bonaventure." Mine to scrutinize. Honest-to-God legislation placed in the fear-damp hands of Faye H. Smallwood, Proctor-Probationary.

"Probationary" meant I had an advisor peering over my shoulder through the scrutiny process: a sober, uncleish Oolom named Chappalar. When I first started my studies for the Vigil, Chappalar had struck me as bashful near humans, always half a step back and matching the color of the walls. He windled around town on foot rather than gliding because it bothered him to be the only flying figure in the sky. Each time before a global election, he petitioned the Vigil for transfer to anywhere with more Ooloms… and each time after, he put on a brave face when he found himself reposted to Bonaventure.

Lately though, Chappalar had perked up something considerable. Office gossip said he’d been seen sashaying with a silver-haired Homo sap woman, variously described as quiet, chatty, or somewhere in between. Translation: no one had actually talked to her; people had just spied from a distance and invented stories to suit their own tastes.

The usual naysayers tried to stir up a fuss about "mixed relationships," but no one paid attention. Humans and Divian sub-breeds had been doing the dance ever since our races made contact centuries ago. Ever since… well, it’s queer to picture the League of Peoples as matchmaking yentas, but after our wave of humans left Earth in the twenty-first century, every alien race we encountered said, "Ooo, you’ve just got to meet the Divians. You have so much in common!"

The Divians lived nowhere near Homo sap space — the closest planet of the Divian Spread lay hundreds of parsecs from New Earth. But continuous nudges from other League members pushed us out for what amounted to a set-up blind date: first contact on the moon of an ice giant halfway between our home systems.

And surprise, surprise, we hit it off.

Our two species are precious close to each other in basic anatomy, intelligence level, evolutionary history… light-years closer than any other species we’ve encountered in the League. Yes, Divians change colors and have ears like grapefruit nailed to their heads; but when they and Homo saps got together, it wasn’t like meeting aliens. More like tagging up with someone from the far side of your own planet — quaint accent and a bag of bewildering customs, but basically a regular joe who shares a slew of your interests.

Curiosity gets piqued. Bonds form.

As for species differences, you can prize them as exotic novelties rather than obstacles. Spice. They give you something to giggle over in the wee hours of the morning.

Understand, I’m talking about Chappalar and his friend now. Because I’m a married woman.

The gist of Bon Cty Ccl 11-28 was improving two water-treatment plants around town; ergo, to kick off our scrutiny of the bill, Chappalar and I decided to tour those plants. We also decided to tour the three plants that weren’t scheduled for upgrades… partly for comparison, and partly to make sure city council was putting money where funds were needed most. (Fact: some plant managers are more likable/persuasive/politically connected than others. Guess whose plants get financial handouts. While plants run by folks who are unpopular/undemanding/unrelated to the mayor only get significant allocations when equipment falls to pieces. Or when the Vigil gets loud and cranky in council meetings.)

All of which meant that my first official act as proctor was a tour of Pump Station 3, just beyond the petting zoo on the edge of Cabot Park.

It was the butt end of winter in Bonaventure. Snow still sat in sodden clumps on the ground, but you could feel the kiss of spring in the air: a licky toddler’s kiss that smeared your skin wet with condensation. The city’s first thaw of the year. No one was fooled by it — Great St. Caspian winters never surrendered graciously — but give or take a few more bitch-slapping blizzards, greener times were on their way.

My stroll from home followed the shore of Coal Smear Creek, where park staff had just posted thin ice signs: those red-and-black ones with sensors that trigger sirens if someone steps off the bank. You need such precautions in Cabot Park; all winter, kids use the frozen creek for hockey or figure skating (Oolom kids for ice-sailing), and they hate to quit as long as the surface looks solid. Even with the signs, one or two dunces take a through-the-ice soaker every year… as Lynn’s son Leo could attest. Except that Leo never breathes a word about what happened. It’s Lynn herself who tells the story every time Leo brings a girl home.

Anyway. Picture a gray winter morning, with mist in the hollows, and moist air that doesn’t feel cold even if it’s only three degrees above freezing. The thaw has begun, trickling along the cement walkways and dripping out of the trees. Life is stirring from hibernation, and even a woman with poison ivy in her brain can let herself loosen up.

I remember the snowstriders that morning — white birds running across the top of the drifts. Every few seconds, they’d plunge their beaks through the crust and pull out frostfly cocoons to gobble. Like all native Demoth birds, they had no real feathers; instead they were coated in downy clouds of fuzz, giving them the look of ankle-high dust balls with small snowshoed feet.

Suddenly, the striders scree-scree-screeched and took to their wings; they’d spotted a looming shadow floating above the snowscape. Hoar falcon? Kite-manta?

Without a sound, Chappalar landed on the path beside me. Out for an early-morning glide. All by himself. And he had the air of a man who’d be wearing a huge smile, if he were the sort of man who wore huge smiles.

"Good morning, Proctor Faye," he said. "Lovely day." Like most older Ooloms, he’d learned English from braingrab lessons originally coded on New Earth. It gave him a la-di-dah mainstream accent that always sounded snooty to my MaryMarch ears.

"Good morning yourself, you," I told him. "You’re looking like the cat that went down on the canary. Pleasant night, was it? You slept well? In good company?"

His outer ear sheaths flicked closed in a split second, then inched back open — the Oolom equivalent of a blush. "Se holo leejemm," he muttered. You hear too much. "Sometimes I find humans disturbingly intuitive."

"Only the women," I said. "So you had a willy wag night?"

"I passed an agreeable evening," he answered primly.

"Se julo leejedd," I told him. I’m hearing too little. "Don’t you know Homo saps live for juicy gossip?"

He didn’t reply right away; but he walked with a rare bounce to his step, even for an Oolom. (They always bounce — they’re light, and their glider membranes catch the breeze. On windy days, Ooloms think nothing of linking arms with any human who’s walking the same direction, using you for an anchor to keep from blowing away. At least, that’s the story I get from all the Oolom men who latch on to me in the street.)

Bounce, bounce, bounce. Finally Chappalar broke the silence. "Her name is Maya. Human, but you don’t know her. One hundred and ten years old, but she has never missed a YouthBoost treatment. She is in excellent physical health."

I snickered. YouthBoost kept us all in "excellent physical health." If Chappalar mentioned it, he must have been struck by some wonderment of Maya’s condition. Perhaps she was a wide woman.

"Tell Mom-Faye all about it," I said, taking him gleefully by the arm.

"Tell Mom-Faye my lips are sealed," he replied, detaching himself pointedly. "Whatever goes on between people is either private or universal. I shall not divulge the private, and you can download the universal yourself."

By which I suppose he meant picking up some Oolom/human porn-chips. No need, Chappalar-boy, no need. I’d seen enough of those in my dissolute past to know the basic interspecies geometries. What I wanted now were pure vicarious specifics.

But no matter how I wheedled, Chappalar refused to give blow-by-bump details of the night before. Truth to tell, he didn’t speak much at all. He was too busy smiling, bouncing, soaking up the feel of the thaw. I could guess how his mind was fluttering with the inevitable morning-after speculations. Does she really… What if she… Should I… How soon can we…

"You’re so cute," I told him.

Maybe he didn’t hear — he kept closing his ear-lids tight as if he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, then opening them wide as if he wanted to embrace every sound in the world.

Christ, he made me want to fall fresh in love myself. Good weather for it too. I broke into a jog to keep up with his bounce.

The pump station formed one wall of the Cabot Park petting zoo — three stories high (the wall), fifty meters long, covered with a glossy mosaic of a woodland that had never existed. By some rare magic, this forest combined Earth cedars, Divian sugar-saps, and Demoth raspfeather palms. (Truth to tell, I’d never seen a real Earth tree outside VR; just a few potted saplings at the NatHist Museum in Pistolet. No Demoth government would be daft enough to endanger the local ecology, letting people plant alien trees out in the open.)

The petting zoo had the same kind of contrived cross-mix as the trees in the mosaic. From Earth, donkeys and sheep; from the Divian homeworld, domesticated orts (chicken-sized pterodactyls, given to annoying squawks but gentle with children); and from Demoth itself, fuzz-worms and leaners. (Fuzzworms resemble rolls of frayed brown carpet — boring to look at, but furry-soft to pet. Leaners are herd animals, like morose short-legged goats with the hides of armadillos. In the wild, they like to rest by leaning against rocks and trees; in the zoo, they flop themselves against the legs of visitors, gravely staring up into your face with a wrinkled, "You don’t mind, do you?" expression.)

As Chappalar and I crossed the zoo grounds, two leaners followed us… one clearly hoping we’d brought sponge-corn from the concession stand, the other a robot chaperoning the first. Every real creature in Cabot Park had a look-alike robot companion, programmed to make sure normal animal behavior didn’t become too much of a nuisance. If, for example, the leaner chose me as its resting post, all well and good (apart from mud stains and leaner smell on my parka); but if the beast went for Chappalar, the robot would cut in like Dads at a dance party, standing sentry between Chappalar and the leaner till the animal went elsewhere.

Here’s the thing: an adult Homo sap could hold the leaner’s weight easily. Chappalar, though, would be knocked ass over teakettle and possibly crushed. Leaners never got it through their dumpy heads that even though Ooloms looked tall and strong, they were actually breakably light. Ergo the need for robot lifeguards — otherwise, the League of Peoples would ask why we let potentially dangerous animals get rough on our sentient citizens.

The League had very strict rules against putting sentients at needless risk. Either you followed those rules, or you got declared non-sentient yourself.

You didn’t want that. The League also had very strict rules for dealing with dangerous non-sentient creatures.

The door to the pump-station building was locked. Routine safety precaution? Or was some paranoid someone truly worried about saboteurs tampering with the city water supply? No. Most likely the staff locked the door for fear some leaner might rest against it and accidentally push it open. Before long, the plant would be full of orts and donkeys, not to mention sheep drowning themselves in the filtration vats. Who wants woolly water?

The mosaicked wall had an intercom screen embedded beside the door; I could easily call someone to let us in. But what would Chappalar think? We’d agreed on an unannounced visit… not an all-out catch-them-with-their-pants-down raid, but still we didn’t want to give the staff time to prepare a show. ("Oh yes, Ms. Proctor ma’am, we surely need all the cash you can funnel our way.")

I glanced at Chappalar. He’d taken his cue from the leaners and propped himself back-against the building’s wall. A creamy dreamy expression settled on his face as he started to turn pointillist, color-matching the teeny mosaic tiles of gloss-fired clay. The perfect picture of a man in reverie over his new girlfriend… not at all waiting to see if I was too wimp-gutless to use my link-seed.

Closing my eyes, I reluctantly reached out to the world-soul: my first deliberate brain-to-byte contact with the collective machine intelligence that permeated every digital circuit on Demoth… including the axonal vines through my brain and whatever computerized locking device kept the pump-station door closed. Faye Smallwood of the Vigil, I thought, silently projecting the words toward the door. Please grant me entrance. (The same formal way I used to speak to my wrist-implant… which, by the by, had got removed during mushor, to avoid radio interference between it and my link-seed. Since then, my wrist had felt so indecent-naked, I’d taken to wearing a rack of cheap bracelets.)

My Open sesame signal traveled like radio fizz out through my link-seed and into the closest datasphere receiver cell, then shunted through a slew of relays to the world-soul core. My identity got verified; likewise the identity of the lock I wanted to open. (The Vigil could pop locks in public buildings, but not private residences.) In less than a second, the door gave a soft click. I pulled it open and offered Chappalar a weak smile… mostly sick relief my head hadn’t exploded.

Without losing his dreamy expression, Chappalar said, "Next time before you open a door, tap into any available security cameras to see what’s on the other side. On my first scrutiny, I nearly got impaled by a forklift that happened to be passing. The door was locked specifically to prevent such accidents." He smiled and gestured toward the entranceway. "After you."

No forklifts inside… just a fiddly-dick locker room where workers stored their street clothes. Some of the staff had hung private trinkets on their lockers — a photo of someone’s family, a wire-painted miniature of the Blessed Mother Mary, the green-on-gray insignia of Bonaventure’s premier boat-racing team — but overall, the room had a spartan feel, whitewashed concrete, sucked dry of personality.

"Is there a city ordinance against dressing up your work area?" I asked Chappalar.

"Pump stations have to meet sanitation standards," he replied. "Some plant managers interpret those standards more rigorously than others."

"You know the manager then?"

"I know everyone who works for the city. You will too."

I’d already memorized the names of plant staff, and downloaded their files from the civic databanks. (Not through my link-seed. Through the one hard-copy feedbox in the Vigil offices.) The manager of Pump Station 3 was Elizabeth Tupper, age sixty-two, employed by the city works since humans took over Bonaventure. No complaints registered against her from above or below: she’d never screwed up badly enough for higher-ups to notice, and never harassed her subordinates to the point where they lodged an official protest.

You could say the same for almost every bureaucrat in town. I wished the employment records would say things like, "Plodding but competent," or "Goat-wanking control freak." Too bad they didn’t let me make up the checkboxes on performance-review forms.

Chappalar moved ahead of me, holding his arms crossed against his chest so his gliders were folded tight to his body. The walkway forward was camel-eye narrow; if he hadn’t trimmed his sails, they would have brushed against lockers on both sides, knocking off all the hung decorations. I followed, tucking my arms in too — I didn’t have Chappalar’s wingspan, but how often do I have to use the word "Amazonian" before you figure out I’m a big old girl?

Probably three times less than I’ve used it already. Redundancy, thy name is Faye.

Beyond the lockers lurked the vat room: a chamber the size of a skating rink, dominated by massive metal tanks. Water from the local aquifer got pumped up from below, fed through a line of processing vats and squirted out the other end, purified of toxic metals and native Demoth microbes. This station was supposed to have three working lines of four vats each; but the two oldest lines had been jinxed with mechanical gremlins over the past year, forcing the staff to hammer away at stubborn pumps, jammed stir-paddles, and hiccuppy valves. Scarcely a week passed that one line didn’t conk out for a day or so… and over last Diaspora weekend, both bad lines went tits up together.

No wonder city council wanted to rip out the old and put in state-of-the-art replacements. The only question was why they’d let the place degrade so badly to begin with. Elizabeth Tupper, plant manager, must have really cranked someone off.

The moment Chappalar and I entered, we could tell which two lines were on the futz: the ones that were half-dismantled, their high-up access panels open to expose wiring and plastic tubes. A pair of wheelstand stairways had been rolled up to the guts of the nearest vat, as if two workers had been poking around side by side, consulting with each other on how to get a bit more service out of the heap of junk… but no one was there now. No one anywhere in sight.

I turned to Chappalar. "They’re all on rest break?"

He shrugged. "Could be a staff meeting."

"The regular staff meeting is tomorrow." Chappalar would have known the schedule if he’d done his homework on the plant… but then, he’d been busy playing lose the spoon with Maya, hadn’t he? Anyway, this scrutiny had got docketed under my name, so I was the one supposed to know the facts. In his way, Chappalar was giving me a vote of confidence — trust I would cover the background trivia so he wouldn’t have to.

"Even if it’s not time for the regular meeting," Chappalar said, "Ms. Tupper might have called an impromptu one. Perhaps she assembled the crew so she could distribute a memo on putting away one’s tools." He rolled his eyes. I was beginning to get a picture of Ms. Memo-Making Tupper. "Or," Chappalar went on, "they may have received a delivery of spare parts at the other door, and everyone’s helping unload."

Possible. Plausible. Considering the rat’s banquet of pipe and cable strewn round the floor, they must send out for spare parts frequently. Still… the place seemed needle-nick quiet. And abandoned. I was getting a case of the hinkies, some of that "human intuition" Chappalar grumbled about.

"Let’s keep on our toes," I told him, keeping my voice low. "This is making me edgy."

He gave me a look — a studiedly neutral look reserved for first-time proctors who talk like escapees from a melodrama. Then again, his inner ear-sheaths lowered a fraction, letting him listen better for suspicious sounds. He was giving me the benefit of the doubt, even if he thought I was overreacting.

Warily, I moved forward. Chappalar followed. As we drew level with the stairways up to the vat controls, I yielded to impulse and climbed the steps — up two full stories above the ground till I was face-to-face with a jumble of fiber optics and plumbing.

Chappalar flapped up beside me and landed lightly on the other set of stairs. His head suddenly jerked; he put a hand to his cheek. "Wet." He looked down and pointed to a black poly pipe just below eye level; it had a pinhole in it, shooting up a thin spray of water that had hit him in the face.

"That can’t be good," I said.

"Not unless you’re in need of a shower." He ducked around the spray and leaned forward to peer at the pipe. "There’s more corrosion here than just that pinhole. Look at this wire. See where the insulation is missing?"

I leaned in beside him. Yes: specks of damage on several wires, on the pipe, and on the readout of a nearby pressure monitor. I could pick up something else too — a sharp scent that curled my nose hairs.

"Acid," I whispered.

"What do you mean?"

"I can smell it."

"Oh." Ooloms flip-flop in their respect for the Homo sap nose. Sometimes they act as if they don’t believe in smell at all, as if we’re shamming our ability to use a sense they don’t have. Other times they treat us with something close to awe: astounding creatures that we are, privy to profound sensations that are hidden from their race.

This time, Chappalar decided to be impressed. "What type of acid is it?" he asked.

"Don’t know." I could have downloaded the world-soul’s library of smells, to compare this pickly odor to the ones on file; but what would be the point? Showing off to Chappalar? And did I want to fill my brain with a catalogue of bitter stinks?

Our cowardly Faye, rationalizing. To avoid taking another kick at the data-tumor can.

"Who cares what acid it is?" I said briskly. "The question is where it came from."

Chappalar looked disappointed at the fickleness of my nose; but he turned back to the innards of the control panel. "I can’t imagine why anything here would leak acid. Pumping and filtration equipment shouldn’t use strong chemicals. I suppose there might be batteries, for backup power supply if the main current goes out…"

He scanned the pipes upward, searching for a source of the spill. I didn’t. I’d memorized schematics of all the equipment in the plant; nothing used so much as a dribble of high-corrosive.

"This is all wrong," I muttered. "I’m going to call Protection Central."

"Faye." You didn’t need sensitive Oolom ears to hear the reproof in Chappalar’s voice. "This is your first scrutiny," he said, "and you’re ready to see everything as suspicious. I was the same when I started. But think — this is just a water-treatment plant, in a quiet city on a quiet planet. Nothing sinister goes on here.

My guess is the workers were just cleaning out pipes with an acid wash. They spilled some, everyone rushed to the first-aid station or the shower, and…"

His ear-lids suddenly opened wider.

"What?" I whispered. A moment later I heard the sound too: footsteps tapping toward us from the far end of the room.

Chappalar gave me a gentle smile, with only a hint of I-told-you-so. "Hello!" he called. "We’re from the Vigil."

The footsteps sped up. In a moment, two figures hove into view at the bottom of the stairs below us — a man and a woman, both human, wearing the standard gray overalls of city maintenance staff. They looked mainstreet-ordinary: in their thirties, one Asian, one Cauc, both with shoulder-length black hair.

Just one problem: I’d gone through the files on everyone who worked here. The files included ID photos; and these two people weren’t in the pictures.

"Good morning," Chappalar was saying. "We’ve come to look around…"

He began to lift his arms as if he intended to launch off the stairs and glide down to the newcomers. Bolt-fast I grabbed him, pulling him back. He gave me a wounded look. "Please, Faye; this kind of behavior…"

That’s when the folks on the ground drew their pistols.

I only had an instant to recognize the weapons: jelly guns, able to shoot a blob of sticky goo up to forty meters where it would splatter on impact. Police loaded them with clots of neural-scrambling syrup — even if the shot didn’t hit you dead on, one tiny splash touching bare skin would send frazzled messages to your brain, interfering with most motor functions. Petit mal on a plate.

Somehow, though, I didn’t think the guns pointed my way were filled with knockout paste. I could almost smell the acid inside, gluey wads of it, that would cling to your skin like tar and eat straight down to the bone.

With simultaneous coughs, the pistols fired.

Standing out in the open up a flight of stairs, two stories above the floor, nothing behind me but a copper-solid wall of pipes and wires… I had nowhere to run. Yes I ducked, and I pulled down Chappalar too, though I knew it wouldn’t help — the whole point of a jelly gun is its splash, its knack for spattering you with droplets even if you dodge from ground zero. In a second I’d be sprayed with burning slush…

…except that Chappalar snapped up his gliders like a membranous shield.

I don’t know how he knew the attack was coming — he had his back to the shooters. Maybe he was just trying to catch his balance after I pulled at him… but his sails spread wide, flat to the incoming wads, and the shots broke against him with a sharp double-splat.

The air blossomed with acid’s bitter reek. Chappalar screamed.

He toppled forward, collapsing onto me — his moaning body so light, the weight was like a flimsy coat stand holding a single burning cloak. Twin splash patterns of acid speckled his back and gliders… and each droplet was starting to smoke, a thousand stringy white streamers smelling of cruel vinegar. I had to get him to safety; and do it fast, in the two seconds the jelly guns took to build up pressure before they could spew another round.

First things first: an instant Mayday over my link-seed and piss on being a nelly about data tumors. Protection Central, I bellowed mentally, defense squad, ambulance, killers! The world-soul was bright enough to fill in the details… like where I was calling from. It could triangulate on my link-seed signals. Meanwhile, I grabbed Chappalar under the armpits, hiked up his arms, and rolled us both straight over the stairs’ guardrail.

We didn’t fall. We didn’t glide. Imagine a wobbly blend of both, me dangling under Chappalar as if he were a crippled parafoil. He was halfway unconscious, but still managed to keep his arms and legs stiff enough for a semicontrolled descent — vectoring down at a steep angle till my feet jarred against the floor. Two staggering steps to catch my balance, then I was running for the exit.

Good points about my situation: Chappalar wasn’t heavy to carry, and I had a head start on the shooters, still back at the stairs.

Bad points: my grip on Chappalar was cramp-awkward — just fingertips under his armpits. My fingers were stopped against the solid web of his gliders, so I couldn’t wrap my arms round his body… lucky for my arms, considering the sticky blobs of acid sizzling their way into his back. (The smell of vinegar smoke. The shuddery whimpers of my friend.)

Another bad point of my position: the shooters had begun to run after me. Arms pumping. Feet pounding the floor like hammers. Only world-class sprinters ever galloped that flat out… certainly not me as I juggled an injured Oolom. The jelly guns must have repressurized by now, and I was easily within range; but the two racing after me must have wanted a point-blank shot, maybe flush in the face to scour away my eyes. That queasy thought spurred me on. I sped through the door to the locker room and slammed it behind me with an adrenaline-fueled kick. Didn’t help.

My pursuers hit the closed door like twin battering rams. The door didn’t just fly open, it snapped off its hinges and hurtled across the room, smashing against a locker, then bouncing off to cuff me a good one in the shoulder. I reeled and lost my grip on Chappalar. Trying to do a dozen things at once — keep my balance, avoid dropping my friend, prevent him from crashing to the floor or against the lockers — I made a hash of damned near everything.

Down I went, the door flipping over on top of me. It was only luck I didn’t fall on Chappalar. He landed beside me in the narrow aisle between lockers, the two of us jammed side by side with the broken door heavy across one of my legs.

Pity the door only covered up to my knee; I could have used some protection for my face.

The shooters stopped at my feet. Their guns lowered and took aim. Two triggers fired simultaneously.

And here’s what I saw: a ghostly tube of light, green and gold and purple and blue, suddenly glimmered into existence before me. The two acid balls flew into that tube… and the tube funneled them up, around, in a smooth arc that led from the pistol mouths, circling over the shooters’ heads, back behind them, and out onto my attackers’ shoulder blades. Acid jelly flew through that misty channel, around the loop; then smack, the two wads slapped into the shooters’ backs, splattering against nearby lockers but missing Chappalar and me.

As fast as it’d materialized, the phantom tube, all its peacock colors, vanished like steam. No evidence it had ever existed… except I was still alive, and the acid balls meant for me had got redirected at the shooters instead.

Their clothes billowed with smoke where the acid struck… as if the gray overalls were catching fire, braised by a flamethrower. The woman spun round, clutching at her back with one hand, but making no sound — no squeal of pain/surprise/outrage. A heartbeat later, I saw why: through clouds of vinegar smoke, metal glittered under her burning clothes.

Steel shoulder blades. Hydraulic muscles. A spine of articulated alloy.

"Christ!" I yelled. Don’t ask me why. Being stalked by assassins was one thing, but it just seemed worse that they were robots.

The woman — the android that looked female — had a case of the writhes, making futile grabs at her back. I snapped out my unblocked foot and caught her with a solid cross-kick in the ankle. Something crunched like celery: not her metal shin, but whatever lay beneath, wires or delicate flexors. She tottered back, off-balance, and grabbed at her male companion. He showed no reaction to getting shot, even though smoke poured off his back in thick white plumes; the splash must have missed everything vital. It was only when his accomplice clutched at him that he shifted his attention away from me. Her grip pulled him sideways with her as she tried not to fall… so I took advantage of the moment to scuttle back on my butt, out from under the door and around the end of the lockers, dragging Chappalar with me.

Three seconds later, I was on my feet again, Chappalar slung like a rug over my shoulder. Another three seconds and I rammed the exit door’s crash bar with my hip.

Donkeys, orts and leaners stared at us curiously as we lurched out into the petting zoo. Thank Mary and all her saints, the animals were the only things in sight — no parents pushing strollers, no schoolchildren parading along on a field trip to the park. I dashed to a nearby leaner and threw myself behind it; its pudgy body wrapped in armadillo hide was the best protection I could find on short notice. With luck, it would shield us from the robots long enough for me to help my friend.

I heaved Chappalar off my shoulder and flopped him down in the snow. Steam gushed up as his back touched the damp surface — the acid gobs must have been blistering hot from the chemical reaction of corroding his skin. I spread out his arms, snow-angel style, tamping down every damaged area of his gliders to give them solid cool contact with the ice below. Soothing, I hoped. It took a strong stomach to look over his injuries: his wing membranes had finger-sized holes eaten clean through them, like plant leaves bitten to rags by beetles.

The edges of the holes were still expanding. I could see them grow as the acid ate outward.

Desperately, I scooped up a handful of snow and smeared it over the upper surface of the membrane, hoping to dilute the corrosive chemicals. Whether it worked or not I don’t know — my attention got pulled away as the leaner suddenly slumped its weight against my back.

"Not now, you witless beast!" I shouted, shoving back furiously. The leaner stayed deadweight against me for a moment, then toppled away limply, hitting the snow with a sizzle and continuing to roll like a duffel bag. Its side was starred with splotches of acid gum; ten steps beyond, the male robot was re-aiming its pistol at me, waiting for the chamber to pressurize.

A donkey brayed in panic. Two orts took to their wings, squawking. They must have all smelled the acid, a piercing reek in the clean fresh air.

I gouged up a snowball and heaved it at the robot. My throw hit the thing’s face, but it didn’t even flinch.

The jelly gun fired.

No peacock-colored tube saved me this time. Instead, a leaner dived into the way, mouth open for all the world as if it intended to swallow the acid wad. Its timing was off; the goo struck the leaner’s nose and splayed across its muzzle, like a classic pie in the face.

Smoke streamed back along the animal’s ears as it continued to charge the shooter. Then its whole face sloughed off, acid-ravaged skin, revealing a skull of white plastic — this leaner was one of the robot lifeguards, programmed to keep other animals from hurting visitors. Thank Christ it had enough bonus brainpower to recognize danger from other sources… and to throw itself forward to protect Chappalar and me. It banged straight into the shooter android, plastic muzzle crumpling against the killer’s metal gut. Both went down in a rolling heap, making no cries as they twisted in the snow.

I snatched up Chappalar; the leaner robot might keep the android busy for a few seconds, but it wouldn’t win the fight. Under its false skin, the creature was only light plastic: not made for heavy-duty grappling, just the placid herding of animals.

The killer android had to be ten times tougher than the leaner. Humanoid robots always are. They’re built for rough-and-tumble in situations too risky for flesh humans… emergency rescue, for example, or the slitter-sex trade. Even robots constructed for less dangerous business can take quite a beating — otherwise, manufacturers get sued for "mental anguish" by owners who watch fragile androids fly apart at the seams. Always disconcerting when your gardener catches its arm on a rosebush, and the arm comes off.

So. Only a matter of time before the android battered the leaner to plastic pulp. By then, I wanted to be sipping mint tea in the next county.

With Chappalar over my shoulder, I ran. How long before Protection Central answered my Mayday? Scant more than thirty seconds had passed since I called in. Average response to an emergency alert was 2.38 minutes, which everyone agreed was damned good. Everyone who wasn’t fleeing in panic from a killer.

But I’d try to smother my bias if ever I scrutinized a bill about police services.

Behind me the silence was broken by a ragged rupturing. I peeked back over my shoulder to see the android getting to its feet, hunks of tattered plastic in both hands. "Damn," I mumbled; the assassin had ripped the animal robot clean apart, tearing it in two.

Good thing for me the android was programmed to shoot people with acid rather than fight with bare hands. Then again… I knew how to spar mano a mano. How do you block a splash of jelly?

The robot took up the chase again — the same flat-out sprint it’d used before, legs and arms churning. Now though, its speed was hampered by snow cover; the machine’s heavy footfalls punched through the crust, sinking into the soft stuff below. On park paths, that didn’t make much difference: the snow was only fingers thick, scarce enough to slow the android at all. I headed for deeper drifts, someplace the robot would get held back while I gingerly skimmed across the top.

Ahead of me… Coal Smear Creek and its thin ice signs. A frozen surface maybe strong enough to hold me, but not a walking heap of scrap iron.

Behind me, the android crunched through the snow crust again and again, with a sound like boards breaking. A flesh-and-blood creature would soon get stuck, plunged into drifts as deep as its crotch; but the robot pushed forward relentlessly, gouging a trail through the waist-high snow. Not far behind, opportunist snowstriders crowded around the broken snow crust, diving for frostfly cocoons exposed by the robot’s passing. The damned birds were having a merry old smorgasboard while I was running for my life.

I got halfway down the creek bank slope before the thin ice alarms noticed me. They burst into hoots and wails, crashing my ears with noise. The din drowned out any chance of hearing the android as it closed the gap between us. Forget it; I had more immediate concerns: crossing the ice without slipping or falling through thin spots.

The creek surface here was clear of snow — cheerfully shoveled by teenage skaters who probably squealed in protest if asked to shovel at home. The ice was smooth but not glare-perfect… dozens of skate blades had sliced at it, turning the surface into a snarl of crosshatches with the occasional loop or figure eight. I could shuffle-step forward without skittering out of control (praise be to boots with grip-rubber soles), but running was not an option.

As I neared the far shore, I felt shudders underfoot. Tremors from elsewhere on the ice. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the android had made it to the creek.

Alarms still screamed. Snowstriders darted about in feeding frenzy on the bank.

The android tried its old sprint on the ice: slam, slam, slip. Three strides and it lost its balance, soaring up, flailing in the air, then down bang, crashing hip-first and steel-heavy onto the frozen surface.

I imagined the prickle-prickle cracking of ice. I couldn’t hear it because of the alarms, but in my mind, the sound was precious-perfect clear.

The android, not programmed for winter gymnastics, tried to scramble to its feet. It slipped once more, its right hand sliding across the creek surface like butter on a hot pan. This time the robot didn’t fall, but threw out its other hand to catch itself.

The hand went through the ice, up to the elbow. By then, I’d reached the far shore. This bank had been built up with fist-sized hunks of concrete laid in uneven rows for a flagstone effect. After the chilling and swelling of winter, lots of those hunks had broken loose from their mortar. I grabbed the nearest and chucked it at the android’s head, praying to hit something vulnerable while its hand was trapped.

The robot saw the chunk coming and twisted away, taking the blow on its back. Nothing happened; the concrete just bounced off a metal shoulder. Now though, I could eyeball the damage inflicted before, when the peacock tube splashed the robots with their own acid. This android’s whole spinal area was pitted with corrosion: hankie-sized patches of epidermis eaten clean away. You could see circuits and fiber-optic cables exposed to open air… not enough to stop the robot in its tracks, but the acid had taken a fierce vicious toll.

Good, I thought, and threw another hunk of cement. This throw missed the android, but bit into the nearby ice with its jagged concrete edge. Hairline cracks radiated out from the point of impact. Did the android care? No. It dragged its hand from the water, shirtsleeve dripping, and picked up for one more climb to its feet. Heavy steel robot feet.

The ice gave way with a snap I could hear even over the alarms. For a wavering moment, the android managed to catch its arms on the sides of the hole — propping itself with upper body still visible, though ice water came up to its nipples. Steam poured from cavities in the robot’s back, where chilly Coal Smear Creek met burning acid and the hot circuitry of the machine’s guts. I yelled, "Short out, you bastard! Blow your sodding battery!"

Obliging things, these robots. The android’s arms suddenly jerked rigid. Then the ice under its hands broke into shockle, and the killer machine plunged out of sight into the creek.

For another moment I stayed on the bank, watching the hole — dark water now, bobbing with ice floes. But a woman my age has watched enough fic-chips to know how witless it is to relax prematurely. Any second, I expected the android’s hand to smash out of the ice at my feet, grab me by the ankle, pull me down. I clambered up the bank to solid ground, and was just shifting Chappalar’s weight for another stint of running when the creek exploded.

All the ice in a ten-meter radius simply lifted up, then slammed down hard on the water beneath. The great banging force fractured the frozen surface into hundreds of separate slabs; but more dramatic was the geyser of muddy water that shot from the hole where the android had sunk. The upburst gushed three stories into the sky, carrying with it scraps of circuit board, metal cables, and tattered gray overalls. Then the fountain lost strength and collapsed, spilling robot ragout all over the creek surface.

"Self-destruct," I whispered to myself. "A deadman’s switch… in case the bugger got in over its head. So to speak. Something to destroy the evidence."

What did that say about the female android, back in the pump station? She’d taken more damage from the acid bath; I hadn’t stayed to watch, but she’d clearly been on the futz.

And when she’d finally shut down? Shut down = cue for the self-destruct mechanism to blow her apart.

I shuddered to think what the explosion had done to the water-treatment vats.

By the time the police arrived, I was back swabbing Chappalar with snow… not the ragged holes in his gliders, but the vicious black pits close to his spine. The ones where ribs and vital organs showed through. His skin had turned a color Dads called Terminal Chalk — an ashy gray-white with no responsiveness. The result of catastrophic failure in the glands that control an Oolom’s chameleon shifting.

I’d seen that color a lot during the plague.

The six staff members of Pump Station 3 were found near the building’s delivery bay. All of them had third-degree acid burns. Three were declared DOA when they reached hospital and one more died later, but two survived.

Chappalar didn’t. Ooloms can be fierce tough; they can also be precious fragile.

Damn.

While I was pacing the rug in hospital, watching Chappalar float lifeless in a burn tank, I got an emergency call from headquarters. Seven other proctors on assignments around the planet had been ambushed by androids and killed. A coordinated attack. No survivors. All at the same time Chappalar and I made our visit to the pump station.

Someone had declared war on the Vigil.