The Caryatids

Attracted by this motion, the machines began firing at the corpse again. Every bullet struck true; she could hear them banging neatly into the dead man's chest and helmet.

"I have his canteen," said the Badaulet.

She squeezed water from the cloak and dribbled it into the container.

"You are such a good wife to me," said the Badaulet. "Can you cook? I have never seen you cook."

"Do you like Chinese food?"

"It is my duty to like Chinese food."

Bullets panged into the rock barricade. Once again, something was wrong with her cyborg ears. Her ears were not hurting properly from the violent noises of ricochet. Their volume controls were problematic.

Lying prone, the Badaulet squirmed his way inside the black water cloak. Humped over, lumpy, featureless, he scrambled over the barricade and vanished.

When he returned, after an eventful ten minutes of aircraft fire, he had an armful of rocks.

"These rocks are difficult to carry," he a

"Are you wet now? That's a shame."

"A human enemy would ricochet his shots off the rock wall behind us, and kill us. These machines will not think of that tactic."

"No. Machines never think."

Lucky sucked a splinter wound on his left hand. "It may be the will of Heaven to kill us."

"I know that. Do you think you might-carefully-turn your body without getting shot, and give me a kiss?"

This done, it occurred to her that to die while making love, delicious though that sounded, was impractical. Or, rather, it depended on the mode of death involved. Sniper fire from small aircraft was not one of the better modes.

"There is a thing that I can do," she told him. "It likely won't affect these aircraft that are shooting at us. But it will avenge us, if they have any human controllers nearby."

"What is that fine vengeance, my bride?"

"If I do this thing, anyone near us will die. Men, women, children. Also the larger animals with longer life spans: the horses, the cattle. They will die in a year and a half. From a great many apparent causes. Cancer, mostly."

"That is your weapon?"

"I thought I might have to use it. If you didn't simply shoot them dead. It is my best weapon."

"Where is this weapon? Give it to me."

"It is in orbit." She paused. "I mean to say, it is in Heaven, so you can't have it."

"I know what a satellite is, woman," he told her patiently. "A sharp-eyed man in the desert can see many satellites. Give me the trigger to your satellite weapon, and I will call down the fire. Then you can flee, and you might live."

"The trigger is inside me," she told him. "I swallowed it."

"You swallowed your weapon of vengeance?"

More bullets panged into the rock, for a fresh squadron of airplanes had appeared. Apparently these new planes had failed to share their data with the earlier assailants, for the dead cyborg in his skeleton was riddled with fresh bullets.

"It would be wrong to deploy a massive weapon such as you carry," he said thoughtfully, "for it would kill those gallant men fighting these aircraft along with us. I saw their truck through the scope of my rifle. I think they are Chinese. Chinese rapid-response, paramilitary. Brave men, hard men. I know such men well."

"Well," Sonja said, "then there will be some Dispensation coming here. Because there are Chinese military here…and the Acquis raiders like our skeleton friend, who is dead over there…the grass people in the tents…There has to be Dispensation. If they're not here already, Dispensation will be coming here."

The Badaulet mulled this over. He agreed with her. "How many Dispensation, do you think?"

"I can't tell you that, but they will probably be Americans, they won't speak Chinese, and they will be trying to make some money from this trouble. That's the Dispensation, that happens every time."

"You forgot some important warriors also present here in this great battle, my bride."

"Who?"

"Us! You and me, my precious one!"

Three broken aircraft plummeted out of the sky. They tumbled like leaves and fell out of sight.

"I see that my rifle is properly grouping its shots," said the Badaulet, pleased. He then stood up and walked-not ran, he walked, sauntered almost-to the nearest source of handy rubble and brought back a heaping armful of new rocks.

"That's a good rifle, built by German professionals," he a

"Walk faster !" she yelled at him.

"You stack them," he said over his shoulder. He lugged back a boulder. "It's a pity my fine rifle has so little ammunition."

One more such fearless venture-Lucky clawed out a few more rocks somewhere, his fingers were bleeding…then he grabbed the dead Acquis cyborg, doubled him over with some casual kicks at his humming robot bones, and embedded the body into the wall.

Then he squatted, breathing hard with his labors.

Suddenly-instead of the bare cliff that would have suited a firing squad-they had created a little fort for themselves. They had built a wall. Bullets simply could not reach them. They could even stretch their legs out a little, raise their heads, think.

"Now we are besieged!" he a

A useless bullet screamed off the dead man's ceramic bones. "We won't starve while he's lying here," she said. She regretted saying that-referring to ca

They rewarded themselves with lavish sips from the dead man's canteen.

Eventually, night fell. The besieging aircraft were not bothered by darkness, since they were firing at human heat. The machines fell into a parsimonious cycle, programmed to save their fuel.

The rifle on the pack robot had run out of ammunition. This failure made the aircraft bolder. They swooped repeatedly by the rocky fortress, silently, sca

Then the machines returned, again and again, flying out of darkness and seeking human warmth, like mosquitoes with guns. Her new ears could hear them with an insufferable kee

The Earth spun on its axis. The stars emerged and strengthened. The Milky Way shone its celestial battle ba

Then Sonja heard a low, symphonic rumble. It might have been a classical bass cello: a string and a bow. Taut strings of magnetic fire.

She shook him. "Do you hear that?"

The Badaulet woke from his cozy doze. "Hear what?"

"That voice from the sky. That huge electrical noise. Electronic."

"Is it a helicopter?"

"No."

"Is it a bigger plane coming here to kill us with a bomb?"

"No! No, oh my God, the sound is really loud now…" Suddenly her husband's voice vanished, she could no longer hear him. She heard nothing but those voices of fire. Those colossal sounds were not touching the air. They were touching the circuits in her head.

There was no escaping them. She had no way to turn them off.

Celestial voices were sheeting through her skull. The voices were beyond good and evil, out of all human scale. She felt as if they were ripping though her, straight through the rocky core of Asia and out of the planet's other side.

The aurora emerged in the heavens, and the glorious sight of it gave no pleasure, for it was enraged. Its fiery sheets were knotted and angry tonight, visibly breaking into gnarls and whorls and branches and furious particles. The tongues of flame were spitting and frothing, with foams and blobs and disks and rabid whirlpools. Sheets of convulsive energy plunged across the sky, tearing and ripping. An a