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The whip scorpion shuffled another step closer to the base of the leaf and froze, motionless except for its questing feelers. By Paul's scale it was as big as a fire engine but much higher, a low, wide body slung between a gantry of jointed legs. It had no tail that he could see, but the pincers that folded like bumpers below its head were jagged with thorny spikes that would hold prey as inescapably as a crocodile's jaws. Two bright red spots low on its head, visible as the lightning flared again, gave an impression of malevolent eyes, of something summoned from its sleep in the pits of hell and angry at having been wakened.
A stream of water rolled off one of the high leaves onto the scorpion. It hugged the ground as the torrent splashed down, waiting with cold patience for the inundation to stop. For a moment Paul could see past it, to the hollow beneath a drooping leaf the size of a ski chalet, to pale human faces reflecting like pearls in the faint moonlight. He took a few steps toward them even as the scorpion ratcheted up to its full height again.
"Martine!" His voice was swallowed in the bombardment of rain. He reached and snatched up a fibrous piece of wood as long as his arm, a tree-needle or a thorn, and flung it at the scorpion. It fell harmlessly against one of the monster's legs but the movement attracted attention. The scorpion stopped and waved one of its whips in Paul's direction. Suddenly aware of what he had done, he went rigid. The feeler, like a horn drawn out twenty meters long yet not much wider than Paul's leg, swept by only an arm's length from where he stood motionless, heart knocking in triple time.
What have I done? His thoughts were as distracted and swift as his heart. I've killed myself. I can't do anything for them, and now I've killed myself, too.
The scorpion took a rasping step toward him. The whip brushed his chest and almost knocked him over. The shadow swung above him, turning, the legs angled out on either side like a forest of leaning trees. He saw the massive pincers flex outward slowly, then snap back.
Before he could close his eyes to cloak the horror of his coming end, the scorpion suddenly wheeled to the side. A tiny human figure had burst from beneath the leaf and was stumbling away across the uneven ground. The whip scorpion moved after it with appalling speed.
The little shrieking figure staggered as the many-legged darkness covered it. The scorpion's front end dipped and the pincers snatched up its kicking prize, piercing it and smashing it into an impossible configuration before levering it up to the furious machinery of the jaws.
Paul could only stare in stupefied horror. The pursuit and kill had taken only seconds. One of his friends was dead and now the vast monster was turning, leg by leg, back toward him.
Something swept down out of the trees, a column of misty whiteness that shoved the huge creature flat against the ground. Ice began to form all across the monster's carapace and crystallize in powdery chunks on the joints of its legs.
"Seven hells, nothing works anymore!" Kunohara's voice rasped in Paul's ear, then the man himself was standing beside him. Ignoring the mammoth, rigid scorpion, Kunohara grabbed Paul's shoulder, then beckoned to the people still cowering under the leaf. "Step out," he shouted. "Come and join hands—I do not know how far my personal field extends."
Still light-headed with shock, Paul watched three dim shapes tumble out onto open ground. Someone clutched his hand, then another avalanche of rain swept down, sending bits of leaves whirling into the air even as everything abruptly vanished.
He was sprawled on the virtual tatami mats of the bubble-house in dark night, with bodies all around him. A moment later the lights warmed and Paul crawled toward the nearest of the groaning figures.
"What was that barking fen?" a large shape said, squelching wetly as it sat up, "And where's this?"
Considering that the last time they had been together the teenager had tried to strangle him, Paul would never have dreamed he would be so happy to see T4b, but as soon as he saw the hand with its pale glow sticking out of the baggy one-piece outfit, he felt a kind of joy. He tugged at the ski
"Paul Jonas?" The voice was Florimel's. "Yes, where is Martine?"
"Over here." T4b crouched beside the third figure. "Don't look good, her."
Martine Desroubins tried to speak, coughed, then succeeded. "I will survive. The transition . . . it overwhelmed me. Paul Jonas, is that truly you? Where are we? I can't make sense of it."
"Yes, it's me." He had been counting heads, but no matter how he tried, he could not make it more than three. He was terrified to ask the next question, but had to know. "Where are the others? Did that horrible thing . . . did the scorpion get them all?"
Florimel sat upright, wearing a fairly generic middle-aged woman's sim, but recognizable by her wounded eye and missing ear. "We have not seen Renie, !Xabbu, Orlando, or Fredericks since . . . since whatever happened on the black mountain."
Paul tried frantically to think of which of the companions he might have forgotten. "But who. . . ? I saw that monster catch someone. . . !"
"It was one of the Grail Brotherhood," Florimel said, "—a man named Jiun. I suppose he thought he could escape while the creature was distracted by you. He misjudged." She looked around again. "Where is this place? How did we come here?"
"Jiun Bhao?" Kunohara said from behind them. All but Paul turned in surprise. "Jiun Bhao, the scourge of Asia, eaten in my garden by a whip scorpion?" He threw back his head and laughed.
"Pretty locked-up sense of humor, you," T4b commented, but he sounded grudgingly impressed by Kunohara's hilarity, which now had their host bent double, hugging his own middle.
"So is it you we owe our gratitude, then?" Martine asked their host.
"You certainly took your time before deciding to help, Kunohara," Paul said angrily.
The man wiped his eyes. "Oh, I am sorry, but it is too sweet. Do you know how many small enterprises Jiun has gobbled himself? How many lives he has crushed in his own claws? Jiun Bhao, eaten by a scorpion, in the rain." He shook his head. "But you are unfair to me, Jonas. I would not have left you to die. I thought I could bring you all back from here, but there are grave problems with the higher levels of my system—doubtless more effects of the larger catastrophe—and I could not move you or your companions remotely. I would even have destroyed the scorpion from a distance if I could, although the creature itself is blameless, but few of my system commands are functioning. That is why I had to come in person, so you could be touching me when I transported back."
"So now we are your guests," Florimel said slowly. "Or are we prisoners?"
"No more than I am." Kunohara sketched a bow. "However, that may prove rather less freedom than any of us would wish."
"There's something I don't understand," said Paul. "Martine, I heard your voice. How were you . . . broadcasting like that?"
The blind woman held up a shiny silver object in her fatigue-trembling hand.
"The lighter!" he said. "But I thought Renie took it from you. . . ."
"It is not the same lighter," Martine said wearily. "I will explain later, if you don't mind."
Kunohara scowled at the device. "You have already done damage by making your presence known with that." He squinted at the stylized monogram. "Yacoubian—the idiot. With his cigars and his short attention span. I should have guessed."
"It would do him no good now, even if he had it," Florimel said with some satisfaction. "Not unless they smoke cigars in hell."