Radiant

But Tut never had the sense to leave well enough alone. Despite Festina’s warning, he prodded the predator lightly in its ribs. The animal’s mouth yawned open… but instead of biting off Tut’s foot, it gave a soft sigh. Steamlike vapors hissed from the beast’s maw — a cloud whose life force roiled with fury. It wreathed once around Tut’s body, possibly looking for something to EMP. I thought it would come for Festina and me next, shorting out another Bumbler, comm unit, and stun-pistol; but the cloud lingered with Tut, brushing (almost caressing) the masks he carried. I sensed the cloud’s emotions shifting from hostility to unbearable sorrow. Then the cloud shot away, rocketing down the street faster than any pseudosuchian could run. In a moment, it had disappeared into the depths of the city.

The three of us watched it vanish. Then Tut said, "Umm… did we just find out the EMP clouds can possess Muta’s minidinosaurs? Like, the clouds can make dinosaurs attack us?"

Festina and I nodded.

Tut beamed. "Cool!"

Using the Bumbler, I sca

When I reported this to Festina, she just shrugged. "I’ve been checking the dirt on the street," she said. "No tracks of big nasties except the one that just attacked. Large predators don’t often come into this city."

"That makes sense," I replied. "Predators go where there’s prey. Prey usually means herbivores, and Drill-Press has nothing to attract plant-eaters." I gestured toward the bare, weedless streets. "No vegetation anywhere."

"You think the baby T. rex wandered here by accident?" Tut asked. "Or did the cloud possess Rexy out in the countryside, then force him to come to the city?"

"Good question," Festina said. "I wish I knew the answer. It’d be nice to know if the cloud could really seize animal minds and compel them to do things against their instincts… or if the cloud only nudged a predator who was already close by."

"Either way," Tut said, "it’s odd the cloud would be hostile… I mean, if it really is Var-La

"Who knows what’s obvious to a cloud?" Festina asked. "The Unity and Technocracy have never been friends. Maybe Team Esteem thinks we’re invading opportunists: trying to claim Muta now that it’s unoccupied."

I shook my head — remembering how Var-La

According to Aniccan lore, that sequence of emotions was the classic pattern for pretas. Ghosts might feel joy at the moment of death, either because they were released from the agony of dying or because they thought the afterlife would be some grand heaven that erased the discontent of living. Then they’d realize death wasn’t an escape from their pasts — that the seeds of karma continued to grow, that one didn’t achieve wisdom and tranquillity just because one stopped breathing. There’s no free ride, not even in the afterlife. So the exhilaration of supposed freedom would turn to rage at continuing slavery… the ghosts’ knowledge that they were still fettered by the decisions they’d made and the people they’d become as a consequence.

It took time for that rage to abate — time spent wandering through other realms of existence until the ghosts could stomach the notion of being reborn: until their anger burned out and they found themselves ready to take another try at life. That was the path the unenlightened dead always walked. So I wouldn’t have been surprised if the ghosts of Team Esteem felt such an overpowering resentment, they’d want to make trouble for any living person who came within reach. However, I wasn’t naive. Normal ghosts couldn’t touch our physical realm; they didn’t look like smoke, nor did they use dinosaurs to attack those whose hearts were still beating.

It was almost as if Var-La

No. I still couldn’t figure out what was happening. But I thought I was on the right track, if I could just fill in some blanks. Perhaps Festina was thinking along the same lines. As I came to an impasse in my own thoughts, Festina sighed, and said, "No sense brooding. Let’s follow Team Esteem’s tracks and see what they were working on. Maybe that will give some answers."

The path worn by Team Esteem led to the center of town. It wasn’t a straight-line route — the streets never let you go farther than a block or two without ru

There, two bridges spa

"Pretty," said Festina, "but impractical. What are the floors like inside? Are they bowed like the building itself? You’d have to bolt down the furniture to keep it from sliding downhill."

"Forget the drawbacks, Auntie," Tut said. "Think about the possibilities. Get a chair on wheels, take it to the middle of the arch, then ride it down the central hallway as fast as you can go. Bet you’d get awesome speed by the time you hit the bottom."

"What if there is no central hallway?" I asked. "Maybe the architecture is designed to prevent people go-carting on office chairs."

"Come on, Mom, what’s the point of building a place like that if you can’t go ca