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Burton wondered where Li Po was. No sooner asked than answered. There was the tall Chinese on a big table, fighting off a trio of cards with his rapier. They kept thrusting their spears at him from three sides, but he danced around, leaping to avoid thrusts, kicking with one foot against the shafts, and flicking the rapier point at them. Then Frigate, covered with blood, ran up holding a strange weapon. For a moment, Burton did not know what it was. When it was brought up and down against one of the cards, Burton recognized it. It was the Caterpillar's hookah. In short order, Frigate had smashed down two of the cards, and Li Po had run the other through twice.
Burton turned again to help those fighting the Jabberwock. Magle
With his vorpal blade, Burton thought.
A dozen men and women were still harassing the monster; a dozen were protecting the attackers' backs. While Magle
He could hear Alice's scream through all the noise; he knew it from long experience. Turning, he saw her standing horrified, the back of her hand over her mouth, her eyes huge dark holes.
He also saw the Red Knight on his galloping horse, charging toward him, the spike-knobbed club held high. The crimson armor and the horse-head-shaped helmet were a terrible sight. The beat of the horse's hooves was like the roll of a drum just before the gallows trapdoor was dropped.
Burton shifted the saber to his left hand, stopped, picked up a spear, and braced himself for the throw. His target was not the Red Knight but its charger. When the armored thing was thirty feet away, he cast the spear, and its sharp broad head plunged into the horse's shoulder. It fell forward, turning over. Its rider flew through the air and landed with a crash of steel upon the grass. Burton took the saber in his right hand and ran to the horse, which was starting to get up, and he slashed its jugular. It, too, had been programmed to kill; it had bitten and kicked while its rider was swinging its club; it had to be made harmless first.
The Knight lay prone and motionless. Burton turned the heavy body over and undid the helmet fastenings. He had to make sure that the thing was dead, not just unconscious. Seeing the face, he recoiled with shock. It was his face.
"One of Alice's jokes," he said.
He rose, looked at the dead features, and thought of how strange it was to see himself as a corpse. He gazed over the field between him and the foot of the hill. There were bodies everywhere, some in heaps. The only one standing in that direction was Alice, who was just pulling her rapier from a Humpty Dumpty. Her tears were washing the blood from her face.
Then he saw Star Spoon ru
He turned. There were ten androids on their feet, not counting the Jabberwock. Three humans were still fighting, Li Po, a black man and a white woman, one of Aphra Behn's friends. The woman went down under a rain of swordstrokes as he watched.
The Jabberwock, breathing in short unsteady gasps, waddled toward the cluster of battlers. It turned when it got near, and its tail whipped out, catching three androids and the black man. Li Po rapiered the White Queen in front of him and ran for the parking area. There were still three chairs there.
Frigate came from somewhere and also headed toward the chairs. The remaining androids hacked at the fallen black man before pursuing the two men.
The Jabberwock swung its head from left to right, saw Burton, and lumbered toward him.
The field was comparatively quiet now, but, suddenly, Burton heard a motor turning over. That was followed by a series of explosions, and Bill Williams, bloody but gri
As the monster advanced toward Burton, not turning its head to find the source of the new noise, Williams speeded up the machine. Dodging around the bodies, sometimes driving over - an outstretched arm or leg, Williams sped straight at the side of Jabberwock, and he smashed his motorcycle into its ribs.
So great was the impact, the Jabberwock was moved a few inches to one side. Williams flew headlong over its back and slammed into the ground. The monster raised its head as high as the neck could reach, gave a great bawling cry, and died.
Burton ran to Willians and turned him over. He was dead, his face smashed and his neck broken.
Though doomed, the androids advanced toward Burton as programmed. They never reached him. Frigate's and Li Po's chairs smashed into them and knocked them down again and again until they could no longer get up. Then the two men got out of the chairs and finished their work.
Burton heard a gasp behind him. Turning, he saw that Star Spoon had slipped and fallen on her face. She had let the beamers loose to soften the fall with her hands. He walked up to her and picked her up. Sobbing, she went into his arms.
Except for the weeping of Alice, Star Spoon and Frigate, the field was silent. Only he, those three, and Li Po had survived. No. The Blue Caterpillar was sitting on the giant mushroom, and the rocking-horse-fly, a creature too fragile to have been programmed to kill, was alive. They did not, however, count.
He felt more weary, more emptied than he had ever felt in his long life. He was in shock, numb, the world around him seeming alien and drifting way.
"Who could have done this horrible thing?" Alice wailed.
Who, indeed?
At that moment, William Gull groaned and sat up from the dead.