Technobabel

I learn to fight with my bare hands and with whatever weapons are at hand. Hunter says there are weapons all around to the warrior's trained eye, but Hunter has the power of magic to improve his sight. His skill in combat is greater than any normal man's and his speed is like a spirit of the Matrix-like electrons moving and responding at the speed of thought. Although I am very fast, I am no match for him in our sparring matches. I am not the best student of hand-to-hand combat. I do better learning to shoot-Hunter says I have an eye for precision-but guns are not something the members of the tribe use casually. In the Rox they are difficult to find and more difficult to maintain and supply with ammunition. The tribe has guns, but they are carefully cared for and used sparingly. One day while sparring, I tell Hunter about the fight with the ghoul and my escape, before he and some of the tribe's warriors found me in the alley. I also tell him about the memory of the weapon I used to stop the ghoul from killing me. When I show him the mark on the back of my arm and then concentrate, a slim, dark blade snaps out like a striking snake. "Ghost!" he cries and jumps back a step from me. The blade emerges from just behind my wrist and arcs smoothly over the back of my hand, slightly curved to fit the contour of my arm. There is almost no weight to it as I wave my arm slightly to test the feel of it. Hunter steps toward me again and seizes hold of my wrist to examine the blade. He lets out a low whistle as he runs a finger just above its rear edge. "That is one nasty cutter, Babel," he says with respect. "I've seen plenty of street-muscle with razors but never anything quite like this. It's like a standard spur, but the brushing on the arm-sheath is nearly invisible, and the blade looks like some kind of carbon-fiber composite. It would be almost impossible to detect, and the damn thing must be sharper than hell. Do you know where you got it?" I shake my head. "Did I have it when I came to the tribe?" I ask and Hunter shrugs and shakes his own head in response. "I don't know, kid. You might have. We don't have the kind of gear to scan people for cyber, but I doubt we would have found it even if we did. If you had it when you got grabbed by the Tamanous, it was already there." I still ca

11

Dragons in their pleasant palaces. -Isaiah 14:12 The young novice made his way quickly down the quiet halls of the lodge set high up on the slopes of Mount Shasta. The rest of the shamans and other inhabitants of the Shasta Lodge were settling in for the night, but Ru