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“Do you think I don’t know you, Luciente?”
“Grasp, as people. I mean you can’t fully comprend our society, any more than I could one a hundred years past us. What new arts will our great‑great‑grandchildren invent? What old arts discover? What musical instruments will they build? What games? What inknowing? What new foods, what styles of cooking? What sciences we can’t imagine? What new way of healing? Will they sail far into our galaxy? Travel on the submicroscopic strata? When each region is ownfed, when reparations are completed, what then? Sometimes … sometimes I want to live forever!” Luciente flung back her head. “But I know I’ll find my death ripe. I’ll want to lay my body down, I myself, and be done. But now I’d like to travel forward into that future as you traveled to us. I know there’s no real point to it Now suffices. Yet I’m very glad to be knowing you, Co
A strange high whistling came through the air, nearer and nearer. Bee and Luciente froze; then they motioned to her and began trotting swiftly in the direction Bee had just come from.
“Fast! Run!” Luciente mouthed at her over her shoulder. Bee dropped back to urge her forward as they ran.
The high penetrating screech grew louder and louder still. It bored through her ears and seemed to whine round and round in her skull. Pain like a drill sang in her marrow. No longer did the pain seem to enter only through her ears; her bones seemed to vibrate at a pitch too high to bear. She was a tuning fork shivering in pain.
“Run, Co
She tried to keep up, but she could not run as fast. Panting, her sides stabbing, she fell farther and farther behind. They paused to wait Luciente ran back to drag her along. The high drill of the whining shook her. She crumpled to the ground, clawing at her head. “Go on! Save yourself!”
“There. Her eyelids fluttered. She’s coming out of it”
She opened her eyes. The nurse stood over her. An aide bustled off with a message.
“What were you trying to say when you came to?” Nurse Roditis bent close. “Something about going on.”
“I don’t know.” She closed her eyes.
“Were you hallucinating?”
“She doesn’t have a history of hallucination.” Acker was hanging around the foot of her bed.
“That injection worked. Dr. Morgan will be pleased. But I don’t know what they’re going to do if this keeps happening.” Nurse Roditis sounded stem and judgmental. She made tsk‑tsk sounds as she straightened the covers over Co
Luciente gripped her arm, pulling her down into the dugout. Behind decorative‑looking screens and small pieces of equipment, some like the one Bee had been carrying on his back, the ground had been scooped out to rock. Her friends were occupying a slight rise over a stream. “Baffles and reflectors,” Luciente explained tersely. “Keep down! They’ll be attacking our line.”
“Where is everyone?”
“We’re on the right flank. The line curves to our left, all the way to the river.”
Otter was cuddled in the dugout next to Co
“How does this touch you?” Otter asked and read off:
“One leaf
webbed gold with fawn
fluttered to my feet
and fragile as a dead moth’s wing
was shattered.”
She looked at Otter in confusion. Otter was dressed in the same mottled jumpsuit, her hair in two long braids. From her broad nose to her glittering slits of eyes she looked proud of herself. Co
“Code? It’s a poem–a cinquain. You don’t like it?”
“But … how can you write poems about leaves now!”
Otter’s brows wrinkled. “How not? We’re close to death. Then it’s natural to write poems, no? And we fall like leaves … .”
“Here they come,” Luciente said calmly, and they all settled into alert poses with their weapons.
The ground shook violently under her, yet she heard no explosion. In effect, nothing seemed to cause what was happening, yet the ground shook again and she felt sick. Again the ground shook and a tree split and toppled in front of them. Other trees were falling, while a boulder crashed from its perch and rolled fifty feet to lodge in a small basin. Cones pelted them as the birds fled crying terror, the jays shouting Thief, Thief as they flew. To their right someone screamed.
Then she saw the enemy coming: tall figures entirely encased in seamless metallic uniforms, clanking with heavy metal and wearing helmets that enclosed their heads. They dodged from tree to boulder, from boulder to bush on the other side of the stream.
“Hold your fire,” Luciente whispered.
She found she was gripping something like a gun, although it was aimed by peering through a scope and focusing her eyes. Nervously she practiced with it. It responded quickly but she could not quite get the knack of stopping it. She was supposed to lock it in position somehow before she looked away from the target, but she kept stopping it too late.
More and more metal figures flitted clumsily through the trees, getting ready to attack in force across the water. “Hold your fire,” Luciente whispered again emphatically. “Pick off the ones that get through the barrage.” The she added in the tone of a prayer, “Forgive me, if you are living and I kill you.”
Bee and Otter mumbled a similar prayer, before Otter whispered, “Do you suppose any of them are people?”
The troops were massing in the far woods, preparing to break cover. More and more moved up into position. Finally they came clanking out, ru
Suddenly she was standing in the living room of the apartment where she had lived with Martin. Hot. Sweat ran down her back and collected under her breasts. The air was so thick and sulfurous she began to cough. She was frightened, her stomach ached with fear. Why? Martin was down there somewhere. Yes, in the street he was barricaded behind turned‑over cars, throwing bottles and rocks at the police. The riot police, the TPF, armed with rifles and shotguns and pistols and tear gas canisters and gas grenades, came clanking down the street, stiff and mechanical. But their voices bouncing off the houses were course with the joy of fury: Motherfuckin cocksuckin nigger spics!
She stood at the window watching, clutching herself across the breasts in her flower print summer dress. Martin was out there somewhere, screaming helpless rage and about to be murdered, as the police gu
“I think she’s coming to, Doctor.”
“Patty, did you get hold of Redding? Get on it Find him.”
“Doctor, his secretary says he’s on the way over.”
“If we lose this implantation, it won’t look good,” Dr. Morgan muttered. “When did she say he left?”
“Ten minutes ago, Doctor.”
“Did she say he was driving straight uptown?”
“She didn’t say, Doctor.”
“And you didn’t ask,” he said with sour satisfaction, glad to find somebody to blame for something. “What about Dr. Argent?”
“I couldn’t get hold of him, Doctor. He’s guest lecturer this morning at Dr. Sanderman’s pathology class. His secretary expects him in his office around eleven‑thirty.”