Part 38 (2/2)
”But they quit sending their young to you. Why? Had their young become unimportant to the Three?”
”No, they loved their young.”
”If they loved their young, and they quit sending them to you, what were you doing that hurt them, made the Three want to protect their young from you?”
”That's not why they quit coming!”
”Then why did they?”
”Why did they?” the kids echoed. ”Why did they?”
”They just did.”
”You don't know why.” Ray hit him with all he had.
Behind him the kids and surviving computer personalities. .h.i.t just as hard. ”You don't know. You don't know why.”
”I don't need to know that. It isn't important,” the President insisted.
”Then what you did wasn't important.”
Jeff swung the laser drill off his shoulders and held it out to Lil. She had the spray can of plastic skin out. As she started to coat her hands with it, it sputtered. A dribble fell onto her palms, puddled, and did not grow.
”Lil, you can't drill with no protection.”
”Looks like I got to,” she said, spreading what she had, then reaching for the drill.
Jeff held on to it. ”You can't.”
”Son, I can d.a.m.n well do what I want to. You and your girl get the explosives ready.”
Jeff let go of the laser. Beside him, Annie tugged at his elbow. ”Let's get the charges. We've got to make this fast. I can hear more people coming.”
Lil drilled, her hands turning red, her teeth grit against the pain. As soon as Lil headed for a new hole, Jeff and Annie poured, set the detonator, and moved on. They had only four holes drilled when Lil set the laser down.
”Hurry up, kid. I can see the poor zombies. Let's blow this one and get out of here.” Jeff did the last one, shooing Annie off as soon as the hole was patted down. Detonator set, he started running.
Lil, Annie, and the horses were hardly far enough away when Lil shouted ”Fire in the hole!” Jeff threw himself down on the muddy ground as she flipped the switch.
The short fire line blew track and rocks high and wide. Two of the zombies took a rail in the gut, cutting them in half. One of those left standing looked familiar...Vicky?
Jeff had no time to waste. He was up and running before the last rock fell. At the horses, he helped Lil up on the one unburdened horse; her hands were a bleeding pulp. ”Ride wide of the road,” she ordered. ”There's bound to be a section of track that doesn't have too many zombies. We'll blow it.”
”You can't drill,” Jeff whispered.
”I know. You drill the next holes.”
Jeff's stomach lurched, terror flooded him. But Lil had said the words so quietly, so evenly, it seemed only fair.
”I'll drill the one after that,” Annie said.
Kat's wrist unit woke her to darkness and frost. A second night sleeping on the ground did little to help her exhaustion or aching body. The air was cold. ”Crew, time to get up.”
”It's dark. The box needs sunlight,” Nikki whimpered.
”And it will get that light best and first from the top of a hill” Kat reminded everyone, including herself.
”Come on, crew,” the copilot growled through a yawn, ”Rhynia didn't die so we could sleep.” That got the crew moving.
”The sun's going to catch the tip of that hill,” Kat said, pointing at a gra.s.s-covered foothill rising a good thousand meters ahead of them. ”We need to get to the top of it as fast as we can this morning.”
”What about the nanos?” a crewman asked.
”As I said,” Kat repeated slowly, ”we need to get to the top as fast as we can.” Folks were beyond tired, but the words sank in. They'd stayed to the river bottom yesterday, avoided land where the computer might have nanos lurking. If they waited for the sun to catch the river bottom and warm the box, the battle might be over before they struck another blow.
The copilot reached for the pole. ”We'll be going uphill, so shortest people up front, taller in back. Kat, you're shorter than Nikki. You take the lead.”
Mary knelt beside Du, surveying the mayhem. The rioters had found no food in the dining hall. From a hundred meters away, they listened to the sound of smas.h.i.+ng plates, overturning tables. Someone tried to batter a hole in the wall with a chair. ”Stupid vandalism,” Du growled. ”Hope it makes them feel better.”
”Looks like they're gonna make a go at the fabrication building.” Mary pointed. The mob had thickened up there. Shoving, shouts drew more people, like bystanders to a fire.
”Chief Max here, Captain. Permission to use tear gas?”
”Granted, Chief. The wind is blowing toward the crowd.”
”I know, ma'am” was punctuated by a pop as the first canister flew over the heads of the s.h.i.+eld wall to fall twenty meters beyond. The rioters began to choke, scream, run.
”They don't know about gas or they'd try to throw it back.” Du spoke from experience.
”Let us be grateful for small favors,” Mary said.
”You're using those three buildings and their guards to draw the rioters away from us,” Du observed, not exactly accusing Mary.
”There was no way the police would leave their families. If I'd ordered them here, I'd have had a mutiny on my hands.” Mary breathed the words, tasted them, balanced her guilt against the hard reality beneath her logic. ”The rioters go where they see people trying to stop them. We're just a darkened, empty building. They tried the mess hall, found nothing. Now they're looking.” Mary eyed the eastern sky; the clouds showed no hint of color. ”Kat is farther east, up where she is on north continent. I hope she gets daylight good and early.”
Doc Isaacs studied the kids. He'd stabilized their temperatures at a hundred, hundred and one. They could survive this for a while. It was their pulse that scared him. It had been over a hundred for a good hour. He'd rigged them all with IVs, was feeding them water and glucose to keep them going. Should he add a drug to the mix, something to slow the heart?
Would it help? Would it wipe them out when they needed their last reserve?
Jerry huddled over them, wanting to do more, scared spitless even to try.
”You don't matter” came at Ray hard and sharp. ”You are nothing compared to me. For two million years I have run this planet. I make the weather, I make mountains vanish. You have discovered one of my tools. Do you think that makes you equal to me? I could turn you off like you do a light.”
”Maybe yesterday,” Ray shot back, ”but we outthought you. You've existed for two million years but done nothing with it. Two million years ago we huddled in cold caves, not even able to make fire, unable to say a word to each other. Today we leap stars. It was we who came to you where you squatted on your haunches, not even keeping what you already had.”
”That is not true.”
<script>