Too much open space and too little shelter. He squatted and could not see what had fired the shot. Carlos lay flat without a twitch.
Nothing happened. No following pulses.
Nigel replayed the images as he waited. A spout of rosy blood from a circle punched high in the spine. Absolutely dead center, four centimeters below the neck. Kilojoules of energy focused to a spot the size of a fingernail.
That much energy delivered so precisely would have done the job even if it hit the hip or gut. Delivered so exactly, it burst the big axis, plowing massive pressures through the spinal fluid—a sudden breeze blowing out a candle, the brain going black in a millisecond.
Carlos had gone down boneless, erased. A soft, liquid thump, then eternal silence.
Nigel held up his hand and watched it tremble for a while. Enough waiting.
He worked his way along the ridgeline. The pulse had come from behind Carlos and he kept plenty of rock between him and that direction. He got to Carlos and studied the face from behind a boulder nearby. The head was cocked to one side. Eyes still open, mouth seeping moisture into the dry dirt. The eyes were the worst, staring into an infinity nobody glimpses more than once.
Good-bye, friend. We had our arguments, but we came thirty thousand light-years together. And now I can’t do a damn thing for you.
Something moved to his right. He pulled out a pulse gun and fired at it but the target was a gossamer ball of motes. A Higher, or rather, a local manifestation of one.
It flickered, spun, and said in a low, bass voice, “We regret.”
“You did this?”
“No. A mechanical form, termed the Mantis.”
“And who’re you?”
“That would be impossible to say.”
“Is this Mantis after me, too?”
“I will protect you.”
“You didn’t do a great job for Carlos.”
“I arrived here slightly late.”
“Slightly?”
“You must forgive errors. We are finite, all.”
“Damn finite.”
“The Mantis was harvesting Carlos. He is saved.”
“You mean stored?”
“To mechanicals it is the same thing.”
“Not to us. I thought we’d be safe in this place, this Lair.”
“No place is safe. This is safer.”
“What’ll kill a Mantis?”
“There was nothing you could do.”
Nigel Walmsley cursed the mote cloud, his fury going into fruitless words.
“Nothing you could do,” he muttered to himself.
Do not belabor the past so.
Nikka’s frail voice resounded in his sensorium.
“There’s so much of it.”
Pay attention to the young man before you. He is a key to saving us.
Nigel sighed. “I grow old, I grow old—”
