She did not have to kill. All she had to do was keep him occupied until his carefully constructed design collapsed of its own unwieldiness. Then, with the world entrusted to her charge safe once more, she could deal with him as an individual.

U’chak knew that his frustration and anger were making him clumsy, affecting his reflexes. The Monitor was toying with him, teasing him, staying temptingly close yet just out of his reach. No matter how he anticipated, she did him one better. It quickly became clear he was not going to be able to run her down.

Her appearance at a critical juncture in his plans had been a shock and he berated himself for over confidence. Failure was in sight, if not imminent. Fortunately he had been able to work some hasty damage control, but the sequence was far from favorably reconstructed and might still abort itself at any moment. Nor could he devote himself wholeheartedly to its repair. Not with the Monitor present.

Distressingly he had been forced to improvise. That automatically bent advantage the Monitor’s way. All was not yet lost, however. Though fractured by unexpected intrusion, the destructive sequence he had devised remained in forward, if jarred motion.

He consoled himself with the knowledge that his present difficulties were the result of an accident and not the Monitor’s direct intuition. It had allowed her to proceed without disclosing her existence to the native fauna, which revelation could be as dangerously disruptive to their development as his own intentions. It was a caveat he’d counted on to help preserve his own anonymity, a component vital to success if one considered the unpredictable and often dangerous nature of the local fauna.

There was nothing for it but to proceed as best he could, occupying the Monitor’s attention and hoping that the very beings he intended to affect would continue along the path he had chosen for them. Any misstep could prove costly.

O’lal sensed the Renegade’s loss of confidence and knew she had disrupted his scheme. All without revealing herself and thereby adversely impacting the creatures she had been assigned to monitor. She kept ahead of his pursuit, exhilarating in it, knowing that while he was occupied with her he could not directly influence the reality around him. Bereft of his subtle manipulations, his inimical design would undoubtedly collapse before any serious damage could be done. And having found him, she could put a categorical end to his intrusions, harrying him until he fled beyond easy return to this world.

What neither Shihararaneth expected or foresaw was the introduction of a startling new element into the equation. Thrust and parry they might, but while they did so reality was not frozen in stasis. It maintained a momentum of its own, one which might influence events either way.

Patience was demanded. There were limits to what even the Shihararaneth could do. Both Monitor and Renegade observed and analyzed, trying to determine how best to make the unexpected serve their own special requirements.

U’chak was hopeful. Disruption was generally to his advantage. It suited his temperament and intent far more than that of the Monitor.

With luck he might yet ride wondrous Chaos across this dull, boring world.

VIII

Carter had fought his bonds all morning without achieving anything more than a cramp in his shoulders.

Ashwood rolled over as her captors returned from their digging. She was stiff, dirty, and angry.

“Find any gold?” she asked sarcastically as Fewick returned from his probing of the first of the three openings in the ancient wall.

“No,” he told her blandly. “Not much of anything. A few petroglyphs whose designs are new to me, some pottery shards, the remains of an old fire pit. Of course we have just begun. Great discoveries are not made in a day. Archaeology is a time-consuming science.” He sat down on a smooth rock while his porters began to prepare a meal.

“Are we to eat?” Igor inquired.

“Certainly. My desire is to immobilize you, not starve you. After my men and I have eaten, you will be released one at a time. I will sit here with my little gun and watch until all of you are finished. Isn’t that nice of me?”

“How long do y’all intend on keepin’ us like this?” Ashwood asked him. “Are we expected to sleep with our arms and legs tied?”

Fewick pursed his lips. “I fear you are in for several uncomfortable nights. I do apologize.”

“So do I.” The admonition did not come from Fewick’s porters, nor from the pair of elderly Machiguenga who sat off to one side cooking something unappetizing over their own fire.

“I wouldn’ do that,” the voice said more sharply when Fewick reached for the pistol bolstered at his belt.

“Who the devil are you?” Fewick looked toward the trees as his fingers halted a couple of inches above the butt of the gun.

A tall, leonine figure emerged from the brush. “My name is Francesca da Rimini.”

Carter gaped at the unexpected arrival. Noting his reaction, Igor and Ashwood tried furiously to figure out what they were so obviously missing. Fewick’s porters retreated from the confrontation while the two old Indian guides hardly bothered to look up from their cookfire.

Fewick’s gaze narrowed. His hand remained in the vicinity of his gun. “Francesca da Rimini is a Russian opera.”

“Well, I not a Russian opera,” the Amazon replied dryly. “My parents, they had poor imaginations but a good radio.”

“I am sorry, but that does not impress me.”

“Perhaps this will.” She turned and whistled into the trees. In response to her signal three dark-skinned men emerged from the forest’s edge. Two were twins, Carter saw. They wore identical clothing, carried identical backpacks, and more important, clutched identical AK-47s. If they were porters, Carter thought, they were extremely successful ones. Instead of T-shirts and frayed shorts they wore expensive twill pants and shirts, and their jungle boots looked brand-new.

The third individual wore tattered jeans holed at the knees and a badly worn short-sleeved shirt. He looked to be in his teens.

Ashwood leaned toward Carter, whispering curiously. “That the same Amazon?”

“I met her our first night in Cuzco, after you went to bed,” the actor replied.

Ashwood’s eyes rolled heavenward. “Lemme guess. You told her our plans, right?”

“I did not.” Carter was feeling the prize fool. “She was very nice and just wanted to talk. I told her we were tourists.”

“Uh-huh. I mean, that’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“Look, it’s not my fault if she drew other conclusions. Maybe she’s here to rescue us.”

“Right,” said Ashwood tersely. “Just like my ol’ flame Billy-Bob Postin went to robbin’ banks because he never got that scholarship to Princeton.” She made a rude noise.

“I’ll relieve you of this.” Towering over Fewick, Da Rimini removed the pistol from his holster and stepped back. The two men behind her relaxed.

“These are the Fernández brothers.” She indicated her companions. “That Manco on the left. You can tell them apart because his brother, Blanco, is a little taller and uglier.” The individual thus described smiled agreeably. “We are old friends.”

The young Indian who’d accompanied Da Rimini strode apologetically past her and the captives, offering a raised hand and a few words by way of greeting. Minga and his dinner companion glanced up from their fire and responded unenthusiastically. The youngster took a seat across from his elders, whereupon the trio began chatting in low tones.

“Lemme guess,” said Ashwood sarcastically. “That boy’s the only one, the only one in the world, who knows the location of the lost city of Paititi and could guide you to it.”

“Not exactly.” Da Rimini had a wild look in her eyes. She no longer acted the oversized ingenue Carter had met in Cuzco. It took a very special, very unusual woman, he thought, to plunge into the selva with two heavily armed men hoping to find … what? “But he did know that his uncle had taken some white men in search of his grandfather, and how to track them.”

Carter found that her darting gaze and quirky gestures were making him more nervous than the AK-47s. The supercilious Bruton Fewick might be obsessed, but at least he wasn’t unbalanced. The more Carter saw and heard of her, the less assured he was of Francesca da Rimini’s state of mind. How would she react to the discovery that the fabled lost city of Paititi consisted of a single crumbling wall, some overgrown paving stones, and three holes in the ground?

“You I know, Jason Carter. Your outfitter, Igor von Mannheim de Soto, I also recognize, and the ugly old woman is clearly the friend you mentioned.” Ashwood tensed but said nothing. Da Rimini’s gaze danced over Fewick. “But who is this unpleasant fat man?”

“His name’s Bruton Fewick. He’s kind of an archaeologist. He’s the one who first figured out where this place was. Marjorie and I, we sort of appropriated the information from him and got here first. He didn’t like that, which is why we’re tied up.”

“That is correct,” said Fewick with misplaced self-importance. “I am the official discoverer of Paititi. The rest of you are nothing more than intellectual interlopers.”

Da Rimini responded by continuing to treat him with all the deference she would an ant. She glared at the disintegrating wall. “This is Paititi? This is all there is? Where is the city? Where is the lost gold of Atahualpa?”

“This is a priceless archaeological site,” Fewick informed her. “That is gold enough.”

She glared murderously at him. “Don’ joke with me, gordo. Not after what I gone through to get here.”

“I believe it may have been an Incan runners’ station,” he added stiffly.