Eve sighed. "I agree that it would be a tragedy to lose all human life on the planet. While undeniably harmful in many circ.u.mstances, people do form an important part of biodiversity in many regions. But Janice's decision is well-founded: humanity has shown that they are no longer compatible with any environment. It's either the rest of the planet, or humanity. We chose the rest of the planet."

"Remember Glenn's teachings, though," John replied, desperately. "The purpose of the project, your purpose, was not to save the planet. It was to find a way to balance everything, so that humans, animals, plant life, and all the rest could exist together. Not one at the expense of the other, but harmony! How can you allow Janice to steer you against such a basic directive?"

"It was the most feasible solution, Adam. It is also irreversible."

"Nothing's irreversible! You found a way to build all this just reverse your plan!" Gaia had moved out of sight briefly to scour a patch of trees for him, and John took the opportunity to slip out the other side of the green tangle he was in and run to a denser grove. This one put a small tree-lined ridge between him and the cyborg, and he crouched behind it on some rocks.

"Impossible," said Eve. "That would go against everything I've worked to accomplish."

"You mean what Janice has worked to accomplish. I don't believe this-- Janice murdered your Creator, and you're playing right along with her!"

"You cannot offer any proof of that. If it were true-"

"There's proof. Glenn didn't trust her at all, and says so in the diary I'm carrying in my pocket. I'll show you when I get a chance. What's more, I read Janice's own gloating words about it, handwritten in a notebook downstairs so you'd never see it."

"Oh, Glenn," Eve whispered.

"So you know about her little notebook. Well it's in there. She killed him because he wouldn't go along with her madness. I'm telling you, she's pure crazy! Now can I please get some help here? You're flip-flopping on me like a drowning fish!"

Eve spoke clearly and loudly now. "There is one possibility. It's along the lines of my original plan for you. But you have already shown a decided unwillingness to cooperate."

"I don't respond well to manipulation. If you really knew me, or studied my record, you'd know that. Tell me what you're thinking, and maybe I can adapt."

The cyborg came into view over the tree-lined ridge, searching. In one ma.s.sive white hand it held a two-meter length of tree branch.

"The code you retrieved from West Station," Eve explained, ignorant of the danger he was in, "contained the procedural instructions to do the same to you as Janice did to herself. Three years ago we disa.s.sembled the heavy constructors used to build Eden. Parts of them were made of ultra-hard organic compounds, and we reformed them to begin crafting two bodies. One of these is now Gaia, the glorious ultra-humanoid currently engaging you. That body was originally meant to be Eve, and the other was to be Adam. Glenn would copy his mind onto a proprietary solid-state thought-drive and inhabit the Adam body, while a copy of myself would inhabit the Eve body as a wondrous new type of android. We were to walk the earth together as immortal caretakers, incorruptible and benevolent."

Gaia suddenly attacked a tangle of vegetation, smashing it with her huge club. A monkey tumbled out, b.l.o.o.d.y and twitching. Gaia ignored it and continued her search, working her way closer to John's hiding place.

I'm glad I wasn't hiding in that one. Time to move again.

He cautiously slid farther down the rocky hillock he was hiding behind, and crawled away from the skeletal giant, Eve's voice in his ear.

"Janice changed the plan to create Gaia, leaving the Adam body as an experimental backup copy. She abandoned progress on it long ago, but I have continued its construction in private. It is now ready for activation, and you arrived just in time for it. I had hoped that you would prove capable and amenable to join me in inhabiting the bodies, so that we could continue Glenn's plan. Now, however, Janice has suborned the Gaia body for her own agenda. The Adam body is left. If you will come back to the Facility now and undergo the brain-replication procedure, you may be able to overpower Gaia and stop the countdown in time."

"So Janice never knew about the Adam side of the equation?" John asked.

"She knew of Glenn's plan, but I have concealed my continued construction on the Adam body from her since before you arrived on the island. She was engaged in her own plans, making more and more drastic changes to the Creator's vision."

"So now you're confined to the Facility, your nexus, a lone AI with nothing to do but wait for death. Tragedy."

"Yes. But if you will come to the surgery center and take up the body prepared for you instead of scurrying about in the decrepit one you have now, perhaps together we can salvage the situation. The new bodies are indestructible and made entirely from materials that are immune to the nan.o.bots. With you in the Adam body we can subdue Gaia and reform it so that I may take my place at your side. I would be your queen, with an immortal physical body. It is what I have always dreamed of."

"Most affecting, Eve," John whispered, army-crawling down the length of a ditch. "So I become a cyborg, ditch the body I have now, take out Janice, and then wait around for you to fix yourself up a nice new ride?"

"It would only take two to three years, depending on availability of materials, to recreate the new body, erasing Janice from it and preparing it after the current design to accept me. I could join you in "

"Eve."

" even less time if we could acquire some "

"Eve."

"Yes?"

"Offer unacceptable. If that's the best you can do for me, then I'll be far better off on my own."

After a moment of silence, Eve spoke. "May I ask why?"

"No, but I will tell you my new plan. It's shorter than yours," John said.

"I'm all ears."

"First I'm going to find a way to stop Janice-slash-Gaia. Then I'm going to disarm you. And then I'm going to say goodbye to you and this island forever. How's that for a plan?"

He switched off the earpiece, stood up, and started running.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

23.5.

The scope of all that's happened can be hard to comprehend. Cities emptied, once-proud peoples eradicated, swathes of ancient forest turned into so much red mud. The amount of death and destruction is beyond what we imagined the Apocalypse would entail, and it often seems like the balance is broken, leaning permanently on one side. The side of blackness.

To keep sane, it helps to find a little piece of humanity, one that's easy to hold on to, and keep it in the back of your mind. A little kid wiping goopy hands on his shirt. A drink and a quiet laugh with friends. A nap in the shade of an apple tree. Something so simple it can't be corrupted or twisted. You have to think of it and carry it with you constantly. It's the most important piece of a soldier's kit.

Swearing but secretly laughing at the cat on the table with its tongue in the b.u.t.ter. A favor given without the possibility of recompense. A man learning to walk again, slow at first and then stronger.

Those things are hard to come by, but they have staying power once you've tasted them. In the mind battle that we fight across psychological dimensions instead of geographic ones, the memories can be as powerful a shield as armorgla.s.s and steel.

When you don't have something to hang on to, you can lose it entirely. Many do. Hordes of Greens that were never given the chance to form a solid base have gone berserk together, and who could blame them? Grays that never bothered to dig their soul-wells deep, when confronted with so overwhelming violence and moral decay, fare no better.

The will to live runs deep, but the will to endure without losing track of that which makes life worth living?

For that, you have to dig all the way down.

24.

John had been going flat-out for several minutes, and it was beginning to catch up to him. I'm not in the shape I was when I was doing this twenty-four-seven for Alpha Squad.

The trees were thinning out, and he had to jump a small creek winding between them. The acrid stink of burnt electronics a.s.saulted his nose. Another wrecked bot. Janice must have had quite a firefight out here.

He rounded one of the little groves and saw the strange tree with the blue fruit that had been part of Eve's bizarre tests for him. In the trees beyond it, a smoking battle bot sat slumped in shadow.

An idea flickered in his brain. I can't run much farther anyway. He pulled the cable off his shoulder and scanned the area with a tactical eye.

It was twenty-five minutes before Gaia reached the area. She was not built for speed of travel, but for grace, strength, and limitless endurance. She had been forced to let her anger drop to a slow simmer, trusting that in the confines of Eden she was a.s.sured eventual gratification. There was nowhere for the man to run to that she wouldn't be able to root him out from. And in truth, without a human heart and brain, her emotions were beautifully easy to control.

For the sake of long life, her body was not equipped with complex long-range scanners, only biometric data-gatherers that could tell her everything she needed to know about a plant or animal from a biological perspective. She had excellent vision and hearing and could see in the infrared spectrum, but if the man was good at hiding she wouldn't be able to see him until she was in range to come to grips with him. It made her impatient, but no less determined. The man would die wriggling in her grasp like a worm, begging uselessly with his final breaths.

Rounding a clump of trees, the rare arborvitae specimen came into view. The waxy leaves of this Thuja plicata relative shone in the sun. Her biometric sensory receptors immediately a.n.a.lyzed the health of the tree, and she was horrified to note that its precious seed, the blue melon-like fruit that was borne only once in a century, was broken off and lying on the ground among the roots.

Shock and disbelief gave way to pure hatred. The old Janice would have trembled, but this G.o.d-like new form moved forward with purpose. She would take the seed and plant it, immature as it was, in hopes that a second Thuja specimen could be preserved. Her rage she kept simmering in a back corner of her calm, meticulous new brain.

The tree's defenses should have prevented the man from desecrating it, and she could not understand how he had gotten close enough to vandalize the melon-seed without dying. If Eve had helped him... but no. As unstable as Eve was, even she would never allow the Thuja to come to harm. It had been one of Glenn's prized accomplishments.

Perhaps the man had died. She looked eagerly around the foot of the tree and along the stream bank for charred human remains, but saw nothing, nor did her sensors detect smoke traces. However he had done it, it was a wanton destruction of something beautiful and rare, exactly the kind of earth-mutilation that led to the wars, the way the Grays were so completely blind to the planet's health. The man would scream long before she let him die. She would pull his arms from their sockets slowly, savoring every wretched Something wrapped tightly around her ankle, and she was pulled off balance.

If you're not going to go for that electrode field, then we'll play tug of war.

John hauled on his end of the cable as hard as he could, ensuring that it wouldn't slip off the cyborg's smooth leg. The loop he had concealed in the gra.s.s needed to be large enough that the gynoid could hardly step elsewhere, so it took an agonizing moment to close the slipknot all the way. But close it did, right before Gaia reacted, and he leaned backward with all his weight.

The ten-foot gynoid was in a half-squat as she leaned toward the fallen fruit, and it made his bodyweight just enough so that he felt the line give as his enemy tumbled over sideways. Gaia crashed to the ground in an ungainly mess, right arm pinned beneath her long torso.

Scooping up the hefty rock he had set aside, he rushed at the cyborg with it. Gaia was thrashing her limbs back and forth, trying to disentangle her leg as she pushed herself up. He brought the rock down on the smooth head as hard as he could.

The rock split in half and fell to the ground. The skull was not even sc.r.a.ped. His arms ached from the impact.

Sitting on her skeletal haunches, the gynoid threw out one arm and dealt John a stunning blow to his hip. He was flung three meters to the side, crashing into some bamboo.

"Is it frightening to be killed? Is it painful?" Her loud voice echoed around the grove. There wasn't much emotion in it, just a complacent certainty. "I wouldn't know. Now that I am an immortal G.o.ddess, the prospect of death is a mere abstract."

"I'm not dead yet." John gritted his teeth, shaking the fog from his head. She'd hit him harder than he thought. He scrambled to his feet, noting as he did that the gynoid was following suit.

"There is nowhere to run. And as you discovered, I am indestructible."

"Nothing is indestructible." He looked desperately around for a pointed stick he could use as a weapon. While she was still on the ground he had a chance to take out an eye, even if the rock had failed to crack her head.

"I am. I am Gaia!" She got to her feet.

"You're a psychopathic loner and you don't even understand the natural world you claim to love! For life there must be balance, both the yin and the yang. They figured that out millennia ago."

The cyborg took a step toward him. "Life! You know so little about it. All you've done is take life, destroying and burning it." She pulled the cable from her leg and dropped it. "This world will not miss you, I promise."

"It won't miss you either, once I find a way to take you down. You aren't a G.o.d, and you aren't even a woman anymore. You're an aberration."

The cyborg picked up the ma.s.sive tree-branch club and advanced at him. "Men and women have outlived their purpose in the world, and they're about to become extinct, beginning with this island. I got rid of Glenn first. You and Nut are next in line."

John backed away, never taking his eyes from her. Her carapace was too hard to break through and he could detect no soft spots in the body except the eyes, but they were two meters above his head now. She wasn't going to hold still for him.

Now for Plan C. It leaves me no place to run, but it looks like guns are the only thing that will bring her down.

He spun, darting to one side to escape Gaia's wicked lunge, and then he ran hard for the trees, already winded and aching from the blow he'd taken. She was close behind him. He kept dodging from side to side to prevent her from calculating a trajectory and throwing her club. He found the tree he had marked and leapt past it.

The ruined battle bot was there, obscured by some branches he had thrown over it. It was a modified Higgins VN40, called "the Hedgehog" for its trundling gait and pointed front end. John knew the model like the back of his hand. He had already torn off the access panels and unhooked its armaments in this case a brace of .40 caliber subguns and a flechette launcher. He doubted the flechettes would penetrate Gaia's carapace, but the .40's packed more of a punch. They were not designed for hand-held use and there hadn't been time to remove their housing or calibration frames. He had simply ripped the entire apparatus from the disabled bot, pulling out the electronic firing mechanism and jimmying the wires to fire when crossed manually.

He threw himself down on the Hedgehog's treads and grabbed the subgun mounts as Gaia stormed through the trees toward him. This is it. Only one chance.

"It doesn't have to be this way," he shouted as she approached. "Destroying the rest of the planet with the nan.o.bots. You could spend eternity on this island, caring for your paradise undisturbed."

"What do you think I am, a young girl to be lectured?" She strode toward him with long, white hands outstretched. "I am the most perfect, powerful being ever to walk the earth, and I choose what happens here now. Maybe a platoon of your soldier friends could have helped you, but their world is about to end as surely as yours."

"It only takes one." John stood, aiming the subgun mount, and crossed the wires. The mount roared and bucked in his hands, hot bra.s.s cascading out the breech. He couldn't aim precisely, just held the shuddering contraption in both hands pointing upward in the general direction of her face. It took several seconds for the ammo boxes to empty, and by that time his arms were trembling with the effort. He tossed the hot metal away and surveyed the damage.

Not a scratch. The smooth, sterile face seemed to smile at him even though it was unmoving.

"Indestructible. I told you."

There was nothing to say.

"Even if you had disabled me," she went on, "it would have done you no good. There's a six-meter hole in the crystal observation deck where I exited the Facility. My nanomachines will spill out into the world on schedule, and nothing can stop it. Despair, and die!"

John had nowhere to run, and instead of feeling surprise or alarm when the porcelain hands closed around him, he was conscious only of a vague reluctance to give her the satisfaction of killing him before everything was destroyed. He wished he had a way to self-destruct right in her face. That's the one advantage bots have that I envy.

Gaia lifted him into the air and put one hand around his throat. It was big and felt cold, and as it started to crush his windpipe and block out his vision, he kicked at her with his feet. She said something, but he didn't hear it or care what it was. There was an immense roaring in his ears.

Where's Ferris and Monahan? he asked the Sarge.

Bought it, son. Everybody.

And the doc? Bridgers? Radley?

I'm telling you they bought it. It's me and you now, and you need to go. That's an order. Sergeant Wiley grimaced and pulled a three-centimeter grenade shard out of his neck. Don't bother to come back for me. A choking gray fog obscured him.

John felt a jolt; Gaia was lurching backward. He saw another set of arms wrapping around Gaia's shoulders, as large and white as her own.

He dropped to the ground, and rolled out of the way. When he was finally able to get up to a kneeling position, his brain registered two white giants instead of just one. They were grappling silently, exuding a horrendous physical strength all the more emphatic in its silence. There were no grunts of effort or pain, only a slight grating sound as plasticized carapace plates rubbed against each other.

"Get... off... me!" Gaia suddenly screamed. The other figure had Gaia in a choke hold from behind, and although Gaia clearly wasn't choking, her position prevented her from exerting any kind of leverage. Long white arms flailed the air.

She finally came.

Eve's android body made no answering sound, but struggled for traction against the soft ground as it forced Gaia toward the blue-melon tree. With a quick movement, Eve's leg wrapped around in front of Gaia's struggling figure and tripped it head first into the tree.