"Roger."

On full magnification, Sam could see the armor shielding on the T-bird's starboard weapon pod retract. If Begay was readying the surface-to-air missile that nestled there, it meant he was through fooling around. The rigger had told Sam that such smart SAMs were hard for panzer runners to come by. They were reserved only for those times when life and liberty depended on a swift kill.

The Dragon banked around a rock tower and swept in. The swiftness of its reappearance surprised Sam, but Begay was ready with a missile that rose toward the serpent on a tail of smoky fire. The beast's long, serpentine shape contorted in an attempt to evade the oncoming weapon and just barely succeeded. Huge wing feathers fluttered away, singed by the rocket's passage. The beast craned its neck around, which let it see the missile begin a curving arc to return to its target.

The Dragon's distraction was enough for Begay. The orange tracers from the chain gun kissed the serpent's side, creating a mighty explosion of feathers and blood. The beast dropped rapidly to earth behind a fold in the ground that shielded it from the rigger's searching tracers. From what Sam could see, it was far from dead. As soon as the beast hit the ground, its powerful legs unfolded from their tucked position, and it ran behind a more massive formation to launch itself into the air once more.

As the missile completed its turn and headed back, Sam was surprised to see the Dragon head straight for it. Was it mad with pain? Just when Sam thought that collision was inevitable, the beast belched forth flame to lave the oncoming missile, then twisted violently to the side. The missile burned past, once again singing the beast's feathers. Bereft of its sensors and control surfaces, the missile followed a straight track down into the earth. Its warhead detonated, sending a geyser of rock and dust skyward.

"Get it?" Begay asked.

"No."

"Frag it!"

The Dragon hadn't stopped moving, turning sharply to slip over the ridge toward the panzer again. Its maneuver too fast for Sam to warn Begay, but the rigger had anticipated. He was firing the chain gun as the serpent cleared a domed mound. For this pass, Begay used the main canon as well. The big gun wasn't suited for firing against aerial target of the Dragon's maneuverability, but one would be enough to blow the beast into hamburger. Unfortunately, the creature wasn't giving Begay any such opportunity. Its flight was a masterful aerial ballet of twisting, sinuous flight. Avoiding the fire, it rushed in under the guns, and before the rigger could switch to the antipersonnel armaments, it swooped low over the panzer. One black-taloned claw caught the chain gun turret. The Dragon's mass and momentum tilted the panzer over, while the vehicle's own supporting thrust helped slam the Thunderbird into a rock face.

The Dragon beat its wings and gained altitude, fanning away the cloud of dust raised by the panzer's impact. Sam saw the Thunderbird half-buried under a small landslide, with a thin strand of gray smoke or steam rising out from a rent on the engine deck. The barrel of the chain gun was gone.

"Begay! Begay!"

For a moment, the only reply was hissing static. The rigger's words came in small, breathy rushes. "Get out, Twist. You get close to the worm and you're history."

"I could distract it while you shoot it."

"Don't be a fool." His voice cut off as he was wracked with coughing. "The guns are gone. You're lucky to be out there. Walk in beauty, Twist."

The serpent swept into sight again. Wings fanned forward with feathers at maximum spread for braking. The neck arched back into an S-curve, and the jaws opened wide to belch forth flame.

Sam thought Begay still safe from that sort of attack. Surely he would have heard screams if the Navaho had been exposed to the flame? Sam looked down to see the comm light cold and dead.

Below him, the flames found a ruptured seal on a fuel tank. The side of the panzer blew out, sending a fireball with an oily black smudge of a tail into the sky.

The serpent beat its wings and gained altitude. It circled lazily, drifting in and out of the smoky column. As it rose, Sam recognized its markings. This was Tessien, the feathered serpent that worked with Hart. Drake must have sent it after him. Now Drake would have to answer for yet another life.

After what the Dragon had done to the panzer, Sam had no illusions about what would happen if the Little Eagle tangled with it. He banked away, seeking a thermal to take him up and away from the scene of carnage.

33.

When an hour had passed, Sam was sure that Tessien was not following him. The Little Eagle was still headed north and the badlands had given way to flat prairie. He was not moving in the optimal direction, but the need to conserve fuel forced this course upon him. He needed to cover ground, and the further the Eagle could take him, the better. Because of the craft's limited endurance, Sam took every advantage of the prevailing winds to glide as much as possible. All the while, he looked for a landing spot where alternate transportation might be available. Otherwise, he'd be walking once the Eagle landed. On the bright side, he was out of Sioux territory.

By now, though, he was physically drained, his head aching from interfacing with the Little Eagle's sensors as he sought to evade pursuit. He wanted to rest, to stretch out somewhere and close his eyes for a while. The cramped confines of the drone offered no solace on the first count, but the autopilot would let him rest for a bit. He fed the Little Eagle's computer the parameters necessary to maintain gliding flight and to take advantage of any thermals, and instructed it to signal any significant change in the prevailing winds. He didn't trust the dog brain to pick a suitable course once the wind shifted. That done, he jacked out. Even confined and cramped as he was, sleep came fast. Dreams came, too.

Sam wandered in a Stygian darkness. To either side, black walls loomed over him and stretched away into the pitchy distance. A sound tapped regularly at the edge of his awareness like a distant clock, or was it a heartbeat? He felt a cold pressure against his back, but when he turned and stretched out his hand, he found nothing. And when he tried to take a step in that direction, he could not move his foot. Turning back, he took a few steps, and stopped again. The pressure returned, and a second attempt to walk in its direction met the same result. He took another few steps in the permitted direction before trying once more. Failure, again. He shrugged and walked on the only way he could.

He continued for a ways, occasionally stumbling over unseen obstructions that evaporated just as he touched them. Resigning himself to barked shins, he pressed on while gradually noticing a dim light ahead. As he approached, the illumination resolved itself into a face. Janice? Maybe not. Hanae? He wasn't sure. He needed to know, and began to run toward the image.

But then he was brought up short and almost fell. Looking down, he saw shackles around his ankles. Each band was linked to a heavy chain of gleaming steel links that stretched away into the darkness. Bending closer, he noted a small cloth label sewn to the metal. The inscription read, "Made expressly for Samuel Verner." He laughed. It was ridiculous to find a custom clothes label on chains.

He resented the restraints and that resentment flared up rage. Who had the right to shackle him? He bent to the chains and found no fastenings. When he pulled at them in frustration, they proved to be stiff and immovable. He beat at them with his bare fists. He needed a tool to smash them or to let him slip free of the bindings. He howled in fury.

Somewhere in the darkness around him a dog howled, too, echoing his outburst. No, the sound was too wild and lonely to be a dog. He was in the prairie; it must be a coyote. The plaintive voice was calling . . . calling. Calling him? No, that didn't seem right. Calling . . .

Thunder rolled across the sky, shocking Sam awake. A look out the cockpit told him what he didn't want to know. The boiling storm front seemed to fill the sky to the southwest. The thunderheads were too high for him to climb over and their leaden gray front was moving too fast to outrun. He knew enough about small aircraft to know that the Little Eagle would not withstand the fury of storm winds.

Sam disengaged the autopilot and dipped the Eagle's nose down. Reluctantly, he scanned the prairie below, looking for a landing site that would also offer him some shelter. He would be walking sooner than he'd hoped.

The Little Eagle dropped swiftly. Early in the descent, Sam spotted a small village, but the turns necessary to reach it would have put him into the teeth of the storm before he could bring the Little Eagle to earth. The grassland rushed past beneath the craft. No better opportunity appeared, and he began to regret having passed up the village. Time was running out.

His tail wind strengthened, forcing him to ease off to a shallower glide slope or else risk a dump. He thought about jacking back in; the added response-time from receiving the sensor data directly might give him an edge. The Eagle shuddered as the first of the storm's winds reached her, and he knew the decision had been made. He could not afford to take his hands from the control yoke now. Seconds later, the drumming of rain announced the arrival of the storm.

Sam fought the bucking Eagle, trying to bring her down safely before the full force of the storm hit. His ground speed increased as the winds swelled. The prairie below vanished, replaced by a landscape as dark as his nightmare.

As the Eagle lurched downward, strange shapes loomed up and flashed past. Even as Sam fought to retain control, he could see that most were geological formations carved from rock by wind and rain and lit by the lightning. But the storm's gathering darkness cloaked other, almost organic shapes. Hunched giants and monstrous creatures reached out of the storm to threaten him and his fragile craft. The Eagle twisted abruptly to the right, and Sam watched helplessly as the winds tore off the starboard wing tip, which tumbled away. Caught in a crosswind, the Eagle's nose lifted just before slamming into a rocky spire. The port wing sheared away, leaving the craft a broken plaything for the gale. The battered fuselage was torn from the sky and slammed across the rough face of a mesa. The remains of the Little Eagle bounced three times before settling against a rocky bluff. Sam never felt those bounces; he lost consciousness when his head slammed back on the first strike.

Warm rain roused him to an aching body. So far, he had survived the landing. Raising a hand to explore his most immediate pain, his fingers came away sticky with what the lightning showed to be blood. Did he have a concussion? Dazed, he stared at his bloody fingers as the rain sluiced them clean.

Fitful flashes lit the barren landscape. The harsh white light washed out perspective, but Sam thought that the revealed formations looked too flat. A couple of twists of his head told him that he was only seeing out of his left eye. The other was swollen shut or gummed closed with blood. That was his hope, at least. He didn't dare touch to see if the eye was still there.

Another sharp pain announced itself in his side, but that one he was willing to explore. He slit open his palm in the process of discovering that his torso had been gashed open by a ragged strut torn from Little Eagle's airframe. He winced at his own touch and vomited. New agony erupted am the convulsion.

Then he was standing outside the wreck, looking at the devastation. He didn't remember crawling free, but that was just as well. It would have been a tortuous process and he feeling enough pain. He staggered back a step, his foot slipping in the thick, slick mud. He fell.

Pain exploded in him as he slid down toward a raging thunder that was more terrifying than the storm. He fetched up on an overhang that stopped him from plunging into the crashing torrent that rushed through what had minutes-hours?-before been a dry gulch. His reprieve was momentary, for already he felt the ground shifting beneath him; his precipitous landing had weakened the overhang.

Fear drove him from his perch and sent him scrambling upward. A detached part of his mind noted the blazing pain and the blood that flowed onto the slick mud. For every three meters he gained, Sam slipped back two, but he kept on climbing. He fainted for a bit, but the hungry water below spurred him forward as soon as he regained his fogged senses.

He had almost reached the wreck again when his foot found a solid rocky surface under the mud. He leaned into it, a safe place amid the morass. Then his hands slipped and his body twisted away from the ledge. His ravaged side screamed its pain and his foot wedged against something hard, sending a new agony searing through his leg. He slipped downward, surrendering to the pain, embracing the darkness.

34.

"Change?"

The interrogative quavered with a faded hint of the brilliant trill the sasquatch's voice must once have held. Sasquatches couldn't speak like people, but they could imitate almost any sound. Hart wondered how this one had come to associate the word with panhandling for money to buy more of the booze that stank on her breath. Most of her kind seemed unable to make the connection between the spoken word and communication. Why, Hart didn't know. Another mystery of the Sixth World, she supposed. The large, furry bipeds could communicate with sign language, though, and this one's fingers gestured in a fumbling way. Hart didn't know the language, but it was obvious the sasquatch's words were as blurred as any Human's would be when drowned in alcohol. How could any thinking being do that to itself?

"Change?" the sasquatch repeated exactly.

Just like a recording, Hart thought, or a dog barking to get a cookie. She shook her head and motioned the sasquatch away. As the furry panhandler hung her head, her hopeful, idiot smile died. She shuffled down the street to collapse outside the bar.

Hart shook her head. Disgusting.

She went back to scanning the sky for a sign of Tessien. The Dragon had finally checked in with the transmitter it wore and she had given it the final approach vector to cut off the running panzer. Tessien had been out of contact for too long. Had something happened to it?

Standing by the battered Chevrolet four-by-four she had rented in Grand Forks, Hart waited. There was no one in sight but that rummy old sasquatch. She didn't like meeting out in the open, but no building in the town had enough space to house the Dragon. This street was at least in a nearly deserted part of town. That made it better than most for her purpose. Anyone who saw the pair would be more than happy to stay out of their way or else be on shadow business of his own.

If Tessien came.

The night cooled rapidly. Just after moonrise, Hart began to contemplate crawling into the vehicle to start its heater. When a cool breeze sprang up, she almost did so. Then she the musty odor of feathers among the high desert f scents.

The serpent landed, surprisingly quiet. Its length coiled about the Chevy and it placed its head on the hood. The truck's suspension groaned. From the reek of blood on its breath, she knew that the Dragon had fed on its way back, It exuded satisfaction.

"It is done."

"He's really dead this time?"

"The machine is destroyed. There was no life within it."

"Where did you catch them? Were there witnesses?"

"Three hours to the northeast. It was good land, wild. There are none to talk."

"That's wiz. No one to tattle to Mr. Drake about our little clean-up operation. If he knew Verner was running around this long, he'd pay handsomely for our hides."

"He could do a lot more with mine than yours."

"He'd still want them both." She pushed at the feathered tail that barred her from the Chevy's door. "Come on, let's back to civilization."

The furry lump didn't stir until the Dragon and the Elf passed from sight. Then she stood, occasionally repeating the call for "Change?" as she shuffled away in the opposite direction. After a dozen blocks, she turned down an alley and approached a car. It was an expensive model, totally out of place among the debris of the alley. Showing uncharacteristic awareness for a being enslaved to alcohol, she scanned the area quickly. Satisfied that no one was watching, she palmed open the car's lock and slipped inside.

The door closed, hiding her from prying eyes and ears. She stretched with a growl, working out the kinks left from her role as a drunk. She reached into the back and opened the refrigerator compartment, from which she fished a foil-wrapped package of meat. She munched on the contents while reflecting on what she had heard.

Once the hunt had gone up from the Sioux Wildcats encounter, it had become a distinct possibility that the Dragon would achieve its lethal results. Still, her master would be disappointed, and if one was to be the bearer of disappointing news, it was preferable to have proof positive. She was always very thorough and that was good, for thoroughness was a survival necessity for her kind.

How to locate the kill? The Dragon's report gave her a general vector and an estimate of distance. She would still need to cover a bit of ground. A helicopter or a tilt-wing craft would be the most suitable search vehicle, allowing her to land in tight confines if necessary. Such a craft must be fast, though, with a higher cruising speed than the Dragon's. She wanted to get there first in case Hart decided to check the site. There was also the matter of Sioux patrols. Not to mention the weather. Forecasts called for scattered thunderstorms. If the Sioux arrived before her or if one of the storms hit the area of interest, she might lose valuable evidence from which to draw her own conclusions. She picked up the telecom headset to make the arrangements.

35.

Sun on his face finally woke Sam. He was stretched out on his back, snugged into a mold of his own body formed when the mud had dried to a hard, lumpy shell. At his first movement, a snake slithered away from the side of his body still in shadow, fleeing the formerly quiet heat source.

He tried to sit up, but the sharp pain in his side and the blaze in his skull stretched him out again. He lay gasping, trying to recall how it had come to be. Flashes of the wild ride in the storm came back, and he knew that the Little Eagle must have crashed, though he couldn't actually remember it. Raising his head gingerly, he looked around with his good eye. The wreck was nowhere in sight. Only sun and shadow, mesas and hoodoos, sage and rock and sand.

The back of his head felt cool and damp. Fearing bleeding, he reached painfully back to touch it. But it was only water. His soaking from the night had been preserved under his body. He realized that what was left of his clothes were damp on the underside as well. Carefully and slowly, he rolled over onto his side, but his arms gave way. Sam fell face-down into the dirt, as waves of agony and nausea wracked his body. He retched emptily, then lay panting on his side, trying to recover some strength.

The sun had already climbed high into the sky, and his movements had put him fully in its light. At first the heat and dazzling brightness felt good, chasing away the chill and easing stiffened muscles. Before long, the sun became too hot for him to lie there much longer.

Rising dizzily to his feet, Sam pointed himself in the direction he happened to face and started walking. He limped awkwardly to favor his injured ankle, but each step brought new pain from his side. He had to keep moving, though. The hotter he got, the more he perspired and the salt in his sweat stung as it ran over raw wounds. Desperately wanting water, he plodded on, his holster slapping against a bruise that matched its shape exactly.

After a time, he found a place where the sun-baked clay of last night's mud was disturbed and broken up. Pawprints in the dirt circled the spot. There were other marks as well, but the only other ones he could make out were a trail of footprints, Human footprints. He stared at them for a time, his brain in a fog. More to rouse himself than because of any plan, he decided to follow the footprints.

He had settled into a rhythm of gasps and winces when he felt a wetness running down his leg. Touching it left his fingers daubed with blood; the wound in his side had reopened. Well, he was following somebody. They would help him. He'd catch up soon.

After a time, he came to a place where the sun-baked that had been last night's mud was disturbed and broken up. Pawprints in the dirt circled the spot. There were other marks as well, Human footprints. He found himself staring at those prints, slowly realizing that they were his own.

Losing it, he thought. Going to walk in circles 'til I drop. Need to see where I am, find some way out of this maze before it's too late.

A rocky prominence dominated the landscape in front of him. Unlike most of the others he had seen, this one seemed to have a gentle talus slope. He might be able to climb it. From the top, he'd be able to see where he was going. He stumbled toward it.

By the time he reached it, Sam had forgotten why he was headed that way. The crumbly talus made him stumble painfully but he pressed on, driven by the need to go forward. He reached the rock face. It rose tall and forbidding above him, no longer appearing an easy climb. As he tilted his head back to stare at its height, dizziness sent colors swirling across his vision. He grabbed the rock and hugged himself to it to keep from falling.

Clinging to the stone and feeling rock dust work its way into the crusted blood and mud that matted his hair and beard, he realized that the shadow in front of him was not just an unlit strip of the cliff. The darkness was a hollow in the mesa, a runoff-cut chimney. He forced himself in.

It was cooler out of the sun's searing light. The rock had worn unevenly, leaving a series of projections and ledges. Above him he could see the sky, deep blue and inviting like a pool of cool water. He needed water, so he began to climb. It was hard work, painful work, but he persevered. At one point, he grabbed what appeared to be a convenient handhold and the stone betrayed him. Screaming in agony, Sam slid down several meters in a cascade of dust and rock fragments. He lay against the rockface, winded and coughing, willing the dust to settle.

Beams of sunlight speared through the swirling motes, lending the tall hollow the air of a cathedral. Mineral flakes sparkled and flashed like fairy dust. Save for the faint noises of his own breathing, the world around him was absolutely silent. Suddenly ashamed that he had never once prayed during his recent trials, he did so now, asking first for forgiveness and only later for the strength to continue.

Some time passed before he could think of climbing again. He didn't really feel capable of anything other than pain, but he pushed himself forward anyway. He crawled again to the chimney's edge to resume his ascent, and came face to face with a Dragon. Or rather face to skull. Embedded in the sediments of the wall, the huge skull leered a toothy grin at him from its prison of time and stone. As he reached out to touch it, the rock fractured and a whole fang came away in his hand. He stared blankly at the tooth for a moment, then shrugged and slipped it into his pocket. He had better things to do than play with old bones.

He resumed his climb. If it had been hard before, it was more so now that he was even weaker. He was a few meters from the top when he realized that he had stopped perspiring. That meant something, but he couldn't remember what. He pressed on, determined to cover those last meters before he collapsed.

The heat struck him again as he crawled out onto the surface. Shakily, he stood to survey the reward for his effort. In every direction, he saw more badlands. He might have been on Mars. Distant features were blurred by heat haze shimmer, or perhaps it was his own vision that blurred. Defeated, he lowered himself slowly to the ground. Adding insult, he sat directly on a large rock. He shifted his position to the left, only to land on another rock.

Sam wobbled to his feet, determined to kick the offending stones away. But he forgot about that as he struggled to make sense out of what he saw in the narrowing tunnel of his vision. There were more rocks. They were placed in a line. No, not a line, an outline-and a man-shaped one at that. He started to walk around it, trying to confirm what didn't make sense, but his ankle, strained beyond further use from the climb, gave way. He hit the ground heavily, screaming out the torment at this latest abuse of his battered body. The sharp knives of pain cut his way into the darkness.

When he came to, Sam was staring at the sky as it darkened to evening. He was weak, almost beyond caring. He felt forsaken and would have cried, but there didn't seem to enough water in his body. He must be near the end, because most of the pain had faded into numbness, tamed by his acceptance of its all-pervasive presence. He felt calm, detached from his body. The world around him seemed at once blurred and more sharply defined than he had ever known it.

"Is this where I die?" he asked the first star to appear in the deep blue to the east.

"That depends."

He looked around for the voice, but saw no one. He was alone on the mesa except for a scrawny dog that looked a little bit like his abandoned Inu. But that couldn't be. There were no dogs out here in the badlands. The animal must be a coyote. In any case, it couldn't talk. He must be hallucinating.

"You're an illusion," he told the animal.

It grinned doggishly at him. "Sure of that, are you?"

Sam decided to play along with his dementia. What harm could it do? "If you're not, what's going on?"

"You are lying in a dreaming circle."

"A what?"