Harman jumped into the droshky and grabbed up another spear from the bed of the vehicle. Hannah fired two quarrels into the voynix. One of the bolts deflected off into the darkness under the trees, but the other sank deep. Harman leaped from the droshky and drove the remaining spear into the last voynix's chest. The creature twitched and staggered back another step.

Harman wrenched the lance out, drove it home again with the pure violence of madness, twisted the barbed tip, pulled it free, and drove it home again.

The voynix fell backward, clattering onto the roots of an ancient elm.

Harman straddled the voynix, unmindful of its still-twitching arms and blades, lifted the blue-milked spear straight up, drove it down, twisted it, ripped it out, lifted it, drove it down lower on the thing's shell, ripped it free, drove it in where a human's groin would be, twisted the barbs to do maximum damage to the soft parts inside, lifted it out-part of the shell ripping away-and drove it home again so fiercely that he could feel the speartip hit soil and root. He pulled the spear free, lifted it, drove it deep, lifted it...

"Harman," said Petyr, setting a hand on the older man's shoulder. "It's dead. It's dead."

Harman looked around. He didn't recognize Petyr and couldn't get enough air into his lungs. He heard a violent noise and realized that it was his own labored breathing.

It was too fucking damned dark. The clouds had covered the rings and it was too fucking damned dark here under the trees. There could be fifty more voynix there in the shadows, waiting to leap.

Hannah lighted the lantern.

There were no more voynix visible in the sudden circle of light. The fallen ones had ceased twitching. Odysseus was still down, one of the voynix fallen across him. Neither voynix nor man moved.

"Odysseus!" Hannah leaped from the droshky with the lantern, kicking the voynix corpse aside.

Petyr rushed around and went to one knee next to the fallen man. Harman limped over as quickly as he could, leaning on his spear. The deep scratches on his back and legs were just beginning to hurt.

"Oh," said Hannah. She was on her knees, holding the lantern over Odysseus. Her hand was shaking. "Oh," she said again.

Odysseus-Noman's armor had been knocked off his body, the leather straps slashed apart. His broad chest was a latticework of deep wounds. A single slash had taken off part of his left ear and a section of scalp.

But it was the damage to the old man's right arm that made Harman gasp.

The voynix-in their wild attempt to make Odysseus drop the Circe sword, which he had never done, it was still humming in his hand-had ripped the man's arm to shreds and then all but torn the arm from his body. Blood and mangled tissue shone in the harsh lantern light. Harman could see white bone glistening. "Dear God," he whispered. In the eight months since the Fall, no one at Ardis Hall or at any of the survivors' communes Harman knew of had suffered such wounds and survived.

Hannah was pounding the earth with one fist while her other hand pressed palm downward on Odysseus' bloody chest. "I can't feel a heartbeat," she said almost calmly. Only her wild white eyes in the lantern's gleam belied that calm. "I can't feel a heartbeat."

"Put him in the droshky..." began Harman. He felt the post-adrenaline shakiness and nausea that he'd experienced once before. His bad leg and lacerated back were bleeding fiercely.

"Fuck the droshky," said Petyr. The young man twisted the hilt of the Circe sword and the vibration ceased, the blade becoming visible again. He handed Harman the sword, the flechette rifle, and two extra magazines. Then he bent, went to one knee, lifted the unconscious or dead Odysseus over his shoulder, and stood. "Hannah, lead the way with the lantern. Reload your crossbow. Harman, bring up the rear with the rifle. Shoot at anything that even looks like it might move." He staggered off toward the last meadow with the bleeding figure over his shoulder, looking ironically, horribly, much like Odysseus often had when hauling home the carcass of a deer.

Nodding dumbly, Harman cast aside the spear, tucked the Circe sword in his belt, lifted the flechette rifle, and followed the other two survivors out of the forest.

24.

As soon as he faxed into Paris Crater, Daeman wished that he'd arrived in daylight. Or at least waited until Harman or someone else could have come with him.

It was about five p.m. and the light had been fading when he'd reached the fax pavilion palisade a little more than a mile from Ardis Hall, and now it was one in the morning, very dark, and raining hard here in Paris Crater. He'd faxed to the node closest to his mother's domi-a fax pavilion called Invalid Hotel for no reason understood by any living person-and he came through the fax portal with his cross-bow raised, swiveling and ready. The water pouring off the roof of the pavilion made looking out into the city feel like peering out through a curtain or waterfall.

It was irritating. The survivors in Paris Crater didn't guard their faxnodes. About a third of the survivor communities, with Ardis leading the way, had put a wall around their fax pavilions and posted a full-time guard, but the remaining residents of Paris Crater just refused to do so. No one knew if voynix faxed themselves from place to place-there seemed to be enough of them everywhere without them having to do that-but the humans would never know if places like Paris Crater refused to monitor their nodes.

Of course, that guarding had begun at Ardis not as an attempt to prevent voynix from faxing, but as a way to limit the number of refugees streaming in after the Fall. The first reaction when the servitors crashed and the power failed was to flee toward safety and food, so tens and tens of thousands had been faxing almost randomly in those early weeks and months, flicking to fifty locations around the planet within a dozen hours, depleting food supplies and then faxing away again. Few places had their own store of food then; no place was really safe. Ardis had been one of the first colonies of survivors to arm itself and the first to turn away fear-crazed refugees, unless they had some essential skill. But almost no one had any important skill after more than fourteen hundred years of what Savi had called "sickening eloi eloi uselessness." uselessness."

A month after the Fall and that early confusion, Harman had insisted at the Ardis Council meetings that they make up for their selfishness by faxing representatives to all the other communities, giving advice on how to raise crops, tips on how to improve security, demonstrations of how to slaughter their own meat animals, and-once Harman had discovered the reading sigl-function-seminars to show the scattered survivors how they could also pull crucial information from old books. Ardis had also bartered weapons and handed out the plans for making crossbows, bolts, bows, arrows, lances, arrowheads, speartips, knives, and other weapons. Luckily, most of the old-style humans had been using the turin cloths for entertainment for half a Twenty, so they were familiar with everything less complicated than a crossbow. Finally, Harman had sent Ardis residents faxing to all of the three hundred-plus nodes, asking every survivor's help in finding the legendary robotic factories and distributories. He would demonstrate one of the few guns he'd brought back from his second visit to the museum at the Golden Gate at Machu Picchu and explain that if they were to survive the voynix, human communities needed thousands of these weapons.

Staring out into the darkness through the rain and runoff, Daeman realized that it would have been difficult to guard all this city's fax-nodes; Paris Crater had been one of the largest cities on the planet just eight months earlier, with twenty-five thousand residents and a dozen working fax portals. Now, if his mother's friends were to be believed, there were fewer than three thousand men and women left here. The voynix roamed the streets and skittered and scrabbled across the old skywalks and residential towers at will. It was past time to get his mother out of this town. Only a lifetime-almost two Twenties-of habit obeying his mother's every wish and whim had caused Daeman to acquiesce to her insistence on staying here.

Still, it seemed relatively safe. There were more than a hundred survivors, mostly men, who had secured the tower complex near the west side of the crater where Marina, Daeman's mother, had her extensive domi apartments. They had water because of rainfall accumulators stretched from rooftop to rooftop, and it rained most of the time in Paris Crater. They had food from terrace gardens and from the livestock they'd driven in from the old voynix-tended fields and then penned in the grassy swards around the crater. Every midweek there was an open market in the nearby Champs Ulysses with all of the survivor camps in West Paris Crater meeting to barter food, clothing, and other survival essentials. They even had wine faxed in from the far-flung vineyard-estate communities. They had weapons-including crossbows purchased from Ardis Hall, a few flechette guns, and an energy-beam projector one of the men had brought up from an abandoned underground museum someone had found after the Fall. Amazingly, the energy-beam weapon worked.

But Daeman knew that Marina had really stayed in Paris Crater because of an old bastard here named Goman who had been her primary lover for almost a full Twenty. Daeman had always disliked Goman.

Paris Crater had always been known as the "City of Light"-and it had been in Daeman's experience growing up there, with floating glow globes on every street and boulevard, entire towers illuminated by electric lights, thousands of lanterns, and the lighted, thousand-foot-tall structure that symbolized the city towering over everything-but now the glow globes were dark and fallen, the electrical grid gone, most of the lanterns were dark or hidden behind shuttered windows, and the Enormous Whore had gone dark and inactive for the first time in two thousand years or more. Daeman glanced up at her as he ran, but her head and breasts-usually filled with bubbling photoluminescent red liquid-were invisible against or perhaps in in the dark storm clouds and the famous thighs and buttocks were just black-iron armatures now, drawing the lightning that crackled over the city. the dark storm clouds and the famous thighs and buttocks were just black-iron armatures now, drawing the lightning that crackled over the city.

Actually, it was the lightning that helped Daeman traverse the three long city blocks between the Invalid Hotel faxnode and Marina's domi tower. With the hood of his anorak up to give him at least an illusion of staying dry in the downpour, Daeman would wait at each intersection, crossbow raised, and then sprint across open areas when the lightning revealed the shadows in doorways and under arches to be free of voynix. He had tried proxnet and farnet when waiting in the pavilion, but both were down. This was good for him since the voynix were using both functions these days to seek out humans. Daeman didn't need to bring up the finder function-this was his home, after all, despite the weaselly Goman's usurpation of his place next to his mother.

There were abandoned altars in some of the lightning-illuminated empty courtyards. Daeman caught sight of crudely modeled papiermache statues of what had been meant to be robed goddesses, naked archers, and bearded patriarchs as he sprinted by these sad testaments to desperation. The altars were for the Olympian gods of the turin drama-Athena, Apollo, Zeus, and others-and that craze for propitiation had begun even before the Fall here in Paris Crater and in other node communities on the continent that Harman, Daeman, and the other readers at Ardis Hall now knew as Europe.

The papier-mache effigies had melted in the constant rain, so the once-again-abandoned gods on the windstrewn altars looked like humpbacked monstrosities from some other world. That's more appropriate than worshiping the turin gods, That's more appropriate than worshiping the turin gods, thought Daeman. He had been on Prospero's Isle in the e-ring and heard about the Quiet. Caliban himself-itself-had bragged to his three captives about the power of his god, the many-handed Setebos, before the monster killed Savi and dragged her away into the sewage-swamps there. thought Daeman. He had been on Prospero's Isle in the e-ring and heard about the Quiet. Caliban himself-itself-had bragged to his three captives about the power of his god, the many-handed Setebos, before the monster killed Savi and dragged her away into the sewage-swamps there.

Daeman was only half a block from his mother's tower when he heard a scrabbling. He faded back into the darkness of a rain-filled doorway and clicked off the safety on the crossbow. Daeman had one of the newer weapons that fired two sharp, barbed quarrels with each snap of the powerful steel band. He raised the weapon against his shoulder and waited.

Only the lightning allowed him to see the half-dozen voynix as they scrabbled by half a block away, heading west. They weren't walking, but racing along the sides of old stone buildings here like metallic cockroaches, finding grip with their barbed fingerblades and horned footpeds. The first time Daeman had seen voynix scramble along walls like that had been in Jerusalem some nine months ago.

He knew now that the things could see in the infrared, so darkness alone would not hide him, but the creatures were in a hurry-scrabbling in the opposite direction from Marina's tower-and none of them turned the IR-sensors on their chests in his direction in the three seconds it took them to scuttle out of sight.

Heart pounding, Daeman sprinted the last hundred yards to his mother's tower where it rose above the west curve of the crater. The hand-cranked elevator basket wasn't at street level, of course-Daeman could just make it out some twenty-five stories higher along the column of scaffolding, where the residential stacks began above the old shopping esplanade. There was a bell rope hanging at the bottom of the elevator scaffolding to alert the tower residents to a guest's presence, but a full minute of pulling on Daeman's part showed no lights coming on up there nor any answering tugs.

Still gasping from his run through the streets, Daeman squinted up into the rain and considered returning to Invalid Hotel. It would be a twenty-five-floor climb-much of it in the old dark stairwells-with absolutely no guarantee that the fifteen stories below the abandoned esplanade would be free of voynix.

Many of the former faxnode communities based in the ancient cities or high towers had to be abandoned after the Fall. Without electricity-old-style humans didn't even know where the current had been generated or how it was distributed-the lift shafts and elevators wouldn't work. No one was going to climb and descend two hundred and fifty feet-or much more for some tower communities such as Ulanbat, with its two-hundred-story Circles to Heaven-every time they needed to seek food or water. But, amazingly, some survivors still lived in Ulanbat, even though the tower rose in a desert where no food could be grown and no edible animals wandered as game. The secret there was the tower-core faxnodes every six floors. As long as other communities continued to barter food for the lovely garments that Ulanbat had always been famous for-and which they had in surplus after one-third of their population was killed by voynix before they learned how to seal off the upper floors-the Circles to Heaven would continue to exist.

There were no faxnodes in Marina's tower, but the survivors up there had shown amazing ingenuity in adapting a small exterior servitor elevator to occasional human use, rigging the cables to a system of gears and cranks so that as many as three people could be lifted up from the street in a sort of basket. The elevator only went to the esplanade level, but that made the last ten stories more climbable. This wouldn't work for frequent trips-and the ride itself was hair-raising, with startling jerks and occasional dips-but the hundred or so residents of his mother's tower had more or less seceded from the surface world, relying on their high terrace gardens and water accumulators, sending their representatives down to market twice a week and having little other intercourse with the world.

Why don't they respond? He pulled on the bell rope another two minutes, waited another three. He pulled on the bell rope another two minutes, waited another three.

There was a scrabbling echo from two blocks south, toward the wide boulevard there.

Make up your mind. Stay or go, but decide. Daeman stepped farther out into the street and looked up again. Lightning illuminated the spidery black buckylace supports and gleaming bamboo-three structures on the towers above the old esplanade. Several windows up there were illuminated by lanterns. From this vantage point, he could see the signal fires that Goman kept burning on his mother's city-side terrace, in the shelter of the bamboo-three roof. Daeman stepped farther out into the street and looked up again. Lightning illuminated the spidery black buckylace supports and gleaming bamboo-three structures on the towers above the old esplanade. Several windows up there were illuminated by lanterns. From this vantage point, he could see the signal fires that Goman kept burning on his mother's city-side terrace, in the shelter of the bamboo-three roof.

Scrabbling noises came from alleys to the north.

"To hell with it," said Daeman. It was time to get his mother out of here. If Goman and all his pals tried to stop him from taking her to Ardis tonight, he was prepared to throw all of them over the terrace railing into the Crater if he had to. Daeman set the safeties on the crossbow so he wouldn't put two pieces of barbed iron into his foot by mistake, went into the building, and began climbing the dark stairway.

He knew by the time he reached the esplanade level that something was terribly wrong. The other times he'd come here in recent months-always arriving in daylight-there were guards here with their primitive pikes and more sophisticated Ardis bows. None tonight.

Do they drop their esplanade guard at night? No, that made no sense-the voynix were most active at night. Besides, Daeman had been here visiting his mother on several occasions-the last time more than a month ago-when he'd heard the guards changing through the night. He'd even stood guard once on the two a.m. to six a.m. shift, before faxing back to Ardis blurry-eyed and tired. No, that made no sense-the voynix were most active at night. Besides, Daeman had been here visiting his mother on several occasions-the last time more than a month ago-when he'd heard the guards changing through the night. He'd even stood guard once on the two a.m. to six a.m. shift, before faxing back to Ardis blurry-eyed and tired.

At least the stairway here above the esplanade was open on the sides; the lightning showed him the next rise or landing before he sprinted up the stairs or crossed a dark space. He kept the crossbow raised and his finger just outside the trigger guard.

Even before he stepped out onto the first residential level where his mother lived, he knew what he'd find.

The signal flames in the metal barrel on the city-side terrace were burning low. There was blood on the bamboo-three of the deck, blood on the walls, and blood on the underside of the eaves. The door was open to the first domi he came to, not his mother's.

Blood everywhere inside. Daeman found it hard to believe that there had been this much blood in all the bodies of all the hundred-some members of the community combined. There were countless signs of panic-doors hastily barricaded, then the doors and barricades splintered, bloody footprints on terraces and stairways, shreds of sleeping clothes thrown here and there-but no real signs of resistance. No bloodied arrows or lances stuck in wooden beams after being thrown, their targets missed. There were no signs that weapons had been reached or raised.

There were no bodies.

He searched three other domis before working up the nerve to enter his mother's. In each domi he found blood spattered, furniture shattered, cushions torn, tapestries ripped down, tables overturned, furniture stuffing strewn everywhere-blood on white feathers and blood on pale foam-but no bodies.

His mother's door was locked. The old thumb locks had failed with the Fall, but Goman had replaced the automatic lock with a simple bolt and chain that Daeman had thought was too flimsy. It proved to be now. After several soft knocks with no answer. Daeman kicked hard three times and the door splintered and came out of its groove. He squeezed into the darkness, crossbow first.

The entryway smelled of blood. There was a light in the back rooms facing the crater, but almost none here in the foyer, hallway, or public anteroom. Daeman moved as silently as he could, his stomach convulsing at the stench of blood and slight ripples under his feet as he moved through unseen pools. He could see just well enough here to make sure there was nothing or no one waiting, and that there were no bodies underfoot.

"Mother!" His own cry alarmed him. Again. "Mother! Goman? Anyone?"

Wind stirred the chimes on the terrace beyond the living area, and although the crater and the city beyond the crater were mostly dark, lightning flashes illuminated the main sitting area. The blue and green silk tapestries he'd never loved but had grown so used to on the south wall had gained red-brown streaks and spatters. The nesting chair he'd always claimed when he was home-a body-molded womb of corrugated paper-had been shredded. There were no bodies. Daeman could only wonder if he was ready to see what he had to see here.

Swirls, trails, and smears of blood came in from the terrace and led from the common sitting room into the dining room where Marina loved to entertain at the long table. Daeman waited for the next flash of lightning-the storm had moved east and there were more seconds between each flash and the following thunder-and then he lifted the crossbow back to his shoulder and moved into the large dining room.

Three successive bolts of lightning showed him the room and its contents. There were no bodies as such. But on his mother's twenty-foot-long mahogany table, a pyramid of skulls rose almost to the ceiling seven feet above Daeman's head. Scores of empty eye sockets stared at him. The white of bone was like a retinal after-image between each lightning flash.

Daeman lowered the heavy crossbow, clicked on the safety, and came closer to the pyramid. There was blood everywhere in the room except atop the table, which was pristine. In front of the pyramid of grinning, gaping skulls was an old turin cloth, spread wide with its embroidered circuitry centered in line with the topmost skull.

Daeman stepped up onto the chair he'd always sat in when at his mother's table, and then stepped on the table itself, bringing his face up to the level of that highest skull of these hundred skulls. In the white flashes from the receding storm, he could see that all of the other skulls were picked clean, pure white, holding no fleshly remains of their victims. This top skull was not so clean. Several strands of curly red hair had been left-oh so deliberately left-like a topknot and more at the back of the skull.

Daeman had reddish hair. His mother had red hair.

He jumped down from the table, threw open the window wall, and staggered out onto the terrace, retching over the side into the single, red eye of the crater magma fifty miles directly below. He vomited again, and then again, and then several more times, even though he had nothing left in him to throw up. Finally he turned, dropped the heavy crossbow onto the floor of the terrace, rinsed his face and mouth with water from the copper basin his mother left hanging there from ornamental chains as a birdbath, and then he collapsed with his back to the bamboo-three railing, staring in through the open sliding window-door of the dining room.

The lightning was growing dimmer and less frequent, but as Daeman's eyes adjusted, the red glow from the crater illuminated the curved backs of countless skulls. He could see the red hair.

Nine months ago, Daeman would have wept like the thirty-seven-year-old child he was. Now, though his stomach churned and some black emotion folded itself into a fist in his chest, he tried to think coolly.

He had no question about who or what had done this thing. Voynix did not feed, nor did they carry off their victims' bodies. This was not random voynix violence. This was a message to Daeman, and only one creature in all of dark creation could send such a message. Everyone in this domi tower had died and been filleted like fish, skulls stacked like white coconuts, just so the message could be delivered. And from the stench-freshness of the blood, it had occurred only hours earlier, perhaps even more recently.

Leaving his crossbow lying where it fell for now, Daeman got to his hands and knees, and then to his feet-only because he did not want to further smear his hands in the gore on the terrace floor-and he walked into the dining room again, circling the long table, finally climbing to take down his mother's skull. His hands were shaking. He did not feel like weeping.

Humans had only just recently learned how to bury their fellow humans. Seven had died at Ardis in the past eight months, six from voynix, one from some mysterious illness that had carried the young woman away in one feverish night. Daeman hadn't known it was possible for old-style humans to contract illness or disease.

Should I take her back with me? Have some burial service out by the wall where Noman and Harman had directed us to create the cemetery for our dead?

No. Marina had always loved her domis here in Paris Crater better than anyplace else in the faxable world.

But I can't leave her here with these other skulls, thought Daeman, feeling wave after wave of indescribable emotion surge through him. thought Daeman, feeling wave after wave of indescribable emotion surge through him. One of these other skulls is that bastard Goman. One of these other skulls is that bastard Goman.

He carried the skull back out onto the terrace. The rain had grown much more fierce, the wind had dropped off, and Daeman stood a long minute at the railing, letting the raindrops wet his face and further clean the skull. Then he dropped the skull over the edge of the railing and watched it fall toward the red eye below until the tiny white speck was gone.

He lifted the crossbow and started to leave-back through the dining room, the common area, the inner hall-then he paused.

It hadn't been a sound. The pounding of the rain was so loud that he couldn't have heard an allosaurus if it was ten feet behind him. He'd forgotten something. What What?

Daeman went back into the dining room, trying to avoid the accusatory stares of the dozens of skulls-What could I have done? he asked silently. he asked silently. Died with us, Died with us, they silently responded-and swept up the turin cloth. they silently responded-and swept up the turin cloth.

He-it-had left the cloth here for some purpose. It and the table were the only things in the domi complex not smeared and spattered with human blood. Daeman stuffed the cloth into the side pocket of his anorak and went out of that place.

It was dark in the stairway down to the esplanade and even darker in the enclosed stairway for fifteen stories beneath the esplanade. Daeman did not even raise his crossbow to the ready. If it-he-was waiting for him here, so be it. It would be a contest of teeth and fingernails and rages.

Nothing waited there.

Daeman was halfway back to the Invalid Hotel fax pavilion, walking stolidly down the center of the boulevard in the pounding rain, when there came a crackling and crashing behind him.

He turned, went to one knee, and raised the heavy weapon to his shoulder. This was not its its sound. sound. It It was silent on its horn-padded and yellow-taloned webbed feet. was silent on its horn-padded and yellow-taloned webbed feet.

Daeman raised his face and stared, jaw going slack. A spinning had appeared in the direction of the crater, somewhere between him and his mother's domi tower. The thing was some hundreds of meters across and spinning rapidly. A form of lightning crackled around it like a crown of electrical thorns and rays of random light stabbed out from the sphere. The wet air was filled with rumbles that made the pavements shake. Shifting fractal designs filled the sphere until the sphere became a circle and the circle sank, ripping a building apart as it settled to the earth and then partially beneath the earth.

Sunlight flooded out of the circle now, but it was not any sunlight as ever seen from Earth. The circle stopped sinking with only one-fourth of it wedged into the ground like some giant portal. It was only two blocks away, filling the sky to the east. Air rushed toward it from behind Daeman at near-hurricane speeds, almost knocking him down in its loud, wailing rush.

There was a daylit world visible through that still vibrating three-quarters circle-a world of a tepidly lapping blue sea, red soil, rocks, and a mountain-no, a volcano, rising to impossible heights in front of an off-blue sky. Something very large and pink and gray and moist emerged from that tepid sea and appeared to scuttle toward the open hole on centipede-fast feet that looked like giant hands to Daeman's eyes. Then the air in front of that view was filled with debris and dust as the winds raged, mixed, were absorbed, and died away.

Daeman stood there another minute, peering through the obscuring dust, holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the diffused but still blinding sunlight streaming from the hole. The buildings of Paris Crater west of the hole-and the iron-armature thighs and emptied belly of the Enormous Whore-glinted in the cold, alien sunlight and then disappeared in the dust cloud broiling out of the hole. Other parts of the city remained invisible and wet, wrapped in night.

There came voynix scrabblings-urgent, many-clawed-from streets to the north and south.

Two voynix exploded out of a dark doorway on Daeman's boulevard and rushed him on all fours, killing blades clattering.

He tracked them with his crossbow sight, led them, fired the first bolt into the leathery hood of the second voynix-it fell-and then fired his second bolt into the chest of the leading one. It fell but kept pulling itself closer.

Daeman carefully pulled two barbed, iron bolts from the pouch slung over his shoulder, reloaded, recocked, and shot both bolts into the thing's nerve-center hump at a distance of ten feet. It quit crawling.

More scrabblings to the west and south. The reddish daylight from the hole was revealing everything on the street here. Daeman's concealment of darkness was gone. Something bellowed from that rising dust cloud-making a sound like nothing Daeman had ever heard-deeper, more malignant, the incomprehensible growls sounding like some terrible language being bellowed in reverse.

Not hurrying, Daeman reloaded again, looked one last time over his shoulder at the red mountain visible through the hole in Paris Crater's sky and cityscape, and then he jogged west-not in panic-toward Invalid Hotel.

25.