The dwarf picked up the woman’s arm, turning it this way and that, as if inspecting it for damage. Eventually he locked it back on her shoulder. At his direction she flexed it. The dwarf turned his attention to the man’s arm, shaking his helmeted head over the arm’s condition. Nomun could see split flesh and ruptured conduit.
The hardcar moved on. Nomun glanced at his mother. She had noticed nothing, nor had Marlain.
Just before they reached the security lock that led out of Howlytown, the hardcar passed through a crowd of grim-faced women dressed in black. Nomun stared at them with such intensity that Marlain glanced out.
“Oh,” Marlain said. “The Barrens.”
“What’s wrong with them, Mother?” Nomun asked, for even to his young eyes it was obvious that something was dreadfully wrong.
His mother smoothed his hair and opaqued the window. “They have no children,” she said. “They live outside the Pale, so they must carry the Korr virus. Else they would breed us all to death. They are allowed no children, either of the egg or of the flesh. Do you understand? They are sterile; and also their cells are useless to the cloners.”
“The enforcers should drive them away,” Marlain said. “Like vultures, they seem to me. Did you hear what happened in Darkway Howlytown? Just last week it was. A man and his daughter were waiting at the security lock, as we are. A fire started in the rotor pods, and they were forced out of their car. The Barrens swarmed over them, with their scrapers and tissue vials. By the time the enforcers came out, the poor little girl’s hands were nothing but bones and tatters.”
“Marlain!” said Nomun’s mother, pulling him close.
“Sorry; I’m sorry. But it’s horrid, somehow, to think that in a few years Howlytown will be infested with a thousand copies of that innocent one.” Marlain shook her head, her face a mask of disapproval.
His mother held him tightly. “Don’t worry, Nomun. That could never happen to you.”
THE JUNGLE WAS quiescent, lit only by an occasional blue flicker. Jade Nomun was sprawled across Nomun’s legs, still clutching the piece of crystal with which he had meant to brain Nomun. Nomun pushed him away and the elegantly dressed body rolled bonelessly to its back.
He recalled the fugue-memory. How comforting it must be, to have a head full of such things, instead of this aching emptiness. But now he had at least one, even if it was not his own. Though perhaps it was; the mother had called her child Nomun. He considered the possibility that the memwort belonged to him, or to one of the others who claimed the name. He laughed. Absurd. Why would the owner expose himself willingly to the dangers of the memwort, and to the more deadly hatreds of his clones?
He looked up and realized he could no longer see the Blood Moon. What had Blue Nomun said? The nights are short on Coal. Nomun struggled to his feet. How much time was left? He thought of the killmech, and a shudder ran up his back.
Jade Nomun stirred and groaned. Nomun felt disappointment. He cast about for Jade Nomun’s weapon, picked it up, looked down at the dark features. He raised the shard high.
“No, don’t,” Young Nomun said. He stood beside the next toroid, leaning against it as if exhausted.
“He tried to kill me,” Nomun said, but without passion. He let the crystal drop. “Why do you care? He would kill you without a thought; he would kill us all.”
“Yes. But he is a part of me. Or I of him.” Young Nomun laughed, shakily. “Will you help me carry him?”
“Insane. There might not be enough time for an encumbered man to reach the beach, if the cyborg can be believed. Leave him; perhaps he will revive and save himself–though I hope not” Nomun turned away, began to trot through the dark crystal. As he ran, Young Nomun’s face filled his mind’s eye. So young. Abruptly, he felt ancient.
The going was easier along the dorsal ridge, and soon the ground sloped downward. Nomun glanced up; was the sky growing light? He ran faster, sometimes brushing against a crystal in the semidark. Nothing terrible happened, and he assumed that the synaptic storm had temporarily neutralized the organism.
NOMUN WAS THE first to arrive. A narrow crescent of glit-tering sand had collected against the ridge of black crystal that snaked between the terminal node and the next node–on this beach an inflatable orange shelter had been erected.
He stopped, breathing deeply. His heart thumped, but slowly.
Inside the shelter he found ten cots, and a neat stack of water canisters and self-heating food packs. He held back for a moment, wary of poison; then he uncapped a canister and drank. If their captor had wanted them to die outright, the mech could have killed them all.