“I thought he was! I saw him jump!” said Nik defensively. He turned to Scotty and yelled at him, “How can you still be alive? How?”

  Mom was crouched next to Scotty, trying to get him not to move, but Scotty fought his way up to a half-sitting position, and he had this look of grim satisfaction on his face. “It’s like ah told Quincy, before ye murdered him, ye bloodthirsty Saracen. Ah prepare for everything. And if ah have to be crawlin’ around a computer core shaft with a sheer drop, ah make sure to have antigrav boots on in case ah make a misstep. They make ’em smaller and more elegant in this century than in muh own, and they get th’ job done.”

  “Very foresighted. Very clever,” Olivan said. Then he saw that Nik was staring at him. “What’s wron—”

  Then he looked down at where Nik was looking. He looked down at his belt buckle. The one that had the device in it that was going to be able to shut down the whole “death-trap” thing.

  It was busted. When Scotty had knocked him to the floor, it had shattered.

  “Oh, no,” Olivan said. He didn’t look quite as confident as he had a moment before.

  “This could be a problem,” Mother said.

  Scotty was looking around in confusion. “What’s wrong? What happen—?”

  That was when we started hearing the rumbling. It was very distant, but it sounded as if it was getting closer and closer with every passing second. People in the tavern were all babbling, looking around, trying to figure out what was going on.

  It was Scotty, naturally, who figured it out first. “The wave generator!” he said. “At the beach front! It’s out of control! What caused th—?” But then he answered his own question as he looked at Olivan. “You! You rigged the computer somehow! That’s why your son was rootin’ around there!”

  “This is a fine time to blame me, engineer,” snarled Olivan. “Everything would have been fine if you hadn’t—”

  And then he spun around. How he knew the attack was coming, I’ve no idea, but he just knew, that’s all. Si Cwan was coming right at him with the sword he’d taken off the wall. Olivan moved so quickly that even now, no matter how many times I run the scene back in my mind, I still can’t actually see him, you know? He was under the sword so fast, just so fast, and then he was behind Si Cwan, his arms around and through, and his hands were on the back of Si Cwan’s neck. I swear to God, just within that period of no more than two seconds, he had outmaneuvered Cwan and was about to break his neck.

  It was Kalinda who saved him. She let out a screech and jumped at him, grabbing him by the back of the head. It didn’t take Olivan more than a second to deal with her, lashing out with a leg and sweeping her feet out from under her. But it was the momentary distraction that Si Cwan needed. Somehow, I don’t know how, he slipped between Olivan’s arms, and then he whipped the sword around and sliced Olivan on the leg. Olivan let out a yell of fury and clutched at it, blood seeping between his fingers. But his shout was drowned out by the yells of alarm from the other people in the tavern as the ground began to rumble even more. And we could hear the onrush of water, like someone had left a faucet running. A really, really, really big faucet. People were trampling over each other to get out.

  But for all that they heard anyone else, Si Cwan and Olivan could have been alone in a desert. They faced each other—Si Cwan poised with the sword in a striking position, Olivan staring at him balefully. “You’ve gotten faster in your old age, Cwan.”

  “And you’ve just gotten older,” Cwan shot back. “You had no intention of shutting down the ‘self-destruct’ program, even if you’d made it to your ship.”

  “As soon as I knew you were here? Of course not. I’d flood a planet to get rid of you, Cwan.”

  Nice guy.

  Scotty was looking off in the direction from which the rumbling was coming. I could practically see him running calculations in his head. It was clear that he had absolutely no intention of wasting time asking for Olivan’s help, even though Olivan was responsible for it in the first place. If nothing else, he likely didn’t trust him to be cooperative, and besides—in retrospect, it was probably a matter of pride. He was going to be damned if he admitted that there was something one person had done to a computer that he couldn’t undo. “We’ve got t’shut down th’wave machine b’fore ev’ry man, woman and child in the place drowns! I can do it down in th’computer core. It’s a two-man job—”

  “I’ll help,” my mother said immediately.

  It’s taking me so long to tell you this, I can’t really impart the sense of urgency that was going on. People weren’t just talking, like I am to you now. They were shouting, or speaking over each other. Everything was heightened, everything was happening so fast . . .

  And that was when an arm grabbed me from behind. Not coincidentally, there was a person attached to it . . . that person being Nik.

  “Don’t move,” he said harshly in my ear. “I don’t want to have to kill you.” Which suited me just fine, since I didn’t want to have to die.

  My mother yelled out my name even as Nik shouted, “Step back from my father, Cwan! Step back or your little friend here dies! You, too, Scotsman! Everyone! Back, or she dies! I mean it!”

  I tried to get a word out, tried to shout that they shouldn’t worry about me. But he had one hand on my throat, choking off anything I might try to say. I struggled against him, but I couldn’t do anything. I felt in him the strength that enabled him to kill people with his bare hands. I had taken such comfort from the power in his arms, and the rest of his body, days earlier, when he and I had been . . .

  Uhm . . .

  Well . . . let’s just say that, when he’d first held me, it had been under somewhat different circumstances. And that which I had taken such comfort in earlier was now terrifying me. Trust turned inside out. Not a pleasant feeling.

  I tend to think any other mother would have been reduced to begging, pleading, howling for her daughter’s life to be spared. Not mine, no. She just studied the situation as coolly as you please. Then, without batting an eye, she turned to Scotty and said, “Let’s go.”

  Scotty was dumbfounded, even though water was already starting to splash around his feet. “Wh-wha’? But . . . but they have—”

  “They’re going to have a soggy corpse—and lots of company to go with it—unless we do something quickly, Scotsman,” she said brusquely. “They’re not going to harm Robin because they want her for a hostage, a shield against Si Cwan and Kalinda. I give it about nine minutes, eighteen seconds before this place is underwater unless we do something about it, and wringing our hands over a hostage situation isn’t what I consider ‘something’ . . . no offense, sweetheart.”

  I grunted, since air was still not forthcoming to my lungs, and flashed her what amounted to a “high sign.” What else could I do? The thing was, she was right. My mother was someone who knew exactly what had to be done, and when it had to be done, and she wasn’t about to let her personal concern over her daughter get in the way of her ability to prioritize.

  “Let’s go. Hurry. Hurry!” she said with greater urgency to Scotty, snapping him from the trance that had momentarily seized him. With a final backward glance at me, my mother and Scotty splashed out the door.

  Olivan, showing only the slightest limp, circled around and came up next to us. Nik shook me slightly, like a warning that I shouldn’t try to break free or otherwise provide him any sort of inconvenience. But, very softly, he whispered into my ear, “Don’t fight me and you’ll get out of this alive.”

  I didn’t have a particular interest in arguing the point.

  Si Cwan wasn’t taking his eyes off Olivan, as if expecting him to make some sort of move. He kept the sword at the ready and glanced, with obvious satisfaction, at the spreading red stain on Olivan’s leg from where he’d slashed him. “Why?” he demanded. “Why did you feel the need to kill Jereme?”

  “It wasn’t me, actually. It was him,” Olivan said, nodding a head toward his son and looking rather proud as he did so. “Nik.”

  “But he did so at your instruction.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” Si Cwan was totally focused on Olivan. I wasn’t even sure if he knew I was still there.

  “What do you want, Si Cwan? A long, elaborate explanation of why I do what I do? I did it because it was time to do it. And Nik did it because he had no choice in the matter. That’s all the explanation I have any intention of giving you . . . and, truthfully, all you really deserve. And now,” and he bowed deeply, “it is time for us to leave. If you want the young woman to die, by all means, follow us.”

  My last sight of Si Cwan was him and Kalinda, rooted to the spot, water splashing up around their ankles, and the distant rumble indicating that more was on the way.

  RHEELA

  SHE HAD TOLD HERSELF she wasn’t going to go.

  She had promised herself, sworn it to herself. As the sun had come up, had climbed higher into the sky, over and over she kept saying, “I won’t do it. I won’t.” And she had kept right on saying it, up until the point where Moke had told her in no uncertain terms that he was going. “Mac needs us,” he said, with clear conviction.

  She tried to figure out some way to tell the child, to make clear to him the magnitude of the disaster that was likely going to occur, and finally there was no other way for her to say it. “Moke . . . he may very well die,” she told him.

  “He’s our friend. We’re his friends. I love him, Ma.”

  “So do I. But . . .”

  “No.” He shook his head vigorously. “No, no ‘but.’ If you love somebody, there’s no ‘but.’ ”

  She tried to come up with some sort of response to that, but nothing readily presented itself . . . perhaps because she knew it to be true. And so she and Moke hastened to the town. All the way in, she prayed that she would not wind up seeing what she was positive she was going to see: the death of a man who had come to mean a lot to her.

  As the luukab’s back swayed gently, Rheela instinctively held Moke closer . . . so much so that he let out a small squeal of complaint. She let up on him then, but was no less concerned about the gravity of the situation.

  It seemed to her that the town was exceptionally quiet. Normally, when she came into the city, there were people bustling about, the general noise of conversation, laughter from the tavern, arguments, raised voices, crying children—the usual range and assortment of interactions that were normal for large groups of individuals cohabiting in a relatively small area. But there was none of that this time. Instead there was a deathly silence hanging over the entire area, like a funeral shroud.

  The luukab, under Rheela’s guidance, lumbered down the main street, and she guided him toward the Majister’s office. It was disconcerting to her that the only sound to be heard was the steady thwump thwump of the luukab’s padded feet. She thought she saw, out of the corner of her eye, people glancing out at her from windows or around doors, but every time she looked in one direction or the other, anyone observing her would vanish.

  She drew the luukab up just outside the Majister’s office and slid off in one direction, Moke dismounting on the other. If the silence that surrounded them registered on the boy, he gave no indication of it. Instead, he seemed much more interested in the sky. He was sniffing it, his nostrils flaring slightly, and he said, “Ma . . . I think there might be a storm.”

  She looked upward as well, but saw nothing. That was odd; usually she was attuned to such things. Then again, she thought grimly, it was likely that Moke was reacting not to the actual weather but to the mood of the town around him. He didn’t understand why, of course. He was still a child, after all. There was so much he didn’t understand. . . .

  If only Calhoun could have remained around to explain it to him.

  She scolded herself immediately. Was she already going to be thinking of Calhoun as one gone? Was she to write him off that coldly and dismissively? Certainly he had some sort of chance . . .

  . . . didn’t he?

  She took a deep breath, the hot air feeling particularly scalding in her lungs, and then turned to Moke. He was still staring at the sky. “Moke,” she said crisply, and Moke turned to her, looking momentarily puzzled, as if he’d forgotten where he was or whom he was with. Then he shook it off and smiled wanly. She reached out, took his hand, and together they walked into the Majister’s office.

  Calhoun was sitting in his chair, his feet up on the desk, looking utterly relaxed. He was twirling some sort of small silver cylinder in his hand, and he looked up at them as they walked in. This did not seem, to her, to be a man who was especially concerned about the prospect of his imminent demise.

  “Hello,” he said pleasantly. Those eyes, those incredible eyes held her gaze. She tried to imagine them closed in death, or staring lifelessly at the skies, and she couldn’t even begin to do so. He just seemed too full of vitality to fall prey to something as mundane as being killed. “Come by to chat for a bit?”

  “Hey, Mac!” said Moke with abundant cheer. Calhoun reached out a hand and Moke gripped it firmly, grinning lopsidedly. The small, silver object that Calhoun had been fidgeting with immediately caught his attention. “What’s that thing?” he asked.

  “This? Oh . . . just a good luck charm.”

  “Ahhh. Okay. I’m glad you got something like that.”

  “You are?”

  “Yeah, ’cause if you have something to help you with luck, that’s good, ’cause Ma’s worried about you.”

  “Is she?” Calhoun looked flattered. “Why should she be worried?”

  “She thinks you’re gonna die.”

  “Moke!” Her face colored at the child’s unabashed candor.

  “Does she now?” Calhoun didn’t seem the least bit bothered by the pronouncement. “Well . . . I suspect she’s right.” But then he added quickly, “However, there’s nothing to say that it’s going to be today.”

  She felt as if her heart was being pulled from her chest, and the words came out all in a rush. “Calhoun, there must be some other way,” she said, silently scolding herself for the desperation in her voice, but unable to help herself. “There must be something other than fighting.”

  He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Such as . . . ?”

  “I don’t know!” she said in exasperation. “Something! Anything! You’re a smart man!”

  “And if I were so smart, I wouldn’t have allowed myself to get pulled into this situation?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly right.”

  Suddenly a rough voice sounded from outside. “Calhoun!” it bellowed. “Calhoun! Coward! Fool! I’m calling you! Unless you want me to come into your hidey-hole, I suggest you come out and face me.”

  He looked to Rheela with an air of resignation and spread his hands, palms up, in a manner that seemed to say, What else can I do?

  Unable to believe that she was doing it even as she did it, Rheela started pushing on Calhoun’s shoulder as he rose from behind the desk. “Get going. Out the back.”

  He laughed. It wasn’t in a derisive way. He seemed amused, even a bit charmed by the urgency in her tone. “Out the back?”

  “Yes. Hurry. I’ll stall him.”

  “Unless you’re planning to run into the middle of the street and do a striptease, I somehow doubt that you’re going to capture his attention for very long.”

  “Do a what?” she asked in confusion.

  He seemed about to explain, but then thought better of it. “Trust me,” he said gently, putting his hands on her shoulders and moving her to one side. “This is just something that I’m going to have to take care of.”

  “And if you die?”

  “Then I die.”

  “But I couldn’t stand it if you did! I—!”

  She felt ashamed, humiliated that there, in front of her son, the emotions that she’d kept in check for so long were hemorrhaging from her. And yet, for all the shame and mortification she felt over leaving herself so exposed, it was also the best that she had felt in years.

  Calhoun put a finger gently to her lips and said softly, “Later. After.”

  “There may not be an after!”

  “There always is,” Calhoun told her. “It’s just not always where we think it’s going to be.”

  “Calhoun!” bellowed the challenging voice once more. Rheela’s heart was thudding wildly. It was clear from the sound of that—that whatever-it-was—that it was not going to be patient for much longer. Not that it had displayed much in the way of patience thus far.

  “That is not the sound of a happy person,” Calhoun understated. “Let’s go out and see if I can rearrange that frown into a smile.”

  He sounded almost chipper about it. So much at ease that the entire thing had taken on an air of unreality. She simply couldn’t believe that he was smilingly about to go out there and die. “Mac—” she said with growing urgency, and she knew—beyond question, right then—that if there was any way she could just knock him out, sling him over her shoulder, and make a break for it, she would do it.

  With quiet confidence, he said, “Not now. Later. Later would be better.”

  Without another word, he squared his shoulders and walked to the door and out.

  Moke immediately went to the door to watch. “Moke, come away from there!” she ordered, but he stayed right where he was. After a moment, rather than make an issue of it, she joined him, watching fearfully.

  She couldn’t believe the creature that was waiting for him. He looked like a monster—tall and green, powerfully built, with arms the size of thick cacti. The expression on his face was a fearsome thing, one that she was sure she would take with her to her grave. He was watching Calhoun like a predator eyeing its prey. The creature—Krut was its name, she believed he had said—simply stood there, its hands hovering in a leisurely manner near the butts of the twin weapons it had strapped to either hip.

  Calhoun was walking with measured stride, but he wasn’t approaching the creature directly. Instead, he seemed to be drifting to one side, moving directly across the creature’s path. Krut was standing there, watching him with keen interest. Mockingly, he started to move in the same manner as Calhoun, with that same stride that seemed so casual in Calhoun and so contemptuous in Krut. In fact, he exaggerated Calhoun’s movements, swaying back and forth, thrusting out one hip and then the other. If any of the mocking aspects of his attitude were bothering Calhoun, one couldn’t discern it from the Majister’s calm demeanor.