MARK J. McGARRY

THE MERCY GATE

The following story grew out of two separate lines he jotted down: "What's
inside All Baba's cave?" and "What's the worst thing that happened to you?" You
might not recognize either line' s role in the genesis of this tale, but we
think you'll find the results to be powerful and poignant.

Anyone can stop a man's life, but no one his death; a thousand doors open on to
it. -- Seneca

1

They came to the world that had died in a single night, the kurtikutt pentad,
the Proteus, and the human pair, to the city that had lain undisturbed for a
dozen centuries.

A handful of days was all the kurtikutt tomb robbers would allow Bergstrom for
his work. At the end of that time the last of his remotes coursed lonely through
pale yellow skies, a cold methane wind whistling across its wings. Through the
robot's faceted eyes, he looked down on a canvas painted in X-rays and infrared,
sonar and radar, gravimetric gradients and the visible spectrum, to render a
cityscape of graceful towers, vast amphitheaters, and parklands run riot. This
was a preindustrial world, less promising than most Bergstrom had visited in the
past eight years; still, he could have spent a lifetime in the city the Hand of
God had touched.

"Time to go home now, Evan."

The voice was small and distant, a bit of noise in the data stream, but it drew
him down. He tipped one graphite wing and spiraled in, toward the plaza at the
city's heart, and the black pearl set there -- the place where lines of
electromagnetic force were drawn tight and the gravitational well became
infinitely deep, a gate to other worlds.

He swept along streets filled with evidence of the final hours' torment, past
smashed merchants' stalls; rune-etched ruby steles, toppled and broken; draft
animals' skeletons yoked to overturned carts; crude barricades; a pyramidal
gallows, its victim's mummified remains curled beneath the open trap. Across a
hundred worlds, the progression had been the same: the sudden onslaught,
virulent panic, scattered episodes of compassion or heroism, the swift descent
into chaos, the unending silence.

"Evan?" Cara's voice again, this time a bit more insistent. Bergstrom triggered
the remote's rudimentary intelligence, instructing it to complete the descent,
and slid regretfully from the interface. The virtual reality folded in on
itself, bright colors smearing to gray, the world spinning about him, but strong
hands bore him up before he could fall.

"Steady now, comrade," the kurtikutts' Second Born rumbled from behind him.

"All right, lover?" Cara Austen said, her voice made hollow by her helmet and
his. "You were deep into it." Her mitt brushed the thick hide of his sleeve.
Like his, her environmental suit was much patched, a centuries-old salvage job.
Through her helmet's scarred visor, Bergstrom saw the fine-boned face and long
buttery hair, those electric blue eyes, and he smiled a bit.

"All right now," he said hoarsely. And, over his shoulder: "Thanks."

The kurtikutt let him go, his vibrissae twitching with some inscrutable
sentiment. "Sure thing comrade," he said, righting Bergstrom's camp chair. The
brute was roughly anthropoid, two meters of dense bone and muscle wrapped in a
thick hide. His glittery metallic robes stirred in the methane breeze; the
small, enameled shield strapped to the small of his back indicated birth rank in
the Ruhk'thmar Clutch. The Second Born needed no environmental suit, only a
transparent mask tailored for its broad muzzle and a flask of oxygen-argon mix
hanging from a knitted sash. Like the Vandals and Visigoths, the kurtikutts were
rugged.

"Chief says we're almost ready to go," Cara said. "He wants to pull out in
fifteen minutes." Bergstrom nodded, and began peeling the VR system's induction
patches from his wrist seals and helmet.

The wind picked up, whistling through the broken doors and empty-eyed windows of
the towers fronting the plaza. It set dust devils to capering among the ruby
obelisks placed at intervals along the perimeter of the square and brushed clean
the grooves cut into its alabaster paving stones. The pattern grew more complex
toward the center of the square, where bands of untarnished metal bound the
Portal to the face of the dead world. Tall as a three-story building,
sharp-edged and seemingly solid, the black hemisphere hummed faintly.

Though the plaza was largely unscarred, soot blackened the stone walls of a low,
circular building not far from the stargate. Its door was smashed and burned,
the pavement outside buckled from the fire's heat. The Portals themselves,
existing largely outside conventional space, were virtually indestructible, but
the mechanisms that aligned one gate with another were more delicate. Neither
they nor their operators had long survived on worlds the Hand had touched.

One of the kurtikutts' sledges sat nearby, runners bowed under the weight of a
battered antimatter generator. The youngest kurtikutt perched atop the vintage
power plant, thick fingers stroking the control surfaces of his hand-built
tuning rig. Cables sprouted from the device, snaking across the pavement and
passing seamlessly into the Portal. Reconstructing the Outstepper technology was
an arcane craft, synchronizing two gates an art. Once the Fifth Born was done, a
single step would return them to Chimerine.

"Evan?" Concern edged her voice. "How about it, love?"

Bergstrom took a deep breath, the air thick in his throat. It was as if he could
taste some lingering poison through all the layers of his environmental suit,
could feel its chill, its holocaust taint. Foolish, perhaps...but then, these
places always got to him.

"My last bird is on its way in," he said, stooping to collect his battered
recording gear. Twenty kilos of telefactoring systems, josephson arrays, and
bubble storage -- a modest container for a decade's work.

"Allow me," said Junior, taking the pack and Bergstrom's chair under one arm. He
grinned, displaying a great many sharp teeth, and set off toward the tower where
they had made camp.

"His big brother is grumbling about our shares again," Cara said after he had
gone. "He's disappointed with the take and wants to make up for it on our end. I
think I can hold the line, though.""That damned pirate."

"It was worse with the last bunch," Cara reminded him. "At least we can be
reasonably sure these pirates won't try to kill us in our sleep."

"Yes," he said flatly, "they're grave robbers, cheats, and barbarians, but
they're not murderers."

He knelt to collect his remotes, a half-dozen robots he hung from his hip belt
like game birds. "There's never enough time, Cara. Reisner had a decade just for
Nubia."

"But you have a lot of good data, Evan."

"Not enough, and I haven't found any written records at all -- just carvings
that seem purely ornamental. This city is as sophisticated as Classical Athens,
but you don't reach that level without some system of writing -- you need it for
trade, taxation, if nothing else."

"Evan," she said quietly, "we've been through this before. You get a glimpse of
a new civilization and you want to study it down to the bones. Every one of them
has a history as rich as ours. They each had a Parthenon, a Great Wall, a Jesus
Christ, and a Genghis Khan. Most of them had their Neil Armstrongs and Harold
Mawsons. Space platforms. Starships. Technology we could only guess at. It's all
out there, waiting for you to dig it up. And you're a good archaeologist,
lover...but we can't do that kind of work on our own. We can look at one problem
-- the most important one, as it happens -- and just do the best we can."

"Sometimes I wonder if it's worth doing." He looked around. "We don't have a
place to stand, Cara. Our own records are in pieces, and half the pieces are
gone, either destroyed or locked up on worlds still hiding behind quarantine.
The Portals themselves .... We can use the technology but we don't understand
it, and the Outsteppers have been dust for ten thousand years or more. All we
have are theories, Cara -- not even that. Guesses. Hunches."

"You've done good work," she insisted.

"We need to do more. There should be some sort of commission, an agency, to send
expeditions to every world the Hand smashed...and some kind of police corps, to
keep the vandals out of places like this." He exhaled loudly. "Maybe in another
thousand years, when we've built everything up again and people aren't so afraid
of the dark."

"We'll go out again in a few months," she said.

"Maybe." Then, his voice flatter: "You did all right, then?"

"Yes .... "She paused, thinking. "A few hundred kilograms of the usual bangles
and art objects, including some intricate stone carvings I'm sure I have a buyer
for. Four sets of mummified remains --"

"I need those for my work," Bergstrom said sharply.

"And we'll have them recorded before we let them go. I know Findlay Broz will
make a bid for those. We'll let him pay for the recording -- full spectrum. Then
there's the heavy earthenware and one of those ruby pylons ...... After the
Chief's cut, we'll have enough left over to buy our way onto another expedition
and, say, six months' living expenses."

Bergstrom only nodded. The silence between them lengthened.

"Do you want me to put it all back?" Cara said finally.

"Of course not."

"Do you want to go back to living on your papers and my teaching?"

"You know we can't. Not and do fieldwork."

"I do know," she said. "I wanted to be sure you did." Then: "We'd better get
moving. The Chief isn't in a mood to wait. And I, for one, want to get home
again."

Home: was Flanders. Cara's world had been spared the plague, but not the chaos
following the collapse of interstellar trade, the refugee hordes and quarantine
wars, famine and revolution. It was the work of generations to rebuild, and
Flanders' one university was not very old when Bergstrom came to it.

Cara turned away, her back stiff; Bergstrom opened his mouth to speak, then
winced as his suit radio awakened with a crash of static. "Home again, home
again," the Proteus said across the link, the emission modulated to a crude
counterfeit of Bergstrom's own voice. He scowled.

It swooped down from the saffron sky, took a turn around the square and plunged
toward Bergstrom, buffering him with the wind from its feathered wings. The
pinions flowed like wax, two becoming four, an eagle's wings transforming to a
honey bee's. The metamorph hovered, for now about a meter across, an amalgam of
practical attributes sewed up in a scaly skin. From its limitless catalog it had
selected a sleek, sinuous body, taloned feet, and a narrow head ringed with
slitted eyes and less readily identifiable sensors.

"Carry?" it asked from a vaguely human mouth.

"You, no." But Bergstrom took a bulging sack from its claws. "This, yes."

"Gratitude," the Proteus said, fattening its lips to a sweetly smiling cupid's
bow. "Kindly refrain from pilferage." It flew off in a flurry of
transmogrification.

"Another pirate," Bergstrom said under his breath.

"More of a magpie, I think," Cara said. "But who knows? Maybe the little monster
is a top archaeologist, too, back where he comes from."

Smiling sourly, Bergstrom herted the pouch and loosened the drawstring. Nestled
inside was a clutch of ruby eggs, finely polished, intricately etched, and
glowing with some soft internal light. The same material as the obelisks ringing
the plaza, the same runes. They would, he knew, fetch a fair price on the black
markets of a dozen worlds.

Throat tight, he looked away and saw the square as it had been, the towers
gleaming in the sun, the ruby steles glittering, standing tall above the throngs
milling about the plaza. The people were small and fragile, with smooth,
translucent skin, long arms and long, many-fingered hands, huge, dark eyes
widely set in elongated skulls, slitted nostrils, small, lipless mouths. He
heard their voices on the wind, a gentle keening, like the sound of cicadas
across a distance.

"The creature does have a weakness for shiny things," he said, handing the bag
to Cara. "I haven't seen these before."

She looked inside. "I have," she said. "In some of the towers. The uppermost
rooms."

They had gone into the towers to die, most of them-- floor after floor of
withered, childlike corpses, flesh so soured by the Hand that it was toxic even
to corrupting microorganisms. A thousand towers, a million rooms, legions of
carcasses in this one city, and the same all across the planet -across a hundred
planets.

"I left them," she said dully. "I just didn't want them."

Bergstrom took the pouch from her. "It's all right," he said.

He followed her across the plaza, frowning.

Trash lay scattered around the tower where they'd lived the past week, a tapered
cylinder two hundred meters tall, its weathered facade the color of old bone. A
portable airlock was cemented roughly across the entrance; rubbery fabric sealed
the windows on the ground floor. The other two sledges were drawn up outside,
one piled high with loot, the other with their equipment and the remaining
stores.

Junior looked up as they approached, then went back to lashing down their gear.
Without a word, Cara walked over to supervise. Bergstrom watched her a moment,
his mouth set, before he cycled through the airlock.

The room on the other side took up most of the first floor. Beneath the rubbish
scattered underfoot, inscribed tiles created complex patterns; thin, graceful
columns poured upward into a vaulted ceiling. A dozen lamps floated about the
chamber, projecting wan heat and a dull red luminescence. The bloody glow fell
across two of the kurtikutts as they broke down the atmosphere plant. They
worked side by side and in silence, perfectly coordinated, stoically efficient.
Cara called them The Twins, though the Third Born outweighed his younger brother
by at least twenty kilograms.

The pressurized shelter Bergstrom had shared with Cara sat in the far corner,
collapsed and rolled into a neat bundle. He settled onto it, cracked open his
helmet faceplate and took a shallow breath: heavy, shockingly cold, stinking of
methane and the kurtikutts' vinegar reek.

A shadow fell across him. "Your mate her treasure found, and we ours as well,"
said a voice so deep he felt it in his bones. "And you, Beergstromm?"

"I found what I was looking for," he said flatly. "Clues to how the Hand came,
and why. Whether it will come again."

The First Born towered over him, a wall of scarred leather draped in elaborate
robes. A jeweled scabbard hung from the silver sash knotted at his waist; one
big, seven-fingered hand rested idly on the blade's hilt. His thick arms were
bare, corded with muscle and old scars. More scar tissue ran like a river down
one side of his head, across the hollow right eye socket and along his throat.
His remaining eye was like an opal, unblinking, unreadable.

"Dusty words, and dust," the First Born growled. "Your mate's treasure is more
of my liking."

"When the Hand reaches for you," Bergstrom said, "see if it will take a bag of
gold instead."

The kurtikutt glared, then threw back his head and laughed, a coyote howl that
sent shivers down Bergstrom's spine. "If the Hand comes," the First Born said,
"I will send it to you, your sharp tongue to cut it, Beergstromm."

He grimaced. Cara had wanted to buy their way onto one of the kurtikutts"
expeditions for years. The Ruhk'thmar pack had been working the fringes of the
shadow trade for decades, buying coordinates and Portal access from corrupt
operators, moving their loot through the black markets of a dozen worlds, and
staying clear of both the syndicates and local authorities. They had no backers,
no brokers, no permanent base of operations. Cara had finally caught up with the
Chief a month ago, in a dive called. The Cadaver Dog, not far from the stargate
on Chimerine. Sooner or later, all the pirates came to Chimerine.

Behind him, the airlock cycled with a wheeze and a gasp of cold methane. Cara
came through, then Junior.

"Your mate knows of value," the First Born said. "The Hand may come again -- but
she and I will be of wealth in the meantime, hey?"

Cara pulled off her helmet, gave the brute a sour glance and barked a handful of
words in the kurtikutts' language. The First Born glowered.

"Private joke," Cara explained to Bergstrom. She smiled up at the kurtikutt.
"You're in a big hurry-up, Chief, but your littlest brother is taking all day to
align the Portal. How about a remedy?"

The First Born considered. "His ass I will kick," he decided. He lumbered toward
the airlock.

Cara touched Bergstrom's arm. "This won't take long," she said. "Shorty just
doesn't know when to stop fussing."

"Better that than we end up scattered across the Arm. Teams do go out and never
come back."

"That's not us, lover."

He took her hand. "I am an idiot, sometimes."

"Oh, you are not. Sometimes."

The Fourth Born brushed past, pushing a cart stacked with components of the
atmosphere plant. His brother followed, carrying their shelter. After they had
cycled through the airlock, Cara looked around the empty room and squeezed
Bergstrom's hand. "Be a gentleman, sir, and walk me home?"

Shorty was still working at the tabs and levers of his homebrew device as Junior
stood watch over the generator. The First Born paced alongside the Portal, then
stalked up to the youngest kurtikutt. His bellow echoed from the towers. Eyes
wide, Shorty ducked his head and stepped away from the apparatus. The First Born
gestured sharply and The Twins dragged up the sledges, one brother yoked to
each.

Junior moved forward, but the eldest kurtikutt put a hand to his brother's
chest. Their conversation was like the rumbling of a waterfall. When it was
over, Junior started back toward the tower they had occupied.

"Now what?" Cara demanded.

The First Born cocked his one eye in their direction. "Your treasure we carry,"
he growled. "You we do not." He pointed to the gate.

Cara shrugged. "Last one home, lover."

Bergstrom hesitated. "I still have a remote on its way in. I could -- "

"We can't afford to write it off." She gave him a quick grin. "It's all right --
you wait here until it finds its way back."

He watched her walk toward the Portal. Even bundled up in that clumsy suit, he
could see the way she moved, the way she held herself. He remembered the nights
on Flanders, and the warmth of her in the mornings, and he, too, wanted to be
home again.

Static surged from his suit radio. "Just me, love," Cara said across the link.
She looked over her shoulder, smiling. "Wanted to tell you not to wait too
long...and remember I'll be waiting for you on the other side." He grinned. "And
I wanted to tell you what I'd like to do when -- "

The transmission cut off as she crossed the Portal's interface, the darkness
closing around her.

"Tease," Bergstrom said under his breath, but he was still smiling. He looked up
into the pale yellow skies. Horizon to horizon, they stretched empty. "Come on,
damn it."

"Beergstromm!" the First Born thundered. "Time marches!" He raised one scarred
arm and The Twins started forward, sledges groaning, their runners gouging the
alabaster tiles. The Proteus fluttered overhead, squawking in the pirates'
language.

The Portal loomed before him, a cut of night framed against the jasmine sky, a
black so deep and formless it hurt to look at it for very long.

A glove reached from it, fingers clutching. An arm. And Cara staggered from the
Portal.

Bergstrom caught her and went down with her to the cold stone. Her eyes were
wide, her face ashen and sheened with sweat; blood trickled from her nose,
smearing her visor. Her mouth worked. "Evan," she said, the word faint beneath
rasp of labored breath.

"It'll be all right, sweetheart. Everything's all right." He checked her suit's
seals, the telltales on the environmental pack: temperature, integrity,
radiation count, pressure, power. "There's nothing wrong, damn it."

She coughed, bright red blood splashing the inside of her helmet. "Oh, lover,"
she got out. "Oh, Evan, it was worse than you thought."

"Cara ? "

He looked over his shoulder. The Second Born stood over him, hands working at
his sides, but the other kurtikutts had drawn back. "We have to get the shelter
rigged again," Bergstrom said. "And the med kit--" The words tumbled from him.
"First -- get that first, before the shelter, while we can still --"

None of them moved. Then Junior knelt ponderously. "She is dead, comrade." He
touched her helmet with one finger.

Bergstrom slapped his hand away. "Get away from us, you fucking monster," he
said, his face wet. "Get the hell away or I'll kill you all."

2

"The answer must be ours," the Second Born said in a low rumble. "What happened,
we must know it."

In the ruddy glow of a single floating lamp, dried blood painted black Cara's
parted lips. Her eyes were closed, their lashes delicate traces against ivory
skin. Golden hair spilled unruly across the blanket folded beneath her head.

It was the moment between one breath and another. Bergstrom had lived it before,
with the sun coming up over the hills of Flanders, the light of dawn pouring
through the bedroom window, as he waited for Cara to open her eyes and smile. It
was the moment between sleeping and waking. He sat close by, and waited for her
next breath.

"The Portal has murdered your mate," said the First Born, "and may yet us all."
He sat on a crate away from the lamplight. "One exit there is, Beergstromm, and
in time we must take it or wait for air and food to be exhausted." The other
kurtikutts stirred, muttering.

"We are none of us chirurgeons, and we know little of your people," said Junior,
his voice almost gentle. "Can you discover the means of her death?"

Bergstrom's eyes squeezed shut. "Just leave her alone."

The box creaked as the First Born stood. "The answer within her lies," he said,
coming out of the darkness. Red light poured along the blade of his knife.
"Perhaps I will search for it."

Junior reached for Bergstrom as he leaped, but his brother was quicker. The
First Born's free hand clamped on Bergstrom's head, temples and crown. Bergstrom
grunted as the vise squeezed; his boots kicked at empty air.

"Time marches," the kurtikutt hissed, his vinegary breath washing across
Bergstrom's face.

"Murdering... bastard," he forced out.

"The murderer I am not," said the First Born. "But hunted I have, and you are
frail prey, Beergstromm."

The Second Born spoke a single harsh syllable. Blackness flooded Bergstrom's
sight as the eldest tightened his grip and let loose a stream of words heavy as
a hammer blow. Junior spoke again, vibrissae fanned stiffly from his "wrinkled
muzzle, and bared needle teeth.

The First Born snarled -- this time something less than words -- and spread his
fingers wide. The floor came up at Bergstrom and smashed the breath from him. He
lay there, his chest caught in bands of steel, his face to the icy flagstones.
He winced at a hot, sweet stink, but it was Junior who came close and said, "You
are not the sixth brother of our clutch, but you are our comrade of the hunt."
He helped Bergstrom from the floor, set him on his feet as if he weighed nothing
and steadied him with one hand. "No harm will come to you, or further harm to
your mate."

"She is dead," the First Born snarled. "We must find the reason."

"In your own way, comrade, will you try?"

"He will," said the First Born, "or --"

"Or he will not," said Junior. "Comrade?"

Bergstrom looked down the long wavy blade of the First Born's kris. Remember
I'll be waiting for you on the other side, she had said. He took a shallow
breath -- all he could manage -- and measured the distance. Then the First Born
shoved the dagger into its scabbard and folded his arms across his chest: the
moment had passed.

"Weak prey," the kurtikutt grunted. "Too weak even to save himself."

"If we find the way, it will be a scholar who leads, not a hunter." Junior
turned to Bergstrom. "Later, comrade?" he said quietly. "But not much later."

From the darkness at the back of the room, the atmosphere plant wheezed and
grumbled. Near it, the remaining stores formed a small, untidy pile. And in the
shadows a few meters away, a still form lay beneath a weathered tarpaulin.
Bergstrom sank back.

The kurtikutts sat in a circle on the other side of the room, speaking in low
voices. Junior glanced up as Bergstrom stirred, murmured a few words to the
First Born, then stood and came over. "We discuss the paths we may take," he
said. "My brother invites you to join us."

Bergstrom looked up, his face blank. Junior studied him for a few moments before
settling onto his haunches alongside him. "This time you have spent with her,
comrade -- for you this hour was fleeting, but for us it stretched. Do you see
my meaning?"

"I hear you."

"Come, then." He put a heavy hand on Bergstrom's arm. "On Chimerine, no one
waits for us. In this trap we are alone. No one will save us unless it is we
ourselves."

Bergstrom shrugged him off. "It should have been you, you know.

You were going in first, the Chief stopped you, and it was her instead."

Junior's nostrils flared. "There were, here, lengths of gold cloth my brother
remembered, a part of our treasure. I was sent to retrieve it. There was nothing
more than that."

"Then show me the cloth."

"You are hunting, comrade, but there is no prey here."

"Show me the cloth," Bergstrom repeated. "We may be your comrades of the hunt,
but we're not part of the clutch. Your little brother does a fair job on the
Portal, but there's always a risk. The Chief let her take it."

"You know I mourn her," Junior said heavily. "In all the journeyings of the
Ruhk'thmar, nothing of this like has happened. Always, all among us, kin and
stranger both, returned safely home."

"Not this time," Bergstrom said.

She waited for him in the shadows. He went to her.

Bergstrom knelt by her side and slowly pulled back the tarp. He did not move
again for a long while; then, when he did, it was to brush a few strands o hair
from her face. Her skin was cold and hard as stone, but he did not pull away.

After a time he drew his fingers along her cheek, then across the ceramic helmet
seal, to the suit's heavy, quilted fabric, the environmental pack. The status
lights glowed wanly under his outstretched hand. The suit still lived, storage
cells near capacity, air canisters charged, pressure regulators and recycling
systems in readiness. He brought up the diagnostic displays in sequence: all
green.

He paused, then lifted her nearer arm from the floor, wincing at its weight and
stiffness, then flinched again as the mitt flopped loosely at the wrist. He
fumbled at the wrist seal...and it slipped from his nerveless fingers, her arm
hitting the floor with a dull thud. A small sound came from the back of his
throat.

"Comrade." Junior came over. "The glove?"

Bergstrom only nodded.

Junior worked :silently at the seal. Soon the mitt came free, rough cloth
rasping on smooth skin. Her hand was pale, almost luminescent; thin fingers
clutched at nothing. Bergstrom motioned, and the kurtikutt passed him the mitt.
"Now the other one," Bergstrom said. "Wait...the helmet first, over there."

The Second Born reached across Cara's legs, lifted the helmet easily with one
hand and put it in Bergstrom's arms. "Are there tools I will need?" the
kurtikutt asked, not looking at him.

Bergstrom stared at the helmet, the smear of blood inside the visor, the dozen
or so long, blonde hairs caught in the convolutions of the foam padding. "I
won't let you cut her," he said. "You'll have to kill me first." His fingers
trembled against the chill metal, the faceplate's crystal, the roughness of
scrapes and scratches left by generations of explorers, and uncounted
explorations. He knew them all...but for one, fresher than the rest.

Junior reached for her other hand. "If there were a thing to find within her, we
would not see it," the kurtikutt said. "I will tell my brother this." He
unfastened the cuff seal, then grasped her tightly clenched fist and, gently,
opened it.

A sullen fire burned in her palm. The kurtikutt inhaled sharply, the breath
whistling through his teeth. "Comrade .... "

The jewel fell free, watery red light pouring along its smooth curves,
glittering on the etched patterns, gathering within its heart. Bergstrom caught
it as it fell, hissing as the cold stone burned him. He closed his fist around
it, holding the hurt.

The kurtikutt shrank back. "My brother took a few of these," he said. "But for
me, there is a stink to them."

"She thought so, too." The ruby egg warmed slowly in his hand. "But it is, I
know, nothing but dead stone." "Yes."

"Do you think there are spectres, comrade?" the kurtikutt said suddenly.

Bergstrom looked up, the blood pounding in his head.

"A spirit that wears the body," the Second Born said, his eyes on Bergstrom's.
"A thing that lives on after the body dies."

Looking away, Bergstrom shook his head. "No. But I wish I did."

The First Born stalked over to them. "You did not dig deeply," he growled.

Junior glided to his feet. "There was no need," he said. "The scent, I think we
have it now."

"This?" The First Born took the jewel from Bergstrom and held it up to the
light. "A bit of treasure it is, and nothing more. I have many like it." Black
lips skinned back from yellowed fangs. "You would sell this, Beergstromm? Soon,
perhaps, for air to breathe."

"She didn't have it when she went through the Portal," Bergstrom said. "She had
it when she came back."

The First Born glared. "Fools, both of you, and I trapped with you."

"Her suit is intact," Bergstrom said. "Operational. No sign of radiation,
pressure, acceleration, electrical shock, tidal forces. Nothing."

"This we already suspected. These would have left their mark. But inside her? In
the mouth there is blood."

"She bit her tongue," Bergstrom said. "Her nose is bloody. She hurt herself. Her
face hit the inside of the helmet."

"What reason for this?" the First Born snapped. "If she stumbled, where did she
fall ? If she was put to ground, what hunted her?" He snarled. "What remains is
meat. She is gone, Beergstromm. Too much time have we wasted, respectful of
meat." He swung toward Junior. "You said it should be so. She is his, yes, but
if there is answer in her, it is ours."

"She had time enough to realize what was happening," Bergstrom said. "It might
have been a heart attack. Or stroke."

"And of this there would be no sign?" the First Born demanded.

"To a medician, yes," Bergstrom said. "To us, no. The damage would be too
subtle. For a stroke, a burst blood vessel somewhere in the brain. For a heart
attack...I don't know if that produces any visible sign at all. Maybe a change
in the blood chemistry."

"You may deceive us in this," the First Born said.

"Yes," Bergstrom said. "Does it matter? You wouldn't find anything, and I won't
look."

"There is a strength in you, Beergstromm," the kurtikutt growled, "though it is
buried deep." Junior opened his mouth, but the eldest cut him off with a snarl.
"We are as hatchlings, eyes still closed! We do not know the means of her
death-- whether from within her, or of the Portal, or by some hunter on the
other side. We must learn the truth of it, and set right the Portal if we can."

"It may be operating as intended," Bergstrom said flatly. "On my world, an
ancient civilization constructed magnificent tombs for their royalty. Their
treasure was buried with them, so they would have it in the afterlife. And thick
walls, hidden passages, traps, and sorcerers' curses protected their treasure
from thieves in this life."

"You believe we are accursed, Beergstromm?"

"These people knew their world was being murdered. Maybe they set a trap for the
murderer and it caught us, instead."

"Fanciful." The whisper drifted from the back of the room. Behind it came wet,
meaty sounds, growing louder. Something moved there in the darkness, half-seen,
unfolding itself until it stood close to three meters tall. "Their technology
was vastly inadequate," said the graveyard voice.

"Holy Father," Bergstrom whispered.

It came out of the shadows, muscles squirming beneath a scaly hide, red
lamplight glinting from the spikes that flared across its massive shoulders. One
large eye, black and moist, gleamed from beneath a thick ridge of bone. The wide
mouth parted slightly, revealing rows of thorns painted with faintly luminescent
drool. The thorns rustled, producing words: "We must explore the Portal."

Distantly, Bergstrom heard Junior make a sound not far from a whine, barely
audible and quickly stilled. Behind him, the younger kurtikutts backed away.

"You wear a hunter's skin now," the First Born said, "but I remember when you
were but a small bird." His nostrils flared. "A brainless bird, and ill-spoken.
Your form is not all that changes."

Towering over the kurtikutt, the Proteus smiled with its mouth full of thorns.
Beneath his battered hide, the First Born's muscles were rigid with tension. But
he kept his hand well away from the hilt of his knife.

"If we are to live, we need more information," said the Proteus. It indicated
one of The Twins, who cowered. "This one is not vital. It will enter the
Portal."

Junior took a step forward. "No one of my brothers will be sacrificed." He
glanced at Bergstrom, then quickly away. "No one else will be sacrificed."

The Proteus hissed. "Do not challenge me in this," it said. "I move to save us
all." It spread its hands, steely serrated claws gleaming in the lamplight.
Junior crouched and moved slowly to one side, flanking the monster. The First
Born fell back, the kris suddenly appearing in his hand.

"Be careful with him," Bergstrom said, his mouth dry, "but he's not all he seems
to be."

The Proteus swung its ridged skull toward him. A faint reek of ozone wafted from
the creature.

Bergstrom looked up into its faceted eye. "That's a frightening package," he
said, "but you can't mass more than fifteen or twenty kilograms. Stick him with
your knife, Chief, and he'll pop like a balloon."

"Beergstromm, what is your tongue after now?" He did not look away from the
shapeshifter.

"How much would you say he weighs?" Bergstrom asked. "Twice what you do?"

"Perhaps," said the kurtikutt, "but I have taken larger prey."

"And when he wore wings and feathers, how much did he weigh then?" Bergstrom
said steadily. "He can't create mass, just redistribute it. Keep watching him,
though. He may not be in your weight class, but he's got the reach."

Junior's muzzle wrinkled. His tongue lolled from his mouth and he raised one
hand to cover it. Laughter, Bergstrom realized.

The First Born glared at the Proteus for a moment more, then shoved the kris
into its scabbard. "Trickery," he growled. "And as time runs from us."

The Proteus shrugged, a quite human gesture. "We require stronger leadership,"
it said. It was already shrinking, softening, the spikes and ridges withdrawing
into its oily hide. "Our status remains unchanged. One must enter the Portal."

Junior looked at Bergstrom. "Comrade, what of your robots? Send one machine into
the Portal, and look through its eyes."

He shook his head. "Not once it crosses the interface. Nothing can --"

"Transmission of information across the Portal would violate relativity," the
Proteus said in a voice now blurred and vaguely feminine.

The creature's hide had smoothed. Its trunk narrowed; arms and legs thinned. The
head became an ovoid, featureless except for a narrow, lipless slit for a mouth.

"That includes nerve impulses," Bergstrom said, his heart racing as the Proteus
transformed itself. "Otherwise I'd suggest you stick your head in and look
around, Chief."

The Proteus smiled at Bergstrom with white, even teeth. The skin stretched
across its skull fell in, leaving two round holes. Eyes surfaced from within
them, black pupils ringed by electric blue irises. The head tilted back;
graceful fingers caressed golden hair. Delicate laughter echoed.

"Is this form more to your liking, Bergstrom?" it said with her voice. Her eyes
stared at him; her hands roamed over her throat, her breasts, her stomach. "Or
do you still find me frightening?"

Bergstrom looked away. "Not now, comrade," Junior said quietly from behind him.
"But later. Yes, later."

The First Born sighed. "These games go on too long," he said. "I am thinking now
of your ancient kings, Beergstromm."

"A pretty theory," the Proteus said in her voice, "but these people did not have
the means."

"They may have traded for the technology," Junior said, "in the time before the
Hand. Or a visitor may have laid the trap, if trap there is."

"Trap or accident," the First Born said, "the answer we must find, and quickly."
He knuckled the scar tissue around his empty eye socket. "We put aside air,
water, and food to last the span of the hunt and little more. Even the power
goes, too quickly. The motes at its heart, the light and shadow .... "His teeth
clashed. "Beergstromm, your tongue be damned!"

"The antimatter within the generator decays at a constant rate," Junior
explained. "We can tap its power, but not conserve it. And when it is gone, we
cannot tame the Portal."

"How long do we have?" Bergstrom asked.

Junior looked across the chamber and spoke a few words of kurtikutt; Shorty's
reply was barely audible. "Twelve hours remain to us before the power has grown
too weak," Junior said. "Even before that, my brother tells me, grasping the
Portal at Chimerine grows difficult."

"Then perhaps you'll finally accept the wisdom of my advice," the Proteus said
to Bergstrom, running her hands over her hips. "You know I'm right, lover. Tell
them."

The First Born sprang, silent, and put his kris to the side of the Proteus's
neck. Blue eyes widened, but otherwise the creature remained motionless.

"This game tires me," the kurtikutt said low in his throat. "End it, or your
head I will take."

The Proteus smiled thinly. "You must know that wouldn't kill me."

"It would be of an inconvenience," the First Born said. It pressed knife to
skin, drawing a thin rivulet of blood. Despite everything, Bergstrom's eyes
stung to see it.

"Why do you take his part?" the Proteus asked mildly. "He is useless to us."

The kurtikutt's knife arm trembled. "He is our comrade of the hunt," he said.
"End it, now."

The Proteus shrugged. "If it will please you." Without moving its head, the
monster shifted its eyes to Bergstrom's. Its smile broadened, becoming sad and
sweet as the familiar curves flattened, the pink skin bleached white, and the
long, buttery hair withdrew into the scalp. The lips went last, leaving the
mouth a narrow slit with ends upturned.

When it was over, the metamorph stood a meter and a half tall, fragile and
childlike, its translucent skin taut over thin bones. The lipless mouth smiled,
the slitted nostrils flared slightly, and the fiend looked at him with eyes that
had through the metamorphosis remained warm and wide and blue.

Bergstrom looked into Cara's eyes and said: "There may be another way."

3

The wind blew along the streets of the dead city, rushing in through all its
gaping windows and running out through all its empty doors. It stole across the
merchants' stalls and whispered through the gallows' open trap. In the plaza, it
lifted a shroud of dust and set the motes to glittering against the stargate's
starless night. Bergstrom sat close by, and felt in him the Portal's vast
emptiness.

A dozen meters off, Shorty's fingers moved slowly across the control surfaces of
his handmade tuning rig. The First Born towered over him, one hand on his
jeweled scabbard. Shorty had been at work for the better part of an hour, but
the First Born stayed silent.

Twisting a coiled rope, Junior settled alongside Bergstrom's camp chair. "Is
there a thing I can do?" the kurtikutt asked, his voice muffled only slightly by
the transparent breathing mask he wore.

Sunlight glinted from Bergstrom's visor as he looked into the empty saffron sky.
"There's one still out there," he said half to himself. "I was waiting for it,
and she went through first. It never came back."

"Later, comrade. Later."

"She'd be angry. Half our profits to replace it." He closed a panel in the
robot's breast. The device was inert for a few seconds, then shook its graphite
wings. Its head began to turn on its thin neck, back and forth, scanning.

"It will remember for us now?" the kurtikutt said.

"It was built to relay data to my recording rig in real time," Bergstrom said
tonelessly, "but it has some onboard storage. I've reconfigured most of the
memory, disabled half the sensors, stepped down the resolution of the others. It
won't see much, but it'll remember what it sees -- an hour's worth, at least,
which is more than we need." Standing, he looked toward the First Born.

The eldest squatted beside Shorty and spoke with him for a few moments, then got
to his feet again and came over. "My brother says the Portal is seemingly as it
was before," he said, "as if it would lead to Chimerine." He glanced down. "I
tire of small birds."

"This one may save your miserable hide." Bergstrom handed the remote to Junior,
who shook free a few meters of rope. Working quickly, he fashioned a harness
that slipped over the robot's wings and was drawn tight across its breast. He
finished it with a square knot and passed the remote back to Bergstrom. "It will
not escape us," the kurtikutt said.

The First Born snatched the bird from Bergstrom before he could react. "'You
have a strength, Beergstromm, but it is not in your arm." He looped the free end
of the rope around his waist, knotted it, then began whirling, the robot over
his head, paying out more line with each revolution.

Bergstrom stepped back. "Be careful with it, you bastard." The First Born
wrinkled his muzzle and let the remote fly free. It arced toward the Portal,
rope trailing, and met the ebony dome two-thirds of the way up. The robot seemed
to hang there for an instant, then was gone. The rope fell after it, the first
dozen meters or so disappearing into the interface, the rest hitting the paving
stones with a muffled slap.

"Give it fifteen minutes," Bergstrom said, settling into his chair. His heart
pounded.

The First Born took some of the slack out of the rope and began looping it
around his scarred forearm. "If there is a hunter on the other side," he said,
"I am ready should your little bird it take for bait." He slid his kris from its
scabbard, set it on the ground before him and settled onto his haunches,
waiting.

Bergstrom pressed a switch. And remembered: a carousel of images. The Portal, an
arc of night. Bone-white towers, yellow sky. The plaza, three figures standing
on the dusty stones, falling away (the kurtikutts, lambent in infrared, the
First Born's hand still open, arm outstretched, and alongside them the
environmental suit's cooler signature). The Portal again, a wall that grew to
close out everything else. A shock, a surge, a deeper night, a time unending.

Then: the rush of air again across graphite wings, a sensation of falling,
impact, and darkness.

But this was merely the absence of light. Obeying a deeply ingrained subroutine,
the remote righted itself and looked around.

Painted in shades of sonar, the gallery stretched beyond his sensors' range.
Ranks of willowy columns flowed from the etched floor and into the barrel
ceiling high overhead. Elaborate patterns flowered along the stonework to frame
row on row of shallow niches, making them part of the design. And within each
niche a ruby egg, finely polished, intricately inscribed. A thousand rows,
millions upon millions of stones.

The scene slid left, then right as the remote's head panned, the image
repainting itself in :radar, in infrared, then again in the visible spectrum
before cycling back to sonar. Nothing moved. Nothing changed.

Long minutes passed. Then the view juddered, swaying crazily, the walls of the
gallery slowly sliding past as the remote was drawn backward. Again the shock of
translation across the infinite, the surge, and utter darkness. Now light again,
the black wall stretching upward and the pale yellow sky above it, a mitted hand
reaching down, and beyond it a crystal visor framing a drawn face: Bergstrom's
own.

The playback ended, the virtual reality shattering, the sense of the dead world
pouring in on him, the weight of his own meat and bone, stink of sweat, the sour
taste in his mouth, and everything spinning, spinning.

"Comrade... ?" Junior squatted before him, his hands on Bergstrom's shoulders,
his face too near. Weakly, Bergstrom pushed him away.

"No hunter," he said thickly. "No threat. A room, vast, somewhere near." He
shook his head to clear it, then forced himself to his feet. "Like a church,
dark, empty. Somewhere on this world, maybe in this city." He swayed and put a
hand on the back of the chair, steadying himself. His environmental suit was
awash in sweat. "Underground," he said. "I'm sure of it. It may be right under
us."

The First Born stared at him, his teeth set in a carnivore rictus. "Nothing to
have murdered your mate?"

"It's an empty room, damn it. No one there. No enemy for you to fight."

The kurtikutt looked at him a moment longer, then stalked off...not toward their
camp, but across the square, and away. Junior watched him go. "Now we know no
more than before," he said. "Your mate may have crossed into a place where the
hunter lives, but you saw another land. Or the hunter may have gone from it.
What you saw may have been a trick, a dream put into the machine. Or perhaps
this is my dream, comrade." He looked up at the sound of wingbeats. "Or
nightmare."

The Proteus swept down from the yellow sky, circling the Portal once before
alighting a few meters away. Its head was human, or nearly so -stylized, glossy,
a mannequin's head with high cheekbones, blue eyes, and long. blonde hair. The
body was monstrous, an amalgam of raptor and reptile, with a thick, snakelike
torso and clawed feet.

"You didn't listen to me," the Proteus said, its voice Cara's once again. "Now
you've lost valuable time. And for you, time has nearly run out."

"But not for you," Bergstrom said.

The Proteus twisted its lips into a parody of a smile. "You know I am very
adaptable," it said. "And very patient. If you do not find a way out, in time
others will come. One of them will find the way." The creature flexed its
harpy's wings. "I wish you could stay and keep me company, Evan, but I'm afraid
you won't last long. You may have enough water, heat, and air for a while, but
the food will go more quickly --if not yours, then the kurtikutts'. And when
they grow hungry, lover, they will forget you are their comrade of the hunt."

"My brother should have taken your head," Junior snarled. His eyes slid to
Bergstrom. "Comrade, you know we would never -- "

"Of course you would," Bergstrom said. "The monster is right about that...about
a lot of things."

He walked slowly across the paving stones, each step raising a little cloud of
dust. The black wall of the Portal loomed over him, closing out the city and the
sky. He felt again its depth, its vast emptiness, and then a subtle vibration as
he passed between the bands of smooth, gray metal that held fast the stargate.

"Comrade!"

The kurtikutt's voice echoed, the echoes lost as Bergstrom stepped into the
Portal. Darkness enfolded him.

Utter lightlessness. Unspeakable cold. Silence, unmarked even by surge of blood
or sough of breath. Time stretched, time enough to believe he would never draw
breath again. A pressure, a straining, as if he were being pulled in a hundred
different directions. Shapes formed within the darkness, patterns of night and
shadow, taking on form, becoming the walls of the vault streaming past him, the
unending cavern lit by the foxfire glow of a million jewels. Then a sudden
surge, a burst of light, and Bergstrom was through to the other side...

And he was a merchant selling sweetbeetles, fruit vines and northlands
succulents from his stall along the radian of the philosophers...

And she was a chancellor drinking up the vernal sun and the loving touch of her
husbands in a parkland on the eastern verge...

And he was a sculptor shaping melancholy in his studio not far from the assembly
of souls...

And she was a wright turning the shape of the Outsteppers' gate, and from her
station watching another party of visitors stream into the world...

And he was a missioner falling to his knees on the bright alabaster stones.

"Comrade?"

Strong hands put him on his feet. He looked up, into the hard stones of a
kurtikutt's eyes, and read in them not concern but mere curiosity -an almost
predatory interest, abstract yet marbled with a primal taste for blood. More
intriguing, though, was the undercurrent of profound loneliness.

"Your kind does not often hunt alone," the missioner said in the kurtikutt's own
language, barks and grunts that came awkwardly to him.

Beneath its transparent breathing mask, the animal's muzzle twitched. "I hunt
here for trade, while my brothers await word."

"Passage is dear," the missioner said. The kurtikutt's lip curled, but he said
nothing.

"Our world is poor," the missioner continued, "but I wish you good hunting." He
felt in the kurtikutt's gaze a vague but growing suspicion. "Good hunting," he
repeated, and turned away.

The tide of new arrivals surged around him, molegs and Yaenites, a small mob of
kappans, a Simonswood in its articulated rambler, towering above all the others
-- a dozen or more breeds, and everywhere the humans, who roamed across all the
worlds of the Outsteppers' net. His was a backwater planet to all their races,
but still they came in search of trade, knowledge, adventure...or to try to
satisfy the vague but powerful need that gnawed at so many of them. Their unruly
personae spread across the plaza and along the city's radians, carrying with
them subtle disorder.

The missioner closed his eyes and pushed himself outward, embracing the city,
and it welcomed him with its gleaming towers and windswept streets, the places
of assembly and sun-warmed commons, all suffused by the presence of his brothers
and sisters, each soul a thread in the tapestry that wrapped the world: the
Bonding. He sent himself out along the design, casting after the thread that
bound him here most tightly and, finding it, he felt that soul tremble beneath
the touch of his. She bore him up in warmth and love, and he knew he was home
again.

And felt, only distantly, the vibration of heavy footsteps, his wife's
quickening alarm as the rambler bore down on him. He stepped back, meeting up
against rough, unyielding fabric. A hand clamped on his shoulder, holding him
fast though he struggled. Venting steam and stink, the machine's metal foreleg
swept past, close enough to stir his tunic, then the rear leg in turn. The
Simonswood looked back from its throne, leafy ocher sensors rustling with
agitation.

The hand fell from his shoulder. "You could have been killed." The tone was one
of indifference.

The missioner turned, and shivered. It was a human, sealed up in the rude second
skin that carried her environment. Lips pressed to a thin line, she stared at
him through the bubble enclosing her head. Looking into her cold blue eyes, he
saw...nothing. He had fallen against her, he had not known she was there, close
by, because there was in her no life or thought, only a cold emptiness. Nothing.

The thing tilted its head, as if listening to something in the distance. "You
are frightened," it said, and its voice was a hundred voices. "What are you
frightened of?"

"You." His gathering fear set a strain on the fabric; in answer he felt vague
concern, and one bright chord of alarm from his wife. "Stay away," the missioner
said, as much to her as to the monster.

It gripped his hand in its heavy mitt, and smiled. The crowd streamed past,
heedless, the wide-eyed kappans pointing at the fine, gleaming towers, the
Yaenite mob grumbling and muttering, a pair of humans looking all around them
and everywhere at once. From them he felt anxiety and anticipation and
determination and wariness: life.

The creature's grip tightened. Muscle bruised, bone creaked; the missioner
nearly cried out, but did not. "You feel it coming," it said in its terrible
chorus. "I see it in you."

"What are you?" he gasped.

"You know who I am," it said. "I was here long before these others, long before
even your kind. I have always walked among them, these vermin, and since last we
met, I have watched their numbers grow, their contagion spread. The Bonding put
a name to me long ago, speaking it only in the darker places."

"No." He recoiled as the monster reached with its other mitt, but it merely
caressed the side of his face, the rough cloth oddly gentle on his skin. "We
destroyed you."

"You tried, you and the Outsteppers. But you only wounded me. You drove me from
the light of all your suns, into the shadows." It paused, seeming to listen
again, and its smile became a snarling rictus. "I rested there, gathering
strength, watching. Learning how to exterminate you, as I did the Outsteppers."

It began to change, the curves and folds of the environmental suit softening.
The lines of its face melted, the eyes fell in. The helmet puffed out and then
collapsed, flowing into the streaming flesh. Cloth and meat fell away from the
hand that still brushed his face, baring a claw of gleaming bone. He bit back a
scream as the talons sank into his flesh.

Around him, the crowd twitched as if stung. A cry went up; a shriek; confusion
and fright rushed outward, diminishing as it rippled through the mob, those dim
intelligences even a few meters away remaining oblivious.

The missioner cast across the Bonding and it strained, it tore, as bright points
of fear blossomed in the fabric. It was everywhere; whatever it was, it was
everywhere in his world at once.

A big hand lashed out, slapping the claw away in a spray of black muck and
flecks of the monster's brittle bone, and the missioner fell. The kurtikutt
stood over him, nostrils flared, shaking. He snarled, the sound cutting through
the rush and rumble of the mob.

In the sudden silence the demon laughed, a wet, bubbling sound that welled from
its depths. It raised its arms, stretching itself against the sky. Its skin grew
taut and smooth, paled, turning smoky, then transparent as the monster spread
itself on the wind. Taller than the Outsteppers' gate, then higher than any of
the towers, barely visible now, a stain, ghostly, billowing, still growing,
still laughing -- a thin, vaporous laugh, a memory, a nightmare.

The shouting began. The screams. The mob buffeted him, visitors running from the
square. A human female brushed by him, and he saw in her brights, metallic fear.
An omblegenna came after, its four snakelike arms flailing. The Simonswood's
rambler stampeded back toward the gate; one of the kappans fell under the
churning metal legs, its high-pitched screams quickly silenced. The missioner
felt its pain only distantly before that, too, was extinguished.

The missioner put one hand to his face and it came away wet with blood. The
kurtikutt pulled him roughly to his feet. "You will live," he said, "but not if
we stay here."

The sky had turned gray, the sun dim behind it. It was, he knew, the same all
across his world.

"Comrade .... "the kurtikutt rasped, the fear boiling off him. "This hunter --
we must find a place away from it."

"If you can," said the missioner, and laid his hand on the beast's head. The
kurtikutt flinched at the contact, but some of the fear slipped from him.

"My brothers -- "

"I think you will be with them soon."

The demon's shape filled half the sky, the vaguest of shadows, a breath of
night, nearly imperceptible. It continued to stretch, shafts of saffron sunlight
pushing through... then it burst, becoming a cloud of gray dust that drifted
down, dreamlike.

On the winds he heard its laughter.

He closed his eyes. The clamor of the mob receded, and the kurtikutt's next
words, the sounds of his own heart and breath. He found his wife waiting, filled
with fear and love and longing. He wrapped himself in her, then cast himself
further out, across the fabric of the Bonding.

It was the same all over: a hundred soulless, lightless monsters; their
transformation; twilight everywhere; now a rain of dust.

The missioner opened his eyes again as a stillness settled over the square. The
kurtikutt stood close by, breathing hard, watching the dust drift down. It
stained the alabaster paving stones and drew a film across the towers. It
settled on the missioner's outstretched hands, black against his white skin,
fading to gray, vanishing. Burrowing. Leaving trails of white heat through his
flesh.

The kurtikutt howled, slapping at himself. "Comrade .... "Eyes fierce, it turned
on him. The missioner braced himself...but the kurtikutt shook himself once all
over and sprinted into the crowd, leaving a trail of dazed and fallen visitors.

The Outsteppers' gate stood impassive above the mob, dark and empty, a hole cut
through the universe, humming faintly.

Twitching, the missioner hugged himself. Screams echoed from the towers. The
wind carried to him the stinks of smoke and gore. A kappan blundered into him,
bleeding from a dozen cuts. An omblegenna clutched at him with its tentacles,
then was carried away. The missioner turned, and stared into the face of one of
his brothers. One eye, nearly closed, wept blood; the other was wide and wild.
The missioner held him for a moment, the pain washing over him, drowning him,
then pushed him away. So much pain, a world of it. He sent himself into it,
covered himself with it, to find the one he loved.

I am coming.

He went out into the city.

Smoke and chaos filled its radians. A team of helpbeasts dragged an overturned
cart. A gray-muzzled kurtikutt crouched in a doorway, pawing at anything that
came near. Merchants' stalls were upended. A pack of kappans stoned a human;
helmet broken, she choked on bitter air before her skull was crushed. Guideposts
were toppled; lost and frightened, newly released souls circled the ruins of
their blood-red lattices. The missioner hurried past a gallows, where brothers
murdered brothers.

Through smoke and over barricades, sometimes seeking the shadows while violence
passed, down streets where blood ran free. Then he was home, stumbling over the
corpse in the doorway, up the stairs, higher and higher, to where she waited. He
took her in his arms and held her, taking up her love and warmth, and put his
hands to her throat. Her soul was freed, flying above the city, the smoke, the
death and madness, hurrying away, to the other side.

He could not follow. Instead he climbed higher, into the tower's uppermost
reaches, and then outward, across the torn and burning fabric of the world...

And he was a merchant, the life seeping from him in a smashed stall along the
radian of the philosophers...

And she was a chancellor, giving her husbands release in a parkland on the
eastern verge before turning the blade on herself...

And he was a sculptor, shaping rage and torment in his studio not far from the
assembly of souls, as his blood ran from half a hundred wounds...

And she was a wright, turning the shape of the Outsteppers' gate so death could
not escape, as the mob screamed outside her station's door and fire blackened
her skin...

And he was a man, standing in the gallery, a chamber big enough to hold a world,
column upon graceful column, line upon finely etched line, row upon row of
recesses carved into living stone, in each a ruby egg millions upon millions,
polished, glittering, glowing warm. Souls.

...and he fell to his knees on the dusty stones.

He lay there, face pressed to the inside of his helmet, chest heaving, stale,
recycled air sawing his throat, until big hands turned him gently onto his back.
Junior looked down at him. "You live," he said. "Comrade, you live."

Bergstrom swallowed bile and coughed, spattering his faceplate with filmy blood.
His tongue was thick in his mouth; sounds came out, but no words. His left hand
clutched at Junior's robes; his right arm was deadweight. The kurtikutt helped
him sit up, cradling Bergstrom against his chest. The First Born looked on, and
behind him the Proteus, still wearing its harpy's wings.

"Beergstromm," said the eldest, "that strength you have, I think it is not in
your head, either." He bared yellow teeth.

"Mon...ster," Bergstrom slurred. "Bass... tard."

Junior tensed. "Comrade, there is no need --"

The Proteus folded its wings and stared at him with hard eyes. A smile split its
mannequin's face.

"Kill...it," Bergstrom got out. "Kill it!"

Sunlight flashed on the First Born's kris, but the Proteus was suddenly
elsewhere, its form blurring as it moved. Leathery wings stretched and thinned
in an instant, becoming a nest of lashing tentacles. Its skull lengthened,
becoming lean and predatory, its mouth agape. The kurtikutt backed away, knife
extended. A tentacle briefly wrapped his forearm, coming away with a sucking
sound. Blood sprayed from flesh made ragged; bone shone bright white deep within
the wound. Silent, the First Born passed the kris to his other hand.

He circled, the blade moving slowly back and forth. Blood streamed down his arm
and onto the paving stones. "Beergstromm .... "he hissed.

"His kind .... "Bergstrom fought to make the words. "They...brought the plague.
They are...the Hand."

The First Born grinned. "When you were a small bird," he told the Proteus, "I
should have taken your head then." He lunged, and missed. A tentacle shot out,
slapping his leg. Flesh ripped, blood gouted, and the First Born went down,
rolling in the dust. The Proteus's neck telescoped, the head lunging forward,
jaws wide, fangs gleaming wetly --snapping shut on nothing as the First Born
rolled underneath, the kris slashing upward, cutting through the scaly neck.

Black sap fountained from the stump. The head rolled for meters.

The First Born struggled to his feet, the blood running from him. Tentacles
whipped blindly. He gripped them one after the other, severing each. The trunk
lay at his feet, inky slime pulsing from its wounds.

"Not dead," the First Born said raggedly. "But inconvenienced." He swayed, the
kris slipping from his fingers to clatter on the pavement. Blood drenched his
tunic. Junior went to his side, then looked across the plaza and called his
brothers with a howl that made Bergstrom shiver.

Bergstrom got his legs under him and stood.

"Comrade," Junior said, "you are hurt."

"Nerve damage," Bergstrom said, the words still indistinct. "Stroke, maybe. Like
her." He started toward the kurtikutts, his right foot dragging.

"We both are battle-scarred, Beergstromm." The First Born's muzzle twitched. "I
could die now, I think."

The other kurtikutts ran up, their gnarls and growls filling the square. Junior
cut them off with a roar, then lowered the First Born to the ground. He ripped
his own tunic into strips and began binding his brother's wounds. The First Born
grunted, his eye closing.

"You will not die," Bergstrom said, the barks and grunts strange in his mouth.
"Not unless you are too much a miser to pay a chirurgeon on Chimerine."

Junior gaped at him. The First Born's good eye fluttered open. "You did not know
our tongue before," he said.

"I know it now." Bergstrom's face twisted. "I remember it."

"If a trick this is .... "The First Born tried to rise. "No, it is madness upon
you. A wound in the brain you said, it may have murdered your mate, and now in
you .... "He fell back, breathing hard. "And mad was I to listen to you."

Junior put his hand on his brother's head. "Comrade. Comrade!" Bergstrom looked
at him, trying to focus. "What is this thing in you?"

He shook his head. A thousand voices filled his ears, a million remembrances
crowded in on him, filling him. But already they were fading, slipping from him
one by one.

"Memories," he said. "Answers." He staggered, but the Fifth Born steadied him
before he could fall. "These people...the Bonding. What it was like to be here
when the Hand came down. To die..to feel a million deaths, all at once. How they
twisted the Portal, so it led just one way. How to get home. How we can get
home."

"Madness," the First Born muttered.

"Or not," Junior said. "We can follow him, or wait here for death. For you it
will come sooner, without a chirurgeon, but it will come for all of us soon
enough." To Bergstrom: "You can find the way to Chimerine?"

"With Shorty's help. But first, there's something else that needs doing." He
turned to The Twins. "Bring the shapeshifter to the Outsteppers' gate," he said
in their language. "Now."

They looked to Junior, who barked his assent. They hurried off. Shorty trailed
Bergstrom as he followed unsteadily.

When he reached The Twins, they were standing well back from the Proteus's bead.
One kurtikutt held its trunk, which writhed sluggishly in its grasp; the other
held the tentacles far from its body.

The Proteus's teeth clashed as Bergstrom knelt in front of the sleek skull. It
was metamorphosing, but haltingly. Buds formed on its underside -- the start of
legs, perhaps. Bony ridges thickened, the Proteus's eyes burning from beneath
them. The teeth snapped again, then shortened, withdrawing into the jaw. Lips
formed, wrinkled, spat out: "Death to you. Death to you."

He grasped the skull behind its ferocious mouth, its oily hide writhing under
his hands. "And you're going to live forever," Bergstrom said, "in the room
where all your victims are waiting."

Grunting, he threw the Proteus toward the wall of night.

Its scream was cut short, leaving only silence.

4

The sun came up over the western hills and set the morning mist aglow. The fog
wrapped wooded slopes and green valleys, a turquoise lake burning with dawn's
light. High clouds streaked a delicate blue sky. Not Flanders' sun or sky, but
Chimerine's; still, it made his throat ache to see it. Bergstrom had the bed
raise him up, and held the jewel to the light. The sunlight poured like molten
fire along the lines and channels etched into it, forming patterns he could no
longer read.

The door opened tentatively. "Comrade?" Junior looked in. "It was a long hunt to
find you, the hospital is so large."

"It needs to be," Bergstrom said. "A lot of people get hurt out there." He
slipped the ruby egg under the covers. "Come in."

"Sure thing." He held the door open and the First Born hobbled in, one arm and
one leg wrapped in sleek green bandages. Junior pulled a chair away from the
wall and his brother settled into it.

"I wondered if you could bear to pay a medician," Bergstrom said.

"Thieves, all of them," the First Born growled. "But, good fortune, they don't
know how to bargain. And you, Beergstromm? A damage to the nerves, they tell
me."

"They're repairing it, but it takes time."

"And treasure," the First Born said, "but that hunts for you now. The knowledge
of that place gathered a high price."

"We shouldn't have sold it."

"Make of it a charity?" the First Born rumbled. "And for charity they would heal
both of us, and give you means to live until you are well enough to go out
again? This is the way of it, Beergstromm: To everything there is a price.
Better than most, you know that."

Silence fell across the room. Into it Junior said, "Across all the worlds we
hunt them."'

"And how many of us have they killed?"

The eldest's look turned sour. "Able hunters they are. The fight will be long."

"It'll never end," Bergstrom said. "They're all pieces of the same organism,
like a cancer -- leave one piece alive and it will all grow back. Next time it
will be stronger, smarter. Its hate will be stronger, too. It wants the universe
to itself again."

"My hate also is strong," the First Born said.

Bergstrom sat up with a muffled groan. "We're like animals to them --vermin. The
war probably started when my ancestors were still in the trees. The Outsteppers
fell first, but the Proteus were beaten back. When the shapeshifters returned,
it was as the Hand, making themselves into new strains for each species. Then
the Bonding fell...along with a hundred other races. Now we're the only ones
left to stand against them -- the survivors."

"The Bonding were a gentle people," Junior said.

"Yes." Bergstrom's look was distant. Their memories were gone from him, but he
recalled their flavor. Each of his brothers and sisters, their experiences
stored in crystal matrices -- not dead histories, but undying souls. The gallery
-- not a dusty library, or a monument, but a temple. "You have to be gentle,
when you can read another's thoughts and feel another's pain."

"We are not a gentle people," Junior said. "And we do not have to learn how to
be hunters."

The First Born shifted in his chair, wincing. "For the hurt both we took," he
said, "for the death of Cara Ausstenn, we will kill them each. There is a
bounty, and I will be of wealth from it. You will visit me in the house they
build for the Ruhk'thmar."

Bergstrom frowned. "Not if you get any slower, Chief."

The First Born barked a laugh. Junior tried to help him to his feet, but the
eldest shrugged him off. "I am not so feeble as believes our scholar." Suddenly
he took Bergstrom's hand in his; the kurtikutt's skin was warm and coarse.
"Comrades of the hunt, Beergstromm -- and sixth brother of the Ruhk'thmar, if
you will honor me."

Bergstrom looked into the obsidian eye, flat and dead. "Brothers," he said.

The First Born gripped his hand more tightly, then released him. He glanced over
his shoulder. "My stomach is hollow! The food here is of a garbage heap, and
there's little of it."

"We will search out something fit," Junior said. He watched as his brother
limped from the room, then turned back to Bergstrom. "He will not hunt again,
but he will keep his promise. From his bed he began gathering teams of hunters.
They will be his claws and teeth." He came up to the Led. "And where does the
hunt bring you?"

"I'm going to take Cara home," Bergstrom said. "After that...I don't know. I've
spent my whole life sifting the ruins for bits of the past. For a few moments, I
knew' it all. I lived it. I could spend the rest of my life trying to get that
back again."

"It would be a good life, I think," Junior said. "After you take her home,
comrade, come and find us."

When he had gone, Bergstrom looked out over the green hills and blue skies, so
much like home's. He put his hand around the jewel again and felt in it a
familiar warmth, and a longing. I'm waiting for you on the other side.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," he said as the dawn's light poured through the window.
"You'll have to wait a while longer."