D'arl smiled. "I believe I can do even better than that, sir. I've already been in touch with the young man who suggested the Aventine colony in the first place. His brother, as it happens, is one of the Cobras out there."

H'orme returned the smile. "I see I've trained you better even than I thought. I'm proud to have you as my successor... Committé D'arl."

"Thank you, sir," the younger man managed to say. "May you always be so proud of me."

Together they left the garden, to which H'orme would never return.

Loyalist: 2414

The boundary between field and forest was as sharp as a laser beam, the giant blue-green cyprenes running right up to the half-meter of orange vegebarrier insulating the tender wheat shoots from native plant encroachment. In his more philosophical moments, Jonny saw a multi-leveled yin/yang in the arrangement: tall versus short, old versus young, native versus man-made. At the moment, though, his mood was anything but philosophical.

Looking up from the note, he found the youth who had delivered it standing in a rigid imitation of military attention. "And what exactly is this supposed to mean?" he asked, waving the note paper gently.

"The message is self-explanatory, sir—" the boy began.

"Yes, I can read," Jonny interrupted him. "And one more 'sir' out of you, Almo, and I'm going to tell your father on you. What I meant was, why did Challinor send you all the way out here just to invite me to a meeting? That's what these things are supposed to be for." He tapped the compact phone resting on his hip.

"Cee-two Challinor didn't want to take any chances on word leaking out about this, sir—Jonny," Almo corrected himself hastily. "It's a private meeting, for Cobras only."

Jonny studied the other's face a moment, then folded the paper and stuck it in his pocket. Whatever Challinor was trying to prove, browbeating his messenger boy wouldn't do any good. "You can give Challinor a definite 'maybe,' " he told Almo. "There's a spine leopard that's been poking around the edge of the forest lately. If I don't get it today, I'll have to ride guard with Chin's planter tonight."

"Cee-two Challinor said I should emphasize the meeting was very important."

"So's my word—and I promised Chin he could start his second seedling run by tonight." Jonny reached for his phone. "If you'd like, I can call Challinor and tell him that myself," he suggested.

"No—that's all right," Almo said hastily. "I'll tell him. Thank you for your time." With that he took off across the field toward where his car was waiting.

Jonny felt a smile touch his lips, but his amusement quickly faded. There weren't a lot of teenagers in this part of Aventine—the first two waves of colonists had all been childless, and two succeeding waves of families hadn't made up the deficit—and Jonny had always felt a twinge of pain for the enhanced loneliness he knew Almo and his peers must feel. The four Cobras assigned to Almo's town of Thanksgiving were obvious role models for the teen-aged boys, at least, and Jonny was glad Almo had found a friend in Tors Challinor. At least he used to be glad. Now, he wasn't entirely sure.

Almo's car took off with minimal dust, and Jonny turned both his face and attention to the towering trees. He'd worry about Challinor's cloak and laser later; right now he had a spine leopard to kill. Making sure all the equipment on his belt was secured, he crossed the vegebarrier and entered the forest.

Even after seven years on Aventine Jonny felt a sense of awe whenever he stepped under the ancient canopy of oddly shaped leaves that turned the day into a diffuse twilight. Partly it was the forest's age, he had long ago decided; but partly also it was the humbling reminder of how little mankind knew about the world it had so recently claimed as its own. The forest was teeming with plant and animal life, virtually none of which was really understood. Clicking on his vision and auditory enhancers, Jonny moved deeper into the woods, trying to watch all directions at once.

The extra-loud snap of a branch above and behind him was his only warning, but it was enough. His nanocomputer correctly interpreted the sound as being caused by a large airborne body, and almost before Jonny's brain had registered the sound, his servos had taken over, throwing him to the side just as four sets of claws slashed through the space he'd vacated. Jonny rolled through a somersault—barely missing a gluevine-covered tree—and came up into a crouch. He got a glimpse of the spine leopard as it leaped toward him, razor-edged quills tucked tightly against its forelegs—and again his computer took over.

Standing flatfooted in the open, the only weapons Jonny could bring to bear were his fingertip lasers; but even as it again threw him to the side his computer used them with deadly efficiency. The twin needles of light lanced out, sweeping across the alien creature's head.

The spine leopard screamed, a full-bodied ululation that seemed to bounce off the inside of Jonny's stomach, and its spines snapped reflexively upright on its legs. The instinctive defensive move proved useless; Jonny was already beyond reach of the spine tips. Again he hit the ground, but this time he didn't roll back to his feet. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the spine leopard struggling to get up, apparently oblivious to the black lines crisscrossing its face and to the brain damage behind them. A wound like that would have killed a human outright, but the less centralized alien metabolism wasn't as susceptible to localized destruction. The creature rose to its feet, spines still fully spread.

And the brilliant flash of his antiarmor laser caught the spine leopard in the head... and this time the destruction was more than adequate.

Carefully Jonny got to his feet, wincing at the fresh bruises the battle had given him. His ankle felt warmer than it should have after only a single shot from the antiarmor laser—a heat-sensitization, he'd long suspected, due largely to his overuse of the weapon during the Tyler Mansion escape.

Even on Aventine, it seemed, he couldn't entirely escape the aftereffects of the war.

Taking one last look around him, he pulled out his phone and punched for the operator. "Ariel," the computer's voice said.

"Chin Reston," Jonny told it. A moment later the farmer's voice came on. "Reston here."

"Jonny Moreau, Chin. I got your spine leopard. I hope you didn't want it stuffed—I had to burn its head off."

"Hell with the head. Are you okay?"

Jonny smiled. "You worry too much—you know that? I'm fine; it never laid a spine on me. If you want, I'll put a beacon on it and you can come get the pelt whenever you want."

"Sounds good. Thanks a lot, Jonny—I really appreciate it."

"No charge. Talk to you later." Pressing the off switch, Jonny again punched for the operator. "Kennet MacDonald," he told the computer.

There was a moment of silence. "No answer," the operator informed him.

Jonny frowned. Like all Cobras on Aventine, MacDonald was supposed to carry his phone with him at all times. He was probably out in the forest or somewhere equally dangerous and didn't want to be distracted. "Record a message."

"Recording."

"Ken, this is Jonny Moreau. Call me as soon as you get a chance—preferably before this evening."

Switching off, Jonny returned the phone to his belt and unfastened one of the two tiny transponders from the underside of his emergency pouch. A flick of a switch set it in "operate" mode; stepping over the dead spine leopard, he dropped the device on its flank. For a moment he looked down at the creature, his eyes drawn to the foreleg spines. Aventine's biologists were unanimous in the opinion that the spines' placement and range of angles made them defensive rather than offensive weapons. The only problem was that no one had ever found any creature on the planet that a spine leopard might need such weapons to outfight. Personally, Jonny had no desire to be around when the first of that unknown species was discovered.