That’s great. I’m glad to be here. But now what? Will Albert’s presence interfere? Will his biotic anchor pin the glazier to “reality” when the crucial moment comes to fly free?

Yosil’s ghost has finished strapping himself in. With enemy soldier-dits breaking down the final door, he can’t procrastinate anymore. Preparing to let the pendulum fly, he gathers nerve for a vocal command.

“Initiate final stage!” he shouts to a control computer. “Launch the rockets!”

So. Preparing for battle, I can feel reassured. Whatever is about to happen to the city isn’t my fault. The mass murder of so many won’t be my doing. Their karma can’t affect me.

I’m as much a victim as anybody else, right?

I will make their sacrifice worthwhile.

A single wan star gleamed through the roughcut window, twinkling like the panel lights of a dark machine that nearly filled the room at the top of the stairs. I felt ominous vibrations through the ground, rather than my ruined ears, as the mechanism awoke. Slim objects tightened formation in the feeder magazine, each bearing scythelike crimson symbols. I wasn’t too far gone yet to recognize an automatic launching system. Damn. Not good.

No, it isn’t.

Perhaps you should stop it.

Instead of nagging, what I needed were ideas how. How was I supposed to stop it!

Buttons glowed, about the height of a standing man’s shoulder. One of them might cut the launcher from its remote controller. But how to get up there? The weapon’s flank, military-smooth, offered no gripholds suitable for a one-armed man sprawled on the floor, even more hopeless than trying to climb aboard that autokiln downstairs.

“I … can’t …” came a hoarse whisper from my throat. “It’s too far.”

Then improvise.

I looked around, seeing no convenient ledge or chair to clamber on. No handy tools, or even bits of stone to throw. The cheap clothes that Aeneas Kaolin gave me, half a lifetime ago, were mostly gone, shredded to useless ribbons.

TARGETING COMMANDS ACCEPTED, said a row of dire words. COMPUTING TRAJECTORIES. There followed a series of numbers. Even in my dismal state I could recognize range and heading data.

Some maniac is shooting at the city!

I guessed Beta. Doubtless he murdered Professor Maharal in order to take over this facility. Why? Desperate because all his ditnapping schemes were collapsing, I guessed. My old foe must hope to wreak such havoc, the authorities will have more urgent chores than chasing down a copyright thief.

Frustrated and supine on the floor, I knew my theory made no sense, and didn’t care. What mattered was stopping him. I’d give anything. My pitiful life, certainly. I already surrendered my left arm to the cause. What else could I possibly …

A shout escaped my corroding mouth. Some things are only obvious after you think of them.

I did have one tool that might work, if I hurried.

It wasn’t going to be easy … but what is?

The self-made army of stolen war-golems finally broke through. While Ritu and I were shepherded over the last shattered robot defenders, a dozen of Beta’s scarred veterans hurried the other way, rushing to help the rear guard. How long could they resist the force battling toward us from the Base?

Not long. I had a feeling things would start happening fast.

They had better. I may not have much time.

Smoke fumed around the edges of an armored door with a big hole burned through. Waves of heat still poured from recently molten metal as we passed into what must be the buried lair of Yosil Maharal. Ritu and I found ourselves standing on a parapet overlooking a scene that was altogether bizarre — a grotto filled to bursting with equipment, much of it jerry-rigged by stringing together hardware with familiar UK logos.

Surely this must be the hoard of electroceramic gear that Kaolin accused Maharal of swiping from work. What on Earth was he trying to accomplish here? I wondered. No doubt some avenue of research that Aeneas forbade him to pursue in the company’s R D department.

Flooding to me came foreboding words, “the curse of Frankenstein,” followed by a clipped image of a mushroom cloud.

Huge antennalike coils funneled from all angles toward a pair of humanoid figures, splayed at opposite ends of the room, facing each other with arms pinioned wide. One of these dittos was dark red, the other a specialized shade of a gray that I sometimes wear myself. Ornate inloading apparatus festooned all over their clay bodies, though I couldn’t imagine what so many souped-up linkages could be for.

Between the pair of dittos, some kind of giant clockwork mechanism kept time to the swaying of a huge pendulum. And damn if there wasn’t a golem there too, riding back and forth like a child on a swing!

That one was yelling its head off.

Those were some of the features my eyes saw. More interesting were things that eyes weren’t meant to see.

First, was I already dying of some awful fever? I had felt better crossing into the lab’s bright light and cooler air after that bloody tunnel. Only now, nausea waves skewered my viscera, like those gut-churning sensations that astronauts used to report, back when realfolk actually risked their lives in space. Bowels clenched, nearly as hard as my teeth, which barely let escape a reedy moan.

This is it, I thought. Some fast-acting super-virus. Death in minutes.

Too bad. I came so close to finding out what was going on here.

Should I have stayed home instead, and get blown up? At least it would have been quick. I never achieved my real goal, setting out on Tuesday night.

Clara, I’m sorry. I really tried -

More symptoms teemed, clouding the senses. I could swear the space between the captive golems, which had seemed as clear as air moments ago, now rippled and fluttered like some dense fluid! The undulations had a dreamlike quality, impossible to pin down, like a smoke-sculptor’s interpretation of manic mood swings.

I had a brief impression that battalions of identical ghostly entities occupied the confined zone, thronging in limitless multitudes, yet somehow uncrowded, with plenty of room in their well-ordered ranks for more. Except when the pendulum passed through. Then brusque waves roiled, transforming many of the marching figures, giving them a face.

Floating before me, I pictured the visage of Yosil Maharal.

“Albert, are you all right?” Ritu murmured, but I shook her hand away. Let her take it as anger for getting me into this fix. I just didn’t want to infect her.

I didn’t want anybody infected. So, despite stomach convulsions, apparitions, and disorientation, I forced myself to look away from shenanigans in the center of the lab, aiming instead at the support machinery lining the grotto walls, seeking any clue about those germ agents. They were all that mattered.

There.

Bleary-eyed, I spotted a computer. One of those expensive AI-XIX models. Damn smart for silicon. One of Maharal’s chief tools, surely, maybe even a master process controller. And just the sort of thing that a fellow like me could smash to bits, without having to know specifics of how or why.

Can I make it all the way down there and do it quickly?

At least it was a goal.

A nearby Beta — perhaps the very same war-dit who spoke to us in the tunnel — grabbed the balcony rail and shouted in a voice whose suddenly plaintive tone surprised me. I never heard the like from Beta before.