Christ just let me get turn this damn chop- hate leaving Angie any back to my family. per around, if you ask way. God, it'd be

You can HAVE this me. Let 'em have stink- good to just be back crap. I-what the ing Ellis if they want home with her, snug hell's with Johnson? it. Hey, what's with gling. Huh? "Welcome-"

"Welcome to the Johnson? He's looking Lord Jesus, he just took

Rox"? Oh God, John- pretty damn weird the safety off son! NO! Please God don't

I screamed again. Screamed with the sudden death of the mindvoices and their wailing pain, screamed with the nats I knew were dying. Screamed because it was all so useless and unnecessary.

Outside, the jumped chopper lost control in a wail of shrieking metal. It exploded before it hit the water. I saw the glare wash over the buildings of the Rox.

I've never heard so many people die at once.

I heard the other nat squads slowly realize that some thing was wrong. I felt their outrage and horror as the carnage echoed over their headsets and radios. I felt their fury.

Their sudden surge of will.

My Wall fell in tatters, shredded by nat hatred. They poured through.

I was staring at the Temptation again, sightlessly. Everyone in the building was gaping at me. I knew they were waiting for Governor Bloat to do something, but I couldn't think.

I could hear them. I could hear everything-as the two choppers touched down in cold tornadoes of dust and vomited their loads, as a boat full of rangers and cops hit the shores of my Rox and scrambled out. I heard screaming and the percussive bark of gunfire. I witnessed the assault through their minds.

It didn't last long. I'd like to claim that it was something I did or that the jokers did, but it really wasn't. I'd already told Kafka to take one of the walkie-talkies, thinking I'd direct him where the nats were. But even as the squad of jokers ran to the compound where the choppers had landed, the jumpers, directed by Blaise, continued to attack. They were taking the cops, making them turn and fire on their own. The nats quickly found that they couldn't trust their friends. It wasn't the damn kids or the ugly jokers who were the enemy here in the Rox. It was themselves.

They died.

I felt them die. I watched the scenes through their minds, through their thoughts.

Leo caught a glimpse of himself in his buddy's visor. He was thinking that they looked like a bunch of damn robots behind the helmets. He even thought it was funny. He was starting to say so to Tom, his partner, when Tom shuddered. He looks so strange… Then Tom whipped around his weapon before Leo could move. Tom was shooting at anything and everything, just holding the trigger down and spraying. Leo saw a line of slugs rip open his stomach and spill purple guts into his cupped hands.

He was dying. Cold mud pressed against his face, but in his mind was another image. He was holding a baby wrapped in a Muppet Babies blanket. In his thoughts, I could see him holding the kid up to his stubbled cheek. He kissed her.

"Good night, darling. Daddy'll be back in the morning, I promise. You be good." He replayed that kiss again and again, crying as his life pumped out from the hole in his chest and the vision spiraled away into the darkness of unconsciousness. "Daddy loves you. Hell be back. I promise. I love you."

A park ranger stood on open ground near the docks. I could sense the hot suppressor of the CAR-15 he cradled against his chest. He looked down at the girl he'd just killed.

Just a kid, just a fucking kid, Jesus, not much older than me… Then his thoughts moved away as he sensed someone coming up behind him. it's Captain McGinnis. Only I could hear this captain's thoughts, too, and I knew that it wasn't McGinnis but Molly Bolt, and the only thing in her mind was a bloodlust.

Blaise's mind was loud in the turmoil, his mindshields carelessly down. He thought it was funny. He thought it was hilarious how Durg could kill them so easily.

The battle was a rout. I could hear it. The nats realized that their strategy had been blown to hell and that they were likely to die here. Their retreat was short and bloody and complete. They fled the Rox, not even dragging away the dead and wounded they found in their path. They piled back into the choppers and the boat.

Blaise didn't want to let them go. He wanted to kill them all. I shouted to Kafka through the walkie-talkie, knowing Blaise would be listening. I told him to let them go.

Let them go.

Blaise didn't like it. But… Durg said something to him that I could not hear, and Blaise just watched as the choppers wheeled into the gray sky, as the boat cast lines from the dock and careened away from the Rox.

I don't know what I would have done if Blaise had defied me. Nothing, probably.

I could hear the wounded and the dying. Ahh, those I heard very well. Even though jumpers and jokers were shouting and dancing in an impromptu victory celebration all around, I didn't share any of their happiness.

I just stared straight ahead, at the Temptation and its bizarre images. I looked at the burning city in the deep background of the painting and the soldiers spilling over the landscape.

I had felt nats die for the first time. A helpless voyeur, I watched them, and it hurt. It hurt just as if they were jokers. They had families and friends, and they weren't any better or worse than my own people. Not really. Maybe, maybe they could have opened fire on the jokers here. Jokers are ugly and misshapen and not even human, if you know what I mean. But they would've had trouble with the jumpers, with the teenagers who look, after all, just like their own kids or nieces and nephews or maybe even themselves a few years back.

Worse, I knew I could've taken care of this myself without any bloodshed if I'd been a little smarter, if I'd just shut up and let the Wall do its work.

I looked at the Temptation and begged it to give some solution. So tell me, is this what victory's supposed to feel like? Is it always such a sour, rotten fruit? Does it always leave you feeling so guilty?

St. Anthony, tormented by his own demons, didn't give me an answer.

Lovers

She drove the body unmercifully. She knew she had achieved a small measure of telepathy, but no one was listening! Her constant mental cries for help also seemed to be taking a toll on the body. The last seven times she had awakened, she had been overwhelmed with nausea. She was having trouble keeping down the gluey mass of oatmeal that was her first meal and the canned beef stew or canned chili that inevitably made up the second and final meal of her waking time. And Peanut had not returned.

"I ruined everything, by trying to escape," she whispered. Tachyon wondered what the body must look like. Gaunt from lack ou food, muscle tone degenerating with each week of captivity that passed. And a bath. Ideal, she would kill for a tub of hot water. It made her crazy even to contemplate washing out the tangled greasy hair, the sluice of hot soapy water across the shoulders and back. Clean pajamas and crisp sheets with the smell of sunshine in them because they had been dried on a line…

Nausea shook her, and Tach bolted for her privy bucket. Vomited up everything in her stomach. Shivering, she retreated into a corner. Tach leaned against the wall, pressed her cheek against the clammy concrete wall. The coolness helped, and she breathed slowly and deeply until the spasm passed. Concerned now, she lay her fingertips on her pulse. Without a watch it was impossible to be certain, but it seemed normal enough. Back of the hand to the cheek. No fever. No pain or ache in the extremities. Probably not a flu. Food poisoning?

Unlikely-the heaves were mild, lacked that violent, almost projectile quality that accompanied food poisoning. Her mind continued to run symptoms and causes. Hit one, and froze. A vise had suddenly begun to close around her temples.