As always, hearing Isoke's eager voice and realizing his responsibilities to her, Dos Santos tried to imagine how Master Trexler would have responded. "That's wonderful, Isoke. But we're still left with the problem of getting Number Seven up and running."

"Can't you just dump the Instruction Set into the River right where you are?"

The Master patiently explained to his apprentice about the need to denature the ribozyme contaminants with the Machine Lake equipment first. Mixing the Instruction Set with the contaminant would simply produce undifferentiated glop.

"What can we do then? You were right about the remaining ladybugs being sabotaged just like yours. The RA has no other transports available. We can hire a private

thopter or borrow a government one, but it'll take hours to get to you, even from the closest point. You're deep into the low-tech preserve around the Lake… "

Dos Santos considered the Vortifisher standing before him. The splice's mouth gaped open, tongue hanging as it panted nervously. Muscles beneath its spotted coat twitched.

"I think I have transportation. It's slow, but it's worth a shot. Send out a flier as backup, though. Tell it to look for me on the River."

Signing off, Dos Santos addressed the Hyena.

"Can your boat make it to Machine Lake?"

The Hyena smiled. "This is good boat. Humans made this boat. Never stops! Eats River and spins tail, all day. Fast, fast, fast!"

"How fast?"

This question brought a frown to the cultivar's canine face. After pondering a moment, it answered. "See that clo'tree? Here to there, ten breaths."

"Twenty knots," interpolated the kibe.

Dos Santos hissed. "Two hours or more to the Lake! It'll have to do. Let's go."

Dos Santos and the splice pushed the beached coracle off, then jumped in. The Hyena prodded control ganglia on a hump near the tiller, and the organic motor came to life. An intake on the bow fed silicrobes-online or off, it mattered not-to the org-engine which broke them down and stole their ATP. The thick, whiplike macroflagellum at the rear of the craft soon had them up to full speed.

"We stop at my village and tell pack where I go."

Dos Santos opened his mouth to argue, then thought better of it. The splice's teeth, not to mention its spears, gave the River Master pause, despite the comforting presence of his Intratec pistol. Although human-designed, this was no collar-wearing domestic cultivar, but a wild one, with the freewill to fend for itself. Although it was now friendly and relying on the human to repair the River, its attitude could easily change. Unless he wanted to kill this one out of hand-a repugnant choice-he would have to compromise…

"All right. But we can't waste time."

"Go very fast. Mate and cubs must know, or fear."

Splices and their pretensions to humanity! Just what he needed now…

Dos Santos dropped to a crouch in the seatless boat. Trailing a hand in the River, he and the kibe used the time to work up the formula for the denaturing compound that would destroy the toxin. All seemed clear, except-there were still strings of mysterious purpose in the contaminant…

After some time, the Vortifisher village appeared in a clearing on the upstream bank.

Although the pure silicrobe medium of the upstream third of the River was lifeless, the downstream two-thirds, with its mix of water and 'crobes, supported an entire ecosystem of engineered lifeforms. Near the top of the food chain was the Hyenas' main sustenance, the vortifishes.

The interface between upstream and downstream channels was normally an orderly zone of increasing and decreasing speed gradients, thanks to the programmed interactions

of the two types of silicrobes. However, chaotic factors, pattern seeds, occasionally caused whirlpools-vortices-of lesser or greater dimensions to butterfly into existence. These were dealt with by the various species of vortifishes, large, powerful, wide-mouthed organisms who derived their sustenance from gobbling the rogue silicrobes (and only the rogues), destroying the vortices in the process.

It took skill and luck and courage for the Hyenas to ride their small boats to the very edge of the vortices and spear their prey, but the cynocephali managed quite superbly-as they had been engineered to do.

Retreating through layers of shimmerstat windows, Dos Santos focused on the village of podhuts. The bank was thronged with welcoming Hyenas, hunters brandishing their spears, mothers carrying up to four nursing babies in special slings.

Suddenly, the villagers began to scream and gesture, expressions of fear on their faces.

The Hyena throttled down until they stood still. Dos Santos turned to look out to midRiver.

A huge vortice was forming.

"Peej, this is impossible. Silicrobes do not come online by themselves-"

Dos Santos loosened his splatpistol in its holster. "It's happening, though."

Something, some form, was beginning to rise up out of the vortice. 'Fishes nibbled at its base without effect.

Matte black, the figure was plainly formed out of silicrobes. But the 'crobes were agglomerating in ways they had never been designed to. Flowing, shifting, rearing up-

ward in a column thrice the mass of a man, they obviously sought to express some programmed form.

At last they succeeded.

An ebony Neptune towered out of the River. Seaweed hair, serene eidolon face, clamshell beard, massive arms and chest, fish tail below the waist.

The River had materialized its monotone god.

"It's an autocatalytic set," whispered a horrified Dos Santos.

He had heard of such things arising, back when the Rivers had been in their prototype stage. Feedback among rogue components bootstrapped primitive, self replicating A-life out of the isotropic soup.

But this was different. This was planned by the Walton League, their ace in the hole, something vastly more dangerous.

Dos Santos squirted off an alert to Isoke as he raised his pistol and rattled off a full clip.

The intelligent bullets, loaded with instantaneous lysing agents, found their mark, but without apparent effect. Dos Santos had known that the lysing agents wouldn't work against nonprotein A-life, but he had been hoping the bullets would disrupt the thing's coherence. Instead, they had passed harmlessly through.

Now the autocat began to advance purposefully across the River toward the coracle, seeming to ride on its tail, but in actuality propelled by silicrobe flow, much like a slidewalk. The thing's actions were so intent, it must register somewhere low on the Turing scale, perhaps even as smart as the River itself had been-

The splash of the Hyena pilot jumping overboard distracted Dos Santos. He turned to do the same-

Too late.

Neptune had him in its arms.

Dos Santos 's face was pressed into the greasy bulk of the autocat's chest. He was blind, suffocating-

Then he began to sink into the creature.

His own River was killing him, a hot darkness extinguishing his life.

And on top of everything else, his suit had gone crazy.

The contents of the system of flexipumps and thin, biolastic water reservoirs in his clothing were shifting, pooling in one place, at his left breast. The concentrated lump of water swelled, pressing into his flesh and the bone beneath it. He tried to scream, but couldn't. Would the fist of water punch through to his heart-?

Then he felt the overstressed reservoir burst outward, scores of needle-like microjets exiting through the suddenly dilated millipores concentrated in a patch of his suit.

Suddenly he fell, landing in the coracle, which rocked crazily, but stayed afloat.

Inactive silicrobe streams dribbled off him. He coughed out what seemed like lungfuls of the stuff, blew gobs out his nose. Finally, he could breathe.