For a moment, he was deaf. His gun hand went numb as it was kicked backward as if by seven mules, and the charge of chaff and cloud exploded under his fingers instead of in the air between himself and his target. Splinters of rock ricocheted against his armor, and the fierce pain in his armpit and ribs told him his armor had been pierced. It felt as if the main bullet and two escort bullets, the number three and the number two, had gone off and blown themselves into the icy rock only a foot or less from his hand.

Montrose found himself kneeling, buried up to the neck in a swarming fog of glittering black chaff-particles, but his head was clearly visible to the enemy. A perfect target.

With his other hand, he raised his gun hand up, trying to see if any fingers had been blown off, but he was defeated by the weight of the gun dangling from his wrist and the restricted field of vision (the helmets were not designed to nod forward, nor was there a peep window below the jawline to let a man see his feet). From the sensation, he thought he’d lost a finger, maybe two. With some part of his brain, he knew he should be scrambling to take the gun up in his left hand and squeeze off the remaining escort bullets, hoping for a lucky shot.

With another part of his brain, he noted that being the master of a worldwide system of coffins which had the most advanced medical nanotechnology on the planet tended to make one nonchalant about wounds. His maimed feet from the day before had been healed overnight; because of events like this, he now regarded major wounds as an inconvenience rather than a lifelong tragedy.

Of course, at the moment, the word “lifelong” meant a span measured in fractions of a second. Montrose saw the gunbarrels of Del Azarchel’s weapon, main shot and escort bullets, aim at him, each one seeming larger and deeper than a well.

Del Azarchel had not released his chaff cloud yet. He held his weapon pointing at the helpless Montrose for a moment. His hand did not shake. The aim was straight and true.

Then Del Azarchel pointed at the ground, and fired his main shot. The noise was thunder, ringing so loud it could almost be tasted.

Del Azarchel had deloped.

17

The Swans

1. Interruption

It took Montrose a long moment to realize that he was still alive, and even longer to realize that Del Azarchel had fired at the ground.

Del Azarchel was not looking at Montrose. Unable to turn his helmeted head, to look left and right, Del Azarchel must move his feet. Del Azarchel was turning slowly in a circle.

Clouds of vapor were rising from underfoot in every direction. The snowy ground was steaming, sublimating. The ice was melting and vanishing. Behind Del Azarchel, Montrose could see the glaciers were also toppling. With a noise like drums and a noise like trumpets, first one, then a dozen, then a myriad distant peaks of glaciers collapsed in avalanche toward the earth, like a stronghold of white towers being flattened by a bomb.

There also came a noise like running or thrumming. It was the sound of rain. No clouds were directly overhead, but in the distance all the vapors and fogs of the sky were changing from white to black with freakish, unnatural speed, and had begun pouring rain against the hills on the horizon; and higher and farther away, the rain was pelting against the sides of the Tower.

Every cloud in sight, including feathery high cirrus in the far distant blue, was precipitating.

Del Azarchel on heavy feet turned back toward Montrose, and pointed underfoot, and then at the hills with his white glove, gesturing toward the unnaturally sublimating snow. “You found a way to kill Exarchel. All the nanotechnology in the world’s water supply is going inert. Your final move was a sacrifice move. You just shot your horse, didn’t you? You allowed Pellucid to be infiltrated, knowing full well that I could not pass up the chance to have a Xypotech of that size housing my soul, and I sent Exarchel into it, and the infiltrator was infiltrated in turn. But why did you wait until I showed the black palm? Ah! You needed the deadman switch turned on, did you not, so that every single copy of Exarchel, wherever it might be stored or howsoever it might be encrypted, would be linked by one link. That was the link you needed. Very clever.”

Montrose raised his unwounded arm and pointed upward. Del Azarchel craned his neck.

There were thousands and tens of thousands of figures in the air, flowing out from the Tower like seedlings blown from a dandelion: Men and women, large and small, winged in silver. With them also were dolphins and several types of whales. One and all, including the sleek sea mammals large and small, were borne aloft on great silvery wings, each feather glittering with eyes.

Montrose spoke in a strained voice, wincing and panting. “They waited, hoping I would shoot you, which would take care of Jupiter for them.”

Del Azarchel’s voice was hoarse with horror. “Them?”

He did not need to say anything aloud: Montrose could guess the rapid pattern of clues snapping into shape in his mind, such as the amateur awkwardness of the last war, the apparent lack of effect from the spread of the Anarchist Vector.

Del Azarchel forced a lilt of humor into his trembling words. “Clever! So your liberty-loving Anchorites had a method of hiding their thoughts even from intimate psychoscopic examination, did they? When they drilled down to the buried seas, it was not to propagate a war. That war was one they knew they must lose—it was just to spread the mental virus. Like your Giants, they sacrificed themselves to let their philosophy prevail.”

“Not a philosophy. A negative-information semiotic technique to reformat the mind-body relation. It comes from the Monument.”

“You think you’ve won this round, you and your pets—”

Montrose, kneeling in the black cloud, spoke in a rasping voice. “No pets of mine. Free men. Equals. They figured out you have no intention whatever of fighting the Hyades, that your whole star raid drill, everything from taking a century to build your skyhook to herding the entire world population under the planetary crust for decades, was just a ruse to get at me.”

Sir Guiden stepped into the cloud of chaff still spreading from Montrose’s pistol. With one arm around Montrose, and a whine of strength amplification motors in his elbows, he helped Montrose to his feet and led him out of the glittering dark cloud of smog. He disconnected the pistol from Montrose’s numb gun hand, and clicked the safeties into place, and worked the lever to open the firing chamber.

Sarmento helped Del Azarchel out of his helmet.

Sir Guiden did the same for Montrose. The two men stood bareheaded in the wind, with snow melting underfoot and rain and winged men pouring down. Del Azarchel’s dark hair was whipped by rainy wind, his grimace surprisingly white in his dark beard. Montrose’s pale red hair hung lank, nose jutting out of his squarish misfeatured face, his lantern jaw like the toe of a boot, his eyes like two embers, unblinking.

Montrose and Del Azarchel stood a moment, merely staring at each other.

Montrose said, “Why didn’t you shoot?”

Del Azarchel did not answer, but said, “I grant quarter until we can re-arm and find a better field. Agreed?”

Montrose said, “Agreed. And next time, we need to pick our judge of honor more carefully. I was not expecting her to interfere.”

“I was not expecting you to fall with such comedic composure on your buttocks,” said Del Azarchel.

“And I was not expecting your brain to melt,” said Montrose.

Of one accord, they turned and looked at Alalloel. The strange, all-dark eyes of her face seemed for the first time to hold expression: an exultation of triumph.