“How far away am I?” Ponter asked.

Hak replied into his cochlear implants. “Assuming they haven’t moved, they’re just over the next rise.” A beat. “You should take pains to be silent,” continued the Companion. “You don’t want to alert Jock to your presence.”

Ponter frowned. You don’t have to tell an old hunter how to sneak up on his prey.

Mary’s Companion spoke into her cochlear implants. “Ponter is only fifty meters away now. If you can keep Jock talking a little longer…”

Mary nodded just enough for Christine to detect the movement. “Wait!” said Mary. “Wait! There’s something you don’t know!”

Jock’s aim didn’t waver. “What?”

Mary thought as fast as she could. “The—the Neanderthals…they’re…they’re psychic!”

“Oh, come on!” said Jock.

“No, no—it’s true!” Suddenly Ponter appeared from over a ridge, behind Jock, silhouetted against the lowering sun. Mary fought to keep her expression neutral. “That’s why we have religious feelings, and they don’t. Our brains are trying to contact other minds, but can’t; something’s wrong with the neural wiring—it makes us think there’s some higher presence that we can’t quite connect with. But in them, the mechanism works properly. They don’t have religious experiences”—Christ, she wasn’t buying this herself; how could she expect him to?—“they don’t have religious experiences because they are always in contact with other minds!”

Ponter was moving his splayed legs in an exaggerated fashion, carefully stepping across the snow, making barely any sound. Jock was downwind of Ponter; if he’d been a Neanderthal, he’d doubtless have detected him by now, but he wasn’t a Neanderthal, thank God…

“Think of the value of telepathy in covert operations!” said Mary, raising her voice without making it obvious that she was trying to cover what little sound Ponter was making. “And I’m on the trail of the genetic cause of it! You kill me and the Barasts, and the secret is gone for good!”

“Why, Dr. Vaughan!” exclaimed Jock. “An exercise in dis-information. I’m most impressed.” Ponter was now as close as he could get to Jock without his own long shadow—damn the low winter sun!—falling into Jock’s field of view. Ponter interlocked his fists, ready to smash them down on Jock’s head, and—

Jock must have heard something. He began to wheel around a fraction of a second before Ponter’s hands came crashing down. Instead of staving in Jock’s skull, the fists connected with Jock’s left shoulder. Mary heard the sound of cracking bone, and Jock let out a yowl of pain and dropped the bomb box. But he still had the gun in his right hand and he squeezed off a shot. Jock didn’t have a Neanderthal’s shielding browridge, and when he’d turned toward the sun, the glare had blinded him for an instant; the shot went wide.

There was no way Mary could reach Ponter safely, so she did the next best thing: she ran to her left, joining Reuben behind the tree. Ponter let out a great bellowing roar and swung again, a roundhouse that sent Jock sprawling face-down in a snowbank. The Neanderthal moved quickly, yanking Jock’s right arm back, pulling it in a direction it was not meant to go, splitting the air with another hideous craaack! Jock screamed, and, in a blur of motion, Ponter had the gun. He tossed it away with such force that it made a whizzing sound as it sliced through the cold, dry air. Ponter then swung Jock around so that he was facing him, and Ponter hauled back his own right arm, its massive fist balled.

Jock rolled to the right, and using his one good arm, he clutched at the silver box, drawing it closer to him. He did something to it, and white gas started pouring out of the box. Ponter was only intermittently visible through the cloud, but Mary saw him grab Jock by the throat and haul back with his other arm, aiming his fist for the center of Jock’s face.

“Ponter, no!” shouted Louise, running out from behind the boulder. “We need to know—”

Ponter was already committed to his punch, but must have backed off slightly in response to Louise’s words. Still, he connected with an impact that made a sound like a hundred pounds of leather dropping to the floor. Jock’s head snapped back, and he slumped to the snow-covered ground, eyes closed.

The cloud continued to expand. Mary ran forward, going straight for the box. Gas continued to pour from it, obscuring her vision. She searched with her hands for some sort of cutoff valve, but found nothing.

Reuben had also run forward, but he’d headed for Jock. He was now crouching down, taking the man’s pulse. “He’s unconscious, but alive,” he said, looking up at Ponter.

Mary took off her coat, trying to wrap up the bomb. She seemed to be managing to contain the box, but then it exploded, the coat shredding, Mary’s skin being sliced in a dozen places, and the cloud expanding more and more. It was like being in a super-dense London fog; Mary could only see a meter or two ahead.

Louise was now bending over Jock. “How long will he be out?”

Reuben looked up and shrugged a little. “You heard the sound of Ponter’s fist connecting. Jock’s got a concussion at least, and probably a skull fracture. It’ll be hours, anyway.”

“But we need to know!” said Mary.

“Know what?” asked Reuben.

Mary’s heart was pounding erratically, her stomach was roiling, acid was clawing up her gullet. “Which version of the virus he used!”

Reuben was completely lost. “What?” he said, getting up.

“Mary modified the virus design last night,” said Louise. “If Jock made his stock of it this morning, then…”

Mary wasn’t listening. Her head was swimming, pounding. She wanted to scream. If Jock had used the codon writer to run off the virus that morning, then he had produced Mary’s modified Surfer Joe. But if he’d made it earlier, then the cloud they were standing in was the original Wipeout version, meaning—

Mary’s eyes were stinging, and she was having trouble keeping her balance.

—meaning that goddamned Gliksin bastard lying there in the snow had just killed the man she loved.

At the moment, Ponter looked fine; no virus worked that fast. He ripped strips of mammoth hide off Reuben’s coat, and Louise and Reuben used them to tie up the unconscious Jock’s arms and legs. As soon as he was trussed up, Reuben and Ponter carried Jock into the nearest building—probably the one Dekant Dorst had gone into, although hopefully she had long since left. The sun had set, and it was getting bitterly cold, but, despite everything, they wouldn’t leave him out at the mercy of the elements.

Reuben closed the building’s door, then he and Ponter returned to where Mary and Louise were. “Come on, big fella,” Reuben said. “Let’s get you to the mine—we can try the decontaminating lasers there.”

Ponter looked up, his blond-brown eyebrow climbing his browridge; like Mary, he clearly hadn’t thought of that.

“Do you think there’s a chance?” said Mary, looking now at Reuben, her eyes bloodshot, her face so desperate for a miracle.

“I don’t see why not,” said Reuben. “I mean, if those lasers work the way you said they do, they should zap the virus molecules, no? It will be a solution for Ponter, at least—although perhaps there’s a better decontamination facility here in the Center.” He looked at Ponter. “Isn’t that where your hospitals are?”