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  When the everlasting moment was over, when he held her and she buried her face against his chest and cried, he stroked her hair and looked into the darkness surrounding them both, and doubted his sanity. I can't be feeling this, he thought. I can't. But the words rang hollow even to him.

  Presently the force took them again, with equal power, as if the whole universe were moving in them, irresistibly. Afterward he held her, and she held him, and together, without words, they waited for morning.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  BLACK FIRE

  Birdsong woke him. Real or recorded? Alex opened gummy eyelids and looked into the face of the woman sleeping in his arms. He watched her for a bit, almost holding his breath. Her breathing was slow and even, and she wore a slight smile. A smug smile?

  Unbidden, his brain called up vivid tactile images of last night.

  My God, he thought, disbelieving. That was one hell of a powerful

  experience! He watched her face, tenderly, and wondered when she would wake up. Then more memories intruded.

  Eames' malice, Gwen's fright, Mary-em's tears. They fell into a pattern.

  Neutral scent.

  Why didn't I see it?

  Because my brain was running on neutral scent. And it acti­vates emotions already there. ...omy god.

  He shook Acacia until she stirred and clung to him, making

  baby-sounds, her lips curled in a satisfied smile. Her eyes opened. They seemed huge to him, and it was all he could do to merely smile in return.

  "Morning, handsome," she yawned. She snuggled closer to him in the bag. "You certainly know how to treat a lady."

  "Wish we had time for thirds."

  "Well?"

  "I'm starting to remember things. We'd better get back to the others. We could be facing a disaster."

  He wriggled out from between the bags and stretched, the cool windless morning air sweeping away the remaining cobwebs. Aca­cia watched, the bag pulled up to her neck, as he pulled on his pants. "You sure we have to get back?" She still seemed half-asleep.

  Alex nodded and pulled his sleeping bag from atop her. She shivered and yelped, scrambling for her clothes. She was saying something to him, but he wasn't listening. Why? Why would a thief waste something so valuable on a vicious practical joke?

  Not until she threw her arms around his neck did he snap alert. "Hey there, you. You're strange. I mean really odd, but I like you anyway." She bunched up her sleeping bag and tucked it under an arm.

  She had to run to keep up with him, and some part of him felt sorry that he didn't have more to share with her. But sorry or not, he had to deal with something far more urgent: the thief knew who he was. He must have used some of his stolen flask of "neu­tral scent" to put The Griffin out of action while... while what? What was the thief doing last night?

  The campground was a mess. Gamers littered the ground. S.J. had gotten sick on himself. Mary-em lay on her side beneath a twisted old tree, far from her sleeping bag. Dried tears streaked her face. Owen and Margie lay close to the ashes of last night's fire, half out of their zipped-together bags, both naked, their clothes piled untidily about them.

  Adrenalin-doped blood pounded in Alex's throat. Too few.

  Where are the rest?

  Eames? Alex spotted the Warrior curled up with Captured Princess. Check.

  Chester? Slumped sitting up, with his face between his knees. And Tony was splayed out near the Lore Master's feet, snoring

  loudly. His twisted sleeping bag must be half strangling him. Red scratches laced his cheeks.

  S. J. Waters: in his bag, sleeping like a baby. Gina: missing. Now what was Gina doing away from Chester? Maibang and Kibu­gonai: missing, maybe getting breakfast. What tendencies in an actor might be accented by "neutral scent"?

  Gwen? Ollie? "Cas, do you see Ollie or Gwen? Or Maibang?"

  "Maibang left when the Game broke off last night. Gwen and Ollie generally go off in the bushes anyway..." But she looked worried now. "I'll go after them."

  "Good. Anyone else you find, too."

  Acacia pushed off into the Brazilian plant life, calling.

  Chester Henderson's head jerked upright. He wiped his eyes clear with the back of his hand and looked about him. The sense of something seriously wrong came home to him, and when he saw Alex he frowned. The Lore Master pulled himself up and paused a moment to balance. "All right, Tegner. What do you know about this?"

  "I don't know much. I know we were all crazy last night, and I don't think it was the beer."

  Henderson still seemed woozy. He jumped up and down a few times to get his circulation going, and surveyed his Gaming party. "What a mess. If Lopez spiked those pizzas-" He shook his head. "That's too crazy."

  He reached down to shake Mary-em's shoulder. Griffin took his cue and woke up Eames, checking the big man's face for damage. There didn't seem to be much more than a badly split lip. Earnes winced the first time he tried to move; then got up, moving like an old man, and went over to Mary-em. They sat down together and spoke in low voices.

  By now most of the Garners were awake and moving. Neutral scent didn't leave a hangover... not a physical hangover, any­way. Gina came wobbling in out of the woods, and Griffin cocked a curious ear when Chester went to meet her. The Lore Master reached a hand out to her, stroking her red hair, and she huddled at his chest. "Axe you all right, Gina?" She nodded wordlessly.

  "I really don't remember much. After you got into logic puzzles with 5.J.

  (delete this)

  the power of their ancestors' tindalos. They swore to defend their Cargo until all of the European thieves are dead, or all the Fore. They... they bragged about what they'd do to you. One of them offered to give me your... private parts," she said with evident distaste. "That was for my benefit. Partly."

  "But they were going to fight."

  "They meant it. They were egging themselves on."

  "Then where are they?"

  Lady Janet shrugged.

  She'll be one hell of an actress, Alex thought. She'll be too good for Gaming. Will she give it up?

  The Garners bunched up around them. Acacia dropped with her back against Alex's knees; but her head was up, alert for the next attack. The enemy had last been seen hiding among the trees at the volcano's base. Where were they now?

  Chester stood up. "Everybody got his breath back?"

  They charged up the last fifty meters to the rim, each screaming his own war cry. At the lip of the crater they paused, feet skidding in the loose rock.

  A few wisps of steam floated within the bowl, obscuring part of the view, but the crater seemed as deserted as the slope. Nothing human showed at all. Chester ordered, "Ollie, Gina, stay here with Lady Janet. The rest of us are going in."

  Crevices in the rock vented more steam as Alex slid down into the mists. The rock was loose enough to make him cautious, but the incline wasn't as severe as he had feared. Digging in with his heels stabilized his balance.

  The body of water at the bottom was not much bigger than a pond. It steamed gently. He caught Chester's eye. "Still no de­fenders."

  "I don't like it either."

  "Here!" Owen called, and Alex turned to see the older man scrambling towards something dark and egg-shaped. Alex checked sideways and up towards the lip for visitors again, and followed Braddon.

  As the shape became clearer, Griffin felt a chill. The fins at­tached to the blunt end said "bomb" so clearly he could almost hear it tick. The others had caught the same message; their head­long rush slowed to a cautious advance. At last they stood in an uncertain semicircle about the bomb.

  It was darkly corroded metal, a pointed cylinder. The flat rock

  it lay on had been positioned like an altar and draped with white cloth: a parachute. A glass jar held fresh flowers.

  Even S.J. looked a little disconcerted. "What in the world do we do with this, Chester?" He edged closer to it, to within five feet, but still couldn't bring himself to touch it. "Can we carry it
out? This baby has to weigh two or three hundred kilograms. Margie?"

  "I wouldn't know how to move it, Chester. Across flat ground, maybe..." Her eyes lit up. "Wait just a minute. How did the Black Hats get it in here in the first place?"

  "Good thinking. It had to be magic." Chester walked around the bomb in a decreasing spiral, fascinated. "I don't know if we have enough power, though."

  Tony was giving the bomb plenty of room. "Maybe we don't want to fool with it at all. Maybe Lopez just wants an excuse to blow us all up."

  But S.J. had moved in closer, and now he was actually touching the smooth surface, eyes closed as if trying to sense its internal workings. "Chester..." he murmured. Then louder. "Chester! Why can't we just extract the plutonium and take that with us? It's got to be almost as valuable as the whole damn bomb. And lots lighter."

  "Jesus, Waters. You want to fry us all? Or did you bring a ton of lead shielding?"

  "I thought maybe the black fire?"

  Chester hesitated, then, "No. Radiation isn't fire."

  "He's got the right idea," Tony insisted. "We don't have to steal it. Wreck it. Make it useless for the Enemy."

  Chester shook his head. "Good common sense, but our mission is theft."

  "But look at it! We'll never move it!"

  "Magic," the Lore Master said. "I'm not sure I like it, but it's the only way out that I can see. It'll take everything that we have, and by the time we've got it out we'll be down to the dregs of our magic."

  Gina carefully walked closer to the bomb, nose twitching. "The heat and steam, Chester. That thing could be pretty unstable."

  "Maybe leaking radiation, too." Acacia seemed almost reluc­tant to say it. Instantly the Garners shied back a few feet.

  "Abight, then. We need a continual Danger scan on this while

  we try to move it. Margie, you and S.J. work out a way to lower it once we get to the lip."

  "Damn," Margie cursed sedately. "I broke another fingernail."

  "Try keeping your fingers out of the knots," Waters laughed, cinching the line tight. They had rigged guide ropes around the bomb that ran up to the crater rim. With luck, they would turn the moving job from an impossibility to a mere back-breaking task.

  Chester had sent Acacia up to the top to substitute for Gina, who had entered into deep meditation with Chester in preparation for the attempt. When they rose they both seemed hollow-eyed and deadly serious.

  Tony was making them all nervous, the way he kept watching the rim. "With luck we could get it almost to the rim before the Enemy jumps us."

  "We'll get warning," Ollie told him.

  "We'd still be afraid to let go of the bomb, won't we? While they're killing our three scouts!"

  "Lopez doesn't make it easy," Ollie granted him. "Wish you'd stayed home?" Tony didn't answer.

  Chester called, "Are the lines tight?" He moved into position beneath the bomb without waiting for an answer. "The rest of you, get on the lines. As soon as the Reveal Danger spell is in force, start pulling, gently but evenly. Gina and I will do what we can. We're well ahead of schedule, troops. If the Gods-" and he lowered his voice to growl through his teeth, "-and Lopez-" Gina nudged him, and a faint smile finally cracked through his mask of fatigue, "-are willing, then we will taste victory today."

  Griffin got into position on line, directly behind Owen. "Do we get a prayer from the Padre?"

  Owen tested the line, grunting. "Good Lord, help us move this mother. Amen."

  "Good enough."

  A weak green glow surrounded the shape of the bomb, growing slowly more distinct. Chester and Gina stood erect, faces shining with sweat-from exertion, or the heat?-and down the middle of the emerald wave they projected came a darker thread of green. It pulsed and sparkled within the lighter hue like a vein of green blood, and when it touched the bomb the casing trembled.

  "Now!" S.J. put his back into it even as he called the stroke,

  and Alex bent to the task, feeling good to have an understandable physical task in the midst of the make-believe.

  The rock beneath the bomb crackled and flakes of it fell away, sliding down the slope towards Chester and Gina. Henderson had closed his eyes, and his hands were outstretched. The green dark­ened and more rock slid away. McWhirter snarled and heaved; his long gymnasium muscles stood out like an anatomy diagram. The bomb shifted and rose several centimeters, and the Garners loosed a cautious cheer.

  Owen's foot slipped a fraction, and he had to move nimbly to catch himself. He turned his head and grinned at Alex, then yelled "Pull! Pull!" His mood was infectious and suddenly the whole group was laughing and sweating in the steam.

  The pale green aura blinked and went red.

  "Hold it!" Chester's voice was frantic, and the tension left the lines so fast that the bomb almost slid back down the incline.

  S.J. crept closer to the bomb, and swallowed hard. "It's tick­ing..." When he turned to look at them all of the color had left his face. The bomb's red aura was darkening smoothly toward black. Part of his head went dark as he leaned close. "Chester.

  I think it's gonna blow..."

  Shadow had entirely engulfed the bomb.

  Henderson was incredulous. "An atomic bomb? He can't do this! Just what the hell does Lopez want from me? There's no way

  -wait a minute." Alex could see wheels turning behind his eyes. "The black fire. Everybody empty your pots onto this thing! Mar­gie, you're carrying ashes? Dump it. It'll stop the priming charges. Who else has black fire? Or ash? Who's got Guinevere's pack?"

  Dark Star and Holly still had anti-fire, and they snatched up their packs and dumped them out, fingers shaking with excitement as they searched for the makeshift firepots. Ollie dumped the ash from Gwen's pack onto the corroded casing. The blackness began to spread through the ash.

  "S.J., Margie, heap it on while-what the hell are you doing?" Waters had pulled a leverage bar out of his pack, and was pry­ing at a hatch in the nose of the bomb. "We can't just pour the stuff on, chief. We've got to try to stuff it as close to the primer as possible-" His voice was shaking, and his skinny arms jerked al­most spastically as he fought with the panel. The ticking stopped.

  Griffin hesitated only a second, then rushed to help. "Get out of here, Gary," S.J. panted. "I can do this myself."

  "Stop trying to be a hero, friend." Griffin yanked the bar from S.J.'s hand and squeezed it into the narrow crack, leaning his weight against it. Distantly he heard Chester telling the others to clear out. The door popped open. Alex sniffed. Odd- "Thanks and get out," S.J. hissed, grabbing the bar back. "No sooner said..." Griffin slapped the Engineer on the back and hightailed it. The gravelly surface of the slope gave that stom­ach-sinking two-forward-and-one-back traction of a sand dune, but Alex sprinted anyway. Wondering why they ran. He had sniffed cordite and hot metal. The primer had abeady gone off; the bomb's explosion was retarded only by the black fire. How could they outrun an atomic explosion?

  Just below the volcano's lip, he looked back.

  S.J. was still shoveling anti-fire and ashes into the hatch, and had pushed Margie away. She said something to the boy that Alex couldn't hear, and Waters snapped at her. She ran stumbling up the slope. Owen went down after her, to help her the last several yards to the top. They both arrived gasping.

  And that cleared the volcano, except for Waters. "Run, you lit-tie idiot!" Henderson bellowed, and Alex was surprised to hear his own throat echoing the words.

  Tony McWhirter was already a good way down the slope, haul­ing Acacia behind him by one arm. Alex heard him shout back at them: "Come on!'~ The others were bounding after him, and Alex joined them.

  He was halfway down when a voice called from above. "Keep going! Keep going!" He looked back over his shoulder and saw S.J. at the rim of the volcano, just as the airplane's egg hatched.

  It outlined Waters with a halo of light and flame. The ground shook as if a giant's palm had slapped the earth, and then the sound came.

  Alex lost his footi
ng and tumbled, falling across a split rock that began to gush steam. He fell into Holly Frost, who frantically tried to regain her balance before cascading with him in a rolling heap. Everywhere geysers of steam erupted from the ground, and he managed to roll around them more by instinct than thought.

  By the time he reached the bottom he was totally out of breath, unnerved, elbow-skinned but otherwise alive. He got to his feet

  and dusted himself off, coughing, looking for bodies to count. Mi­raculously, there were no black auras.

  Then he remembered, and his eyes searched the top of the vol­cano for a certain young Engineer. It was difficult for him to deal with what he felt at that moment: hope, fear, anger... and what else? All of them absurd, all of them real as a cut finger. He saw a plume of black smoke rising, rocks rolling, and nothing else. S.J. was gone.

  Acacia read his mind. "He knew he wasn't going to make it, Gary."

  Griffin fought with his emotions. "All right, dammit, he knew. But did he know he was dying for nothing?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "He's right, Acacia," Henderson had the same mixed emotions warring on his face. "That was no atomic bomb. Even in 1945, they weren't that small. We'd all be blown to hell and back."

  "Well then, what... ?"

  "Decoy, dammit. Another decoy." He watched the smoke churning at the top of the flattened peak. "That crazy little bas­tard. He's going to make a hell of a Lore Master one day . .

  he shook himself out of it.

  Most of the Garners were back on their feet, although none of them looked too steady. They clustered around Chester like little children around their mother. Numb, disbelieving, and con­fused.

  Holly rubbed a scraped knee. "What now, Ches?" There was no sass in her voice.

  "Regroup and rethink. I guess we had better go back for Maibang." He tried to force some life into his voice, but Griffin saw the shallow backward glance toward the top of the volcano and knew what he was thinking: Three down. And the day was yet young.