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CHAPTER SEVEN

Roark was grateful for the view through the lofty transparencies of Svyatog'Korth's private office, in the highest reaches of the Hov-Korth Tower. That glimpse of autumn-clothed Virginia countryside was a homelike anchor for his sense of reality as he and Katy passed through silently sliding doors and faintly tingling invisible curtains of stationary security nanobots, and crossed a darkly gleaming marblelike floor between walls paneled in what looked like priceless jade but glowed faintly from within. The matter-of-fact, human-crowded functionality he'd seen so far had not prepared him for this realm of hushed alienness.

He reminded himself that it was all old hat to Katy, and stayed shoulder to shoulder with her as they walked up to the large desk, where they simply stopped. She'd explained that no formal courtesies were required when coming into the presence of Earth's arbiter.

Svyatog'Korth was a Lokar of the blue-skinned, average-proportioned sort Roark had always thought of as simply the majority type but now knew to be characteristic of Gev-Harath and its offshoots. He'd also learned of certain age indicators to look for, and from the smooth texture of Svyatog's hairless skin he knew the Lokar to be a fairly young one, without the coarsening that came with middle age, accompanied by a thickening of the body that was scarcely noticeable to human eyes. (Katy had mentioned that Svyatog was young for his position in Hov-Korth. She'd waxed indignant when Roark had suggested that he might owe that position to his surname, even while admitting that the hovahon were still largely run by their founding families.)

He also knew how to recognize the Lokaron equivalent of a smile, a stretching of the mouth which concealed the hard ridges which served as teeth. (The Lokaron, like humans, were omnivores, but with a strong predisposition toward a meat diet, which lent them some of the characteristics of carnivores.) Svyatog's face now wore that expression. He gave the rather high-pitched sounds of Lokaron speech. The minute but sophisticated single-purpose computer in the pendant he wore translated those sounds into an American English flawed only by its flawlessness, which it transmitted to the hearing aid-like earpieces the two humans had been issued. "Ah, Katy! This must be the man you spoke of earlier this morning when you asked to see me." The unhuman head turned and the yellow slit-pupiled eyes focused in their disturbing way. "Mr. Roark, I believe."

"Yes, Factor," Roark murmured. Svyatog didn't need one of the earpieces; he had a surgical implant which performed the same function, among others. "Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to see us on short notice."

"Don't mention it. Katy indicated that the matter is one of extreme urgency. Won't the two of you sit down?" Svyatog's gesture indicated a spot behind them. Roark turned and saw two odd-looking but human-proportioned chairs that hadn't been there a moment before.

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore. Roark ordered the prickling at the nape of his neck to subside as he sat down with a mumble of thanks.

"Factor," Katy began, "as you know, from the circumstances under which you originally found me and also from my subsequent account, I formerly worked for the chief American intelligence-gathering organization."

"Yes. A government instrumentality, as I recall." The near-microscopic translating computer could convey tone, and it clearly hadn't been instructed to edit any out, however unflattering to the listener. Katy had explained that the hovahon adamantly refused to entrust spookery to the gevah functionaries.

"Just so," Katy resumed. "At any rate, Mr. Roark is an old . . . colleague of mine."

Svyatog looked at Roark with new interest. Roark met his gaze and suddenly decided he'd identified what was so unsettling about those eyes: they were the most animal-like thing about the Lokaron. He also decided he should follow Katy's advice and be completely forthright. "Actually, Factor, I was a member of the group that included Katy, that night when you saved her life . . . for which, by the way, I owe you a debt of gratitude."

Svyatog's facial muscles did a quick, indescribable expansion and contraction which, Roark suspected, answered to a sudden lifting of a human's eyebrows over widened eyes. "Are you, by any chance, still in this same . . . line of work?"

"I wasn't, but recently I've resumed it. And yes, I became an employee of yours in order to spy on you."

Katy flashed him a sharp glance, even though she herself had counseled him not to try to conceal anything from this being, who knew humans far better than Roark knew Lokaron. But he kept his eyes on Svyatog's face, expecting an exaggerated version of the look he'd just seen. Instead, the alien face was a mask of control. "I'll say this for you, Mr. Roark: you've succeeded in getting my undivided attention. May I inquire as to your reason for coming to see me now? Would it perhaps be . . . ?" Svyatog's eyes flicked back and forth between the two humans, members of their species' two sexes, and gazed at them across a chasm as wide as the abyss between the stars.

"No," Roark answered the unspoken question. "Well, it has something to do with it. I can't deny that. But"—a sudden flash of resentment—"we humans aren't mindless slaves of our sexual patterns, any more than you are of yours! Oh, all right, some of us are," he backpedaled, recalling certain people he'd known, and also the President under whom the U.S. had ended the previous century, whose demeaning of the office had helped create the institutional vacuum the EFP had eagerly filled. "But not those of us who've outgrown adolescence."

"What, then, is the basis for what seems a rather dramatic change of sides on your part?"

"Not a change of sides! I want that clearly understood. My loyalty is still to the United States of America, and to the human race in general. But I have to make my own ethical decisions as to where my loyalties must take me. It's called being an adult."

Svyatog regarded him in silence for a couple of (human) heartbeats before speaking gravely. "Yes. I agree. Although . . . I gather that the notion of individual responsibility for the consequences of one's actions has fallen out of favor in your culture over the last two or three generations."

Roark felt his ears heating up, but he couldn't argue the point. "What others think is their business. I can only answer for myself. And Katy has convinced me that the interests of my nation and my world are bound up with yours. I wouldn't be coming to you if it were a matter of betraying my government—the government that sent me in here, along with five others."

Svyatog's face took on the goggle-eyed-equivalent look once again, but the translator conveyed only dryness. "Evidently our security needs work."

"So does ours. You see, I've learned that at least two of those five were, in fact, members of a secret organization called the Eaglemen."

"Ah, yes. Katy has told me about them: fanatical xenophobes with respect to us, and romantic reactionaries with respect to their own country's current regime. And they've attached themselves to an espionage operation of the very government they oppose, in order to infiltrate the Enclave. How can you be sure of this?"

Katy answered for him. "Because I recognized one of them, who is dead now, and knew the other one by name. I myself am a former member of the organization."

The English-speaking voice in Roark's ear grew even more expressionless. "This is new data."

"Yes, I concealed it from you. And for a while after entering your service, I continued to work for them. Later, as I've learned from Ben, the government captured some of the information I'd supplied to them. This made possible the operation which has resulted in Ben's presence here."

Few humans could have equaled Svyatog's absolute motionlessness. Outside the transparency a flock of migrating birds fared heedlessly southward toward Florida without breaking the silence.

"Why are you telling me this now?" the alien finally asked, with a lack of intonation that represented the translator software's abject surrender in the face of unmanageably complex emotions.

"To convince you that I'm in earnest. Yes, I withheld this from you for a long time, despite my gratitude and my . . . high regard for you." Human and Lokaron eyes met, and Roark, observing from the outside, strove to define his own emotions. Jealousy was, of course, unthinkable. Biologically, Katy had less in common with this being than with an armadillo, or an oak tree. Still, those locked pairs of eyes held a tale of shared thoughts and now-disappointed trust that were forever outside his own world of memories.

After a moment, the eyes slid apart and Katy resumed. "I withheld it even after I stopped considering myself a member of the Eaglemen. I broke with them even though I continued to share their opposition to my country's current government—"

"Understandable, from what I know of it." Svyatog's smooth urbanity was back.

"—and still share it. In fact, I shared it so strongly that I was willing to go along with the other half of their agenda—expelling you Lokaron—even though I suspected it was an impossible dream, and not even a very beautiful one at that. But finally that suspicion became certainty. Our future lies in today's universe—your universe. So I stopped communicating with them. After a while, I pretty much forgot about them. I also forgot about their pet idea of attacking the Enclave."

"What?" Svyatog leaned forward in an altogether human way. "Why haven't you told me this, if you've abandoned your loyalty to them?"

"It didn't seem important. The notion was never anything but an impossible daydream. The only plans that rose above the level of fantasy required people on the inside, which we never had. But now . . . " Katy's voice trailed off, for it didn't take an expert on Lokaron body language to know that Svyatog had ceased to listen as he worked out the implications for himself.

"You say there are two of these infiltrators?" the alien finally asked.

"There were at least two. Now there's at least one; we killed the other, Travis, last night." Katy spoke tersely of the moment of shared recognition in the corridor, and Travis' murderous attack. "But there could be other Eaglemen. And the one we know is left is a fairly high-level one—she was my cell leader. And if our government inserts additional agents, some of those may well be Eaglemen. They've shown it's not beyond their capabilities."

"Also," Roark put in, "the Eaglemen can make unwitting tools of the agents who don't even belong to their organization. That cell leader—Ada Rivera is her name—is our on-scene control. If she tells the others to act in support of an outside attack, they'll assume she's transmitting orders from higher up."

Svyatog flopped back in his chair and stared at them. "But this is terrible! If such an attack takes place . . . " He seemed to catch himself, and his mouth snapped shut as he darted a slit-pupiled look at Roark.

"I've told him about Gev-Rogov," Katy said quietly. "And given him all the background he needed to understand what I was telling him."

"That was not information you were authorized to release." The artificial voice was very level.

"No, it wasn't. But he had to be let in on it. And I trust him—completely."

Svyatog gazed at the two humans. They sat unflinching under his regard. "Very well," he finally said, addressing Katy. "I've learned to rely on your judgment. And, at any rate, you seem to have presented me with a fait accompli." He turned to Roark. "You understand, then, the possible consequences if these idiots make their attack. Of course," he added as a complacent afterthought, "they'd have no hope of success. But they wouldn't have to succeed. The mere attempt would be enough."

"But you can stop them!" argued Roark. "You can apprehend Rivera and all the others, and use whatever means necessary to get confirmation of what we've said." My God, he thought, suddenly hearing himself, these are humans I'm talking about, and Americans at that. "And then . . . uh, deport them, or whatever."

"Unfortunately, it's not quite so simple. That kind of overt act would cause such an uproar among our human employees that everyone would hear of it. The truth would come out: the Enclave has been infiltrated, not just by American government operatives but also by the kind of xenophobic terrorists I've constantly assured everyone we need not fear. It would create precisely the climate of paranoia the Rogovon are counting on."

Roark stared at the Lokar. "But there must be something you can do!"

"Of course. I can have them kept under subtle surveillance. But more important at the moment is what you can do."

"Huh?" Roark was uncomfortably aware of how stupid he must look as he sat, blinking. "Me?"

"Yes. You." Svyatog's face had never looked more alien. "You claim to understand what is at stake here. Prove it. Resume your place among your fellow infiltrators, where you'll be in an ideal position to know when Rivera is preparing the groundwork for an outside attack. And when that moment comes . . . stop her. Abort the attack quietly."

Katy regained the power of speech before Roark did. "Do you have any idea what you're asking of him?"

"I do. I'm asking him to act in his own people's interests, as viewed in the larger perspective you've made him see."

Sheer irritation at listening to himself being discussed in the third person brought Roark out of shock. "Wait a minute! Aren't you overlooking a few little problems? Right now, Rivera and the others must be wondering what happened to me and Travis. When I show up without him, there are going to be some awkward questions."

"I can provide you with a cover story. You'll be returned to your fellows with a stern warning about straying into unauthorized areas—where, it seems, Travis was killed by automated defenses. We'll let it be known that you were questioned but that your answers satisfied us."

"Rivera won't buy it. She'll never trust me again."

"It will be up to you to allay her suspicions. It shouldn't be too hard. With only four subordinates left, she'll be open to justifications for not rendering herself even more shorthanded."

Had Svyatog been a human, Roark would have been certain he was getting dangerously pleased with his own cleverness. As it was, he was even more certain of it. Katy said that cockiness is their abiding vice, he reflected. It may do them in, eventually. But right at the moment, I'm on the leading edge of what gets done in!

"What about me?" Katy asked.

"You must remain out of sight. If this Travis individual recognized you and assumed that you had been turned, Rivera will surely do the same, as will any other Eaglemen still surviving in the group. We can set up prearranged rendezvous times when Roark can communicate with you—and, through you, with me."

The man and the woman exchanged a quick eye contact, eloquent of their knowledge that what had been miraculously restored was about to be undone again. Roark unwillingly ended that shared moment and turned to face the alien across the desk. "So you want me to deal with this situation in a low-profile way—meaning, as a practical matter, unsupported. What if I make a good-faith effort but something goes wrong? Can you guarantee to keep me and Katy alive?"

"Yes, I can. If all else fails, I will—" Svyatog stopped abruptly, then resumed in a carefully expressionless way. "There's no need to go into the details at present. Suffice it to say that I can put the two of you beyond any possibility of reprisal by the Eaglemen, and that I will do so if it comes to that."

Roark locked eyes with Katy once again. She gave a small nod, into which she seemed to be trying to concentrate everything she'd already told him about what this being's word meant. Roark nodded in return. It had to be enough.

He turned back to Svyatog. "All right. Let's get down to cases."

* * *

The next few days went by in a mist of unreality for Roark. He'd been a lot of things in his time, but never a double agent.

But then, he told himself, that's not really what I am, strictly speaking. So what am I? I'm not sure human experience provides a word for it. 

His return to the human dormitory, as he'd decided he might as well call it, went pretty much as expected. Chen showed every evidence of relief to see him back, tempered by shock at the official version of Travis' fate. The others, who weren't supposed to know him, concealed whatever reactions they may have had as they listened, along with all the other human employees, to the lecture about restricted areas. All but Rivera, who shot him a surreptitious look compounded of puzzlement, suspicion, and emotions less easily defined.

Afterwards, he reported to her personally at the same secluded alcove where she'd given him and Chen their instructions two days earlier. "They had a laser sensor system," he concluded his fictionalized account. "Only it doesn't operate in the visible light frequencies, or even close to them. So the aerosol spray Travis was using didn't reveal the beam. And it has one other difference from our systems: when it's tripped, it instantaneously steps up its energy output to weapon-level intensity. Travis never knew what hit him."

Rivera muttered a bilingual string of obscenities. "We never learned about this system from our—" Her mouth snapped shut as she seemed to recall Roark's presence. "Anyway, they took you alive. What did you tell them?"

"Nothing! Oh, I don't doubt that they could have gotten the truth out of me with drugs or . . . whatever the hell they use. But they didn't think it was worth the trouble. They accepted my story that we were just idle sensation seekers, and sent me back here with a scolding."

"How can you be so sure of that? For all anybody knows, they could have put you under without you knowing anything was going on, sucked you dry of knowledge, and left you without any memory of it."

Roark found exasperation easy to counterfeit. "Sure. And for that matter, they could have zapped us all with this magic mind-ray you're postulating as we were arriving. Hey, as long as you're spinning paranoid fantasies, why fuck around? How about this: they're telepathically eavesdropping on all our innermost thoughts, all the time, and—"

"All right, all right. Cut the sarcasm." Rivera chewed her lower lip and scowled with concentration. "I suppose we'd all be dead or in custody by now if you'd spilled your guts. So I'm going to proceed on the assumption that we haven't been compromised, and advise Havelock accordingly. You're to hold yourself in readiness for a major shift in this operation's entire orientation."

"Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"

"You'll be informed at such time as you have a need to know."

"You know something, Captain? I'm getting awfully goddamned sick and tired of that canned phrase you picked up while brown-nosing some OCS instructor. I may have resumed my affiliation with the Company, but I'm not in the military."

"You insubordinate son of a bitch! You heard Havelock: I'm in charge inside the Enclave. My orders are his orders. And, last I heard, you work for him."

"Yeah . . . without any great enthusiasm. But I'm not some twerp fresh out of boot camp who's going to wet his pants when you bark at him. If you want to get the maximum performance out of me, you'd better start talking to me like a grown-up. Which means, among other things, sharing information."

The discipline Rivera visibly imposed on herself extended even to her lips, which barely moved as she spoke in a tightly controlled voice. "Very well, Mr. Roark. You'll have to know anyway. The decision has been made to adopt a policy of overt action against the Enclave."

Even though this was what Roark had been awaiting, he found he wasn't prepared for the shock of actually hearing it. Rivera's euphemism somehow made it even worse. "You must be crazy!" he blurted. He retained enough presence of mind not to specify just who must be crazy. "An attack can accomplish nothing except to bring down a reprisal that will—"

"It's been determined at higher levels that the risk of retaliation is within acceptable parameters. Instead, we believe the loss of the Enclave will make them lose heart and pull off Earth. We'll be free of them for good!" Rivera could no longer keep exultation out of her dark eyes. They blazed with an unaffected enthusiasm that, for the first time in Roark's experience, made her actually sympathetic.

Even if I didn't know she's an Eagleman, I'd be pretty sure of it now. "You really do believe this, don't you?" he asked quietly.

"Come on, Roark! They're nothing but a bunch of interstellar hucksters! If we convince them they can't operate here at a profit, they'll give up on Earth as a bad job, and cut their losses. It's the way minds like theirs work."

How would you know? Roark wanted to ask. But he wasn't here to engage in a debate.

"All right. When is it going down?"

"Night after next." Rivera saw Roark's expression and nodded grimly. "Yes, I know, it's all happening fast. But those are my instructions."

"What are mine?"

"You and Chen are to meet me at oh-one-hundred that night, at Charlie-eight-five." She used the coordinate system they'd superimposed on the map of the Enclave and memorized. "We're going to disable the perimeter warning system."

"With what?"

"Remember all those odds and ends you brought in here in your luggage? Chen has been filling in for you while you've been in custody, so now I've got it all." They'd established a schedule of drops by which all the agents delivered their various smuggled items to Rivera, who knew how to assemble them. It hadn't been difficult; the Lokaron were serenely confident that nothing they needed to worry about could possibly have gotten through the entry scanning-net.

"Have you put together weapons for us?"

"No, but you'll be surprised what I have put together. And the important thing is that we take out the warning system—especially in light of what you've told me about this lethal beam sensor of theirs. The attacking force will be inside before the Lokaron know what's going on."

"Still—"

"Yes, I know, they'll take a lot of casualties. But it can be done, given the element of surprise. It has to be done, for America and for the whole human race! Oh, and don't worry: they'll have extra weapons for us. We'll be able to get in on the party." Once again, Rivera seemed to glow from an inner flame of honest idealism, a blaze she could barely contain, and Roark was struck by how attractive she could be when she forgot to be a martinet.

I wonder, came the unbidden thought, if she'll be looking like this when I kill her. 

 

"Over here!"

Roark and Chen moved furtively through the night in the direction of Rivera's low voice. They wore their darkest clothing—there was no formal curfew for humans, but neither was there any legitimate reason for them to be out at one in the morning among the thin scattering of trees in this part of the Enclave's western edge—and, under it, multiple layers of underwear against the late-autumn chill. Aside from the few lights still showing from the towers behind them, there was only a quarter-moon and a scattering of stars to see by, and with no high-tech aids like starlight scopes they proceeded cautiously. But their eyes had adapted, and presently they saw Rivera's equally dark-clad form up ahead beside a tree, motioning to them. Beyond her was a relatively clear slope, and beyond it was the deeper blackness of a densely wooded area. Still further west, the mountains occluded the stars.

Fallen leaves crackled as they settled down beside her. She wore a backpack to which a fiber-optic cable connected a paperback-book-sized object in her hands. The top face of that object gave off a faint varicolored glow. Roark looked at it more closely, and sucked in a breath of the chill air.

"A Lokaron tactical sensor," he breathed.

Rivera's teeth gleamed in a grin. "Not exactly, but cobbled together using mostly Lokaron components. I told you you'd be surprised at what all the junk you brought in could be assembled into!"

"What do you need it for?"

"To let me know the attack force is in place. I couldn't communicate with them, even if I had a communicator to do it with; the Lokaron would detect that. But this thing is a cluster of strictly passive sensors—thermal, sonic and so forth. Watch." She laid the unit on the ground, pointed west. "See, it displays the landscape out there . . . and these are the troops concealed in the woods. They've been brought in quietly over the past week."

So this isn't such a sudden change of strategy after all, is it? The unsurprised thought occupied only a small fraction of Roark's mind; with the rest he was gazing, stunned, at the sheer number of ruddy little blotches marking the human bodies concealed in the woods. My God! I never knew there were so many Eaglemen! They must have brought in their entire organization for this. But how could so many military people absent themselves from wherever they're stationed, at exactly the same time? 

"Where are Pirelli and Stoner?" Chen asked.

"Over on the far side of the Enclave. They were here half an hour ago, to pick up these." Rivera reached inside her apparently general-purpose backpack and produced several small objects, which she distributed to the two men. In the darkness, Roark felt rather flimsy metal frameworks enclosing some kind of lightweight electronic hardware.

"These aren't bombs," Chen stated positively.

"Of course not. We couldn't have brought explosives in with us; the Lokaron chemical scanners would have detected those in our luggage. No, these are very crude, one-shot applications of Lokaron technology. They produce an EM pulse that disrupts electronic systems. You four are to affix them to the generators of the security sensors, all around the perimeter, by means of these adhesive patches on the sides. From our standpoint, they're better than bombs. Explosions out here just might wake the Lokaron up! But since the whole security system is automated, they probably won't even know it's ceased to function until our people are on top of them."

"I suppose these devices are set to all go off at a predetermined time," Roark ventured cautiously as he stuffed the little objects into his pockets.

"No. We had to keep things as simple as possible, given the conditions under which we're working. This is a command-detonation system. As soon as you've finished, report back here to me. When I know all the devices are in place, I'll activate them simultaneously, with this." Rivera displayed a simple remote. "Our people outside can detect the sensor field around the perimeter, so they'll know when it goes down. That'll be their signal to move."

And if it doesn't go down, they'll know something's gone wrong, and abort the mission, Roark thought, knowing what he must do.

"All right, here are your orders." Rivera assigned each of them certain generators, the locations of which they'd long since memorized along with everything else Katy had ever told the Eaglemen about the Enclave. "All right, any questions? No? Then move!"

They moved, Chen to the south and Roark to the north. The latter proceeded a short distance, until he was well out of Rivera's sight and was sure Chen was also. Then he turned and doubled back under the fitful moonlight.

He paused behind a tree and peered at Rivera. She was still in position. She'd taken off her backpack and laid it beside the sensor display, in which she seemed absorbed. Very carefully, lest his steps on the carpet of dried leaves give him away, he began to circle around behind her. He worked his way to the tree closest to Rivera's back and paused, readying himself. This would have to be done quickly and quietly. . . .

There was a sound of hastily approaching steps. Cursing under his breath, Roark flattened himself against the tree as two figures emerged from the darkness and joined Rivera.

"All done," said Pirelli. Yeah, Roark recalled, he and Stoner started earlier. 

"Good," Rivera said. "As soon as Roark and Chen report back, it's a go. Now get to your assigned coordinates and stand by."

"Right." The two headed off, in different directions. Rivera turned back to her display. Roark drew a long slow breath and relaxed from motionlessness. Now, where were we? He drew a length of cord out from inside his jacket's lining through a tiny slit. He'd turned down Svyatog's offer of a real weapon, which he would never have been able to keep concealed from Chen in their quarters. But it hadn't been hard to improvise a garotte.

Again the sound of approaching footsteps sent him flat against the tree, exasperated. A figure emerged from the darkness and joined Rivera.

"What's the status?" asked a voice Roark recognized as Stoner's.

"On schedule," Rivera replied. "Roark and Chen should be done shortly. They're competent men. And, like Pirelli, they think they're acting in support of a government military operation . . . which they are, after all."

Stoner too, Roark thought. So fully half of the six of us were Eaglemen! Jesus Christ! How could they have penetrated the Company so completely?  

And . . . what did that last remark of Rivera's mean? 

Stoner was staring at the sensor display. "Are all our people in place?" he asked nervously.

"How should I know?" Rivera's voice was brittle with tension. "All I know is what Havelock told me the last time I was able to exchange messages with him. He assured me that Kinsella, having let him talk her into this attack, had given him a free hand in selecting the personnel. So he should have been able to put plenty of us in key positions."

What the hell is she talking about? Roark wondered irritably. She's not making sense. . . .  

Then, with a jolt, reality rearranged itself into a pattern in which Rivera's words made perfect sense.

As though from a vast distance, he heard Rivera resume. "You'd better get moving. It won't be long now."

"Right." Stoner slipped away into the night.

After a time, Roark shook himself and stepped cautiously out from the tree. He looked at Rivera's back, where she crouched over the display. And he dropped the cord onto the ground.

Don't be stupid, he told himself. Rivera is Special Forces. She knows all the tricks you do, and is a lot younger. The surest way to disable is to kill. 

Oh, shut up, himself replied. The only thing I'm certain of just now is that I'm not certain of anything any more . . . and I'm damned if I'll kill anybody without a definite reason. 

He took a couple of very careful steps, which brought him close enough to spring the rest of the distance.

Pushing off for that leap, he disturbed the dead leaves. Rivera twisted around at the sound. Her eyes widened with recognition.

Then he was on her, just as the turning movement put her off balance. He grappled her from behind, forcing the kind of fight where sheer weight and strength counted. She started to snarl his name, but it turned to a choking gurgle as his left arm went around her throat. She strained and writhed, seeking to escape his grasp. It was like trying to hold onto a spring-steel wildcat. Her left elbow jabbed backward into his ribs, with a pain that almost made him lose control of her. He had just barely enough time to turn her head sideways, exposing a certain spot, and deliver a short right jab. She went limp.

He made sure her unconsciousness wasn't feigned, then checked his ribs. Nothing broken. He turned to her backpack and found the remote. Simply stomping on it might have inadvertently activated it. He opened the plastic panel on its back and removed the batteries, then pocketed it.

Someone—it had to be Chen—was approaching from the south. Roark scooped up the backpack and its attached display pad and scuttled away into the trees. He watched as Chen rushed over to Rivera, tried the usual revival techniques, then looked around with bewildered frustration. Finally Chen swung the unconscious form over his shoulder and went back into the Enclave.

Roark waited a while, staring at the display. Finally the little blotches of color—some of which, but not all or even most, represented Eaglemen—began to move with military orderliness, withdrawing from the woods as their instrumentation told them that the Enclave's security system had not gone down as promised.

Only then did Roark head back . . . but not toward the dormitory. It seems, he thought, oddly calm, that I'll have to take Svyatog up on his offer of sanctuary, or whatever, after all.

 

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