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12

It was difficult in the modern world for anyone to stay dead for very long.  Aristide sat in the clinic, awaiting Daljit's resurrection in a waiting room that smelled of flowers and too many nervous bodies.  It was less than two days since her plunge off the apartment balcony.

Other survivors crowded the waiting room, all showing the shock and horror of the last few days—tens of thousands had died.  Since resurrection facilities were not unlimited, the government and Endora had created a prioritized list for who would be brought back to life and in what order.  Vital government functionaries and servitors first, everyone else later.  Endora, however, had been willing to do Aristide a favor by bumping Daljit up the list by a few categories.  Aristide had tried but failed to disguise how grateful he was for the favor.

Bitsy—the new Bitsy—coiled in Aristide's lap.  He absent-mindedly stroked her short hair.  He witnessed lovers and families welcoming their lost ones back to the land of the living, with overloud hellos and nervous laughter.  A disturbing number of the dead had been children, the most vulnerable to violence.

It was fortunate they wouldn't remember how they had died, probably at the hands of their family or friends.  At least they were spared that trauma.

He was more saddened at the thought of the children who had somehow survived the attacks of their kin, and who would remember for the rest of their lives the sight of their loved ones turning into monsters. 

When Bitsy uncoiled and hopped to the floor, Aristide knew that the cat had learned through her data connections that Daljit was about to step into the waiting room.  Aristide rose, wiped his nervous hands against the seams of his trousers, and stepped toward the door.

Daljit appeared.  She walked with a certain deliberation, as if she was unused to being in the world.  She was dressed in the clothing that Aristide had brought from her apartment—he had also brought cosmetics and the flowery perfume she favored. She smiled as she saw him and kissed his cheek, then stepped back and gave him a questioning look.

"What happened?" she asked.  She blinked.  "Did we—"

"Not here," Aristide said.  He led her from the clinic and to a sleek Destiny automobile, which under autopilot pulled from the curb as soon as they entered and closed the hatch.

Tecmessa, with the heavy blade reattached to the hilt, waited sheathed and propped up against the back seat.  The sword had seemed an inappropriate object to bring into a clinic waiting room.  Aristide slid onto the wide back seat, and held the sword at his hip as if it were attached to his belt.

Daljit looked at the world with wide, questioning eyes.  The car hissed away from the curb.

"We didn't kill Tumusok?" she asked.  "What went wrong?"

Her backup had been made on the day of the planned assassination, so that if things went amiss, she would be resurrected complete with the established knowledge of the Venger's existence.

"No," Aristide said, "that part worked fine.  Tumusok was dispatched, resurrected successfully, and briefed by Endora.  But a few hours later the enemy worked out that he'd been detected, and attacked before we were ready for him."

"Attacked?"  Daljit's expression was intent.  "How?"

"A zombie plague," Aristide said.  "Apparently the intention was to cause enough chaos so that the Venger's agents could seize power in as many of the pockets as possible."

"So it was a zombie that got me?" Daljit said.  Then, gazing out the window: "I take it the Venger's coup failed?"

Bitsy jumped up onto the padded shelf behind their seat.  "He was unsuccessful everywhere except Courtland," she said. "Courtland is the corrupt AI, by the way, and even there the Venger had only managed to turn a minority of the population by the time the war started.  But these were enough to seize and hold the wormhole gates from Courtland into the pockets, and presumably the rest are now being subjected to a Seraphim-like plague that will bring them all under the Venger's control."

Aristide could imagine the horror of the population there, communication with the outside cut off, the Venger's propaganda on all the feeds, growing panic as the sickness began, the fever, hallucinations, and eventual coma as the brain was restructured from within . . .

With the Seraphim, people hadn't realized at first what was happening.  In Courtland's pocket universes, everyone would know at once, and known there was nothing they could do.  The valiant and the cowardly, the old and young, the devout and the irreligious, all condemned to the same fate. 

Daljit's look was bleak.  "Has there been any communication from Courtland?"

"Surrender demands," Aristide said, "from someone calling himself Vindex—Latin for 'the Avenger,' by the way.  There's only one of him, supposedly . . . he's not a committee, like the Seraphim."

"But he's got Courtland."

"Yes.  Or he is Courtland, under another name."

They fell silent.  Daljit looked in bleak silence at a series of storefronts blackened by smoke damage.  There had been a great many fires set during the disturbances, but, thanks to building codes and modern materials, very little had actually burned down.  The buildings' contents had gone up in smoke, but the buildings remained, looking out at the world through blackened eyes. 

The scent of ashes sifted through the car's ventilation system.

"How are people taking it?" Daljit asked.

"They were afraid," Aristide said. "Now they're angry.  Everyone wants to do something, but this early it's unclear what most people can do."  He looked at her.  "You have a job waiting for you in the war effort, if you want it."

Daljit was surprised.  "But I'm just a geneticist."

"You're a geneticist in a biological war." 

"I'm not a senior enough fellow at the Institute to work on human genetics," Daljit said.  "I—" And then she stopped, as if she realized how obsolete that idea had become. 

Aristide laughed.  "That was before the war.  Now we need everyone with any skills in that direction, to work out what weapons Vindex and Courtland can deploy against us, and how to counter them—or immunize ourselves against them before they are ever used."  He gave her a grim smile.  "That's important—your job category is much more substantial than mine, a semi-retired computer scientist turned biologist turned swordsman."

The car turned, and Daljit looked at her surroundings in surprise.

"We're going to the port?"

"I have the boat for another three days," Aristide shrugged.  "Why not?"

The car drove to the pier where Fathom Deep was tied up.  Aristide told the car to wait, and then he, Daljit, and Bitsy left the Destiny and walked down the pier.  He rested the heavy sword against his shoulder.  Water surged beneath them; composite planks boomed beneath their feet.  The sun, reflecting on the wavetops, danced across the sailboat's hull.

They stepped aboard the boat, and the hatch to the main cabin opened at Aristide's silent command.  Bitsy remained on deck, curling up on a sunny cushion, while Daljit and Aristide went into the cabin. 

Daljit looked over the cabin without interest.  Aristide strained to detect a scent of their time together, but could find nothing.  He stood the sword against a corner of the chart table and opened a cabinet.

"Care for a drink?"

"Mm—not now, thanks."  Daljit brushed a brass fitting with her fingertips.  "So this is where we fled, after we killed Tumusok."

"We did."  He smiled.  "We ran away to sea." 

He drew out a bottle of lemonade and opened it 

"Tell me about the assassination," Daljit said.  He looked at her, then narrowed his eyes.

"The mole is on the other side of your face," he said.

She smiled.  "Yes.  I have standing orders to switch it every time I visit a pool of life."

"That's amusing."

"I hope so."  She perched on the arm of the settee.  "The assassination?" she prompted.

He sipped his lemonade and sat in the navigator's chair and told her about the watch on the trackline station, the ceramic sewer pipe bounding down the road to its fatal meeting with General Tumusok.

"His friends call him Coy Coy," Aristide said. "Or so Lin tells me."

"Amusing," she said, unamused. 

He held the bottle of lemonade between his two hands, as if to warm it.  He looked up at her.

"You and I became lovers that night," he said, "here on the Fathom Deep."

He plotted the changes that worked their way across her face, and wished he knew what thoughts had prompted them.  Then her lips drew apart in a smile, the mole lifting from its accustomed place.

"I hope that isn't too much of a shock," he said.

"A pleasant one, if so."  The words were spoken with grave care.

"We planned to meet again the next night.  But you'd been infected by then, and you tried to kill me with a kitchen knife."

"I was the zombie?"  Her surprise was complete.  "I assumed I'd been killed by a zombie."

"You were killed by me," Aristide said, "in self defense.  I threw you off your balcony."

Her lips formed an O, but she said nothing.

"Would you like that drink now?" he said.

"Killing, loving, trying to kill each other." Daljit shook her head.  "We ran the gamut in a short time, didn't we?"

"We did."

Soberly, she rose and approached him.  He rose from the chair, uncertain.  She took the lemonade from his hands and put it on a table, then kissed him.  For a long, silent moment, they explored the kiss together. 

She drew back and smiled.  His heart leaped.

"Let's run the gamut again," she said.

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