It was clearly one of Trixia's translations, the sort of "human-colored" description that irritated Ritser Brughel so much. But Underhill's "first trip to Lands Command"? That would be before the last Dark. Strange that Tomas Nau had wanted such retrospectives.

"It's all messed up now."

"What?" Pham's mind came back to the Attic grouproom, the irritable voices of the zipheads. It was Trixia Bonsol who had just spoken. Her eyes were distant and her fingers still twitched across her keys.

Pham sighed. "Yeah, you got that right," he replied. Whatever she was talking about, the comment was appropriate.

His low-rate synthesis from the unpowered net was complete: He had a view down on L1-A. If he could trigger a little more connectivity, he might reach the ejets near L1-A. No great processing power there, but those sites were on the ejet power grid...and more important,Maybe we canuse the electric jets themselves! If they could target a few dozen of them on the Podmaster..."Trud! Have you had any luck with the numerical people?"

FIFTY-EIGHT

Rachner Thract's helicopter lifted clean of the tilted landing pad, its turbine and rotor sounds healthy. By turning his head this way and that, Thract was able to keep track of the terrain. He took them eastward, along the caldera wall. The punched-hole craters marched off ahead of them, a line of destruction that disappeared over the top of the far wall. In the city below, there were emergency lights now, and ground traffic heading for the craters that had been apartments and occupied mansions.

On the perch beside him, Underhill was moving feebly, pulling at the panniers on his guide-bug's back. The animal was trying to help, but it was injured far worse than its master. "I need to see, Rachner. Can you help me with Mobiy's pack?"

"Just a minute, sir. I want to bring us around to the heliport."

Underhill pushed a few inches up from his perch. "Just put it on autopilot, Colonel. Please, help me."

Thract's helicopter contained dozens of embedded processors, themselves hooked into traffic control and information nets. Once he had been very proud of this fancy aircraft. He hadn't flown it on automatic since that last staff meeting at Lands Command. "Sir...I don't trust the automatics."

Underhill gave a gentle laugh, then broke into liquid coughing. "It's okay, Rach. Please, I have to see what's happening. Help me with Mobiy."

Yes! By the Dark, what did it matter now! Rachner slammed four hands into the control sockets, and wiggled on full auto. Then he turned to his passengers and quickly unzipped the bag on the top of Mobiy's broken back.

Underhill reached in and removed the gear within as if it were some King's crown jewels. Rachner turned his head for a closer look. What...a bloody computer game helmet, it was!

"Ah, it looks okay," Underhill said softly. He started to settle the helmet across his eyes, then winced away. Rachner could see why; there were blisters all across the cobber's eyes. But Underhill didn't give up. He held the device just off his head, then turned on the power.

Glittering light splashed out and around his head. Rachner jerked back reflexively. The cabin of the heli was suddenly awash in a million shifting colors, bright and plaid. He remembered the rumors about Underhill's crazy hobbies, the videomancy. So it had all been true; this "gaming helmet" must have cost a small fortune.

Underhill mumbled to himself, shifting the helmet this way and that, as if to see around the blind spots in his burned eyes. There really wasn't much to see, just an incredibly beautiful shifting of lights, the mesmerizing power of computers in the service of quackery. It seemed to satisfy Sherkaner Underhill. He stared and stared, petting his guide-bug with a free hand. "Ah...I see," he said softly.

And the helicopter's turbines suddenly began a banshee twistup, well past their redline. The power was like magic, and would burn them out in a matter of an hour or two. That's why no reasonable controls would allow such performance.

"What the devil—" The words caught in Thract's throat as the turbine windup finally reached the blades above. His aircraft suddenly became a maniac, clawing its way up and up, over the caldera ridge.

The turbines briefly idled as the helicopter soared over the top, five hundred feet, a thousand feet above the altiplano. Rachner had a glimpse of the flatlands. The single row of destruction they had seen at Calorica was actually part of a grid. Stretched out south and west of them were hundreds of steaming plumes.The antimissile fields. But the crappers had missed! Wave after wave of interceptor rockets were sweeping up from their silos across the altiplano. Hundreds of launches, quick and profligate as short-range rocket artillery—except that the silos were dozens of miles away. Those rocket plumes were pushing smart payloads toward long-range intercepts thousands of miles away, and scores of miles up. It was awesome beyond all the staff-meeting hype that Air Defense had ever shilled...and it must mean that the Kindred had just launched everything they had.

Sherkaner Underhill didn't seem to notice. He moved his head back and forth under the helmet's light show. "There has to be some reconnect. There has to be." His hands twitched at the game controls. Seconds passed. "It's all messed up now," he sobbed.

Trud left his numerical-control zipheads and rejoined Pham Trinli by the translators. "The pure numericals I can manage, Pham. I mean I can get answers. But for control—"

Trinli just nodded, brushing the objections aside.Trinli looks so different. I've known him years of Watch time, and now he's a different person. The old Pham Trinli had been loud and arrogant, a bluster that you could argue and joke with. This Pham was quieter, but his actions were like knives.Killing us all. Trud's eyes slid unwillingly to where Anne Reynolt's body hung like meat on a hook. And even if he could conceive a scheme to betray Pham, it probably wouldn't save him. Nau and Brughel were Podmasters, and Trud knew he had passed beyond foriveness.

"—still a chance, Trud." Pham's voice cut through his fear. "Maybe we could open things a little further, fool the zipheads into—"

Silipan shrugged. Not that it mattered, but, "Do that and the Podmaster will be down our throat instantly. I'm getting fifty service requests a second from Nau and Brughel."

Pham rubbed his temples and his eyes got a faraway look. "Yeah, I see what you're saying. Okay. What do we have? The temp—"

"The cameras at Benny's show a lot of very puzzled people. If they're lucky they'll stay where they are." And afterward the Podmasters would have no claim of vengeance on them.

One of the zipheads—Bonsol—interrupted, the typical irrelevance of the Focused: "There are millions of people on the ground. They will start dying in a few seconds."

The comment actually seemed to derail Pham. Even the new Pham Trinli was still an amateur when it came to dealing with zipheads. "Yeah," he said, more to himself than to Silipan or the ziphead. "But at least the Spiders have a chance. Without our zipheads, Ritser can't tighten the screws any more." Of course, Bonsol ignored the reply, just went on tapping at her keys.

Trinli's attention snapped back to Silipan. "Look. Nau is in a taxi, coming in on the L1-A site. There are electric stab jets all over the area. If we can get a few zipheads to work them—"

Trud felt anger sweeping up. Whatever he was, Pham Trinli was still a fool. "Plague take you! You just don't understand Focused loyalty! We need to—"

Bonsol interrupted. "Ritser can't tighten the screws, but we can't loosen them either." She was laughing, almost inaudibly. "What an intriguing thing. We have a deadlock."