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He considered Bernice, the new Life growing within her. His instinct was to
agree with Bannen, to let the birth run its course, as he had with the monkeys.
But something was holding him back. A glimpse of distant logic. Why should
Bannen agree with him? Why should Bannen agree with him and no other?
Perhaps things were different for these things that thought of themselves as
Life  even though they couldn t tell the difference between Life and what
they really were: just life.
He would help Bernice. Not because they d asked him to. Not because
they deserved it. Because she reminded him of someone. Reminded him of
someone he d known a long time ago. A Sahvteg. No. A woman named
Sahvteg.
Midnight prepared to help Bernice. He extruded himself into the compound
Ace was holding out. The compound was simple. He could improve upon it.
In fact, they should have asked him to help Bernice in the first place. He could
do all the things they asked of him at the same time now, even synthesize the
enzyme to fool the Artifact. Time itself began to take on interesting new
meanings. He remembered forward, back 
 then he remembered Bannen. Bannen was still screeching, those sounds
that no longer had meaning for him. His limbs were thrashing almost as much
as Bernice s had been. One of them held a . . . a . . .
A machine of some kind.
He wondered what it did.
He extruded himself into Bannen to find out.
As he did this the machine in Bannen s hand separated into a number of
smaller pieces. One of the pieces moved quickly through a cloud of random
chemical molecules and entered him.
That was interesting.
It seemed to trigger a memory in him.
A memory of pain. Of death.
" " "
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Bannen screamed. He was running. He was running and they wanted him.
They wanted to catch him and his son and kill him and and 
No.
He wasn t running.
The woman was running.
His mother was running.
The crowd surged around him, a beast, savage, desperate, hungry.
Starving.
He saw her scramble up the steps to the shrine. The church. Saw her offer
her son to the priest. Saw himself offered to the priest.
Bannen realized he was remembering the moment which had shaped his
entire life. One which, until now, he had been obsessed by but never known.
The moment of his mother s death.
She was beautiful. And utterly determined. Utterly determined that he
should live.
He struggled to reach her, to clasp her, to bear her away but the beast
pushed him aside as it ran for her, took her down, opened her up beneath the
hot sky.
No. No. This wasn t how it was supposed to be. He had come here to help.
How could this be happening? He had come here to help!
The thought wasn t his. He tried to stop it, couldn t, was overwhelmed by
it.
He moaned as the beast killed and ate his mother, there in front of him,
more than three and a half centuries in the past, but there, right there in front
of him.
A few eyes gazed upwards when the church lifted on silent antigravs  but
not many and the feeding soon resumed.
Something inside him died with his mother.
And in the burning ruins of Mexico the beast turned on itself and began to
feed.
He closed his eyes but the sight remained. The memory remained.
Not his.
The Doctor s.
The Doctor s!
He wasn t aware of squeezing the trigger of the gun once, twice, three times.
Was only aware of his mother lying open beneath the hot sun. It was obscene,
her lying there in the open like that. Open like that. He wanted to close her.
To cover her. Shut away her insides. They were private things. Things no one
else should know about, especially the sky.
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He tried to move, couldn t. Tried to call out, couldn t.
And then the beast stopped in its feeding frenzy as if noticing him for the
first time, as if recognizing something different about him.
The crowd looked at him.
He found he could move.
He ran.
Ace heard the first shot, reacted on a gut level  and froze. Something was
not quite right here. Bannen was screaming. Wailing and screaming. But too
much. He had been too calm until now. And now his reaction was extreme.
There were two more shots. Ace heard Gail call out to Drew, heard the boy
yell out in pain. Count on Drew to do something stupid. He d probably tried
to be a hero, tried to take the gun from Bannen. Idiot.
Ace listened hard. She also looked carefully around, stretching her improv-
ing eyesight to the limit. Bannen was still out of control. Dare she risk exam-
ining Bernice? Had Midnight managed to synthesize her cure and implement
it?
There was only one way to find out.
Ace edged the glass blade from her pocket. She sidled very slowly over to
Bernice, ran her hands over the older woman s bare stomach. A smile sketched
itself across her face as she felt a hard lump beneath the skin.
Then, as Drew s screams rose to join Bannen s, she placed the knife against
Benny s skin and began to cut.
And of course the neurotransmitter exchange worked both ways as it had
before, with the Doctor. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]