JDB
JDB waited at the bottom of an atmosphere so clear that it vanished. The moon named Groves, its
bright face half done with its slow turn away, rode gently at the top of that apparent vacuum. A
patient sentinel, it stirred not as both Neddermeyer and Oppenheimer flitted past. Like Groves,
JDB posed and watched, though he must shift his gaze across his dark surroundings. Watch, shift,
watch.
The moons drew on his thoughts again. Unseen companion to Dain, clad in vacuo-tek, he'd walked
their surfaces in times of less urgency ... and less opportunity. The Inn's caldera around him now
resembled those lunar crags, lending isolation and clarity to his watch, shift, watch.
Every crux in their combined life had generated similar sensations. That the cosmos descended on
this particular turning point seemed only fitting.
Few of his senses disputed this illusion. The balmy air stirred infrequently. The camou-tek suit
sitting next to him matched vacuo-tek in weight, heft, and bind. Only gravity refused to play
along. Yeibichai snugged him hard to his stone chair and he couldn't afford to fidget lest it
disrupt watch, shift, watch.
From that seat, selected carefully for its vantage, JDB twitched his gaze methodically across the
scene around him. Thy had been gone from the Inn when JDB showed up, so he waited for her here.
Apparently, Dain's simple call — reporting Lugar's death, asking for an emergency meeting of the
surviving Chief Executives at the Inn of the Laetoli Valley — hadn't fooled her. JDB respected
her wit and caution, though it would avail her nothing.
Once more, he looked to his right. Along that way, the caldera wall descended quickly into a
jumble of glittering black stone, debris from a primeval collapse. Thy couldn't cross that
irregular field without sound, especially with the present negligible and shifting moonglow. Still
JDB paid it attention, his blink rate way down, toying with his mantra to distract his
consciousness while the hindbrain he shared with Dain and the other alters looked for motion.
Bedlip had developed that mantra as he rescued their splintered psyche, even before JDB had come
along.
Time expired: JDB shifted his head left sixty degrees and set watch again.
Ahead, the cooled volcanic dome spread till it filled the circular wall. Men had ground it flat,
to enable air approaches, but that had no more effect than a cutter's chisel on a diamond. Both
rocks endured in spite of the cosmetics. Thy probably had one of the kinetic weapons with her, the
one she'd demonstrated at the formal dinner in the Inn, snatched up as she prepared for this, the
ultimate in can-feels. A thorough search of the Inn had implied that; all of its normal weapons
stood properly in their displays. In that process, Dain had had the presence of mind to physically
shut down the drome. None of the aircraft standing out there, including hers, could go anywhere.
Thy would find that out if she opted for flight instead of fight, though it was a little late to
re-open that missed chance. She should've fled after Dain's call, sought safety among her
ghost-troops, but she hadn't. Now, those troops would greet Dain as their last, and only,
Governor. JDB would give him that ajándék, that gift.
Watch. Shift. Watch. The Inn stretched there, at the far left of his canvass, its bulky
protrusions blending into the crater's uneven wall. Glow-trim trees rustled by its side. Without
sensors, he couldn't be sure Thy was not hidden there, but the probabilities were too low to spend
much time on it. He watched, though, in case she did come from that direction. Because
she would use the unlawful sensors she had taken from their secret box inside the Inn.
The rest of the Inn, its exit from the lift that carried hunters to and from the veldt itself,
hunkered below his feet, not visible, but he counted on the rocks so hard beneath him to signal
movement down there. He'd move for better perspective only if that contingency came true.
JDB didn't watch behind. That side of the caldera, like all the others, rose too steeply, too
difficult for a climb in the dark. Maybe he could have scaled it, but not Thy, too short to make
the most of its limited holds. Besides, she wouldn't sneak; she'd come at him straight on or not
at all.
So, he rested his eyes for that part of the circuit. His weapon lay heavy in his lap. He didn't
move, but channeled his perceptions to the hand that gripped the bow, to the finger that hugged the
arrow to its rest, to his forearm where it lay against the tense bowstring. He had shut down the
bow's automata, rendering it inert to sensors, a pleasing accord between mind and gut. He wanted
to do this himself. That's why he'd come here at all. All those echoes Dain had stomped up as he
worked through the Inn, now known to be empty. All those futile acrobatics as Dain searched the
Laetoli Plain from the air. All that drama in Dain's conclusions, sensors and Thy's pistol still
missing, nothing else. How could JDB ignore that? How could he not take the opportunity to rise
to Thy's challenge, not when she'd baited Dain — and unwittingly, JDB — for all these long
seconds.
Time expired: he shifted his head to the right and opened his eyes to watch once more. More
seconds ticked by in his mind. Seconds even the wraithe, wretched creature that he was, would have
enjoyed if Dain hadn't killed him.
Fluff k-wack! The air ripped apart not a meter from his head, ending in a thud. His eyes flicked
themselves closed needlessly. Shards flicked across his face, arms, and hands in vain. Bam!
Another harsh noise followed from his far left, finally catching up.
JDB lingered in the dark within the dark and sought an after-image ... and found a pinpoint flare
in the left corner of his left eye ... matching the weapon's report from the same direction.
He swung his head and stared at the spot where he estimated Thy had fired her gun ... and waited.
The weapon spat again. He saw its fire. He heard its belch. Its slug slammed through the empty
camou-tek suit again. He'd fooled its automata into heating the man-shaped suit while he sat
beside it within its unaltered twin, masking his body heat and protecting his skin,
as intended for hunting the wily gwira and its infrared fifth eye, both suits as unlawful as the
sensors Thy was using.
Just as he'd rehearsed it, he raised the horizontal bow, laid his head over to align with it, drew
back on the string till the feathers rustled against his cheek inside the camou-skin, all in one
motion. He sighted, his target offset by his knowledge of Thy's primary hand, her probable firing
posture, her height. He paused.
Probably puzzled by the suit's refusal to lie down, Thy fired again. JDB released his arrow. The
aftermath of her sounds plagued his ears as he strained in the silence that followed. He probably
imagined the fading buzz of the arrow, but the low moan was real. And there was no clatter to say
he'd missed.
He nocked a second arrow as he rose. Others hung in a muffled quiver at his waist. He made three
leaps, his feet catching their intended spots, then pushing again. He dropped over the caldera's
lip onto gravel. He leaped away from the chuff of pebbles. He froze. No sound. He raced toward
his target.
Thy lay beside a small boulder. Her steady eyes twinkled in the meager light. JDB turned a torch
on them. They stared back, sightless, wet from her last blink, the skin around them pinched with
anger. Below that, tickling the end of her nose, fletch poked from her mouth. Blood swelled
around it and across her cheek. He nudged her shoulder with his foot. The body leaned back like a
deadweight. He pushed harder. The body fell back. The arrow projecting from the nape snapped
off. The head waggled on the flaccid neck, once, twice, then still.
So much knowledge lay in that now-cooling brain, inherent in its tangle of dying neurons. On other
planets, JDB and Dain could have harvested that skein, laid its patterns upon an artificial
substrate, and tapped into it through a simple interface, all without the need of Thy to act as
intermediary. But Yeibichai did not allow such technology, disrespectful as it was of the Cycle of
Life. Instead, Dain had shattered the security on Thy's personal coag and picked up all her
administrative secrets, especially the organization of her ghost-troops, like sweet hunks of meat
from a smashed walnut. JDB had admired the skill stolen from the newly absorbed jDub even as he
liberated the center of perception from Dain.
JDB set down the bow and slapped that hand around one of Thy's wrists. He bent, tugged, then
assumed her weight across his shoulders. He trudged the meters of gravel back toward the Inn's
entrance.
"Slaughter chute," he ordered.
The wall split. He dumped the body into its maw.
"Prepare as predator bait," he ordered, then spun to fetch his bow before heading inside to clean
up.
His leg faltered, didn't seem to swing smoothly. No, the foot did strike the ground as planned,
just there at the bottom of his vision. He rocked slightly as the other leg strode, but he hadn't
taken that step. He reached out to brace himself on the volcanic wall, but no arm obeyed, no arm
even existed to his mind. Nor any gut or chest or shoulder, no kinesthesia at all. Sounds
stopped, so abruptly the last he heard was the snap of silence. Sight, too, clicked away. All
external senses had failed. He hung alone with his thoughts and skills and memories once more in
his pince in their brain.
=At least I'm safe here!= he shouted, taunting — and distracting — his captor. He pawed quietly
down his secret link to JDainB, cackling silently in his cyst. Jikki, their childish progenitor,
counted only as icon, the image they all labored to protect.
=No,= Dain answered simply and raked away JDB's skills. Gouges, like gray jags, scored through
JDB's mind.
=With those, you don't need Thy,= JDB offered. Behind the comment, he felt JDainB's eager claw,
filled it with the pivot-memory he always used to displace Dain, even today. Then he quietly
snipped the link, lest Dain stumble upon it. JDainB would drift, steward of restitution, privy to
JDB's special past, until Dain pinnacled, till he cradled success, till he —
Another raid tore through JDB's mind, adding gouges, widening the others, ripping his past out of
him.
=With these,= Dain said, =I don't need your advice about our ghost-troops, taking their helm and
leading them into Ganj Dareh. In fact ...= And he paused.
JDB wondered why Dain waited. =A little appreciation, a barátom?= he asked. =For all I've done
for you?=
=And what would that be?= Dain said and reached out one more time.
