you were meant to.The one in front of me lunged.I
stepped out of the way, turning again.I hit him on
the head while I looked back at the first one, who
was on his feet, coming forward, but hesitating at
the side of the one I'd hit second, who was
struggling up against the wall, holding his face;
dark blood on pale skin.
They ran, as one, like a school of fish turning.
Linter was staggering, trying to stand.I caught him
and he clutched at me, gripping my arm tightly,
breath wheezing.He stumbled and sagged as we got
to the red and white light outside the little
restaurant.A man with a napkin stuffed in the top of
his vest opened the door and looked out at us.
Linter fell at the doorstep.It was only then I thought
of the terminal, and realized that Linter was
gripping the top of my coat, where the terminal
brooch was.The smells of cooking came out of the
open door.The man with the napkin looked
cautiously up and down the alley.I tried to prise
Linter's fingers free.
'No,' he said. 'No.'
'Dervley, let go.Let me get the ship.'
'No.' He shook his head.There was sweat on his
brow, blood on his lips.A huge dark stain was
spreading over the fawn coat. 'Let me.'
'What?'
'Lady?'
'No.Don't.'
'Lady?Want me to call the cops?'
'Linter?Linter?'
'Lady?'
' Linter !'
When his eyes closed his grip loosened.
There were more people at the restaurant
door.Somebody said, 'Jesus.' I stayed there,
kneeling on the cold ground with Linter's face
close to mine, thinking:How many films? (The guns
quieten, the battle stops.) How often do they do
this, in their commercial dreams? (Look after
Karen for me that's an order, mister you know I
always loved you Killing of Georgie Ici resté un
deporté inconnu) What am I doing here?Come on
lady.
'Come on lady.Come on, lady'Somebody tried to
lift me.
Then he was lying beside Linter looking hurt and
surprised and somebody was screaming and
people were backing off.
I started running.I jabbed the terminal brooch and
shouted.
I stopped at the far end of the alley, near the street,
and rested against a wall, looking at the dark
bricks opposite.
A noise like a pop, and a drone sinking slowly
down in front of me; a business-like black-body
drone, the inky lengths of two knife missiles
hovering on either side above eye level, twitchy
for action.
I took a deep breath. 'There's been a slight
accident,' I said calmly.
6.3:Halation Effect
I looked at Earth.It was shown, in-holo'd, on one
wall of my cabin; brilliant and blue, solid and
white-whorled.
'Then it was more like suicide,' Tagm said,
stretching out on my bed. 'I didn't think Catholics -'
'But I cooperated,' I said, still pacing up and down.
'I let him do it.I could have called the ship.After he
lost consciousness there was time; we could still
have saved him.'
'But he'd been altered back, Dizzy, and they're
dead when their heart stops, aren't they?'
'No; there's two or three minutes after the heart
stops.It was enough time.I had enough time.'
'Well then so did the ship.It must have been
watching; it was bound to have had a missile on
the case.' Tagm snorted. 'Linter was probably the
most over-observed man on the planet.The ship
must have known too; it could have done
something.The ship had the control, it had the real-
time grasp; it isn't your responsibility, Dizzy.'
I wished I could accept Tagm's moral subtraction.I
sat down on the end of the bed, head in my hands,
staring at the holo of the planet in the wall.Tagm
came over, hugged me, hands on my shoulders,
head on mine. 'Dizzy; you have to stop thinking
about it.Let's go do something.You can't sit
watching that damn holo all day.'
I stroked one of Tagm's hands, gazed again at the
slowly revolving planet, my gaze flicking in one
glance from pole to equator. 'You know, when I
was in Paris, seeing Linter for the first time, I was
standing at the top of some steps in the courtyard
where Linter's place was, and I looked across it
and there was a little notice on the wall saying it
was forbidden to take photographs of the courtyard
without the man's permission.' I turned to Tagm.
'They want to own the light!'
6.4:Dramatic Exit, Or, Thank You And Goodnight
At five minutes and three seconds past three AM,
GMT, on the morning of January the second, 1978,
the General Contact Unit Arbitrary broke orbit
above the planet Earth.It left behind an octet of
Main Observation Satellites - six of them in near-
GS orbits - a scattering of drones and minor
missiles, and a small plantation of young oaks on a
bluff near Elk Creek, California.
The ship had brought Linter's body back up,
displacing it from its freezer in a New York City
morgue.But when we left, Linter stayed, in a