Текст книги "Twilight "

Автор книги: David George

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 30 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

46

Something’s going on,Quark thought as he marched along the Promenade toward the bar. Kira in a dress uniform, Alonis and Trill coming to the station and attending an event with an Andorian and a Capellan—one of the only Andorians on DS9 being a Federation ambassador, and the only Capellan, a Starfleet admiral. This would be more than a “gathering,” as Kira had called it. Something was definitely happening, and Quark wanted to know about it.

He strode along, darting left and right through the midday crowd, anxiously rapping the padd in his hand against the side of his leg. He dashed past the bar without even glancing inside, heading instead for the security office. Laren would know about whatever was going on, and she would tell him.

If she’ll even talk to me now,he thought.

The doors to the office parted before Quark. He began speaking as soon as he stepped inside. “Laren, I just came from—” He stopped at the sight of the person standing behind the desk. She turned from peering at one of the security displays just as the office doors clicked closed.

“Can I help you, Quark?” Sergeant Etana asked.

“No,” he said, drumming his fingers against the padd. “No, I…where’s Lieutenant Ro?”

Etana looked left and right, then back at Quark. “Not here,” she said. The expression on her face suggested that she thought Quark had asked an improper question.

“I can see that,” he said, not bothering to hide his annoyance. “Can you tell me where she is?”

“She’s working on a security issue,” Etana said evasively.

I’m sure she is,Quark thought. He realized that this gathering tonight must be why Laren had been working such long hours the past few days. He spun on his heel and, without saying anything more to Etana, bolted out of the office.

Quark sped across the busy Promenade toward the bar. He had to find Laren as soon as possible. And not just about the gathering,he thought, recognizing the other cause for his sense of urgency: he had flirted with Treir in front of Laren. What had he been thinking? After he and Laren had spent such a wonderful few hours together last night, walking through the dark, quiet station, talking and laughing. “Idiocy must run in my family,” he muttered as he entered Quark’s.

He quickly slipped behind the bar, headed for the companel at the far end. He skirted by Treir, who was busy serving a customer. “Hey,” she said, “how did it go with Colonel Kira?”

Quark ignored her, dropping his padd on a shelf with a clatter. He ducked down below the companel and worked to unlock a compartment there. As he did, Treir came over and bent down beside him. “Is everything all right?” she asked. “Didn’t she approve the menu?”

“Yes, yes she did,” Quark said hurriedly, not wanting to be distracted. He reached up to the shelf and pulled the padd from it. “Here,” he said, handing it to Treir. “Can you take care of this?”

Treir took the padd and examined it. “Um, sure,” she said, “but if I’m working on the catering, then who’s going to run the bar?”

Quark looked at her, but he had to replay in his head what she had just said. “You stay in charge of the bar,” he told her. “Find Broik and have him work on the catering.” He turned back to the compartment.

“All right,” she said. She stayed beside him for a moment more without saying anything. Finally, she stood up and moved away.

Quark finished unlocking the compartment, then slid its door open. He reached inside and withdrew a small, unexceptional box. Holding it on his knee, he flipped open the lid, revealing a cache of isolinear optical rods. Quark pulled out a particular rod, then closed the box and set it back inside the compartment. He rose, then instinctively glanced around to make sure that nobody was watching him too closely. Satisfied, he opened a hinged access plate in the companel, pushed the security-breaching rod into a receptacle, then flipped the plate closed. Not wanting anybody to hear what he was doing, Quark chose to key in his query: LOCATE LIEUTENANT RO.

The response came back at once, spelled out on the display: LIEUTENANT RO IS IN THE WARDROOM.

Of course,Quark thought. The gathering tonight would be held in the wardroom. Laren was no doubt securing the area. He entered another command: IDENTIFY PERSONNEL IN WARDROOM. A list of three names appeared, Laren’s and those of two other security officers. Quark wanted to talk to Laren, but he would wait until she was alone.

He deactivated the companel, then removed the orange isolinear rod and slipped it inside a jacket pocket. He would return to his quarters and monitor Laren from there, then go see her when the opportunity arose. First, though, he dropped down to the compartment again, sliding the door closed and locking it.

As Quark stood up, the companel emitted a quaver that signaled an incoming audio message. He touched a control to receive the communication, foolishly hoping it might be from Laren. “Quark’s,” he said.

“I want to use a holosuite,”a rich voice announced. Quark recognized both the words and the tone at once. It was the same message as always, delivered in the same manner—which, despite its lack of courtesy, still worked better than having the Jem’Hadar stalk into the bar before going to one of the holosuites. “ProgramTaran’atar Seven.”

He quickly checked the availability of the holosuites on the companel. “This is Quark. I’ll send somebody with your holoprogram up to holosuite one.” The channel closed without even an acknowledgment from the Jem’Hadar. “Not only are they ugly and nasty,” Quark mumbled to himself, “but they’re also rude.” He turned toward the bar, located the right box of programs on a shelf beneath, and picked out Taran’atar Seven.

Quark peered around, searching for Treir. His gaze found her at the dabo table, delivering drinks to a group even larger than this morning. He looked for Frool and Grimp, and saw them also busy with customers. Actually, now that Quark noticed, the bar had quite a few patrons, at least for this time of day. For any time of day, lately,he thought. And yet the increase in business failed to cheer him.

Deciding just to deliver the holoprogram himself, Quark hurried out from behind the bar and over to the nearer of the spiral staircases. He bounded up, one hand sliding up the outside railing, his footfalls ringing on the metal stairs. At the top, he headed for the holosuites. He found the Jem’Hadar waiting, rigid as a statue. As a gargoyle,Quark thought. He remembered when the soldier had unshrouded in the bar three nights ago, and how unnerving and frightening that had been. Now, though, seeing the Jem’Hadar in this context, wanting to enter a holosuite, Quark felt less threatened—not unthreatened, but less threatened.

“Here,” he said, holding up the isolinear rod. The Jem’Hadar reached forward, delicately plucked it from Quark’s hand, and turned without a word toward the holosuite door. Quark started to go, but them an abrupt chill coursed through the outer ridges of his ears. Anxiety gripped him. He did not know the purpose of Kira’s gathering this evening, but an image came to him of the Jem’Hadar tearing through the wardroom, leaving a slew of mangled bodies in his wake—one of them Laren’s. He turned back to the Jem’Hadar, who was operating the panel in the bulkhead beside the holosuite door. “Why are you here?” Quark asked, startled to hear a note of challenge in his voice.

The Jem’Hadar took his hand off the panel, looked over, and regarded Quark for a moment. “I am here to train,” he finally said. “This program simulates—”

“No,” Quark interrupted, waving off the explanation. “Why are you here,on Deep Space 9?”

Again, the Jem’Hadar looked at him for a few seconds without saying anything, and Quark got the uncomfortable feeling that the soldier was deciding whether to answer his question or break his neck. Very quickly, the fear Quark had felt the other night in the bar returned. It suddenly seemed like a bad idea not only to have asked the question, but to have come up here in the first place. Quark contemplated running, but then the Jem’Hadar spoke. “I am on this station,” he said, “in order to observe life in the Alpha Quadrant.” Quark declined to point out that the Jem’Hadar could not do much observing in a holosuite—well, unless it was a certain type of program, but he chose not to mention that either. “And I am also here to keep an eye on you.”

Quark’s lobes went cold. But then he realized that what the Jem’Hadar had said made no sense. What possible interest could the Founders have in a Ferengi bartender? And then the answer occurred to him. “Odo sent you here,” he said.

“The Founder sent me, yes,” the Jem’Hadar said.

Two things immediately became clear to Quark. First, his concerns about the Jem’Hadar were baseless; Odo would not have allowed the soldier to come to the station if any real chance existed of something bad happening. And two, even ninety thousand lightyears away, the constable still wanted to be a thorn in his side. “Odo told you to keep an eye on me,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And you believe the Founders are gods,” Quark said.

“The Founders aregods,” the Jem’Hadar insisted. He resumed operating the panel, and the door to the holosuite glided open. Quark could see the holographic emitter system in the walls beyond. The Jem’Hadar walked through the doorway.

“If the Founders are gods,” Quark blurted, “then how could they have lost the war?”

The Jem’Hadar stopped just inside the holosuite and turned back toward Quark. “The Founders did not lose the war. The Jem’Hadar failed them. The Vorta, the Cardassians, and the Breen failed them.”

“Of course, it’s never the leaders’ fault, only their minions’,” Quark said, and he actually took a step forward. “You know, I knew Odo longer than anybody on the station. I knew him betterthan anybody. And I never once thought of him as a god.” It rankled him, he realized, that anybody did.

“That demonstrates nothing about the Founder,” the Jem’Hadar said. “It only demonstrates something about you.”

“It demonstrates that I’m observant,” Quark said.

“It demonstrates that you court death.”

Quark stepped back now, unsure whether to accept the statement as a joke or a threat. Somehow, he did not believe that a genetically engineered soldier would have much of a sense of humor.

“You needn’t worry. I won’t hurt you,” the Jem’Hadar said. He turned toward the panel just inside the door, raised his hand, and slipped the isolinear rod into a slot. “Because the Founder instructed me not to.”

“How nice of him,” Quark said. “What else did Odo say about me?”

“He said you were a lawbreaker, scurrilous, loutish, avaricious, deceitful, devious, and short.” The Jem’Hadar touched a control, and the holosuite transformed from a dim, empty room on a space station into a bright, sprawling beach on the edge of an amethyst lake.

“There, you see?” Quark said. “He was wrong, so how can he be a god?”

“I am sure the Founder was not wrong,” the Jem’Hadar avowed, still peering at the panel.

“Well, I am short,” Quark allowed, “but a lawbreaker? Scurrilous and loutish? And those other things? Please.”

“I’ve observed nothing to suggest the Founder’s description of you is inaccurate.”

“All right,” Quark said, warming to the opportunity to prove Odo something less than a god. “Let’s say that he was right, that I am all those things. You know that Odo was chief of security on the station when he was here, right?”

The Jem’Hadar looked over at Quark now, apparently curious. “Yes,” he said.

“Well, if I’m a lawbreaker, then doesn’t that mean that Odo should have arrested me and put me in prison?” Quark argued. “But here I am, free. Which means either Odo was wrong and I’m not a lawbreaker, or he was right, but he wasn’t a good enough chief of security to catch me. Either way, I’d say that doesn’t make him much of a god.” I should’ve been a Vulcan,Quark thought, dazzled by his own display of logic.

The Jem’Hadar said nothing.

“Well,” Quark said. “All right then.” He started to leave.

“Wait.” To Quark’s surprise, the word sounded more like a request than a command. “The Founders created the Jem’Hadar. Createdthem. We exist by their providence. Is that not a characteristic of divinity?”

“I wouldn’t exist if not for my mother,” Quark said. “I don’t lose sleep over it.”

“But your mother did not create the entire Ferengi species,” the Jem’Hadar said.

“Listen, with enough latinum and the right scientists, you can create just about anybody or anything,” Quark said. “So what?”

The Jem’Hadar said nothing again. Then he turned and paced deeper into the holosuite, his boots kicking up puffs of white sand as he neared the edge of the bluish purple water. Quark, enjoying being able to confound this genetically engineered soldier, walked forward and through the doorway.

The Jem’Hadar stopped and turned back toward him. “What do you most want?” he asked.

“What?” Quark had not expected such a question.

The Jem’Hadar strode back across the beach until he reached Quark. “What is it that you most desire? Wealth?”

Quark laughed, a response combined of amusement and anxiety as he peered up into the Jem’Hadar’s intense eyes. “Wealth,” he confirmed. “Of course.”

“If a Founder chose to, he could become a brick of gold-pressed latinum,” the Jem’Hadar said. “Or ten bricks. Or a thousand.”

“That’s not exactly the same thing as having wealth,” Quark contended. “They couldn’t spend himself.”

The Jem’Hadar stepped around Quark and moved back to the panel inside the doorway. He touched a control, and the scene around them gained substance. The lake began to undulate, the gentle waves nipping at the shore. The crisp smells of vegetation floated through the air, carried along by a caress of breeze. The pacific nature of the holoprogram seemed at odds with the character of the Jem’Hadar. “And why do you spend?” he asked.

Quark shrugged. “To acquire things, of course.”

“But the Founders do not need to acquire anything,” the Jem’Hadar said, moving past Quark again and heading back across the beach toward the water. “The Founders can be anything they wish to be. They are free from the need for wealth, because they already have everything—they already areeverything—in the universe.”

“Yes, but…” But what?Quark wondered, his gaze drifting downward. He had never considered Odo’s nature in quite the way the Jem’Hadar had just described it. Odo had never quite been like that, reveling in all that he could become, although Quark supposed that he could if he chose to. In a sense, the Jem’Hadar was right; Odo could have just about anything he wanted, because he could bejust about anything he wanted. Of course, in all the time Quark had known him, the constable had only wanted three things: to serve the cause of justice, to have Kira love him, and to return to his people, all things that he could not have simply by shifting his form. But then, Odo had nevertheless managed to acquire all of those things. He had meted out justice for years, Kira had come to love him, and he had finally gone back to live with the Founders.

Odo has everything he ever wanted,he thought. The truth of that astounded Quark. Odo was no longer with Kira, of course, but that had been his choice.

“Computer,” the Jem’Hadar said, “begin program.” Quark looked up. He thought that the holoprogram had already been running, but obviously the Jem’Hadar had only activated the setting parameters up until now. At first, Quark detected no change in the holosuite, but then a deep vibration reached his ears. The sound increased in volume, originating somewhere behind the Jem’Hadar. Quark peered out at the surface of the lake and saw a mass of water being displaced, churning upward. As the rumble grew louder, the movement of the water grew more violent. Quark looked at the Jem’Hadar’s face. The soldier was smiling.

The lake bubbled upward in a frenzy. With a crashing sound, the surface broke, and a huge shape burst out of the water. Quark saw a creature out of a nightmare, with a rugged, black hide, two golden, vertical slits for eyes, and a gaping maw that held enormous triangular teeth. The beast bellowed, an ugly, angry cry. The Jem’Hadar turned to face it. Quark turned and raced from the holosuite. Even though this was only a simulation, he had no desire to witness this sort of thing.

Quark headed out across the upper level of the Promenade toward the nearest turbolift. The image of the horrible creature in the holosuite stayed with him only an instant. Odo’s face replaced it in his mind, along with the notion that the constable essentially had acquired everything he had ever wanted. And I can’t get almost anything I want,Quark thought bitterly. Not the moon for which he had always longed, not great monetary wealth, not even much of a business. And he also might have thrown away whatever small chance he might have had with Ro Laren.

But now Quark decided he would do what he had to do to change that.

47

Vaughn took a last sip of water, then sealed the container and set it aside. He stood up, packed his bedroll—the blanket and beacon inside it—and strapped it to his back. He slung both water containers over his shoulder, then started up the side of the hollow in which he had chosen to rest.

At the top of the incline, a roadway stretched away to the left and right. Vaughn had found the road a few hours ago, on the way out of the city. It measured a dozen or so meters across, traveling through the rise and fall of the landscape in a predominantly straight line, directly toward the complex surrounding the source of the pulse. Walking on the even terrain beside the road allowed him to maintain a steady gait, while at the same time putting less strain on him than if he were to move along the harder surface of the road itself.

Vaughn turned left and resumed his journey. A long upgrade lay ahead, the summit about a kilometer away. He slipped his tricorder out of a coat pocket and performed a scan. As he had drawn nearer the site of the pulse, the range of the sensors had decreased dramatically, though the amount of interference from the energy still confirmed that the road continued in the right direction. He closed the tricorder and slid it back into his coat.

Above, the dark sea of clouds gloomed, matching Vaughn’s mindset. Since his encounter in the city with Captain Harriman—or whoever or whatever it had been—he had spent considerable effort conceiving of possible explanations. Time and again, though, his mind would drift from asking questions and searching for answers, to recalling his days with Harriman. Over and over, he had to force his thoughts back to the situation at hand, a problem of focus that did not usually afflict him.

In the end, he figured that the problem broke down simply enough: either that had been Harriman back in the city, or it had not. If it had been Harriman, then how had he come to be here, and why? And why from so long ago? Had there been a reason he had not responded when Vaughn had called to him? Most important, how would this affect the mission to disable the pulse?

On the other hand, if it had not been Harriman—which seemed far more likely—then who or what had it been? Had it occurred only in Vaughn’s mind, or had it been real? And if real, then how had it been accomplished, and why? Again, most important, what effect would it have on his mission?

What most troubled Vaughn was the agreement between what he had perceived and what his tricorder scans had shown. If it had not been Harriman, or at least a human male, then either both Vaughn and the tricorder had been fooled, or Vaughn’s perception of the tricorder had been fooled. Either way, it left the accuracy of the two most valuable tools he had right now—the tricorder and his mind—in doubt.

As Vaughn hiked up the gradient, leaning into the slope, his thoughts wandered again from Harriman’s apparent presence here to those dangerous days spent with him– What? Sixty-five years ago?He remembered with horror the catastrophe of Ad Astra,in which lives and hopes had been lost. He recalled the mission to remedy the damage done, to avert the unwinnable war…the success, but at a cost. Vaughn had still been a young man then, in his thirties, and naïve.

No, not naïve,he thought, a word that carried negative connotations with it. Innocent.Back then, he had believed in the virtue of fighting evil, without really understanding the toll that such fighting could take.

Now, alone on this planet, he shook his head and laughed, with not humor but curiosity. He had not thought about Tomed– reallythought about it—in years, perhaps decades. And yet for the last few hours, he had come back to it again and again. All this time later, he found that those ancient emotions could still take hold of him, as though he were experiencing them for the first time. He knew now that he would always carry within him the simple hollowness of the tragedy, along with the complicated sorrows that came from fighting in the shadows.

Underneath the gray skies, Vaughn marched alongside the road, up the incline. Pebbles crunched in the dirt beneath his boots, a sharp contrast to the spectral hum still pervading the air like the aural equivalent of mist. As he approached the summit of the upgrade, a shape became visible in the distance, slowly climbing into view. Vaughn’s hands balled into fists, a symptom of the adrenaline that began to course through his body. If he had reached the complex around the pulse already, then he would have an entire day to determine a course of action to save the Vahni.

But as Vaughn topped the rise, he saw only a single structure. A dark tower of some sort, it sat perhaps another kilometer away, reaching up from the center of the roadway itself. It appeared to be about as tall as the road was wide, its base measuring about half that size. Vaughn pulled out his tricorder and attempted a sensor scan, but the interference from the energy made it impossible.

Vaughn kept his gaze on the structure as he continued walking, looking in particular for movement. He saw none. He wondered about the purpose of the structure. Considering its placement, he speculated that it might have functioned as a checkpoint of some sort. He looked for openings in the side facing him, and saw a rectangular doorway at ground level, and several narrow slits in a vertical line above it. With its dark coloring and slightly irregular edges, it appeared to be constructed of stone and—

Vaughn stopped. He checked the tricorder again, but still could not take a reading. It didn’t matter. He had drawn close enough now to recognize the structure. It was identical to the tower at the center of the Vahni city.

In less than a quarter of an hour, Vaughn had reached the tower. When he had come within half a kilometer, he had been able to scan the structure: stone and mortar, four stories tall, a single doorway, and a stairway that ascended up the inside walls to the roof. He did not have the readings of the actual Vahni tower—why would he?—so he could not compare the two structures, but his memory found them indistinguishable.

What’s going on?Vaughn wanted to know. Was he in a holosuite somewhere, or was this all occurring in his mind? Maybe he still lay back in the wreckage of Chaffee,unconscious or even comatose, imagining all of this.

Except…this did not seem like a holosuite or an illusion or a dream. Of course, he understood that he might not be able to prove such a belief one way or another. It had been more than a day since the shuttle had gone down, though, and all of the events since then—finding Prynn alive, treating the badly wounded ch’Thane, walking for kilometers across the empty land, passing through the city—had all seemed real. But then, so too had Harriman.

Standing beside the doorway, Vaughn patted a hand against an outer wall of the tower. The stone felt cool to the touch, hard, rough. He closed his eyes for a moment, and the sensations remained.

Vaughn pushed one side of his coat back, allowing him to draw his phaser. He tapped at the control surface on the top of the weapon, configuring it to a powerful but nonlethal setting. He turned around to face back the way he had come, leveled the phaser, and fired. A shaft of yellow-red light streaked into the surface of the roadway, at a point about ten meters away, its high-pitched whine loud in the almost-quiet of the empty landscape. Vaughn shot the beam for ten seconds, then released the trigger. The point on the road at which he had fired glowed red. He checked the tricorder and read liquefaction of stone composites and binding materials. It proved little, he knew, though it at least seemedto lend credence to the reality of his surroundings.

Turning back toward the tower, Vaughn stepped away, raised the phaser, and fired again. He held the beam for longer this time. When he stopped, a section of the wall glowed red. He worked the tricorder once more, scanning the tower. Again, he read liquefied stone in the affected—

A life-form showed on the display. Vaughn adjusted the scan and located it on the roof of the tower. It read as Vahni Vahltupali.

Vaughn slipped the straps of the water containers from his shoulders, lowering the containers onto the roadway. Then he unburdened himself of the bedroll, also setting it down on the road. He reset his phaser to heavy stun, then strode back to the tower. Cautiously, he moved through the open doorway, his weapon poised at the level of his waist. Inside, the air felt slightly cooler than the air outside, and slightly damp. He waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust fully to the dimmer lighting, then turned to his left and started up the stone stairs that ran along the wall. The setting matched his recollection of the tower on the Vahni world.

Climbing the stairs as quietly as he could, he took three minutes to reach the top. He stood with his back to the inside wall, beside the open doorway that led out onto the roof. He consulted the tricorder again, verifying the presence of the Vahni. Then he closed and pocketed the tricorder, raised his phaser higher, and stepped through the doorway.

Ventu—or somebody or something that looked just like him—stood on the far side of the roof, a cloth bag at his feet. Vaughn slowly moved forward, observing and saying nothing. As he did, a flash of color and form flowed across the Vahni’s body. “Again, you are welcome,” came the slightly mechanical voice of the translator. Vaughn peered down at his chest and saw only his tattered uniform under his open coat, but not the optical mesh that had comprised part of the Vahni translation devices. Nor did the interface between the mesh and the universal translator hang in a small casing at his side.

Vaughn looked up. “Who are you?” he demanded.

All at once, the tower thrust sideways, surging to Vaughn’s right. He and Ventu were thrown from their feet in the opposite direction. Even as he fell, a sense of déjà vu overwhelmed him, just as it had back in the city with Harriman. He dropped the phaser as he brought his hands up in time to break his fall, but the left side of his forehead impacted the stone floor of the roof. Explosive sounds pounded the air around him, sounds he knew to be the products of a quake. He had lived through all of this before.

The tower continued to shake violently. Vaughn pushed himself up, fighting to rise onto his knees, and to his feet. He looked over at Ventu and saw vacant, white swirls blooming on his flesh, and Vaughn vividly remembered the horrible, silent screams of the Vahni.

He eyed the doorway, and briefly considered bolting through it and attempting to escape the tower before it collapsed. But he had little time, he knew, and if he got caught within the tower when it went down, he might be killed. He looked back at Ventu, but instead of trying to help him, as he had back on the Vahni world, Vaughn raced to the wall that rimmed the roof. Beyond the tower, he saw no Vahni city, nothing but the empty, rolling geography of this gray world. He gazed upward, and saw the sky filled not with the awful sight of a shattering moon, but only the constant cloud cover that haunted this place.

The tower shifted dramatically, nearly knocking Vaughn from his feet once more, but he grabbed the top of the wall and held himself up. He peered over at Ventu—or the masquerade of Ventu—and saw what he had seen a week ago: fear, embodied in the empty whorls cycling across the Vahni’s flesh, and the tentacles wrapped tightly around his upper body. Knowing what the next few moments would bring, and not wanting to chance the reality of the situation, Vaughn decided to protect Ventu. If they could make it through the destruction of the tower, then maybe Vaughn could get some of his questions answered.

With the roof moving back and forth beneath his feet, he staggered over to Ventu. “We have to protect ourselves,” Vaughn yelled. To demonstrate, he lifted his arms up around his head. “Ventu,” he screamed through the din, “protect your head!” Back on the Vahni world, Ventu had died from a massive brain injury. Maybe this time, Vaughn could—

That was when the tower collapsed.

Vaughn could not tell whether or not he had lost consciousness, but the next perception he had was that the quake had ceased, as had the thunderous noise accompanying it. He opened his eyes and raised his head, finding himself atop a pile of rubble that had once been the tower. A veil of dust hung in the air, and the debris beneath him ticked and popped as bits of rubble fell toward the ground. He had been here before.

Slowly, Vaughn moved, taking inventory of his body. He felt familiar aches, particularly in his limbs. What isn’t familiar here?he thought.

As he began a cautious descent, the urge to call the names of Bowers and Roness rose in his mind; that was what he had done back on the world of the Vahni. But now, when he peered out past the remains of the destroyed tower, he did not see a Vahni city, its pedestrian ways clogged with frantic crowds, smoke flowing skyward from several points, violet lasers shooting up and warning of the emergency. Instead, he spied only a barren landscape, with a narrow belt of roadway receding into the distance.