"I have," Baris confirmed, his smile only slightly less, "and I will be coming to join you for the final chase."

Jharit and Trock exchanged a look. "As you wish. You are paying."

"Yes, I am." The merchant"s smile was gone now. "Turn on your beacon and I will join you within the hour."

"How are you getting out here?" Canard Meck asked.

"By AGC of course," Baris said, turning to look toward her.

"All AGCs are registered. The AI will know where you are."

Baris flicked his fingers at this, a.s.suming an expression of contempt. "No matter. We will continue from your position to...our destination, in the transport."

"Very well," Canard Meck agreed.

Baris waited for something more to be said. When nothing was he blanked the screen with a disappointed moue.

The merchant arrived in a fancy repro Macrojet AGC. He climbed out wearing sand fatigues and followed by two women dressed much the same. One carried a hunting rifle and ammunition belts; the other carried various unidentifiable packages. Baris struck a pose before them. He was a handsome man, but none of the four reacted to this foolish display. They knew that anyone who had reached the merchant"s position was no fool. Jharit and Jharilla looked at him gla.s.sy-eyed. Trock inspected the rifle.

Canard Meck glanced at one of the women, took in the imbecilic smile, then returned her attention to the merchant.

"Shall we be on our way then?" she said.

Baris nodded and, still smiling, clicked his fingers and walked to the transport. The two women followed him, obedient as dogs. The four came after: hounds of a different breed.

Out of the rock field reared the first of the stone b.u.t.tes, carved by wind-blown sand into something resembling a man-like statue sunk up to its chest in the ground. In the cracks and divisions of its head, mica and quartz glittered like insectile eyes. Snow led the way to the base of the b.u.t.te where slabs of the same stone lay tilted in the ground.

"Here," he said, holding his hand out to a sandwich of slabs. With a grinding noise, the top slab pivoted to one side to expose a stair dropping a short distance to the floor of a tunnel. "Welcome to my home."

"You live in a hole in the ground?" Hirald asked, with a touch of irony.

"Of course not. Follow me."

As they climbed down, the slab swung back across above them and wall lights clicked on. Hirald noted that the tunnel led under the b.u.t.te and had already worked things out by the time they reached the chimney and the elevator car. They climbed inside the car and sprawled in plush seats as it hauled them up a chimney cut through the center of the b.u.t.te.

"This must have taken you some time," Hirald observed.

"The chimney was already here. I first found it about two hundred years ago. Others had lived here before me, but in rather primitive conditions. I"ve been improving the place ever since."

The car arrived at its destination and they walked from it into a complex of moisture-locked rooms at the head of the b.u.t.te.

With a drink in her hand Hirald stood at a polarized panoramic window and gazed out across the rock field for a moment, then returned her attention to the room and its contents. In a gla.s.s-fronted case along one wall was a display of weapons dating from the 22nd century, and at the center a sword from some pres.p.a.ce age. Hirald had to wonder where and when Snow had acquired it. She turned from the case as Snow returned to the room, dressed now in loose black trousers and a black, open-necked shirt.

The contrast with his white skin and hair and pink eyes gave him the appearance of someone who might have a taste for blood.

"There"s some clothing there for you to use if you like, and the shower. There"s plenty of water here," he told her.

Hirald nodded, placed her drink on a gla.s.s-topped table, and headed back into the rooms Snow had come from. Snow watched her go. She would shower and change and be little fresher than she alreadywas. He had noted with some puzzlement how she never seemed to smell bad, never seemed dirty.

"Whose clothing is this?" Hirald asked from the room beyond.

"My last wife"s," said Snow.

Hirald came to the door with clothing folded over one arm. She looked at Snow questioningly.

"She killed herself about a century ago," he said in a flat voice. "Walked out into the desert and burned a hole through her head. I found her before the crab-birds and sand sharks."

"Why?"

"She grew old and I did not. She hated it."

Hirald didn"t comment. She went to take her shower, and shortly returned wearing a skin-tight body-suit of translucent blue material, which she did not expect to be wearing for long once Snow saw her in it. He was occupied though-sitting in a swivel chair studying a screen. He was back in his dust robes, terrapin mask hanging open. She walked up behind him to see what he was looking at. She saw the hover transport on the sand and the two women pulling a sheet over it. She recognized Merchant Baris and the four hired killers.

"It would seem Baris has found me," Snow said, his tone cold and flat.

"You know him?"

"Met him once when he was younger. He hasn"t changed much." He nodded at the screen. "The four with him look an interesting bunch."

"I met them: the Marsman and the Corporate woman are the leaders-mercenary group," said Hirald. "What defenses does this place have?"

"None, I never felt the need for them."

"Are you sure they are coming here?"

"It seems strange that he has chosen this particular rock field on the whole planet. I"ll have to go and settle this."

"I"ll change," said Hirald, and hurried back to get her suit. When she returned Snow was gone; when she tried to follow she found the elevator car locked at the bottom of the shaft.

"d.a.m.n you," she said flatly, smashing her fist against a doorjamb, leaving a fist-shaped dent in the steel. Then she walked back a few paces, turned, ran and leaped into the shaft. The rails pinned to the edge were six meters away. She reached them easily, her hands locking on the polished metal with a thump. Laboriously she began to climb down.

Jharit smiled at his wife and nodded to Trock, who stood beyond her, strapping on body armor. This was the one. They would be rich after this. He examined the narrow-beam laser he held. He would have preferred something with a little more power, but it was essential that the body not be too badly damaged. He turned to Baris as the merchant sent his two women back to the transport.

"We"ll go in spread out. He probably has scanning equipment in the rock field and if there"s an ambush we don"t want him to get too many of us at once."

Baris smiled and thumbed bullets into his rifle, adjusted the scope. Jharit wondered about him, wondered how good he was. He gave the signal for them to spread out and enter the rock field.

They were coming to kill him. There were no rules, no challenges offered. Snow braced the b.u.t.t of his pistol against the rock and sighted along it.

"Anything?" Jharit asked over the com.

"Pin cameras," Jharilla told him. "I burned a couple out, but there have to be more. He knows we"re here."

"Remember, narrow-beam, we burn too much and there"s no money. A clean kill. A head shot would be nice," Jharit added.

There was a whooshing sound, a brief scream, static over the com. Jharit hit the ground and moved behind a rock.

"What the h.e.l.l was that?" "He"s got a f.u.c.king proton weapon. f.u.c.king body armor"s useless!"

Jharit felt a sinking sensation in his gut. They had expected projectile weapons, perhaps a laser.

"Who..?"

There was a pause.

"Trock?"

"Jharilla"s dead."

Jharit swallowed dryly and edged on into the rock field.

"Position?"

"Don"t know?"

"Meck?"

"Nothing here."

"Baris?"

There was no reply from the Merchant.

Snow dropped down off the top of the boulder and pulled some of the small but deadly grenades from his belt. Lacking a hand, he used his teeth to twist their tops right around. The dark-skinned one was over to his left, the Marsman over to his right. The others were farther over to the right somewhere.

He threw the two spheroids right and left and moved back, then flicked through multiple views on his wrist screen. A lot of the cameras were out, but he pulled up a view of the Marsman. Two detonations.

As the Marsman hit the ground he realized he had thrown too far. He flicked through the views again and caught the other stumbling through dust and wreckage, rock splinters imbedded in his face. Ah, so.

Snow moved to his left, checking his screen every few seconds. He halted behind a tilted slab and after checking his screen once more, squatted down and waited. With little regard for his surroundings Trock stumbled out of the falling dust. Snow smiled grimly under his mask and sighted on him, but before he could fire, red agony cut his shoulder. The smell of burning flesh. Snow rolled to one side, came up onto his feet, ran. Rock to one side of him smoked, pinged as it heated. He dived for cover, crawled among broken rock. The firing ceased. Now I"m dead, he thought. His pistol lay in the dust back there somewhere.

"He dropped his weapon, Trock. He"s over to your left. Take him down, I can"t get a sighting on him at the moment."

Trock spat a broken tooth from his mouth and walked in the direction indicated, his antique revolver in his left hand and his laser in his right. This was it. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d was dead, or perhaps not. I"ll cut his arms and legs off, the beam should cauterize sufficiently. But Trock did not get time to fire. The figure in dust robes came out of nowhere to drop-kick him in the chest. The body armor absorbed most of the blow, but Trock went over. Before he could rise the figure was above him, a split-fingered blow spearing down. After that Trock saw nothing. Sprawled back he lifted fingers to the bleeding mess behind his broken visor. Then the pain hit and he started screaming.

Snow coughed as quietly as he could, opened his mask and gasped in pain. The burn had started at his shoulder and ended in the middle of his chest, but luckily his dust robes had absorbed most of the heat. A second more and he would have been dead. The pain was crippling. He knew he would not have the energy to withstand another attack like that, nor would he be likely to take any of the others by surprise. His adversary had been stunned by the explosion, angered by injury. Snow edged back through the rock field, his mobility rapidly decreasing. When a shadow fell across him he looked up into the inevitable.

"Why didn"t you take his weapon?" Jharit asked, nodding back toward Trock, who was no longer screaming. He was curled fetal by a rock, a field dressing across his eyes and his body pumped full of self-administered pain-killers.

"No time, no strength...could only get him through his visor," Snow managed.

Jharit nodded and spoke into his com. "I have him. Home in on my signal."

Snow waited for death, but Jharit squatted in the dust, seemingly disinclined to kill him.

"Jharilla was a h.e.l.l of a woman," said Jharit, removing a stasis bottle from his belt and pushing it into the sand next to him. "We were married in Viking City twenty years ago." Jharit pulled a wicked ceramal knife from his boot and held it up before his face. "This is for her you understand. After I"ve taken your t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es and dressed that wound I"ll see to your other injury. I don"t want you to die yet. I have so much to tell you about her, and there is so much I want you to experience. You know she-"

Jharit turned at a sound, rose to his feet and drew his laser again. He stepped away from Snow and gazed around. Snow looked beyond him but could see nothing.

"If you leave here now, Marsman, I will not kill you."

The voice was Hirald"s.

Jharit fired into the rocks and backed toward Snow.

"I have a singun and I am in chameleonwear. I can kill you any time I wish. Drop your weapon."

Jharit paused for a moment of indecision, then whirled, pointing his laser at Snow. The expression on his face told all. Before he could press the trigger he collapsed into himself: a central point the size of a pinhead, a plume of sand standing where he stood, then all blasted away in a thunder-clap and encore of miniature lightnings across the ground. Snow slowly shoved himself to his feet as he stared in awe at the spot Jharit had occupied. He had heard of such weapons but had not believed they existed. He looked across as Hirald flickered back into existence only a few meters away. She smiled at him, just before the first shot ripped the side of her face away.

Snow knew he yelled, he might have screamed. He watched in impotent horror as the second shot smacked into her back and knocked her to the ground. Then: Baris and the Corporate woman, walking out of the rock field. Baris sighted again as he walked, hit Hirald with another shot that ripped half her side away as he and his companion moved past her.

Snow felt his legs give way. He went down on his knees. Baris came before him, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. Snow gazed up at him, trying to pull the energy together, to throw it all into one last attempt. He knew it was what Baris was waiting for, but it was all he could do. He glanced aside at the woman, saw she had halted some way back. She was staring back past Baris at Hirald, horror on her face. Snow did not want to look there-he did not want to know.

"O my G.o.d! It"s her!"

Snow pulled himself to his feet, dizziness making him lurch. Baris glanced at the Corporate woman in confusion, then pointed the rifle at Snow"s face. The merchant relished his moment for the half a second it lasted. The hand punched through his body from the back, knocked the rifle aside, lifted him and hurled him against a rock with such force he stuck for a moment, then fell, leaving a man-shaped corona of blood. Hirald stood there, revealed. Where the syntheflesh had been blown away, glittering ceramal was exposed, her white enamel teeth, one blue eye complete in its socket, the ribbed column of her spine.

She observed Snow for a moment, then turned toward the woman. Snow fainted before the scream.

He was in his bed and memories slowly dragged themselves into his mind. He lay there, his throat dry, and after a moment felt across to his numbed chest and the dressing. It was a moment before he dared open his eyes. Hirald sat at the side of the bed and when she saw he was awake she helped him up into a sitting position against his pillows. Snow observed her face. She had repaired the damage somehow, but the scars of that repair-work were still there. She looked just like a human woman who had been disfigured in an accident. She wore a loose shirt and trousers to hide the other repairs. As he studied her she reached up and self-consciously touched her face, before reaching for a gla.s.s of water to hand to him. That touch of vanity confused him for a moment. Gratefully, he drained the gla.s.s.

"You"re a Golem android," he said in the end, unsure.

Hirald smiled, and it did not look so bad.

She said, "Canard Meck thought that." When she saw his confusion she explained, "The Corporate woman. She called me product, which is an understandable mistake. I am nearly indistinguishable from the Golem Twenty-Two." "What are you then?" Snow asked as she poured him another gla.s.s of water.

"A cyborg discovering she"s more human than she thought. No one owns me."

Snow sipped his drink as he considered that. He was not sure what he was feeling.

"Will you come to Earth with me?" she asked.