- •The Growing chapter one
- •It’s not a question, and everyone realizes it.
- •I’m not gonna look. I won’t and you can’t make me.
- •It is waiting for her at the bridge.
- •In a related story (a 14) the Palace had "no comment" to Tonight Show host Jay Leno’s remark that His Majesty King Charles is an early, unmarketable Westerhaus test model.
- •I’m going to die.
- •It is what she had intended to do in any case. She had not expected to have allies. Koda nods. "Count me in."
- •In an automatic reflex, Dakota looks over at the nightstand, but of course, the clock that stands there is blank without the electricity needed to run it.
- •I have Asi.
- •I have summoned her here. Watch, and see.
- •It’s Maggie’s turn to sigh. “Much as I don’t like it, I think I’m going to have to split them into smaller squads.”
- •It is not what she has forgotten. It is who she has left behind.
- •It has been so quiet for the last several miles that Kirsten starts at the sound of Micah’s voice. “Pardon? Dragons?”
- •It is much too big to be a fox.
- •It does not explain the familiarity.
- •It is a dangerous mind trap when there is no hope, and Kirsten only manages to scramble out when she notices the shining silver bands around the necks of what she now recognizes to be androids.
- •It is not disabled, certainly not destroyed. Its logic chains have simply returned a null set upon evaluating the possible success of further resistance.
- •I am not strong enough. Not wise enough.
- •I will go back, she says.
- •It doesn’t have to be that way, Little k. Her father’s voice intrudes into her thoughts, frustrating her with its always maddening logic. Nothing’s keeping you locked inside. Nothing except you.
- •It is a peaceful time that appeals to her need for solitude.
- •It’s time to buck it up and call a spade a spade, little k.
- •Ithanchan winan. The thought comes unbidden. This woman is a chief.
- •It seems a lifetime but is perhaps five minutes later that Kirsten raises a hand to her earpiece. “They’re here.”
- •Instantly serious, Maggie snaps, “And—“
- •If she only knew how.
- •Item: Article 120. Rape and Carnal Knowledge
- •Item: Article 128 Assault
- •Item: Article 81. Conspiracy.
- •In Russian.
- •Is there still a United States? If so, is there a Constitution?
- •Insh’allah.
- •It is dismissal. Maggie rises, snapping her attaché case shut. "Thank you for your time, General."
- •It does, though only briefly, and she feels almost faint with relief as it passes on, leaving her untouched.
- •In those eyes, she can see visions; bits and pieces of his life, and hers, and the bond that draws them together closer than kin.
- •It is the silence during a gathering storm. "Fine! You want to kill yourself? Be my guest. I hope you have fun doing it."
- •It is over in an instant of an instant, but when she opens her eyes, she knows that she has been forever changed. Koda is smiling at her, a sweet, tender smile filled with so much, with…everything.
- •It comes, then; a deep, Caribbean blue that nurtures and soothes, and settles over her, leaving nothing within untouched.
- •I’m in love with her.
- •In plain language, Manny had potted the bastard right between the eyes, blowing his brains out. The said bastard had been dead before he hit the ground.
- •Instinctively responding to Dakota’s tone, Shannon relaxes, slumping against the wall and breathing deeply, as if she’s just come out of a trance.
- •In this life, in the next. For all time.
- •In the silence of her mind, a wolf howl rises to the floating moon.
- •If he were right. . . And it seems he is, though not in the way he expected.
- •It had been the third suicide in as many weeks, and people—too many people—were looking to her for answers she didn’t have.
- •It takes twenty minutes, with much grinding of gears and spinning of wheels, but Andrews jerks the pickup to a stop just on top of the slope and just short of the trees.
- •It is nothing, however, to the beatific expression on Manny’s face, framed in the rear-view mirror. "Good bread, good meat," he says reverently. "Good God, let’s eat."
- •Very gently she says, “It’s not going to be the same, no. In some ways, it may be better. Or there may be no one left to care. We just don’t know yet.”
- •Very gently she says, “It’s not going to be the same, no. In some ways, it may be better. Or there may be no one left to care. We just don’t know yet.”
- •I wonder. . . .
- •It is only then that she notices the frightful cold pressed against her right side, melded to her like a block of ice that has melted and refrozen.
- •It is a tone she well remembers, and instinctively heeding it, she begins to do as ordered. After a couple of spoonfuls, however, she pauses, the soup sitting heavy in her belly. “Ate, I….”
- •It is a long almost. But when she walks through the front door, into Asi’s exuberant greeting and Dakota’s arms, she is as well as she has ever been in her life.
- •If they survive this battle, their first priority must be to make contact with other surviving communities and make alliance with them.
- •If her plan works, he will not need to.
- •Voices come to her on the wind of her passing, but she does not heed them. "Surrender," she says.
- •Intolerable.
- •It is only when the dynamic duo has left the office and the door closes quietly behind them that she lets the smile bloom fully over her face. With a jaunty little whistle, she turns back to work.
- •I miss him, she says without sound.
- •It's not a question, and she doesn't have it within her to demur. Not now. Instead, she nods.
- •It is a better one to live.
- •I am on your ground, Igmu-tanka. Teach me patience.
- •It is what she does not know that frightens her. "All right!" she shouts, stepping up to the crest of the ridge. "Move out!"
- •I’m hallucinating.
- •It is over.
- •In the guardshack above, Kirsten’s jaws clench tighter and a thick vein throbs to prominence at her temple.
- •Very carefully, she lets go of Simmons' gun, handing it to Koda. She meets her lover's eyes. "Don't worry. I'm not going to give him anything."
- •In its wake, a silence so profound that not even the ever-present wind soughing through the boughs of the large pines surrounding them can penetrate, descends, and Kirsten shivers.
- •I’d kill for a hot bath. No, not kill. Maybe maim somebody, though. Starting with Hunk-boy here.
- •It is either dry humor or stupidity; Koda opts for the former. "We aren’t. We are hungry, though. Chasing that antelope right into your sights was hard work."
- •I made it, though. Made it without help.
- •I would know you in the silence between the stars. The thought is her own, and not. And with it comes another. I see you in the darkness, like a flash of lightning. And the darkness cannot hide you.
- •In the west, where the stone holds a raven’s wing and a bowl of Kirsten’s irises and gentians, another priestess raises her hands and makes the invocation.
- •Ina Maka, Koda prays as the women disperse to feast and celebrate. Give us strength and wisdom to do what we must do. Let the death end. Let the life come forth again.
- •It is not a small honor, and Koda says quietly. "Thank you. But we can’t stay."
- •It is that tone, even more than her words, that confuses him and causes his steps to slow. "You wouldn’t…."
- •In the end, it is mercifully easy. Where you go, I go, she thinks, lowering the rifle and setting it on the cold, gray floor.
- •It ends here, she thinks, opening her eyes to the still monotonous view of the security screens. It all ends here.
- •It will not stop them. It will force them to break the door or go around the building to the other stairwell, and that will buy her time. Buy Kirsten time.
- •Venous blood.
- •Ina Maka says, "Every soul that passes from the Earth comes to Me. Not all come here, to this place—only My chosen ones. But for them, as for the others, a reckoning must be made. You know this."
- •I can die when I get outside.
- •Virgilius’ termination had been evidence of Kirsten’s success. This is confirmation. "You did it," Koda breathes, marveling. "It’s over."
Item: Article 120. Rape and Carnal Knowledge
(a) Any person subject to this chapter who commits an act of sexual intercourse with any person, whether male or female, by force and without consent, is guilty of rape and shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct.
(b) Any person subject to this chapter who, under circumstances not amounting to rape, commits an act of sexual intercourse with a person not his or her spouse who has not attained the age of sixteen years, is guilty of carnal knowledge and shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
(c) Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete either of these offenses.
Item: Article 128 Assault
(a) Any person subject to this chapter who attempts or offers with unlawful force or violence to do bodily harm to another person, whether or not the attempt or offer is consummated, is guilty of assault and shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
(b) Any person subject to this chapter who—
(1) commits an assault with a dangerous weapon or other means or force likely to produce death or grievous bodily harm; or
(2) commits an assault and intentionally inflicts grievous bodily harm with or without a weapon, is guilty of aggravated assault and shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
In the margin by Article 120, she scrawls: MAIN INDICTMENT, in forceful block letters. Assault will be a lesser included charge. Very carefully she underlines the penalty for rape: for three of the Rapid City men, she can cheerfully ask that they pay with their lives. The fourth— She frowns as she remembers Buxton’s abject shame, the guardhouse staff reports that he is sleeping little and eating less. Death might be a mercy for him.
Maggie is not at all sure she wants to be merciful. She makes a note to set him under a suicide watch. Then, reluctantly, finally giving a name to her own uneasiness about the man, she scribbles a reminder to herself to set up a second, less obvious, on Hart.
Briefly, she rises to check supper. Koda and Kirsten are not back, but the chicken is done. She sets it, covered, on the stove’s smooth cooking surface to await their return, then goes back to her newly-assigned lawyering.
Item: Article 104. Aiding the Enemy
Any person who—
(1) aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with arms, ammunition, supplies, money or other things; or
(2) without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly; shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct.
Item: Article 105: Misconduct as Prisoner
Any person subject to this chapter who, while in the hands of the enemy in time of war—
(1) for the purpose of securing favorable treatment by his or her captors acts without proper authority in a manner contrary to law, custom or regulation, to the detriment of others of whatever nationality held by the enemy as civilian or military prisoners; or
(2) while in a position of authority over such persons maltreat them without justifiable cause; shall be punished as a court-martial shall direct.
Maggie sets down her pen and glances out the window. The sky is beginning to fade, the blue leeching out of the east as the sun drops toward the horizon. The light still lingers on the crowns of the young pines in her yard, caught like diamonds in the fall of melted snow, drop by drop, from its branches. Winter is beginning to break; the wind that soughs among the long green needles sits in the south. It will be the first spring in centuries in which humans will not interfere appreciably with the natural cycle of life and death, slayer and slain, in this part of the world.
Possibly not in any part of the world.
For a moment her neat kitchen falls away, and she looks down from an immense height on a sun-drenched plain. From horizon to horizon, the herds fill her sight: impala and springbok, oryx and gazelle. Along the flanks, seen only in the sinuous ripple of tall grass, lion and leopard stalk their prey. It is this earth, molded into her very bones, that calls to her, even as she knows that the template of the Black Hills, layer upon layer of molten rock and sediment, is somehow laid down in the double spiral of Koda’s heritage.
It is a call she is not free to answer, not in this lifetime. She shakes her head slightly, bringing time and place into focus once again. But the sense of hovering on the imminent edge of a new world lingers, and with it the sense of multiple possibilities. Choose one path and pursue it to awaiting fate; choose another and alter the woven strands of karma.
Even the droids, it seems, intended to remake the world in the image of—what? Something that required breeding human beings, hence the preservation of women of childbearing age and a small number of men to sire young. Herd bulls. But nothing she had encountered so far explained why the droids set out to breed their human cattle or why young children had apparently been taken alive. Which was another question—where? Into slavery? Droids hardly needed slaves; they could always replicate themselves, or at least they had been able to until the destruction of the Minot facility. Food? Droids did not eat. Nor, as far as anyone could tell, was there any surviving market on earth for either slaves or long pig. She and Koda had gone fruitlessly around the subject, around and around again. Some piece of the puzzle was missing, something vital.
Damn. Her mind had begun to run in the same endless loop, again. Stop that.
Perhaps one of the prisoners would be able to supply the one fact that would make sense of all the rest. She was far from certain that they knew their own role, beyond the obvious, in the droids’ purposes. Still, they might not know what they knew. The questioning would have to be a careful process.
The immediate purpose at hand was to bring a handful of collaborators to justice. Collaborators who had viciously and willingly abused their fellow prisoners at the behest of their captors. It was not necessary to know what the droids had meant to achieve; only that the accused had co-operated with them.
Which brought her to the final charge: