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the far side and immediately dropped into defensive crouches.
Smoke drifted capriciously through the trees, but there was no sign of the
monstrous glowing serpent-shape. Either the program had run down or Gaggii had
called it off. They advanced warily on the pickup.
Moody yanked open the door and started to reach inside. He stopped as soon as
he saw that they would not be able to use the truck phone to call for
assistance, because it was no longer there.
Nor was the front half of the truck. In its place was a cooling lump of metal
and composite about four feet high. The pickup's bed was still intact, but the
cab and engine compartment had melted like a chunk of pork fat in a pot of
greens.
202
fllan Dean Faster
Moody tried to imagine the snake-thing clamping tight to the truck and
expiring in a burst of incredible energy. It must have been quick; a single
violent spark lighting up the night, completely overloading the electric
engine's surge suppressors. In addition to the body itself, the intense heat
had melted all four tires.
Gaggii had called it up to rescue him, but he hadn't had time to program it
selectively, Ooljee
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t was thinking.
"He directed it to attack the truck, but not us. So when we jumped out it
ignored us. That is what
I prayed would happen."
"What if you'd been wrong?"
Ooljee shrugged. "Then we would have had to rely on your shooting. I thought
flight the better option."
"Too bad it didn't start a fire." Moody glanced at the surrounding trees and
brush. "Might've brought a ranger out to check on it. I don't think what's
left of the truck is putting out enough smoke to be noticed from a distance."
"Doesn't matter. We must get back to the main road."
"He's used the web to kill twice, and he tried to kill us with it." Moody
spoke as they strode through the trees. "He's learning how to handle the
infernal thing."
"He still needs a mechanical interface to access it," Ooljee pointed out. "The
bracelet was only a link to whatever setup he has constructed in his house.
Take that away from him and he is harmless." He considered aloud. "He must
have used it to make contact with his home molly via a cableless modem at
Kettrick's house. I wonder what he intends to do with it besides defend
himself?"
"You heard him." Moody felt like he was carrying a fifty-pound pack on his
back. In a sense he was, except that he had me location reversed. "He's the
ant who's figured out how to use the garbage. Or if this web was set up with a
purpose in mind, he's trying to figure out what that is."
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"No one will believe what happened to us here." Ooljee
CYBER UJflY
203
squinted into the night, changed direction. "We will have to say he had a gun,
or that the truck sprung a wheel. If we go into a station and say we lost our
prisoner because he was rescued by
Klish-do-nuhti'i they will lock us up instead of Gaggii."
"Say again?"
"Klish-do-nuthti'i. Endless Snake. It appears in many of the Ways." He nodded
back over his shoulder. "Or maybe it was only Ah-yah-neh, Big Snake."
"Got a lot of snakes in your religion, do you?" Moody was in no mood to be
understanding.
"All kinds," the sergeant admitted readily. "Crooked snakes, water snakes,
arrow snakes: they are as common to us as fleas are to you in Florida. It is
not surprising that the spirit a hatathli would call up to protect him would
take that form"
"He's not a hatathli, dammit!" Moody was good and frustrated by their failure
to bring Gaggii in, after all the time and effort that had been expended in
tracking him down. He felt angry and helpless. He was not going to let reality
slip away from him too.
"He's just a good weaver who's stumbled across the web to end all webs. He hit
back at us with technology, Paul. Not metaphysics or spiritualism."
"I did not mean to suggest otherwise." Ooljee started up yet another slope.
Moody followed, sucking air. "But he clearly understands sand pain tings, and
probably the Ways as well. There is nothing that says a weaver cannot also be
a trained hatathli.
"If the term metaphysics bothers you, perhaps we should call them mu/aphysics.
Mysticism is just a name, my friend, for a different level of reality that we
haven't learned how to tap into yet. Try going back eight hundred years and
telling one of my ancestors that the spinner on my belt or the watch on your
arm is not powered by magic. Tell me that the cutting edge of modern science
does not sound more
20M
Rlan Dean Foster tike something out of a sandpainting than a textbook. Take
particle physics, for example."
"You take it," Moody said with a snort. "I'll have pastrami on rye."
Ooljee was not dissuaded. "Particles that have names like smart, and lazy.
Forces called weak, up, down. Colors. Is that physics? Or the chant of
hatathlis? Take modern recombinant metallurgy.
Nothing more than alchemy without the pointy hats. Even a couple of hundred
years ago who could have imagined metallic glass, or carbon-alloy shuttle
bodies, or all-ceramic engines? Not to mention molly sphere storage.
"Where lies the line between sorcery and science? It is only a matter of
terminology, my friend.
This web is another place we are just finding out how to visit, the way people
decades ago learned how to make photons line up to lase. One more step.
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