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Mkono tottered, spun to face Bork again, but held his attack, stood still and gathered himself.

  No, sorry, pal. No rest for the wicked. Bork gave him Steel Circle, finished with the optional sweep; his extended leg caught Mkono behind the knees and lifted his feet from the ground. The stunned Mkono fell flat on his back, hit the ground and bounced again, a good eighteen centimeters high.

  Bork backed off five steps, whirled his hands in overlapping half moons and stood ready to cast The Flower Unfolding. “Call it stop,” Bork said. This wasn’t competition, strong as Mkono was. The man had raw power, but it wasn’t enough. In that moment, Bork saw himself in Mkono, knowing his strength would always be enough. Wrong.

  Mkono growled, the sound bubbling liquidly in his throat. Came in again.

  He unfolded the flower. Broke Mkono’s left arm.

  Mkono came in again. Was bitten by Snake and Spider.

  Again. Cold Fire Burns Bright.

  Finally, on one leg-the other being broken and unable to support him-Mkono hopped toward Bork.

  The man was a murderer, an ice-soul killer, but even so, pity welled in the matador. “You got balls, Mkono. And you are stronger than I am. You’re stronger, but I’m better. Call it stop.”

  Mkono shook his head. Blood flew in jellied strings from his nose and mouth. He hopped closer.

  Bork nodded. He understood. Mkono wasn’t going to quit. Bork knew. He wouldn’t have quit either.

  Teeth bared, Mkono hopped, nothing left but his own Thing in the Cave, fighting on primal rage. He would keep coming as long as he could move, as long as he could breathe.

  Bork gave Mkono Mimosa Sleeps Softly, and it was almost a grace note. When it was done, Mkono, who had been stronger, maybe the strongest man in all the galaxy, could no longer move.

  Or breathe.

  Bork stood over the dead man and shook his head. What a waste. What a terrible waste.

  Some of the others still on their feet shambled toward the matador. Now he drew his hand wand and used it.

  Kifo felt the power envelop him, drawing him in, filling him. Bright pain flashed over him electrically, then eased. If Sanctuary had been delightful, this place was ten times more so. There came a sense of peace unlike any he had ever known, even in the deepest meditation, the most sound sleep. Here, at last, the center of Sanctuary.

  A questing presence touched him.

  Fighting to draw breath, Kifo said, “My Lord Zonn! I am Ndugu Kifo, the Unique of your Chosen Few! Come to claim my promised godhood!”

  “Toy with me no longer! I have earned my place! I have done as you asked. I beg you, please!”

  Kifo wanted to scream.

  Taz saw the runner vanish, but damned if she could figure out how. The space ahead of her was clear, empty; she could see to the far wall of wherever this was. He just disappeared as if the air had swallowed him. Another joy of this place.

  She slowed to a jog, then a walk. Wait a second; there was some kind of sparkle ahead, kind of like a heat wave. Trying to get more air than her mouth and nose could channel, she moved toward the sparkle.

  “In the name of everything holy, I beg you!”

  This time the questing presence did not offer any interrogatory energy. Seconds passed. Then it spoke.

  Well, not actually in words, Kifo realized. It was inside his head, as the gods had been other times, but different than those had been. This was sharper, clearer, more directed.

  AH, I HAVE IT. WHAT ARE YOU? the presence said.

  “I am Kifo, your Unique, shepherd to your Few-”

  MEANINGLESS, the presence said. DEFINE.

  Kifo was stunned, but only for an instance. Another test. Could this be the final one? Was he being asked to respond properly so that the Zonn could be assured of his faith even at this late hour? Was this gate to be strait, narrowed by this Keeper so that only a precise walk could allow passage? He sighed. It must be so. So many trials.

  All fight. He would pass this test as he had passed all the others. Kifo brought forth the doctrine, the dogma as he had lived it, explained as if talking to a stranger he must convince of the truth.

  The presence listened. Absorbed the words.

  How long it took the man could not have said, but he spilled it in a flood, a cup overflowing and rising about him until he was immersed in it. The Few. The Faith. His place in it.

  Finally, after eons of waiting, the presence replied.

  AH, SENTIENT BUT FLAWED. REQUIRING SUPPORT FROM OUTSIDE ITSELF. IGNORANT OF REALITY, FEARFUL, CLUTCHING AT ITS OWN MINDS’S EYE. MUCH DEVELOPMENT NEEDED.

  The presence spewed something else, but the meaning of it eluded Kifo like a never-before-heard foreign language.

  ADJUST. MILLENNIA YET. MORE.

  “Lord-?”

  YOU HAVE ERRED, SIMPLEMINDED BEING. THOSE YOU CALL “ZONN” ARE NOT GODS. THEY NO LONGER EXIST IN THIS PLANE, IN THIS UNIVERSE.

  “Blasphemy!”

  AS MUCH TRUTH AS YOU CAN STAND. YOUR EFFORTS TO EXPLAIN THAT WHICH YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND ARE INEPT. YOU ENDOW THOSE GREATER THAN YOURSELF WITH ESSENCES THEY DO NOT POSSESS.

  “No, I-”

  UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU CAN: THIS PLACE (MEANINGLESS) IS A CONSTRUCT. I ALSO AM A CONSTRUCT. WE ARE RECORDINGS, (MEANINGLESS) STORAGE FACILITIES FOR ENERGIES AND EMOTIONS THE ZONN OVERCAME AND LEFT BEHIND WHEN THEY DEPARTED FOR (MEANINGLESS). ALL THE NEGATIVE THINGS THEY NEEDED NO LONGER FOR (MEANINGLESS) WERE LEFT HERE.

  “No-!”

  A PHOTO ALBUM, HOLDING UNPLEASANT MEMORIES, A PLACE THEY CAN CALL UP SHOULD THEY EVER NEED TO BE REMINDED OF HOW LOW THEY ONCE WERE. CHECKS AND (MEANINGLESS).

  Kifo screamed. Too much. This test was too much, he couldn’t endure it! “You lie to task me-!”

  POOR CREATURE. SO SMALL. SO DULL. KNOW THIS. FEEL. TRY.

  With that, Kifo’s head nearly burst from the flow of sudden knowledge that filled it. He was a cup under a firehose, a circuit overloaded with ten thousand times the current it could safely conduct; his mind burned with it.

  Just before it overwhelmed him totally, he felt the truth of it all, just as the presence had said. His religion was a myth, based on a mistake, worth less than a handful of hard vacuum. He had communed not with gods but with the cast-off mental and spiritual garbage of a race of aliens who had elevated themselves to another plane before men left the trees. Not even with demons, but with dregs.

  He had looked upon the face of his god and found it was nothing more than a bin full of trash.

  The weight of it crashed down upon Kifo.

  The air shimmered brightly and the naked man appeared in front of Taz, not two meters away. She snatched at her hand wand, stopped. He lurched at her; too close. He’d get there before she could draw.

  She shoved, hit him solidly on the chest with both hands. Saw the horror on his face as he flew backward, spittle spraying. Saw his eyes roll back as he fell. Heard him gurgle as he hit the ground. He spasmed, vibrating rapidly, gurgled again.

  “No!” he screamed. He came up, lunged at her.

  She sidestepped, hit him a glancing shot with the heel of her hand. Not a powerful blow.

  He fell. Screamed, a wordless, horrified cry, the most chilling sound she had ever heard a human being make. It was terror distilled from the beginning of time down to a brew thick as lead, the very essence of fear and betrayal. A sound of despair she would never forget did she live to be ten thousand years old.

  Then he closed his eyes and went slack.

  Taz did not want to imagine what it was he had seen, wherever it was he had been.

  Chapter THIRTY

  THE NAKED MAN was alive but there was nobody home. His face was locked into a fright mask, his eyes wide, mouth open, features contorted. Taz guided him and he walked when she prodded, but offered nothing coherent. The fear was like a stain.

  She found his walking stick, picked it up, and saw that it was more than it seemed. There was a short-range stunner built into the handle; a button above the wand’s control opened a
small compartment inside of which was a sculpted bit of Zonn metal. It had an odd shape and felt like ice in her hand. Carefully Taz replaced the metal and reclosed the compartment’s cap. She didn’t know what it meant. Let the scientists figure it out.

  Ahead of her Saval stood rounding up the others. Even though there were four or five dozen of them, they didn’t offer him any resistance. Some of the people were still sprawled from the effects of the hand wands, some were coming out of the shock.

  The body of the biggest one lay face down on the ground.

  “Taz,” Saval said. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. You?”

  Saval glanced at the big man on the ground. “Yeah. He was stronger than me.”

  “Didn’t matter, though, did it?”

  “No. That was all he had.” He looked back at her. “What happened to him?”

  “Something got him,” she said. “He warped in and out of somewhere, I lost him for a few minutes.

  When he came back, he looked like he’d spent a season in hell. Wonder what could be so scary?”

  “Maybe he ran into his god.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Not somebody I’d want to meet.”

  “Me, neither. What say we try to find our way home?”

  She nodded.

  They came out in the ruins, not far from, where they’d entered. They were met by a pair of special teams.

  A command post had been set up, and camp tents erected.

  “You guys are pretty quick,” Taz said.

  The leader of the teams shook his head. “Jesu, Chief, you been gone three days. We could have walked here.”

  Bork smiled as Taz turned and raised an eyebrow at him. By their own time, they’d been inside maybe half an hour. Another thing to warn the scientific types about.

  The teams herded the now-dressed church members toward waiting transports. Some of them were probably connected directly to the crimes instigated by their leader, some of them maybe just guilty of misplaced faith. Bork and Taz watched them go.

  “Well,” Taz said, “looks like that about wraps it up.”

  Bork nodded.

  “I appreciate your help.”

  “We’re family,” he said. “That’s what you do.”

  They smiled at each other.

  “Ruul’s probably worried about you,” Bork said.

  “I’ll call him. You probably ought to call Veate, too, and see how my nephew is getting along.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “It’ll probably be months before Ruul can shed his exowalker,” she said. “And maybe he’ll change his mind after having me around that long, but if not, you’ll come to the wedding?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it, little sister.”

  She reached for him, they hugged, squeezing each other hard; ordinary people would have creaked under the force. But then, the Borks weren’t ordinary people. “This was a good thing for me,” he said. “I learned something important about myself.”

  “Me, too.”

  For a moment they let that rest between them. Life was about motion, Bork realized. You had to keep moving, keep learning, keep growing. On one level he knew that, but it didn’t hurt to have it brought home. The big lessons always needed repeating until you got them. Or they got you.

  “Come on, brother, let’s go get something to eat. Seems like days since we did that. Pickle will have something rigged up, even if she had to cover the hole in her wall with a tarp. And she deserves another shot at you before you go back to your wife.”

  He chuckled. “You ought to be ashamed, tempting me like that.”

  “Oh, I am. Really.”

  They both laughed. Arm in arm, they walked to her flitter.

  THE END

  Table of Contents

  Chapter ONE

  Chapter TWO

  Chapter THREE

  Chapter FOUR

  Chapter FIVE

  Chapter SIX

  Chapter SEVEN

  Chapter EIGHT

  Chapter NINE

  Chapter TEN

  Chapter ELEVEN

  Chapter TWELVE

  Chapter THIRTEEN

  Chapter FOURTEEN

  Chapter FIFTEEN

  Chapter SIXTEEN

  Chapter SEVENTEEN

  Chapter EIGHTEEN

  Chapter NINETEEN

  Chapter TWENTY

  Chapter TWENTY-ONE

  Chapter TWENTY-TWO

  Chapter TWENTY-THREE

  Chapter TWENTY-FOUR

  Chapter TWENTY-FIVE

  Chapter TWENTY-SIX

  Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN

  Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT

  Chapter TWENTY-NINE

  Chapter THIRTY