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Now there were no treelings on Ildira. The threat was gone. Behind him, he could hear Kolker's miserable sobs, but he refused to turn around. "Now you can take him back to his people. There is nothing more to worry about."

Alone on the balcony, Jora'h's eyes filled with hot tears. He stared across the city for a long time, seeing nothing. Again, he wished Nira could be there with him. Would she hate him for what he had just done? How much would this all cost him?

I am becoming more and more like my father every day.

39

RLINDA KETT

Ice shards showered down like broken glass. BeBob yelped when a fist-sized chunk struck him on the shoulder. "The sky is falling!"

Freezing mist spangled the air. Rlinda could not tell how close the reanimated woman was to shattering the ceiling. If she broke through the crust, all the atmosphere trapped underground would erupt like a volcano of air. Karla Tamblyn seemed intent on knocking down every solid wall, leveling every unnatural structure, turning all of Plumas into a slurry of rubble and water.

Karla gestured toward the water-dissociation plant, breaking pipes and releasing jets of stored gas. Fortunately, nothing exploded. Yet.

Scrambling along as low and out of sight as possible, Rlinda and BeBob hid behind mounds of piled snow and frost, wove among conduits and the wreckage of smashed huts. Sooty residue rose from burst fuel containers and combustible materials in the habitation domes. Vaporized ice and water formed a fog that was as good as a smokescreen. Even when Rlinda couldn't see what was happening, the din was enough to set her teeth on edge.

Directed by Karla's demonic force, hundreds of scarlet nematodes swarmed forward, like a basket of angry cobras dumped onto the ice. Their rudimentary brains weren't sufficient for complex hunting behavior, but the creatures could sense movement and heat. Their smooth bodies hissed across the ice pack, and their round mouths emitted eerie hooting sounds. Looking at them, Rlinda could tell these creatures were not self-aware, but mere tools of the reanimated woman.

As patchy mist drifted in and out, Rlinda watched three water miners stand their ground against the worms that writhed forward like inflated bags of blood. Two men jabbed and poked with makeshift spears while the third hammered with a club.

The nearest nematode convulsed, contracted, and squirmed, but the concerted blows were too much. The skin split open, and bright red fluid splashed the ice. The miners barely managed a cheer before dozens more worms lunged at them.

Without thinking, Rlinda grabbed her shovel and barked at BeBob, "Come on!" Springing several meters with each bound--she loved low gravity!--she flew in among the chewing nematodes. With her wide shovel, she knocked aside several of the heavy, soft worms. A backstroke with the flat blade splattered another one against the ice. BeBob used his tool like a gravedigger's spade, driving the edge down on a flaccid body and cutting it in two. He scowled as thick gelatinous blood sprayed him, but turned his attention to five more nematodes coming at him.

"I wish I knew what we did to piss that lady off," BeBob said.

The three water miners were yelling and fighting, smashing and chopping the worms, but the numbers didn't seem to be diminishing. Rlinda swung her shovel, each time rewarded with a hard, wet impact. Elsewhere in the wrecked base, dozens of groups clustered together to make their last stands.

Karla continued her rampage, striding into the center of the mining base. From the other side of the settlement, two men yelled something and then unleashed a gushing explosion. Wynn and Torin had hooked a wide-diameter outflow tube to an emergency valve on one of the pipes that pumped water to the surface. The twins struggled to direct the explosive stream toward the reanimated woman. The torrent swept over Karla in a storm of frigid water, but she anchored herself like a statue. A flash-frozen wall of ice rose around her, creating a shield.