Behind him, a voice shivered. "Give us the gun, Mary."

Pleading, cajoling, shaking, other voices joined.

"Mary—give us the gun now!"

"Please, Mary, you can kill people—"

"You just give Uncle Patrick the gun now, honey, and—"

She was backing away toward the arched opening. Beyond that were the gardens, the fountains the pretty landscape of the courts. Beyond that were the helio landings, and then the pits. It wasn't so far.

Jonothan was trying to smile at her as he reached again for the gun. Behind him, the others stood immobile and without any more words. The intercom had words, but no one was listening now.

She fired a much heavier charge than that against the guard on the tenth floor. Between Jonothan's outstretched arms which had held her with love, his torso and head disappeared. His arms fell and the legs toppled like parts of a mannequin. Beyond the vacancy that had been Jonothan, several others tried to draw their guns. All were abruptly reduced to jellied and smoking anonymity. Mary ran for the courts.

She heard herself giggling without recognizable meaning as she ran under the rainbowed fountains, leaped the flower hedges, and skimmed over the carefully designed green of lawn patches.

She still had that initial advantage. No one still could logically connect her with what was happening. So far there were no living witnesses. At least it was unlikely that there were.

She was a little behind her schedule and every second was now important. Where before there had been allowed some margin for error, now there was none.

She wanted to get a helio. She wanted to get as far up wind and as far into the air as possible when the G-Agent began drifting over the land. She wanted to live for the reasons she had thought about before, many times. She couldn't say that her life was important to her now any more than it ever had been. It had never been her life, not in her memory. Always she had been the instrument of others. She could blast the rocket back to earth from inside a helio, and keep on from there to some degree 

 Prev. P 9/18 next