Steel dogs

She stood at the farthest extent of the leash, hands pressed to her mouth. A chip of marble had nicked her cheek and caused a small trickle of blood.

«I’m sorry,» he said. «I've become overexcited. I'll calm myself; don't be afraid.»

«Why don't you run away?» For the first time, her voice carried no undertone of hatred. «Surely there are boats.»

«Oh yes. Fairy boats drift on the River Dark, and the Elf King's funeral galley hangs in slings under his pavilion on the Quiet Shore. You don't understand. Droam knows where each of us is at all times; with a thought, it could terminate me. Or punish me terribly. And of course, we cannot preserve our personalities without Droam; without access to Droam's refresher circuits and energy nodes, we would all fade away. If I left or Droam were destroyed — in five years or ten, I'd be gone.»

«Does it know your thoughts, too?»

«No. We have that much privacy. It can speak directly to our minds; but to reply, we must direct our thoughts into a special mode. This is true only because so many direct linkages would spread Droam's intellect too thin; it might diffuse away into nothing. Though for a fact there's been some migration; some of our darkness has seeped into Droam over the years.» He sighed.

They walked on in silence. When they were nearly to the audience hall, she spoke again. «I still don't understand. Why did they fill their resort with horrors?»

«They aimed for a quality of 'dark glamour'; they succeeded, but that sort of thing went out of vogue…»

In the audience hall, she was silent until they approached the nexus pit. «What is it?» she asked.

«Droam. Its brain, in essence.» He detected a sudden tension in her body, and tightened his grip on the leash. «Restrain yourself, Sundee Gareaux. What you're considering would do no good. Look carefully; see how the force bubble diffracts the light? If you jump over the wall, the bubble will prevent you from falling onto the nexus, unless you now weigh ten times what you weighed when last I carried you. That much mass might, I think, overload the bubble.» He tugged at the leash. «Resides, if you kill Droam, I will die. You wouldn't want that on your conscience.» He meant it as a joke, but her face was full of baffled despair.

Droam's hulk waited beside the probe. «Ah,» it said. «Our guest.»

THE PROBE confirmed Droam's worst fears. Sundee Careaux's tribe was desperate; they had no choice but to try to occupy the island. Aandred watched the deliberations of several village councils, through Sundee Gareaux's eyes. Each group of grim old men and women came to the same conclusion: settlers would be sent to the island they called Neverland, despite the terrifying legends.

Aandred learned an interesting thing about Sundee Gareaux: she was the leading tribal authority on the decaying synthetic ecologies that infested the Sea of Islands. So she had been chosen to go ashore with the first exploratory party.

…she stood on the beach, holding her husband tight, forcing back tears for his sake. «Don't worry; we'll be fine. No one's been to Neverland for eighty years or more. The monsters have probably all broken down — entropy’s on our side.» She looked down at her son, a sturdy two-year-old with flame-red hair and a truculent expression. «You'll be in more danger than I will, I think. Be careful, and keep a close eye on our own little monster.» She ruffled the fiery hair, picked the child up for a last hug. He clung to her, though ordinarily he would have struggled to escape. His father pulled him gently away, and she waded through the surf to the waiting boat. She waved, until they crossed the reef into blue water and the figures on the beach were lost in the light..

Once again Aandred found himself in the grip of some powerful alien emotion. It was so difficult to identify, without the somatic tags that living humans took for granted. Were he alive, would he feel tears on his cheeks, would he feel a great pressure in his throat, would his chest heave with suppressed sobs? He could not say, but he was almost blind with it, whatever it was. He looked down at Sundee Gareaux's pale, dreaming face, and the pressure of the unknown emotion increased to an unbearable level.

He shuddered. Droam was speaking to him. «…so I’ll leave the organization of the teams to you — this was your area of expertise, not so? We'll take the galley, knock them back one island at a time. We'll kill as many as we can, burn the fields, blow up the reefs, poison the wells. We won’t get them all, of course, but it will be many generations before they breed back enough to be dangerous.»

The situation becomes unreal, Aandred thought. He felt like a shadow; in a tragic farce, «A large undertaking,» he muttered.

«But necessary. Report your progress tomorrow; be ready to sail in three days.»

«What of the woman?» he asked, before he thought.

«Give her to Merm and his crew. Call it incentive, if you like.» Droam went still and spoke no more.