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Enough, already!"
She was breathing hard, but it was more from ex-
citement than the exercise.
"Hell, no!" she responded. "Let's really give them something to remember!"
With that, she leaped for an open doorway, and entered the building. She knew
her way well enough, as would I; they were all alike, every one, everywhere.
There were no locks in the perfect society; she bounded up the short stairs
and nudged the panel next to a second-floor apartment. The door slid open,
barely large enough for her, and she barged in.
A woman was in there, totally nude, watching the excitement from her window.
She turned as Marsha stormed in, and screamed. Marsha stopped, then slowly
approached the terrified woman. She shied back into a comer, trapped. Marsha
approached her, so close that the woman could smell her breath.
Then the power-drunk Choz smiled I don't know how I know that, but I do and
caressed the woman in some nasty places with her tongue. Her fun over, she
shot some webbing at those nasty places and
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The quad was full of people; she could hear them, but the window blocked the
sonar. They were the sealed type, too. No way.
"Marsha!" I screamed. "No!"
She charged the window, striking it first with her huge, extremely powerful
hind feet, smashing the plasticine into millions of tiny crystals. Still
almost ten meters up, she straightened out, and had the sounding before she
landed.
"If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't have believed it," George
murmured.
The quad was a sea of humans now, but there were other things there as well.
"Marsha!" I yelled. "Robots! Get out of there!
Jump over if you can!"
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The Web of the Chozen
They were the big kind, the construction kind, not easily bypassed. They had
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the quad hemmed in, and the humans quickly retreated behind them, leaving her
exposed.
She stood her ground, but she was scared again now, suddenly, in the face of
those huge, terrible machines.
"They've got me cut off!" she almost yelled in panic.
"I don't "
"Why doesn't the protective sound come?" I shouted at George.
George was transfixed. "I don't unless . . . Oh, my
God! You remember all the times we saw it, right from the start! It was always
the males. Bar! Always the males! Never Eve, never the others!"
He was right, I knew with certainty. In that Bible that Moses and George
followed in different ways, women were the weaker, dependent sex.
"Everyone! All males! Get to that quad! Marsha needs you!" I yelled.
"Ahead of you!" came several responses, but a quick check showed they were a
short distance away.
"George!" I called. "Do you have enough virus to disable them?"
He shook his head. "One, maybe. No more!"
Not in many years had I felt so helpless, so cheated.
Nobody, I thought angrily, beats Bar Holliday.
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My head cleared. "George! Get that virus to the operators! The robots can't
shoot any animal life on their own!"
The great things were closing in fast. They wanted a narrow field of fire, to
avoid hitting the buildings.
"Locked in!" George called. "Marsha! Scan the cabs!"
She had panicked and was looking every which way, but she snapped out of it.
George played some tones, first at one, then the second, then the third. The
fourth, however, he missed, The Web of the Chozen and the first three weren't
instant; it would take time for the virus to start dissolving their clothes,
causing the diversion.
Then suddenly, four more were there, behind them, and we saw the clouded
vision of the panic defense in action. Things seemed to slow but George
jumped.
"The laser!" he yelled. "One of them is on and we can't see it!"
Marsha looked confused, then sprang in a giant leap right at one of the
lumbering automatons.
A beam followed, we found, slicing off a section of the construction robot
she'd landed alongside.
The operator of that one was frozen by the defense sounds, feeling too much
pain to react, and she was able to jump again.
The wild laser lashed through, out of control, and beyond the two other robot
borers. Pieces of machin-
ery were chipped off, and flew, and the beam cleared, striking out. We saw
Marsha's vision blur as something hit her. She screamed and dropped like a
stone.
"The hell with this!" I growled. "I'm going in!"
We dropped suddenly down almost to the edge of town. I opened the lock
anxiously and called the others.
"Marsha's hurt!" came a call from one of the others, I couldn't tell which.
"And so's Shem! Bring litters!"
We had a couple for emergency purposes, and Cain strung one quickly around me.
"Stay here, George!" I commanded as the older man made to follow. "Cain! Come
with me!"
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The robot scuttled out the lock, and I kept up as best I could, dragging the
sledge.
It wasn't far to the site. I didn't have time for re-
criminations the males couldn't hold that panic beam deliberately, and I knew
it might quit at any time, bringing the laser canons to bear on us.
Cain picked up two limp forms and put them on the sledge; one of the women
spun webbing to hold them, and I was off, Cain pacing me.
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The Web of the Chozen
I made the lock and dropped the web-rope from my teeth.
"George! Get them back here!" I ordered crisply.
"Let's go!"
I started the emergency takeoff procedures, and counted anxiously as first
one, then all the others fairly leapt into the air lock. I closed it, fed the
pressuriza-
tion in, and gunned it. Ship's sensors showed two bulky shapes closing fast,
and I knew that I would have little time to spare.
We were far out into space when I dared relax, having made the short L-jump as
quickly as I could match vector and velocity.
Only then I was able to look at the two injured
Choz.
One, a male caught in the wild fire, was obviously dead perhaps the first Choz
of the new breed to die.
A Fourth, Shem had been a good, inquisitive boy with a knack for mechanical
concepts, I remembered sadly.
Marsha was still alive, although that was almost a matter of opinion. She was [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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