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"You wouldn't be EdwardYork, would you? The Explorer who married the Mandasar
high queen?"
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"Um. Yes. That's me." I didn't think the outside world had heard about that,
but admirals must be pretty well informed.
Festina let her breath come out in a whoosh. "Sometime real soon, you'll have
to tell me how you're mixed up in this... but for now, tag along with me. If I
leave you alone, the wrong people might find you."
I wondered who she thought were the wrong people. Recruiters? Captain Prope?
Battle-mad Mandasars? But I didn't ask, and the admiral didn't explain. She
just waved for me to follow as she headed into the trees.
The Larry was no longer in sight, but the laughter still rattled through the
forest, occasionally hitting a note that made the trees buzz with resonance.
We plunged after the cackling as fast as we could, thrashing through the
undergrowth on a general downhill slant, back toward the canal.
Soon we reached an area where the brush was trampled flat. A lot of warriors
had stormed past this way maybe the whole militia. They must have heard the
Larry too; they'd swum across the water, then started to search the woods,
trying to figure out what was making the howl.
I winced the warriors' trail led in the same direction as the Larry's
laughter. Were they following it, or was it following them?
With the undergrowth all squashed, Festina and I could move through the woods
more quickly, angling downhill toward the Larry's cackle. Laughter wasn't the
only thing on the night breeze; I could smell the crusty burning-wood whiff of
Musk B as thick as the smoke from a forest fire. It was the odor of disaster
waiting to happen a whole pack of warriors aching to crush recruiter bones,
and a single Laughing Larry that could hover high overhead, spraying down
death.
Half a minute later, we were closing in on the hyena chatter... and also on
the choking musk. Up ahead, a bright light suddenly beamed from the sky,
reflecting crimson off the shells of two dozen warriors gathered in a marshy
clearing. The warriors had drawn into a wide ring, circling the edge of the
open area. In the middle stood a human man, and straight over his head the
Laughing Larry hovered in the air like a gold-glinting sun. The light came
from higher in the night sky where a skimmer floated, searchlights in its
belly and a rope ladder dangling down to ground level.
Festina put her hand on my arm and held me back out of the light. No one in
the clearing noticed us; the man in the center had his gaze glued on the
warriors, and they were too busy eyeing the Larry. One of the Mandasars must
have recognized the gold ball as a weapon and told the others to keep back.
"It's a standoff," Festina whispered. "That man's right in the Larry's eye.
You know about that?"
I nodded. Straight under a Larry's spin-axis, there's a spot that isn't
covered by any firing slits. Stand there, and it's like the eye of a
hurricane things get destroyed all around you, but you're safe. Larries are
intentionally built that way; I'd once seen an underground advertisement
showing a smug business exec walking down the street with a Larry over his
head, while thugs fled out of his path. THE ULTIMATE IN PROTECTION, the ad
said. SLAUGHTER EVERYTHING AROUND YOU FOR A 50-METER RADIUS, THEN WAIT FOR THE
BLOOD TO STOP DRIPPING.
Just one problem for the man in the middle: to escape with his skin intact,
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he had to climb the ladder up to the skimmer. The easiest way to do that was
clambering past the Larry; but that meant leaving the safety of the eye. For a
few seconds, he'd be smack in the Larry's kill zone... and during those
moments when he couldn't let the Larry fire, the Mandasars would race forward
and shake him off the ladder. He'd be dead by the time he hit the ground not
from the fall, but from dozens of claws lopping him into giblets.
I could see one other way for the man to try his escape: ordering the Larry
to rise with him as he climbed, always keeping a meter or so above his head.
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