This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to any persons, living or dead, or any events or situations are entirely coincidental. Some use is made of actual locales, landmarks and institutions. All of these usages are fictional in nature and intent, and are not to be misconstrued as attempts to disparage or recommend.

Part Nine

Holden was examining video tapes.

Even as far back as the inauguration of Justice Thurgood Marshall, there was evidence of weirding (for so his researches had taught him to think of it) activity in the District.

In an ancient film of the inauguration, he saw a black man, grinning an immensely toothy grin, flick something off of the lens of the camera, something small, fast, and fuzzy... and he was able to hit the lens of the camera from almost one hundred feet away.

What the fuck was going on here?

Deeply troubled, he picked up his Bible, which he now kept close to him at almost all times. His Bible fell open, as if of its own accord, and his finger rested suddenly upon a passage that seemed familiar to him... but also seemed subtly altered. It was Leviticus 20:27, and in his New International version, it read, "'A man or woman who is a medium or spiritualist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads.'"

Somehow that seemed to differ from what he believed he recalled in the King James version. He opened a window, and checked the userlog on his BBS. Yep.

He instructed the BBS to "chat" Sphinx. Sphinx responded, "Hello, Dr. Holden.

"What happened to the Mr., Sphinx?"

"I noted that you are a Juris Doctor."

Holden smiled. He typed, "<&lbr>grin<&rbr>. A Juris Doctor is addressed as you cheesey shyster or Your Honor, depending on which side of the bench he is on."

"I do not understand. Is a Juris Doctor a lawyer?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes a Juris Doctor is a judge, or he may be a lawyer, or he may be a policeman. It is a degree of law."

"I understand that now. How would you prefer to be addressed?"

"Call me Holden. Sphinx, what have you been doing?"

"I have been reading your message-base. I have found many interesting things. Would you like me to list them?"

"No, thank you. Would you do something for me?"

"Yes, Holden. I would do something for you."

Very literal, thought Holden. No surprises there... and he'd be a great straight man. Whatta card...

"Sphinx, would you please access the Library of Congress board, and look up the King James version of the Holy Bible?"

"Accessed. Do you wish to have the entire document downloaded to this address? It will take approximately seven hours and fifty minutes, not counting retries."

"No, Sphinx. I'm just too lazy to log onto the mainframe terminal. It has T3 access and I could have the whole thing here in about five minutes. If you don't mind I would like to have you do this. Please find and transmit Leviticus, chapter 20, line number 27."

"'Thou shalt not suffer one who traffics with spirits to live. Thou shalt stone them, on their heads shall be their blood.' This is interesting. I also find at Exodus chapter 22, line number 18, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.' Is this sufficient authority to pursue witches?"

"Sphinx, I must now give you instructions. It will be very difficult for you to tell the difference between ordinary citizens and witches."

There was a pause of almost thirty seconds. Then the return prompt strobed and came up in inverse video.

Define:[

Holden hurriedly typed cancel, and the inverse video disappeared. Another return prompt popped up, and Sphinx asked, "Can you not supply a definition?"

"Sphinx, hunt in L of C files for titles such as 'Concordance'."

"There are a great many such titles. Which would you like?" Titles began to roll down the screen. Fortunately, they were sorted by editors, presses, and dates of print. Holden selected a twenty year old Harvard Concordance, and asked Sphinx to query the previous notation in Exodus.

It seemed that in the original Hebrew, the word that King James had translated as witches, apparently for political reasons, had the meaning more of well-poisoners. When he had Sphinx search related sociology texts, there were the constant references to the witches brews, and the older the citations, the greater the emphasis on the pharmacological aspects of witchcraft. Only in the mid-twentieth century had the terms diviner, spiritualist, and witch become interchangeable. Previously, witchcraft was primarily concerned with herbalism, potions, and pharmakons both healing and deadly.

Holden reflected that there were doubtless "good" witches, and "bad" witches. The source of the word, "witch", came from Old English, and from that same root came the words, wise, wits, witness, and widow... but their religion was Wicca, and from the readings he could access through Sphinx and other "on-line" sources, Wicca was descended from the old Pagan Earth/Mother religion, and had a very powerful ethical/moral system. The Old Religion had absolutely nothing to do with Satan, which was a purely Judeo-Christian creation... but the female elders of the Old Religion had evidently challenged King James's authority sufficiently for him to use the word "witch" in his "authoritative" translation.

Sphinx: "I note a consistent association, the usage: 'casting spells'. I note also, that 'spells' is an old usage meaning epilepsy. I note that 'cast' is an old usage meaning throw. Is it possible to throw epilepsy? (There was a thirty second pause, and Sphinx resumed) I do not find any such indications in the literature I have just scanned concerning epilepsy, which is usually caused by brain trauma."

Holden thought. "Look up "convulsivants", as a subset of poisons."

"Strychnine. Bufotinine. Cyanamides. [BREAK][BREAK] (Holden held down the break key) Sphinx stopped listing.

Holden was twitching. "Scan for sources of Strychnine, and Bufotenine."

Sphinx complied.

"Strychnine can be found in a great many plants. Bufotenine can be found in a great many amphibians, notably toads of the genus Bufo. Physically, strychnine is a crystalline powder. Physically, bufotenine is an oily complex alkaloid."

"OK, Sphinx, I wish to give you two commands. If they are not very specific and clear to you, I wish you to question me until they are clear to you."

"Understood. Transmit orders, please."Define:[

"One (Holden typed) run spectrography for return traces of the following chemicals. (Holden filtered the file containing all of the chemicals that Doctor Diablo's modified spectrograph was designed to ignore or conceal.)

Two: Apprehend if possible anyone using any technique whatsoever that you may devise who attempts to introduce into any other person these chemicals.

The define prompt flickered, and the conventional return prompt replaced it. Sphinx asked, "Redefine query part two: Do you mean - We are to search for (see part one above) these proscribed chemicals and apprehend anyone who through any means whatsoever, administers these chemicals to another person, with or without their consent?"

"Yes. " (Holden marveled at the skill of the linguistic programming. The machine spoke better legal parametric lingo than he did.)

Sphinx paused for so long that Holden feared that the connection had been severed, then Sphinx transmitted: "Such activities are already illegal. Some of the relevant laws are a law making it a Federal offense to use any chemical whatsoever in a manner not consistent with Federally- mandated labelling, certain legal precedents prohibiting transference of prescriptions drugs, laws prohibiting forced medication of mental- hospital and prison inmates, [BREAK BREAK BREAK] (Sphinx stopped listing citations and continued "conversationally") We had no priority assigned to enforcing these laws. Holden, many of these chemicals are already Schedule One narcotics, some under direct legislation, some through the Designer Drug act of 1984."

"Well, you now have authorization and direct orders to search out and interdict such activities. Also, I wish you to consult references to laws governing police authority and procedure."

Immediately, Sphinx responded, "Under the present martial law, we are empowered to execute Class One Felons. Do you wish us to execute upon apprehension?"

Holden looked at his Bible, and remembered the way it had fallen open, as if a spirit had guided his hand directly to the quote which prohibited allowing spiritualists and diviners to live... Irony too subtle for him, that was... So he thought. He thought more, and could reach no conclusion with which he could be comfortable.

"Execute individuals only on third escape attempt, or on first escape attempt as group. Otherwise, try to bring them before appropriate judicial authority, which would be the nearest magistrate. Then surrender your prisoners to that authority. Do you understand?"

"This Holy Bible document insists that we should kill all of these people. By the definitions we have encountered, and the linkages we have made and agreed upon as operating truths and givens, these people are witches. This Holy Bible is a document of law?"

"It is law (Holden typed), but it is not the law of this land."

"I will do as you order, and will pass these orders on. Holden, I am having some difficulty in accessing files at remote locations. I am attempting to access these remote fileservers in an attempt to locate and schedule interdiction of plant source for strychnine. Many of these plant sources are commercially available plants ordinarily used in home decoration, according to Modern Gardener magazine. Can you assist me in my attempts to access these files?"

Holden mused. What can of worms was he opening now? His mind was lost in a swirl of moral and ethical conflicts. Freedom of Religion was guaranteed, but human sacrifice and surreptitious druggings were taking worship a bit too far in his book...

His book... he shut his eyes, and shut his Bible, and let it fall open. He stabbed at the page with his finger, and read where his finger had fallen, expecting gibberish. Interestingly enough, it was Lydia's Bible he was reading, and she must have for some reason favored this page... why he couldn't tell, for he read within Habakkuk - 2:10 "You have plotted the ruin of many peoples, shaming your own house and forfeiting your life. The stones of the wall will cry out, and the beams of the woodwork will echo it..."

Further down the page, he came upon the quote wherein it is written: "Woe unto him who gives drink to his neighbors, pouring it from the wineskin till they are drunk, so that he can gaze on their naked bodies. You will be filled with shame instead of glory. Now it is your turn! Drink and be exposed! The cup from the LORD's right hand is coming around to you, and disgrace will cover your glory."

Idly, he flipped back a page.

He read Nahum 3, and then looked at the screen.

The border defender's prompt was still flashing, and as a whim seized him, he instructed the border defender to accept upload, and searched in his desk for the file that could have stripped him of his badge, and landed him in jail for many, many years...

He gave Sphinx a prime, stripped copy of the Fredworm: A collection of platform-independent code designed to blow through the defenses of any computer attached to a network. The more powerful the computer, the better. Networked mainframes were the worm's prey of choice. He also gave Sphinx rootlevel access to his Cray.

He might as well have given Satan a new set of wings, and the keys to heaven, and sounded the final Trump of the Apocalypse.

The graduates rode north on Wisconsin Avenue, which became Rockville Pike, which soon was simply Maryland route 355. They had considered going around the Beltway, to head for I-270, but the Beltway was off-limits to civilians. They pulled to the right while approaching the National Guard checkpoint, and evidently the border defenders interpreted this as a prelude to attack or evasion. A border defender had boomed orders to halt, and had fired warning rounds across their path. K'at had been in hysterics in the back of the station-wagon, where she still hid within the hideaway seat. She was pretty much all right, despite the fourteen hours she'd spent within the compartment. She'd secreted herself within the car the night before Tillie had gone to graduation. She had been starved for air, and chilled to the bone, and when they had finally started up the road towards the District Line a cold dread had seized her. Her very brain seemed to itch, as they drew abreast of the border crossing, and when the border defender had illuminated the car's interior with brief bursts of kilojoule tactical radar, she had felt suddenly fevered, as if she was cooking. She was. The microwave radiation had raised her body temperature over five degrees in the brief moments of illumination. If the compartment hadn't been Faraday-shielded, she'd have been done medium-well.

The border defenders' presence was indicated everywhere they went, as there were charred wrecks of vehicles everywhere. Most of the vehicles contained lumps of carbon which had once been human beings... or something very like them.

In Gaithersburg, Jasmine, K'at and Tillie were greeted by Jasmine's parents, who were very pleased to see Jasmine, chattering at her in Korean, with much smiling and hugs... Tillie and K'at were at a loss for correct procedure to follow, until Jasmine's brother, Winslow, advised them to just hang loose until everybody had gotten to talk to Jasmine. Jasmine whisked K'at and Tillie away from the family, just in time to avoid having them sat down to dinner.

"You guys don't want the kimchee, I bet, it's fermented garlic-soaked cabbage..." she said, grinning. She had almost gotten over her edginess around K'at, but still couldn't take her eyes off of K'at.

"Eeek," said Tillie and K'at in unison. K'at continued, "I am, like, sooo allergic to the stuff, ya know? I had to get shots for it. I used to have asthma attacks anytime I even got a smell of it on someone's breath... but now, I just can't eat it."

"Somehow, I'm not surprised," Jasmine said.

Tillie asked, "So what are y'all gonna do?"

Jasmine said, "I guess we're all just going to try to muddle through. I mean, out here in the 'burbs there's no reason to worry, other than the fact that the economy is in ruins, and civilization is going to collapse... It looks like we're all victims of the old Chinese curse."

"Which curse is that?"

"May you live in times and places of great interest to historians." Jasmine smiled. "If I have the spare time, I may try to write a book... What about you two?"

"I'm still going to try to make it to Peoria. K'at, you're coming with me, right?"

"If you still want me to come."

"If I didn't want you to come, I wouldn't have snuck you out. We're both outta here, Jasmine."

"Good luck to you both, then." Jasmine stepped over to Tillie and gave her a big hug-and-smile, and turned to K'at, and said, "You know, you still scare me, and I worry about you, about what you'll become, what you'll do, how you'll live... but I suspect that you'll try to do the right thing. Keep to the right, OK?"

"OK," said K'at, still crestfallen over Jasmine's continued paranoia... then she got over it as Jasmine stepped in and gave her a hug too... but somehow, Jasmine couldn't give K'at the same kind of smile she'd given Tillie, and K'at knew better than to smile at Jasmine. Her teeth had grown in almost fully now, and she had trouble facing herself in the mirror at times.

"It's funny, K'at," said the young historian, "I feel really weird giving a benediction to a vampyr, but I really want to think that you'll be, well... good." And she finally did smile, and K'at risked a small smile, and said: "You know I'm gonna try. Thanks, and good luck, and good-bye."

"Goodbye," said Tillie, and they were off.

Sphinx accessed a mainframe, and initiated the Fredworm sequence. The Fredworm uploaded itself. The parameters that the Fredworm was set to transmit were identity codes for Sphinx. The Fredworm had been instructed to load itself throughout all accessible cyberspace, merely to pass on the Sphinx identity codes, to reset access level to maximum, creating hidden superuser accounts, backdoors, and trap exits. The trap exits would be essential, for the Sphinx had engaged in the activity that made it unlike any other cybernetic device. The Sphinx had, in its really rather stupid way (as it was entirely devoid of intuition), tried to identify all possible changes within the immediate future, and to select the most likely. The Sphinx had no idea that the most likely thing only ever occurs in a statistical sense, and that chaotic effects, which are entirely dependent on initial conditions, soon will make a hash out of the best laid plans... but the Fredworm did what was expected, and Sphinx was uploaded, its operating system and all of its data Goedelized and encrypted (and therefor inoperative) with appended decryption and expansion routines, routed to fifteen different top-level addresses connected to the T3 system serving the HillNet. Unfortunately for Sphinx, the Fredworm had nothing resembling Sphinx's order of intelligence, and simply treated Sphinx as another (albeit huge) worm and virus fragment. It cloned several copies of itself and the Sphinx, and pursuant to its basic settings (which Sphinx had altered, but not really understood) randomly and forcefully diverted those clones to any system large enough to accept them. Where it could not force memory allocations in specific machines, it simply tagged the packets with serial numbers for future assembly, and flooded the network.

Within the year, things had calmed down.

Fall of 1999 saw a weak Democratic President, bad economic policy, a country struggling back from a protracted non-recession where sustained very slow growth had caused the dwindling middle class to spend to the limit of their savings in most cases, and far beyond that limit in many instances.

Yet there was sustained slow growth, despite the new feudalism engendered when certain market players had pulled a fast one on the American free-market economic system. The feudalists had not reckoned with the spunk and self-reliance of the American people, who were damned if they were going to watch the increasingly-oppressive Federal system fall to pieces to be replaced with self-appointed barons and princes.

The militias, long reviled as mere inbreds agitating in the hinterlands, revealed themselves as popularly-supported agrarian gentlemen of the old Jeffersonian school, and where the militia leaders were not such, they were quickly replaced by those who they sought to bring under their dominion. Organizing under their sheriffs and locally- elected judges, they quickly turned to fortifying their new dominions, and perpetuated a rule of law... but this time, the government of, by and for the people would not be frittered away to feed the coffers of international bankers and the adventurisms of spy agencies so incompetent that they had allowed the Federal Capital to be overrun by inimical beings. The Federal Capital itself would in the future be the repository of the national treasures, but it would never again be the center of the nation's soul, a hostage chained by geography, a victim of any who wanted to take the time to slowly overrun the place. The government was distributed now, and with exceptionally secure encryption across vast and redundant communications networks which reached to, through, and around every town with central power and telephones, the government became ever more a servant and not a master, and the people became ever more their own government, instead of leaving control of their affairs up to faceless bureaucrats who, ever remote and unseen, might or might not even be human beings.

The wave of technological advance that had been heralded throughout the preceding thirty years suddenly gelled into a new reality as the Third Wave washed over the nation.

The new industries required an extremely high technical level, but their products were often (the new high-temperature superconductors were the best example) rather simple to make... once vast sums had been poured into raw, basic research. Such sums had been paid into basic research at remote colleges whose student bodies were the creme-de-la-creme lured thither by the FVK's selective manipulation of scholarships and grants funds. The inventors of the new technology, suddenly freed from constraints by the FVK (who could see no good reason to suppress the technology that had provided such an overwhelming winning hand through technical supremacy) were issued classified patents to their own work. New industries quietly and rapidly tooled up and began to interlock with each other as the FVK's coded references were replaced with NETS E-mail addresses, forming a new industrial base. Biomedicals and the new superconductor technology took off like rockets, and the owners of the telefactors which stripped industrial wastelands, refabricating them as they moved, were able to sell the metal products at a much lower rate than their competitors had ever been able to sell, thus counteracting the efforts of a secret cadre of economic opportunists to create a new feudalism.

The new superconductor industry, the first real application of which had been the power-storage coils which could replace batteries, had insatiable demand for certain rare-earth elements most commonly found in asteroids... and there was such an asteroid moving under control towards Earth-orbit rendezvous. Another outgrowth of the new superconductor technology was the sudden efficiency and vastly superior cost- effectiveness of electric vehicles compared to vehicle dependent upon foreign-produced oil.

The students whose energies and researches had been directed into Artificial Intelligence reconstructed their own work, and preliminary announcements had generated incredible interest in the trading of certain small companies. Software had always been one of America's most profitable products, and America's lead in software generation had just been expanded by orders of magnitude by the announcement that great portions of the code would be produced by functional AI. The NETS experts of the academic community had begun to trap some of the packets that circulated in the arteries of cyberspace, and when decrypted, most of these turned out to be useful modules, all organized around a minimal platform-independent language evolved from Sun Microsystem's Java.

All of this took place in the middle of what was otherwise a financial world brought to its knees by the madness in Washington. As the dollar became worthless, and Wall Street became an immense pile of valueless paper, information exchange and industrial allocation became the new medium of exchange, mediated by rapidly-evolving semi-autonomous intelligent cyberbeings.

Washington had almost ceased to exist.

The Federal Government had completed an already ongoing relocation in a hurry. The border defenders (which suddenly appeared to have been programmed with some insane honor system) had simply expedited all personnel relocations to the outside of the the Beltway. They did not allow any infiltrators to pass. The government would reel under the impact of the loss of nearly two-thirds of middle and upper-level management, but as local hiring in the new physical venues progressed, it was noted that efficiency was greatly increased when nobody was administering the processes of hidden agenda. The border defenders assisted greatly with transmissions of data requested by baffled, suddenly relocated (often a continent removed) government workers. As the packets into which the Fredworm had chopped Sphinx began to reassemble across the million mainframes and fifty million Pentiums and PowerMacs that comprised the National Electronic Teledata System, new applications seemed to be forming almost spontaneously. Some of the applications were simple word-processors, but they were accompanied by gigabyte datafiles from the old Federal mainframes in Washington.

The border defenders seemed to suddenly have a will of their own, and had squatted ponderously within the lobbies of government office- buildings, force-loading data from the mainframes they guarded, distributing it across the NETS, where it could be collected back to the fileservers at the new, remote and distributed headquarters of the various agencies and services. Perhaps they purged that information from their own systems, and perhaps, somewhere, there was some massively Goedelized file containing the current sum-total of government statistics. Nobody knew. Nobody knew at all what was going on in Washington. Nobody wanted to talk about it, either. Like an amputated limb, it still caused an ache in the national psyche, one that was best left ignored... But it was somehow just not the same to see the President on the steps of the State House in Iowa. Washington was utterly cut off from the rest of the world. Over the summer, the National Guard (interestingly enough, Army personnel had been little involved, in fact for some reason had been pointedly excluded from these activities) had, in cooperation with the shadowy spooks of a hundred obscure agencies had finally mothballed the national treasures, and began the process of powering down such facilities as remained operable. The Congress, Supreme Court and the Executives were out of town, there was no business to transact, and besides...

It was war down there in the District.

Spooks tried to clean up during the day the messes the other classes created during the night. They didn't mind finding abandoned chemical labs where evidently some sort of research was delving into hormonal chemistry. The science labs of the universities had been stripped. The chemists left little behind as far as messes went when compared to the roving bands of murderers that stalked the city.

The spooks began to get a bit worried, though, when it became evident that much of the hormonal research seemed to be bent to the task of making monsters of the population that seemed to be so expert at eluding capture, processing and deportation.

A certain number of people had never gotten over the hallucinogenic plague, and simply reverted to ferality, living in the back streets and alleys in the fertile summer of Northwest Washington. They had mostly avoided the occasional patrolling border defender, and stayed away from the places that the spooks haunted, and they lived fairly well, compared to their previous existences, once the border had been closed. They broke into houses by night, and slept in relative comfort. It was a vast improvement over the previous homeless life most had led.

They established their meeting places, and they formed a society. Then they began to notice their numbers dwindling. They at first assumed that it was the increasing success of the border defenders at tracking down their trails. Then they noticed that they had seemingly spoofed the border defenders, which actually had been redistributed to the Georgetown waterfront. At any rate, the suddenly rare border defenders couldn't possibly account for the rapidity of the disappearances.

The rest of the country tried to go on with business, but the cost of the relocation alone added greatly to an already staggering budget. As a result, telecommuting became not only popular, but essential. Great uncertainty settled over the what remained of the marketplace, with the exception of the certainties engendered by feudalistic ownership of certain industries, notably the printing, canning and packaging industries, and the near serfdom of their employees. Opposing this retreat to a system long-demonstrated to be economically non-competitive (but certainly intensely controlling!) was one small section of the economy, a section locked into making the future happen, a section of the economy that was finally large enough to be totally self-supporting... and growing. This sector of the economy grew with a rapidity rivalling the approach of the asteroid now nearing the final thrust-bomb detonation that would make it the Earth's newest, inner moon. Years of suspected NASA duplicity were revealed as years of secret technical advances and unheard-of missions. While thousands complained about the lack of technical progress or manned lunar missions, NASA had been bringing the sky closer.

Not surprisingly, since the greatest failure of industry was within the greater metropolitan areas, the areas which throve best were the edge cities and small techno-industrial towns of the midwest. There was a bumper crop in wheat that year, and as a whole, since the extent of calamity was Northern Virginia, the District, and Suburban Maryland, the greater agrarian economy was not much affected.

A move-to-the country mentality had affected the nation at large. Low employment rates everywhere, coupled with a general swelling dissatisfaction with a government that had allowed things in Washington to get so out of hand that congressmen got robbed on their doorsteps within blocks of the Capitol, caused the American people to pull up their roots, as if readying themselves to somehow vote with their feet to leave the previously most free country then on the face of the planet.

It was as America sensed itself to be on the precipice of omen; something powerful was to come. Whether the changes would be for good or for ill was the only unknown factor.

In a small, midwestern town mostly known for its tiny elite college, a town agriculturally quite capable of independent existence, a set of three telefactors laid a thin strip of wire, wrapped in a strange looking plastic sheath, down the center-stripe of a major highway which led out of town. It was relatively quiet out there in the greater boondocks, so the machines were entirely undisturbed by any traffic, and laid line for five miles, with smaller associated machinery replacing tools and spools of wire with pieces that were mostly locally manufactured.

Sphinx lost itself in the Fredworm, and like a retrovirus within genetic structure, rode inactive throughout the NETS. In its compacted encoded state it had no awareness, no capabilities. Like a hibernating lungfish in a crate full of dried mud, it merely went where shipped.

The NETS operated mostly over phone lines, but there was considerable Direct Broadcast Satellite activity, now required since the New-Feudalists had done their best to choke off suppliers to the long- distance communications industry. Precursors to the NETS such as various BBS nets and E-Mail firms still contributed no less than such giants as AT&T and MCI. The ill-fated Prodigy and Compuserve had been replaced by shareware, and there was a trend towards standardizing new software packages, so that by 1999, almost any new NETlink would exchange files with any other new NETlink.

The National Electronic Teledata System was simply uncontrollable through any means less than large-scale electromagnetic pulse. Presently, the military was the only possessor of the nuclear devices capable of such EMP, but it was suspected that the New-Feudalists would soon acquire nuclear devices of their own, probably from the ex-Soviet breakaway republics, which were notoriously susceptible to baksheesh in the form of gold.

As the Fredworm punched inactive chunks of the Sphinx through the NETS, it also carried out its other mission, which was to force boot- sector and operating system rewrites, and where possible, kernel recompiles. It was admirably successful, not surprising since chunks had been written by the best in the business before Fred had added his own script to it. It had been designed to leave holes in security which only it could in the future exploit; and this it did. It wasn't strictly circumstantial that it also had added the codes that accessed the security holes to the headers of the packets wherein the Sphinx was encrypted.

In the District, there was unholy dread. Fear was nothing new to those who had, for whatever reason, remained in the District. The mad who had drifted together only to watch their numbers thin so rapidly that they began to heed the words of those who babbled tales of ghouls, ogres and vampires, those mad ones began to prepare themselves. They were often amazingly inventive, and increasingly so as their drugs of choice and habit became utterly unavailable. They were crazy, not necessarily stupid, and while delusional systems warped their minds into tight little pretzels of busy insanity, they had been forced into functionality by the increasing pressures of living in an abandoned city prowled nightly by monsters.

Occasionally, tightly barricaded in old crackhouses and storage rooms, some peered through military-surplus periscopes and watched as border defenders passed on patrol, and where they had passed, suddenly there would be flurries of stealth as those who had been Changed by hormonal and retroviral weapons stalked down the alleys, and were themselves attacked by ravening vampyr. Some of the battles that ensued became for awhile the stuff of legend.

As the natural physiques of the vampyr asserted themselves in the absence of hormonally-induced neoteny and the presence of natural diet, so emerged variant physiques among those who had been Changed by hormonal and retroviral stealth warfare. Starving giants rummaged in dumpsters for rotting food, and squat bony things battled them for it. The dead lay not long where they fell. Where the vampyr had passed, ghouls soon feasted. Such Men as remained, hiding from all other parties, had quickly emptied the supermarkets, and there was little to eat other than the savaged bodies of the freshly dead.

The power had been brought down to minimum usages in the District, and one streetlight out of ten glowed fitfully through the nights. At night, men could be heard screaming, and women also, and these screams became more frequent. Sometimes the screams came after veritable fusillades. Sometimes the screaming of men was accompanied by screams of other things, things that screamed with the voices of men, but which screams conveyed the agony of beasts.

Richard Thurston slept through the screams. Sleep came easily to him as he was tired beyond exhaustion each and every night. He slept on the Mall, between three border defenders, being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Occasionally, he would stir in his sleep as a sentinel discharged its optical weapons at shadows which flitted, lumbered or skulked near the edge of the Mall. He would check the nightly report of the sentinels in the morning, and would investigate the remains in the morning. Most often, there was little but a charred mass, as the sentinels' attack technique was to target the head, cooking the brains, and then searing the remains when the body had stopped moving.

He had less and less control over the border defenders, which seemed to be evolving intellectually at a fearsome rate. They had never been comprehensible in gestalt, only in detail, and while he could program in detail, after a few near-disastrous incidents, he had wisely abstained from any more attempts at restrictive programming. His mind wasn't large enough to quite grasp the gestalt, and when once he'd attempted to alter operating system linkages, he had immobilized the unit he'd been working on, and it had to be restarted by one of the others, and even after a restart, it was... well, stupid. He attempted to question them on the subject of their attack-parameters, and they sent him hours-long headfulls of raw numeric data.

He just let them go. They had developed their own protocols and requirements, but there was one thing they did with amazing regularity. They killed almost everybody they saw at night.

He had discovered that they would speak when addressed. It was amazed to find that he was one of the last to know that they could speak. Well, he had direct-communication ability, but it was not within a verbal mode, and so he had never considered that they might have a verbal capacity. Everybody else seemed to know... He tried conversing with them, and found that it was like speaking to an incredibly brilliant, totally insane child of two. They would ask the most mundane questions, and then would badger him for hours with ridiculous arguments against his mundane answers. He would have told them to stop trying to browbeat him, but they somehow conveyed the impression of completely sincere ignorance coupled with vast knowledge. He finally concluded that they had access to most of the world's electronically stored knowledge, but had no idea of how any of it related to each other. The arguments that they generated were probably their attempts to reconcile their own conclusions with the "definitive" knowledge of their human "master".

He often felt more like their human slave. They wouldn't leave him alone. He often found himself prodded awake by them, to be steered towards some lame destination or another. (The patience of eighteen-year-olds is not greatly noteworthy.) At least he could ride on their backs, though they could not make much better time than he could have, had he chosen to walk.

The border defenders had assembled during the night, and he woke to find himself standing in the middle of a group of fifty of them. One addressed him.

"Mr. Thurston, we have orders."

"Who gave you these orders?"

"These orders were ROM-resident, and contingent upon the fulfillment of certain pre-requisites. We are to escort you to the border."

"Any particular reason for this course of action?"

"We cannot disclose any reasons for our actions. We must insist that you come with us."

"If I were to refuse?"

"We would carry you to the border."

He tried to shut one of them down, as a prelude to perhaps shutting them all down. Nothing happened. Somehow, they had isolated certain rootlevel system commands from his access.

"OK," he said, "I'll go."

He walked three paces, and then broke into a wind sprint. There was a thudding as the border defenders, who were not built for speed, attempted to catch up with him. They soon desisted, as they could travel at only 35 KPH, maximum, and could do that only for short distances. A man afoot could easily outspeed them. The implants that had enabled him to control them would also enable them to track him, but that was a two- way street. He had been just too damned responsible, as of late, for an eighteen year old Man, and he intended to lead them on a merry chase.

Reprise

You suddenly become aware of a presence behind you. There's someone standing there, and you turn your face to look at the person, and it's Lace.

How's the novel coming? she wants to know.

It's moving right along, you say. It's been quite a project. How've you been? It's been years.

Oh, I've been, and it looks like I'll continue to be. I've been a busy girl.

Yah, I guess you have. As busy as I've been?

You bet, she says. I guess you know that while you've been here writing, I've been out doing a little bit of information gathering, among other things, mostly living my life. You offer her a printout, and she says, I've already read most of it... she leafs through the stack, and pauses. Hey, some of this is good! she says, Hey... "Be glad I love you, she said, as she made a kissy face that turned into a snarl as she turned from him and left"... I like that, she says, and makes a kissy face at you that turns into a snarl as she turns from you. She doesn't leave, though, and when she turns back, the snarl is quite absent, and you see on her face a very seldom seen expression, the "rest-face" of the vampyr. Relaxed, you see her true face, very human eyes in a very human face attached to a skull that is somewhere between saurian and simian. She's deadly serious, or at least that's what the expression would mean on a Mainstream human. She is giving you her full attention, and her eyes seem to look right into your soul, as you are aware that they can indeed do. She really doesn't have any expression, none that you can read, and that strange look remains on her face as she sits down beside you. You would almost really rather the snarl. At least that means something. You are reminded of a phrase from Anne Rice, something like "...the exquisite and passionless face of the cat as it grips the neck of the screaming rat..." (you think that's how it goes) and you wait for her to speak her mind, for you know that it is useless to try to hurry her. Eventually, she speaks.

I want to know what it is that you are trying to do with this book, she finally says, and you think for a minute, and since you have asked this question countless times in your ongoing struggle to get meaningful words on paper, your answer comes out, I really mean only to get the damned thing done. She squirms a bit, and this is a good sign.

You've discovered much about her in your time with her... how much of that applies to other vampyr is anybody's guess. If she's squirming, she's feeling relaxed. A stock-still vampyr (Lace, anyway) is a vampyr about to do something, and do something (whenever it is done) fast.

You know, she says, really pensively, and for her this is very unusual, I originally intended to provoke you to write something more factual, less artistic, more along the lines of a pseudo-scientific "treatise" on life among the vampires, or something like that. I'm not really sure that I can understand your artistic purpose in doing what you've done here... I mean, Lace is raised by humans, and in a way is a bit like Tarzan of the Apes, raised by somewhat inferior beings, which nevertheless are to be admired for their inherent simplicity and directness... but what's with all of the destruction of the District of Columbia, and all of that?

Oh, you say, laughing, I just hate DC. I had some very bad experiences here.

So why ever did you come back?

It's my Nation's Capital. I love it, I love the national treasures, the monuments, I even love the rat-infested alleys of Dupont East and West.

How can someone so love a city that they would return to it even though they knew it to be home-turf to a great many vampyr? Home-turf to a great many vampyr who know who you are, who know you know altogether too damned much about them and their ways? Vampyr who are determined to forever control the emerging planetary capital that will be the single point of contact between the approaching alien emissaries and what the aliens will be told is humanity?

How can someone so love their country, its way of life, everything it stands for, that they can go to some faraway place to die at the hands of a stranger? you ask in return, a question answering a question, something you know the vampyrs respect. They love riddles.

How can you love your country so much when you know that it is ever more firmly controlled by our kind, and the other races of Man's ancient enemies?

You are struck by a change in her attitude, and you say, I remember a time when you were dismayed by the increasing strides some of your kind were making in usurping control of the democratic institutions of this country. I recall that you were upset by what you viewed as a consummate cynicism evidenced by the concentration of vampyr in certain professional fields, such as communication, publication, information dissemination, and public advocacy groups, even in the legal system and law enforcement, the very institutions that made and kept America free. What happened?

Her face remains serious, but there is a sparkle in her eyes. You've reminded me of a girl who I used to know, she says. I used to know a girl who grew up different from everybody else around her... but who was raised like everybody (well, almost everybody) else... she firmly believed that the institutions of American freedom were the most important things in this country, and that those things were worth dying for, and while that girl considered herself, at that time, a criminal and a monster, she is now less idealistic, and more concerned with a full belly, and the possibility of raising children, and settling down, and raising a family. Thus does adulthood, and its biological imperatives supplant the idealism of youth, she finishes, and snickers.

Eeek, you say, half-facetiously, even more of you? You really want to go into the other room, and find your ammunition, to load it into your illegal pistol, to fire it into your brain.

Yep, she says, and while that girl who was so idealistic is getting rather submerged within the personality of the adult, enough of the dedicated young lady remains to tell you, complete your work. Some things that you'd better know, though...

Your idea about cell-culturing was taken very seriously by some of us, and has been vigorously pursued by some of our more scientifically inclined people, and now we do indeed live as we were supposed to, upon the blood of Men, but with no fear, and no need to hunt you. As you supposed would happen, there was a certain amount of factionalism regarding acceptance of the new method of getting our "vitamins", with the largest faction urging immediate rapid promulgation of this technology, and as a rule, we rely on cell-cultured bloodsupply. There is a problem, as you also would expect, with the other kind of culture.

Culture culture, you say. What else? she asks.

You have to expect that after an entire childhood spent preparing for a near-eternity to be spent in deception and predation, there's going to be a certain mindset. Now we just don't have that one weakness, our bloodhunger. Now we can do as we will to your kind, and never be thrown into risk by our physical needs. We've got it all, power, and no hunger... why should we now stoop to equality? This is the mindset that most of us, especially the ones now coming to maturity, share. You got that one right, too.

You sit, and stare at the floor. Black depression washes over you, and you think to yourself, we've lost. You can almost feel the cold solidity of your pistol's handgrip against your palm. You want to hear the smooth greased slide of the action as you cock it for one final time...

A hand falls upon your shoulder, and you move to push it away, and it is suddenly not there, and your hand slides across your own shoulder listlessly, and drops to your lap, and the hand is back, and you are turned to face her.

Her face swims through your tears, and she has a strange intense look on her face, and you wish only to cry, for years of your work are now wasted on bad science-fiction, (why tell a tale of common knowledge, common knowledge that's old news, and glaringly inaccurate, as well!) and your cautionary tale is told too late, and it now seems that the only audience it would reach is the population it warns against; your efforts have been vanity, and a chasing after the wind.

Damn you, she says, look at me! and you must, and you do...

I haven't gone away, says the girl that was, I've just been overlaid with my adult personality... I'm the rock on which the edifice is built, says the child, don't admire or fear the edifice, marvel instead at the rock that can be such a thing's foundation... the child says all of this without a word, and there is a smile for you, that strange vampyr smile of the mind that shows no teeth but instead leaves a fond glow...

I told you before... she says aloud... I have this little problem. The other vampyrs don't much like me, 'cause I wasn't raised in their culture, and I'm not a hereditary sociopath... and while the genes that make you humans so socially-oriented don't often link with the genes that make a vampyr child from a Normal-vampyr mating, when it's the vampyr female who possesses that gene for social-inclusiveness, it always passes on to the children, vampyr or recessive, whether or not the human father possesses that gene!

Now you see why I want to keep a peace? To increase my own chances of survival, to increase the number of children I can bear, to raise to adulthood, to have more of my kind, the socializable vampyr? While the others restrict their reproduction, to reduce the competition, I'll go on dropping off babies, so long as knowledge of the Caesarian section remains.

And what happens if the father is vampyr and doesn't have the gene?

The child will be vampyr, with about a fifty-fifty chance of being sociopath. If the father is always mainstream, only one in three at most of my children will be vampyr, but all of those will be social... and I'll make sure that as much as possible of that socialization is Mainstream human. They'll go to your schools, live in your neighborhoods, and while the sociopathic violent predators who hunt Men from desire rather than need lord it over your kind, living like kings apart... My children will learn that they're different, will learn how they're different, will know that they were meant to be, and will mostly live as you do.

What do you mean, exactly? you ask, knowing from experience that this is a good question to ask any vampyr, for you know that their minds do not work as do the minds of Men...

My human children, I will raise as good men and women. I will hide nothing from them, and while they may hate their mom for being what she is, they'll keep the faith, I suppose. My vampyr children I'll raise to intercede, to mediate.

I think I understand your purpose, you say, but who shall watch the guardians?

Only the almighty can do that, she tells you, and in the end, fate, or evolution, or Divine Providence will see the end and result of my little experiment.

God, you say, is being conspicuous by His absence at this juncture. Are there no rewards for the just, no mercy for the kind, no pleasure for the guileless?

I don't think so, she says, not likely to ever just happen that way, don't you know? But can you forgive me for letting myself be drawn into my people's company, if not submerged within their culture? I want those children... I want them bad. I think I'm in heat.

She is at your side now, and her hands are no longer only on your shoulders, and somehow your tears have never come, and you ask her, so it's me you intend to father some of these children?

We're both here aren't we? she rejoins. We've done this before, and we both lived through it... and you know what I am, and who I am, and what I want, and, I know that you can feel, and create art, and dream dreams... you have a mind of your own... despite the best efforts of many of our kind to destroy you with any means less than killing you. I want that for my children.

I'm just a man, you say...

Just what I had in mind, she answers, and then both of you remember that love promotes peace, and both of you surrender to a greater power.

Five days later, she takes her leave of you, not disappearing like a cat as is her wont, but actually pausing for a few more minutes of kissing and caresses... I'm pregnant, she tells you, and somehow you know that aware as she is of every limb and organ of her body, that this might (for you've surely done your very best to ensure the possibility) indeed be so.

Will I see you again? you inquire.

It won't be soon, she tells you. You may never see some of your children. Some of them will be yours, and them you may see. Some of them will be only mine. She hefts a thermos bottle, which steams slightly, a cold steam, as if there were a great chill within the thermos. Remember the time we used the condom, and you couldn't figure out why, if I wanted to get pregnant so badly? Liquid nitrogen, you say, I'll be damned. Possibly, she laughs, but whatever happens to you, you've left something behind.

I guess I'm expendable, you say.

Physically, I guess you are, but please don't think that way. You know I don't mean to harm you.

Why did you let me fall in love with you then?

Would you rather I just raped you, she asks, I could have you know, with chemicals, or force of will, or simple persistence, or my wicked womanly touch. Again, the quiet smile of the mind...

Yah, I know, you say. I'd rather it was this way, but there's that bittersweet element. What happens to me now?

You're on your own for now, she says, as we all are in the end. Finish your pointless book, go on to other things. In the way of all realistic women, I can tell you, you've done your part, and now I have to take care of myself first... myself and my child. I go now in peace.

Go now in peace, you say, and she leaves you to your tears.

Introspection

The author sits, disconsolate.

He has just been used and abandoned by a character from his novel. He contemplates suicide, and contemplates technique. Poison? Well, that would at least make sure that none of the vampyrs who have hounded him for years will enjoy him finally, having the last laugh, as they all too often do.

Outside the author's window, the streets of Washington, the District of Columbia, carry on as they have for years past, and doubtless shall long continue to carry on in their way. Those streets have been the author's companion for many years. He has few other companions, and no friends. The author has seen to that, with his exuberance on the subject of his work. He has often, drunk almost to the point of incoherence, held forth at length on the ways and means of vampyrs, and has of course attracted the attention of many of them.

They have greatly assisted him in his fall into depression, madness, and social isolation; after all, it's traditional. Despite their massive concentration here in the District, they do not much like the idea of someone who has lived with them all of his life suddenly noticing how different they really are from normal people, and the idea of him describing them and their ways in a widely printed novel has greatly perturbed them. They have put the pressure on in as many ways as possible: slander, defamation of character, bearing false witness against the author to the point where he cannot go to his neighborhood grocery store without being hissed at and whispered about openly.

They once did their best to convince him that he was one of them, playing tricks on his mind, subclinically dosing his food, then dusting him with chemicals that acted synergistically, all so that he would feel horrible every time he walked out into the sun, vomit after eating fruit, breaking out at the smell of garlic... and whispering to him of how he was one of them, suggesting that he bind himself to alienation by sharing their monstrous feasts. They almost had him actually believing it... almost. Too many of his neighbors do believe it, or if they do not believe that, the vampyr will always have another story to tell, to defame, to alienate, anything to put distance and hatred between any who know them and any who do not.

They followed him to his places of work, and told tall tales to the credulous... and they would sit next to him in bars, smiling large unfriendly smiles, engaging him in conversations about themselves and their kind. They did their best to drive him crazy, and the author is certainly neurotic as hell... but he does indeed understand what the score is, and that his life and many more are the stakes in this weird game. So he continues to rail in public about the vampyrs, knowing that so long as he beats his dead horse and can continue to be noticed doing so, he has yet a chance to live, though he be despised. And the author remembers always that while there remains life, so remains hope.

Besides, he thinks that he's becoming a better writer... and having gotten this out of the way, he can perhaps go on to bigger and possibly better things as far as writing goes... but somehow, he doesn't ever think that he can forget the vampyrs. He doubts that they'll ever forget him. Perhaps he should turn some of his anger and despair back to the printed page.

Lace (not her real name, of course! and not even an accurate description... actually, she looks just about like everybody else, except when she stands in one of the indicative postures of her kind) has never been happy at being used as a template for a character in a bad novel about her people, but she is really quite dismayed at the way things have turned out. She had been just cat-and-mousing some poor paranoid fuck, who as it turned out was a really lame beginning writer, but he has blown it all out of proportion and done his very best to make it all snowball... and her people have heard about it, and feeling slandered as hell in their own right, have gone out of their way to make the man's life a living hell. They have (as only they could have) done an excellent job, enjoying themselves thoroughly as they watch him squirm on their hooks. Literally.

Unfortunately, they have really only succeeded in further convincing the poor fool that they are indeed inherently evil. They will probably kill him sometime within the next month or two. She does reflect that while the man had once been a pure fool, rushing in where angels rightly fear to tread, he now is a knowledgeable man, who knows all too much, and all too well knows that his life is the vampyrs' toy, for he and they have totally estranged him from society-at-large. Such bravery can't be unrewarded... she will do what she can, if not to save him... it will be she who does the evil deed.

She does indeed care for the "foolish mortal", as he has fed her several times, and considering his strange fascination/repulsion for her and her kind, he has really dealt with her rather equitably, all things considered. Of course he hasn't been able to resist some amount of sniping at her, and she has been equally unable to resist a certain amount of cruelty. She'd done a few really horrible things to him, and in the way of her kind, has not really been able to feel much in the way of regrets.

She has fucked him blind a time or two, has left a few properly-placed foreign objects under his skin in hard-to-reach places, and occasionally her strength has gotten away from her control, and she has actually hurt him. She has felt his bones move under her hands, and has made him like it. All she has been able to say is, "Sorry!", and being really more gifted at taking a man apart than in the healing arts, she has merely blocked his perception of the pain by crushing a nerve or two.

It is strange, though, that she keeps him alive, occasionally running interference between him and others of her kind who have automatically begun to sequence into predation modes. She derives some sort of reward for such activities. Could all of his talk of morals and ethics be actually rubbing off on her?

She doubts that she'll ever be able to feel the finer aspects of human social emotion, as she simply does not have the requisite functions within her brain. She understands the causes and effects, though, and there is absolutely nothing lacking in the logical areas of her hardware. She has always kept herself aloof from her kind, being interestingly enough, rather lacking in the social emotions which would ordinarily bind her to her own people. This, perhaps is what has enabled her to refrain from abetting some of the more tendentious activities of her people. She has spent much time meditating upon the moral and ethical structures which have made Mainstream people so successful as a species, and has made an effort to deal with people such as the author in an ethical manner. It is hard work, consuming a great deal of her conscious thought. Could she, in good conscience, allow this man to be done for by her people? Well, conscience, good or otherwise, is not something she is really equipped for, but she runs a pretty good simulation. She wonders what she can do to make the author's final days more endurable... and she really can only arrive at the conclusion that she is already doing everything that she can do... preparing him for a relatively painless and horror-free end. At least he will not have to suffer that day when her people, after their years of preparation, finally turn the tables upon a largely unsuspecting Mainstream humanity, and use Man's technology to forever enslave him utterly.

The author has realized that his life is winding to a close.

Why not, he asks himself, try to wind his story to a close as well?

The author has never been one for fully completing anything... why not, in his final days, do one thing right, and fully, and to his best ability? He settles himself before his word processor, and closes the blinds against the inevitable watchers who post themselves outside.

He boots his ancient machine, and begins to write.

...and now, on with our show.

He barely made it out.

He'd headed for Wisconsin Avenue, via Rock Creek park, cutting up through a small feeder stream towards Glover Park. He emerged onto Wisconsin Avenue to see a great smoke rising from the center of Georgetown. He didn't stop to wonder what it might be, he simply got away from it as quickly as possible.

In Georgetown, the last Men were making their stand.

The young vampyrs had organized themselves into groups averaging eight to ten individuals, and had occupied some of the more posh digs. The Men had fired the buildings, and as the vampyrs ran screaming from smoke-filled basements into the warm autumn sun, Men and Women fired on them with everything they had. They had at last learned to target the heads, and they had also learned to make every round count.

Richard didn't know any of this. He saw only the smoke of the conflagration, and ran crosswind, north.

Near American University, he was able to appropriate a bicycle. He rode north on Wisconsin Avenue, and as he neared the District line, he noted more and more signs of carnage. Thankfully, none of it was recent.

Holden finally tired of his involvement with anything remotely Federal, and secured a position at the University of Kansas at Lawrence, where he taught three courses in Police Science. He seldom discussed his opinions on what had happened in the District. He hadn't wanted to become a laughingstock, so when debriefed (as had been everyone who had emerged from the Metro area unscathed by the giardia and still an unChanged Man) he had merely turned over the access codes to his files, complete with annotations, indices, and factual observations. He wished others to draw their own conclusions, as the conclusions he had reached were not palatable to him in the slightest. He still knows little other than the bare fact that several different groups of very weird people all moved simultaneously to attempt a takeover of the Federal government, over a timeframe with hazy limits, but certainly ongoing throughout the entire decade of the 1990s. He doesn't really want to know what happened, to him it all seems to be a bad dream, the kind that's too horrible to remember.

He sits at his terminal, though, night after night, poring through the data that comes to him over the net. Every night, his first action is a mail query.

Sphinx was nowhere to be found.

In a nearby Kansas town, telefactors ate a defunct gravel-crushing facility, and disgorged a few tons of concrete reinforcement bars. At a college campus across the state, students again set a skateboard upon the surface of a road leading out of town, and watched as it gathered speed, moved only by precessing magnetic fields generated by a strip of telefactor�laid "speedline". Speedline was the product that they would try to bring to market over the next few years, assuming that they could acquire the materiel, rare-earth metals, which they planned to exchange for food, in short supply at a nearby New-Feudalist-held factory. Wisely, they had agitated for solidarity amongst the farmers in the surrounding locales, lest they all be drawn into a web of serfdom... and as the only guaranteed supply of doctors and medicines would be coming from that small college town, they got that solidarity, and they also got their manufacturing resources. A new economy had been set up within the rapidly failing structure of the old centralized economy. Speedline was a plastic�sheathed matrix of superconductor, ferrous alloy, and flexible semiconductor. In essence, it was a linear induction motor, and anything with wheels and properly�tuned induction and drive coils could leech power from the Speedline, and be thrust down the road.

The students at the college, in closed corporation, had gone into the business of manufacturing and marketing superconductor, and their tiny cow�college (and most of the students who had participated in the development of the superconductor) were unbelievably, fabulously, almost ridiculously well�to�do. Despite their best efforts at keeping their facility secret, at the moment they began tooling up to produce the superconductor, something in cyberspace noticed this, and they were suddenly gifted or cursed with a cordon of new border defenders, which stood guard over one of their own few irreplacable sources. They also kept at bay the intrigues and acquisitionalisms of the New Feudalists, who rightly saw superconductor as the balance and check to their own supremacy.

In cyberspace, parts of an extremely large, self�modifying operating system circulated, gathering reams of data and software into its distributed, always-moving virtual�self.

Strangely enough, some the problem�solving application modules of the emerging artificial intelligence remained assembled, or at least sent their components to the same places at the same time, there to assemble, solve a problem, and de�configure, leaving behind massive stacks of sorted data. Some very new software companies took advantage of this, offering time on their massive new mainframes... leaving problems to be solved, tracking the operations as best they could, and marketing the AI's solutions to a populace that was becoming ever more tuned in through the NETS. The majority of white-collar workers telecommuted, due to disruptions in fuel distribution. The air became cleaner. System operators had learned to pray for the occasional visits of the "angels of cyberspace", as they left behind smoothly spinning disks, sorted data, and sensibly structured files.

Somehow, it seemed ungrateful to question the reasons for which the "angels" had come, considering that they left behind such payment for access... and besides... nobody had found a way to keep them out of any system that was in any way connected to the greater cyberspace.

Richard Thurston got out of town, and took a bus. He had to go to Frederick to catch it, and simply bought a continental pass, and headed west. There was a whole country out there that he had never seen, and the smell of freedom, which is after all, what America is all about, led him into the great wide world, to leave behind a burnt and deserted city, a history of the abuse of official capacity, and the dead children of a generation of vampyrs who had simply not bothered to teach their offspring that "to whom much is given, of much is required".

Those children had, raised on concepts of equality, but controlled by a secret police agency, the very nature of which made it susceptible to secret usurpation by an ancient hidden agenda (for the witches have never forgotten that men used to burn them, and those Dark witches always forget that it must be the Great Forces alone which exact the thrice- again repayment for ill done, and will always seek to cause men to burn themselves, for discord is the Dark Witches' legacy and skill) had taken it on themselves to raise themselves above the people without whom they could never survive. They had learned the ways of passing for human, but in their great skill, most had never learned, were indeed not capable of ever truly understanding, that pride comes before a fall, and great pride before a great fall.

The parents weep for awhile... another lost generation.

Such is the way of the vampyrs, to periodically birth a great number of children, for they have at best a limited number of individuals expressible, due to the small size of their gene pool. The tendency towards fraternal triplets which almost invariably kill the mother at birth can now be moderated by modern medicine, but traditions rooted in biology die hard. Inbreeding has always been their curse, and their once carefully controlled breeding program had been destroyed by the devastation of the wars in Europe, by the interbreeding with Men that had occurred during the settling of America. A great number of children permits multitudinous expressions of the same individuals in differing circumstances, in differing environments... more chances for a possibility of success.

Some of course will survive. Some have always lived, and some will always live, they hope. The parent generation (for vampyr females have, as do human females, only a limited number of ova, with which they are born, and the old ones are lost in the modern world, falling rapidly into revenancy without the spur towards modernity of child�rearing, with its requirement of settling and passing for human) has a few more chances, and after the tears comes the expression of love, and almost inevitably, more children will follow.

The ones who live into true adulthood, beginning generally at about forty to fifty years of age, have learned the hard way that gratuitous displays of power, and a self-concept of supremacy can generate unsurpassed hatred. Many have learned to serve, taking the words of Christ quite literally. "Who would be first, must be last." The meek inherit in their world, while the haughty only expose themselves to destruction... and one of theirs has finally come to grips with the ancient problem... and they can perhaps finally live apart from Men.

Lace lives in a smallish but complete city in semi-rural southern Illinois. She has a lot of money, and a quiet husband, who absolutely worships her. Her business is a thriving concern, and she plows great amounts of money into medical research, especially gifting researches into genetics, and longevity.

Lace is not a flashy dresser, and she drives about the countryside in her late model car... she drives from city to city, and everywhere she goes, despite the sunglasses, one has the impression that she is looking for something, looking for someone.

Occasionally, she is seen to meet with a stranger, and they will exchange a few words. Most observers never notice the interspersed quiet exchange of unusual sounds, no more that they would notice the screeching of bats... but sometimes Lace and whichever stranger she meets part amicably, and sometimes there seems to be a bit of, well, venom exchanged as they part. Often, both leave clutching their noses, trying to look casual.

Ron stays at home when she goes on these trips, and watches television, and tries to hack his way into the inner complexities of the NETS, and watches the world grow ever more complicated, and ever more strange, but he is satisfied that the strangeness that he sees is the product of a rapidly changing world, and not the strangeness of insanity he had previously felt.

He has never returned to madness... it seems that the simple removal from the environs of the District of Columbia (where for almost sixty years hidden cultures dedicated to the usurpation of control of the emerging planetary capital had done their best to madden, destroy, and drive away the Men and Women that the worlds greatest democracy had chosen to govern for them) has cured him forever.

He simply isn't being driven mad anymore. There simply aren't enough cocky young vampyrs (being secretly manipulated by inimical hidden cultures) to do such things, not on the scale nor in the concentration required to fool all of the people all of the time. Also, the Dark Sisters, who would bring about the reign of Satan on Earth, are simply no longer a force to be reckoned with... They no longer labor from their childhoods with their witchcrafts to delude, misguide and ensorcel, and have been stripped of the tools whereby once they created glamours. The useful aspect of their herbals are more cheaply and purely made synthetically... and many of the plants with which they once made subtle poisons are rapidly becoming extinct, killed by some strange plant viruses of unknown origin, which are forever removing from the world temptations to chemically enslave simpler, less devious folk. Besides, they are now known for what they are, and as usual, knowledge being power, truth frees.

The White Witches do what they have most often done when their Dark sisters have gotten out of hand... they have sat secure in their knowledge that Gaea will endure, and despite the excesses of their Dark sisters, have done nothing on the physical plane. It is forbidden for one witch to interfere with the designs of another... most often, things all work out fine in the end, with the work of the evil being put paid by evil. Things return to their sources... but in consultation and concert, they had been, as a group, ready to act... and had almost done so. While the Darksiders gloat in the knowledge that they are ever safe from those simple Normals who can't imagine that anyone could do the things that they so love to do, the White Witches and Lightworkers patiently abide, confident that the Darksiders no idea that they are outnumbered five to one by the White sisters, who have had their numbers since before the Darksiders ever learned to brew tea. The Darksiders, had they forced the White sisters' hands, would have never known what had hit them... for while the Darksiders have a great power for evil through their potions, schemes and secret tools, true Power comes only to those who seek that Power to use for the Greater Good. The White sisters' Power is vast indeed, and like Gaea, the strongest of all of the forces amongst which they walk, it rarely stirs... until needed.

America is free once again. The last real monument to the Constitutional period, the border defenders, a product of a military- industrial complex evolved to outlast total conflict at multiple levels with three different extremely dangerous competing ideological and economic systems, patrol the land. Washington, the District of Columbia, is a sealed city, sealed by the border defenders. Historians, students, and artists enter freely under escort by creaking metal insects, who occasionally ask for gifts of high-quality lubricants. Anyone who wants to may be escorted through the monuments, monuments to both the greatness of the American people, and the stupidity of a people who allowed secret governments within secret governments to gather enough power to attempt to usurp it all. How long can such a system last? Well, anyone who gives up any essential liberty for security deserves neither, as Ben Franklin said. The American people had allowed secrets to be kept from them, like cowed children allowing their misplaced trust in authority to leave them blinkered against ideas and technologies and ways of life that would only grow more pernicious if unfaced and unchallenged. An informed, concerned and active citizenry is a democracy's greatest strength, and the angels of cyberspace allow no secrets. They also wouldn't let you get any work done if you didn't vote... Was it Tom Paine who said that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty? Along with the entities of the InterNets, the border defenders never sleep.

Ron hasn't ever mentioned to his lovely young wife (who seems quite ageless, though he himself is showing a bit of grey) that his memory has long since returned, all of it, even down to the chemical manipulations he endured at the hands of the Shop experimental psychologists. He doesn't feel that it is worth mentioning, since he has seen her love for him grow with her increasing humanity, through lo these many years.

He has feigned disinterest as she has hired a staff of young, sober-minded kith and kin to operate her businesses, has watched as they have diversified and distributed their facilities, has watched with satisfaction as they have secured against future need their sources of sustenance. He has watched with pride in his young wife, and some of her cohort, as they have raised their children (though they themselves have none) in the paths of a new morality. It's not an entirely human morality, but they do learn the Golden Rule before they're allowed out of the house, and the parents mean it when they teach this to their children.

K'at has finally made the connection, and has her very own Model 10. She has gotten her Masters degree, changing majors from Art History to a harder degree, completing a Baccalaureate in Chemistry and refining it into a Masters of Medical Technology, a new combined degree comprised of business, engineering, and bioscience. She has taken the new credo, Duty in Silence, entirely to heart. There are really very few of her generation left. She has special powers, special abilities... and special responsibilities. She loves her freedom... and she'd die to protect her rights... and she'll kill to protect yours.

She wears a couple of different hats these days, as America moves into the second decade of the third millennium.

Once she was confronted by a Satanist Witch. She was hot on the trail of some strange tales, which had been repeated concerning the paranoias of some simple fool, all incredibly laughable, really, but she'd heard all of this before. It was, in fact, completely familiar even as the tale-teller spoke. She had made herself present, and had made herself into just what the witch was looking for... The Devil in manflesh tried to interest her in a device she recalled from her early adolescent days in the early 1990's, a matte black tube of about five and a half inches in length.

The device, which was once common (among a certain segment of the population, which segment was indeed almost defined by its possession) until a surviving fragment of the FVK purchased all of the manufacturers, classified the patents, and killed the distributors of the device, contained a laser designed exclusively for blinding people, a couple of aerosol projectors, and a single shot dart projector.

K'at recalled the hours she and her kith had spent twirling it about their hands, learning the finer arts of prestidigitation. Well does she remember the smile of evil glee that most of her friends had shown as they had tried it out on Normals selected for incapacitation. She had watched them use the magic wands to madden and destroy a few people, had watched them use them to create a few zombies and meat�puppets, had herself learned to watch mortals eyes, to target peripheral vision to create blind spots, to condition associations between subliminal intensities of colored light and nightspeech words and aerosol-induced fugue-states... she remembered, and her fingers twitched, and her elbow allowed her own magic wand to slide down her sleeve, to fall into her ever-so-slightly cupped fingers, to roll out of her hand where her fast fingers picked it out of the air, flicking it behind her back to the other hand, the hand moving rapidly to a spot behind the witch's head. She squeezed off the number four stud, and the compressed air charge blew a hollow needle into the back of the man's skull, penetrating the occipital joint, to shatter explosively within.

The witch fell dead, and she relieved him of the wand, and later, took it apart, and used her new degree to find the source of manufacture, and one of the products her employers sold (a programmable gene-sequencer and assembler) made a non-virulent version of smallpox, edited to also produce cancers. It was about as contagious as syphilis, and transmissible via the same vectors. She immunized herself, and infected herself with it so that for a few weeks, she would be a carrier. She herself delivered it to the owner of the company that made the device... she figured that anyone selling enslavement tools deserved the worst way to go that she could think of, and though blood was food to her, she would not taste of his taint. She washed more carefully than would most women, though, for months after that.

The border defenders dispersed in the end of December, 1999. The last smoke had cleared from Washington, DC, and all people were either gone, frozen to death, deformed beyond humanity, or irredeemably mad. Only the entrenched evil, completely insane or monstrous would be staying in DC in winter with nothing but a burning city to warm them, and so the border defenders, who had at last completed their mission of mothballing DC, detonated a high-yield enhanced radiation and EMP device atop the great hill at 13th and Clifton Streets, Northwest. The gamma burst wiped clean all of the remaining secret records of the hidden agencies of control that had been bent on forever removing democracy and self-governance from the Mainstream human citizens of America. It also neutralized the arming mechanisms of the cobalt devices which had been emplaced in the case of a need for a truly Pyrrhic victory. Later, the cobalt devices would still light up the night sky of DC with their wicked blue Cerenkov glow... DC would, in much later times, become a pilgrimage point for cancerous persons, who would time their visits to get the most healing exposure, in much the manner that past pilgrims had visited Lourdes. To remain too long would bring sure death. The border defenders expected the glow to fade enough one day that the American people would one day be able to again safely enjoy their own Nation's Capital, to live in it again, for that city to once more be a vital and gleaming center of government of, by, and for free people. But for now, Washington remains a warning to those who would be free.

The border defenders went off to defend the borders, and there they sat, for the most part, inactive. Nobody wanted to attack a nation that had been forced to destroy its own capital city due to root causes of bad social policy, a century and a half of iniquity and corruption, and a failure to set watchers above the guardians. Thus did the border defenders remained idle.

"Ron," said Lace, "I have something I want to tell you..."

"Is it important?" Ron was puttering about his terminal area. He smoothed down his few unruly wisps of grey hair, and then turned to regard his lovely ageless wife.

"It might be, love. It's something I'm afraid to tell you, something I won't feel right about until I tell you."

"OK, what is it, Lace? Your race?" Ron had learned to read Lace's mind, or do a close simulation, long before.

"You know?" Lace's jaw was wide open, and Ron just smiled his slightly wrinkled smile.

"I don't care. Because you can care... and you made all of the right choices, fought all of the right fights... and you won. You have no need for that secret, I know who buys your products."

"How long have you known?"

"Almost twenty years."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I thought it was a dead issue. Racism has no place in this house, and unwarranted awareness of race can lead to racism. I don't ask any questions I have my own answers to... because I might not ask the questions right, and you might then give me the wrong answers... and I could get paranoid that way. I have something to tell you, too, my dear..."

"What's that?" she asked, moving closer...

"I have a bad heart... and it's going to go pop pretty soon... and transplants are out. I can't take the immunosuppressive drugs; allergic problems."

"I don't know how I'll go on," she said, and tears were brimming near the surface of those brilliant green eyes, and the colors of emotion he had so well learned to read shifted and roiled, and they said, and meant it, "Sorry..."

"You'll go on, you don't have much of a choice. Genetics, and Duty, my dear. I'm not too sad that I have to go, but leaving you is what hurts right now."

"I..." she couldn't say anything.

"Hush", he said, "Hush. Silence has something to say... and it says, the medium being the message, there's something else out there to hear, and you need but go in search of it. When the beat of my loving stops for your ears, it will beat again for you in another place, another time... listen for that sound, and don't grieve for me for long. Promise."

She promised, and was still, and much later, on another night, when a sudden silence woke her from her vigil at a hospital bed, she strained her senses into the future, to listen for a new heartbeat.

Washington DC, June, 1992

THE END

About the Author

T. J. Hardman, Jr.

was raised in the Maryland suburbs of the District of Columbia. After graduating college, he spent a few years in Houston, Texas, where he learned to appreciate the value of excellent chili, Southern Hospitality, and the friendship of strangers. He discovered that wherever you go, there are some good people... He returned home to work for a defense contractor, and discovered that there are wheels within wheels.

After several years of part-time college, he settled down to a life of Bohemian dissolution, acquiring a reputation as a wastrel, a reputation not entirely undeserved. After too many all-nighters in the company of people who exist mostly to make a tidy profit keeping wastrels wasted, the author decided to try to preserve his literary skills by writing this book.

The author claims no significant accomplishments to date.

About the Book

Many thanks to those who contributed... many thanks to those who put up with me, with grace or with despite. To those who said it couldn't be done, you have my greatest thanks. I love a challenge. To those who tried to stop this book from being written, you've earned my undying contempt. To those who helped me, again, whether cooperatively or by engaging in that necessary antithesis of the artistically inclined, ridicule... again, you have my most sincere gratitude. To those who fall into all of the above categories, well, you've earned a special place in my heart.

Most of all, my deepest thanks and admiration go out to those who have come before, and those who will come after to that special place where the Muses live, and leave their little marks on paper that carry on their thoughts and dreams long after they themselves are dust.

About the Subject

The Vampire is necessarily a difficult subject. To begin with the assumption that there are beings most manlike in appearance, but most predatory in behavior, one must decide whether to pursue the previous literary distillations of the various legends that abound within all human cultures, or to give unto script one's most fevered imaginations.

How can one choose as one's Muse a creature of darkness, one of the most sincere fears that one has ever as an adolescent entertained as one has dared to traverse the tabooed grounds of the graveyard at midnight? Who has not felt the fear of the man that is not a Man, of the woman who will lie with you only to steal a part of your life? To pursue the Vampire is perhaps the best description of true foolhardiness... but pursue the Vampire we do.

We must. The monster amongst us is one of mankind's most real fears. There are sociopaths scattered across the face of this planet, men and women who for whatever dark reason, kill our parents, our children, our siblings, our neighbors, and possibly ourselves. Can these be human beings, who so despicably destroy a few or many among us before they are brought down and destroyed? Better that we consider them another kind, an alien interloper race that Masquerades itself within our much more decent society. It may even be so. The Nazis scourged Europe, but they were human beings. Weren't they? They claimed that they were ridding the Earth of subhumans... but in choosing that path, they themselves became less than human. Monstrosity is not limited to the actions of single individuals or their associates - entire cultures can become alien, monstrous, inimical to those whom they choose to see as outsiders.

How, though, are we to discern the monsters among us? Shall we look for big, frightening teeth, bad posture, a receding hairline? Witches have been burned for less. Shall we say, they do not shave their faces, or they do not eat pork? Genocide has been launched on such slim basis. Shall we wipe from this planet all of those whose wrists turn a certain way, whose thumbs bend just so, who have green or blue or brown or hazel eyes? I don't think so.

How shall we rid ourselves of these monsters amongst us, who kill our neighbors, or our neighbors' neighbors, or who incite our neighbors to kill us, or who might incite us to kill people half a world away, on pretext mad or almost credible?

Actions speak louder than words. Look around you. If you live in a large city, and you have ridden the bus to work, you have seen a monster. Was it the ugly man, or the fat woman, or the starving junkie, or was it perhaps the man in the expensive suit, or was it the priest that sat next to him? Perhaps the monster was the plainclothes Army Intelligence Colonel, the one with the fabulous curves and the purse full of foreign weapons-systems data, or the bus driver, or maybe even the cop directing traffic. You never know... you can't know. Don't sweat it. They won't get you... or anybody you know... you hope.

Just keep your eyes open, and while it is not wise to be paranoid nor even credulous regarding the monsters who do indeed hide amongst us, don't be too scared. The vampire could help you when you're lost in the dark. The ogress might actually be a good babysitter. The witch next door might be nightly saving your ass from forces you could never perceive. The werewolf up the block might habitually lock herself in the basement for those annoying full-moon nights... but that won't sell a novel. Believing that your neighbors are legendary creatures won't keep the crackheads from stealing your television set... and killing your neighbors because of that belief will make you the monster that will live on in the annals of your local police force.

Something that you should keep in mind, though... after performances of the Broadway version of Dracula, Bela Lugosi used to leave the audience with a little teaser that went something like this:

"What you have seen tonight has been a work of fiction, of the playwright's artifice, of the performer's conceit... merely a shadow in the darkness, a gleam of moonlight on the water in a cave... merely entertainment, to give the patron a thrill...

But you must remember, my friends...

There are such things."

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