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fall and struck dust that billowed up in clouds on my impact.
A weight clinging to my legs sloughed off: gunpowder grains that had traveled
with me on this abrupt trip to wherever. They dropped limply from my clothing
into the dust, all sign of malice gone.
I looked up. I was inside another laser cage, much bigger than the one I'd
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just left, but still delineated by thin violet beams outlining a cube. Those
beams showed this cage was still working, isolating the captured cellules from
the Satanic overmind outside. It made perfect sense; since this was where
Spark Lords sent bits of Lucifer, they'd erected a special holding cell to
separate the parts from the whole.
Beyond the cell ceiling, stars shone untwinkling in a pure black sky. There
was no sun, but amidst the starry waste floated a large cloudy blue moon. I
knew it wasn't really a moon at all I'd seen photographs from OldTech space
missions, and I recognized the Earth when I saw it.
My homeworld. My planet. Drifting overhead as I stood in a laser prison on
the moon.
"Pretty, isn't it?" said a voice behind me.
I turned. It was Annah.
25: EARTHRISE
For a moment, my heart surged with joy; then the joy was crushed by
depression. "I know you're not real," I said. Dull weariness washed over me.
"You're just another doppelgänger a collection of all the cellules sent here
over the years. I don't know how you realized that looking like Annah would
torment me... but frankly I don't care." I still held the -rod in my
hand; I waved it in warning, like showing a cross to a vampire. "Come any
closer, and I'll hit you with this. Unless I miss my guess, that will send you
back to Niagara Falls. One tap brings you here. Another returns you to
wherever..."
My voice trailed off. The Annah in front of me had brought out an identical
-rod. "This is the one Jode stole from Mind-Lord Priest. I was standing
over Jode when I shot Knife-Hand Liz. The rod was right at my feet. I fired my
gun, then dived to grab it; I used it on myself a millisecond before the Ring
of Knives men tried to shoot me."
I stared at her numbly. Forcing myself not to believe.
"It's true, Phil," she said. "I got out in time. Didn't you notice I was
gone?"
"There was an explosion," I mumbled. "Nothing but charred heaps of..." I
didn't finish the sentence. "Annah?"
"Yes, Phil. It's me." She held open her arms.
I walked forward knowing full well it might be a Lucifer trick. But I didn't
care. If this vision of Annah transformed into a slurry of maggots that choked
me to death, so be it. I was numb to fear, numb to hope, numb, numb, numb.
She wrapped her arms around me. I laid my head on her shoulder. She kissed my
hair, but said nothing.
For a long time we just stood there, body to body. Her breath soft beside me;
the smell of her skin and hair slowly working into my consciousness.
At some point, I put my arms around her too. But neither of us spoke as the
Earth slowly drifted overhead.
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We might have stood that way forever. What broke the spell was something
bumping hard against my leg. I looked down and saw an amorphous black blob
trying to wrap itself around my ankle. It was the size of a housecat but made
of gunpowder grains that glinted in the Earthlight; I shook it off in disgust
and it slid away, leaving a haphazard track in the moondust.
Annah unwrapped her arms from me. "There are lots of those things here," she
said as she watched the blob weave away. I could see she was right; the cage
held more than a dozen masses of similar size, moving apparently at random
across the lunar surface. They showed no sign of intelligence deprived of
contact with Satan, they seemed as mindless as worms.
"They're used to being part of a larger consciousness," I said. "This laser
cage cuts that connection; I guess it sends them into shock."
I told Annah what I'd learned from the good Lucifer... and as I talked,
questions rose in my mind. If the good Lucifer had eventually come to its
senses after being blocked off from the whole, why hadn't that happened to the
wandering blobs in this cage? Were the blobs perhaps too small to regain their
intelligence not enough cellules, so not enough collective brainpower? Did the
"angelic" Lucifer have a stronger self-identity than the Satanic version? Was
it just that the angel had Spark Lords caring for it, and somehow the Sparks
had nursed it back to sanity? Or could this version of the laser cage be
different from the one in Niagara: not just sealing off the cellules from the
hive mind outside, but suppressing their mental capacity so they couldn't
collect their thoughts?
No answers, just questions... and when I'd finished my explanations, Annah
had a question of her own. "If I understand this correctly," she said,
"Dreamsinger sent Jode to this prison too. Jode had that rod which let him
escape; but while he was here, wouldn't he have lost touch with the main
consciousness just like these blobs?"
"You're right. Yet he kept enough intelligence to use the -rod for his
return." I shrugged. "Maybe the difference was that Jode was ready for the
experience. Heexpected to get sent here. Maybe that expectation let him retain
intelligence long enough to use the rod." I looked around at the scuttling
blobs. "Or maybe every Lucifer retains intelligence for a while. It's only
prolonged separation from the hive mind that makes them stupid. Or even...
look, Jode knew in advance he'd get banished here. He could have prepared some
sort of device, a clockwork attachment that swung the -rod a few minutes
after he'd arrived on the moon. That way it wouldn't matter if he went
mindless the rod would tap him automatically, so he'd return to Earth, and
immediately link back with the hive."
"That last sounds most likely," Annah said. "It doesn't leave as much to
chance; he could have been hiding the whole contraption right inside his
body." She looked up at the bright blue planet in the sky. "By the way, I
don't think that's the real Earth... and this isn't the real moon. There's no
air on the moon, is there?"
"True. And there shouldn't be this much gravity either." I took a tentative
jump. It felt like jumping on Earth nowhere near the big bounce I'd have made
under weak lunar gravity. "Both Jode and Dreamsinger talked as if those fancy
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