are ex-Fleet and work for the Fleet, mostly cleaning areas and moving freight. They appear to be armed also but I don't know why. Do not shoot at the big window in the far wall or the other one in the ceiling. They are real windows, not imagers. That might break them and open the room to vacuum."
"What about the Asimov Laws?" Daidaunkh asked Fred. "Are you going to kill people?"
"The Asimov Laws don't pertain to me," Freddy answered. "I'm an AMI, temporarily borrowing Fred's machinery. Do you want another weapon?"
Daidaunkh took a third pistol.
"Go in shooting?" Freddy asked.
"That is a stupid plan," Daidaunkh said with grim humor, "but I can't think of a better one."
/
Percival stared at the pistol he had got from the android and wondered if the one who had decided to cut off his hand was in the room.
"Wait," Shorty ordered. "Something is happening."
= = =
A flash of white light blinded her for an instant before her augmented eyes compensated. Fidelity took a step back as the phenomenon appeared in the center of the room between her and the Fleet captain. She was so fascinated by the disruption that only her combat augment kept her aware of the movements of the dozens of people in the room. Everyone had jerked or twitched at once, then all had stood quite still.
A large, silvery rectangle coalesced from the dazzling zone of visible energy. The perfect rectangle of pure light rotated slowly and made a loud hiss as though reacting with the air. Everyone in the room remained transfixed, letting Fidelity notice Daidaunkh and Pan's android move into the open doorway behind the Fleet officers. They were armed with pistols. Another figure joined them and she recognized Percival, also armed with a pistol. A change in the rectangle of light drew her attention away, completely displacing her concerns and questions about the men and the android.
An image had appeared in the plane of light: a pale human woman, young, black-haired, with red lips, and whose eyes flickered between silver and black. Her body was almost abstract, restlessly changing color and pattern, not as real-seeming as the face. The mirror floated in the air as an image that was less substantial than a hologram, but Fidelity could feel a power in it that frightened her. She knew she was too close to it!
"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?" the image in the mirror demanded with theatrical malice, rotating away from Fidelity, but an identical image on the other side of the mirror angled into view. No, the tone of the voice was neither theatrical nor malicious but simply made complex and disquieting by harmonic overtones and undertones that plucked at multiple resonant frequencies. The mirror paused rotation, facing her. The black-silver eyes seemed to focus exactly on Fidelity.
"WHO ARE YOU?" the young female image demanded.
"Admiral Fidelity Demba," she replied quickly, while feeling her combat augment trying to factor in this new entity by polling other augments that apparently had connections to her eyes and possibly to other kinds of sensors in her body. "Who are you?" she asked. She wanted to say: "What are you?"
"I AM THE LADY IN THE MIRROR," the dominating female voice intoned.
Fidelity could hardly pull her gaze from the phenomenon to view data that was forced onto the display in her eyes. The ocular display was filled with scientific jargon but ended with a simple directive: DO NOT TOUCH! This was what everyone had feared when Olivier earlier spoke its name!
"NAVY ADMIRAL," the image addressed her, "WHY ARE YOU HERE?"
"I think I needed to meet you," Fidelity replied.
"ALL WHO MEET ME DIE!" the voice thundered, shaking the air, shaking everyone and everything. Then, almost conversationally, it said, "I LIKE THE YELLOW DRESS. ARE WE THE ONLY FEMALES IN THE ROOM?"
Fidelity felt something bump into her legs and discovered Samson clinging to her dress, trying to keep upright. She dared not move her eyes from the Lady in the Mirror.
"BEHOLD, A CHILD," the Lady said, any subtlety of tone obscured by the fear-inducing harmonics of her voice. "AND AN OLD MAN," she added.
Fidelity's ocular display now warned her of a drop in air pressure in the room and she could almost feel a breeze flowing past her toward the mirror. Rafael had apparently let Samson break away from him and had followed him to her. Samson stayed behind her, afraid to be with her, afraid not to.
"I THINK I KNOW THAT CHILD," the Lady said. "TROUBLE MAKER!"
"Do you?" Fidelity quickly asked, sensing the importance of the statement. "Who is he? Where are his parents?"
"I ASK THE QUESTIONS!" the Lady thundered. "WHY DO YOU HAVE HIM?"
"I believe he was given to me by someone named Milly. Do you know who Milly is?"
The mirror rotated quickly and Fidelity reacted more quickly, moving backward, pushing Samson and Rafael away. The edge of the mirror swung very close to her, and she could feel a ripping kind of force tugging at her. The mirror stopped again and Fidelity dared to take a moment to help Samson, while Olivier pulled Rafael to his feet. "Get them away from here!" she pleaded to Olivier.
"SHUT UP!" the Lady ordered, the phrase spoken in the colloquial Twenglish she had used from the beginning. "TIME TO DIE!"
The mirror expanded left and right and started to move. Those closest to the lethal plane of the mirror could only run before its rotation, dodging furniture that exploded into nothingness at its touch. Men fell over each other in the mad scramble and parts of them were cut away from reality, leaving bloody fragments on the floor, clothed in pieces of black uniforms or in gray coveralls.
Fidelity glimpsed Olivier and friends pulling Samson and Rafael away from the zone of carnage, and away from her. The mirror seemed to follow her, until she was forced to jump to a table and from there to vault over the top of the silvery wall of death, putting her on its receding side. She was now on the side of the room where Daidaunkh and Fred had stood in the doorway. She followed the escaping Fleet soldiers through the doorway, where Daidaunkh grabbed her arm as she passed, drawing her out of the flow. More Fleet and some broken ones ran past, ignoring them.
"Where did Rafael go?" Daidaunkh asked, peeking back into the bedlam in the room. "What is that?"
"The broken ones took them to safety, I hope," Fidelity replied. "We need to get behind some vacuum locks. The Lady could decide to push into the walls and kill everyone else."
"Stay right here!" a high-pitched voice that seemed familiar to Fidelity ordered. She immediately recognized the sparkling material of the gatekeeper across the doorway from her! "She's going to jump!" it warned. "There!"
The mirror appeared just down the hallway from them, annihilating the walls before she became smaller, rotating faster. Fidelity could feel an actual breeze now flowing from the observation room, through to the spinning mirror in the hallway, which now began to move toward them in small jerks as the plane of destruction tapped the walls.
"I have a gate!" the gatekeeper squeaked. It rolled to the center of the hallway. "Get close to me!" They huddled as close to the hot mass of the gatekeeper as they could, then darkness instantly enveloped them.
The air smelled dusty, earthy, and stars winked on in the sky as eyes adjusted to the change. Fidelity's eyes sampled the full spectrum and outlined the tall structure of the African Space Elevator.
"What now, Shorty?" Daidaunkh inquired. "Can it follow us here?"
"Indeed, she can," the gatekeeper replied. "Who stays and who returns?"
"I can't leave Samson and Rafael in Oz!" Fidelity declared.
"And I can't play tag with Mama with this many passengers!" Shorty complained. "You will burn yourselves hugging me. Admiral, I'm sorry, but you'll have to stay. I will attempt to locate and return your friends to you, but it will take some time. Who else stays on Earth?"
"Percival?" Daidaunkh questioned. "Fred?"
"I... I don't know!" Percival said. "No! I must go back! I can help!"
"We don't have much time," Shorty warned. "Step away now or say good-bye to the admiral."
Fidelity walked a short distance away. A faint pop
caused by unequal air pressure sounded before she could turn around. Pan's android servant, Old Fred, had stayed with her. Her short-range transceiver augment performed a security handshake with her yacht, which was not far away. Using the yacht's transmat, she winked Fred and herself aboard. Then she looked for the only other person for whom she was responsible, hoping Jon Horss was still on Earth.
1-31 The Mother Earth Opera
"Where are we?" the android inquired.
Despite her crowded thoughts, Fidelity wondered why Pan's Old Fred would ask such a question. It must know the coordinates of their location from its navigational system. She knew them and she wasn't - as far as she knew - an android. Any further definition of the location would be unnecessary for its purposes. "Daidaunkh's apartment," she replied. She saw a familiar person asleep on Daidaunkh's sofa. Fidelity nudged Jon Horss and he came instantly awake.
"Where is he?" Horss asked.
His first words, and his immediate and honest concern for Samson made her feel sick to give him the bad news. "I lost him."
He sat up, then stood up. He gave a quick glance of greeting to the android, indicating he was familiar with it. "What happened to him? Where were you? Is Samson still...?"
"We need to keep moving." She knew it would do nothing more than delay another attempt by Etrhnk to capture her. Or another attempt by the Lady in the Mirror to annihilate her. Her yacht hovered invisibly on the roof of the apartment building. It couldn't be much longer