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equipment arrayed around a bare raised platform to her right. The platform
stood in roughly the middle of the laboratory, surrounded at equidistant
points by four consoles with screens.
Only the console occupied by the lone researcher was functioning.
The researcher glanced at the screen before her; then at the series of inked
designs she had added on one side of the hard copy of the report beside the
keyboard.
Again, the lights flickered, then failed, plunging the room into darkness and
wiping the screen blank.
Sighing once more, the researcher waited, as if to see whether the power would
return.
Wheep.
With the return of the lights, the screen relit, but displayed only a
featureless blue. The woman touched several keys, and the screen went black.
She took a deep breath, then lifted the thin report that lay on the flat space
to the right of the screen and slid it into the drawer in the console under
the screen, shaking her head as she did so. Her sandy blond hair flared
slightly with the movement, then bounced as she rose fluidly from the chair,
and walked toward the bare platform in the middle of the laboratory.
Click.
Her fingers turned off the monitoring equipment on the right hand side of the
platform.
When all the power light panels were dark, she stepped upon the platform and
looked around, taking another deep breath, as if attempting a plunge into icy
cold water. With a sad smile, she vanished. The room remained unpowered, but
waiting. Outside, the emergency etheline generator coughed, and the single set
of lights illuminating the console where she had been seated flickered.
The researcher reappeared on the platform, smiling but shaking her head.
Droplets of water cascaded from her onto the platform. Her blue tunic and
trousers were soaked, and the thin fabric clung to her like a second skin,
outlining a slightly curved and youthful figure.
The lights flickered one last time and went out, leaving the windowless
laboratory in near-total darkness, as the emergency generator coughed on the
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last drops of etheline.
The researcher walked surefootedly toward the doorway, leaving behind a trail
of damp footprints that had already begun to fade as she slipped from the
laboratory.
XV.
The Long Wall Trail ended nearly five kays from the outskirts of Herfidian,
itself a good twenty kays east of
Bremarlyn by the Eastern Highway. None of the way stations had offered
anything but shelter.
While shelter was indeed welcome amid the continuing strange alternation of
snow and ice rain and sunlight and crisp fall afternoons, food was my biggest
problem. Water was available from the cascades and the brooks, for the
temperature never dropped far enough to freeze more than skim ice over running
water. The abrupt changes in tem-
perature had spoiled most of the wild fruits and berries. I had found one blue
chyst in a copse of trees near the second way station. The blues are terribly
bitter, but nearly a dozen were clear and edible.
I ate one on the spot and put the others in my pack, hoping to save what dried
food was left as long as possible.
Rabbits were plentiful, and curious. But I had no way to kill them at a
distance, and didn't seem to be able to stalk them. More important, I still
didn't like the thought of killing them. Even at home, I'd never been a big
meat-eater.
Neither had mother, and my father had teased her about it, saying that it was
the secret to her youthfulness.
From the ridge line part of the trail, I had noticed some other strange
changes. In places, huge circles appeared to have been cut out of the forest,
and nothing remained but a fine dust. Those places seemed to be near the
Eastern
Highway, some distance from the trail, and the only things that were left
standing were natural hills or the heavy foun-
dation stones of barns or buildings.
It looked like the work of an enemy, because the destruction appeared to be
just in or around the inhabited places.
But who was this unseen enemy?
While I wasn't about to find out in the hills, trudging along the Long Wall
Trail toward the east, I also wasn't in a hurry to make myself visible. What I
could have used was a bath or a shower. Despite the earlier snows and sleet,
the air was still dusty, so much so that I often found myself sneezing as I
made my way eastward.
When I finally stood by the stone marker the one that said "Long Wall Trail,
in memory of Kenth, last Duke of
Ronwic" that signified the end or the beginning of the trail, depending on
which way you were going, I still had no real idea what I would do. I couldn't
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