Tony Daniel by Metaplanetary: A Novel of Interplanetary Civil War Page A

touch.
    Instantly I reconstitute the Bendy water’s grist, tell it what I want it to do. The momentum of the triangles knocks me over, and I roll along the deck under its weight. Something in my wrist snaps, but I ignore that pain. Blood on my lips from where I have bitten my tongue. I have a bad habit of sticking it out when I am concentrating.
    The clump of triangles finishes clobbering me, and it falls into the river. Oh, too bad, triangles. The river grist that I recoded tells all the river water what to do. Regular water is over eight pounds a gallon, but the water in the Bendy is thicker and more forceful than that. And it knows how to crush. It is mean water, and it wants to get things, and now I have told it how. I have put a little bit of me into the Bendy, and the water knows something that I know.
    It knows never to cease. Never, never, never.
    The triangle clump bobs for an instant before the whole river turns on it. Folds over it. Sucks it down. Applies all the weight of water twenty feet deep, many miles long. What looks like a waterspout rises above where the triangle clump fell, but this is actually a piledriver, a gelled column climbing up on itself. It collapses downward like a shoe coming down on a roach.
    There is buzzing, furious buzzing, wet wings that won’t dry because it isn’t quite water that has gotten onto them, and it won’t quite shake off.
    There is a deep-down explosion under us, and the hoy rocks. Again I’m thrown onto the deck, and I hold tight, hold tight. I don’t want to fall into that water right now. I stand up and look.
    Bits of triangles float to the surface. The river quickly turns them back under.
    “I think I got it,” I call to the others.
    “Jill,” says TB. “Come here and show me you are still alive.”
    I jump down through the pilot hole, and he hugs and kisses me. He kisses me right on the mouth, and for once I sense that he is not thinking about Alethea at all when he touches me. It feels very, very good.
    “Oh your poor back,” says Molly Index. She looks pretty distraught and fairly useless. But at least she warned us. That was a good thing.
    “It’s just a scratch,” I say. “And I took care of the poison.”
    “You just took out a Met sweep enforcer,” Andre Sud says. “I think that was one of the special sweepers made for riot work, too.”
    “What was that thing doing here?”
    “Looking for Ben,” says Molly Index. “There’s more where that came from. Amés will send more.”
    “I will kill them all if I have to.”
    Everybody looks at me, and everyone is quiet for a moment, even Bob.
    “I believe you, Jill,” Andre Sud finally says. “But it’s time to go.”
    TB is sitting down at the table now. Nobody is piloting the boat, but we are drifting in midcurrent, and it should be all right for now.
    “Go?” TB says. “I’m not going anywhere. They will not use me to make war. I’ll kill myself first. And I won’t mess it up this time.”
    “If you stay here, they’ll catch you,” Andre Sud says.
    “You’ve come to Amés’s attention,” Molly Index says. “I’m sorry, Ben.”
    “It’s not your fault.”
    “We have to get out of the Met,” Andre Sud says. “We have to get to the outer system.”
    “ They’ll use me, too. They’re not as bad as Amés, but nobody’s going to turn me into a weapon. I don’t make fortunes for soldiers.”
    “If we can get to Triton, we might be okay,” Andre Sud replies. “I have a certain pull on Triton. I know the weatherman there.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Trust me. It’s a good thing. The weatherman is the military commander, and he is very important on Triton. Also, he’s a friend of mine.”
    “There is one thing I’d like to know,” says TB. “How in hell would we get to Triton from here?”
    Bob stands up abruptly. He’s been rummaging around in TB’s larder while everybody else was talking. I saw him at it, but I knew he wasn’t going to find