"There's something wrong. I'm hearing from . . ." He tried to place the source of the alarm, but it was no longer on the network. "I think it was Shanghai."

Jenkins stood up from the couch and called for his wife. "Is it starting?" he asked Hicks.

"Oh, Lord, I don't know," Hicks shouted, feeling another lance. The network was being damaged, links were being severed—that was all he could tell.

The window afforded a fine nighttime view of the myriad lights of downtown Seattle from Queen Anne Hill. The sky was overcast, but there had been no reports of thunderstorms. Still . . . The cloud deck was illuminated by brilliant flashes from above. One, two ... a long pause, and by the time Mrs. Jenkins was in the living room, a third milky pulse of light.

Mrs. Jenkins looked on Hicks with some alarm. "It's just lightning, isn't it, Jenks?" she asked her husband.

"It's not lightning," Hicks said. The network was sending contradictory pulses of information. If a Boss was on-line, Hicks could not pick its voice out through the welter.

Then, clear and compelling, the messages came through to Hicks and Jenkins simultaneously.

Your site and the vessel in the sound are under attack.

"Attack?" Jenkins asked out loud. "Are they starting it now?"

"Shanghai Harbor was an ark site," Hicks said, his voice full of wonder. "It's been cut from the network. Nobody can reach Shanghai."

"What . . . What . . ." Jenkins was not used to thinking about these things, whatever his value to the network as a local organizer and procurer.

"I believe—"

His own inner thoughts, not the Boss's, said before the words could come out, They're defending us but they can't stop everything from getting through. They've never told us this before, but they must have put ships or platforms or something in orbits to watch over the Earth—

"—we're being bombarded—"

Light fell through the clouds and expanded.

this is a war after all but we haven't quite thought of it that way didn't suspect they would do this to us

"Jenks ..."

Jenkins hugged his wife. Hicks saw the flash of red and white, the lifting of a wall of water and rock, and the rush of a darkening shock wave across the lights of the city and houses on the hill. The window exploded and he closed his eyes, experienced a brief instant of pain and blindness—

On the last leg of the marathon drive into San Francisco, speeding down an almost-deserted 101 at well over the speed limit, Arthur felt a severe pain in the back of his head. He gripped the wheel tightly and pulled to a halt at the side of the highway, his body rigid.

"What's wrong?" Francine asked.

He twisted around, threw his arms up on the back of the seat, and looked through the rear window of the station wagon. A hellish blue and purple glow was spreading to the north, above and beyond Santa Rosa and the wine country.