“Come on,” he told Oy, and booted the pony’s sides lightly. The pony needed no further urging. It hurried downhill, not quite trotting, toward the building with the fluorescent lights. Oy gave the moving cactus a final mistrustful look, then followed them.

Seven

Jake reached the driveway and stopped. About fifty yards farther down the road (it was now very definitely a road, or had been once upon a time), train-tracks crossed and then ran on toward the Devar-Tete Whye, where a low bridge took them across. The folken called that bridge “the causeway.” The older folken, Callahan had told them, called it the devil’s causeway.

“The trains that bring the roont ones back from Thunderclap come on those tracks,” he murmured to Oy. And did he feel the tug of the Beam? Jake was sure he did. He had an idea that when they left Calla Bryn Sturgis— ifthey left Calla Bryn Sturgis—it would be along those tracks.

He stood where he was a moment longer, feet out of the stirrups, then headed the pony up the crumbling driveway toward the building. To Jake it looked like a Quonset hut on a military base. Oy, with his short legs, was having hard going on the broken-up surface. That busted-up paving would be dangerous for his horse, too. Once the frozen gate was behind them, he dismounted and looked for a place to tether his mount. There were bushes close by, but something told him they were too close. Too visible. He led the pony out onto the hardpan, stopped, and looked around at Oy. “Stay!”

“Stay! Oy! Ake!”

Jake found more bushes behind a pile of boulders like a strew of huge and eroded toy blocks. Here he felt satisified enough to tether the pony. Once it was done, he stroked the long, velvety muzzle. “Not long,” he said. “Can you be good?”

The pony blew through his nose and appeared to nod. Which meant exactly nothing, Jake knew. And it was probably a needless precaution, anyway. Still, better safe than sorry. He went back to the driveway and bent to scoop the bumbler up. As soon as he straightened, a row of brilliant lights flashed on, pinning him like a bug on a microscope stage. Holding Oy in the curve of one arm, Jake raised the other to shield his eyes. Oy whined and blinked.

There was no warning shout, no stern request for identifi-cation, only the faint snuffle of the breeze. The lights were turned on by motion-sensors, Jake guessed. What came next? Machine-gun fire directed by dipolar computers? A scurry of small but deadly robots like those Roland, Eddie, and Susannah had dispatched in the clearing where the Beam they were following had begun? Maybe a big net dropping from overhead, like in this jungle movie he’d seen once on TV?