man's chest, just below his heart. The force of the blow hurled him backward. Wyungare's body tumbled across the stone clearing like one of the limp rag dolls Cordelia had played with as a girl.
And just as lifeless.
"No!" Cordelia screamed. She ran to Wyungare, knelt beside him, felt for the pulse in his throat. Nothing. He was not breathing. His eyes stared blindly toward the empty sky.
She cradled the man's body for just a moment, realizing that the spider-creature was patiently regarding them from twenty yards away. "You are next, imperfect cousin," came the ground-out words. "You are brave, but I don't think you can help the cause of my people any more than the Wombat." Murga-muggai started forward.
Cordelia realized she was still clinging to the gun. She aimed the H and K mini at the spider-creature and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. She clicked the safety on, then off again. Pulled the trigger. -Nothing. Damn. It was finally empty.
Focus, she thought. She stared at Murga-muggai's eyes and willed the creature to die. The power was still there within her. She could feel it. She strained. But nothing happened. She was helpless. Murga-muggai was not even slowed.
Evidently the reptile-level had nothing to say to spiders. The spider-thing rushed toward her like a graceful, eight-legged express train.
Cordelia knew there was nothing left to do. Except the one thing she dreaded most.
She wondered if the image in her mind would be the last thing she would ever know. It was the memory of an old cartoon showing Fay Wray in the fist of King Kong on the side of the Empire State Building. A man in a biplane was calling out to the woman, "Trip, him, Fay! Trip him!" Cordelia summoned all the hysterical strength left within her and hurled the empty H and K at Murga-muggai's head. The weapon hit one faceted eye and the monster shied slightly. She leapt forward, wrapping arms and legs around one of the pistoning spider-creature's forelegs.
The monster stumbled, started to recover, but then Cordelia jammed the flint knife into a leg joint. The extremity folded and momentum took over. The spider-thing was a ball of flailing legs rolling along with Cordelia clinging to one hairy limb.
The woman had a chaotic glimpse of the desert floor looming ahead and below her. She let go, hit the stone, rolled, grabbed an outcropping and stopped.
Murga-muggai was propelled out into open space. To Cordelia the monster seemed to hang there for a moment, suspended like the coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons. Then the spider-creature plummeted.
Cordelia watched the flailing, struggling thing diminish. A screech like nails on chalkboard trailed after.
Finally all she could see was what looked like a black stain at the foot of Uluru. She could imagine only too well the shattered remains with the legs splayed out. "You deserved it!" she said aloud. "Bitch."
Wyungare! She turned and limped back to his body. He was still dead.
For a moment Cordelia allowed herself the luxury of angry tears. Then she realized she had her own magic. "It's only been a minute," she said, as if praying. "Not longer. Not long at all. Only a minute."
She bent close to Wyungare and concentrated. She felt the power draining out of her mind and floating down around the man, insulating the cold flesh. The thought had been a revelation. In the past she had tried only to shut autonomic nervous systems down. She had never tried to start one up. It had never occurred to her.
Jack's words seemed to echo from eight thousand miles away: "You can use it for life too."
The energy flowed. The slightest heartbeat. The faintest breath. Another.
Wyungare began to breathe. He groaned.
Thank God, thought Cordelia. Or Baiame. She glanced around self-consciously at the top of Uluru.
Wyungare opened his eyes. "Thank you," he said faintly but distinctly.
The riot swirled past them. Police clubs swung. Aboriginal heads cracked. "Bloody hell," said Wyungare. "You'd think this was bloody Queensland." He seemed restrained from joining the fray only by Cordelia's presence.
Cordelia reeled back against the alley wall. "You've brought me back to Alice?"
Wyungare nodded.
"This is the same night?"
"All the distances are different in the Dreamtime," said Wyungare. "Time as well as space."
"I'm grateful." The noise of angry shouts, screams, sirens, was deafening.
"Now what?" said the young man.
"A night's sleep. In the morning I'll rent a Land-Rover. Then I'll drive to Madhi Gap." She pondered a question. "Will you stay with me?"
"Tonight?" Wyungare hesitated as well. "Yes, I'll stay with you. You're not