had left of strength to force that arm back by an inch, a couple of inches, three. Then of a sudden I stopped pushing and pulled instead, dragging on Mardew’s hand like we was treading a ring in Summer-dance.
A ring is what it was, more or less. Mardew rolled over, and I rolled too, so I was under him. The beam went wide of me, just about, though I seen the sleeve of my shirt part in a long strip from shoulder to elbow, like the peel you take off an apple.
Mardew was not so lucky. His wrist turned as he come down so the silver band of the cutter was pointing down towards his feet. The beam sliced through the side of his leg just above the knee, painting the dust bright red for twenty feet or so along a narrow, straight, perfect line.
Mardew yelled out in pain, and the beam died. I kept on pulling on his wrist, using the curve of my shoulder to roll him right on over me and come out clear, him sprawling on his back in the red-specked dirt.
I did a foolish thing then. I scrambled back away from him, instead of going in close. I don’t know what I was thinking of. There wasn’t nowhere for me to hide, and ten feet or twenty or a hundred was all the same to the cutter beam.
Mardew blinked his eyes, looking at the cut in his leg that was gouting out blood. And then across at me. And then down at the DreamSleeve that had fell out of his hand and was lying on the ground in between us. His eyes was crossed a little, but they was coming back into focus. I guessed that din was still hammering into his head, but he was managing to think around it now. He knowed what he had got to do.
So did I.
Mardew lifted up his hand and took aim, not at me but at the DreamSleeve.
I groped for a stone and didn’t find one, but I did find a solid chunk of roof tile that had come into the cutter beam and fell down on the ground.
The bar on the cutter turned silver again, and I flung the tile.
I say I flung it, but it’s truer to say I brung it down like a hammer. I leaned in close and drove it home, and it didn’t hardly leave my hand until the last second. I had meant to skim it, the way you would skim a stone across a pond, for it was the same flat shape and had a good edge to it where the cutter beam had sliced it across the middle. But I was scared my aim would not be good, and so I kept a grip on it and slammed that sharp edge right down into the middle of the cutter’s silver bar.
It’s hard to say what happened next. I only hoped to throw off Mardew’s aim, but when the tile struck against the cutter it was like a stone striking on a flint. There was a flash of light so bright it went dark in the middle, kind of. I seen it grow in between me and Mardew like a flower opening up. Then I didn’t see nothing for a little while, only that flash hanging in front of my eyes like paint had been splashed there. I had come down on my back somehow, though I can’t say when that happened or what did it. My left arm, where the cutter almost hit me, was stinging really bad, and my head was ringing like some of them bells from the personal security alarm had got in there after all.
“Get a grip, Koli.”
That was Monono’s voice, and it come through the induction field so it sounded like she was standing behind me and whispering in my ear.
“Monono!” I cried out. “Oh, I’m glad you’re back! I’m glad you come back to me!”
“That’s nice, dopey boy. I missed you too. But your shitty friend is going to die. If you’ve got an opinion about that, you might want to do something.”
I could see again now, a little, around the edges of the bright and dark blots that was on my eyes. I got up on hands and knees and crawled over to where Mardew was. He had landed on his back too, a fair way away from where he had been standing.
When I seen what I done to him, it made