Time Was Read Free Page A

from underneath her cap, stood on end with barely audible crackles.
    Psy–4 saw her lips bloom into a small, self-satisfied smile.
    Congratulate yourself later , he thought. It’s time to do your job.
    She reached forward with both hands and gripped a section of chain-link.
    There was a brief, soft pop! when her flesh came into contact with the fence.
    Psy–4 looked toward the kiosk.
    The two guards were too busy scanning their monitors to notice what was surely only another moth buying the farm.
    Radiant held firm to the fence.
    Unseen machines and invisible trembling monoliths, the computerized entities she was sensing were at once compromised, humming and singing, grinding, clicking, growing in force, coalescing into a silent, whirling dynamo, around, around, up and out into the heart of all whirling invisibilities, fed into, read by, then accepted within a million-plus copper wires, thrice as many microprocessors exchanging innumerable geometric capability sequences—
    â€”Psy–4 felt the welcomed excitement that always overtookhim when things were getting ready to shift into a higher gear, and he carefully watched Radiant as—
    â€”an electric web poured over her, around her, the sizzling heat deflected by the ripple-shield, branching in four directions, then eight secondary directions as she hunched her shoulders and threw back her head—not only to signal her companions, but to direct the white-hot threads farther around and above her—
    â€”Psy–4 and Stonewall emerged from the darkness, crouching until they were well under the protection of Radiant’s shield—
    â€”somewhere in the compound turbines whirred and hummed and screamed as the electric sparks and bolts jumped away from the intruders and clustered on the dew-soaked grass beneath their feet—
    â€”Stonewall knelt down and slammed a fist into the soil, creating a hole three feet deep, then dragged his arm six feet straight across, earth and weeds and worms and stones spitting upward as he dug his small trench. He rammed both arms down into the space until his vicelike fingers found the buried base of the fence—
    â€”he rose steadily, wrenching the fence base from the ground and pulling it higher, higher, the chain-links like scraps of tinfoil in his fists, peeling the fence back and up, rolling it as easily as a newspaper until there was enough room for his companions to walk through—
    â€”Psy–4 went first, eyes darting this way, then that—
    â€”Radiant followed him, quickly, quietly, her ripple-shield spreading over the barbed wire, then a few yards beyond, until she stood by his side—
    â€”a nod from both of them, and Stonewall rolled the fence back down into the trench, straightening it, melding it back into the shattered ground below, which spread around the metal base as he pulled his arms out of the trench.
    Quickly, with the expertise of a landscape artist, he replacedthe remaining earth and rocks and worms and weeds that he’d disturbed—
    â€”in a few seconds all was as it had been before, and Radiant brought her hands together, cupping them as if in prayer; the ripple-shield vanished as the wriggling electric strands shot back into the metal of the fence, humming and buzzing contentedly.
    Stonewall retreated back into the darkness and the duties waiting for him there.
    Radiant turned toward Psy–4, gave a quick nod, and they ran forward.
    With a wave of Radiant’s hand here, a finger point there, every motion- and heat-sensing detector surrounding them, both those buried and those in plain view, blinked and went blind.
    No cameras recorded their movements.
    No audio-scanners detected the vibrations of their breathing.
    No radio-controlled ground-pressure devices registered their weight.
    Psy–4 felt pleased about how well everything was going thus far.
    Very pleased.
    Until he checked the time.
    A little over seven seconds had elapsed