Killeen turned and moved along the hillside. This was his old neighborhood. Tumbled-down blocks and twisted girders could not wholly conceal the paths and corridors he had known as a boy.

Here a man lay, eyes bulging at the bruised sky.

There a woman was split in two beneath a fallen beam.

Killeen knew them both. Friends, distant relatives of Family Bishop. He touched the cold flesh of each and moved on.

He had fled with the remnants of Family Bishop. They had quickly reached the far ridgeline and only then had he seen that his father was not among the survivors. Killeen had turned back toward the Citadel, wearing powered leggings for speed. Like lean pistons, his legs carried him within the slumped defensive walls before anyone in the Family noticed that he was gone.

Abraham had been defending the outer ramparts. When the mechs had breached those, the human perimeter had fallen back in a mad scramble. The mechs poured in. Killeen was sure he had heard his father’s voice calling over the comm. But then the battle had submerged them all in a rushing hot tornado of death and panic.

—Killeen!—

He stopped. Cermo-the-Slow was calling over the comm. “Leave me alone,” Killeen answered.

—Come on! No time left!—

“You head on back.”

—No! There’s mechs still around. Some comin' this way.—

“I’ll catch up.”

—Run! No time left.—

Killeen shook his head and did not answer. With a flick of a finger he dropped out of the comm net.

He climbed among tumbled stone. Even in his powered suit it was hard to make his way up the steep angles of ruined walls. Though the mechs had gouged gaping holes, the massive bulwarks had stood for a while. But beneath the incessant pounding blows even the heavy foundations had finally yielded.

He walked beneath an arch that had miraculously survived. He knew what lay ahead but could not keep himself from it.

She was in the same position. The heat beam had caught his wife as he carried her. Her left side was seared raw.

“Veronica.”

He bent down and looked into her open gray eyes. They peered out at a world forever vanquished.

He gently tried to brush closed her rebuking eyes. Her gummy, stiff eyelids refused to move, as if she would not give up her last glimpse of the Citadel she had loved. Her pale lips parted with the half-smile she always made just before she spoke. But her skin was cold and hard, as if it had now joined the unyielding solidity of the soil itself.

He stood. He felt her eyes at his back as he made himself walk on.

He scrambled over slumped piles that had been homes, workshops, elegant arcades. Fires snapped in the central library.

The public gardens had been his favorite spot, a lush wealth of moist green in the dry Citadel. Now they were blasted, smoking.

As he passed the smashed Senate, its alabaster galleries groaned and trembled and slowly clattered down.

He moved on warily, but there was no sign of mechs. “Abraham!”

Around him lay the exploded remains of his boyhood. Here in his father’s workshop he had learned to use the power-assisting craft. There, beneath a lofty corbelled vault, he had first met a demure, shy Veronica.

“Abraham!”

Nothing. No body. It probably lay beneath collapsed bulwarks.

But he had not covered all the rambling complex that men had built through generations. There was still some chance.

—Killeen!—

It was not Cermo this time. Fanny’s voice cut through to him sharp and sure, overriding his own cutoff of the comm.

—Withdraw! There’s nothing we can do here now.—

“But… the Citadel…”

—It’s gone. Forget it.—

“My father …”

—We must run.—

“Others … There might be …”

—No. We’re sure. Nobody left alive here.—

“But…”

—Now. I’ve got five women covering the Krishna Gate. Come out that way and we’ll head for Rolo’s Pass.—

“Abraham…”

—Hear me? Hustle!—

He turned for one last look. This had been all the world for him when he was a boy. The Citadel had made humanity’s warm clasp real and reassuring. It had stood resolutely against a hostile universe outside, strong yet artful. Its delicate towers had glistened like rock candy. Returning to the Citadel from short forays, his heart had always leaped when he saw the proud, jutting spires. He had wandered the Citadel’s labyrinthian corridors for many hours, admiring the elegant traceries that laced the high, molded ceilings. The Citadel had always been vast and yet warm, its every carefully sculpted niche infused with the spirit of the shared human past.

He looked back toward where Veronica’s body lay.

There was no time to bury her. The world belonged now to the living, to fevered flight and slow melancholy.

Killeen made himself take a step away from her, toward the Krishna Gate. Another.

The blasted walls teetered past. He had trouble finding his way.

Fog and smoke swirled before him. “Abraham!” he called again against empty silence.

The Citadel’s high, spidery walkways now lay broken in the dust, sprawled across the inner yards. He crossed the ancient, familiar ground in a numbed daze. Craters yawned where he had once scampered and laughed.

At the edge of the smoldering ruins he looked back. “Abraham!”

He listened and heard nothing. Then, distantly, came a quick buzzing of mech transmissions. The rasping sound narrowed his mouth.

He turned and ran. Ran without hope, letting his legs find the way. Stinging dust clouded his eyes—

A jerk.

Intense, blinding light.

“Hey, c’mon. Wake up.”

Killeen coughed. He squinted against the high glare of harsh yellow lamps. “Huh? What—”

“C’mon, gotta get up. Fanny says.”

“I, I don’t—”

Cermo-the-Slow loomed over him. The big smiling face was weary but friendly. “I just pulled the stim-plug on you, is all. Got no time, wake you up easy.”

“Ah … easy …”

Cermo frowned. “You been dreamin' again?”

“I… the Citadel…”

Cermo nodded. “I was ’fraid that.”

“Veronica… found her.”

“Yeah. Look, you don’t think ’bout that, hear? She was a good woman, won’ful wife. But you got let go her now.”

“I…” Killeen’s tongue was raw from calling his father. Or was it from the alcohol he had gulped last night?

This was morning, early morning. He felt the stiffness in him from the night’s sleep. Peering upward, he could make out the shadowy bulk of alien machinery. They had bedded down for the night in a Trough, he remembered. Around him, Family Bishop was waking up.

“C’mon,” Cermo urged. “Sorry I pulled the plug so quick. Snap up now, though. We’re movin' out.”

“How… how come?”

“Ledroff spotted some Snout comin' this way. Figures it’s headed into this Trough for supplies.”

“Oh…” Killeen shook his head. An ache spread from his temples into his clammy forehead. A bead of night sweat dripped from his nose as he sat up.

“You better stay off the stim-tab awhile,” Cermo said, frowning. “Gives you bad dreams.”

“Yeah.” Killeen nodded and started groping for his boots. They were the first thing you put on and the last you took off.

“It’s been years, after all,” Cermo said kindly. “Time we let it be.”

Killeen frowned. “Years… ?”

“Sure.” Cermo studied him a moment, plainly worried. “Been six years since the Calamity.”

“Six…”

“Look, we all like it, gettin' a li’l stimmed now ’n' then. Not if it takes you back into bad times though.”

“I… I guess so.”

He clapped Killeen on the shoulder. “Get on up, now. We’re movin' quick.”

Killeen nodded. Cermo-the-Slow went away to awaken others. His large frame slipped quickly among the shadows of the alien vats and machines.

Killeen’s hands pulled on his boots but his mind still wandered among memories. His dirty clothes, the worn boots, the calluses and stains on his hands… all testified to what had happened since the fall of the Citadel, the Calamity.