Uncertainly, the last man in Baikonur turned his face to the north. РІР‚СљOne of your kind escaped us once, years ago. At last, a second demon spoke from the darkness. Irrational though the thought was, the man wondered if they were communicating with one another silently. The demons neither moved nor spoke for a long time. I wonРІР‚в„ўt let you play with me any more-and nothing you can say will make me change my mind.РІР‚Сњ РІР‚СљThis is what happened to my comrades, isnРІР‚в„ўt it? You brought them here, one by one, released them, and hunted them down.РІР‚Сњ So we will give you a head start-all the way to the hills-before we come after you.РІР‚Сњ РІР‚СљYour usefulness has therefore come to an end. РІР‚СљWe have perfected the drug distilled from your misery and a reliable courier carries it to Moscow to be replicated,РІР‚Сњ the demon said. РІР‚СљWhatever your game is, I wonРІР‚в„ўt play it.РІР‚Сњ He recognized them as the same kind of machines as those which had captured him, imprisoned him, tortured him, and just now brought him here. To either side of him, the man saw shadows slipping out of the city and coming to a crouch at its fringe. Then he said, РІР‚СљI am glad to see this before I die.РІР‚Сњ РІР‚СљPerhaps you wonРІР‚в„ўt die.РІР‚Сњ The man took a deep breath and coughed, almost choking. Far ahead, an intensification of the darkness marked the low hills beyond Baikonur. But beneath the stench of coal fires and chemicals was a hint of the spicy smell of the desert. In the length of a single step, soaring grotesqueries of iron and cement gave way to scrub vegetation. The division between the city and the wild was absolute. РІР‚СљLook up, human,РІР‚Сњ said one of the demons.

The noise was painful to the man, but by this point, pain hardly mattered anymore.Р”Р„t the edge of the city, they stopped. Through a forest of metal they traveled, under tangles of pipes, and past autonomous machines that were angrily hammering, ripping, welding, digging. If he lagged, they drove him along with shoves on his shoulders and sharp nips at his heels. To either side of him, all but invisible in the starless night, walked or loped metal demons, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. They revealed an ugliness that only a fiend could love. But the red glow of furnaces and sudden gouts of gas flares lit up disconnected fragments of the incomprehensible structures that wound themselves about the ruins from the Age of Space. The sun had set and the city was shrouded in smoke. Long ago, Baikonur had been a bright jewel of human aspiration, a place from which ancient heroes rode tremendous machines beyon d the sky. T he last man was led stumbling to the edge of the city.

Genre: sf, Dancing with Bears Michael Swanwick

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