Protocol

“I was thinking,” Aimee Shondar said casually as she set the last of the breakfast dishes in the drainer, “that I might go to the market this morning.”

Her husband Ted lifted his eyes up over the facplate with the look on his face that she’d known would be there. “I was going to fix the garden today,” he said, his tone mildly reproving, as if she should have remembered that. “We had a second Stryder come through last night, you know.”

“No, I didn’t,” Aimee said, frowning. Usually she was the first one awake when a Stryder came lumbering across their land in the middle of the night. “What did he hit?”

“Mostly the tomokado area,” Ted said, sounding disgusted. “I swear sometimes they deliberately take whatever route will let those size-twenty feet of theirs do the most damage. A lot of it should be salvageable, but it’ll take most of the day to replant the vines. I really don’t have the time to go to market with you.”

“I wasn’t asking you to,” Aimee said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “I can go by myself.”

The look in Ted’s face deepened. “We’ve been through this, Aimee,” he reminded her in the patient tone of an adult explaining a difficult concept to a young child. “I don’t want you going to the village alone.”

“I know that,” Aimee said, feeling a quaver trying to nudge its way into her voice. She hated confrontations, hated them with a passion. “But I’m twenty-four years old. It’s high time I started learning how to do things on my own.”

“So take up knitting,” Ted suggested. “Or hydroponics, or supportable architecture. Better yet, come help me in the garden today and we can both go to the market tomorrow.”

“But the shoreline traders are coming in today,” Aimee protested. “All the best fish will be gone by tomorrow.”

With a sigh, Ted laid aside the facplate. “Okay, fine,” he said. “I guess I can do the garden tomorrow.”

“I already said you don’t have to go with me,” Aimee said, feeling familiar stirrings of annoyance and frustration. He was patronizing her again. She hated when he patronized her. “I’m perfectly capable of dealing with the Stryders all by myself.”

“Really?” he countered, the patient tone starting to fray about the edges. “There’s only been one time I know about when you were actually alone with them.”

Aimee had known the conversation would eventually end up here. All conversations about going into the village alone ended up here. But even knowing that, and expecting it, the comment still hit her in the gut like a Stryder’s razordisk. “That’s not fair,” she insisted, the quaver in her voice into full shake mode now. “Aunt Ruth sneezed during the protocol. It wasn’t my fault.”

“I never said it was,” Ted said calmly. “Look, kiddo, I don’t blame you a single scrappy seed. Matter of fact, I’ve always been rather impressed by the fact that a kid your age didn’t panic at what happened, and even managed to get all the way back home by yourself. And past, what, two more Stryders, too?”

Aimee shivered at the memory. After twelve years, she still shivered at the memory. “Three,” she corrected him quietly.

“Three,” he repeated. “My point is that you can’t go through an experience like that without it affecting you. I feel you tense up every time a Stryder lumbers into view, like a rabbit facing a doggerelle. I’m just afraid that—well, look, I’m just afraid, that’s all. Okay?”

Aimee sighed deep within her. “I know,” she said. “But someday I’m going to have to grow up.”

He smiled. “You’re already grown up just fine, Aimee,” he assured her. “Maybe it’s just me who’s still feeling traumatized by the past.”

“And so I should humor you?”

“Something like that.” He stood up, brushing the breakfast crumbs off his coveralls. “Give me a couple of minutes to change and we’ll go.”

The road leading toward the village was more crowded than usual this morning, Aimee thought as they headed out, with both pedestrians and pull carts wending their way between the ruts. Apparently, everyone in the district had fresh fish on their mind. It made her glad she hadn’t let Ted talk her into waiting until tomorrow.

“Nice day for a walk, anyway,” Ted commented as he steered her around a cart rattling noisily over the rough road. One of the wheels seemed on the verge of falling off, she noticed as they passed it. Too bad, too—the cart itself looked almost new.

But then, what little they had in the way of heavy machinery never seemed to last very long these days. As a girl, Aimee remembered her grandmother spinning grand stories about machines from the colony ship that could create perfectly round, perfectly smooth wheels, as well as other incredible devices that could last for years and years.

But no one had seen anything like that for a long time, and it was unlikely anyone ever would. The Stryders had long since plowed their random Juggernaut paths across and through all the colonists’ major manufacturing areas, leaving nothing but rubble behind. Only in the more small-scale areas of electronics manufacture had the colonists been able to maintain anything of the technology they’d brought from Earth.

And it was just as well they’d been able to keep that. Without the language translators and the protocol programs coded into their facplates, the entire colony would long ago have been slaughtered.

“Did you check the list before we left?” Ted asked.

Aimee nodded. “At last report there were four Stryders in the square, with two more—”

“Stryder!” someone ahead of them called.

The knot of people jerked to a halt, a sudden eerie silence ringing in Aimee’s ears as the rattle of the carts abruptly ceased. She slid her facplate from its belt pouch, feeling her pulse throbbing at the base of her throat. Somewhere up ahead, Death Incarnate was coming. Coming to snatch the unwary, or the careless, or the foolish. …

And then, there he was, just rounding one of the trees ahead to the left of the road: three meters of tall, golden-skinned being, like a mythological Greek god impossibly come to life. He was walking more or less toward the group of humans, his path cutting diagonally across the road ahead of them.

Beside her, Ted lifted his plate chest high. “Fifty meters ahead, angling inward thirty degrees left to right,” he murmured rapidly toward the plate. All around them, Aimee could hear others muttering into their own plates.

And even with her stomach trying to do gymnastic maneuvers around her spleen, she found herself smiling tightly to herself. This one, at least, was a no-brainer. She’d done this protocol so many times she could practically quote it. Stand still, head bowed to look one meter in front of you, hands folded in front of your chest—

“Stand still, head bowed to look at the ground one meter in front of your feet, with your hands folded in front of your chest,” she heard Ted’s plate give the protocol for this kind of encounter. “Holding objects in your folded hands is acceptable. If he changes direction to approach at less than ten degrees, drop to your knees as soon as he comes within your peripheral vision, head still bowed. Resume activities when you can no longer see him. If he continues or increases his angle, maintain position. Resume activities when you can no longer hear his footsteps.”

All around her, Aimee could hear the protocol message being repeated from another thirty plates. For her part, she had already bowed her head, folding her hands around her plate at her chest. Straining against the tops of her eyelids so that she could see if the Stryder changed direction toward her, she tried to ignore the tension quivering through her muscles.

Did all the people around her have that same quivering, she wondered? Certainly they all had cause to. The Stryders had killed over a quarter of the colonists in their first two months on the ground, and had probably killed one a week in the thirty years since then. Everyone knew someone who had died suddenly and violently at the edge of a razordisk for making some mistake in the protocol. She was hardly alone on that score.

And yet somehow, all the rest of them managed to get through the day just fine. Maybe Ted was right, she thought distantly. Maybe she just didn’t have the emotional strength to face the Stryders alone.

The thudding footsteps were getting closer. Aimee tensed a little harder; and then the footsteps were past and heading back into the forest to the right. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. The footsteps faded into the forest sounds—

“All clear,” someone on that edge called softly.

There was a general rustling as everyone relaxed, coming out of their stiff bows and taking a few deep breaths of their own. A murmur of conversation rippled through the crowd, and here and there Aimee heard a nervous giggle or a mother calming her frightened children. With a multitonal group squeak, the carts started up again, and the crowd shambled back on its way.

“Why didn’t you check the protocol?” Ted asked, his voice tight.

“I didn’t need to,” Aimee told him. “Most contacts are in that ninety-to-ten-degree approach angle. I know that one by heart.”

“I don’t care if you’ve got it tattooed on your retinas,” Ted growled. “You don’t play like that with Stryders. Ever.”

“I’m not a child, Ted,” Aimee shot back in a low voice, feeling heat rising into her cheeks. To be lectured that way in the privacy of her own home was bad enough; but have it thrown into her face in public was humiliating in the extreme. “I can take care of myself.”

“Then prove it,” he countered, not bothering to lower his voice. “And you can start by calling up the protocol yourself instead of relying on someone else to do it for you.”

Clenching her teeth, Aimee kept her eyes on the back of the woman walking ahead of them. “Whatever you say.”

The rest of the trip—aside from the creaking of the carts, the buzz of conversation from the rest of the crowd, and the rustlings of the forest—was very quiet.

The settlement of Venture had once been envisioned as the first and possibly greatest city of the new colony, a sprawling metropolis filling the land between the forest and the ocean shore thirty miles to the east, with the mysterious Great White Pyramid as the center of a huge park within its borders. But with the discovery of the Stryders, all such grandiose plans had long ago faded into dust. Small villages were about as extensive as human habitation got here, and even that was sometimes pushing their luck. The more decentralized the populace, the better.

Still, even a small village was a treat after the isolation of the forest. Aimee took deep breaths as they passed the outer rings of houses and shops and continued inward, drinking in the aromas of cooking and baking and commerce and people. It was like waking from a dream, she always thought at this point. A reminder of what it was to be human.

“Two more have come in,” Ted grunted from beside her, studying his plate. “We’ll probably run into at least one of them.”

“That’s okay,” Aimee said, looking around at the various merchants opening up their shops and trying to ignore the butterflies testing their wings in her stomach. “I’m ready.”

“And if and when it happens, you check the protocol,” he said tartly. “I don’t see any fish here. The dealers must be somewhere on the other side of the Sanctuary.”

“Yes, they’re probably on the east side, near the butchers,” Aimee agreed as they started to angle off to the right. “Most of the other people seem to be heading that direction—”

“Stryder!” the call drifted back.

Everyone stopped dead in their tracks. “Where?” Aimee heard a man growl. “I don’t see anything.”

“That way!” a young girl answered, pointing to the left, her voice a mixture of excitement and dread. “I can hear him!”

Just about twelve years old, Aimee noted with a quiet shudder as she gazed at the girl’s profile. The same age she herself had been when that Stryder had cut down Aunt Ruth beside her.

At her side now, Ted was nudging her urgently with his elbow. Pushing back the memories, she pulled out her plate.

And then, from the direction the girl was pointing, the Stryder appeared from behind a tree. He pushed past the side of one of the booths, his bulk bending back the memory plastic and eliciting a soft crunch from something inside, and headed straight toward them.

The butterflies in Aimee’s stomach took flight as she lifted the plate to her lips. “Fifty meters to the left, coming straight toward me,” she said, her lips feeling cold and dry. “He just pushed past a booth, probably breaking something inside.”

“Go down on your right knee, continuing to face forward, leaving your left knee bent at a ninety-degree angle,” the plate instructed her. “Put your left hand on your left knee, palm resting on the kneecap, fingers pointed down along the shin. Set your plate down on the ground and then put your right hand across the back of your left, elbow pointing forward and bent at a ninety-degree angle, fingers pointed straight out toward the Stryder. Lower your head to look at your crossed hands.”

She did as instructed. Her right arm wasn’t quite long enough to make a precise ninety-degree angle, and she had to lean her shoulder forward a little to compensate. Peripherally, she could see everyone nearby following suit as she gazed at her hands. Those farther away, of course, would be doing the protocol for a ten-to-ninety-degree sideways approach.

What did it all mean? After thirty years, no one still had an answer to that question. The Stryders didn’t even seem to notice the humans scurrying around their feet, at least as long as they obeyed the strange rules of the protocol. They couldn’t be communicated or reasoned with; they couldn’t be deflected or lured or frightened away from the complex paths they wove through human-occupied land; and they couldn’t be killed, at least not with any weapon the colonists had ever been able to bring against them.

They were like berserkers or Juggernauts, living in a secret self-contained world within their own minds, creating their secret rules for others to follow. Only when the protocol was broken did they come out of those shells, and then only to kill with instant and emotionless efficiency. No one knew where they lived, if they indeed lived in any particular place or society. The colony ship’s sensors hadn’t spotted any such groupings on its way in, and the handful of brave or rash souls who had tried to track the Stryders back through the forest had never been heard from again.

Every possible approach to communication had been attempted, to no avail. The colonists had tried human speech, both at normal pitch and as shifted to other segments of the auditory spectrum. Lights had been tried, and mathematical and geometric symbols, and odors and tastes and Morse and Jartrac codes. Kla’ka Four, the nearest thing to a general trade language that the archaeologists had ever found in this region of space, had had no more impact with the Stryders than any of the Earth languages had.

Someone had even talked the colony’s governors into letting her try an interpretive dance. That had garnered the same nonresults as everything else, except that the dancers had died even faster.

The Stryder was coming closer now, his slow, steady footsteps shaking the ground and sending shivers through Aimee’s knee. She kept her eyes down, double-checking the angle of her elbow and wondering if the crowd was too tightly packed for the Stryder to get through without stepping on someone. As far as she knew, that had never happened, but there was always a first time. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the man directly in front of her fidget slightly, possibly wondering the same thing. Hold still, she pleaded silently with him as he fidgeted again. The approaching Stryder was well within razordisk range, and she had no desire to see the man fidget his way to a bloody death. The footsteps were practically on top of her—

And suddenly, the air filled with a sound that froze her blood and wrenched her back a dozen years to that horrible day with Aunt Ruth. A sound like the moan of a wounded wolfbat.

The Stryder had activated his razordisk.

A scream bubbled up in Aimee’s throat; desperately, viciously, she forced it down. Screaming wasn’t part of the protocol.

The nervous man in front of her apparently wasn’t as strong or as self-controlled as she was. He gave another twitch at the sound, the worst one yet.

Aimee’s breath was coming in short, painful bursts now. No doubt; the razordisk was for him. She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut, to block out her view of his back before the silvery death cut through his heart and lungs and spine and left him broken on the roadway.

But shutting her eyes wasn’t part of the protocol, either. Instead, she focused her attention on the back of her own hand, counting the veins and praying that for once a Stryder would change his mind and go away without killing someone—

The wolfbat moan changed pitch; and with a flash of reflected sunlight the razordisk shot past her forehead, snapping back in its return flight half a racing heartbeat later. A burst of bright red erupted across her vision, obscenely brilliant in the morning sunlight.

And without even a last gasp, Ted toppled over and collapsed into a spreading pool of his own blood.

The footsteps resumed their plodding, and the Stryder passed through the rest of the crowd, without so much as stepping on an outstretched toe.

The Sanctuary was a slightly irregular circle, perhaps ten meters across, in the center of the village square and bordered by a hedge of meter-high bushes dotted with delicate orange-colored flowers. For some unknown reason, the Stryders always avoided the ring, as well as ignoring everything that went on inside it. Anyone who wanted to relax and not have to think about Stryders for a few minutes could step through one of the three narrow gaps into the circle and sit down on one of the benches set around the inside.

The time limit for most people was ten minutes before they had to give up their place to someone else and move on. For someone like Aimee, there was no such restriction.

She was sitting in the shady side of the circle, staring down at the ground, when a pair of booted feet suddenly intruded. “Here,” a man’s voice said, sounding like it was coming from far away.

She looked up, the haze of unreality glazed across her eyes parting just far enough to show an earnest young face gazing down at her from above a stiff uniform collar. “What?” she asked. Her voice sounded as distant as his.

“I brought you something to drink,” he said. “It’ll help you feel better.”

She lowered her eyes from his face, down past the policeman’s badge pinned to his uniform jacket, and focused at last on the cup in his hand. “No, thank you,” she murmured.

He seemed to hesitate, then moved to the bench and sat down beside her. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Shondar,” he said quietly. “I wish there was something I could say or do to help.”

“Thank you,” she said mechanically, still staring at the cup in his hand. “I don’t … what did he do wrong?”

“I don’t know,” the patrolman said. “Did you happen to notice anything?”

Aimee shook her head, tearing her eyes away from the cup to look across at the far side of the hedge and the orange flowers. Once, she knew, there had been a plan to plant this species of hedge around the whole colony, giving them permanent protection against the Stryders. But everywhere else that it was planted, the flowers came out yellow, and the Stryders trampled them into the ground as uncaringly as they did tomokado vines. “I saw the man in front of me twitching,” she said. “I wasn’t facing toward Ted.”

“No, of course not,” the patrolman agreed. “Well, Sergeant Royce is running the facplates’ records now. We’ll know soon enough what happened.”

“But how could he have done anything wrong?” Aimee protested. “It was all right there. He knew how to follow the protocol.”

“I know,” the policeman said. “But sometimes it’s such a small and subtle mistake that you don’t even notice it until it’s too late. You’re sure you didn’t see anything?”

“No,” Aimee said, frowning up at him. Granted that it had been twelve years since the last time she’d gone through this, the questions weren’t going at all the way she remembered them. “I’m sorry. What was your name again?”

“Patrolman Ricardo Clay,” he told her, not taking offense even though she had the vague feeling he’d given her his name at least twice already. “The reason I ask, Mrs. Shondar, is that we’ve already talked to most of the people who were closest to you. None of them has any recollection of your husband breaking protocol, either.”

“But that’s impossible,” Aimee said. “If he follows protocol, they have to let him live. Don’t they?”

Clay’s lip twitched. “As far as we can tell, they don’t actually have to do anything,” he reminded her soberly. “But up to now, yes, as long as a person stayed within protocol, he was okay.”

“What do you mean, ‘up to now’?” Aimee asked. “Has something changed?”

“I don’t know.” Clay’s eyes shifted over her shoulder. “Maybe we’re about to find out.”

Aimee looked behind her. An older patrolman was coming toward them, sergeant’s braid glittering on his shoulder, her facplate gripped in his right hand. “Mrs. Shondar,” he greeted her as he stepped up beside Clay. “I’m Sergeant Royce. We’ve just done a complete analysis of yours and your husband’s plate records.”

His eyebrows lifted slightly. “And we’ll be damned if we can find anything he did to break protocol.”

Aimee’s skin began to prickle. There’d been just the slightest emphasis on the word he. “What are you suggesting?” she asked. “If he didn’t break protocol, why is he dead?”

“As I said, we really don’t know,” Royce said, an odd glint in his eye. “Though it’s possible we might have missed something. Your plate doesn’t have a very clear view of the event; we’re still analyzing your husband’s.”

“But if you didn’t miss anything?”

Royce was still eyeing her strangely. “Then we may have something new cropping up,” he said. “Maybe some little nuance we haven’t gleaned from the Pyramid record yet.”

Automatically, Aimee’s eyes drifted over his shoulder to the slivers of white that could be seen through the surrounding trees. The Great White Pyramid, with its detailed listing of the protocol set out in five languages—Kla’ka Four among them—had been the colony’s salvation after all the attempts to communicate with or destroy the Stryders had failed. “But that’s impossible,” she said. “Isn’t it? The archaeologists and linguists have been over it a thousand times. How could they possibly have missed anything?”

“I don’t know,” Royce said evenly. “But I’m sure you agree that anything’s possible.” He paused, just a fraction of a second too long. “By the way, have you ever gone out and looked at the Pyramid yourself?”

“My aunt took me to see it once when I was ten,” she told him slowly. “I haven’t been there since.”

“Uh-huh,” Royce said. “That was your Aunt Lydia, wasn’t it? The one who was pretty good at reading Kla’ka Four?”

Aimee looked at Patrolman Clay, who was in turn peering up at Sergeant Royce. The younger man looked as confused as she felt. “She read me a few lines,” she acknowledged. “Mostly parts of the protocol I already knew.”

“‘Mostly’?” Royce echoed.

“All right, it was all parts of the protocol I already knew,” Aimee said, anger beginning to seep into the numbness. What was he trying to say, anyway? “Is that better?”

“If it’s the truth,” Royce said, his expression not changing in the slightest. “Tell me, Mrs. Shondar: how have you been getting along with your husband?”

The wisps of anger vanished into something very cold. “What do you mean?” she asked carefully.

“What I mean is that several of the people we interviewed mentioned that the two of you had an argument on the way to Venture this morning,” Royce said. “What was it about?”

Aimee swallowed. “That was a private matter between me and my husband.”

“Maybe,” Royce said, his eyes hardening. “Maybe not. This is a death investigation; and in death investigations we have a lot of latitude as to what gets to stay private and what doesn’t.”

Clay cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir, but I’m a little confused. This is a simple Stryder death, not a homicide.”

“Is it?” Royce countered. “Again, maybe or maybe not. You haven’t answered my question, Mrs. Shondar.”

It took Aimee a moment to even remember what the question was. “Ted was angry because I did the protocol from memory instead of calling it up on the plate,” she said. “I told him I knew that particular one by heart; he didn’t think it was a good idea to do it that way.”

“He was right about that, actually,” Clay murmured. “Two-thirds of all Stryder killings are a result of people getting complacent or careless.”

“I wasn’t getting complacent,” Aimee snapped. “If anyone out there this morning knew what messing up the protocol would mean, it was me.”

“Yes, of course,” Clay said hastily. “I didn’t mean to suggest you were taking it lightly.”

“Still, as long as we’re on the subject,” Royce put in, “how about telling us what your relationship was like with your Aunt Ruth?”

Aimee felt the memory of that day tearing through her stomach. “What kind of a question is that?” she snarled, her voice starting to shake. “I loved my aunt.”

“Just like you loved your husband?” Royce asked pointedly. “Tell me: did you have a similar argument with her that morning? Possibly on the same subject of being treated like a child?”

Royce’s face was beginning to swim in front of her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her voice sounding like it was coming out of a deep well. The whole world was starting to swim now. …

She awoke with a start, to find herself lying on the bench where she’d been sitting. Directly above her, the sky had turned a dark shade of purple with tinges of red and yellow in it.

What in the world … ?

She started to lift her head, instantly regretting the decision as her neck abruptly screamed from a dozen locales at the hasty movement. Carefully, stifling a moan, she eased it back down again.

“Ah—you’re awake,” a voice came from behind her.

More carefully this time, Aimee lifted her head and turned it around. Patrolman Clay was walking across the Sanctuary ring toward her, his shirt sleeves rippling in the evening breeze.

The evening breeze?

She looked around again. It was evening, all right, with the brilliant colors of sunset peeking through the trees to the west. “What happened?” she asked.

“You fainted,” Clay explained, coming to her side and helping her sit up. “We called Dr. Bhahatya, who said it would be best to let you sleep, so we had him give you an injection.”

“Was that your idea?” Aimee asked, carefully stretching stiff arms. “Calling the doctor, I mean.”

Clay shrugged slightly. “Mostly.”

“Sergeant Royce won’t be very happy about that,” she warned bitterly. “Interrupting his interrogation that way.”

Clay waved a hand casually. “He’ll get over it.”

“I don’t think so.” Aimee closed her eyes briefly. “He thinks I murdered my husband, doesn’t he?”

She opened her eyes in time to see Clay purse his lips. “You have to admit it’s an intriguing idea,” he said. “If you could somehow find a way to make someone break protocol—without also doing it yourself, of course—you’d have a way to commit the perfect murder. In front of witnesses, too.”

A lump rose into Aimee’s throat. “I loved my husband, Patrolman Clay,” she said. “I really did. I didn’t want him dead. I didn’t want Aunt Ruth dead, either. Doesn’t anyone believe me?”

“I believe you,” Clay said quietly. “But I don’t believe what happened today is just an unexplained accident, either. Something happened to cause that Stryder to attack.”

“But what?” Aimee asked. “I didn’t do anything. I know I didn’t.”

“Maybe it was something subtle,” Clay suggested. “Something so small that you didn’t even notice it. Or maybe it’s something else, some new layer in the protocol that we haven’t figured out yet.”

“Like what?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Clay said. “Maybe it’s something having to do with you personally. You were, what, twelve years old when your aunt was killed?”

“That’s right.”

“And it’s been another twelve years since then,” Clay continued. “Maybe the Stryders are celebrating an anniversary or something.”

Aimee winced. “That’s a horrible thought.”

“I agree,” Clay said. “And personally, I don’t believe it for a second. But until we figure out what happened, we can’t afford to dismiss any of the possibilities.”

“Including the possibility that I deliberately murdered them?”

Clay started to speak, but apparently thought better of it. “Look, it’s going to be dark soon. Why don’t you stay in the Sanctuary tonight where you’ll be safe, and we can talk more in the morning.”

Aimee’s first reaction was to insist that she wasn’t afraid of the dark, and that she was perfectly capable of traveling. But the reaction was pure pride, and her pride had already caused enough damage for one day. Besides, she really didn’t feel like a walk all alone in the dark. “All right,” she said.

“Good.” Almost shyly, he smiled at her. “I’ve got to get back to work—I’m on evening patrol tonight. I’ll leave you my coat, though, in case you get cold.”

She looked down, noticing for the first time that his jacket was neatly folded right where her head had been lying on the bench. Apparently, it had already served duty as her pillow. “Thank you,” she said.

“No problem,” he said, moving toward one of the gaps in the hedge. “I’ll look in on you a little later.” He paused at the gap, glanced around for any signs of Stryders, then strode out into the gathering dusk.

For a long time, Aimee sat on the bench, watching the sky fade into purple and then into starlit black. The businesses around the square were long since closed, but there were enough lights from nearby residences to throw a faint glow over the area.

And with the ghostly light washing over her, she gazed at the stars and listened to the night breezes whispering through the trees.

And tried to think.

What had she done? Because she had done something. Everyone agreed on that, even those like Patrolman Clay who didn’t think she’d done anything on purpose. Somehow, something she’d done had caused a Stryder to kill her husband.

But how? And why? Could she have been angrier at him than she’d realized? Some kind of deep or lingering anger that she didn’t even know was there?

No. She’d loved her husband. Hadn’t she? Of course she had. And she’d loved Aunt Ruth, too. The older woman had irritated her sometimes, but everyone had irritated her sometimes back then. Part of being twelve, she supposed.

But if somehow her subconscious had latched onto that irritation and figured out a way to break protocol for someone else …

She shook her head decisively. No. Aunt Ruth had sneezed. That sneeze, and the resulting rearrangement of head and torso and arms, was what had broken protocol and gotten her killed. These were two entirely different cases, despite Sergeant Royce’s efforts to link them.

What about Patrolman Clay’s theory? Could it be a matter of who she was, rather than something she’d done? Had the Stryders somehow gotten it into their heads that every twelve years someone standing or kneeling or crouching beside her should die?

But no. That didn’t make any sense.

But then, what sense did the protocol make in the first place? Why impose such arbitrary rules of conduct on helpless people, with death as the punishment for every single infraction?

And not just on human beings. Whoever had set up the Pyramid with its five languages had clearly been trying to make sure that at least five different species would be able to learn and follow the protocol. Apparently, the Stryders played this same vicious game with everyone who happened by.

Except that this particular group of playmates weren’t going to simply play the Stryders’ game for awhile and then move on. If Earth hadn’t sent a follow-up ship by now, they never would. The colonists were trapped here. Trapped on this otherwise lovely and bountiful world with the Stryders and their protocol.

And if there was something new happening with that protocol, they weren’t going to be living here much longer.

So what in heaven’s name had she done?

Her plate was lying on the bench near Patrolman Clay’s folded jacket. Slowly, reluctantly, she reached over and picked it up. The record of Ted’s death was in there, recorded in all its horrifying detail. The thought of watching it …

It’s been another twelve years since then, Patrolman Clay had suggested. Maybe the Stryders are celebrating an anniversary.

She took a deep breath. The thought of living through Ted’s death again made her feel violently ill. But she had to know. Bracing herself, she keyed for the record.

It was as bad as she’d expected. Worse. With the position the plate had been in, she could only see Ted’s left side, but that was enough to send her stomach into a fresh knot. She watched and listened as she and Ted went into the protocol positions; watched and listened as the Stryder clumped toward them; watched and listened at that horrible moment when the razordisk whipped past overhead, cutting into Ted’s side with a splash of red and then returning like a deadly yo-yo to its owner. She heard herself give a strangled gasp as Ted fell to the ground; saw the image turn half red as a stray drop of blood landed on the recording lens, partially obscuring it.

And she saw the Stryder pass by, looming overhead like a giant tree as he made his unconcerned way past his victim. The footsteps faded into the distance, and she heard herself begin to moan …

With a stabbing jerk of her finger, she shut off the record, squeezing her eyes tightly shut as if cutting off the images would somehow destroy the memory.

But at the same time, she knew she couldn’t afford to lose any bit of that memory. Not yet. Sergeant Royce had said Ted’s plate didn’t show exactly what had happened, either. If they were going to figure out how he had broken protocol, it was going to be up to her to figure it out.

Slowly, tiredly, she opened her eyes.

To find a Stryder standing directly across the Sanctuary ring, just outside the hedge.

Staring at her.

Her heart seemed to freeze in her chest. No one knew how exactly the hedge protected them against the Stryders. One theory was that they liked the orange flowers so much they didn’t want to risk damaging them. Another was that the delicate aroma somehow obscured their vision, so that they literally couldn’t see what was happening inside the hedge.

But all anyone really knew was that, up to now, the hedge had kept the Stryders away from you.

But then, up to now, following the protocol had done the same thing.

Up to now.

The Stryder was still standing there. Still staring at her. Aimee stared back, holding as still as she could, Ted’s image of a rabbit facing a doggerelle flashing through her mind. No Stryder had ever stared at her that way before. For that matter, she couldn’t recall ever seeing a Stryder even standing still before. Even when they killed, they never so much as broke stride.

And yet, this one was standing. And staring.

Was it the same Stryder who had killed Ted? There were supposed to be subtle differences between them, but Aimee had never been able to tell one Stryder from another. Could Sergeant Royce have been right about her somehow instigating the attack? Had the Stryder later realized that, and decided that Aimee deserved to die, too?

She realized she had stopped breathing. Slowly, carefully, she inhaled, feeling terribly alone. If only someone was here with her; Patrolman Clay, or even Sergeant Royce. If the Stryder wanted her, of course, there was nothing either of them could do. But suddenly she was terrified at the thought of dying without another human present to say good-bye to.

The Stryder still hadn’t moved, and she found herself wondering bleakly what he was waiting for. The hedge itself was certainly no physical barrier, and his razordisk probably had enough range to get her here at the far side anyway. What was he waiting for?

And then, suddenly, something inside her snapped. If this was her night to die, she wasn’t going to take it hiding beneath the flowers in a corner like a frightened rabbit. Standing up, stuffing her facplate back into its pouch, she started across the Sanctuary ring toward the Stryder.

With every step, she expected him to raise his right arm and send the razordisk nestled beneath it flashing toward her, to cut through her heart and lungs and to quiet forever the agonizing memory of Ted’s death. But still he stood there, unmoving, as she approached.

Until finally she stood just inside the hedge from him.

For a long moment she gazed silently at him, staring up into his face. Every variation of the protocol she’d ever heard made you bow down before a Stryder ever got this close; and though she’d seen plenty of telephoto pictures of them, she realized suddenly that no picture or video had ever really done them justice.

It was an old face. A face that had seen many things; a face that somehow reflected deep wanderings in secret thoughts and paths. Even in the darkness his eyes were bright as he stared down at her, and Aimee could feel a sense of eminence and mystery and serenity hovering around him. Like a Greek god, she’d often thought, or the wise mentor to humanity that so many people had longed for over the centuries.

Only these mentors killed on a whim.

She took a deep breath. If this was indeed her night to die, then nothing she could do could stop it. But perhaps she could at least voice her objections to this insanity before that happened. “Why?” she asked, her voice sounding harsh and crowlike against the Stryder’s innate grandeur. “Why did you kill him?”

The Stryder seemed to consider that. Or maybe he was just ignoring her. The first colonists had tried to talk to the Stryders too, she remembered. All it had gotten them was killed.

And then, abruptly yet smoothly, he lifted his arm.

Aimee flinched back, her eyes dropping to the razordisk against his forearm. But the arm stopped, and there was no wolfbat moan, and the weapon didn’t move. Slowly, she let her gaze travel down the arm to the huge hand reaching over the hedge toward her. The hand was cupped, palm up, as if he wanted something.

Aimee swallowed. What did he want? In another human, the gesture might have indicated that she was to take his hand, as if he was preparing to lead her somewhere. But somehow, she sensed that wasn’t it.

And then she noticed that not all the fingers were cupped. One of them was stretched out straight—almost curved under, in fact—pointing at her belt pouch.

At her facplate.

“My plate?” she asked, reaching carefully toward it. “Is that what you want?”

The Stryder didn’t move or speak. Carefully, wondering if she was in fact reading him correctly, she began working the plate free. Was he trying to tell her there was a protocol for this kind of face-to-face meeting? She couldn’t imagine there being such a thing; and even if there was, no Stryder ever gave out hints like that, even in mime. Their entire range of responses was either to ignore or to kill.

Still, this one was already doing things she’d never heard of from a Stryder. Maybe, for once, one was actually giving a human the benefit of the doubt. She got the plate out and lifted it to her lips—

And with a smooth motion, the Stryder turned his cupped hand over and plucked it from her grasp. Turning, he strode away across the square and disappeared around a shop.

Aimee watched him go, her body seeming to sag inside her skin. So that was it. No benefit of the doubt; no communication; no nothing. The Stryder had indeed realized he’d made a mistake earlier, and this was his way of rectifying it.

Because without a plate, she was as good as dead. Her mind flicked back to that day with Aunt Ruth, and how she’d had to use her plate to pull up the protocol three more times before she was able to make it home. By taking her plate, the Stryder was effectively condemning her to death the minute she left the safety of the Sanctuary.

Slowly, she turned and headed back across the circle. Relax, she tried to tell herself. Just stay here until Patrolman Clay gets back, and he’ll get you a new plate.

But that would be at best a temporary fix. If the Stryders could take one plate away from her, they could take the next one away, and the next one, and the next, until at some point she would be caught out in the open with a Stryder and no idea what the protocol was to keep him away.

And even in her despair, she could see the irony in it. Sergeant Royce had all but accused her of getting a Stryder to kill her husband for her. Now, by taking her plate, this Stryder was doing that exact same thing to her.

She reached the bench where Patrolman Clay’s jacket lay and sat down beside it. All sorts of desperate plans and ideas had chased each other through her mind on the short walk across the circle, but she knew there was no point in trying any of them tonight. In the morning, perhaps, she would be able to think more clearly.

Assuming, of course, the Stryders didn’t come for her before then.

But if they did, there was still nothing she could do tonight. And at the moment she was too drained of emotion to even worry about it. Stretching out on the bench, pillowing her head on the folded jacket, she drifted off to sleep.

“Mrs. Shondar? Aimee?”

She woke with a start, muscles jerking with sudden terror. But it wasn’t one of the Stryders who had haunted her dreams crouching over her, just Patrolman Clay. In the pink predawn light she could see the lines of tension were back in his face. “Yes, I’m awake,” she said, her mouth feeling dry. “What is it?”

“Come on,” he said, taking her hand and urging her upward. “You need to see this.”

Abruptly, the memories of the night flooded back. “I can’t,” she protested, even as she swung her legs over the side of the bench. “He took my plate.”

“Who, Sergeant Royce?” Clay asked, frowning.

Aimee shook her head. “One of the Stryders.”

Clay’s eyes widened. “One of the Stryders? But …”

He inhaled sharply, his face abruptly changing. “Oh, my God,” he said softly. “So that’s it. Come on, you definitely need to see this.”

There was something in his voice that stifled all further protest. Standing up, she let him lead her across the Sanctuary circle.

There, lying on his back in the square a few meters outside the hedge, was a Stryder.

Dead.

Aimee caught her breath. “What—”

“He was there when I got back a few minutes ago,” Clay told her. “We can check your husband’s plate record, but I’m betting he’s the one who killed him.”

He gestured toward the Stryder. “Which must be why the other Stryder took your plate. So he could figure out who he was, too.”

“I don’t understand,” Aimee said, unable to take her eyes off the body. She was so accustomed to thinking of the Stryders as messengers of death that it was a shock to see one lying there dead himself. “What’s he doing here?”

“Don’t you see?” Clay said quietly. “He killed your husband. Only he shouldn’t have, because your husband hadn’t done anything wrong.”

Aimee turned to him, sudden understanding twisting through her heart. “Are you saying … ?”

“Your husband didn’t break protocol, Aimee,” Clay said. “Neither did you. It was the Stryder who broke it.”

His lips compressed briefly. “And even for Stryders, I guess, the penalty for breaking protocol is death.”

Aimee looked out at the body again, a dark and depressing confusion tugging at her emotions. “They’re trapped by it too,” she said quietly. “For all their cold-blooded killing, they’re as trapped by the protocol as we are.”

“So it seems,” Clay agreed. “Well. Come on, let’s get you a new plate, and I’ll escort you home.”

“It’s not that easy,” Aimee said, looking at him again. “What about him?”

Clay frowned. “What do you mean? What about him?”

“What do we do with the body?” Aimee asked. “Do we leave it there for the Stryders to collect? Or do we bury it, or build a funeral pyre, or walk in a circle around it with our heads bowed, or what? What’s the protocol for this?”

The tension lines were back in Clay’s face. “Oh, my God,” he breathed. “We’d better get someone out to the Pyramid. And fast.”