Free Under the Eye of God by David Gerrold Page B

distract her so badly that she’d lose all of her control; in which case, she might do something really dangerous.
    â€œI must see the cargo safely transferred. That includes the cages. I will permit no exceptions.”
    Robin could feel her frustration building. She stopped trying to pretend. “Does the word dogmatic mean anything to you?” she snapped.
    â€œAn automatic canine? A relative of yours, perhaps?” Naye-Ninneya allowed himself a sharp-toothed smile, overly pleased with himself at his nasty little joke. He had shown this android bitch that Dragons did not lack a sense of humor.
    He turned to Ota. “I’ll sign that manifest now.” He strode over to the bioform and grabbed the clipboard from its paws. He rudely ground his right thumbprint into the scanning plate, then thrust it back. “You!” He pointed to the robot, Shariba-Jen. “You may begin transferring these containers to the landing-shuttle security bay. Kask, Keeda—you will supervise.” He turned sharply and left.
    In their cages, the puppies wailed abysmally, their tails drooping.
    Robin turned to Ota; but Ota shook its head sadly. “I ache worse than you do, but . . . I can do nothing.” The bioform put a restraining hand on Robin’s arm. “Let it go. The universe will find its own punishment for that one.”

MesaPort
    The planet turned, baking in the oppressive gloom of the giant red star. The inhabitants called it Devil’s Heart and other things even less complimentary. Pilgrims find no gratitude here, only hellish days and bizarre nights.
    The fading old sun gave off very little light, only a dull gloomy presence; but it still had the heat to scorch the air and shatter the rocks. Dayside, the huge dark furnace scoured the planet’s face and burned the deserts. The atmosphere crackled with coronal effects; Thoska-Roole writhed under a steady onslaught of particle bombardment that left the weather churning, the mountains burning, and the atmosphere faintly glowing.
    But somehow, as it always does, life endured. It even thrived.
    The few real cities on Thoska-Roole remained untouched by the fiery day; they hid well inside the walls of the planet’s deepest fissures. These scars ran deep—once sliced with the cuts of ancient mines, now they shone with the lights of civilization. Here, down beneath, safe from the winds, safe from the solar flares, the interior precipices churned with life, the constant continual thrusting, pushing, clamoring for uncommon living space.
    Follow the walls of the rift downward and behold the teeming slums of the vertical city: bright hanging markets, plunging complexes of hive-like apartments, the terrifying overhang of greedy business districts, and precarious perpendicular gardens, dripping with yellow and black fripperies; everything tightly clustered, jammed one against another in a desperate grasp for purchase. And all these exterior structures only represented the open face of the crowded city; most of the real dwellings burrowed deeper into the bedrock, tunneling sideways into dark cramped warrens. Many of the denizens here had never seen real daylight. Below, the bottom of the chasm disappeared in darkness. Above, far above, the sheltering roofs distilled the dayside heat into faint red gloom. Between the dark and the day, the rift-cities fattened and prospered.
    Twenty klicks to the southwest, a twisted spire of rock reached upward, as if grabbing for the sky—MesaPort; three kilometers tall, high enough so that its broken peak stood easily above the worst of the scouring winds and the restless dust and lightning storms. Here, in the gaudy palace that crowned the peak; and here, deep in the caverns that honeycombed the mountain; the Nobility lived, deliberately isolating themselves from those they fed upon. And here, at the very topmost peak of MesaPort, on the mountain’s flattened crown, the sky-boats came to nest at the