We drove out beyond the stone head, traveling south and west, following the cuts between low hills. Dawn turned to daylight, and I began to see riders on the hillcrests. Never more than three or four at a time. They kept their distance and I could make out nothing about them. Silhouettes against a high blue sky. Then shortly before ten o'clock the carrier's engine died and we rolled to a halt in a wide arroyo bordered by banks of yellow rock. There was no gas problem, nothing mechanically wrong. It simply quit. Childers was unconcerned.

"It was only a matter of time before Montezuma stopped us," he said. "We're inside his first line of defense." He opened his door. "See those patches of glittering sand? There." He pointed to a shoal-shaped patch curving out from a rock face that broke from a hillside. "That's all machines. Trillions of 'em. You wouldn't want to take a walk through it. Likely some of the machines filtered up into the engine and shut us down."

"How you know that?" I asked.

"We know everything."

" 'Us,' you mean."

Childers smiled. "Whatever."

We sheltered beneath the overhang of the rock face until late afternoon. Dennard spent the entire time sitting cross-legged, tranced out. With the delicate tattoos on his lips and eyelids, cranes and pharaonic men and women with their arms held in positions of dance, he resembled a serene monster in an Egyptian nightmare. Childers, manly Sammy that he was, declined to take advantage of the shade and passed the hours perched on a chunk of dark rock that thrust up from the sand about fifty feet away, staring out at the desert. Now and again his hand would stray to his pack, as if making sure it was still resting beside his knee. I imagined it contained a program that would shut down but not destroy the AI—if "Us" wanted to kill it, they would have simply nuked the area. Lupe cried and complained for the first hour, then fell asleep. Frankie scuttled about shooting this and that. I tried to sleep, but kept recalling our violent ride through the shanties and wondering how my business would be affected by people believing that I'd nuked the Carbonells and wondering also how the hell I was going to get Lupe and me clear of whatever was about to happen.

Zee lay on a collapsible stretcher that was part of the carrier's medical supplies, fading in and out of consciousness. At one point he beckoned to me, and I kneeled beside him. His skin was acquiring a pastiness, but despite loss of blood and pain, he maintained his calm.

"Señor Poe," he said in a creaky whisper. "Listen to me. This man …" He nodded toward Childers. "You must"—he coughed, closed his eyes—"you must prevent him from accomplishing his mission."

I gave this a moment's consideration. "How you know what's he up to?"

Zee blinked up at me, shaping words with his mouth but making no sound.

"Did Dennard tell you?" I asked. "Is he in on it?"

Very weakly, he said, "What is known to my father, I also know."

"Your father?"

"Please, Señor Poe. Listen." Zee caught at my arm. "If you do not stop him, eternity will be lost."

"Eternity," I said. "Oh … yeah. We can't have that."

Then—thinking that if Zee knew what "his father" knew, I might be able get a line on Childers—I said, "He says the AI can't see him. What's that all about?"

"He is not here. He … " He broke off and concentrated on staying alive.

"You're in contact with the AI, right?" I said. "Can't you direct it to Childers?"

"It is … it's as if my Father does not believe he exists." He faded a little, then after about half a minute he went on: "If you are injured, go to one of the organic distribution points. The gates to eternity are all around you."

I'd been feeling scattered before speaking to Zee—this talk of organic distribution points wasn't helping me hold it together.

"So these points, they got a little marker says what they are?" I asked. " 'Cause I don't got a clue what the fuck you talkin' about."

Lupe crawled up beside me, leaned in over my shoulder. "Is he okay?" Somewhere along the line she had freshened her make-up and was ready for the camera. The viewing audience would appreciate a nice death scene.

Zee appeared to make a slight gain; a degree of animation had been restored to his face. "What do you know of God?"

I wasn't sure which of us he was addressing, but Lupe jumped right in. "Sundays when I was a little girl," she said, gazing soulfully at Frankie, who had taken a position facing her on the opposite side of the stretcher, "my Mami would set out a white lace dress with the ruffled skirt, and …"

She began to relate her churchical experiences, how she flirted with the little boys, especially that cute Pedro Garza, and everyone marveled over how beautiful she looked. It was a total fantasy. Lupe had been brought up in Santa Barbara. Her father was a successful lawyer who spent his Sundays on the golf course, and her mother's hangover rarely permitted her to rise before six in the evening. As far as I knew she had never called her mother "Mami." Slut, bitch, and "that fuckin' old hag …" were the pet names she usually applied. I was starting to wonder if shock had knocked her brain off-line, and she had retreated into her on-air personality.

"Man didn't ask what you wore to church," I said. "What you wore to church and who you wanted to screw when you were twelve don't have a hell of a lot to do with God."

Lupe frowned at me, and I figured we were about to have one of our famous, ratings-boosting fights, but Zee, who was clearly tuned to another channel, interrupted by saying, "You once asked me who I was before I came to the desert. I am now who I was then … but made clean. Perfected."

I was still pissed at Lupe, and my impulse was to tell Zee to save his bullshit for St. Peter or whoever waited beyond the organic distribution points. But the guy was dying. You had to cut him some slack.

"As will you be," he went on. "Both of you."

I could think of worse fates than spouting platitudes and smiling in everybody's face, but not many. Zee's eyes closed, and I thought he had canceled his reservation, but he heaved a sigh and focused on my face.

"Your purpose is more worldly than mine," he said. "But it is no less God's purpose."

"What do you mean by God?" I asked, trying to make the question seem an inquiry and not a bullshit challenge.

Zee's happyface smile widened. "Look around you. You are with Him now."

I saw sand and sage and yellow rock. I saw an iguana scuttling across a patch of ocher sand. God. Why not? I thought. An AI who believed it was God, or God manifest in an AI. Not much difference there.

Lupe put on her professional anchor voice. "Are you suggesting, Zee, that the AI known as Montezuma is, in fact, the entity we think of as El Gran Señor?"

"Every age has its avatar," Zee said weakly. "Believe what you will now. Faith is your destiny."

She asked more questions, but Zee said he needed to rest. She gazed at me with wounded devotion, retreating into the persona of the Border Rose. "Eddie! You were mean to me."

I told her to go fuck herself and eased myself down into a more comfortable position. That's when, looking past her shoulder, I spotted the rider.

It was watching us from about twenty yards away, about fifteen feet from the rock where Childers was stationed. At that distance I should have been able to make out considerable detail, but as far as I could tell, there was no detail to see. It looked to be the living shadow of a horse and rider. The human form flowed out of the horse's back. Its movements—the uneasy shifting of the horse's feet, the rider's head and torso turning—made me think of animation. Too fluid to be alive. It stepped closer, halving the distance between us, stirring up puffs of dust. Dennard eased his rifle up onto his knees. Childers might have been wedded to his rock the same way the rider was joined to his mount.

Lupe clutched at my shoulder. I felt I was looking deep inside the rider, that its blackness had infinite depth. My hand went to my gun; then I recalled Childers had taken it. The rider was half-again normal size, conveying an impression of enormous menace and power. Ebony; anthracite; pitch; obsidian; there was no word dark enough to describe its blackness. It sat unmoving for a dozen heartbeats, then wheeled about with uncanny suppleness and trotted soundlessly off along the arroyo. I glanced down at Zee. No surprise there.

He was smiling.

"Straighten up, god damn it!" he said. "I don't need you going primitive!"

Dennard gave him a two-handed push and dropped into a fighting stance.

Childers let out a dry laugh. "You're in my world, brother. Don't be an asshole."

Dennard shed his rifle and pack, and did an all-over flex. He shifted into a deep crouch, his fingertips grazing the sand. "Come get it," he said. "I ain't followin' no more. I saw my face on that thing in the arroyo."

"Wha-at?" Childers affected a tone of pity such as you might use with a child. "And now you're scared?"

"I ain't scared of you, that's for sure." Dennard flowed into yet another stance, this slightly more upright, with his back straight and right leg forward. "But I'm no damn fool. I know what's comin'."

"You just think you know." Childers shrugged off his rifle and pack. "Christ Jesus! A fucking hallucination, and you go to pieces. In Guatemala I saw beasts made of human shit feeding on the dead. All it did was make me strong. I saw the sun pierced by arrows—I showered in its blood."

"You ain't seen jack," Dennard said. "I was in Zacapas when the black church burned and the demons flew. A hundred brothers saw the same, and they went zero levels, every damn one 'cept me."

They began trading brags, an old pitfighting ritual. I had no thought to get between them. Sammy on Sammy suited me fine. With any luck, they'd scrag each other. Lupe clung to me. Frankie secured a good position from which to shoot the fight. Our ratings were probably off the charts.

The ridgetop we were walking was narrow, with a thirty-foot slope, and as the two men grappled, I realized that one or both would probably wind up sliding down the slope, landing among the glittery patches of sand curving everywhere below, standing forth against the darker sand like rhinestone scalloping. For what seemed a long while, neither man earned an advantage, fighting almost silently, with just the sound of their labored breathing audible; but at last Dennard slipped beneath Childer's left arm, got behind him, and applied a chokehold that would have crushed an ordinary throat in seconds. Childers tried to bite Dennard's forearm, failed, gnashed his teeth. His face darkened, and he clawed at Dennard's eyes. I was pulling for Dennard. His attitude toward the mission was more-or-less my own, and I started thinking how to deal with him once Childers was dead. But then Childers' neck and torso expanded, as if his bones were flexible like a python's ribs, and this loosened Dennard's grip. He spun inside the grip and head-butted Dennard, knocking him to his knees; then he seized the front of Dennard's jacket and hammered him with two chopping right hands. I couldn't believe Dennard was still conscious. Blood and slobber spilled from his mouth. His eyes rolled. But when Childers threw a third right, he ducked it and locked his arms about Childers' waist, lifting him into a shoulder carry. I saw him tense, adjusting the hold, preparing to throw Childers off the ridgetop—but he stepped back, lost his footing, and Childers slipped from his shoulder. Overbalanced, Dennard snatched at the air, toppled and went rolling down the slope, coming to rest directly below. As he lay spread-eagled, dazed, the glittering curves that mapped the desert floor began to flow, spreading in a film to cover a considerable section of the desert around him—watching those bright shapes in motion transformed my anxiety to full-blown fear. The fall had busted Dennard up—it took him twenty, thirty seconds to get to his feet, but by then it was too late. He was standing in a slate-blue circle in the midst of a diamond pond. To escape he would have to walk across a molecule-thin carpet of machines. He looked bad. One arm appeared to be broken, and blood was coming from his mouth. He turned within his confining circle, searching for an escape route. A rider was approaching from the west, coming at an easy trot, looking less like something alive than a horse-and-rider shaped hole in a photomural that was sliding past so as to simulate movement. Lupe began to recite a Hail Mary.

"This is your moment, brother!" Childers said. "Live in it."

The rider stopped ten, twelve feet away from Dennard. They seemed to be regarding one another, but I noticed that Dennard's eyes were closed. It was a compelling tableau. The bleeding warrior with his Egyptian tattoos, Death black and empty on its eyeless stallion, and the glittering sand enclosing that blue target circle. I could hear wind troubling the sage, Lupe's whispered prayer, my own hushed breath. Then Dennard let out a scream, as enraged and shrill as a mother eagle sighting a violated nest, and launched himself at Death, an assault knife in his hand. The impact should have driven the rider backward, but it didn't even tremble. It looked as if Dennard was half-sunk in a tarpit, his back and portions of his legs and arms emerging from an area spanning from the rider's chest to the horse's belly. Gradually he sank deeper, until his camo-draped butt was the only thing visible. The absurdity of the sight somehow made it more horrifying. Lupe buried her face in my shoulder. Whether she felt any compassion for Dennard, or if she was merely appalled by the thought that his fate might soon be hers, I had no clue.

"Bet that hurt," Childers said with satisfaction once Dennard had vanished completely.

I wasn't so sure. Dennard had gone still at the instant of impact. The contact might have killed him outright, but if he had been alive, he had not shown the least sign of resistance.

Childers clapped me on the shoulder. "Break's over, Eddie." He gestured at Zee on his stretcher. "Grab an end."

"You crazy? I wouldn't make it a mile carryin' him."

"Amazing what a man can do when he's desperate." Childers fished in his trouser pocket, pulled out something shiny. "But I can help you out."

"Fuck is that?"

He showed me the shiny thing—a syrette. "Sammy."

"Right," I said. "I'm gonna join the freak brigade. Not a chance."

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist."

I backed farther away. "Zee's almost dead. What you need him for, anyway?"

"You never know—he might come in handy."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Frankie shooting me, and I heard Lupe giving a commentary. She was standing behind me, doing her Border Rose on-the-spot-with-this-latest-development thing.

"Bitch!" I started toward her and she darted away.

"Eddie," said Childers reprovingly. "You don't get mad at a snake for hissing."

I ignored him. "Lupe …"

"What am I s'posed to do?" she said tearfully. "I can't do nothin'."

I couldn't tell what was going on with her. Maybe she couldn't tell, either. The spark of emotion that had brought us together was flaring its last beneath the pleats and ruffles of our pretend-lover bullshit. Standing in her disheveled silk blouse, her white slacks, with her hair lifting in the desert wind, she was beautiful and false, a perfect illusion that I had succumbed to. The extent to which I had chumped myself made me feel desolate and uncaring. Why should I worry about her … about anything? I was walking toward death with Sammy. I might as well join him in insanity.

"I'm not asking for volunteers." Childers came forward, doing his Mister Menace scowl, holding up the syrette.

I looked at Lupe for what I figured would be the last time through sane eyes. "Hit me," I said.