The victory in the square was a fragile oasis in a mounting tide. The neuro-static emitters were silent, their technicians collapsed dazed among the citizens they had tried to destroy, all of them united now in a shared, confusion-wracked sense of awe. But the awe was already tainted, and was already turning. The N-Atoms' opening was not a discrete event; it was an ongoing avalanche, and the next wave was breaking.
It began sneakily. A woman who had laughed a second earlier suddenly clutched at her stomach, her face contorting in a ghostly agony. A low, bestial wail was torn from her throat—the wail of birth. She collapsed to the ground, crying, rocking an unseen infant in her arms, whispering a name that was not hers to a child that had never been born.
Across the plaza, a man stared at
