Saturn's Children by Charles Stross Page B

yell again.
    The thing in the shadows stands up and waggles its proboscis in my direction. It begins to walk, very deliberately, away from me. I flash my diffraction silhouette desperately, and it pauses for a moment— then rises on a puff of rocket-disturbed dust and zips away toward the onrolling city.
    “Don’t leave me here,” I wail, overwhelmed by a sudden bleak stab of horror. (For some reason part of me expected that thing—whoever, whatever, it is—to rescue me. And now that part of me feels betrayed.) I can see what’s going to happen, as if in a theater of gore—the spectacle of my demise. Here I am, tied across three tracks, my head anchored to the northernmost one by my own hair. Here comes Cinnabar, squealing and grating along the tracks on motors powered by the thermal expansion of red-hot metal just beyond the bright horizon. The moving mountain rolls toward me like an incarnation of doom, swallowing the world. First I’ll see the overhanging lip of the city, then the guide-wheel bogies to either side. Stone’s sibs have staked me out thoughtfully close to the center, where the great grinding power wheels drive the city forward at a stately twelve and a half kilometers per hour. Somewhere high up, out of sight beyond the curve of the carrier deck, two evil dolls toast my demise with icy drafts of malice. I freeze for a minute as I imagine the shadows lengthening across me, then a brief glimpse of curved mirror-finished steel, then my head popping apart like a plastic fuel canister as knife-rimmed wheels slice off my feet at the ankles, crunch through my abdominal cavity—
    Stop whining and pull yourself together, part of me warns grimly. The sunlight is already dimming: I can see stars smeared across the sky behind the city. You’ve got about three minutes of sunlight left, then twelve minutes until it’s over. Which is more important: your hair or your life?
    My hair?
    I blink at the sudden realization. If my feet were free I’d kick myself in the ass: I’m a fool! There may not be enough time ...
    I have a full head of long ruby red hair, one of my least unfashionable qualities. It grows from an array of extrusion follicles in my scalp and falls halfway down my back when I wear it loose. The aristo assassins used my own braids to tie my head across the track—they’ve knotted them in two thick hanks under the rail, and I’m not strong enough to yank my own scalp off. But if I grow it . . .
    Well, yes. I force my scalp into activity, steeling myself against the crawling, chilly itch as I squeeze everything I can into extruding more hair, willing it to grow. I don’t normally let my hair grow from day to day, but in a fashion emergency I can make ten centimeters in an hour—it’s physically draining, and it never looks as good, but it’ll do at a pinch. Now, with panic driving my follicles into a frenzy, my glands pulse as I strain my neck muscles against my bonds. The hair grows white and fine as glass. As I pull on the still-setting fibers, they stretch, thinning to invisibility—then they begin to snap.
    For the first couple of minutes I’m not sure it’s going to work (and wouldn’t it be a crying shame to go to my death looking my worst for my enemy’s imago?), but then I discover I can nearly touch my chest with my chin. I stop squeezing my follicles, lean back until my head is touching the rail, then tense my shoulders and do my best to sit up. There’s an awful tearing from my scalp, then sudden freedom. I pull my head away from my magnificent mane, leaving it wrapped around the rail, its roots thinned to translucency. I’m as bald and ugly as any mecha. I shiver in disgust at the picture I must make: Luckily, I’m the only mirror around here, except for the silent witnesses . . .
    A few minutes pass in shock and near exhaustion. The tracks hum and vibrate more urgently beneath my buttocks and ankles. I can tense my abdomen and pull myself nearly upright, but now I face a