He went back down on the same escalator that had led him and Zella into the Labyrinths the night before. Halfway down he saw the two uniforms, Varvani this time, standing at the foot—watching riders boarding the up ramp. He turned his head away from them, looking at the streaming crowds until he hit bottom, then slipped around the pillar and lost himself among them. Those two might have been waiting for someone else.
He and the place had become different within fifteen Standard hours of this twenty-six-hour day. He felt so deeply the absence of Zella’s touch at his side it was as if a part of himself had been torn away. The effort of keeping the turmoil of his mind below the boiling point flattened everything that reached his senses; the deep low roar of a thousand chattering good-natured human beings beat threateningly at his ears, he blinked in the flashing lights and the smokes of cooking caught his throat, the song of sweet rain turned bitter:
Savage rain, O savage rain,
the lutolin player sang:
savage rain stains the city, and
the country where it falls
and the pain behind my eyes
is the rain, the savage rain in
the wilderness, the rain
O the rain . . .
He stopped in the doorway of a shop to catch his breath and pull himself together. Zella running toward the men and touching, Zella running—
He became aware of the darkness at his back without quite seeing it, and turned. The tiny shop, of less breadth than the span of his arms, was empty; the Lyhhrt, who had hammered thin gold bangles and woven filigrees that were beautiful no matter what the price, had gone, leaving no more than his shimmering gold-leaf world-symbol on the door.
This emptiness—beyond the glass was a blackness deep as space—struck Ned oddly, for no reason he could recall. He had never known this Lyhhrt, though he had bought plenty of Lyhhrt trinkets for women at other places. He had seen no Lyhhrt at all in Zamos’s Palace, not even in the doctor’s office where the mech had treated him.
It was the chilling emptiness of the place that touched him. He moved away along the walls and shopfronts where the noise ricocheted with multiple echoes above his head against the friezes of news reports and stock prices, looking across the moving thicknesses of bodies in all the colors and textures that thirty kinds of human flesh can show, handed, clawed, tailed and tentacled, some with eyestalks, some half metal or plastic, one or two double-headed.
He nearly tripped over the beggar.
She was crouched beside him. Not crouched, but sitting against the wall with her back straight, legs folded and head bent to look into the depths of her bowl, her hands were folded in it. One of his own species, dressed in neat blue denims, her hair braided and her mouth surprisingly rouged bright pink. She was thin, strung out probably on more than one drug, nowhere near smiling. Not Zella. The pale hair that shadowed into the braid was not blond but had whitened with age—she was half again as old as Zella. But he could see by the set of her body that she had been strong once, a fighter to begin with, God knew what else after. There was no way for anyone lost in the Labyrinth to find a passage home.
Ned could not keep himself from tearing a leaf from his book and giving it to her. She raised her head and looked at him with eyes like smashed glass, and whispered thanks. He hurried away feeling like the coward he had pretended to be when Jacaranda had let him beat her at the entrance to another labyrinth.
Before he had gone three steps there was a scuttling back of him, and a squeeze-box voice that he recognized said, “Ah-yee, here is that healthy boy again who needs nothing from me, not even work!”
Ned looked around to find the Sziis in the act of circling him like the stripe on a barber pole. “What do you want?” He could not be sure this was the one who had cashed his card for him; he had never seen another.
The Sziis’s head was dancing at eye level now with his tongue frilling out through his tiny sharp fangs, four of his little feet jigging to keep balance, tapping their rattling claws. “He seems me different in his new goodies, but my sharp tongue smells him the same!” The silver scales writhed in the flickering red, blue, and green lights.
“You got your cut, didn’t you?” Ned said. “Let me go by!” He kept his arm up but was careful to make no offensive movements. He dared not get into a fight down here, and those little teeth had very sharp points.
He turned away from the dancing colors, half-hypnotized—more than half. He had not kept watch on the crowds, and if the two thugs working their way forward with their eyes fixed on him were not the ones who had punched him up on the gym floor, it made no difference. The Sziis had fingered him.
He grinned and snarled, “Smarted me up, percentnik? Sold me to the bull-chuckers for a grab of my cashbook?” In the instant that the Sziis blinked and listened, Ned thrust out his foot and swept it under the serpentine body. The Sziis flopped with his four hands thrashing and his six feet pumping wildly.
Ned grabbed a handful of tokens from his pocket and flung them over the heads of the crowd at his pursuers, a Varvani who was a half head taller than almost everyone else, and a Bimanda who was taller by a head. They were not uniformed but wearing the same kind of pugs’ clothing he had discarded. Those around them, distracted by what seemed a shower of gold, set up a flurry of catching and scuffling, and Ned slipped away.
But the crowd blocked him as well, and the Bimanda, a pale shark-shaped woman with a lot of teeth, swam through the press of it and caught him by the ankle as he was ducking under a bally. There was a mixed troupe from five worlds dancing, and the music and spielers were so loud that no one noticed what was going on beneath.
Ned twisted on his back to face the Bimanda; a flicker of light from between the bally’s slats caught her staring gold eyes and the triple racks of her teeth. He saw in the shadows that she was armed with a knife and reaching for it, but she did not have quite enough space to move her massive arms between her body and the platform, and could not thrust. While dancers thumped and trombones blatted above him he kicked her in the throat with his other foot, and when she let go his ankle and pulled away gasping, he rolled out from under the other edge, then jumped up and dodged away without waiting to dust himself off. His breastbone was as cold as if the knife had lodged there: whoever wanted him now wanted him dead.
He paused in a doorway to take breath and was almost knocked down by a clump of burly customers coming out. He realized that he was in the entrance of the grim tavern he and Zella had come through on their way to the alley. The figures that yesterday had been hunched over mugs of beer and yoptai, smoking jhat, were the same, or same as no difference. He would not have minded sitting down among them. He had not eaten since the early morning, or paused for rest since he had lounged in the barber’s chair for that comfortable few moments.
He did not dare stop for that, but he tossed a brass token and took a handful of dried kep seeds while he fought his way through the smoke and made a side trip to the urinal, pausing for a few handfuls of brackish water. Coming out he heard voices raised in the smokedrifts: “Nobody come in here that you want! Sit down and order or get out!”
No one would talk to Security that way. He ran, and hard. Security at least would not fling knives at him. Their justice was rough, but over half their salary was paid by Interpol, and they balked at murder. He pushed out into the alley and did not stop at the cupboard he and Zella had found refuge in the night before. He heard the pounding steps of his trackers too close behind him and the sound of shattering when the tall Bimanda ran into one of the hanging lamps and swung it against the wall.
The alley seemed to stretch endlessly without branching off, but as soon as he had the thought, he saw not twenty paces away a robot cleaner swinging around a corner to fill the breadth of the corridor and coming forward head-on fast with flashing lights and quivering antennas. He paused an instant to catch his breath, and a stunner bolt hissed over his shoulder and scored the wall. He took three springing leaps and vaulted over the b
ig machine like a Cretan bull-dancer.
After that everything he had was used up and he had twisted his knee landing, but his pursuers were thick-bodied probable wrestlers, who had as much chance of flying as of leaping. The machine would not run them over, but would not let them pass either. They could do nothing but go back and duck into whatever door they found open.
Ned hobbled to the passageway the robot had come from and found a dead end leading to a closet like the one he had sheltered in. Panting he went on half-skipping down the alley, wound up with terror of another machine and afraid to try the latches on any of the doors he passed.
At the very end there was a door with an EXIT symbol straight ahead and to the left a narrow passageway leading to the open doorway of a restaurant kitchen. Clouds of steam were coming from it and he could see the shadowy outlines of bussers scraping food from plates and bowls. The smell was of garbage, too rancid to make him hungrier.
He lingered for a moment, not knowing where the exit led, not willing to cause a stir in the kitchen. A noise of crashing pots and clattering dishes broke out and two tall figures who did not care about making a stir burst through the clouds of steam yelling obvious obscenities in a language Ned did not know.
He pushed the heavy bar of the door. It opened with a hiss and let him into a small square space lit only by a dim red light, and leading only to a similar door. The first one shut behind him with a breath like a sigh. Only an electronic key would open it again. He heard faint laughter on the other side, and the words, “Got him now!” With dread, he began to realize where he was.
One of the thugs was pushing down the latch. Desperately he lunged at the bar of the outer one and fell, he thought, into space. The thin cold air dried his sweat in an instant, and as he rolled down three steps and landed flat on his back on concrete, the white sun Shen dropped beyond the world and the copper rim of the sky turned black and blazed with stars. It seemed to him that their lights were lancing themselves at him while he gasped for air beneath them.
Ned bit down on his panic and forced himself to take slow breaths that did not satisfy his need for air. He picked himself up achingly, and after a moment his oxygen capsule switched on. He dared not breathe too deeply or it would be used up before he could move far. He was shuddering in the freezing cold.
Shen IV had no moons, and the lights in its night sky were those of stars or other worlds, doubly bright because the air was so thin. Ned saw that the square of concrete was a buzzer landing pad, marked with tire tracks and fuel drippings. The area surrounding it was thick with ground trees furred with small grey leaves, twisted stems of wood swarming over the terrain ankle-thick as far as the eye could see. On the far side of the massive building was the long stretch of wharfs lining the seacoast.
His pursuers had not followed him out. He looked up at the huge arched windows on the upper floors; they were full of life and warmth. No one could see him out here, and not many were eager to save him. Tomorrow if he survived the night he would fry in the sun’s furious heat when it reached the peak of noon. Trying to calm the fear clawing inside him like a cat in a sack, he climbed the steps again and looked around. He saw a narrow stone pavement along the wall, half overgrown by twisting branches. It led away from both sides of the door and neither direction looked better than the other. His capsule sounded a warning ping! that told him he had only half a Standard hour’s worth of oxygen left. He went down the steps to his left calculating that it would bring him to one of the Labyrinths’ entrances.
The wall was still faintly warm. He kept it at his back, sidling along the narrow passage to avoid stray branches; parts of the flagstones were cracked and forced up, and some of the blocks of the wall had cracks thrusting with grey lichenous growths.
When he passed several broad porthole windows set into the wall and found them completely dark he realized the direction he had chosen was wrong. He had reached an old section that did not seem to be inhabited at all. The capsule pinged again. He rested for a moment and heard the hiss of the airlock door, and a sound like oxygen tanks banging against it, then several voices. His trackers had not given up.
He kept going. Zella was far away somewhere on this world, so far away he could not find her, would not think of her. Ping! He stopped again but heard nothing of the searchers; perhaps they had gone in the other direction, or the sounds had come only from his imagination.
Suddenly the wall disappeared; he stumbled backward reeling to keep balance and found himself in a shadowy recess. There was a door here but the stems of the ground-trees had woven themselves across it. He crawled over and tried to wrench them away, but they would not move, felt at the door, but could not find a latch. Ping!
Three lights flashed on, in off tones of primary colors. They were set into the walls of the recess at points half a meter above his head.
“Traveler—”
He jumped. The voice came from speakers beneath the lights, but the image appeared just beside him. It was the old hologram of Zamos—Ned had not seen it on the floors above—shaking his beckoning hand free of his sleeve in a dramatic gesture, sapphires and rubies glittering on his wrist. He looked deeply faded and aged, like a weathered statue; the three transmitters were coated with dust and salt from the offshore winds, and the image was eroded. It spoke again.
“I am Zamos at your service, always ready to guide you. Do you need help, Traveler?”
Ned hesitated for only a second. He needed help. “Yes.”
The figure said, “Guest of Zamos, this is an emergency exit. Have you become detached from your tour group?”
“Yes!” The word hissed through his chilled teeth. It was true enough.
There was a moment of silence while the computer controlling Zamos weighed the answer to his question. Ned listened for the sounds of the hunters, and thought he heard a faint cry.
“If you wish to return to your tour, please place your Zamos Tours Identicard against the sensitive plate in the left side of the doorway.”
Ned swallowed and said, “I don’t have it with me.”
“You may also use any other I.D. bearing your retinal pattern. Always keep your Zamos Tours Identicard on your person at all times when you are with us.”
Ned fumbled the I.D. disc from his belt with thick stiff fingers and pressed it against the faintly glowing square in the lintel. After a moment the door slid open, grinding fiercely on unused runners.
He heard the snort of a buzzer’s engine starting up and the bright flash of its searchlight over the dark cold terrain. He had no idea where he was going but stepped quickly over the tangled branches into a dimly lit airlock with dust and dead leaves in its corners. The door closed behind him and another opened in front; he came through it into a broad corridor where the air was warm but musty.
The moment his foot touched the floor the colored lights quickened to life above him down the hall, startling him, and the image of Zamos beckoned once again. Ned glanced ahead and back; there was darkness in both directions. He followed.
Fans began to hum, and the lightstrips lit before and faded after Zamos as he floated down a hall floor gritty with dust and spattered with long-dried stains. Not far away thousands were eating, drinking, gambling, coupling, singing, dancing, fighting . . . Zella was very far away. Zamos’s step was noiseless, and his own seemed too loud.
Zamos pointed to a dark open doorway. “There you see a demonstration of cattle cloning for species of twenty-three worlds. We have been engaged in such work for over two hundred years Standard.” At his gesture a dim light illuminated an empty room littered with twisted shelf supports and warped glastex tank panels. Ned felt cold again. Here the silence behind Zamos’s flat synthetic voice was palpable, unreality deeper with every step.
“And here you see scientists attending a course of lectures on the deadly virus-molds that pollute the jungles and tundras of Kemalan Five and Six.” A door opened into a wilderness of toppled lecterns and scattered books and cassettes.
&nb
sp; Ned listened for the clamor of his followers and said aloud, “This is crazy. What am I doing here?”
Zamos’s image turned and looked him in the eye. “If you follow me, Ned Gattes, you will be safe.”
“I am crazy,” said Ned.
“Here is the highlight of this tour,” Zamos said. He raised a finger and a door slid open. The hallway had ended.
Ned was hit by a hot burst of stinking air. In the ceiling yellow lightstrips brightened, and he saw the barred cages. A roomful of them.
“It is the very heart of Zamos,” said the image. “Here we create life that—” Ned stopped paying attention to it. He was standing by the bars of a cage where two naked figures lay bedded on straw, snoring faintly. They were the pair of one-armed fighters who had attacked him, nested like spoons with their long single arms crossing over each other, their greyish bodies glistening with sweat. A clumsy apparatus wound with pipes and studded with dials and gauges hung overhead and dropped water and food pellets into pans.
“—have engineered many new species easily bred for cattle or hunting . . .”
In a clear-walled enclosure beside them a hairy male figure with its arms tightly wrapped around its head twisted in a dream and thrashed out with thick blunt feet like hooves; the walls had many kick marks. It flung out its arms and Ned saw the pale curved horns, the squared bull’s snout of dark red hardened flesh that was not truly a bull’s and not quite half-human, the heavy pelt spreading over the head and shoulders like a bull’s hide. Ned wanted to wrench his eyes away and could not. He had seen a creature like this at a mall freak show, bellowing in terror, and thought it was a strange species, but this naked half-man had genitals like his own. It opened huge bovine eyes for a moment, saw nothing, and whipped at the straw with a sinewy tail; then raised the thick clubbed hands to wrench at its horns as if it would tear them from the skull, and burst out with a lowing cry of agony that was smothered by the thick plastic walls.
Flesh and Gold Page 21
