There was a moment of awkward silence after he hung up. Then Freddy said, “Is that Muffy’s picture? By the Alice?”
“Yeah.” Tom picked it up and showed Jim and Julia what she looked like.
“I’d like to see her again,” said Freddy. He sounded wistful.
“So would I,” said Tom. His eyes filled now with actual tears, and when he had wiped them dry, Julia said gently, but practically, “The food’s getting cold.”
Tom barely noticed what he was putting into his mouth. Nor did Jim seem to be paying much attention to the food, while Julia was watching Jim far more intently than her plate. It was left to Freddy to say, in between the forksful that the others dropped into his mouth, “Good stuff. Not like the swill at the museum. They try, you know? But they’re not geared for intelligent genimals. And it’s not much better when they feed us from the cafeteria. I’d still get heartburn, but I wish they’d send out more often. Either that or hire a…”
Julia Templeton interrupted him. “Why doesn’t your Dad do something?”
“He’s not my Dad.” Tom turned away to watch the spider. She had jumped on the rat as soon as they had released it, paralyzed it with her venom, and withdrawn with it under the couch. Now she was pulling it into the open again, all neatly trussed with silk. He pointed, and they all watched as Randy tugged the rat across the floor until it was under Julia’s chair.
She moved, he thought, as if nothing—not Muffy, not a limb—were missing at all. The wound where she had gnawed free her broken leg was already tightly sealed with new tissue, and her nervous system had compensated more than adequately for the imbalance in her gait. He wished he could adjust as easily.
“That’s where Muffy usually sits,” said Tom. Finally, when she was where she wanted to be, Randy crouched over her rat to suck its fluids.
“Ralph’s her husband, isn’t he?” asked Julia. “Then…”
Tom shrugged. Jim offered, “Sounds like he’s not there much anymore. I’ll bet he has another place.”
“He should be there,” said Julia. “She’s not well, physically or…”
“She’s off her nut,” growled Freddy. “A drunk. A junky. A honey bum.”
“We could call the cops?” said Jim. “Though they don’t care much about honey suckers. And they can’t do a thing. The vines are everywhere, after all.”
“Then put her in a loony bin,” said the pig. “Dry her out.”
“It’s up to Ralph, really,” said Tom. “If he cares anymore.”
“Don’t you?” asked Freddy.
“Yeah, but…”
“He has his own troubles,” said Jim.
“So do you,” said Julia.
Tom sighed. “Muffy,” he said. “She likes honey too. Though not that much.”
“How’d your mother know that?”
When he looked puzzled, Julia added, “She said it had to be your real Daddy, that Jack, who kidnapped her, and he was going to turn her into a potted plant, just like her.”
“If she likes the wine, that shouldn’t be too hard,” said Jim.
“But he can’t turn her into a plant. Can he?” asked Tom.
“You’re the one who works in a bioppliance store.”
“Maybe,” said Freddy. “Maybe she’s as psychic as Porculata.”
“That’s…”
“Hogwash?” said Freddy. “You bet, and it’s a lot of fun. We’ve got a tub there at the museum, and…”
Randy’s rat now lay shriveled on the floor. Jim picked it up by a loose strand of silk and said, “Want the leftovers, Freddy?”
The response was outraged. “Goddammit! I’m a musician! I may have started off as a garbage disposal, but even then I didn’t have to eat dead rats. You can stuff that rat up your…”
Tom Cross scooped a handful of rice from one of the cardboard boxes before them and dropped it into Freddy’s mouth. Then, while the pig made choking noises, he said, “What’s Randy doing now?”
The giant spider was scuttling back and forth across the apartment floor, her palps raised and twitching. If she had been a dog, they would have thought she was casting for a scent, and then, as she froze, waved her palps, and began to move straight toward the apartment door, that she had found one.
When she reached the door, Randy stopped and meeped. “I think,” said Julia, “that we should follow her.”
Jim Brane dropped the dead rat into an empty take-out carton. Then he and Tom cleared away the debris of their meal. While they worked, Jim said, “It’s night, and she’s black. How can we?”
“There’s a leash,” said Tom.
The rain had stopped. The sky had cleared. Now the air was still and damp. Randy scuttled around the intersection, searching for ascent that time and weather must almost totally have destroyed. But her senses were as keen as those of any bloodhound. She stiffened, paused, and turned left, her seven legs pulling the leash taut against Tom’s arm.
The man behind the arm refused to move. After six blocks of following the spider down the center of the road, dodging traffic, wishing fruitlessly to be invisible when pedestrians were in sight, he had had enough. His feet were already sore, and there seemed no sign that Randy would ever stop.
Hand over hand, he drew leash and spider toward him, picked her up, and turned toward the Mack not far behind him. Jim opened the right-hand door and said, “Had enough? Whatever she’s following has to be riding by now.”
“Keep going,” Tom Cross said. “I’ll get out at the next intersection and let her check the direction.”
Their progress was slow, but it was nevertheless faster than walking. Blackie could cover the long straight stretches between the intersections far more quickly than Tom’s personal shank’s mare. He could catch his breath while he petted the bristly back of the spider who was leading them, he hoped, toward her mistress and his mate. For a moment he envied his old friend, Jim, who might have lost his Mack, and, yes, of course, that had to be a blow. But he still had Julia.
As Tom thought, he remembered that when he had come home—just yesterday!—an Armadon had pulled away from the curb in front of his and Muffy’s building and gone down the road ahead of him, in just the direction they were moving now. He wondered if there were indeed any connection besides coincidence, and then he decided it didn’t matter, for here was another intersection. It was time to get down, let Randy cast about for the scent and point their direction of travel, climb aboard again, and then drive on.
It was a slow stop-and-start process, but in due time it led them out of the residential neighborhood in which they had begun their tracking and onto a larger artery that bent their path back toward the city center. Now Tom had to give up his wish for invisibility, for it was more unrealistic than ever. The brightly lighted streets were thick with Buggies of every description, and the sidewalks with shoppers and theater-goers. And here, as nearly everywhere, honeysuckle vines grew wherever they could find bare soil, in the cracked pavement of alleys, by the roots of curbside ginkgoes and maples, in the miniparks to be found on many blocks, and then climbed toward the sun on whatever vertical surfaces were within their reach. Honey bums huddled in cardboard huts sheltered in the shadows of the vines. Litterbugs patrolled the streets and sidewalks.
The intersections were now so busy that they had to use Blackie to block traffic while Randy searched for scent. Drivers made their various genimals honk, growl, and bark. Drivers and pedestrians alike cried out, “Where’s your Spiderman suit?” Most of them surely did not know that Spiderman had been created long in advance of the genetic technology that had prompted the revival of superheroes in new comics and veedo shows.
At one intersection, however, there was no such noise. Blackie stopped, deliberately blocking traffic. Tom emerged with Randy in his arms. He set her down, and she quickly ran to the limits of the leash to scuttle from side to side, forward and back, exploring for the scent that had first caught her attention in the apartment. But the halted traffic was silent, and
the humans simply watched.
“Tommy!”
He raised his head, and the silence caught at his attention. Jim Brane was leaning out the door of Blackie’s pod, pointing urgently with one hand toward the side of the intersection on the other side of the Mack, gesturing frantically with the other for Tom to get back inside the pod. Tom wondered what had so upset his friend. Were the cops coming to tell them to quit blocking traffic? He looked around him. Then why was everyone so quiet? Knowing that he might be doing something foolish but intent only on answering that question, hoping that the answer might help him solve the larger mystery of Muffy’s disappearance, he let Randy draw him forward until he could see around the Mack.
Standing on the other side of the intersection were four Engineers, distinctive in their blue coveralls and golden cogwheels. They had apparently been strolling down the center of the street, for a horde of bioform vehicles was silently backed up behind them. One wore a metal helmet that resembled the helm of some ancient knight. Another had shiny brass springs dangling from his earlobes. All held curved lengths of sharpened metal that might once have been automobile springs. Now they were swords, machetes, the perfect weapons with which to terrorize modern drivers. They could chop off a genimal’s limbs or head, slash its wheels, destroy upholstery and control computers and even drivers. The Engineers were staring at the Mack that had dared to block their path, at the man and the spider, which had now, finally, caught the scent and begun to strain the leash straight ahead, toward the threatening quartet.
The Engineers laughed and stepped forward as if to meet her.
A chill ran down Tom’s spine.
Blackie growled. The Engineers stopped and gave her a wary look.
Pedestrians began to edge away, deciding that though this bit of impending street theater might be fascinating enough, it might turn nasty, and who, after all, wanted to get his or her shoes or coverall or gown bloody?
“Get in here!” Jim’s gesture was more urgent than before. Tom obediently drew the spider in, picked her up, and turned toward the Mack.
“What’s going on?” cried Freddy. The Mack’s pod had not been meant for passengers. It had only two seats, one of them the driver’s. Jim sat in the other. Tom had to squat behind, while the pig was simply braced in the handcart by his cushions. “Lift me up so I can see!”
The Engineers laughed again when Jim raised the pig’s head into view. One said, “I’m kinda sick of pork, but at least it’s not a litterbug.” Another added, “Too small. Just an appetizer.”
Freddy swore and added loudly, “Gotta catch me first!”
“We’ll catch you all! Dogmeat for dinner!” They waved their makeshift swords in the air, but Blackie growled once more and they didn’t move.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Jim as Tom climbed into the pod. Julia put her Mack into motion, the Engineers stepped aside to let them pass, and soon the intersection was behind them.
Jim turned the rear-view screen toward his face and adjusted the magnification. “They’ve stopped a Roachster,” he said. “Hauled the driver out.” Tom leaned over his shoulder to see. The Roachster’s owner was curled on the sidewalk while two of the Engineers kicked at his head and ribs. The other two were turning the Buggy into something reminiscent of an antique convertible. Roachsters were exoskeletal genimals, half lobster and half cockroach, and their passenger compartments were bubbles in the shell of their back. Dealers cut holes in the bubble wall and installed windows and doors before selling the vehicles. Now the Engineers were using their blades to chop away the entire bubble. Fortunately for the owner, if the Engineers left the Roachster alive, its next molt would recreate the bubble, and the post-molt body shop would have no more work to do than ever to make it just as good as new.
“Now they’re following us,” said Jim. “And everyone else is going the other way.”
“I wish we were going the other way!” Freddy’s loud defiance of a moment before had turned into a moan of despair. “Fast. I don’t wannabe barbecued!”
“Do you think Engineers did it?” asked Tom. Kidnapped Muffy and stole Tige, he meant. “Maybe they wanted to get me to destroy the Garden, or…”
“It’s not their style,” said Julia Templeton. “If they wanted to closedown the store, or that place where she dances, they’d simply walk in and chop it to bits.” The precedent had been established long ago by protestors against alcohol and abortion.
They stopped at the next intersection as usual. But while Tom set Randy again to searching for scent, Julia turned Blackie to face the way they had come. The Engineers stopped their hijacked Roachster half a block away, waved their blades, and screamed threats. The few residents of the neighborhood who were on the street promptly disappeared. Vehicles turned and fled, seeking other routes to their destinations.
When they set off again, this time down a side street that led them into a neighborhood with fewer streetlights and open stores and less traffic, the Engineers continued to follow. Their shouts echoed from the walls that enclosed the street.
As the intersections passed behind them, their surroundings grew darker, the homes and apartments that lined the streets shabbier, more festooned with graffiti, much of it reflecting the sentiments of the dispossessed of the age, the Engineers and their sympathizers. But Randy continued to pick out their turns, and the speed and apparent confidence of her choices increased as the streets grew drabber and less traveled. “Not so many newer odors laid down on top,” said Jim Brane.
“She didn’t pick out any scent yesterday?” asked Julia.
Tom stared ahead, over their shoulders and out the windshield. Somewhere ahead, near or far, the trail would come to an end. And then…“No,” he made himself say. “I wish I knew why she did today. You’d think the scent would be a lot dimmer.”
“Of course it is,” said Freddy. “But she lost a leg, right? She was in shock. It just didn’t penetrate.”
Jim checked the viewer and barked a surprised laugh. “They’re turning off! Got bored, I bet.”
“Or decided they didn’t have enough of an audience,” said Julia.
All four relaxed, though Freddy didn’t seem entirely to trust Jim’s report. “Keep an eye out,” he said. “They may be circling.” They were entering a district of factories and warehouses, of streets that even litterbugs ignored and whose gutters overflowed with filth, of alleys choked with honeysuckle, of cracked masonry and burned-out hulks, of stark desolation softened only by the draperies of the honeysuckle vines.
“This isn’t far from where I picked you up,” said Julia, with a glance at Jim.
“A few blocks,” he said.
“Turn off the headlights!” said Tom.
Ahead of them, the street ended in a paved square surrounded by buildings and unusually free of honeysuckle and rubbish. An Armadon was parked to the left. The only exit was a narrow, tunnel-like opening in one wall. Yellow light, flickering as if someone or something were moving between the source and them, glimmered around the edges of some object in the tunnel. The light was brightest on the right.
“Looks like we walk,” said Julia. “Unless this…”
“You stay with Blackie,” said Jim, thinking of how he had lost his own Mack. “And lock the doors.” When he and Tom were down, Tom put Randy on the ground, and she began to dance and strain at the leash, pulling them toward the tunnel. She meeped insistently.
“The scent’s fresh,” said Jim. “Right in there, but what is it?”
As they drew closer, they could hear quiet voices and make out scattered words: “That’s…last…Glad…done. Wonder what…do.” The object in the tunnel became clearly a truck trailer, being loaded through a side door drawn hard by a loading platform in the side of the tunnel. At the trailer’s other end, presumably, there was a Mack.
The trailer’s door slammed and latched. The lights on the loading platform went out. A voice rose: “Let’s get outa here.” They heard the door to the Mack’s cab open and close.
The trailer’s lights blinked on, and the glare of headlights reflected from a wall beyond the tunnel.
“I wonder!” Jim’s voice was just a whisper, but it carried as clear a load of eager anticipation as if he had shouted.
“What?”
Instead of responding, he called aloud: “Tige!”
There was an answering bark. Jim’s voice rose joyfully. “Tige!” Behind them, Blackie woofed a more canine greeting. A cry of anger echoed in the tunnel from the men in Tige’s cab. The trailer lurched forward, but as soon as it had cleared the far end of the tunnel, the Mack pulling it began to turn, its headlights revealing that the tunnel linked a pair of similar courtyards. Reflected light illuminated Tige’s brindle hide, the white circle around one bright eye, an open mouth, a lolling tongue.
Tige stopped and turned his head, snarling, toward the cab of the pod upon his back. His limbs and neck shook spastically, as if there were within his brain a war between his loyalty to the master who had called his name and the electronic controls through which the thieves were trying to make him turn and flee.
“Tige!” The great dog still trembled, but the spasticity diminished and he walked haltingly into the tunnel and toward his true master, the signals from the computer in the cab classified as delusions though they remained obviously distressing. Tige snarled, whined, and whimpered by turns, until at last the door to the cab opened and three cursing men leaped out and fled back through the tunnel.
Tige stopped, panting, in front of Jim. The trucker grinned, thumped the side of the overhanging snout, dodged an immense tongue, danced his delight, turned, and saluted Julia in her own Mack. But Randy was still meeping and tugging at the leash.
Tom Cross let her lead him toward the trailer that had been hitched onto the stolen Mack. Tige still wore his original pod, cargo compartment and all, and the new trailer had little more room for cargo than the pod. What it had in addition was the side door that had permitted loading from the kidnappers’ hideaway here, and that was where Randy stopped to meep again, more insistently than ever.
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