Nita’s eyes burned in the dark air. She rubbed them and glanced down at Kit’s leg, bound now with a torn-off piece of her shirt. “How is it?”
“Not too bad. It feels stiff. I guess it stopped bleeding.” He looked down, felt the makeshift bandage, winced. “Yeah … I’m hungry.”
Nita’s stomach turned over—she was too nervous to even consider eating—as Kit came up with a ham sandwich and offered her half. “You go ahead,” she said. She leaned against the hard cold wall, and on a sudden thought pulled her pen out of her pocket and looked at it. It seemed all right, but as she held it she could feel a sort of odd tingling in its metal that hadn’t been there before.
“Uh, Fred—“
He hung beside her at eye level, making worried feelings that matched the dimness of his light. Are you sure that light didn’t hurt you?
“Yeah. It’s not that.” She held out the pen to him. Fred backed away a little, as if afraid he might swallow it again. “Is this radioactive or anything?” Nita said.
He drifted close to it, bobbed up and down to look at it from several angles. You mean beta and gamma and those other emissions you have trouble with? No.
Nita still felt suspicious about the pen. She dug into her backpack for a piece of scrap paper, laid it on her wizards’ manual, clicked the point out, and scribbled on the paper. Then she breathed out, perplexed. “Come on, Fred! Look at that!”
He floated down to look. The pen’s blue-black ink would normally have been hard to see in that dimness, no matter how white the paper. But the scrawl had a subtle glimmer about it, a luminosity just bright enough to make out. I don’t think it’s anything harmful to you, Fred said. Are you sure it didn’t do that before?
“Absolutely!”
Well, look at it this way. Now you can see what you’re writing when it’s dark. Surprising you people hadn’t come up with something like that already.
Nita shook her head, put the paper away, and clipped the pen back in her pocket. Kit, finishing the first half of his sandwich, looked over at the scribble with interest. “Comes of being inside Fred, I guess. With him having his own claudication, and all the energy boiling around inside him, you might have expected something like that to happen.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like it. The pen was fine the way it was.”
“Considering where it’s been,” Kit said, “you’re lucky to get it back in the same shape, instead of crushed into a little lump.” He wrapped up the other half of his sandwich and stuffed it back into his backpack. “Should we go?”
“Yeah.”
They got up, checked their surroundings as usual to make sure that no cabs or cars were anywhere close, and started up Madison again, ducking into doorways or between buildings whenever they saw or heard traffic coming.
“No people,” Kit said, as if trying to work it out. “Just things—all dark and ruined—and machines, all twisted. Alive—but they seem to hate everything. And pigeons—“
“Dogs, too,” Nita said.
“Where?” Kit looked hurriedly around him.
“Check the sidewalk and the gutter. They’re here. And remember that nest.” Nita shrugged uneasily, setting her pack higher. “I don’t know. Maybe people just can’t live here.”
“We’re here,” Kit said unhappily. “And maybe not for long.”
A sudden grinding sound like tortured metal made them dive for another shadowy doorway close to the corner of Madison and Fiftieth. No traffic was in sight; nothing showed but the glowering eye of the traffic light and the unchanging “don’t walk” signs. The grinding sound came again—metal scraping on concrete, somewhere across Madison, down Fiftieth, to their left. Kit edged a bit forward in the doorway.
“What are you—” Nita said silently.
“I want to see.” He reached around behind him, taking the antenna in hand.
“But if—”
“If that’s something that might chase us later, I at least want a look at it. Fred? Take a peek for us?”
Right. Fred sailed ahead of them, keeping low and close to the building walls, his light dimmed to the faintest glimmer. By the lamppost at Madison and Fiftieth he paused, then shot low across the street and down Fiftieth between Madison and Fifth, vanishing past the corner. Nita and Kit waited, sweating.
From around the corner Fred radiated feelings of uncertainty and curiosity. These are like the other things that run these streets. But these aren’t moving. Maybe they were dangerous once. I don’t know about now.
“Come on,” Kit said. He put his head out of the doorway. “It’s clear.”
With utmost caution they crossed the street and slipped around the corner, flattening to the wall. Here stores and dingy four-story brownstones with long flights of railed stairs lined the street. Halfway down the block, jagged and bizarre in the dimness and the feeble yellow glow of a flickering sodium-vapor streetlight, was what appeared to be the remains of an accident.
One car, a heavy two-door sedan, lay crumpled against the pole of another nearby streetlight, its right-hand door ripped away and the whole right side of it laid open. A little distance away, in the middle of the street, lay the car that had hit the sedan, resting on its back and skewed right around so that its front end was pointed at Kit and Nita. It was a sports car of some kind, so dark a brown that it was almost black. Its windshield had been cracked when it overturned, and it had many other dents and scrapes, some quite deep. From its front right wheel well jutted a long jagged strip of chrome, part of the other car’s fender, now wound into the sports car’s wheel.
“I don’t get it,” Nita said silently. “If that dark one hit the other, why isn’t its front all smashed in?”
She broke off as with a terrible metallic groan the sports car suddenly rocked back and forth, like a turtle on its back trying to right itself. Kit sucked in a long breath and didn’t move. The car stopped rocking for a moment, then with another scrape of metal started again, rocking more energetically this time. Each time the side-to-side motion became larger. It rocked partway onto one door, then back the other way and partway onto the other, then back again—and full onto its left-hand door. There it balanced, precarious, for a few long seconds, as if getting its breath. And then it twitched hard, shuddered all the way over, and fell right-side down.
The scream that filled the air as the sports car came down on the fender-tangled right wheel was terrible to hear. Instantly it hunched up the fouled wheel, holding it away from the street, crouching on the three good wheels and shaking with its effort. Nita thought of an old sculpture she had seen once, a wounded lion favoring one forelimb—weary and in pain, but still dangerous.
Very slowly, as if approaching a hurt animal and not wanting to alarm it, Kit stepped away from the building and walked out into the street.
“Kit!”
“Ssssh,” he said silently. “Don’t freak it.”
“Are you out of your—“
“Ssssshhh!”
The sports car watched Kit come, not moving. Now that it was right-side up, Nita could get a better idea of its shape. It was actually rather beautiful in its deadly-looking way—sleekly swept back and slung low to the ground. Its curves were battered in places; its once-shining hide was scored and dull. It stared at Kit from hunter’s eyes, headlights wide with pain, and breathed shallowly, waiting.
“Lotus Esprit,” Kit said to Nita, not taking his eyes off the car, matching it stare for stare.
Nita shook her head anxiously. “Does that mean something? I don’t know cars.”
“It’s a prototype racer. The new version of a really mean old one. What it is here—Look, Neets, there’s your answer. Look at the front of it, under the headlights.” He kept moving forward, his hands out in front of him. The Lotus held perfectly still, watching.
Nita looked at the low-sloping grille. “It’s all full of oil or something.”
“It’s a predator. These other cars, like that sedan—they must be what it hunts. This time its
prey hurt the Lotus before it made its kill. Like a tiger getting gored by a bull or something. Ooops!”
Kit, eight or ten feet away from the Lotus’s grille, took one step too many; it abruptly rolled back away from him a foot or so. Very quietly its engine stuttered to life and settled into a throaty growl.
“Kit, you’re—“
“Not now,” he said, aloud. Then in the Speech, also aloud, he said, “I won’t hurt you. Let me see to that wheel.”
The engine growl got louder—the sound of the Speech seemed to upset the Lotus. It rolled back another couple of feet, getting close to the curb, and glared at Kit. But the glare seemed to have as much fear as threat in it now.
“I won’t hurt you,” Kit repeated, stepping closer, holding out his hands, one of them with the antenna in it. “ Come on, you know what this is. Let me do something about that wheel. You can’t run on it. And if you can’t run, or hunt—I bet there are other hunters here, aren’t there? Or scavengers. I’m betting there are scavengers. Who’ll be coming here to clean up this kill? You want them to find you here, helpless?”
The Lotus stared at him, shifting a little from side to side now, swaying uncertainly. The growl hadn’t stopped, but it hadn’t gotten any louder either. “If I was going to hurt you, I’d have done it by now,” Kit said, getting closer. The car was four feet away, and its headlights were having to look up at Kit now. “Just let me do something about that fender stuck in you. Then you’ll go your way and I’ll go mine.”
The dark eyes stared at the antenna, then at Kit, and back at the antenna again. The Lotus stopped swaying, held very still. Kit was two feet away. He reached out with his free hand, very slowly, reached down to touch the scratched carbon-fiber hide.
The engine raced, a sudden startling roar that made Nita stifle a scream and made Kit flinch all over—but he didn’t jump away, and neither did the Lotus. For a second or two he and the car stood there just looking at each other—small trembling boy, large trembling predator. Then Kit laid his hand carefully on the brown hide, a gingerly gesture. The car shook all over, stared at him. Its engine quieted to an uncertain rumbling.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Will you let me take care of it?”
The Lotus muttered deep under its hood. It still stared at Kit with those fearsome eyes, but its expression was mostly perplexed now. So was Kit’s. He rubbed the curve of the hurt wheel well in distress. “I can’t understand why it’s mute,” he said unhappily. “The Edsel wasn’t. All it took was a couple of sentences in the Speech and it was talking.”
“It’s bound,” Nita said, edging out of the shadow of the building she stood against. “Can’t you feel it, Kit? There’s some kind of huge binding spell laid over this whole place to keep everything bound, unable to be any way but how they are.”
She stopped short as the Lotus saw her and began to growl again. “Relax,” Kit said. “She’s with me. She won’t hurt you either.”
Slowly the growl dwindled, but the feral headlight-eyes stayed on Nita. She gulped and sat down on the curb, where she could see up and down the street. “Kit, do what you’re going to do. If another of those cabs comes along—”
“Right. Fred, give me a hand? —No no no!” he said hastily, as Fred drifted down beside him and made a light pattern and a sound as if he was going to emit something. “Not that kind! Just make some light so I can see what to do down here.”
Kit knelt beside the right wheel, studying the damage, and Fred floated in close to lend his light to the business, while the Lotus watched the process sidelong and suspiciously. “Mmmfff… nothing too bad, it’s mostly wrapped around the tire. Lucky it didn’t get fouled with the axle.
“Come on, come on,” Kit said in the Speech, patting the bottom of the tire, “relax it, loosen up. You’re forcing the scrap into yourself, holding the wheel up like that. Come on.” The Lotus moaned softly and with fearful care relaxed the uplifted wheel a bit. “That’s better.” Kit slipped the antenna up under the Lotus’s wheel well, aiming for some piece of chrome that was out of sight. “Fred, can you get in there so I can see? Good. Okay, this may sting a little.” Molten light, half-seen, sparked under the Lotus’s fender. It jumped, and an uneven half-circle-shaped piece of chrome fell clanging onto the pavement. “Now hunch the wheel up again. A little higher—” Kit reached in with both hands and, after a moment’s tugging and twisting, freed the other half of the piece of metal. “There,” Kit said, satisfied. He tossed the second piece of scrap to the ground.
The engine roared again with terrible suddenness, deafening. This time Kit scrambled frantically backward as the Lotus leaped snarling away from him. With a screech of tires it swept so close past Nita that she fell over backward onto the sidewalk. Its engine screaming, the Lotus tore away down Fiftieth toward Madison, flung itself left around the corner in a cloud of blue exhaust, and was gone.
Very slowly Kit stood up, pushed the antenna into his pants pocket, and stood in the street dusting his hands off on his shirt as he gazed in disappointment after the Lotus. Nita sat back up again, shaking her head and brushing at herself. “Thought maybe it was going to stay long enough to thank you,” she said.
Kit shook his head, evidently in annoyance at himself for having thought the same thing. “Well, I don’t know—I was thinking of what Picchu said. ‘Don’t be afraid to help.’” He shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter, I guess. It was hurting; fixing it was the right thing to do.”
“I sure hope so,” Nita said. “Hate to think that the grateful creature might run off to— you know what—and tell everybody about the people who helped it instead of hurting it. I have a feeling that doing good deeds sticks out more than usual around here.”
Kit nodded, looking uncomfortable. “Maybe I should’ve left well enough alone.”
“Don’t be dumb. Let’s get going, huh? The … whatever the place is where the dark Book’s kept, it’s pretty close. I feel nervous standing out here.”
They recrossed Madison and again started the weary progression from doorway to driveway to shadowed wall, heading north.
At Madison and Fifty-second, Nita turned right and paused. “It’s on this block somewhere,” she said silently, trying to keep even the thought quiet. “The north side, I think. Fred, you feel anything?”
Fred held still for a moment, not even making a flicker. The darkness feels thicker up ahead, at the middle of the block.
Kit and Nita peered down the block. “Doesn’t look any different,” Kit said. “But you’re the expert on light, Fred. Lead the way.”
With even greater care than usual they picked their way down Fifty-second. This street was stores and office buildings again; all the store windows empty, all the windows dark. But here, though external appearances were no different, the feeling slowly began to grow that there was a reason for the grimy darkness of the windows. Something watched, something peered out those windows, using the darkness as a cloak, and no shadow was deep enough to hide in; the silent eyes would see. Nothing happened, nothing stirred anywhere. No traffic was in sight. But the street felt more and more like a trap, laid open for some unsuspecting creature to walk into. Nita tried to swallow as they ducked from one hiding place to another, but her mouth was too dry. Kit was sweating. Fred’s light was out.
This is it, he said suddenly, his thought sounding unusually muted even for Fred. This is the middle of the darkness.
“This?” Kit and Nita thought at the same time, in shock, and then simultaneously hushed themselves. Nita edged out to the sidewalk to get a better look at the place. She had to crane her neck. They were in front of a skyscraper, faced completely in black plate glass, an ominous, windowless monolith.
“Must be about ninety storeys,” Nita said. “I don’t see any lights.”
Why would you? Fred said. Whoever lives in this place doesn’t seem fond of light at all. How shall we go in?
Nita glanced back up the street. “We passed a driveway that might go down to a delivery entran
ce.”
“I’ll talk to the lock,” Kit said. “Let’s go!”
They went back the way they had come and tiptoed down the driveway. It seemed meant for trucks to back into. A flight of steps at one side led up to a loading platform about four feet above the deepest part of the ramp. Climbing the stairs, Kit went to a door on the right and ran his hands over it as Nita and Fred came up behind. “No lock,” Kit said. “It’s controlled from inside.”
“We can’t get in? We’re dead.”
“We’re not dead yet. There’s a machine in there that makes the garage doors go up. That’s all I need.” Kit got out the antenna and held it against the door as he might have held a pencil he was about to write with. He closed his eyes. “If I can just feel up through the metal and the wires, find it…”
Nita and Fred kept still while Kit’s eyes squeezed tighter and tighter shut in fierce concentration. Inside one garage door something rattled, fell silent, rattled again, began to grind. Little by little the door rose until there was an opening at the bottom of it, three feet high. Kit opened his eyes but kept the antenna pressed against the metal. “Go on in.”
Fred and Nita ducked through into darkness. Kit came swiftly after them. Behind him, the door began to move slowly downward again, shutting with a thunderous clang. Nita pulled out the rowan wand, so they could look around. There were wooden loading pallets stacked on the floor, but nothing else—bare concrete walls, bare ceiling. Set in the back wall of the huge room was one normal-sized double door.
“Let’s see if this one has a lock,” Kit said as they went quietly up to it. He touched the right-hand knob carefully, whispered a word or two in the Speech, tried it. The right side of the double door opened.
“Huh. Wasn’t even locked!” Through the open door, much to everyone’s surprise, light spilled—plain old fluorescent office-building light, but cheery as a sunny day after the gloom outdoors. On the other side of the door was a perfectly normal-looking corridor with beige walls and charcoal-colored doors and carpeting. The normality of it came as a shock. “Fred, I thought you said it was darker here!”