The lights went off.
Dirk stopped for an instant, then took two steps forward in the thick darkness and bumped into Gwen. “What?” he said. “Sorry.”
“Quiet,” Gwen whispered. She began to count off the seconds. At thirteen, the hanging globes at the cross corridors came on again. But the blue radiance was a dim ghost glow, barely enough to see by.
“Come on,” Gwen said. She began walking again, more slowly this time, treading carefully in the blue gloom. The tubes were not far ahead.
When the walls spoke to them, the voice was not the Voice.
“This is a large city,” it said, “yet it is not large enough to hide you, t’Larien. I am waiting in the lowest of the Emereli cellars, the fifty-second sublevel. The city is mine. Come to me, now, or all power will die around you, and in the darkness my teyn and I will come hunting.”
Dirk recognized the speaker. He could hardly be mistaken. On Worlorn, or anywhere, it would not be easy to duplicate the twisted, rasping voice of Bretan Braith Lantry.
8
They stood in the shadowed corridor as if paralyzed. Gwen was a dim blue silhouette, her eyes black pits. Her mouth twitched at the corner, reminding Dirk horribly of Bretan and his twitch. “They found us,” she said.
“Yes,” Dirk said. Both of them were whispering, out of fear that Bretan Braith—like the displaced Voice of Challenge—would hear them if they spoke aloud. Dirk was acutely aware that speakers surrounded him, and ears as well, and maybe eyes—all invisible behind the carpeted walls.
“How?” said Gwen. “They couldn’t have. It’s impossible.”
“They did. It must be possible. But what do we do now? Do I go to them? What’s down on the fifty-second sublevel anyway?”
Gwen frowned. “I don’t know. Challenge wasn’t my city. I know the subsurface levels weren’t residential, though.”
“Machines,” Dirk suggested “Power. Life support.”
“Computers,” Gwen added in a small hollow whisper.
Dirk set down the bags he was carrying. It seemed silly to cling tightly to clothing and possessions at this point. “They killed the Voice,” he said.
“Maybe. If it can be killed. I thought it was a whole network of computers, scattered throughout the tower. I don’t know. Maybe it was only one large installation.”
“In any case they got the central brain, the nerve center, whatever. No more friendly advice from the walls. And Bretan can probably see us right now.”
“No,” Gwen said.
“Why not? The Voice could.”
“Yes, maybe, though I don’t think the Voice’s sensing devices had to include visual sensors, by any means. I mean, it didn’t need them. It had other senses, things humans don’t have. That’s not the point. The Voice was a supercomputer, built to handle billions of bits of information simultaneously. Bretan can’t do that. No human can. Besides, the inputs weren’t intended to make sense to him, or to you or to me. Only to the Voice. Even if Bretan is standing where he has access to all of the data the Voice was getting, it will mostly be meaningless gibberish to him, or it will flood by so fast as to be useless. Maybe a trained cyberneticist could make something out of it, though I doubt it. Not Bretan, though. Not unless he knows some secret we don’t.”
“He knew how to find us,” Dirk said. “And he knew where the brain of Challenge was, and how to short-circuit it.”
“I don’t know how he found us,” Gwen replied, “but it was no great trick to get to the Voice. The lowest sublevel, Dirk! It was just a guess on his part, it had to be. Kavalars build their holdfasts deep into stone, and the lowest level is always the safest, the most secure. That’s where they quarter the women, and other holdfast treasures.”
Dirk was thoughtful. “Wait a minute. He can’t know exactly where we are. Otherwise, why try to get us down to the basement, why threaten to hunt us?”
Gwen nodded.
“If he’s in a computer center, though,” Dirk continued, “we have to be careful. He might be able to find us.”
“Some of the computers must still be functioning,” Gwen said, glancing toward the dim blue globe a few meters away. “The city is still alive, more or less.”
“Can he ask the Voice where we are? If he brings it back?”
“Maybe, but would it tell him? I don’t think so. We’re legal residents, unarmed, he’s a dangerous intruder violating all the norms of ai-Emerel.”
“He? You mean they. Chell is with him. Maybe others as well.”
“A party of intruders, then.”
“But there can’t be more than—what? Twenty? Less? How could they take over a city this size?”
“Ai-Emerel is a world singularly without violence, Dirk. And this is a Festival world. I doubt that Challenge had many defenses. The warders . . .”
Dirk looked around suddenly. “Yes, warders. The Voice mentioned them. It was sending one for us.” He almost expected to see something large and menacing wheel into sight from a cross corridor, as if on cue. But there was nothing. Shadows and cobalt globes and blue silence.
“We can’t just stand here,” Gwen said. She had stopped whispering. So had he. Both of them realized that if Bretan Braith and his fellows could hear every word they spoke, then they could surely be located in a dozen other ways as well. If so, their case was hopeless. Whispering was a wasted gesture. “The aircar is only two levels away,” she said.
“The Braiths might be two levels away too,” Dirk replied. “Even if they’re not, we have to avoid the aircar. They have to know we’ve got one, and they’ll be expecting us to run for it. Maybe that was why Bretan made his little speech, to flush us out into the air, where we’d be easy prey. His holdfast-brothers are probably out there waiting to laser us down.” He paused, thoughtful. “But we can’t just stay here, either.”
“Not around our own compartment,” she said. “The Voice knew where we were, and Bretan Braith might be able to find out. But we have to stay in the city; you’re right about that.”
“We hide, then,” Dirk said. “Where?”
Gwen shrugged. “Here, there, and everywhere. It’s a big city, as Bretan Braith said.”
Gwen quickly knelt and went through her bag, discarding all the cumbersome clothing but retaining her field supplies and sensor pack. Dirk put on the heavy greatcoat that Ruark had given him and abandoned everything else. They walked toward the outer concourse; Gwen was anxious to get as far from their compartment as possible, and neither of them was willing to risk using the tubes.
The lights above the wide concourse boulevard still burned bright and white, and the slidewalks were humming evenly; the corkscrew road seemed to have an independent power supply. “Up or down?” Dirk asked.
Gwen did not seem to hear; she was listening to something else. “Quiet,” she said. Her mouth twitched.
Above the steady hum of the slidewalks then Dirk heard the other noise, faint but unmistakable.
A howl.
It came from the corridor behind them, Dirk was positive of that. It came like a chill breath from out of the warm blue stillness, and it seemed to hang in the air far longer than it should have. Dim, distant shouts followed close on its heels.
There was a short silence. Gwen and Dirk looked at each other and stood very still, listening. The howl came again, louder, more distinct, echoing a bit this time. It was a furious shriek of a howl, long and high pitched.
“Braith hounds,” Gwen said, in a voice that was much steadier than it had any right to be.
Dirk remembered the beast he had encountered when he walked through the streets of Larteyn—the horse-sized dog that had snarled at his approach, the creature with the hairless rat’s face and the small red eyes. He looked down the corridor behind them with apprehension, but nothing moved in the cobalt shadows.
The sounds were growing louder, closer.
“Down,” Gwen said. “And quickly.”
Dirk needed no persuasion. They hurried to the median strip o
f the concourse, across the width of the silent boulevard, and got onto the first and slowest of the descending slidewalks. Then they began to move in, hopping from belt to belt until they were riding the swiftest of the descenders. Gwen unslung her field supplies and opened the packet, rummaging through the contents while Dirk stood above her, one hand resting on her shoulder, and watched the level numbers slide by, black sentinels mounted above the dusk-dark maws that led off into the interior corridors of Challenge. The numbers flashed past at regular intervals, growing steadily smaller.
They had just passed into the 490s when Gwen stood, holding a palm-sized rod of blue-black metal in her right hand. “Take off your clothes,” she said.
“What?”
“Take off your clothes,” she repeated. When Dirk only looked at her, she shook her head impatiently and tapped his chest with the point of the rod. “Null-scent,” she told him. “Arkin and I use it in the wild. Spray ourselves before going out. It will kill the body scent for about four hours, and hopefully throw the hounds off the trail.”
Dirk nodded and began to strip. When he was naked, Gwen made him stand with his legs far apart and his arms raised over his head. She touched one end of the metal rod, and from the other a fine gray mist issued, its soft touch tingling his bare skin. He felt cold and foolish and very vulnerable as she treated him, back and front, head to toe. Then she knelt and sprayed his clothing as well, inside and out, everything except the heavy greatcoat that Arkin had given him, which she carefully set to one side. When she was finished, Dirk dressed again—his clothes were dry and dusty with the ashen powder—while Gwen stripped in turn, and let him spray her.
“What about the coat?” he said while she got back into her clothes. She had treated everything: the sensor pack, the field supplies, her jade-and-silver armlet—everything except Arkin’s patched brown greatcoat. Dirk nudged it with the toe of his boot.
Gwen picked it up and tossed it over the guardrail, onto the swiftly moving belt of an ascending slidewalk. They watched as it receded from them, out of sight. “You don’t need it,” Gwen said when the coat was gone. “Maybe it will lead the pack in the wrong direction. They’re certain to have followed us as far as the concourse.”
Dirk looked dubious. “Maybe,” he said, with a glance at the inner wall. Level 472 came and went. “I think we should get off,” he said suddenly. “Get away from the concourse.”
Gwen looked at him, questioning.
“You said it yourself,” he said. “Whoever is behind us will get at least as far as the concourse. If they’ve already started down, my coat won’t fool them much. They’ll see it sailing past, and laugh.”
She smiled. “Conceded. But it was worth a try.”
“So assume they’re coming down after us . . .”
“We’ll have built a good lead by this point,” she interrupted. “They’ll never get a pack of hounds onto a slidewalk, which means they’ll be on foot.”
“So? The concourse still isn’t safe, Gwen. Look, that can’t be Bretan up there, he’s down in the sublevels. It probably isn’t Chell either, is it?”
“No. A Kavalar hunts with his teyn. They do not split.”
“I figured as much. So we’ve got one pair playing games with the power way below us, another pair at our backs. How many others are after us? Can you answer that?”
“No.”
“I’d guess a few, at least; and even if it isn’t so, we’d be better off to assume the worst and work from there. If there are other Braiths loose in the city, and if they’re in contact with the hunters behind us, the ones above us will tell the others to close off the concourse.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe not. Hunting parties seldom work together. Each pair want the kill for themselves. Damn, but I wish I had a weapon!”
Dirk ignored her final comment. “We shouldn’t take any chances,” he said. Even as he said it, the bright lights above them began to flicker, fading down abruptly into a dim lingering grayness, and simultaneously the slidewalk beneath them jerked and began to slow. Gwen stumbled. Dirk caught her and held her in his arms. The slowest belt stopped first, then the one next to it, and finally the descender they were riding.
Gwen shivered and looked up at him, and Dirk hugged her more tightly, drawing desperately needed reassurance from the warmth and closeness of her body.
Below them—Dirk swore that the sound came from below them, from the direction the slidewalk had been taking them—a shrill scream rang briefly, and not so very far away.
Gwen pulled loose of him. They did not speak. They moved from belt to belt, across the shadowed, empty traffic lanes, toward the passage that led away from the dangerous concourse and into the corridors again. He glanced up at the numbers as they passed from gray dimness into blue: level 468. When the carpets swallowed their footsteps once again, they began to run, moving quickly down the first long corridor, then turning again and yet again, sometimes right and sometimes left, choosing at random the directions they took. They ran until both of them were short of breath, and then they paused and sank into the carpets beneath the light of a dusky bluish globe.
“What was it?” he said at last, when his breath returned to him.
Gwen was still heaving and panting with the effort of their run. They had come a long way. She fought to catch her breath. Silent tears left wet trails down her face in the blue light. “What do you think it was?” she said at last, with an edge in her voice. “That was a mockman, screaming.”
Dirk opened his mouth and tasted salt. He touched the wetness on his own cheeks then, and wondered how long he had been crying. “More Braiths, then,” he said.
“Below us,” she said. “And they’ve found a victim. Damn, damn, damn! We led them here, we’re to blame. How could we have been so stupid? Jaan was always afraid they would start to hunt the cities.”
“They started yesterday,” Dirk said, “with the Blackwiner jelly children. It was only a matter of time until they came here. Don’t get all . . .”
She turned her face up to his, her features tight with anger, her cheeks streaked by tears. “What?” she spat. “You don’t think we’re responsible? Who else, then? Bretan Braith followed you, Dirk. Why did we come here? We could have gone to Twelfth Dream, to Musquel, to Esvoch. Empty cities. No one would have gotten hurt. Now the Emereli will be— How many residents did the Voice say were left?”
“I don’t remember. Four hundred, I think. Something like that.” He tried to put his arm around her and pull her to him, but she shrugged it off and glared at him.
“It’s our fault,” she said. “We have to do something.”
“All we can do is try to stay alive,” he told her. “They’re after us too, remember? We can’t worry about the others.”
Gwen was staring at him, her face hard with—what? —perhaps contempt, Dirk thought. The look startled him.
“I don’t believe what you’re saying,” she said. “Can’t you think of anyone besides yourself? Damn it, Dirk, we’ve got the null-scent going for us, if nothing else. The Emereli, they’ve got nothing at all. No weapons, no protection. They’re mockmen, game, that’s all. We’ve got to do something!”
“What? Commit suicide? Is that what? You didn’t want me to go against Bretan this morning, in the duel, but now you—”
“Yes! Now we have to. You wouldn’t have talked this way back on Avalon,” she said, her voice rising until it was almost a shout. “You were different then. Jaan wouldn’t . . .”
She stopped, suddenly aware of her words, and looked away from him. Then she began to sob. Dirk sat very still.
“So that’s it,” he said after a time. His voice was quiet. “Jaan wouldn’t think of himself, right? Jaan would play the hero.”
Gwen looked at him again. “He would, you know.”
He nodded. “He would. Maybe I would have, once. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ve changed. I don’t know anything anymore.” He felt sick and weary and defeated then, and very shamed. His t
houghts went back and forth and round and round. They were both right, he kept thinking. They had brought the Braiths down on Challenge, on hundreds of innocent victims. The guilt was theirs; Gwen was right. And yet, he was right, too, they could do nothing now, nothing. If that was selfish, it was no less true.
Gwen was crying openly. He reached for her once more, and this time she let him hold her and try to comfort her with his hands. But all the while, as he stroked her long black hair and fought to hold back his own tears, he knew that it was no good, that it changed nothing. The Braiths were hunting, killing—and he could not stop them. He could hardly save himself. He was not the old Dirk after all, the Dirk of Avalon, no. And the woman in his arms was not Jenny. Both of them were only prey.
Then suddenly it came to him. “Yes,” he said loudly.
Gwen looked at him, and Dirk got unsteadily to his feet, pulling her up after him.
“Dirk?” she said.
“We can do something,” he said, and he led her to the door of the nearest compartment. It opened easily. Dirk went to the viewscreen by the bed. The room lights were all out; the only illumination was the long rectangle of faded blue that fell from the open doorway. Gwen stood in the frame, uncertain, a bleak dark silhouette.
Dirk turned on the screen, hoping (he could do nothing else), and it lit under his hands, and he breathed easier. He turned to Gwen.
“What are you going to do?” she asked him.
“Tell me your home call number,” he said.
She understood. Slowly she nodded, and she told him the numbers, and he punched them out, one by one, and waited. The throbbing call signal brightened the room. When it dissolved, the patterns of light reshaped themselves into the strong-jawed features of Jaan Vikary.