No one spoke. Gwen came forward to stand behind Dirk, one hand up on his shoulder. Vikary looked at them in silence, and Dirk was afraid for a long moment that he would blank the screen and leave them to their fate.
He did not. He said to Dirk, “You were a holdfast-brother. I trusted you.” Then his eyes shifted to Gwen. “And you I loved.”
“Jaan,” she said, quick and soft, in a voice so much a whisper that Dirk doubted that Vikary could hear. Then she broke and turned and walked swiftly from the room.
Still Vikary did not close out the connection. “You are in Challenge, I see. Why have you called, t’Larien? You know what we must do, my teyn and I?”
“I know,” Dirk said. “I risk it. I had to tell you. The Braiths have followed us. Somehow, I don’t know how, we never thought we would be traced. But they are here. Bretan Braith Lantry has knocked out the city computer, and seems to control much of the remaining power. The others—they have hunting packs here. They are in the corridors.”
“I understand,” Vikary said. Emotion—unreadable, strange—flickered across his face. “The residents?”
Dirk nodded. “Will you come?”
Vikary smiled very faintly, and there was no joy in it. “You ask my help, Dirk t’Larien?” He shook his head. “No, I should not jape, it is not you who asks, not for yourself. I understand that. For the others, the Emereli, yes, Garse and I will come. We will bring our beacons, and those such as we find before the hunters we shall make korariel of Ironjade. Yet it will take time, too long perhaps. Many will die. Yesterday, at the City in the Starless Pool, a creature called a Mother died a sudden death. The jelly children—do you know of the Blackwiner jelly children, t’Larien?”
“Yes. I know enough.”
“They burst forth from their Mother to find another, and discovered none. During the decades they have lived inside their vast host, others of their world had caught the creature and brought it to Worlorn from the World of the Blackwine Ocean, and lastly abandoned it. There is scant love lost between the jelly children and other Blackwiners not of the cult. So they stumbled forth, a hundred of them or more, overrunning their city, filling it with a sudden life, knowing nothing of where they were or why. Most were old, quite old. In panic, they began to wake their dead city, so Roseph high-Braith found them. I did what I could do, protected some. The Braiths found many others, because it took time. It will be the same in Challenge. Those that take to the corridors and run, those will be hunted down and slain, long before my teyn and I can help. Do you understand?”
Dirk nodded.
“It is not enough to call me,” Vikary said. “You must act yourself. Bretan Braith Lantry wants you badly, you and no other. He may even allow you to duel. The others want only to hunt you, as a mockman, but even they value you high above any other prey. Come into the open, t’Larien, and they will come after you. For the Emereli hiding around you, the time will be important.”
“I see,” Dirk said. “You want Gwen and me . . .”
Vikary flinched visibly. “No, not Gwen.”
“Me, then. You want me to draw attention to myself? Without a weapon?”
“You have a weapon,” Vikary said. “You stole it yourself, giving insult to Ironjade. Whether you choose to use it or not is a decision that only you can make. I will not trust you to make the correct choice. I trusted you once. I simply tell you. One other thing, t’Larien. Whatever you do, or do not do, it changes nothing between you and me. This call changes nothing. You know what we must do.”
“You said that,” Dirk replied.
“I say it a second time. I want you to remember.” Vikary frowned. “And now I will go. It is a long flight to Challenge, a long cold flight.”
The screen went dark before Dirk could frame an answer.
Gwen was waiting just outside the door, leaning up against the carpeted wall, her face in her hands. She straightened when Dirk came out. “Are they coming?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry I . . . left. I couldn’t face him.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does.”
“No,” he said sharply. His stomach ached. He kept imagining far-off screams. “It doesn’t. You made it clear before—how you feel.”
“Did I?” She laughed. “If you know how I feel, you know more than me, Dirk.”
“Gwen, I don’t—no, listen, it doesn’t matter. You were right. We have to . . . Jaan said we have a weapon.”
She frowned. “He did? Does he think I took my dart gun? Or what?”
“No, I don’t think so. He only said that we have a weapon, that we stole it ourselves and insulted Ironjade.”
She closed her eyes. “What?” she said. “Of course.” Her eyes opened again. “The aircar. It’s armed with lasercannon. That has to be what he meant. They aren’t charged. I don’t even think they’re connected. That was the aircar I used most of the time, and Garse . . .”
“I understand. But you think the lasers can be fixed? Made to work?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. But what else could Jaan have meant?”
“The Braiths may have found the car, of course,” Dirk said. His voice was cool and even. “We’ll have to take that chance. Hiding—we can’t hide, they’ll find us. Bretan may be on his way right now, if my transmission to Larteyn registered anywhere down below. No, we double back to the aircar. They won’t expect that, if they know we were headed down along the concourse.”
“The aircar is fifty-two levels above us,” Gwen pointed out. “How do we get to it? If Bretan has as much control over the power as we think he does, he has surely killed the tubes. He stopped the slidewalks.”
“He knew we were using the slidewalks,” Dirk said. “Or at least that we were on the concourse. The ones tracking us told him. They are in contact, Gwen. The Braiths. They have to be, the belts stopped too conveniently. But that makes it easy.”
“Easy? What?”
“For us to draw attention to ourselves,” he said. “For us to get them after us, to save the goddamned Emereli. That’s what Jaan wants us to do. Isn’t that what you want us to do?” His voice was sharp.
Gwen paled slightly. “Well,” she said. “Yes.”
“Then you win. We’re going to do it.”
She looked thoughtful. “The tubes, then? If they are still working?”
“We couldn’t trust the tubes,” Dirk said. “Even if they were working. Bretan might stop them while we were inside one.”
“I don’t know of any stairs,” she said. “And we’d never find them without the Voice even if they do exist. We could walk up the concourse, but . . .”
“We know of at least two Braith hunting parties roaming the concourse. There are probably more. No.”
“What then?”
“What’s left?” He frowned. “The centershaft.”
Dirk leaned forward across the wrought iron railing, looked up and then down, and grew dizzy. The centershaft seemed to go on forever in both directions. It was only two kilometers from top to bottom, he knew, but everything about it gave the feeling of all but infinite distance. The rising currents of warm air that gave buoyancy to the feather-light floaters also filled the echoing shaft with a gray-white mist, and the balconies that lined the circumference—level on level on level—were all identical, giving the illusion of unending repetition.
Gwen had taken something from her sensor pack, a palm-sized silvery metallic instrument. She stood next to Dirk by the railing and tossed it lightly out into the shaft. Both of them watched it travel, spinning over and over, winking at them with reflected light. It sailed halfway across the diameter of the great cylinder before it began to fall—slowly, gently, half-supported by the rising air, a mote of metal dust dancing in the artificial sunlight. They watched it for an eon before it vanished in the gray gulf below them. “Well,” Gwen said after it was lost to sight, “the gravity grid is still on.”
“Yes. Bretan doesn’t know the city. Not
well enough.” Dirk glanced up again. “I guess we should get started. Who goes first?”
“After you,” she said.
Dirk opened the balcony gate and retreated to the wall. He brushed a tangle of hair out of his eyes impatiently, shrugged, and ran forward, kicking as hard as he could when his boot touched the edge.
The leap took him out and up and up. For one wild moment it was like falling, and Dirk’s stomach wrenched, but then he looked and saw and felt, and it was not like falling at all, it was flying, soaring. He laughed aloud, suddenly giddy, and he brought his arms in front of him and swept them back in powerful strokes, swimming higher and faster. The rows of empty balconies went by: one level, two, five. Sooner or later he would begin to drop, a slow curving descent into gray-shrouded distance, but he would scarcely have time to fall far. The other side of the centershaft was only thirty meters off, an easy jump against the paperclip chains of the shaft’s trace gravity.
Finally the curving wall grew near, and he bounced off one black iron railing, spinning out and tumbling upward absurdly before he reached and caught a post of the balcony just above the one he’d hit. It was easy to pull himself in. He’d come clear across the centershaft, and eleven levels up. Smiling and strangely elated, he sat and gathered strength for a second leap while he watched Gwen come after him. She flew like some graceful impossible bird, her black hair shimmering behind her as she soared. She also outjumped him by two levels.
By the time he reached the 520th level, Dirk was bruised in a half-dozen places where he’d banged up against the iron railings, but he felt almost good. At the end of his sixth dizzy leap across the plunging shaft he was half reluctant to pull himself onto the target balcony and return to normal gravity. But he did. Gwen was already there waiting for him, her sensor pack and field supplies strapped to her back between the shoulder blades. She gave him a hand and helped pull him over the railing.
They went out into the broad corridor that circled the centershaft, into the now-familiar blue shadows. Globes shone dimly at junctions on either side of them, where long straight passages led away from the city’s core like spokes on some great wheel. At random they chose one and began to walk swiftly toward the perimeter. It was a longer walk than Dirk would have thought possible, past numerous other intersections (he lost count at forty) each like the others, past black doors that differed only in their numbering. Neither he nor Gwen spoke. The good feeling that he had touched briefly, the joy of wingless flight, dropped from him as suddenly as it had come while he walked through the murky dimness. In its place, a faint tinge of fear. His ears conjured up phantoms to worry him, far-off howlings and the soft footfalls of pursuers; his eyes made the more distant light globes into something strange and terrible, and found shapes in the cobalt corners where only darkness lay. But they encountered nothing, no one; it was only his mind playing tricks on him.
Yet the Braiths had been here. Close to the perimeter of Challenge, where the cross-corridor met the outer concourse, they found one of the balloon-tired vehicles that the Voice used to carry guests back and forth. It was empty and overturned, lying half on the blue carpet and half on the clean cold plastic that floored the concourse proper. When they reached it, they stopped, and Gwen’s eyes met Dirk’s in wordless comment. The balloon-tired cars, he recalled shortly, had no controls for their passengers; the Voice drove them directly. And here one lay, on its side, without power or motion. He noticed something else as well. Near one rear wheel the blue carpet was damp and smelly.
“Come,” Gwen whispered, and they started out across the silent concourse, hoping that the Braiths who had been here were gone out of earshot. The airlot and their car were very close now; it would be cruel irony if they did not reach them. But it seemed to Dirk that their steps echoed horribly loud on the uncarpeted surface of the boulevard; surely the whole building could hear them, even Bretan Braith in the deep cellars kilometers below. When they reached the pedestrian walkway that bridged the median strip of unmoving slidewalks, the two of them began to run. He was not sure who started, Gwen or himself. One instant they were walking side by side, trying to move as quickly as possible with as little noise as they could; then suddenly they were running.
Beyond the concourse—uncarpeted corridor, two turns, a wide door that seemed reluctant to open. Finally Dirk smashed his bruised shoulder against it, and he and it both groaned in protest, but the door gave way, and they stood again on the airlot of Challenge’s 520th level.
The night was cold and dark. They could hear Worlorn’s eternal wind whining against the Emereli tower, and a single bright star burned in the long low rectangle that framed the outworld sky. Inside, the airlot itself was just as black.
No lights went on when they entered.
But the aircar was still there, hunched in the darkness like a living thing, like the banshee it was intended to resemble, and no Braiths stood guarding it.
They went to it. Gwen took off her sensor pack and field supplies and put them in the back seat, where the sky-scoots still lay. Dirk stood and watched her, shivering as he did so; Ruark’s greatcoat was gone, and the air was frigid tonight.
Gwen touched a control on the instrument panel, and a dark crack opened in the center of the manta’s hood. Metal panels swung back and up, and the guts of the Kavalar machine were before them. She came around front and turned on a light built into the underside of one of the hood panels. The other panel, Dirk saw, was lined with metal tools in clips.
Gwen stood in a small pool of yellow light studying the intricate machinery. Dirk went to her side.
Finally she shook her head. “No,” she said in a tired voice. “It won’t work.”
“We can draw power from the gravity grid,” Dirk suggested. “You have the tools.” He pointed.
“I don’t know enough,” she said. “A little, yes. I hoped I’d be able to figure . . . you know. I can’t. It’s more than just a matter of power. The wing lasers aren’t even connected. They might as well be ornaments for all the good they’re going to do us.” She looked at Dirk. “I don’t suppose you . . . ?”
“No,” he said.
She nodded. “We have no weapon, then.”
Dirk stood and glanced out past the manta, toward Worlorn’s empty sky. “We could fly out of here.”
Gwen reached out and caught the hood panels, one in each hand, and brought them down and together again, and once more the dark banshee was whole and fierce. Her voice was toneless. “No. Remember what you said. The Braiths will be outside. Their cars will be armed. We wouldn’t have a chance. No.” She walked around Dirk and got into the aircar.
After a time he followed her. He sat twisted about in his seat, so that he faced the lonely star in the cold night sky. He was conscious of being very tired, and he knew it was more than physical. Since coming to Challenge, his emotions had washed over him like waves over a beach, one after another, but suddenly it seemed as though the ocean had gone. There were no waves left at all.
“I suppose you were right before, in the corridor,” he said in a thoughtful, introspective voice. He was not looking at Gwen.
“Right?” she said.
“About being selfish. About . . . you know . . . about not being a white knight.”
“A white knight?”
“Like Jaan. I was never a white knight, maybe, but back on Avalon I liked to think I was. I believed in things. Now I can hardly even remember what they were. Except for you, Jenny. You I remembered. That was why . . . well, you understand. The last seven years, I’ve done things, nothing terrible, you know, but still things that I might not have done on Avalon. Cynical things, selfish things. But until now I’d never gotten anyone killed.”
“Don’t flog yourself, Dirk,” she said. Her voice was weary too. “It’s not attractive.”
“I want to do something,” Dirk said. “I have to. I can’t just . . . you know. You were right.”
“We can’t do anything, except run and die, and that won’t help
at all. We have no weapon.”
Dirk laughed bitterly. “So we wait for Jaan and Garse to come and save us, and then . . . Our reunion was terribly short-lived, wasn’t it?”
She leaned forward without answering, and cradled her head against her forearm on the top of the instrument panel. Dirk glanced at her and then looked outward again. He was still cold in his thin clothing, but somehow it did not seem important.
They sat quietly in the manta.
Until finally Dirk turned and put a hand on Gwen’s shoulder. “The weapon,” he said in a strangely animated voice. “Jaan said we had a weapon.
“The lasers on the aircar,” Gwen said. “But—”
“No,” Dirk said, suddenly grinning. “No, no, no!”
“What else could he have meant?”
In answer Dirk reached out and turned on the aircar’s lifters, and the gray metal banshee stirred to life and rose slightly from the floor plates. “The car,” he said. “The car itself.”
“The Braiths outside have cars,” she said. “Armed cars.”
“Yes,” Dirk said. “But Jaan and I weren’t talking about the Braiths outside. We were talking about the hunting parties inside, the ones roaming around through the concourse killing people!”
Understanding burst across her face like sunlight. She grinned. “Yes,” she said savagely, and she reached out to her instruments and the manta growled and from somewhere under its hood bright columns of white light fanned out to chase the darkness before them.
While she hovered a half-meter from the floor, Dirk vaulted out over the wings, went to the battered door and used his equally battered shoulder to knock loose a second panel, wide enough to give the aircar exit. Then Gwen moved the manta to him and he climbed in again.
A short time later, they were in the concourse, floating above the boulevard, close to where the overturned balloon-tired car lay. The bright beams of the headlamps swung over the stilled slidewalks and the long-deserted shops to point straight ahead, down the path that would lead around and around and around the tall tower of Challenge until it reached the ground at last.