Glory Lane

  A chunk of lobster—maybe—went flying past her. She didn’t even bother to duck. Might have mussed her hair.

  Neither Kerwin nor Seeth had time to observe this unique phenomenon because the two of them were now rolling across the floor in the company of numerous individual components of their dinner. A few alien patrons looked on with casual interest, but soon returned to their own meals.

  The only ones who expressed more than a passing con­cern were three very short insectoids. Save for the obvious intelligence in their faces and postures, they might have been giant aphids escaped from some barnstorming entomological carnival. They wore identical, intricately woven capes of black and purple material, which rose to form high collars behind their heads and served to conceal most of their bulbous, pear-shaped bodies. Moving gracefully on four hind legs apiece, they approached the dinner table recently abandoned by Seeth and Kerwin Ransom.

  Kerwin extracted himself from Seeth’s grasp and nod­ded at the alien trio. “Look, dummo. People even shorter than you are.” Seeth responded by trying to flatten his older brother’s nose.

  Actually, they’d been so closely entwined that next to no damage had been done.

  One of the aphid-things turned to another and buzzed. The other two buzzed back, gesturing with their antennae instead of their hands. As the brothers were about to resume their sibling altercation, the aphids calmly picked Izmir off the floor and ran like mad for the restaurant egress.

  Miranda rose. “Hey, they’re trying to swipe Izmir!”

  The two men separated, eyed each other warily. “So what’s it to us?” Seeth was carefully rearranging his bike chain.

  Kerwin headed hesitantly for the exit. “Come on. You heard what Rail said. We’re supposed to guard him with our lives.”

  “Guard him with your life, clown.” He brushed food from his Mohawk.

  “We can’t let strangers take Izmir like that. He’s as helpless as a puppy.” Miranda rushed past Kerwin and out onto the street in pursuit of the kidnappers. Or were they thieves? It all depended on what Izmir was.

  “Can you believe that, man?” Seeth shook his head. “Dumb squeeze.”

  Kerwin couldn’t reply because he was being verbally assailed by the proprietors of the restaurant. His translator kept up with their rapid-fire speech easily. Not that transla­tion was necessary. Someone was going to pay for the mess they’d made. They had Kerwin up against a wall and were berating him unmercifully. Several of their accusa­tions didn’t translate at all.

  Being marooned on Alvin without female companion­ship, however indifferent it might be, was worse than chasing after Izmir. Seeth tossed a couple of pieces of plastic ruler at the restaurant’s owners. This appeared to placate them instantly. Then he and Kerwin lit out after the would-be homecoming queen.

  They found her staring over a flimsy-looking rail that encircled a bottomless pit. Kerwin drew back from the abyss, sucking in his breath. Flickering lights marked the descending levels of the city. It was like staring down into a vertical infinity mirror.

  “Far out,” said Seeth.

  Miranda pointed. “They went over that way.”

  They followed her around the pit until the rail ended, whereupon she jumped out into nothingness. Another dropshoot, Kerwin noted nervously as she began to de­scend, only this one had no walls.

  “Time waits for nobody, man.” Seeth jumped in after her.

  No time to think, anyway, Kerwin told himself. He closed his eyes and stepped over the brink.

  8

  Falling rapidly, but not accelerating, Kerwin opened his eyes, promptly closed them again. His body told him everything was under control but his mind saw him smash­ing noisily against a solid surface far below, blood and guts flying, bone shattering. A hand wrapped around his and he opened his eyes again to see Miranda smiling confi­dently at him. She gave his fingers a slight squeeze, then drifted away with swimming motions.

  They slowed and exited the shaft thirty levels below the one that had grown almost familiar. In aspect and atmosphere this one was very different from the one they’d left. There was trash lying in the street and the storefronts looked considerably seedier than those above. Miranda pointed.

  “I saw them stop and go that way when they left the shoot.” They followed her up the street. Sure enough, three squat figures could be glimpsed trundling a fourth shape between them. Izmir’s abductors were not fleet of foot despite the fact that each possessed an additional pair.

  “How can they run at all with such short legs?” Kerwin said, panting as they pursued.

  “Hey, lay off the short jokes.” Seeth was having a difficult time keeping up with Miranda, who seemed to flow effortlessly across the pavement.

  As they drew closer they could hear the aphids buzzing among themselves. As Kerwin wondered if they knew they were being followed, one of them turned, pulled some­thing from inside its cape, and leveled it at the three humans. Seeth grabbed Kerwin with one hand and gave Miranda a shove with the other. Together they tumbled to the street behind a pyramidal tower that might have been a restroom or trashcan. Something that sounded like a berserk dragonfly slammed into the other side of the tower, making it ring like an out-of-tune church bell.

  Seeth rolled, looked up the street. “Right, let’s go. Bastards.”

  As they scrambled to their feet and rushed around the tower, Kerwin saw that the opposite side had been blown open. Twisted metal groped at air.

  “How’d you know that was a gun?”

  “C’mon, brother. Use your pinhead. What do you think somebody you were chasing would point at you? A feather duster?”

  They were starting to run out of breath. A sharp pain was running up Kerwin’s side (he’d drunk too much at dinner), and even Miranda was starting to slow. But they’d closed the distance between themselves and Izmir’s cap­tors, who weren’t possessed of inexhaustible energy either.

  Two of them held onto the apparently unperturbable and indifferent Astarach. They were huddled in front of an abandoned storefront that dominated the end of a cul-de-sac. Save for the presence of one feeble streetlight set in the roof overhead, they might all have been on some isolated moon.

  Seeth slowed, stopped, still breathing hard. “Right. That’s our property. Turn him loose or we’re gonna take your little bug heads off, comprende?”

  “Hey, wait a minute.” Kerwin was looking around anxiously. “Where’s the third one?”

  A high-pitched buzz brought his head around and an­swered the question at the same time. The third member of the insectoid trio appeared from behind the concealing bulk of a transformer housing. He was pointing what looked like a pen and pencil set that had been fused together. He was aiming it at Kerwin’s stomach, which began trying to shrink into a small, hard ball.

  “Darn.” Miranda looked down at herself. “These just aren’t the right clothes to be buried in.”

  “Maybe we can reason this out.” Kerwin extended both arms, palms exposed, and took a step toward the armed aphid. “Look, we really don’t know what’s going on here. We’re strangers, we don’t want to get involved, and if we could just sit down and talk maybe we could...”

  Somebody hit him in the head with a hammer. He felt himself falling, accompanied by Miranda’s scream. It wasn’t loud, but he nevertheless found it personally as well as perversely gratifying that the first real emotional reaction they’d extracted from her came about as a result of his being shot.

  Distantly, he was aware of additional explosive sounds, muted and faint. Seeth yelling. A crackling in the air. Miranda screaming far away. His consciousness was rap­idly fading.

  At least, he mused, I get to die on a full stomach, even if I don’t know what my stomach’s full of.

  It didn’t seem that he was out of it for very long. He found himself staring up at familiar faces—Seeth, close by, looking almost concerned, and Miranda, for a change looking relieved instead of merely bored. Surprisingly, there was also a third face—a green o
ne full of whorls and swirls that seemed to wriggle as he stared at them. As his vision cleared, they slowed down and finally stopped.

  Arthwit Rail straightened to look at Seeth. “Well, your friend is alive.”

  “Lucky,” Seeth responded. “Damn lucky. Always been damn lucky. He’s smart, but he ain’t got the common sense of a turnip.”

  “I heard that.” Kerwin was delighted to discover that his voice functioned.

  Seeth glanced down at him. “Good. Means your ears work. As for your mouth, I never worried about that failing. Sit up, dimwit.”

  Kerwin complied, put a hand to his forehead. “What happened?”

  “What do you think happened, man? You got shot.”

  “I thought I got dead.”

  “Just grazed you,” said Rail. “I am not sure graze is the proper right word. The shell the Falarian fired at you exploded prematurely. You were knocked down by the concussion. The shell was intended to explode once it had penetrated your skull, but the Falarians are not renowned for the precision of their manufactures.”

  Kerwin rose shakily to his feet. The cul-de-sac was gone. They were at an outdoor cafe in a gloomy, grimy, rundown area. Everyone sat down at the empty table nearby. A few other aliens were enjoying the dubious delights of this establishment. They didn’t look nearly as prosperous as those who strolled the streets thirty levels above. One or two glanced casually in his direction before looking away.

  “What about the Foliar—Falarians?” His head still hurt.

  “Fertilizer now,” said Rail calmly. He sipped some­thing from a tall, narrow-mouthed vessel.

  Seeth’s eyes were shining. “Rail here got two of ‘em and I busted up the third myself.” He made a face. “Got green goo all over me.”

  Rail shook his head. “You primitive primates and your propensity for violence.”

  “Our propensity? Don’t play the high and mucky with me, greenface,” said Seeth. “You fried two of ‘em and I don’t see you moaning and wailing.”

  “It was necessary, not desirous. Why did you leave the hotel? I agonized for some time while I searched you out.”

  “We didn’t leave.” Kerwin gently supported his head in both hands as he leaned over the table. He felt sick. “They kicked us out. We—we kinda overdid the shop­ping, I think.”

  “I warned you about that. Still, you should not have been summarily ejected.”

  “Why not?” He looked up. “The manager said no Arthwit Rail was registered in the hotel.”

  “Did you expect that I could so openly declare myself in a public place? Alvin is alive with Oomemians and their agents, all intent solely on locating myself and Izmir.”

  “Izmir.” Kerwin’s eyes opened wide. “Hey, where is Izmir?”

  “Oh, I’m sitting on him.” Miranda moved slightly. A blue eye winked at Kerwin. “I think he likes the chair shape.” She settled back down. “Kind of tickles.”

  Seeth was about to say something, but Kerwin threw him a warning look and for once his younger brother kept quiet. Rail was still talking.

  “I didn’t think you could have gone far, not being familiar with this world, but you had progressed farther than I believed possible. You have apparently managed to cope quite well.”

  “Yeah, my brother’s the resourceful type,” Kerwin told him.

  Seeth looked surprised and pleased. “Scavenging’s one of the highest art forms of human civilization. What about those bugs? Why were they trying to swipe Izmir?”

  “The Falarians are prime allies of the Oomemians. I think, though, that they meant to keep him for themselves instead of notifying their friends. Otherwise we would have been captured by now.”

  “Great allies.”

  “There will be others.” Rail sighed. “Clearly the word is out that we are about. I had hoped for more time.”

  “They must really want that chair. I mean, Izmir.”

  “I told you as much.” Rail took another sip of his drink. “I am glad I was able to find you again.”

  “Yeah, us too. So why don’t we skip this scrapheap and dally elsewhere?”

  “I wish it were that simple. Unfortunately, the Oome­mians have located my ship and placed it under surveil­lance. I was extremely fortunate to discover this before revisiting the vessel. We dare not even return to the port. If we tried to leave by that means they would have us in an instant. And now we are responsible for the deaths of three Falarians. They will have their own reasons for wanting to find us.”

  Seeth made a face and wiped his palms on his sleeves. “Hope they don’t. I don’t think I’ll ever get all that goo off.”

  “You do not comprehend the seriousness of the situation. With deaths involved, the Alvinian police will be dragged into this.”

  “Are they Oomemian allies too?” Kerwin asked him.

  “No, no. As I said, Nedsplen is rigorously neutral. Her inhabitants have no love for either us or the Oomemians. The police will look for us when they discover that a crime has been committed.”

  “How do the Nedsplenites view human beings?” Seeth inquired.

  “With massive indifference, I should think. As primi­tive visitors you would not be worthy of attention were you not in my company.”

  “That’s just what I thought, man.” He looked over at Kerwin. “So why don’t we dump this guy? Maybe if we go to the papers or somebody, they’ll get the Oomemians to lay off us.”

  “How would we get home?” Miranda wondered.

  “Are you kidding, sweetcakes? You saw the bread we made in a few hours. We could probably find ourselves a full-time gig, maybe in some major club.” He began snapping his fingers. “Make some real money. Buy our­selves tickets home, or rent an interplanetary limo, or something.”

  “No thanks,” said Kerwin. “The novelty of our music might wear off fast. I wouldn’t want to chance being stuck here. So we have to stick with Rail until he can get us home.”

  “I am grateful for the thought.” Rail looked apologetic. “I know you have no reason to help me, or even to like me. I have caused you nothing but trouble difficulty thus far.”

  “You can say that again, man,” griped Seeth.

  “I have caused you nothing but trouble difficulty thus far. But if you will continue to help me I can promise you that when we reach Prufillia you will be richly rewarded by my government, and that transportation will be pro­vided to return you to your own world.”

  Seeth considered. “I’d rather play music than get shot at by people who look like something the exterminators found in my Aunt Heida’s basement.”

  “You’re liable to get shot anyway,” Kerwin reminded him. “Remember how the Oomemians work?”

  “Yeah, there’s that. I don’t like it, but—okay. We’ll hang around a while longer.”

  “Thank you, thank you!” Rail’s gratitude was as genu­ine as it was effusive. “You will not regret this.”

  “I’m regretting it already, Jack, but like brother-mother says, we don’t have a whole lot of options. So, what do we do now, if we can’t hang around here and we can’t get to your ship?”

  “We must find another means of leaving Nedsplen. I have contacts here.” He eyed them unsurely, as if ponder­ing how best to continue. “In fact, the only ones who can help us now are the human beings.”

  Kerwin’s reaction was anticipated. “Wait a second. We’re human beings.”

  “No. I mean the real human beings.” Rail looked uncomfortable.

  “I am a real human being!”

  Seeth smiled easily. “That’s debatable.” Kerwin glared at him as Rail strove to explain.

  “You do not understand. You will. I probably shouldn’t be doing this: giving away the secrets of the ages is frowned upon by the general judiciary. However, we don’t have much choice, since these people are about the only ones on Nedsplen I can trust.” He pushed back his chair and rose. “Come.”

  “Where we going?”

  “Down.”

  Kerwin leaned b
ack as they passed beneath a low-slung ventilation shaft, found himself staring up at a hundred subterranean levels of city. A few droplets of moisture from the evening’s preprogrammed precipitation still clung to black metal and slick plastic, dangling precariously like jewels loose in their settings. Everything smelled of damp metal and machine oil. Like a Mexican bar.

  “You mean there’s more ‘down’?”

  “Oh yes, a great deal more,” Rail assured him. “Alvin is quite a substantial city even by galactic standards, though it is of course by no means the largest.”

  “Of course.” Kerwin saw they were heading for a different dropshoot. “Which is the biggest?”

  “I am not certain. It’s hard to keep up with such things, you know. I would say that Hatanga on what used to be Youseekia is the largest.”

  “Why do you say ‘on what used to be’?”

  “Because it’s all Hatanga now. You can’t find any of the original Youseekia. It’s all been built over. The city covers the entire planet, except for what’s left of the oceans. The city’s built out into the continental shelves, everywhere. That’s where the power plants are located. They use the heat from the planet’s core. Have to. You can’t run a planet-wide city on batteries, you know. Alvin’s impressive, but Hatanga’s an old place while Nedsplen’s comparatively new. That’s why the city isn’t any larger than it is. Ah, here we are. Be so good as to follow me closely. I wouldn’t want to lose any of you to an intersect­ing horizontal transportation shaft. There are a lot more of those down here than up above. You know how to use one of these?”

  “Sure,” said Seeth. “You step off into nothing, close your eyes, put your head between your legs and...”

  “Give us a break, Seeth.” Kerwin requested tiredly.

  “Why? You know, I get the feeling that the deeper you go into the city the more profanity is appreciated. What do you say, Arthwit old sod? You like a good dirty joke now and then.”