“Don’t worry, fellow,” Jay assured him. “I want to help.”
“Someone was throwing stones. Drum caught one.”
“Bad catch. He really should use a mitt.”
“How can you joke at a time like this!”
“I don’t see how crying is going to help. You know any first aid?”
“Some. My mother’s a doctor.”
“Then take a look at your buddy. I’ll keep off the weirdos.”
To punctuate his statement, Jay reached up and broke off a branch from the tree and hefted it. Poorly balanced, but it would do for now. The youth dropped to his knees beside his friend, gingerly removed the baseball cap, and did things that Jay did not watch carefully, his attention being reserved for the milling mob.
The tidal flow that governs such things had carried the bulk of the action away from them. Fortunately, they had been on the fringes. Closer to the ziggurat, Jay spotted several unmoving forms. Skimmers, their jets set for the greatest degree of elevation, were bringing officers in body armor and dropping them throughout the area. Red Cross vans followed as soon as the all-clear was given. Of Bel Marduk and his mounts there was no sign.
“Drum is coming round,” the youth said. “Can you help me move him? I don’t think anything’s broken and this isn’t exactly the place to be right now.”
“There’re med-tech vans down there,” Jay suggested.
“I think Drum’ll wait. I can get him better help if I take him to my mother’s clinic. It’s on the other side of town. Will you help me get him to his car?”
“Of course.”
Jay thought of suggesting that they go to the Donnerjack Institute, but he didn’t really know if they were equipped for emergency medicine. Besides, a visit there might entail some awkward explanations.
“What’s your name?” he asked as the older man (who understood what they wanted) threw one arm over Jay’s shoulder so that he could help lift him to his feet.
“Link,” the young man said, grunting a little as they steadied Drum. “Link Crain and this is Desmond Drum. You are?”
“Jason MacDougal,” Jay said, giving the name that was on all his papers, wishing that he had remembered his Scots accent, knowing that it was too late now to start. “Call me ‘Jay.’”
“Jay it is,” Link said.
Conversation was limited as they maneuvered Desmond Drum out of the park and the several blocks to where he had parked his car. Link thumbed open the lock and with Jay’s help set Drum in the passenger seat.
“Thanks for your help,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Let me come with you,” Jay offered. “The streets could get ugly.”
Link hesitated, but a moan from Drum seemed to decide him.
“I’d be much obliged.”
Once they were moving, Link made a quick call to the clinic, announcing that he was safe but that he was bringing Drum in.
“Is there anyone you need to call?” he said, glancing back at Jay. “That riot is going to be on every newsnet.”
“Yeah, I’d better.”
Jay placed a quick call to Milburn, grateful that the android had given him a home number. Milburn promised to notify Paracelsus and Dack that Jay was safe and cautioned him to be careful.
“Spontaneous rioting has been breaking out as the news of what happened in Central Park today spreads. Let me know when you’re done helping your friend and I’ll come and pick you up.”
“Right, Milburn. Thanks.”
Link drove for a while in silence. “Your friends have odd names.”
“Not much odder than Link and Drum.”
“Touche. Where are you from?”
“Scotland.”
“Really? And you came all this way for the service?”
“I’ve been attending services for a while. This promised to be something special so I came. You’re from around here?”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re a reporter?”
“Freelance.”
“And Drum, is he a reporter, too?”
“Sort of, not really. He’s an investigator. We work together sometimes, decided to catch the show together.”
Briefly, Jay wondered if the pair were homosexual. They seemed close, but—even though his knowledge of such things was restricted to the virt—he did not think so. Link’s care for Drum seemed sincere, but not at all romantic.
“Why do you keep looking at the sky, Link?”
“Looking for bulls.”
Jay could think of no answer to that.
They drove for a time in silence, Jay bursting with questions about the riot (none of which he dared ask lest he inadvertently reveal his own isolated upbringing), Link worried about Drum, concentrating on driving the Spinner, and trying to figure out the consequences of the riot for the Church of Elish.
Only Desmond Drum’s thoughts were not racing with a hundred different questions, worries, and conjectures. His attention was wholly centered on the pounding in his head and the queasy sensation in his gut that seemed to portend something ominous. The portents proved correct.
“Pull over,” he grunted, pressing the heel of his hand into his midsection.
Link glanced around the area. In his hurry to get Drum to the clinic, he’d forsaken the freeways (which he rightly suspected would be tied up with traffic related to the Elishite celebration) for a shortcut through the inner city.
“Drum, it may not be safe.”
“Pull over. Don’t want to ruin my upholstery.”
“Drum…”
“Now!”
Link did as he had been told, sliding the Spinner into a mostly vacant parking lot next to a convenience store that—judging from the neons and holocals in the windows—subsisted mostly by selling alcoholic beverages. Drum lurched out of the sedan almost before it stopped, falling to hands and knees among a litter of bottles and broken glass, and retching mightily.
This was another thing Jay had never seen. He’d been sick a few times, but his existence was fairly antiseptic and Dack made certain he got his shots. In the virt spaces he frequented illness was not a popular theme (he had yet to discover the soaps), and none of his companions were human. Getting out of the Spinner, he hovered—half horrified, half fascinated—wondering what he could do to help.
“Jay, stay with Drum,” Link said. “I’m going to run inside and get him something he can rinse his mouth with.”
He lowered his voice and glanced across the parking lot, where a half-dozen people in matching satin jackets were passing around a large, square bottle.
“I’ll hurry. I don’t like the looks of those folks.”
“I can handle them,” Jay assured him.
Link snorted and hurried into the convenience store.
As if his departure had been a signal, the gang began strolling across the parking lot. Their leader bore a passing resemblance to Staggert, another member of Sayjak’s band who had proven that age did not equal infirmity—at least among the People in Virtu. Jay moved to interpose himself between the blue Spinner and the retching Drum.
“Nice car,” said the hulking one, sounding rather like Staggert as well.
“Thanks.”
“Pretty new.”
Jay had no idea if that was true, so he nodded.
“A Spinner. Maybe my friends and I should take it for a spin.”
A rough chuckle went around the group at this sally of wit. The five remaining gang members (three male, two female—all evidently worshipers in the cult of steroids) had ranged themselves behind their boss. One of the women slapped a tire iron into the palm of her hand, but clearly they expected no trouble from him.
“I don’t think so,” Jay replied. “We’ll need it to take my friend to the hospital.”
The spokesman drew himself up in mock indignation.
“Hey, chupling, we were just going to take it for a little drive. We’d bring it back.”