“Max,” Jim said hoarsely. “They’ve gone for the subways of the city. A red force is coming this way.”
Pol sank down with a shake of his head and a deep-voiced curse.
Jim tucked his arms about his knees and wished to go to that null place that had always been there, that he saw some of the guard-azi attain, waiting orders. He could not find it now. Tape-thoughts ran and cycled endlessly, questions open and without neat answers.
He stared at Max and at the Kontrin, at the Kontrin most of all, for in those dark and angry eyes was a mutual understanding. It became quieter finally, that glance, as if some recognition passed between them.
“If you’ve her mind-set,” Pol said, “use it. We’re sitting in the most dangerous place in the city.”
He looked into the dark and answered out of that mindset, consciously. “The hive,” he said, “is safety.”
Pol’s retort was short and bitter.
iv
Itavvy rose and walked to the door, walked back again and looked at his wife Velin as the infant squirmed and fretted in her arms, taxing her strength. One of the Upcoast women offered a diversion, an attempt to distract the child from her tears. Meris screamed in exhausted misery…hunger. The azi outside the glass, with their guns, their faceless sameness, maintained their watch.
“I’ll ask again,” Itavvy said.
“Don’t,” Velin pleaded.
“They don’t have anger. It isn’t in them. There are ways to reason past them. I’ve dealt—” He stopped, remembered his identity as Merck Sod, who knew little of azi, swallowed convulsively.
“Let me.” The gangling young Upcoaster who had spent his time in the corner, sketch-pad on his knee, left his work lying and went to the door, rapped on it.
The azi ignored it. The young artist pushed the door open; rifles immediately lowered at him. “The child’s sick,” the youth said. “She needs milk. Food. Something.”
The azi stood with their guns aimed at him…confused, Itavvy thought, in an access of tension. Presented with crisis. Well-done.
“If you’d call the kitchens,” the artist said, “someone would bring food up.”
Meris kept crying. The azi hesitated. unnerved, swung the rifle in that direction. Itavvy’s heart jumped.
Azi can’t understand, he realised. No children. No tears.
He edged between, facing the rifle. “Please,” he said to the masked face. “She’ll be quiet if she’s fed.”
The azi moved, lifted the rifle, closed the door forcefully. Itavvy shut his eyes, swallowed hard at nausea. The young artist turned, seta hand on his shoulder.
“Sit down,” the youth said. “Sit down, ser. Try to quiet her.”
He did so. Meris exhausted herself, fell whimpering into sleep. Velin lifted bruised eyes and held her fast.
Then, finally, an azi in ISPAK uniform brought a tray to the door, handed it in, under guard.
Drink, sandwiches, dried fruit. Meris fretted and ceased, given the comfort of a full belly. Itavvy sat and ate because it was something to do.
The identity of Merek Sed would collapse. They were being detained because someone was running checks. Perhaps it had already been proven false. They would die.
Meris too. The azi had no feeling of difference.
He dropped his head into his hands and wept.
v
The truck laboured, ground up the slope from the riverbed, picking up dry road in the headlights. Raen threw it to idle at the crest, let what men had gotten off climb on again, the truck pinking on its suspension as it accepted its burden. She read the fuel gauge and the odometer, cast a look at Merry, who opened the door to look out on his side. “They’re all aboard,” he said.
“Then go back to sleep.” She said it for him and the two azi crowded in between them, and eased the truck forward, walking it over ruts that jolted it insanely and wrenched at her sore arms. A thousand kilometres. That was one thing on the map, and quite another as Istrans built roads. The track was only as wide as the truck. The headlights showed ruts and stones, man-high grass on either side of the road, obscuring all view.
A nightmare shape danced. into the lights before them, left again: Warrior stayed with them, but the jolting on this stretch was such that it chose to go on its own feet.
By the map, this was the only road. They were on the last of their fuel, that which they had brought in containers, having used the stored power and both main and reserve tanks. They might nurse a kilometre back out of batteries after the fuel ran out. Cab light went on. Merry was checking the map again, counting with his fingers and making obvious conclusions.
“It’s six hundred to go,” Raen said, “and it pulls too much. We’re loaded way beyond limits and we’re not going to do it.”
“Map shows good road past the depot.”
“Easier walking, then.” Raen looked to the side as a black body hit the door, scraped and scrambled its way to the roof of the truck. Warrior had decided to ride again. Six hundred kilometres more: easy on a good road with an unburdened truck. As exhausted men would walk it…days.
“Could be fuel there,” Merry offered.
“One hopes. If we get that far.”
“I’ll drive again, sera.”
“We’ll change over at the depot. Rest.”
Merry turned the light out. He did not seem to sleep, but he said nothing, and in him, in the two with them—likely in all those men in the rear—there was evident that familiar blankness. They lost themselves in that, and perhaps found refuge.
She had no such. There was a stitch in her back which had been growing worse over the hours, and fighting the steering aggravated it; the right shoulder ached, until finally she chose to let the right hand rest in her lap, however much that tired the left. The jolt of the crash, she reckoned. Pain was something she had long since learned to ignore. A stoppered bottle sat beside her; she moved the right hand to it, flipped the cap with her thumb, took a drink of water, capped it again. It helped keep her awake. She worked a bit of dried fruit from her pocket, bit off a little and sucked at that: the sugar helped too.
The road worsened again, after a little smoothness; she applied both hands for the while, relaxed again when it passed. Imagination constructed a picture of the men in the back, jammed in so that some must constantly stand, or lie on others, whose muscles must cramp and joints stiffen, all jolted cruelly with every hole she could not avoid and every lean and lurch of the turns.
Figures flicked past on the odometer, a red pulse far too slow. The fuel registered lower and lower, most gone now out of the last filling.
Then the road smoothed out on a fiat high enough to see no flooding. She kicked them up to a better pace, and Merry came out of his trance and shifted position, causing the other two men to do the same.
“Should be coming up on the depot,” she said.
Merry leaned to take a look at the fuel and said nothing.
There was a scraping overhead. A spiny limb extended itself over the windshield. Warrior slid partially down, and Raen swore at that, for they had no margin for delays. It gaped at the glass, insisting on her attention, and at the realisation it was urgent her heart began to beat the faster.
She let off the accelerator, coasted, rolled down the window lefthanded. Warrior scrambled off when they slowed enough, paced them, the while the headlights picked out only dusty ruts and high weeds.
“Others,” Warrior breathed. “Hear? Hear?”
She could not. She braked, threw the engine to idle, quieter.
“Many,” Warrior said. “All around us.”
“The depot,” Merry said hoarsely. “They’ve got it.” Raen nodded, a sinking feeling in her stomach.
“Get the men out,” she said. “They’d better limber up, be ready for it, be ready to dive back in on an instant. Third thorax ring, centre; or top collar-ring, if they don’t know. Make sure they understand where it counts.”