(Yeah. It's not that.) She held out the pen to him. Fred backed away a
'e' 3 s if afraid he might swallow it again. (Is this radioactive or anything?) N'ta said.
He drifted close to it, bobbed up and down to look at it from several angles. (You mean beta and gamma and those other emissions you have trouble with? No.)
Nita still felt suspicious about the pen. She dug into her backpack for a piece of scrap paper, laid it on her wizards' manual, clicked the point out, and scribbled on the paper. Then she breathed out, perplexed. (Come on, Fred! Look at that!)
He floated down to look. The pen's blue-black ink would normally have been hard to see in that dimness, no matter how white the paper. But the scrawl had a subtle glimmer about it, a luminosity just bright enough to make out. (I don't think it's anything harmful to you,) Fred said. (Are you sure it didn't do that before?)
(Yes!)
(Well, look at it this way. Now you can see what you're writing when it's dark. Surprising you people hadn't come up with something like that al-ready.)
Nita shook her head, put the paper away, and clipped the pen back in her pocket. Kit, finishing the first half of his sandwich, looked over at the scribble with interest. (Comes of being inside Fred, I guess. With him having his own claudication, and all the energy boiling around inside him, you might have expected something like that to happen.) (Yeah, well, I don't like it. The pen was fine the way it was.)
(Considering where it's been,) Kit said, (you're lucky to get it back in the same shape, instead of crushed into a little lump.) He wrapped up the other half of his sandwich and shoved it into his backpack. (Should we go?) (Yeah.)
They got up, checked their surroundings as usual to make sure that no cabs or cars were anywhere close, and started up Madison again, ducking into doorways or between buildings whenever they saw or heard traffic coming.
(No people,) Kit said, as if trying to work it out. (Just things — all dark and ruined — and machines,
all twisted. Alive — but they seem to hate everything-And pigeons—)
(Dogs, too,) Nita said.
(Where?) Kit looked hurriedly around him.
(Check the sidewalk and the gutter. They're here. And remember that nest.) Nita shrugged uneasily, setting her pack higher. (I don't know. Maybe people just can't live here.) (We're here,) Kit said unhappily. (And maybe not for long.)
A sudden grinding sound like tortured metal made them dive for another shadowy doorway close to the corner of Madison and Fiftieth. No traffic was in sight; nothing showed but the glowering eye of the traffic light and the unchanging don't walk signs. The grinding sound came again — metal scraping on concrete, somewhere across Madison, down Fiftieth, to their left. Kit edged a bit forward in the doorway. (What are you—)
(I want to see.) He reached around behind him, taking the antenna in hand.
(But if—)
(If that's something that might chase us later, I at least want a look at it. Fred? Take a peek for us?)
(Right.) Fred sailed ahead of them, keeping low and close to the building walls, his light dimmed to the faintest glimmer. By the lamppost at Madison and Fiftieth he paused, then shot low across the street and down Fiftieth between Madison and Fifth, vanishing past the corner. Nita and Kit waited, sweating.
From around the comer Fred radiated feelings of uncertainty and curiosity. (These are like the other things that run these streets. But these aren't moving. Maybe they were dangerous once. I don't know about now.)
(Come on,) Kit said. He put his head out of the doorway. (It's clear.) With utmost caution they crossed the street and slipped around the cor-ner, flattening to the wall. Here stores and dingy four-story brownstones with long flights of railed stairs lined the street. Halfway down the block, jagged and bizarre in the dimness and the feeble yellow glow of a flickering sodium-vapor street light, was the remains of an accident. One carf a heavy two-
door sedan, lay crumpled against the pole of another nearby street light, its right-hand door ripped away and the whole right side of it laid open. A little distance away, in the middle of the street, lay the car that had hit the sedan, resting on its back and skewed right around so that its front end was pointed at Kit and Nita. It was a sports car of some kind, so dark a brown that it was almost black. Its windshield had been shattered when it overturned, and it.had many other dents and scrapes, some quite deep. From its front right wheelwell jutted a long jagged strip of chrome, part of the other car's fender, now wound into the sports car's wheel.
(I don't get it,) Nita said silently. (If that dark one hit the other, why isn't l*s front all smashed in—)
A>he broke off as with a terrible metallic groan the sports car suddenly
Tocked back and forth, like a turtle on its back trying to right itself. Kit sucked in a long breath and didn't move. The car stopped rocking for a foment, then with another scrape of metal started again, rocking more energetically this time. Each time the side-to-side motion became larger. It °cked partway onto one door, then back the other way and partway onto the
Jler> then back again — and full onto its left-hand door. There it balanced, frecar'°us, for a few long seconds, as if getting its breath. And then twitched, ardf shuddered all the way over, and fell right-side down.
The scream that filled the air as the sports car came down on the fender-tangled right wheel was terrible to hear. Instantly it hunched up the fouled wheel, holding it away from the street, crouching on the three good wheels and shaking with its effort. Nita thought of an old sculpture she had seen once, a wounded lion favoring one forelimb — weary and in pain, but still dangerous. Very slowly, as if approaching a hurt animal and not wanting to alarm it, Kit stepped away from the building and walked out into the street. (Kit!)
(Ssssh,) he said silently. (Don't freak it.) (Are you out of your — j
(Ssssshhh!)
The sports car watched Kit come, not moving. Now that it was right-side up, Nita could get a better idea of its shape. It was actually rather beautiful in its deadly looking way — sleekly swept- back and slung low to the ground. Its curves were battered in places; its once-shining hide was scored and dull. It stared at Kit from hunter's eyes, headlights wide with pain, and breathed shallowly, waiting.
(Lotus Esprit,) Kit said to Nita, not taking his eyes off the car, matching it stare for stare. Nita shook her head anxiously. (Does that mean something? I don't know cars.) (It's a racer. A mean one. What it is here— Look, Nita, there's your answer. Look at the front of it, under the headlights.) He kept moving forward, his hands out in front of him. The Lotus held perfectly still, watch-ing.
Nita looked at the low-sloping grille. (It's all full of oil or something.)
(It's a predator. These other cars, like that sedan — they must be what it hunts. This time its prey hurt the Lotus before it made its kill. Like a tiger getting gored by a bull or something. Ooops!) Kit, eight or ten feet away from the Lotus's grille, took one step too many; it abruptly rolled back away from him a foot or so. Very quietly its engine stuttered to life and settled into a throaty growl.
(Kit, you're—)
(Shut up,) "/won't hurt you," he said in the Speech, aloud. "Let me see to that wheel" The engine-growl got louder — the sound of the Speech seemed to upset the Lotus. It rolled back another couple of feet, getting close to the curb, and glared at Kit. But the glare seemed to have as much fear as threat in it now-