There was scattered shouting on the street and the clip-clip of boots on cement. Evidently, the soldiers had been off duty, reveling at some private orgy and had turned the corner just after Mayna had gunned down their two friends. Now they would be hunting. No one gunned down a Romaghin soldier on his own world — no one but a Mutie.
“Hurry,” Mayna said, disappearing into the darkness.
They followed, trying to be as quiet as she, not succeeding. The faint echo of their steps was sure to attract the guards. And did.
The walls along the alley glistened wetly as hand torches of low-beam lasers lit up the entranceway they had left, searched slowly, closer, closer, much closer. Tohm felt, as well as saw, the light wash over him for an instant, then flick back and hold.
“Halt!”
There was a louder pounding of feet behind them. Tohm no longer tried to be quiet; he concentrated only on watching the catgirl's feet and matching her speed. She turned abruptly into a side alley. They were moving now into the slum areas of the city where not as many lights burned and the ways between buildings were twisted and crisscrossed into a maze they might be able to put to their advantage. The cobblestones beneath their feet were slimy with garbage tossed out through windows. The laser torch was no longer on them, but the voices were still close behind, several turns away. They turned again. Again.
Mayna pulled to a stop and stood panting. Tohm was surprised and pleased to see that this seemingly indefatigable creature was registering exhaustion. Almost as much as he was.
“Look,” she said, “these alleys to the right all connect with the Avenue of Beggars. The wall between the Avenue of Beggars and the next street isn't high. If we climb it, it is only a block to the alley and the entrance to the hutch.”
“No,” Tohm said flatly.
“What do you mean?” she almost snarled.
“No. All of those alleys do not connect with the Avenue of Beggars. If you want to get there, we go straight ahead, not right. You've lost your sense of direction.”
“You're insane. Follow me.”
He grabbed her shoulder. “Okay, so you hate to be proven wrong — especially by me. But, remember, I have a memorized street map in my head.”
Footsteps and voices were growing louder.
Somewhere an owl moaned as the search disturbed his home…
“Babe, who do you stick with?” she asked, facing the boy-man.
He looked at Tohm, back to her. He was thinking of her fast action and good shot that had saved his life back there. “You, I guess.”
“Hell,” Tohm moaned.
“Either go with us or go on your own.”
“Lead on, lady,” he said.
She turned into a corridor between two buildings that had been roofed over for weather protection. It was pitch-black. They moved carefully but steadily, now and then aware of the soft bodies of rats bumping against their legs in an attempt to get out of their way. There was an odor of sewage and of rotting food scraps. Vapors of animal wastes and the unpleasant perfumes of garbage-suckling plants lay over all, smothering.
When they left that and ran into the next street, they were directly in front of the garrison on Royal Guard Avenue.
“I—” she started to say.
A laser blast smashed into the bricks just above their heads, sent orange powder cascading over their shoulders.
A second blast slightly lower…
“Now will you follow me?” Tohm roared.
That had been a hard way to prove a point, but he was gloating.
Her face showed confusion, the first time he had seen it there, twisting those beautiful features into something approaching agony.
Sssang! A third shot.
Babe screamed.
They turned, saw the black scar across the arm and the blood beginning to bubble out. Babe twisted his face in pain, clutched at the wound.
“This way,” Tohm said, grabbing both of them and turning back into the covered lane. He ran first, Babe between, Mayna bringing up the end. They broke into the alley they had just left seconds before, confronting the guards who had first chased them.
Tohm launched himself at the largest, a muscular man in the red plumes, gold cape, and gray pantaloons of an officer. They crashed into the stone street, the officer's head striking the wall of the building. Mayna turned a second guard's head to mush, whirled and burned the legs from a third, who didn't even have time to scream. Tohm smashed a fist into the officer's face, saw blood, was nauseated and excited at the same moment. His stomach flopped, and for an instant he hesitated as the conservative side of him momentarily dominated the sadistic. The other man took advantage of the lull, heaved, twisted loose, kicked out with a foot that caught Tohm in the chest, tossed him against the wall. Mayna had turned, fanning the beam into the covered alleyway, interfering with any approach from the garrison.
“Oof,” Tohm moaned as the larger man leaped and landed on him. He grunted as the heavy arm of the Romaghin pressed against his throat, cutting the air off, crushing his vocal cords. Only his left arm was free. He brought the edge of that palm down hard against the officer's skull, lowered his aim to the back of the neck, slammed down again, again. His throat was trickling blood on the inside, and his head was looping the loop with wild abandon, his eyes swimming out of focus, in, out, in-out, inoutinoutinout. His karate hand was a separate object. It did not seem to be part of him any longer, but merely a thing. Distantly, he saw it hack at the flesh of his opponent. Smashing. Again. Suddenly there was a crunching noise of cartilage or bone giving way to pressure. For a moment, he was not sure whether it was his own throat or the other man's spine. But the inrush of fresh air and the dead weight upon him told him which. He wriggled loose of the Romaghin, managed to stand, swaying.
“They've stopped trying to come this way,” Mayna said, motioning to the covered alley. “But they'll be hunting new routes.”
“How's your arm?” Tohm asked Babe.
The Mutie gritted his teeth. “Hurts like Hell, but it isn't bleeding much. The burn cauterized the wound, closed up the main gash.”
“Good,” Tohm said, his throat sore, his lungs grasping at the air as if it were gold and they were the hands of Midas. “Now,” he said, turning to Mayna, “follow me.”
They moved straight forward, listening uneasily to the voices of soldiers on both sides as the guards searched the maze of streets and semi-streets, alleys and walkways. Eventually they came to the end of the slum system that the Romaghins so cleverly hid in the heart of the city behind a facade of new buildings and looked out upon the Avenue of the Beggars. It was deserted at this late hour, littered with the paper scraps and food bits that were the remnants of the day, when the poor had clustered there to meet the clergymen who daily distributed alms. Tohm pulled his head back into the gloom.
“One trouble,” he said.
“What?”
“A guard. Halfway up the block. He can survey most of the street. He'll see us before we make the wall.”
“I lost my laser running,” she said. “It's back there somewhere.”
“We won't need it if you're game,” he answered, searching out the green glint of her eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“There is a ledge, much like the one at the prison— only wider — running a dozen feet above his head. If you can climb the wall in here, move around the corner and onto the ledge out there without being seen, you could get above him. Perhaps you could jump, knock him down, confuse him until I can get there without being beamed down. I'll run the moment you jump. I'll try to knock him out.”
She looked around the corner, surveyed the guard and the ledge. It was as he had said. Without comment, she scaled the wall of the alley like a spider spewing her invisible net, her feet finding every crack a good toehold, moving unfailingly ahead. She inched around from the ceiling into the street and held her breath. The guard had not seen her, for his peripheral vision was occupied in the scanning of the street, not the walls. He stood fifty feet away, his rifle across his arms. She gained the ledge and moved silently down, balanced perfectly, her tiny feet like gyroscopes, trembling but always on an even keel.