Hal stopped the truck and got creakily out of it. He walked to the closed and locked pipe-metal gates of the fence and stared through it. The lighted window was uncurtained; but the distance was too great to see if anyone was visible behind it. He looked about the gate for some kind of communicator or bell to announce his presence and found none.
As he stood there, there was the sound of a snarling bark and two dark canine forms rushed the other side of the gate, setting up a savage noise at him. He stared. Like horses, dogs were not usually able to reproduce on Harmony, particularly dogs as large as these. A pair like this would be more likely to have been raised from test-tube embryos of Earth stock, imported by spaceship - and their purchase would have represented a very large expense for a business as small and poor as this one looked. He waited. Perhaps the barking would raise the attention of someone inside.
But no one came, and time - his time, limited as his strength was now limited - was going. He considered getting back into the truck and simply driving it through the locked gates. But that would hardly be the way to begin an appeal to the sympathy and help of Athalia McNaughton, if this was indeed her address. Instead, he sat down cross-legged on his side of the gate and began to croon to the two dogs in a soft, quavering falsetto.
The dogs continued to bark savagely - for a while. Then, gradually, intervals came in their clamor; gradually the volume of their barks lessened and became interspersed with whines. Finally, they fell entirely silent.
Hal continued to croon, as if they were not there.
The dogs whimpered more often, moving about uneasily. First one, then the other, sat down on its haunches. After several minutes, one of them raised its muzzle to the still-dark sky and moaned lightly. The moan continued and increased, developing into a full howl. After a second, the other dog also lifted its muzzle and howled softly.
Hal crooned.
The howling of the dogs rose in volume. Shortly, they were matching voices with him, almost harmonizing, seated on their haunches on the other side of the gates. Time went by; and, suddenly, a crack opened in the dark front wall of the building, next to the window, spilling white, actinic light in a fan of illumination out toward the fence. The dogs fell silent.
A dark, trousered figure occulted the brilliant, newly-appeared opening and advanced across the yard toward the gate, carrying a light in one hand and something short and thick in the other. As it got close, the light being carried centered on Hal's face and blinded him. His available vision became one blare of light. It approached and stopped, close enough that he could have grabbed it, if the bars of the gate had not been between him and the approaching individual.
"Who're you?" The voice was a woman's, but deep-toned.
Hal pulled himself slowly and heavily to his feet. On the other side of the fence, the dogs also rose from their sitting positions, approached the gate and stuck black noses between its pipes, licking their jaws selfconsciously with occasional whines.
"Howard Immanuelson," he said, hearing his own voice echo, hoarse and heavy in the darkness, "from the Command of Rukh Tamani."
The light stayed steady on him.
"Name me five people who're with that Command," said the voice. "Five besides Rukh Tamani."
"Jason Rowe, Heidrik Falt, Tallan, Joralmon Troy… Amos Paja."
The light did not move away from his eyes.
"None of these are the Lieutenant of that Command," said the voice. "Name him."
"I'm co-Lieutenant, with Heidrik Falt," said Hal. "Both of us, acting only. James Child-of-God is dead."
For a moment the light held steady. Then it moved away from him to the truck behind him, leaving him lost with expanded pupils in the darkness.
"And this?" The voice came after a moment, unchanged.
"Something I need your help with," Hal said. "The truck has to be gotten rid of. Its load is something else. You see - "
"Never mind." There was a sound of the gate being unlocked. "Bring it in."
He turned around, eyes gradually adjusting to the night, fumbled his way to the cab of the vehicle and into it, up behind its controls. Without turning on its forelights again, he drove through the now-open gates to halt just outside the building. When he got down from the cab again, the two dogs pressed shyly forward against him, their noses sniffing at his pants' legs and crotch.
"Back," said the voice; and the two animals retreated slightly. "Come on inside where I can get a better look at you."
Within, his vision gradually adjusted to the brightly-lit room behind the window that seemed to be half office, half living room - impeccably neat, but somehow without the forbidding, don't-touch quality that often accompanied such neatness. They stood and examined each other. She was mid-thirties, or possibly a good deal older, straight-backed, wide-shouldered, handsomely strong-boned of face, with heavy, wavy hair, cut short and so rich a brown as to be almost black. Under that darkness of hair, her skin was cream-colored, reminding Hal of a face on a cameo ring he had fallen in love with, once, when he had been very young. Her eyes were also brown and wide-set, her mouth wide and thin-lipped. To only a slightly lesser extent - although they were in no way similar otherwise - she had the devastatingly direct gaze Hal had seen in Rukh; but, unlike Rukh, the challenge of her presence was almost entirely physical.
"You're sick," she said, looking at him now. "Sit down."
He looked about, found an overstuffed chair behind him and dropped heavily into it.
"You say James is dead?" She was still standing over him.
He nodded.
"We've had Militia right behind us for nearly a week and a half now," he said, "and there's been some kind of pulmonary disease we've all caught. James got to the point where he couldn't keep up. He insisted on making a rearguard action by himself to give the Command time to change its route. I helped him set up in a position…"
The words Child-of-God had given him to pass on to Rukh and the Command came back to him; and he repeated them now for this woman.
She stood for a moment after he had finished, not saying anything. Her eyes had darkened, although there was no other change in her expression.
"I loved him," she said at last.
"So did Rukh," Hal said.
"Rukh was like his grandchild," she said. "I loved him."
The darkness went from her eyes.
"You're Athalia McNaughton?" he asked.
"Yes." She glanced out the window. "What's in the truck?"
"Bags of fertilizer - and other makings for the explosive Rukh planned to use to sabotage the Core Tap. Can you hide it?"
"Not here," she said, "but I can find a place."
"The truck needs to disappear," he said. "Can you - "
She laughed, dryly. Her laugh, like her voice, was deep-toned.
"That's easier. Its metal can be cut up and sold in pieces. The rest of it can be burned." Her gaze came back to him. "What about you?"
"I've got to get off-planet," he said. "I've got credit vouchers and personal papers - everything that's necessary. I just need someone to tell me how to go about buying passage at the spaceport here."
"Real vouchers? Real papers?"
"Real vouchers. The papers are real, too - they just belonged to someone else, once."
"Let me see them."
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out the long, lengthwise-folded travel wallet with its contents. She took them from his hand almost brusquely and began to go through them.
"Good," she said. "Nothing here to connect you with anyone in Ahruma. No one official's seen these since you left Citadel?"