The Hound pulled her away and shook her. “It isn’t ended yet,” she said.
The ship’s AI had come awake, and had dispatched the same monster that she had encountered once before. Slinky-Chinky, she had called it, for it moved fluidly with the sound of brass coins falling onto a plate.
“Lucy!” she said sharply to the weeping girl. “We must get to my ship. Time afterward for weeping, if there is time for anything at all. There’s his dazer. Hand it to me.”
“Your ship is wrecked, Mother. And how can we find our way to the shuttle I came in?”
“Fash it, girl! I can find my ship, whether she can fly or no. And you can have your shuttle meet us there. Nothing is lost until all is lost, and that time is not yet.” The Hound unfastened a pocket and pulled out a flat instrument. “This way.”
Méarana brushed her hand against the Fudir’s cheek. “Good-bye, Father…,” she said.
Bridget ban scowled and slapped the slack face of the man on the deck. It rocked to the side, and the bright red of her palm glowed on his skin. “That is for all the years since!”
“Mother! Why did you do that?”
“Because he can’t feel it now.” She stared at the palmprint. “Come, take his left side. He’s a used-up old man. He can’t be all that heavy.”
Méarana and Bridget ban lifted Donovan to his feet and wrapped his arms around their shoulders. The head lolled on Bridget ban’s shoulder and she shrugged it off onto her daughter.
“Is he…?”
“Enough to show red when he’s slapped. That is a feat few dead men master. Run in step with me. Slinky-Chinky will come along the catwalks. If we stay atop the tanks, it cannae reach us. But when we cross the space from one block to another, it will have a shot. And remember, the catwalks run in three directions.”
“I’m not afraid to die, Mother, if I’m at your side.”
The Hound laughed. “And terrified at any other time? It’s nae death ye risk, bairn. It will stun ye and stuff ye like sausage into one of yon pods. I will shoot you myself before I allow that to happen.”
Méarana did not have her harp with her, but her voice was true and she sang a running song while she and her mother loped across the tops of the sleep tanks, holding Donovan between them. She maintained an easy gait, holding his arm around her neck with her left, and holding the belt of his coveralls with her right, lifting his feet slightly above the ground. She did not know how long she and Mother could carry him; but she did not know how long she could not carry him, either.
They stopped to rest and catch their breath, and listened to the metallic sounds of their pursuer draw ever closer. Bridget ban had set her beacon to respond with sharper pings as they drew nearer to where her field office lay. Méarana contacted Franq and told him where to rendezvous.
“Not a beat too soon,” Number Two said. “Wrathrock is bad hurt, but we secured the shuttle and we are now outside the ship. What are those things?”
“Proctors,” Méarana told him. “The ship is delusional. Her internal clock is disrupted; her sensors scrambled. She thinks we are wakened sleepers—and you are boarders.”
“Can’t gainsay her on that account,” said the officer. “We are a boarding party.”
As they resumed their flight, Donovan began to run on his own. It was a peculiar and intensely focused sort of running and when Méarana and Bridget ban let go, he jogged ahead for a few steps, then turned and awaited direction.
“Is that you, Brute?” the harper asked; and the man nodded dumbly.
“Did Silky revive you? She’s got all the glands, right?” Again a nod.
“Are the others okay?”
The Brute placed his hand about three feet off the ground, palm flat and level to the ground. Then he spread his hands and shrugged.
“Inner Child is awake, but you don’t know about the others?” Another nod.
“Another day,” said Bridget ban just before leading them off again, “if there is another day, you will have to explain that, if there is an explanation.”
They had reached the edge of yet another block when the Brute paused, crouched, and held his hand up. Bridget ban went to her knees in an instant; Méarana, a moment later. The metallic jingling had waxed and around the corner of the catwalk came a monster.
It was a machine, like the Attendant and the Proctor, but unlike any machine Méarana had seen before. A centipede of metal hoops, each self-powered, yet all marching forward in rough uniformity. The lead ring bore the seeming of a face. Partly that was the spotlight eyes and the grill where a mouth might be; partly too, the fringe of antennae and sensors that so resembled a bristling mane.
As it passed each intersection, rings scattered clattering and clinging down the four intersecting catwalks—left, right, up, and down. At the same time, other rings, scattered at the previous intersection, rejoined the main body. The whole seemed in a continual state of dissolution, on the verge always of breaking apart, and yet, despite the comings and goings of its constituent rings, maintaining its identity.
Bridget ban consulted her beacon. “This way,” she whispered, pointing forward and to the right. “Yon beastie does nae yet stand’ tween us and my ship.”
Méarana tugged the Brute on the sleeve, held a finger to her lips, and pointed. The Brute nodded and slipped off in silence.
“Will the rest of him e’er come back?” Bridget ban murmured.
“That may depend on how the umbra affected the cortex. Had the muzzle twisted the other way…” The harper shivered. “Did you see the way he looked at you?”
“I had a dog that used to look at me that way,” Bridget ban answered.
“When did you ever have a dog? What happened to him?”
“He went rabid and I shot him.”
It was a mad race in three dimensions. They stayed atop the pod blocks, but in places the extensible bridge connecting one block to the next failed, and they slipped down to the regular catwalks. Without Bridget ban’s locator beacon they would quickly have gotten lost.
It was while on the catwalks that one of Slinky-Chinky’s scouts found them. It rounded the corner just ahead of them and instantly, lights began to flash on its circumference and the sounds of activity came from below. Through the gaps in the catwalks they saw the main snake two levels below them turn abruptly and head up the next intersection.
The Brute meanwhile had taken his dazer, which Bridget ban had restored to him, and fired at anything that might have been a brain-case on the ring that had found them. The ring went dark, and the three of them retreated around the corner and scrambled like monkeys atop the tanks. There, they lay prone underneath the maintenance track, in the V where the cylinders nestled together.
In less than a minute the sound of clinking rings was all around them, as segments ran up and down the catwalks, joining and splitting and rejoining. It’s as if the tanks themselves are invisible to them, Méarana thought. A flaw in their instructions? A malfunction from age or from damage? Not my department?
Finally, the sounds of pursuit faded into another sector, and they crawled from under the maintenance track and raced for the vestibule. There, they paused to activate their helmets before cycling through the air lock.
Orienting themselves on Bridget ban’s locator, they quickly made their way through an open landing bay to the hull and Bridget ban’s wrecked field office. There, they called for the Blankets and Beads’ shuttle.