Dying of the Light

Chapter 8

They stood in the shadowed corridor as if paralyzed. Gwen was a dim blue silhouette, her eyes black pits. Her mouth twitched at the corner, reminding Dirk horribly of Bretan and his twitch. "They found us," she said.

"Yes," Dirk said. Both of them were whispering, out of fear that Bretan Braith-like the displaced Voice of Challenge-would hear them if they spoke aloud. Dirk was acutely aware that speakers surrounded him, and ears as well, and maybe eyes-all invisible behind the carpeted walls.

"How?" said Gwen. "They couldn't have. It's impossible."

"They did. It must be possible. But what do we do now? Do I go to them? What's down on the fifty-second sublevel anyway?"

Gwen frowned. "I don't know. Challenge wasn't my city. I know the subsurface levels weren't residential, though."

"Machines," Dirk suggested. "Power. Life support."

"Computers," Gwen added, in a small hollow whisper.

Dirk set down the bags he was carrying. It seemed silly to cling tightly to clothing and possessions at this point. "They killed the Voice," he said.

"Maybe. If it can be killed. I thought it was a whole network of computers, scattered throughout the tower. I don't know. Maybe it was only one large installation."

"In any case they got the central brain, the nerve center, whatever. No more friendly advice from the walls. And Bretan can probably see us right now."

"No," Gwen said.

"Why not? The Voice could."

"Yes, maybe, though I don't think the Voice's sensing devices had to include visual sensors, by any means. I mean, it didn't need them. It had other senses, things humans don't have. That's not the point. The Voice was a supercomputer, built to handle billions of bits of information simultaneously. Bretan can't do that. No human can. Besides, the inputs weren't intended to make sense to him, or to you or to me. Only to the Voice. Even if Bretan is standing where he has access to all of the data the Voice was getting, it will mostly be meaningless gibberish to him, or it will flood by so fast as to be useless. Maybe a trained cyberneticist could make something out of it, though I doubt it. Not Bretan, though. Not unless he knows some secret we don't."

"He knew how to find us," Dirk said. "And he knew where the brain of Challenge was, and how to short-circuit it."

"I don't know how he found us," Gwen replied, "but. it was no great trick to get to the Voice. The lowest sublevel, Dirk! It was just a guess on his part, it had to be. Kavalars build their holdfasts deep into stone, and the lowest level is always the safest, the most secure. That's where they quarter the women, and other holdfast treasures."

Dirk was thoughtful. "Wait a minute. He can't know exactly where we are. Otherwise, why try to get us down to the basement, why threaten to hunt us?"

Gwen nodded.

"If he's in a computer center, though," Dirk continued, "we have to be careful. He might be able to find us."

"Some of the computers must still be functioning," Gwen said, glancing toward the dim blue globe a few meters away. "The city is still alive, more or less."

"Can he ask the Voice where we are? If he brings it back?"

"Maybe, but would it tell him? I don't think so. We're legal residents, unarmed, he's a dangerous intruder violating all the norms of ai-Emerel."

"He? You mean they. Chell is with him. Maybe others as well."

"A party of intruders, then."

"But there can't be more than-what? Twenty? Less? How could they take over a city this size?"

"Ai-Emerel is a world singularly without violence, Dirk. And this is a Festival world. I doubt that Challenge had many defenses. The warders…"

Dirk looked around suddenly. "Yes, warders. The Voice mentioned them. It was sending one for us." He almost expected to see something large and menacing wheel into sight from a cross corridor, as if on cue. But there was nothing. Shadows and cobalt globes and blue silence.

"We can't just stand here," Gwen said. She had stopped whispering. So had he. Both of them realized that if Bretan Braith and his fellows could hear every word they spoke, then they could surely be located in a dozen other ways as well. If so, their case was hopeless. Whispering was a wasted gesture. "The air-car is only two levels away," she said.

"The Braiths might be two levels away too," Dirk replied. "Even if they're not, we have to avoid the air-car. They have to know we've got one, and they'll be expecting us to run for it. Maybe that was why Bretan made his little speech, to flush us out into the air, where we'd be easy prey. His holdfast-brothers are probably out there waiting to laser us down." He paused, thoughtful. "But we can't just stay here, either."

"Not around our own compartment," she said. "The Voice knew where we were, and Bretan Braith might be able to find out. But we have to stay in the city; you're right about that."

"We hide, then," Dirk said. "Where?" Gwen shrugged. "Here, there, and everywhere. It's a big city, as Bretan Braith said."

Gwen quickly knelt and went through her bag, discarding all the cumbersome clothing but retaining her field supplies and sensor pack. Dirk put on the heavy greatcoat that Ruark had given him and abandoned everything else. They walked toward the outer concourse; Gwen was anxious to get as far from their compartment as possible, and neither of them was willing to risk using the tubes.

The lights above the wide concourse boulevard still burned bright and white, and the slidewalks were humming evenly; the corkscrew road seemed to have an independent power supply. "Up or down?" Dirk asked.

Gwen did not seem to hear; she was listening to something else. "Quiet," she said. Her mouth twitched. Above the steady hum of the slidewalks then Dirk heard the other noise, faint but unmistakable. A howl.

It came from the corridor behind them, Dirk was positive of that. It came like a chill breath from out of the warm blue stillness, and it seemed to hang in the air far longer than it should have. Dim, distant shouts followed close on its heels.

There was a short silence. Gwen and Dirk looked at each other and stood very still, listening. The howl came again, louder, more distinct, echoing a bit this time. It was a furious shriek of a howl, long and high pitched.

"Braith hounds," Gwen said, in a voice that was much steadier than it had any right to be.

Dirk remembered the beast he had encountered when he walked through the streets of Larteyn-the horse-sized dog that had snarled at bis approach, the creature with the hairless rat's face and the small red eyes. He looked down the corridor behind them with apprehension, but nothing moved in the cobalt shadows.

The sounds were growing louder, closer.

"Down," Gwen said. "And quickly."

Dirk needed no persuasion. They hurried to the median strip of the concourse, across the width of the silent boulevard, and got onto the first and slowest of the descending slidewalks. Then they began to move in, hopping from belt to belt until they were riding the swiftest of the descenders. Gwen unslung her field supplies and opened the packet, rummaging through the contents while Dirk stood above her, one hand resting on her shoulder, and watched the level numbers slide by, black sentinels mounted above the dusk-dark maws that led off into the interior corridors of Challenge. The numbers flashed past at regular intervals, growing steadily smaller.

They had just passed into the 490s when Gwen stood, holding a palm-sized rod of blue-black metal in her right hand. "Take off your clothes," she said.

"What?"

"Take off your clothes," she repeated. When Dirk only looked at her, she shook her head impatiently and tapped his chest with the point of the rod. "Null-scent," she told him. "Arkin and I use it in the wild. Spray ourselves before going out. It will kill the body scent for about four hours, and hopefully throw the hounds off the trail."

Dirk nodded and began to strip. When he was naked, Gwen made him stand with his legs far apart and his arms raised over his head. She touched one end of the metal rod, and from the other a fine gray mist issued, its soft touch tingling his bare skin. He felt cold and foolish and very vulnerable as she treated him, back and front, head to toe. Then she knelt and sprayed his clothing as well, inside and out, everything except the heavy greatcoat that Arkin had given him, which she carefully set to one side. When she was finished, Dirk dressed again-his clothes were dry and dusty with the ashen powder-while Gwen stripped in turn, and let him spray her.

"What about the coat?" he said while she got back into her clothes. She had treated everything: the sensor pack, the field supplies, her jade-and-silver armlet– everything except Arkin's patched brown greatcoat. Dirk nudged it with the toe of his boot.

Gwen picked it up and tossed it over the guardrail, onto the swiftly moving belt of an ascending slidewalk. They watched as it receded from them, out of sight. "You don't need it," Gwen said when the coat was gone. "Maybe it will lead the pack in the wrong direction. They're certain to have followed us as far as the concourse."

Dirk looked dubious. "Maybe," he said, with a glance at the inner wall. Level 472 came and went. "I think we should get off," he said suddenly. "Get away from the concourse."

Gwen looked at him, questioning.

"You said it yourself," he said. "Whoever is behind us will get at least as far as the concourse. If they've already started down, my coat won't fool them much. They'll see it sailing past, and laugh."

She smiled. "Conceded. But it was worth a try."

"So assume they're corning down after us…"

"We'll have built a good lead by this point," she interrupted. "They'll never get a pack of hounds onto a slidewalk, which means they'll be on foot."

"So? The concourse still isn't safe, Gwen. Look, that can't be Bretan up there, he's down in the sublevels. It probably isn't Chell either, is it?"

"No. A Kavalar hunts with his teyn. They do not split."

"I figured as much. So we've got one pair playing games with the power way below us, another pair at our backs. How many others are after us? Can you answer that?"

"No."

"I'd guess a few, at least; and even if it isn't so, we'd be better off to assume the worst and work from there. If there are other Braiths loose in the city, and if they're in contact with the hunters behind us, the ones above us will tell the others to close off the concourse."

Her eyes narrowed. "Maybe not. Hunting parties seldom work together. Each pair want the kill for themselves. Damn, but I wish I had a weapon!"

Dirk ignored her final comment. "We shouldn't take any chances," he said. Even as he said it, the bright lights above them began to flicker, fading down abruptly into a dun lingering grayness, and simultaneously the slidewalk beneath them jerked and began to slow. Gwen stumbled. Dirk caught her and held her in his arms. The slowest belt stopped first, then the one next to it, and finally the descender they were riding.

Gwen shivered and looked up at him, and Dirk hugged her more tightly, drawing desperately needed reassurance from the warmth and closeness of her body.

Below them-Dirk swore that the sound came from below them, from the direction the slidewalk had been taking them-a shrill scream rang briefly, and not so very far away.

Gwen pulled loose of him. They did not speak. They moved from belt to belt, across the shadowed, empty traffic lanes, toward the passage that led away from the dangerous concourse and into the corridors again. He glanced up at the numbers as they passed from gray dimness into blue: level 468. When the carpets swallowed their footsteps once again, they began to run, moving quickly down the first long corridor, then turning again and yet again, sometimes right and sometimes left, choosing at random the directions they took. They ran until both of them were short of breath, and then they paused and sank into the carpets beneath the light of a dusky bluish globe.

"What was it?" he said at last, when his breath returned to him.

Gwen was still heaving and panting with the effort of their run. They had come a long way. She fought to catch her breath. Silent tears left wet trails down her face in the blue light. "What do you think it was?" she said at last, with an edge in her voice. "That was a mockman, screaming."

Dirk opened his mouth and tasted salt. He touched the wetness on his own cheeks then, and wondered how long he had been crying. "More Braiths, then," he said.

"Below us," she said. "And they've found a victim. Damn, damn, damn! We led them here, we're to blame. How could we have been so stupid? Jaan was always afraid they would start to hunt the cities." – "They started yesterday," Dirk said, "with the Blackwiner jelly children. It was only a matter of time until they came here. Don't get all…"

She turned her face up to his, her features tight with anger, her cheeks streaked by tears. "What?" she spat. "You don't think we're responsible? Who else, then? Bretan Braith followed you, Dirk. Why did we come here? We could have gone to Twelfth Dream, to Musquel, to Esvoch. Empty cities. No one would have gotten hurt. Now the Emereli will be– How many residents did the Voice say were left?"

"I don't remember. Four hundred, I think. Something like that." He tried to put his arm around her and pull her to him, but she shrugged it off and glared at him.

"It's our fault," she said. "We have to do something."

"All we can do is try to stay alive," he told her. "They're after us too, remember? We can't worry about the others."

Gwen was staring at him, her face hard with– what?-perhaps contempt, Dirk thought. The look startled him.

"I don't believe what you're saying," she said. "Can't you think of anyone besides yourself? Damn it, Dirk, we've got the null-scent going for us, if nothing else. The Emereli, they've got nothing at all. No weapons, no protection. They're mockmen, game, that's all. We've got to do something!"

"What? Commit suicide? Is that what? You didn't want me to go against Bretan this morning, in the duel, but now you-"

"Yes! Now we have to. You wouldn't have talked this way back on Avalon," she said, her voice rising until it was almost a shout. "You were different then. Jaan wouldn't…"

She stopped, suddenly aware of her words, and looked away from him. Then she began to sob. Dirk sat very still.

"So that's it," he said after a time. His voice was quiet. "Jaan wouldn't think of himself, right? Jaan would play the hero."

Gwen looked at him again. "He would, you know."

He nodded. "He would. Maybe I would have, once. Maybe you're right. Maybe I've changed. I don't know anything anymore." He felt sick and weary and defeated then, and very shamed. His thoughts went back and forth and round and round. They were both right, he kept thinking. They had brought the Braiths down on Challenge, on hundreds of innocent victims. The guilt was theirs; Gwen was right. And yet, he was right, too, they could do nothing now, nothing. If that was selfish, it was no less true.

Gwen was crying openly. He reached for her once more, and this time she let him hold her and try to comfort her with his hands. But all the while, as he stroked her long black hair and fought to hold back bis own tears, he knew that it was no good, that it changed nothing. The Braiths were hunting, killing-and he could not stop them. He could hardly save himself. He was not the old Dirk after all, the Dirk of Avalon, no. And the woman in his arms was not Jenny. Both of them were only prey.

Then suddenly it came to him. "Yes," he said loudly.

Gwen looked at him, and Dirk got unsteadily to his feet, pulling her up after him.

"Dirk?" she said.

"We can do something," he said, and he led her to the door of the nearest compartment. It opened easily. Dirk went to the viewscreen by the bed. The room lights were all out; the only illumination was the long rectangle of faded blue that fell from the open doorway. Gwen stood in the frame, uncertain, a bleak dark silhouette.

Dirk turned on the screen, hoping (he could do nothing else), and it lit under his hands, and he breathed easier. He turned to Gwen.

"What are you going to do?" she asked him.

"Tell me your home call number," he said.

She understood. Slowly she nodded, and she told him the numbers, and he punched them out, one by one, and waited. The throbbing call signal brightened the room. When it dissolved, the patterns of light reshaped themselves into the strong-jawed features of Jaan Vikary.

No one spoke. Gwen came forward to stand behind Dirk, one hand up on his shoulder. Vikary looked at them in silence, and Dirk was afraid for a long moment that he would blank the screen and leave them to their fate.

He did not. He said to Dirk, "You were a holdfast-brother. I trusted you." Then his eyes shifted to Gwen. "And you I loved."

"Jaan," she said, quick and soft, in a voice so much a whisper that Dirk doubted that Vikary could hear. Then she broke and turned and walked swiftly from the room.

Still Vikary did not close out the connection. "You are in Challenge, I see. Why have you called, t'Larien? You know what we must do, my teyn and I?"

"I know," Dirk said. "I risk it. I had to tell you. The Braiths have followed us. Somehow, I don't know how, we never thought we would be traced. But they are here. Bretan Braith Lantry has knocked out the city computer, and seems to control much of the remaining power. The others-they have hunting packs here. They are in the corridors."

"I understand," Vikary said. Emotion-unreadable, strange-flickered across his face. "The residents?"

Dirk nodded. "Will you come?"

Vikary smiled very faintly, and there was no joy in it. "You ask my help, Dirk t'Larien?" He shook his head. "No, I should not jape, it is not you who asks, not for yourself. I understand that. For the others, the Emereli, yes, Garse and I will come. We will bring our beacons, and those such as we find before the hunters we shall make korariel of Ironjade. Yet it will take time, too long perhaps. Many will die. Yesterday, at the City in the Starless Pool, a creature called a Mother died a sudden death. The jelly children– Do you know of the Blackwiner jelly children, t'Larien?"

"Yes. I know enough."

"They burst forth from their Mother to find another, and discovered none. During the decades they have lived inside their vast host, others of their world had caught the creature and brought it to Worlorn from the World of the Blackwine Ocean, and lastly abandoned it. There is scant love lost between the jelly children and other Blackwiners not of the cult. So they stumbled forth, a hundred of them or more, overrunning their city, filling it with a sudden life, knowing nothing of where they were or why. Most were old, quite old. In panic, they began to wake their dead city, so Roseph high-Braith found them. I did what I could do, protected some. The Braiths found many others, because it took time. It will be the same in Challenge. Those that take to the corridors and run, those will be hunted down and slain, long before my teyn and I can help. Do you understand?"

Dirk nodded.

"It is not enough to call me," Vikary said. "You must act yourself. Bretan Braith Lantry wants you badly, you and no other. He may even allow you to duel. The others want only to hunt you, as a mock-man, but even they value you high above any other prey. Come into the open, t'Larien, and they will come after you. For the Emereli hiding around you, the time will be important."

"I see," Dirk said. "You want Gwen and me…"

Vikary flinched visibly. "No, not Gwen."

"Me, then. You want me to draw attention to myself? Without a weapon?"

"You have a weapon," Vikary said. "You stole it yourself, giving insult to Ironjade. Whether you choose to use it or not is a decision that only you can make. I will not trust you to make the correct choice. I trusted you once. I simply tell you. One other thing, t'Larien. Whatever you do, or do not do, it changes nothing between you and me. This call changes nothing. You know what we must do."

"You said that," Dirk replied.

"I say it a second time. I want you to remember." Vikary frowned. "And now I will go. It is a long flight to Challenge, a long cold flight."

The screen went dark before Dirk could frame an answer.

Gwen was waiting just outside the door, leaning up against the carpeted wall, her face in her hands. She straightened when Dirk came out. "Are they coming?" she asked.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry I… left. I couldn't face him."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does."

"No," he said sharply. His stomach ached. He kept imagining far-off screams. "It doesn't. You made it clear before-how you feel."

"Did I?" She laughed. "If you know how I feel, you know more than me, Dirk."

"Gwen, I don't– No, listen, it doesn't matter.

You were right. We have to… Jaan said we have a weapon."

She frowned. "He did? Does he think I took my dart gun? Or what?"

"No, I don't think so. He only said that we have a weapon, that we stole it ourselves and insulted Iron-jade."

She closed her eyes. "What?" she said. "Of course." Her eyes opened again. "The aircar. It's armed with lasercannon. That has to be what he meant. They aren't charged. I don't even think they're connected. That was the aircar I used most of the time, and Garse…"

"I understand. But you think the lasers can be fixed? Made to work?"

"Maybe. I don't know. But what else could Jaan have meant?"

"The Braiths may have found the car, of course," Dirk said. His voice was cool and even. "We'll have to take that chance. Hiding-we can't hide, they'll find us. Bretan may be on his way right now, if my transmission to Larteyn registered anywhere down below. No, we double back to the aircar. They won't expect that, if they know we were headed down along the concourse."

"The aircar is fifty-two levels above us," Gwen pointed out. "How do we get to it? If Bretan has as much control over the power as we think he does, he has surely killed the tubes. He stopped the slidewalks."

"He knew we were using the slidewalks," Dirk said. "Or at least that we were on the concourse. The ones tracking us told him. They are in contact, Gwen. The Braiths. They have to be, the belts stopped too conveniently. But that makes it easy."

"Easy? What?"

"For us to draw attention to ourselves," he said. "For us to get them after us, to save the goddamned Emereli. That's what Jaan wants us to do. Isn't that what you want us to do?" His voice was sharp.

Gwen paled slightly. "Well," she said. "Yes."

"Then you win. We're going to do it."

She looked thoughtful. "The tubes, then? If they are still working?"

"We couldn't trust the tubes," Dirk said. "Even if they were working. Bretan might stop them while we were inside one."

"I don't know of any stairs," she said. "And we'd never find them without the Voice even if they do exist. We could walk up the concourse, but…"

"We know of at least two Braith hunting parties roaming the concourse. There are probably more. No."

"What then?"

"What's left?" He frowned. "The centershaft."

Dirk leaned forward across the wrought-iron railing, looked up and then down, and grew dizzy. The center-shaft seemed to go on forever in both directions. It was only two kilometers from top to bottom, he knew, but everything about it gave the feeling of all but infinite distance. The rising currents of warm air that gave buoyancy to the feather-light floaters also filled the echoing shaft with a gray-white mist, and the balconies that lined the circumference-level on level on level -were all identical, giving the illusion of unending repetition.

Gwen had taken something from her sensor pack, a palm-sized silvery metallic instrument. She stood next to Dirk by the railing and tossed it lightly out into the shaft. Both of them watched it travel, spinning over and over, winking at them with reflected light. It sailed halfway across the diameter of the great cylinder before it began to fall-slowly, gently, half supported by the rising air, a mote of metal dust dancing in the artificial sunlight. They watched it for a eon before it vanished in the gray gulf below them. "Well," Gwen said after it was lost to sight, "the gravity grid is still on."

"Yes. Bretan doesn't know the city. Not well enough." Dirk glanced up again. "I guess we should get started. Who goes first?"

"After you," she said.

Dirk opened the balcony gate and retreated to the wall. He brushed a tangle of hair out of his eyes impatiently, shrugged, and ran forward, kicking as hard as he could when his boot touched the edge.

The leap took him out and up and up. For one wild moment it was like falling, and Dirk's stomach wrenched, but then he looked and saw and felt, and it was not like falling at all, it was flying, soaring. He laughed aloud, suddenly giddy, and he brought his arms in front of him and swept them back in powerful strokes, swimming higher and faster. The rows of empty balconies went by: one level, two, five. Sooner or later he would begin to drop, a slow curving descent into gray-shrouded distance, but he would scarcely have time to fall far. The other side of the centershaft was only thirty meters off, an easy jump against the paperclip chains of the shaft's trace gravity.

Finally the curving wall grew near, and he bounced off one black iron railing, spinning out and tumbling upward absurdly before he reached and caught a post of the balcony just above the one he'd hit. It was easy to pull himself in. He'd come clear across the center-shaft, and eleven levels up. Smiling and strangely elated, he sat and gathered strength for a second leap while he watched Gwen come after him. She flew like some graceful impossible bird, her black hair shimmering behind her as she soared. She also outjumped him by two levels.

By the time he reached the 520th level, Dirk was bruised in a half-dozen places where he'd banged up against the iron railings, but he felt almost good. At the end of his sixth dizzy leap across the plunging shaft he was half reluctant to pull himself onto the target balcony and return to normal gravity. But he did. Gwen was already there waiting for him, her sensor pack and field supplies strapped to her back between the shoulder blades. She gave him a hand and helped pull him over the railing.

They went out into the broad corridor that circled the centershaft, into the now-familiar blue shadows.

Globes shone dimly at junctions on either side of them, where long straight passages led away from the city's core like spokes on some great wheel. At random they chose one and began to walk swiftly toward the perimeter. It was a longer walk than Dirk would have thought possible, past numerous other intersections (he lost count at forty) each like the others, past black doors that differed only in their numbering. Neither he nor Gwen spoke. The good feeling that he had touched briefly, the joy of wingless flight, dropped from him as suddenly as it had come while he walked through the murky dimness. In its place, a faint tinge of fear. His ears conjured up phantoms to worry him, far-off howl-ings and the soft footfalls of pursuers; his eyes made the more distant light globes into something strange and terrible, and found shapes in the cobalt corners where only darkness lay. But they encountered nothing, no one; it was only his mind playing tricks on him.

Yet the Braiths had been here. Close to the perimeter of Challenge, where the cross corridor met the outer concourse, they found one of the balloon-tired vehicles that the Voice used to carry guests back and forth. It was empty and overturned, lying half on the blue carpet and half on the clean cold plastic that floored the concourse proper. When they reached it, they stopped, and Gwen's eyes met Dirk's in wordless comment. The balloon-tired cars, he recalled shortly, had no controls for their passengers; the Voice drove them directly. And here one lay, on its side, without power or motion. He noticed something else as well. Near one rear wheel the blue carpet was damp and smelly.

"Come," Gwen whispered, and they started out across the silent concourse, hoping that the Braiths who had been here were gone out of earshot. The airlot and their car were very close now; it would be cruel irony if they did not reach them. But it seemed to Dirk that their steps echoed horribly loud on the un-carpeted surface of the boulevard; surely the whole building could hear them, even Bretan Braith in the deep cellars kilometers below. When they reached the pedestrian walkway that bridged the median strip of unmoving slidewalks, the two of them began to run. He was not sure who started, Gwen or himself. One instant they were walking side by side, trying to move as quickly as possible with as little noise as they could; then suddenly they were running.

Beyond the concourse-uncarpeted corridor, two turns, a wide door that seemed reluctant to open. Finally Dirk smashed his bruised shoulder against it, and he and it both groaned in protest, but the door gave way, and they stood again on the airlot of Challenge's 520th level.

The night was cold and dark. They could hear Worlorn's eternal wind whining against the Emereli tower, and a single bright star burned in the long low rectangle that framed the outworld sky. Inside, the airlot itself was just as black.

No lights went on when they entered.

But the aircar was still there, hunched in the darkness like a living thing, like the banshee it was intended to resemble, and no Braiths stood guarding it.

They went to it. Gwen took off her sensor pack and field supplies and put them in the back seat, where the sky-scoots still lay. Dirk stood and watched her, shivering as he did so; Ruark's greatcoat was gone, and the air was frigid tonight.

Gwen touched a control on the instrument panel, and a dark crack opened in the center of the manta's hood. Metal panels swung back and up, and the guts of the Kavalar machine were before them. She came around front and turned on a light built into the underside of one of the hood panels. The other panel, Dirk saw, was lined with metal tools in clips.

Gwen stood in a small pool of yellow light studying the intricate machinery. Dirk went to her side.

Finally she shook her head. "No," she said in a tired voice. "It won't work."

"We can draw power from the gravity grid," Dirk suggested. "You have the tools." He pointed.

"I don't know enough," she said. "A little, yes. I hoped I'd be able to figure… you know. I can't. It's more than just a matter of power. The wing lasers aren't even connected. They might as well be ornaments for all the good they're going to do us." She looked at Dirk. "I don't suppose you…?"

"No," he said.

She nodded. "We have no weapon, then."

Dirk stood and glanced out past the manta, toward Worlorn's empty sky. "We could fly out of here."

Gwen reached out and caught the hood panels, one in each hand, and brought them down and together again, and once more the dark banshee was whole and fierce. Her voice was toneless. "No. Remember what you said. The Braiths will be outside. Their cars will be armed. We wouldn't have a chance. No." She walked around Dirk and got into the aircar.

After a time he followed her. He sat twisted about in his seat, so that he faced the lonely star in the cold night sky. He was conscious of being very tired, and he knew it was more than physical. Since coming to Challenge, his emotions had washed over him like waves over a beach, one after another, but suddenly it seemed as though the ocean had gone. There were no waves left at all.

"I suppose you were right before, in the corridor," he said in a thoughtful, introspective voice. He was not looking at Gwen.

"Right?" she said.

"About being selfish. About… you know… about not being a white knight."

"A white knight?"

"Like Jaan. I was never a white knight, maybe, but back on Avalon I liked to think I was. I believed in things. Now I can hardly even remember what they were. Except for you, Jenny. You I remembered. That was why… well, you understand. The last seven years, I've done things, nothing terrible, you know, but still things that I might not have done on Avalon. Cynical things, selfish things. But until now I'd never gotten anyone killed."

"Don't flog yourself, Dirk," she said. Her voice was weary too. "It's not attractive."

"I want to do something," Dirk said. "I have to. I can't just… you know. You were right."

"We can't do anything, except run and die, and that won't help at all. We have no weapon."

Dirk laughed bitterly. "So we wait for Jaan and Garse to come and save us, and then… Our reunion was terribly short-lived, wasn't it?"

She leaned forward without answering, and cradled her head against her forearm on the top on the instrument panel. Dirk glanced at her and then looked outward again. He was still cold in his thin clothing, but somehow it did not seem important.

They sat quietly in the manta.

Until finally Dirk turned and put a hand on Gwen's shoulder. "The weapon," he said in a strangely animated voice. "Jaan said we had a weapon."

"The lasers on the aircar," Gwen said. "But-"

"No," Dirk said, suddenly grinning. "No, no, no!"

"What else could he have meant?"

In answer Dirk reached out and turned on the air-car's lifters, and the gray metal banshee stirred to life and rose slightly from the floor plates. "The car," he said. "The car itself."

"The Braiths outside have cars," she said. "Armed cars."

"Yes," Dirk said. "But Jaan and I weren't talking about the Braiths outside. We were talking about the hunting parties inside, the ones roaming around through the concourse killing people!"

Understanding burst across her face like sunlight. She grinned. "Yes," she said savagely, and she reached out to her instruments and the manta growled and from somewhere under its hood bright columns of white light fanned out to chase the darkness before them.

While she hovered a half-meter from the floor, Dirk vaulted out over the wings, went to the battered door and used his equally battered shoulder to knock loose a second panel, wide enough to give the aircar exit. Then Gwen moved the manta to him and he climbed in again.

A short time later, they were in the concourse, floating above the boulevard, close to where the overturned balloon-tired car lay. The bright beams of the headlamps swung over the stilled slidewalks and the long-deserted shops to point straight ahead, down the path that would lead around and around and around the tall tower of Challenge until it reached the ground at last.

"You realize," Gwen said before they started, "that we're in the up lane. Descending traffic is supposed to stay on the other side of the median." She pointed.

"This is prohibited, no doubt, by the norms of ai-Emerel." Dirk smiled. "But I don't think the Voice will mind."

Gwen gave him a fault smile back, touched her instruments, and the manta beneath them leaped forward with a rush and gathered speed. Then for a long time they made their own wind as they swept through the gray gloom, faster and faster, Gwen pale and tight-lipped at the controls, Dirk beside her idly watching the level numbers as corridor after corridor flicked by.

They heard the Braiths a long time before they saw them-the howling again, the wild baying shrieks unlike any canine that Dirk had ever heard before, made even wilder by the echoes that raced up and down the concourse in their wake. When he first heard the pack, Dirk reached out and snapped off the aircar's lights.

Gwen looked at him, questioning.

"We don't make much noise," he said. "They'll never hear us over the howls and their own shouts. But they might see the light coming up behind them. Right?"

"Right," she said. Nothing more. She was intent on the aircar. Dirk watched her in the pale gray light that

remained to them. Her eyes were jade again, hard arid polished, as angry as Garse Janacek's could sometimes be. She had her gun at last, and the Kavalar hunters were somewhere ahead.

Close to level 497 they passed an area littered with scraps of torn cloth that fluttered and stirred in the wash of their descent. One piece, bigger than the others, scarcely moved from where it lay in the middle of the boulevard. The remains of a brown patchwork greatcoat, ripped to shreds.

Ahead, the howling came stronger and louder.

A smile passed briefly across Gwen's lips. Dirk saw it, and wondered, and remembered his gentle Jenny of Avalon.

Then they saw the figures, small black shapes on the shadowed concourse, shapes that swelled rapidly into men and dogs as the manta swept forward toward them. Five of the great hounds were loping down the boulevard freely, close on the heels of a sixth, larger than any of them, that strained at the ends of two heavy black chains. Two men were on the far ends of the chains, stumbling behind the pack as the massive leader pulled them along.

They grew. How fast they grew!

The hounds heard the aircar coming first. The leader fought to turn, and one of the chains whipped loose from the hands of a hunter. Three of the free-roaming pack hounds spun, snarling, and a fourth began bounding back up the concourse toward the fast-descending car. The men briefly seemed confused. One was tangled in the chain he was holding when the lead dog reversed directions. The other, empty-handed, began to reach for something at his hip.

Gwen turned on the lights. In the semi-darkness, the manta's eyes were blinding.

The aircar ripped into them.

Impressions rolled over Dirk one after another. A lingering howl turned abruptly into a squeal of pain; impact made the manta shudder. Savage red eyes gleaming horridly close, a rat's face and yellow teeth wet with slaver, then impact again, another shudder, a snap. More impacts, sickening fleshy sounds, one, two, three. A scream, a very human scream, then there was a man outlined in the wash of the headlamps. It took them an hour to reach him, it seemed. He was a large square man, no one that Dirk knew, dressed in thick pants and jacket of chameleon cloth that seemed to change color as they neared. His hands were up in front of his eyes, one clutching a useless dueling laser, and Dirk could see the sheen of metal peeking from beneath the man's sleeve. White hair fell to his shoulders.

Then, suddenly, after an eternity of frozen motion, he was gone. The manta shuddered once again. Dirk shook with it.

Ahead was gray emptiness, the long curving boulevard.

Behind-Dirk turned to look-a hound was chasing after them, dragging two chains noisily as it ran. But it dwindled smaller and smaller as he watched. Dark shapes littered the cold plastic street. No sooner had he started to count them than they were gone. A pulse of light flamed briefly overhead, coming nowhere near them.

Shortly he and Gwen were alone again, and there was no sound except the rushing whisper of their descent. Her face was very still. Her hands were steady. His were not. "I think we killed him," he said.

"Yes," she replied. "We did. Some of the hounds as well." She was quiet for a while. Then she said, "His name, as I recall, was Teraan Braith something."

Both of them were quiet. Gwen turned off the headlamps once more.

"What are you doing?" Dirk said.

"There are more ahead of us," she said. "Remember the scream we heard."

"Yes." He thought for a time. "Can the car take any more collisions?"

She smiled faintly. "Ah," she said. "The Kavalar code duello has several aerial modes. Arrears are often chosen as weapons. They are strongly built. This car is constructed to withstand laser fires as long as possible. The armor– Need I go on?"

"No." He paused. "Gwen."

"Yes?"

"Don't kill any more of them."

She glanced at him. "They're hunting the Emereli," she said, "and whoever else is unlucky enough to be left inside of Challenge. They would gladly hunt us."

"Still," he said. "We can draw them off, win some time for the others. Jaan will get here soon. No one need be killed."

She sighed and her hands moved and she slowed the aircar. "Dirk," she started to say. Then she saw something and brought them to a near halt, so they hovered and slid forward slowly. "Here," she said, "look." She pointed.

The light was so dim, it was hard to make things out clearly, until they came closer, and then-a carcass of some sort, or what remained of one. In the center of the concourse, still and bloody. Chunks of meat scattered around it. Dried dark blood on the plastic.

"That has got to be the victim we heard earlier," Gwen explained in conversational tones. "Mockman hunters don't eat their kill, you know. In one breath, they say the creatures aren't human, only some sort of semi-sentient animals, and they believe it too. Yet the stench of cannibalism is too strong, even for them, so they don't dare. Even in the oldest days, on High Kavalaan during the dark centuries, the holdfast hunters never ate the flesh of the mockmen they ran down. They would leave that, for the gods, for the carrion moths, for the sand beetles. After they had given their hounds a taste, of course, as a reward. The hunters do take trophies, however. The head. You see the torso there? Show me the head."

Dirk felt sick.

"The skin too," Gwen continued. "They carry flaying knives. Or they did. Remember, mockman hunting has been banned on High Kavalaan for generations.

Even the highbond council of Braith has ruled against it. Such kills as the remaining hunters made were surreptitious. They have to hide their trophies, except maybe from each other. Here, though, well, let me just say that Jaan expects the Braiths to remain on Worlorn for as long as they can. He has told me there is talk of renouncing Braith, of bringing their betheyns from the homeworld's holdfasts, and forming a new coalition here, a gathering that will bring back all the old ways, all the dead and dying ugliness. For a time, a year or two or ten, as long as the Toberian stratoshield can gather in the warmth. Lorimaar high-Larteyn, and the like, with no one to restrain them." "It would be insane!"

"Perhaps. That won't stop them. If Jaantony and Garse were to leave tomorrow, it would be done. The presence of Ironjade deters them. They fear that if they and the other Braith traditionalists moved here in force, then the progressive faction of Ironjade would also send men in force. There would be nothing to hunt then, and they and their children would face a short, hard life on a dying world, without even the pleasures they covet, the joys of high hunt. No." She shrugged. "But there are trophy rooms in Larteyn even now. Lorimaar alone boasts five heads, and it is said he has two jackets of 'mockman' skin. He doesn't wear them. Jaan would kill him."

She threw the aircar forward again, and once more they began to build up speed.

"Now," she said, "do you still want me to swerve aside the next time some of them come up? Now that you know what they are?"

He did not answer.

A very short time later the noises began once more below them, the drawn-out howls and the shouts, echoing down the otherwise empty concourse. They passed another overturned vehicle, its fat soft tires deflated and torn, and Gwen had to turn to pass around it. A little later there was a dead hulk of black metal blocking their descent, a massive robot with four tensed arms frozen in grotesque postures above its head. The upper part of its torso was a dark cylinder studded with glass eyes; the lower part was a base the size of an aircar, on treads. "A warder," Gwen said as they went by the quiet mechanical corpse, and Dirk saw that the hands had been sheared off each of its arms in turn, and that the body was riddled with fused laser holes.

"Was it fighting them?" he asked.

"Probably," she answered. "Which means that the Voice is still alive, still controls some functions. Maybe that's why we haven't heard anything further from Bretan Braith. It could be that they're having trouble down there. The Voice would naturally mass its warders to protect the city's life functions." She shrugged. "But it doesn't matter. The Emereli don't hold with violence. The warders are instruments of restraint. They fire sleep-darts, and I think they can emit tear gas from those grills in their base. The Braiths will win. Always."

Behind them the robot was already gone, and the concourse was empty once more. The noises ahead grew very loud.

This time Dirk said nothing when Gwen bore down upon them and turned on her lights, and the screams and the impacts piled one upon the other. She got both of the Braith hunters, although afterwards she said she was not so sure the second one was dead. He'd been hit a glancing blow that spun him to one side, into one of his own hounds.

And Dirk could find no voice at all, because as the man went stumbling and spinning off their right wing he lost his grip on the thing he had been carrying, and it flew through the air and smashed against the window of a shop, leaving a bloody path on the glass when it slid down to the floor. He had been holding it, Dirk noted, by the hair.

The corkscrew road went around and around the tower that was Challenge, sinking slowly and steadily. It took more time than Dirk could have imagined to sink from level 388-where they surprised the second party of Braiths-to level one. A long flight in gray silence.

They encountered no one else, neither Kavalar nor Emereli.

On level 120 a solitary warder blocked their way, turning all its dim eyes on them and commanding them to halt in the voice-still even and cordial-of the Voice of Challenge. But Gwen did not slow, and when she neared, the warder rolled off out of her way, firing no darts and emitting no gas. Its echoing commands chased them down the concourse.

On level fifty-seven the dim lights above them flickered and went out, and for an instant they flew in total darkness. Then Gwen turned on the headlamps and slackened her speed just a bit. Neither of them spoke, but Dirk thought of Bretan Braith and wondered briefly whether the lights had failed or had been turned off. The latter, he guessed; a survivor above had finally called his holdfast-brothers below.

On level one the concourse ended in a great mall and traffic circle. They could see very little of it; only where the beams of the headlamps touched did shapes leap startlingly out of the ocean of pitch that surrounded them. The center of the mall seemed to be a tree of sorts. Dirk caught glimpses of a massive gnarled trunk, a virtual wall of wood, and they could hear leaves rustling above them. The road curved around the great tree and met itself. Gwen followed it, all around the wide circle.

On the far side of the tree a wide gateway stood open to the night and Dirk felt the touch of wind on his face and realized why the leaves had been rustling. As they swept past the gateway, staying on the circle, he looked out. Beyond the gate a white ribbon of road led away from Challenge.

And an aircar was moving low over the road, quickly, toward the city. Toward them. Dirk glimpsed it only for an instant. It was dark-but everything was dark in the meager outworld starlight-and metallic, some misshapen Kavalar beast he could not even begin to identify.

It was not the Ironjades, of that he was sure.