“That’s OK. Keep it." Horza jumped off the guard’s shoulders. The giant shrugged as Horza ran, swerving and ducking to get
past people,
toward where he had seen Kraiklyn.
He had his terminal fastened to his left cuff; the time was minus two and a half hours. Horza squeezed and shoved and excused
and
apologized his way through the crowd, and on his way saw many people squinting at watches, terminals and screens, heard
many little
synthesized voices squawk the hour, and nervous humans repeat it.
There was the queue. It looked surprisingly orderly, Horza thought, then he noticed that it was being supervised by the same
security guards
who had been inside the arena. Kraiklyn was near the front of the queue now, and a bus had almost finished
filling up. Road cars and hovers
waited behind it. Kraiklyn pointed at one of them as a security guard with a notescreen talked
to him.
Horza looked at the row of waiting people and guessed there must be several hundreds of them in it. If he were to join it
he would lose
Kraiklyn. He looked around quickly, wondering what other way there might be of following.
Somebody crashed into him from behind, and Horza turned round to the noise of shouting and voices and a press of brightly
dressed
people. A masked woman in a tight silver dress was shouting and screaming at a small, puzzled-looking man with long
hair, clad only in
intricate loops of dark green string. The woman shouted incoherently at the small man and struck out at
him with her open hands; he backed off,
shaking his head. People watched. Horza checked that he hadn’t had anything stolen
when he was bumped into, then looked round again for
some transport, or a taxi tout.
An aircraft flew overhead noisily and dropped leaflets written in a language Horza didn’t understand.
“… Sarble," a transparent-skinned man said to a companion as they both squeezed out of the nearby crowd and went past Horza.
The man
was trying to look at a small terminal screen as he walked. Horza caught a glimpse of something which puzzled him.
He turned his own terminal
onto the appropriate channel.
He was watching what looked like the same incident he had seen for real in the auditorium a few hours earlier: the disturbance
on the
terrace above his own when he’d heard that Sarble the Eye had been caught by the security guards. Horza frowned and
brought the screen on
his cuff closer.
It
was
that same place, it
was
that incident, seen from almost exactly the same angle and apparent distance he’d watched it from. He
grimaced at the screen,
trying to imagine where the picture he was watching now could have been taken from. The scene ended and was
replaced by candid
shots of various eccentric-looking beings enjoying themselves in the auditorium, as the Damage game went on somewhere
in the
background.
…
If I’ d stood up,
Horza thought,
and moved over just a
—
It was the woman.
The woman with the white hair he’d seen early on, standing in the highest part of the arena, fiddling with a tiara: she’d
been on that same
terrace, been standing by his lounger when the incident on the terrace above took place. She was Sarble
the Eye. Probably the tiara was the
camera and the person on the higher terrace was a decoy, a plant.
Horza snapped off the screen. He smiled, then shook his head as though to dislodge the small, useless revelation from the
center of his
attention. He had to find some transport.
He started walking quickly through the crowd, threading his way through people in groups and lines and queues, looking for
a free vehicle,
an open door, a tout’s eyes. He caught a glimpse of the queue Kraiklyn was in. The
CAT
’s commander was at the open door of a red road car,
apparently arguing with its driver and two other people in the queue.
Horza felt sick. He started to sweat; he wanted to kick out, to throw all the people crowding around him out of his path,
away from him. He
doubled back. He would have to risk trying to bribe his way into Kraiklyn’s queue at the front. He was five
meters away from the queue when
Kraiklyn and the two other people stopped arguing and got into the taxi, which drove off.
As he turned his head to watch it go past, his stomach
sinking, his fists clenching, Horza saw the white-haired woman again.
She wore a hooded blue cloak, but the hood fell back as she squeezed
out of the crowd to the edge of the road, where a tall
man put his arm round her shoulders and waved into the plaza. She pulled the hood up
again.
Horza put his hand into his pocket and onto the gun, then went forward toward the couple—just as a sleek, matte-black hover
hissed out of
the darkness and stopped beside them. Horza stepped forward quickly as the hover’s side door winged open and
the woman who was Sarble
the Eye stooped to enter.
Horza reached out and tapped the woman on the shoulder. She whirled round to face him. The tall man started toward him, and
Horza
shoved his hand forward and up in his pocket, so that the gun pressed out. The man stopped, looking down, uncertain;
the woman froze, one
foot on the door’s sill.
“I think you’re going my way," Horza said quickly. “I know who you are." He nodded at the woman. “I know about that thing
you had on your
head. All I want is a lift to the port. That’s all. No fuss." He gestured with his head in the direction of
the security guards at the head of the main
queue.
The woman looked at the tall man, then at Horza. She stepped back slowly. “OK. After you."
“No, you first." Horza motioned with the hand in his pocket. The woman smiled, shrugged and got in, followed by the tall man
and Horza.
“What’s
he
—." began the driver, a fierce-looking bald woman.
“A guest," Sarble told her. “Just drive."
The hover rose. “Straight ahead," Horza said. “Fast as you like. I’m looking for a red-colored wheeled car." He took the gun
out of his pocket
and pivoted round so that he faced Sarble the Eye and the tall man. The hover accelerated.
“I
told
you they put that ’cast out too soon," the tall man hissed in a hoarse high voice. Sarble shrugged. Horza smiled, glancing
occasionally
out of the window at the traffic around the cab, but watching the other two people from the corner of his eye.
“Just bad luck," Sarble said. “I kept bumping into this guy inside the place, too."
“You really are Sarble, then." Horza said to the woman. She didn’t look round and didn’t reply.
“Look," the man said, turning to Horza, “we’ll take you to the port, if that’s where this red car’s going, but just don’t
try anything. We’ll fight if
we have to. I’m not afraid to die." The tall man sounded frightened and angry at the same time;
his yellow-white face looked like a child’s, about
to cry.
“You’ve convinced me." Horza grinned. “Now, why not watch out for the red car. Three wheels, four doors, driver, three people
in the back.
Can’t miss it."
The tall man bit his lip. Horza motioned him to look forward, with a small movement of the gun.
“That it." the bald-headed driver said. Horza saw the car she meant. It looked right.
“Yes. Follow it; not too close." The hover dropped back a little.
They entered the port area. Cranes and gantries were lit in the distance; parked road vehicles, hovers and even light shuttles
lay scattered
on either side of the road. The car was just ahead now, following a couple of struggling hover buses up a shallow
ramp. Their own hover’s
engine labored as they climbed.
The red car branched off the main route and followed a long curve of roadway, water glittering darkly on either side.