“
Are
you really Sarble." Horza asked the white-haired woman, who still didn’t turn to him. “Was that you earlier, outside the
hall. Or not. Is
Sarble really lots of people."
The people in the car said nothing. Horza just smiled, watching them carefully, but nodding and smiling to himself. There
was silence in the
hover, only the wind roaring.
The car left the roadway and angled down a fenced boulevard past huge gantries and the lit masses of towering machinery, then
sped
along a road lined on both sides with dark warehouses. It started to slow by the side of a small dock.
“Pull back," Horza said. The bald-headed woman slowed the hover as the red car cruised by the dockside, under the square cages
of crane
legs.
The red car drew up by a brightly lit building. A pattern of lights revolving round the top of the construction spelled out
“SUB-BASE
ACCESS 54" in several languages.
“Fine. Stop," Horza said. The hover stopped, sinking on its skirts. “Thanks." Horza got out, still facing the man and the
white-haired woman.
“You’re just lucky you didn’t try anything," the man said angrily, nodding sharply, his eyes glistening.
“I know," Horza said. “Bye now," he winked at the white-haired woman. She turned and made what he suspected was an obscene
gesture
with one finger. The hover rose, blasted forward, then skidded round and roared off the way it had come. Horza looked
back at the sub-plate
shaft entrance, where the three people who had got out of the car stood silhouetted against the light
inside. One of them might have looked
back down the dock toward Horza; he wasn’t sure they did, but he shrank back into the
shadows of the crane above him.
Two of the people at the access tube went into the building and disappeared. The third person, who might have been Kraiklyn,
walked off
toward the side of the dock.
Horza pocketed the gun again and hurried on, underneath another crane.
A roaring noise like the one that Sarble’s hover had made when it drew away from him—but much louder and deeper—came from
inside
the dock.
Lights and spray filled the sea-end of the dock as a huge air-cushion vehicle, similar in principle to but vastly bigger than
the hover Horza
had commandeered, swept in from the expanse of black ocean. Lit by starlight, by the glow of the Orbital’s
daylight side arcing overhead and
by the craft’s own lights, the billows of spray kicked up into the air with a milky luminescence.
The big machine lumbered between the walls of
the dock, its engines shrieking. Beyond it, out to sea, Horza could see another
couple of clouds, also lit from inside by flashing lights. Fireworks
burst from the leading craft as it came slowly up the
dock. Horza could make out an expanse of windows, and what appeared to be people
dancing inside. He looked back down the dockside;
the man he was following was mounting the steps to a footbridge which crossed high over
the dock. Horza ran quietly, ducking
behind the legs of cranes and leaping over lengths of thick hawsers. The lights of the hover flashed on the
dark superstructure
of the cranes; the scream of the jets and impellers echoed between concrete walls.
As though pointing out the comparative crudity of the scene, a small craft—dark, and silent but for the tearing noise its
passage made
through the atmosphere—rushed overhead, zooming and disappearing into the night sky, specking once against the
loop of the Orbital’s
daytime surface. Horza gave it a glance, then watched the figure on the small bridge, lit by the flashing
lights of the hover still making its
lumbering way up the dock underneath. The second craft was just swinging into position
outside the dock to follow it.
Horza came to the steps leading to the walkway of the narrow suspension bridge. The man, who walked like Kraiklyn and wore
a gray
cloak, was about halfway across. Horza couldn’t see much of what the terrain was like on the other side of the dock,
but guessed he stood a
good chance of losing his quarry if he let him get to the other side before he started after him. Probably
the man—Kraiklyn, if it was him—had
worked this out; Horza guessed he knew he was being followed. He set off across the bridge.
It swayed slightly underneath him. The noise and
lights of the giant hovercraft were almost underneath; the air filled with
swirling dark spray, kicked up from the shallow water in the dock. The
man didn’t look round at Horza, though he must have
felt Horza’s footsteps swinging the bridge with his own.
The figure left the bridge at the far end. Horza lost sight of him and started running, the gun out in front of him, the air-cushion
vehicle
beneath blasting gusts of spray-soaked air about him, soaking him. Loud music blared from the craft, audible even
through the scream of the
engines. Horza skidded along the bridge at its end and ran quickly down the spiral steps to the
dockside.
Something sailed out of the darkness under the spiral of steps and crashed into his face. Immediately afterward something
slammed into
his back and the rear of his skull. He lay on something hard, groggily wondering what had happened, while lights
swept over him, the air in his
ears roared and roared, and music played somewhere. A bright light shone straight into his
eyes, and the hood over his face was thrown back.
He heard a gasp: the gasp of a man tearing a hood away from a face only to see his own face staring back at him. (
Who are you.
) If that
was what it was, then that man was vulnerable now, shocked for just a few seconds (
Who am I.
)…. He had enough strength to kick up hard
with one leg, forcing his arms up at the same time and grabbing some material,
his shin connecting with a groin. The man started to go over
Horza’s shoulders, heading for the dock; then Horza felt his
own shoulders grasped, and as the man he held thumped to the ground to one side
and behind him, he was pulled over—
Over the side of the dock; the man had landed right on the edge and had gone over, taking Horza with him. They were falling.
He was aware of lights, than shadow, the grip he had on the man’s cloak or suit and one hand still on his shoulder. Falling:
how deep was
the dock. The noise of wind. Listen for the sound of—
It was a double impact. He hit water, then something harder, in a crumpling collision of fluid and body. It was cold, and
his neck ached. He
was thrashing about, unsure which way was up, and groggy from the blows to his head; then something pulled
at him. He punched out, hit
something soft, then pulled upright and found himself standing in a little over a meter of water,
staggering forward. It was bedlam—light and
sound and spray everywhere, and somebody hanging on to him.
Horza flailed out again. Spray cleared momentarily, and he saw the wall of the dock a couple of meters to his right and, directly
in front of
him, the rear of the giant hovercraft, receding slowly five or six meters ahead. A powerful gust of oily, fiery
air knocked him over, splashing into
the water again. The spray closed over him. The hand let go, and he fell back through
the water once more, going under.
Horza struggled upright in time to see his adversary heading off through the spray, following the slowly moving hovercraft
up the dock. He
tried to run, but the water was too deep; he had to force his legs forward in a slow-motion, nightmarish version
of a run, angling his torso so that
his weight carried him forward. With exaggerated twistings of his body from side to side
he strode after the man in the gray cloak, using his
hands like paddles in an attempt to gain speed. His head was reeling;
his back, face and neck all hurt terribly, and his vision was blurred, but at
least he was still chasing. The man in front
seemed more anxious to get away than to stay and fight.
The blattering exhaust of the still moving hover blew another hole in the spray toward the two men, revealing the slab of
stern rising above
the bulbous wall of the machine’s skirt, bowing out from fully three meters above the surface of the water
in the dock. First the man in front of
him, and then Horza, was blown back by the pulse of hot, choking fumes. The water was
getting shallower. Horza found that he could bring his
legs out of the water far enough to wade faster. The noise and spray
swept over them again, and for a moment Horza lost sight of his quarry;
then the view ahead was clear, and he could see the
big air-cushion vehicle on a dry area of concrete. The walls of the dock extended high on
either side, but the water and the
clouds of spray were almost gone. The man in front staggered to the brief ramp leading from the now only
ankle-deep water
onto the concrete, staggered and almost fell, then started running weakly after the hovercraft, now powering faster along
the
level concrete down the canyon of the dock.