by Диана Дуэйн
U think I'll join you,) Nita said. She backed out of range of that tongue ef°re she started across the street herself—
There was no time to move, to scream, even to think. Kit was halfway across the street, with his eye on that fire hydrant, his head turned away from the big yellow Checker Cab that was maybe six feet away and leaping straight at him,
A flash of brilliance struck Nita like a blow, and did the same for the cab so that it sv/crved to its left and knocked Kit sideways and down. The cab roared on by, engine racing in frustration, evidently too angry to try for another pass. But something about it, maybe the savage sidelong look it threw Nita out of its burned-down eyes as it squealed around the corner of Forty-sixth and Madison — something made Nita suspect that it would not forget them. She ran out into the street and bent over Kit, not sure whether she should try to move him. fSawright,) Kit said, groaning softly as he worked at getting up. Nita slipped hands under his arms to help. (Fred did it.)
(Are you all right?) came the frantic thought, as Fred appeared in front of Kit's face. (Did I hurt you, did I emit anything you can't take? I took out all the ultraviolet. Oh, no! I forgot the cosmic rays again.)
Kit managed a smile, though not much of one, his face was skinned and bruised where one cheekbone had hit the pavement. (Don't worry about it, Fred, that thing would have done a lot worse to me than a few cosmic rays if it'd hit me the way it wanted to.) He stood up, wincing. (It got my leg some, I think.)
Nita bent down to look at Kit's left leg and sucked in her breath. His jeans were torn, and he had a straight horizontal gash six inches or so below the knee, which was bleeding freely. (Does it feel deep?)
(No. It just hurts a lot. I think it was the cab's fender, there was a jagged piece sticking out of the chrome. Listen, Fred, thanks—)
(You're sure I didn't hurt you? You people are so fragile. A little gamma radiation will ruin your whole day, it seems.)
(I'm fine. But I've gotta do something about this leg. And then we've got to get moving again and get to the dark Book.)
Nita looked over at the fire hydrant, fear boiling in her. Casually, as if this was something it did many times a day, the hydrant cracked open and spat something out onto the sidewalk — a dessicated-looking little lump of bones and feathers. Then it got up and waddled heavily down to a spot about fifty feet farther down the block, and sat down again. And I thought it couldn't all be bad.
Together, as quickly as they could, two small, frightened-looking figures and a spark like a lost star hurried into the shadows and vanished there.
Entropies Detection and Avoidance
(How close are we?)
(Uh … this is Madison and Forty-ninth. Three blocks north and a long one east.) (Can we rest? This air burns to breathe. And we've been going fast.) (Yeah, let's.)
They crouched together in the shadow of a doorway, two wary darknesses and a dim light, watching the traffic that went by. Mostly cabs prowled past, wearing the same hungry look as the one that had wounded Kit. Or a sullen truck might lumber by, or a passenger car, looking uneasy and dingy and bitter. None of the cars or trucks had drivers, or looked like they wanted them. They ignored the traffic lights, and their engines growled.
Nita's eyes burned in the dark air. She rubbed them and glanced down at Kit's leg, bound now with a torn-off piece of her shirt. {How is it?)
(Not too bad. It feels stiff. I guess it stopped bleeding.) He looked down, felt the makeshift bandage, winced. (Yeah… . I'm hungry.)
Nita's stomach turned over — she was too nervous to even consider eating — as Kit came up with a ham sandwich and offered her half. (You go ahead,) she said. She leaned against the hard cold wall, and on a sudden thought Pulled her pen out of her pocket and looked at it. It seemed all right, but as she held it she could feel a sort of odd tingling in its metal that hadn't been there before. (Uh, Fred—)
He hung beside her at eye level, making worried feelings that matched the d'niness of his light, (Are you sure that light didn't hurt you?)
(Yeah. It's not that.) She held out the pen to him. Fred backed away a
'e' 3 s if afraid he might swallow it again. (Is this radioactive or anything?) N'ta said.
He drifted close to it, bobbed up and down to look at it from several angles. (You mean beta and gamma and those other emissions you have trouble with? No.)
Nita still felt suspicious about the pen. She dug into her backpack for a piece of scrap paper, laid it on her wizards' manual, clicked the point out, and scribbled on the paper. Then she breathed out, perplexed. (Come on, Fred! Look at that!)
He floated down to look. The pen's blue-black ink would normally have been hard to see in that dimness, no matter how white the paper. But the scrawl had a subtle glimmer about it, a luminosity just bright enough to make out. (I don't think it's anything harmful to you,) Fred said. (Are you sure it didn't do that before?)
(Yes!)
(Well, look at it this way. Now you can see what you're writing when it's dark. Surprising you people hadn't come up with something like that al-ready.)
Nita shook her head, put the paper away, and clipped the pen back in her pocket. Kit, finishing the first half of his sandwich, looked over at the scribble with interest. (Comes of being inside Fred, I guess. With him having his own claudication, and all the energy boiling around inside him, you might have expected something like that to happen.) (Yeah, well, I don't like it. The pen was fine the way it was.)
(Considering where it's been,) Kit said, (you're lucky to get it back in the same shape, instead of crushed into a little lump.) He wrapped up the other half of his sandwich and shoved it into his backpack. (Should we go?) (Yeah.)
They got up, checked their surroundings as usual to make sure that no cabs or cars were anywhere close, and started up Madison again, ducking into doorways or between buildings whenever they saw or heard traffic coming.
(No people,) Kit said, as if trying to work it out. (Just things — all dark and ruined — and machines,
all twisted. Alive — but they seem to hate everything-And pigeons—)
(Dogs, too,) Nita said.
(Where?) Kit looked hurriedly around him.
(Check the sidewalk and the gutter. They're here. And remember that nest.) Nita shrugged uneasily, setting her pack higher. (I don't know. Maybe people just can't live here.) (We're here,) Kit said unhappily. (And maybe not for long.)
A sudden grinding sound like tortured metal made them dive for another shadowy doorway close to the corner of Madison and Fiftieth. No traffic was in sight; nothing showed but the glowering eye of the traffic light and the unchanging don't walk signs. The grinding sound came again — metal scraping on concrete, somewhere across Madison, down Fiftieth, to their left. Kit edged a bit forward in the doorway. (What are you—)
(I want to see.) He reached around behind him, taking the antenna in hand.
(But if—)
(If that's something that might chase us later, I at least want a look at it. Fred? Take a peek for us?)
(Right.) Fred sailed ahead of them, keeping low and close to the building walls, his light dimmed to the faintest glimmer. By the lamppost at Madison and Fiftieth he paused, then shot low across the street and down Fiftieth between Madison and Fifth, vanishing past the corner. Nita and Kit waited, sweating.
From around the comer Fred radiated feelings of uncertainty and curiosity. (These are like the other things that run these streets. But these aren't moving. Maybe they were dangerous once. I don't know about now.)
(Come on,) Kit said. He put his head out of the doorway. (It's clear.) With utmost caution they crossed the street and slipped around the cor-ner, flattening to the wall. Here stores and dingy four-story brownstones with long flights of railed stairs lined the street. Halfway down the block, jagged and bizarre in the dimness and the feeble yellow glow of a flickering sodium-vapor street light, was the remains of an accident. One carf a heavy two-
door sedan, lay crumpled against the pole of ano
ther nearby street light, its right-hand door ripped away and the whole right side of it laid open. A little distance away, in the middle of the street, lay the car that had hit the sedan, resting on its back and skewed right around so that its front end was pointed at Kit and Nita. It was a sports car of some kind, so dark a brown that it was almost black. Its windshield had been shattered when it overturned, and it.had many other dents and scrapes, some quite deep. From its front right wheelwell jutted a long jagged strip of chrome, part of the other car's fender, now wound into the sports car's wheel.
(I don't get it,) Nita said silently. (If that dark one hit the other, why isn't l*s front all smashed in—)
A>he broke off as with a terrible metallic groan the sports car suddenly
Tocked back and forth, like a turtle on its back trying to right itself. Kit sucked in a long breath and didn't move. The car stopped rocking for a foment, then with another scrape of metal started again, rocking more energetically this time. Each time the side-to-side motion became larger. It °cked partway onto one door, then back the other way and partway onto the
Jler> then back again — and full onto its left-hand door. There it balanced, frecar'°us, for a few long seconds, as if getting its breath. And then twitched, ardf shuddered all the way over, and fell right-side down.
The scream that filled the air as the sports car came down on the fender-tangled right wheel was terrible to hear. Instantly it hunched up the fouled wheel, holding it away from the street, crouching on the three good wheels and shaking with its effort. Nita thought of an old sculpture she had seen once, a wounded lion favoring one forelimb — weary and in pain, but still dangerous. Very slowly, as if approaching a hurt animal and not wanting to alarm it, Kit stepped away from the building and walked out into the street. (Kit!)
(Ssssh,) he said silently. (Don't freak it.) (Are you out of your — j
(Ssssshhh!)
The sports car watched Kit come, not moving. Now that it was right-side up, Nita could get a better idea of its shape. It was actually rather beautiful in its deadly looking way — sleekly swept- back and slung low to the ground. Its curves were battered in places; its once-shining hide was scored and dull. It stared at Kit from hunter's eyes, headlights wide with pain, and breathed shallowly, waiting.
(Lotus Esprit,) Kit said to Nita, not taking his eyes off the car, matching it stare for stare. Nita shook her head anxiously. (Does that mean something? I don't know cars.) (It's a racer. A mean one. What it is here— Look, Nita, there's your answer. Look at the front of it, under the headlights.) He kept moving forward, his hands out in front of him. The Lotus held perfectly still, watch-ing.
Nita looked at the low-sloping grille. (It's all full of oil or something.)
(It's a predator. These other cars, like that sedan — they must be what it hunts. This time its prey hurt the Lotus before it made its kill. Like a tiger getting gored by a bull or something. Ooops!) Kit, eight or ten feet away from the Lotus's grille, took one step too many; it abruptly rolled back away from him a foot or so. Very quietly its engine stuttered to life and settled into a throaty growl.
(Kit, you're—)
(Shut up,) "/won't hurt you," he said in the Speech, aloud. "Let me see to that wheel" The engine-growl got louder — the sound of the Speech seemed to upset the Lotus. It rolled back another couple of feet, getting close to the curb, and glared at Kit. But the glare seemed to have as much fear as threat in it now-
"/won't hurt you," Kit repeated, stepping closer, holding out his hand5' one of them with the antenna in it. "Come on, you know what this is. Letm& do something about that wheel You can't run on it. And if you can't run, °r /bet there are other hunters here, aren 't there? Or scavengers. I'm sure there are scavengers. Who 'II be coming here to clean up this kill? And do you want them to find you here, helpless?"
The Lotus stared at him, shifting a little from side to side, now, swaying uncertainly. The growl had not stopped, but it hadn't gotten any louder either. "// /were going to hurt you, I would have by now," Kit said, getting closer. The car was four feet away, and its headlights were having to look up at Kit now. "fust kt me do something about that fender stuck in you, then you 'II go your way and I'll go mine."
The dark eyes stared at the antenna, then at Kit, and back at the antenna again. The Lotus stopped swaying, held very still. Kit was two feet away. He reached out with his free hand, very slowly, reached down to touch the scratched fiberglass hide—
The engine raced, a sudden startling roar that made Nita stifle a scream and made Kit flinch all over—but he didn't jump away, and neither did the Lotus. For a second or two he and the car stood there just looking at each other — small trembling boy, large trembling predator. Then Kit laid his hand carefully on the brown hide, a gingerly gesture. The car shook all over, stared at him. Its engine quieted to an uncertain rumbling. "It's okay," he said."Will you let me take care of it?"
The Lotus muttered deep under its hood. It still stared at Kit with those fearsome eyes, but its expression was mostly perplexed now. So was Kit's. He rubbed the curve of the hurt wheelwell in distress. (I can't understand why it's mute,) he said unhappily, (The Edsel wasn't. All it took was a couple of sentences in the Speech and it was talking.) (It's bound,} Nita said, edging out of the shadow of the building she stood against. (Can't you feel it, Kit? There's some kind of huge binding spell laid over this whole place to keep it the way it is.)
. She stopped short as the Lotus saw her and began to growl again. "Relax," Kit said. "She's with me, she won't hurt you either,"
Slowly the growl dwindled, but the feral headlight-eyes stayed on Nita. She gulped and sat down on the curb, where she could see up and down the street. "Kit, do what you're going to do. If another of those cabs comes along—"
Right. Fred, give me a hand? No, no, no," he said hastily, as Fred drifted Own beside him and made a light-pattern and a sound as if he was going to A't something. "Not that kind. Just make some light so I can see what to do down here."
Kit knelt beside the right wheel, studying the damage, and Fred floated in se to lend his light to the business, while the Lotus watched the process 'aelong and suspiciously. "Mmmfff—nothing too bad, it's mostly wrapped around the tire. Lucky it didn't get fouled with the axle.
"Come on, come on," Kit said in the Speech, patting the bottom of the tire, "relax it, loosen up. You're forcing the scrap into yourself, holding the wheel up like that. Come on." The Lotus moaned softly and with fearful care relaxed the uplifted wheel a bit. "That's better." Kit slipped the antenna up under the Lotus's wheelwell, aiming for some piece of chrome that was out of sight. "Fred, can you get in there so I can see? Good. Okay, this may sting a little." Molten light, half- seen, sparked under the Lotus's fender. It jumped, and an uneven half-circle-shaped piece of chrome fell clanging onto the pavement. "Nowhunch the wheel up again. A little higher—" Kit reached in with-both hands and, after a moment's tugging and twisting, freed the other half of the piece of metal. "There," Kit said, satisfied. He tossed the second piece of scrap to the ground. The engine roared again with terrible suddenness, deafening. This time Kit scrambled frantically backward as the Lotus leaped snarling away from him. With a screech of tires it swept so close past Nita that she fell over backward onto the sidewalk. Its engine screaming, the Lotus tore away down Fiftieth toward Madison, flung itself left around the corner in a cloud of blue exhaust, and was gone.
Very slowly Kit stood up, pushed the antenna into his pants pocket, and stood in the street dusting his hands off on his shirt as he gazed in disappoint-ment after the Lotus. Nita sat herself back up again, shaking her head and brushing at herself. (I thought maybe it was going to stay long enough to thank you,) she said.
Kit shook his head, evidently in annoyance at himself for having thought the same thing, (Well, I don't know — I was thinking of what Picchu said. 'Don't be afraid to help.') He shrugged. (Doesn't really matter, I guess. It was hurting; fixing it was the right thing to do.)
(
I hope so,) Nita said. (I'd hate to think the grateful creature might run off to—you know — and tell everybody about the people who helped it instead of hurting it. I have a feeling that doing good deeds sticks out more than usual around here.)
Kit nodded, looking uncomfortable. (Maybe I should've left well enough alone.) (Don't be dumb. Let's get going, huh? The … whatever the place is where the dark Book's kept, it's pretty close. I feel nervous standing out here.) They recrossed Madison and again started the weary progression from doorway to driveway to shadowed wall, heading north.
At Madison and Fifty-second, Nita turned right and paused. (It's on this block somewhere,) she said, trying to keep even the thought quiet. (The north side, I think. Fred, you feel anything?)
Fred held still for a moment, not even making a flicker, (The darkness feels thicker up ahead, at the middle of the block.)
Kit and Nita peered down the block. (It doesn't look any different,) Kit said. (But you're the expert on light, Fred. Lead the way.)
With even greater care than usual they picked their way down Fifty-second. This street was stores and office buildings again; all the store windows empty, all the windows dark. But here, though external appearances were no different, the feeling slowly began to grow that there was a reason for the grimy darkness of the windows. Something watched, something peered out those windows, using the darkness as a cloak, and no shadow was deep enough to hide in; the silent eyes would see. Nothing happened, nothing stirred anywhere. No traffic was in sight. But the street felt more and more like a trap, laid open for some unsuspecting creature to walk into. Nita tried to swallow as they ducked from one hiding place to another, but her mouth was too dry. Kit was sweating. Fred's light was out.