The Dark River

by John Twelve Hawks

  “No worries, mate. I promise.” Jugger slapped Gabriel on the shoulder. “You’re a scrappy one. You are indeed.”

  Cutter’s red tracksuit appeared to glow under the security lights. He wandered over to Gabriel and nodded. “You’re from the States?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You know what a ‘splat’ is?”

  Jugger looked flustered. “Come on now. We’re just about to start.”

  “Just helping out,” Cutter said. “Bit of education for our American cousin. A ‘splat’ is when you don’t know what you’re doing and you fall off a roof.”

  Gabriel stood still and peered into Cutter’s eyes. “There’s always a chance you’ll fall. The question is—do you think about it? Or are you able to keep it out of your mind?”

  Cutter’s cheek twitched near the corner of his mouth, but he controlled his fear and spit on the ground.

  “All bets in,” a voice said. “All bets in.” And then the crowd parted and Mash stood before them.

  “This is happening because Manchester threw down a challenge to the London crews. May the best runner win and all that crap. But what we do is more than one race. Most of you know that. Walls and fences won’t stop us. The Vast Machine can’t track us. We make our own map of this city.”

  Mash raised his right hand and counted. “One, two…”

  Cutter darted across the street and the rest of them followed. The wrought-iron gates were designed to resemble flowers and vines. Using these gaps as footholds, Gabriel began to climb.

  When they reached the top of the gate, the slender Ganji slipped between the awning and the wall. Cutter followed, then Gabriel and Malloy. Their shoes made a thumping sound on the clear plastic, and the awning trembled. Gabriel grabbed one of the poles that jutted out from the top of the wall. The steel pole was as narrow as a rope and difficult to hold.

  Hand over hand, his body hanging from the pole, he pulled himself up. When he reached the end of the pole, Gabriel found a three-foot space between the holding bracket and the top of the white stone facade that ran around the edge of the roof. How am I supposed to get up? he thought. Can’t be done.

  Gabriel glanced left and watched the three other men trying to manage the dangerous transition to the roof. Malloy had the strongest arms and shoulders. He swung himself around so that he was on the top of the pole, his eyes looking downward. Still holding on tightly, he tried to shift his weight to the lower part of his body. When his feet were in the right position, he let go of the pole, grabbed for the top of the facade, and fell. Malloy hit the Plexiglas awning and began to roll off, but he grabbed the edge and stopped. Still alive.

  Gabriel forgot about the others and concentrated on his own movements. Imitating Malloy’s strategy, he swung himself around so that his feet were on the top edge of the slanted pole, his hands just a few inches higher. He hunched up like a man squeezed into a box, put the full weight of his body on his feet, and then threw himself upward. Gabriel grabbed the white stone facade; it was like a little wall around the border of the roof. Using all his arm strength, he pulled himself up and over the top.

  The slate roof of Smithfield Market lay before him like a dark gray road. The night sky was clear; the stars were precise points of bluish-white light. Gabriel’s mind was beginning to glide into the consciousness of a Traveler. He observed the reality around him as if it were an image on a screen.

  Cutter and Ganji darted past him, and Gabriel returned to the moment. The loose slates on the roof made a clicking sound as he chased after his two opponents. A few seconds later he reached the first gap in the roof: a thirty-foot section where an intersecting road divided the building. Concrete arches holding sheets of ivory-colored fiberglass passed over the gap, but the fiberglass looked too fragile to support his weight. Moving like a tightrope walker, he stepped on an arch and crossed over to the other side of the roof. Cutter and Ganji were pulling away from him. His eyes moved past them to the stars, and it seemed like all of them were running toward the dark expanse of space.

  At the second gap, the fiberglass sheets had been ripped away and only the concrete arches spanned the roof. Remembering what Ice had told him, Gabriel concentrated on his feet and tried not to look beyond them to the road, where a handful of curious Free Runners gazed upward at their progress.

  Gabriel was relaxed and moving easily, but he was losing the race. He had to stop and traverse a third set of arches. Halfway across, he watched Cutter and Ganji jump onto a steeply angled metal awning that passed across Long Lane to the boarded-up brick building that had once been the market’s slaughterhouse.

  Cutter had sprinted down the length of the roof. Now he was cautious, straddling the top of the awning and walking slowly. Ganji was about five yards away and decided to take the lead. He stepped onto the left side of the awning, ran three steps, and lost his footing. He was falling, rolling, screaming as his legs went over the edge and his hands grabbed onto the rain gutter.

  Ganji dangled in the air. His crew was on the street below him, yelling at him to hold on—just hold on!—they would come up and save him. But Ganji didn’t need their assistance. He pulled himself up slightly and got one leg onto the slippery metal awning, followed by his entire body. By the time Gabriel reached the area, the Free Runner was lying facedown. Pushing with his toes and extending his hands, he moved toward safety.

  “You all right?” Gabriel shouted.

  “Don’t worry about me. Keep going! London pride!”

  Cutter had been far ahead of Gabriel, but the advantage disappeared on the flat roof of the slaughterhouse. The Free Runner darted back and forth looking for a fire escape or a security ladder that would get him down to the road. Moving to the southwest corner of the building, Cutter crawled over a low wall, grabbed a drainpipe, and swung himself out into space. Gabriel ran to the corner and looked down. Cutter was sliding down the pole, inch by inch, controlling his movement with the sides of his climbing shoes. When he saw Gabriel, Cutter stopped for second and nodded to his opponent.

  “Sorry for what I said before we started. Just wanted to make you nervous….”

  “I understand.”

  “Ganji took a close one there. Is he okay?”

  “Yeah. He’s fine.”

  “London did all right, mate. But Manchester wins this time.”

  Gabriel imitated Cutter’s movements and swung himself out onto the corner drainpipe. Below him, Cutter was maneuvering around some evergreen shrubbery, pushing the branches away with his arms until he finally reached the ground.

  The moment Cutter stepped into the street, Gabriel decided to take a risk. He pushed himself away from the wall, let go of the drainpipe, and fell twenty feet into the bushes. The branches cracked and snapped, but he went with the momentum, rolling to one side and then landing on his feet.

  A few Free Runners had appeared in the area, like bystanders watching a citywide marathon. Cutter was showing his skill, running down a line of parked cars. One leap would take him onto a car hood; two steps and he was across the roof, leading to a one-step jump from the trunk that would propel him onto the next vehicle. Car alarms began to go off because of the impact of his feet, and the sharp, wavering sound echoed off the walls. Cutter shouted—“Up Manchester!”—and raised both arms in triumph.

  Gabriel ran silently across the cobblestones. Cutter didn’t see his opponent, and Gabriel began to narrow the space between them. They were at the bottom of Snow Hill, the narrow street that led up to St. Sepulchre and the looming silhouette of the Old Bailey criminal court building. Cutter vaulted over a car, spun around, and saw Gabriel. Surprised, he took off and sprinted up the hill. When they were about two hundred yards from the church, Cutter couldn’t resist his own fear. He began glancing over his shoulder again and again, forgetting everything but his opponent.

  A black London cab emerged from the shadows and turned onto the street. The cabdriver saw the red tracksuit and slammed on the brakes. Cutter leaped up into the a
ir, but his legs hit the cab’s windshield and he bounced off like a straw effigy of a man tossed into the street.

  The cab screeched to a stop. The Manchester crew came running, but Gabriel continued up the hill and climbed over the spike fence to the empty garden of St. Sepulchre. Bending over, he placed his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath. A Free Runner in the city.

  14

  M aya walked down East Tremont and turned onto Puritan Avenue. Directly across the street was her current hiding place—the Bronx Tabernacle of the Divine Church of Isaac T. Jones. Vicki Fraser had contacted the local minister and he had allowed the fugitives to stay at the church until they figured out a new plan.

  Although Maya would have preferred to leave New York, the East Tremont section of the Bronx was much safer than Manhattan. It was a frayed-at-the-edges, working-class area—the kind of neighborhood that had no large department stores and only a few banks. There were surveillance cameras in East Tremont, but they were easily avoided. The government cameras protected parks and schools. The privately owned cameras were inside bodegas and liquor stores—conspicuously pointed at the front counter.

  THREE DAYS EARLIER, she and Alice had escaped from the underground world beneath Grand Central Terminal. In the daytime, they might have encountered city workers, but it was very early in the morning and the tunnels were cold, dark, and empty. The dead-bolt locks and padlocks on the doors were standard models—not difficult to open with Maya’s small collection of picks and tension wrenches. Her only other tool was the random number generator that dangled from the cord around her neck. At different junctions, she pressed the button and chose a direction based on the number that flashed on the screen.

  They passed beneath the streets of the Midtown area and followed the railroad tunnel that ran up the west side of Manhattan. When they emerged from the tunnel, it was a new day. Alice hadn’t gotten any food—or sleep—since they left the loft, but the little girl remained beside her. Maya flagged down a gypsy cab and told the driver to take them downtown to Tompkins Square Park.

  Approaching the message board on the Purest Children memorial, she saw that no one was waiting for her. An unpleasant sensation—something close to fear—passed through her. Was Gabriel dead? Had the Tabula captured him? Maya knelt down on the cold pavement and read the message: G2LONDON. She knew Gabriel needed to find his father, but at that moment his decision felt like a betrayal. Her father was right—a Harlequin should never form an attachment with a Traveler.

  When she came out of the park, she saw Alice standing beside the gypsy cab, waving frantically at her. Maya felt annoyed at this act of disobedience until she saw that Hollis and Vicki had just arrived in another taxi. They asked where Gabriel was and explained that they had been separated from him as well, eventually emerging from the underground and checking into an off-the-Grid hotel in Spanish Harlem. Neither of them discussed what had happened at the hotel, but Maya sensed that the warrior and the virgin had finally become lovers. Vicki’s uneasiness around Hollis had completely disappeared. When she touched him at the Chinatown loft, it had always been a quick, fluttery gesture. Now she took the palm of her hand and held it against his arm or his shoulder, as if reaffirming the connection there.

  THE BRONX TABERNACLE of the Divine Church was an impressive-sounding name for two rented rooms above the Happy Chicken restaurant. Crossing the street, Maya peered through the fogged-up window of Happy Chicken and saw two bored cooks standing guard behind a steam table. She had purchased dinner there last night and discovered that the meat wasn’t just cooked at the take-out restaurant; it was frozen, thawed, sliced, pounded with mallets, and then deep-fried until covered with a rock-hard crust.

  A few feet down from the restaurant was a door that led to the tabernacle. Maya unlocked the door and climbed up the steep staircase. A framed photograph of the Prophet, Isaac Jones, hung over the entrance to the tabernacle, and Maya used a second key to get in. She walked into a long room filled with wooden benches. A pulpit for the minister and a small platform for the church musicians were at the front of the room. Directly behind the pulpit was a set of windows facing the street.

  Hollis had stacked some of the benches up against the wall. His bare feet squeaked on the polished wooden floor as he ran through his “forms”—a graceful series of moves that displayed the basic elements of martial arts. Meanwhile Vicki sat on a bench with a leather-bound copy of The Collected Letters of Isaac T. Jones. She pretended to read the book, but kept watching Hollis kick and punch at the air.

  “How’d it go?” Vicki asked. “Did you find an Internet café?”

  “I ended up at a Tasti D-Lite ice cream shop on Arthur Avenue. They’ve got four computers with Internet access.”

  “Were you able to contact Linden?” Hollis asked.

  Maya looked around the tabernacle. “Where’s Alice Chen?”

  “In the children’s room,” Vicki said.

  “What’s she doing?”

  “I don’t know. I made her a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich about an hour ago.”

  Church services went on for most of Sunday morning, so the tabernacle had a carpeted side room with toys for younger children. Maya walked over to the door that led to the room and peered through a window. Alice had draped a church banner over a table, and then had surrounded the table with every piece of furniture in the room. Maya assumed that the little girl was sitting at the dark center of this improvised fort. If the Tabula broke into the church it would take an extra few seconds to reach her.

  “Looks like she’s been busy.”

  “She’s trying to protect herself,” Vicki said.

  Maya returned to the center of the tabernacle. “If Gabriel boarded a plane to London on Saturday, then he’s already been there for seventy-two hours. I’m sure he went straight to Tyburn Convent to ask about his father. Linden said that the Harlequins have never dealt with this group of nuns. He has no idea if Matthew Corrigan is staying there.”

  “So what’s our next move?” Hollis asked.

  “Linden thinks we should travel to England and help him look for Gabriel, but there are two problems involving identification. Because Gabriel grew up off the Grid, the false passport we obtained for him matches the facts we inserted into the Vast Machine. That means he has the ‘cleanest’ passport—the one that is the most likely to be accepted by the authorities.”

  Vicki nodded slowly. “But the Tabula probably have biometric information about Hollis and me.”

  “They also have information about Maya,” Hollis said. “Remember—she spent a couple of years in London living on the Grid.”

  “Linden and I have the resources to obtain clean, nontraceable identification when we’re in Europe, but it’s too risky for everyone to use our current passports on a plane trip. The Tabula have supporters in the various government security agencies. If they know our false identities, they’ll attach a terrorist alert to our files.”

  Hollis shook his head. “What’s the second problem?”

  “Alice Chen doesn’t even have a passport. There’s no way we could take her on a plane to Europe.”

  “So what are we supposed to do?” Hollis asked. “Leave her here?”

  “No. We don’t want the church involved. The easiest plan is to check into a hotel, wait until she falls asleep, and then walk away.”

  Vicki looked shocked. Hollis was angry. They’ll never understand you, Maya thought. That was what Thorn had told her a thousand times. The average citizen walking down the street could never comprehend the way a Harlequin saw the world.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Hollis said. “Alice is the only witness to what happened at New Harmony. If the Tabula know she’s still alive, they’ll kill her.”

  “There is an alternative plan. But you need to accept the fact that, from this point on, either Linden or I will be making all the decisions.”

  Maya had deliberately made her voice harsh and uncompromising, but Hollis didn’t look intimid
ated. He glanced at Vicki, and then chuckled. “I think we’re about to be given an answer to our problems.”

  “Linden has made arrangements for us to leave on a merchant ship to Great Britain. The trip across the Atlantic will take about a week, but it will allow us to enter the country without a passport. I’ll protect Alice from the Tabula here in New York, but we can’t keep guarding her. When we reach London, she’ll be given new identification and placed in a safe environment.”

  “All right, Maya. You’ve made your point,” Hollis said. “The Harlequins want to be in charge. Now give us a minute to talk it over.”

  As Hollis and Vicki sat next to each other on the bench, Maya walked over to the windows and looked across the street at St. Raymond’s Cemetery. The huge cemetery was as crowded and gray as the city itself; the tombstones, pillars and sad angels were packed together like a jumble sale.

  The fact that Hollis and Vicki were in love changed everything; it implied a life together. If they’re clever, Maya thought, they’ll run away from both the Tabula and the Harlequins. There’s no future in this endless war.

  “We’ve made a decision,” Vicki said. Maya returned to the middle of the room and noticed that the two lovers were now sitting apart. “I’m going with you and Alice on the boat to England.”

  “And I’m going to stay in New York for a few weeks,” Hollis said. “I’ll make the Tabula think that Gabriel is still in the city. When I’m done, you can figure out another way to get me out of the country.”

  Maya nodded her approval. Hollis wasn’t a Harlequin, but he was starting to think like one. “That’s a good idea,” she said. “Just be careful.”

  Hollis ignored her and looked into Vicki’s eyes. “Of course I’ll be careful. I promise.”

  15

  S itting in the back of a Mercedes, Michael gazed out the side window at the German countryside. This morning he had eaten breakfast in Hamburg, and now he was traveling on the Autobahn with Mrs. Brewster to see the new computer center in Berlin. A security guard wearing a black suit was in the front seat next to the Turkish chauffeur. The guard was supposed to watch the Traveler and keep him from escaping, but that wasn’t going to happen. Michael had no desire to return to the ordinary world.