The air was thick with the smell of cat piss and the humidity seemed increased. Jay hoped that the resident aion would have the sense to delay the storm, then realized with shock that Verite had no aions. The enormity of such disorder shook him so that for a moment he did not realize that the young man was speaking to him.
“Stay back! I’m armed.”
Jay grinned at him. “Me, too, only I’ve only got two arms—not like Bel Marduk.”
He glanced up. The Greater God and his minions seemed to be circling back toward the ziggurat. When he looked back at the young man, he saw that he was being studied uncertainly.
“Don’t worry, fellow,” Jay assured him. “I want to help.”
“Someone was throwing stones. Drum caught one.”
“Bad catch. He really should use a mitt.”
“How can you joke at a time like this!”
“I don’t see how crying is going to help. You know any first aid?”
“Some. My mother’s a doctor.”
“Then take a look at your buddy. I’ll keep off the weirdos.”
To punctuate his statement, Jay reached up and broke off a branch from the tree and hefted it. Poorly balanced, but it would do for now. The youth dropped to his knees beside his friend, gingerly removed the baseball cap, and did things that Jay did not watch carefully, his attention being reserved for the milling mob.
The tidal flow that governs such things had carried the bulk of the action away from them. Fortunately, they had been on the fringes. Closer to the ziggurat, Jay spotted several unmoving forms. Skimmers, their jets set for the greatest degree of elevation, were bringing officers in body armor and dropping them throughout the area. Red Cross vans followed as soon as the all-clear was given. Of Bel Marduk and his mounts there was no sign.
“Drum is coming round,” the youth said. “Can you help me move him? I don’t think anything’s broken and this isn’t exactly the place to be right now.”
“There’re med-tech vans down there,” Jay suggested.
“I think Drum’ll wait. I can get him better help if I take him to my mother’s clinic. It’s on the other side of town. Will you help me get him to his car?”
“Of course.”
Jay thought of suggesting that they go to the Donnerjack Institute, but he didn’t really know if they were equipped for emergency medicine. Besides, a visit there might entail some awkward explanations.
“What’s your name?” he asked as the older man (who understood what they wanted) threw one arm over Jay’s shoulder so that he could help lift him to his feet.
“Link,” the young man said, grunting a little as they steadied Drum. “Link Crain and this is Desmond Drum. You are?”
“Jason MacDougal,” Jay said, giving the name that was on all his papers, wishing that he had remembered his Scots accent, knowing that it was too late now to start. “Call me ‘Jay.’”
“Jay it is,” Link said.
Conversation was limited as they maneuvered Desmond Drum out of the park and the several blocks to where he had parked his car. Link thumbed open the lock and with Jay’s help set Drum in the passenger seat.
“Thanks for your help,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Let me come with you,” Jay offered. “The streets could get ugly.”
Link hesitated, but a moan from Drum seemed to decide him.
“I’d be much obliged.”
Once they were moving, Link made a quick call to the clinic, announcing that he was safe but that he was bringing Drum in.
“Is there anyone you need to call?” he said, glancing back at Jay. “That riot is going to be on every newsnet.”
“Yeah, I’d better.”
Jay placed a quick call to Milburn, grateful that the android had given him a home number. Milburn promised to notify Paracelsus and Dack that Jay was safe and cautioned him to be careful.
“Spontaneous rioting has been breaking out as the news of what happened in Central Park today spreads. Let me know when you’re done helping your friend and I’ll come and pick you up.”
“Right, Milburn. Thanks.”
Link drove for a while in silence. “Your friends have odd names.”
“Not much odder than Link and Drum.”
“Touche. Where are you from?”
“Scotland.”
“Really? And you came all this way for the service?”
“I’ve been attending services for a while. This promised to be something special so I came. You’re from around here?”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re a reporter?”
“Freelance.”
“And Drum, is he a reporter, too?”
“Sort of, not really. He’s an investigator. We work together sometimes, decided to catch the show together.”
Briefly, Jay wondered if the pair were homosexual. They seemed close, but—even though his knowledge of such things was restricted to the virt—he did not think so. Link’s care for Drum seemed sincere, but not at all romantic.
“Why do you keep looking at the sky, Link?”
“Looking for bulls.”
Jay could think of no answer to that.
They drove for a time in silence, Jay bursting with questions about the riot (none of which he dared ask lest he inadvertently reveal his own isolated upbringing), Link worried about Drum, concentrating on driving the Spinner, and trying to figure out the consequences of the riot for the Church of Elish.
Only Desmond Drum’s thoughts were not racing with a hundred different questions, worries, and conjectures. His attention was wholly centered on the pounding in his head and the queasy sensation in his gut that seemed to portend something ominous. The portents proved correct.
“Pull over,” he grunted, pressing the heel of his hand into his midsection.
Link glanced around the area. In his hurry to get Drum to the clinic, he’d forsaken the freeways (which he rightly suspected would be tied up with traffic related to the Elishite celebration) for a shortcut through the inner city.
“Drum, it may not be safe.”
“Pull over. Don’t want to ruin my upholstery.”
“Drum…”
“Now!”
Link did as he had been told, sliding the Spinner into a mostly vacant parking lot next to a convenience store that—judging from the neons and holocals in the windows—subsisted mostly by selling alcoholic beverages. Drum lurched out of the sedan almost before it stopped, falling to hands and knees among a litter of bottles and broken glass, and retching mightily.
This was another thing Jay had never seen. He’d been sick a few times, but his existence was fairly antiseptic and Dack made certain he got his shots. In the virt spaces he frequented illness was not a popular theme (he had yet to discover the soaps), and none of his companions were human. Getting out of the Spinner, he hovered—half horrified, half fascinated—wondering what he could do to help.
“Jay, stay with Drum,” Link said. “I’m going to run inside and get him something he can rinse his mouth with.”
He lowered his voice and glanced across the parking lot, where a half-dozen people in matching satin jackets were passing around a large, square bottle.
“I’ll hurry. I don’t like the looks of those folks.”
“I can handle them,” Jay assured him.
Link snorted and hurried into the convenience store.
As if his departure had been a signal, the gang began strolling across the parking lot. Their leader bore a passing resemblance to Staggert, another member of Sayjak’s band who had proven that age did not equal infirmity—at least among the People in Virtu. Jay moved to interpose himself between the blue Spinner and the retching Drum.
“Nice car,” said the hulking one, sounding rather like Staggert as well.
“Thanks.”
“Pretty new.”
Jay had no idea if that was true, so he nodded.
“A Spinner. Maybe my friends and I should take it for a spin.”
A rough chuckle went around the group at this sally of wit. The five remaining gang members (three male, two female—all evidently worshipers in the cult of steroids) had ranged themselves behind their boss. One of the women slapped a tire iron into the palm of her hand, but clearly they expected no trouble from him.
“I don’t think so,” Jay replied. “We’ll need it to take my friend to the hospital.”
The spokesman drew himself up in mock indignation.
“Hey, chupling, we were just going to take it for a little drive. We’d bring it back.”
“Sure we would,” Tire Iron sniggered.
“I don’t think so,” Jay repeated.
Among the debris near his feet was a liter bottle that had once held wine. The kick at the base was thick and solid—meant to deceive buyers that they were getting more volume than the label claimed. Slipping his foot under it, Jay tossed it into the air and caught it by the neck (a trick he had learned from Tranto, who liked to reminisce about his days in the circus).
The gang members were impressed by the unexpected decisiveness of his actions, but beyond taking a step back and arraying themselves more advantageously for a brawl, they did not respond.
“Iron beats glass, chupling,” Tire Iron said, swinging in lieu of punctuation.
Jay ducked her swing, lashed out with a kick to her knee. He connected, and the combination of the force of his impact and her momentum carried her forward. Nimbly, he stepped out of the way, letting her crash onto the gravel-surfaced lot. From the noises she made, the fall couldn’t have been pleasant, but she was up on her feet again almost before Jay had the time to recognize that for the first time in his life he had struck someone—someone not protected by virt—in anger.
He didn’t have time to meditate on the implications of this change in his perspective, for the other gang members were closing. Skilled as he was in theory, strong and agile as he was in body, he would not have had a chance if Link had not come running from the store at that moment.
Although not an immediately imposing physical specimen (being maybe 5‘9” and somewhat slenderly built), Link was clearly not only trained in the martial arts, but prepared to use his skills. Shouting an ear-splitting “ki-yah!” he kicked the thug nearest to him in the groin. The man went down, counterpointing Drum in the process of redecorating the pavement with the contents of his stomach.
Link set down his package, raised his hands in a guard position and took on the next fellow. Heartened, Jay swung out at the gang boss with his bottle. His opponent blocked the blow, but it ruined his attempt to pull a handgun of some sort from inside his satin jacket.
Pausing to kick the gun out of reach, Jay took a punch that made his head reel and—more importantly—made him furiously angry. He was no Sayjak, but something of the Boss of Bosses’ brutality had imprinted him as he watched that nightmare battle. Now, his dark eyes narrowed, his teeth bared, he seemed to forget the heavy bottle he held in his hand. Lowering his head and hunching his shoulders, he drove himself like a battering ram into his opponent.
The gang boss went down; Jay swung the bottle. The ganger stayed down.
Link had disposed of one opponent, was occupied with two. Jay swiveled to avoid all but a grazing swipe from the tire iron. The hooked end sliced through his light summer shirt and furrowed his back. Feeling his own blood running hot and liquid, Jay spun, threw the bottle. He missed Tire Iron, but in the instant she flinched, he was upon her.
He grappled her as he had seen Sayjak grapple his foes, squeezing hard, rising to his full height and shaking her with all the force of muscles trained not by repetitious lifting of weights but by climbing trees, swimming in deep lakes, and wrestling with a dog made of iron, steel, and old carpet.
Tire Iron tried to get a purchase, relinquishing her weapon to pummel his kidneys with whatever force her pinned arms could manage. Jay made certain her feet were clear of the ground, squeezed hard once more, then released his grip. Unable to recover her balance quickly, she dropped to her knees. An uppercut to the jaw as she was rising laid her out.
Still in a blood frenzy, Jay might have gone to finish her off, but he heard Drum wheeze weakly.
“Link!”
Jay looked. Link had disposed of one of the two he had been fighting, but the remaining one had dropped back and, very sensibly, drawn his handgun from within his jacket. Like a rabbit caught in a headlight, Link stood frozen. Jay howled.
It was not a focused sound, not the sharp ferocity of a “ki-yah.” It was a guttural thing, raw and atonal with something of Mizar in it, and as the gunman’s hand wavered, Jay charged.
The gun went off. Link screamed. There was an explosion of red. Jay, certain he had been his new friend’s death, covered the ground between him and the gunman more quickly than he could have imagined. The gun went off again, wild this time. A third bang, the bullet creasing his brow as he leapt to one side.
Blood streaming into his eyes, fury in his bones, Jay launched himself onto his opponent, knocking him to the ground and falling on top of him. His tactics were pure Sayjak. He bit the man’s shoulder, grabbed his gun arm and beat it against the ground until he heard a bone crack. Kneeling partly on, partly over, his opponent’s chest, Jay wrapped hands around the man’s throat and pressed down with his full body weight behind his thumbs.
The man was bull-necked, but Jay was very strong and nearly mad from pain and anger. That Jay would have killed him was a certainty, but Desmond Drum kicked him in the ribs and growled.
“Stop it, you asshole! It’s over! We’ve won. Now let’s get out of here.”
The words barely penetrated in time. Jay blinked at the unconscious man and sat heavily on his chest, adrenaline draining away. He looked up at Drum. The detective held his head as if it ached.
“Link?”
“Bloodied but unbowed. The guy was going for a chest shot. Missed anything vital but caught his arm. C’mon. I need you to get Link into the car. I’ll drive. I think I’ve just been put on the walking wounded list.”
Jay nodded, rose, looked at the battered gang members feebly stirring. No one had come out to watch the fight, though he suspected much had been seen from the tenement windows. These people would never talk, though. They had no trust in law and order, no reason, particularly, to do so.
He walked over to Link, trying to disguise how weak his ebbing adrenaline high had left him. Link lay on the ground, blood washing his light shirt dark red, pooling a bit on the gravel beneath. Drum had slapped an old towel from his Spinner’s trunk over the wound, tightened it with the belt from Link’s pants. Link steadied the compress in place, right arm pressed to left shoulder. His face was grey from pain and blood loss.
When Jay bent to lift him, he waved him back.
“I can get up on my own. Have Drum bring the sedan here. You’re bleeding.”
“A flesh wound,” Jay said. “A couple of them. If you move you’ll pass out. Go ahead. Then I don’t have to argue with you.”
Link managed a slight grin and surrendered, biting his lip against the pain. Jay raised him as carefully as he could and as he wrapped his hand around Link’s midsection, gingerly avoiding the upper region where the bullet had penetrated, his fingers encountered something rounded, soft, and cushiony.
He blinked. Stared at Link. Link nodded faintly.
“Yes. Please. Don’t.”
Link passed out.
Jay put him into the back of the sedan, took the passenger seat up front. Drum got the sedan up and moving, racing down the streets with no regard for speed limits.
He glanced over at Jay, a wry expression on his battered features.
“I guess this is what I get for worrying about my upholstery.”
The Hazzard Clinic was in a neighborhood that, while not as decrepit as the one they had departed, was definitely middle class. Drum had called ahead to warn them to expect two more injured and terminated the call before the woman on the other end could ask too many question
s.
They were met at the door by a couple of confused-looking orderlies with a gurney and a tall brunette woman whose aura of professional competence could not disguise her worry. Despite her maturity and the wealth of brown hair she wore piled up on her head, the resemblance to Link was unmistakable—almost frighteningly so.
Jay thought about what his fingers had learned and realized that, looking at Dr. Hazzard, he had a pretty good idea of what Link would look like when he—she—reached the same age.
“Marco, Tom,” Dr. Hazzard ordered, “help me slide the young man out of the back seat onto the gurney.”
She spared Jay and Drum a glance and a tight smile.
“Are you both ambulatory?”
“Pretty much, ma’am,” Drum answered. “Link’s the one who is hurt bad.”
“Follow us in. I’ll assign someone to each of you right away.”
They followed her through the double glass doors past a curved counter behind which a receptionist processed incoming patients. Beyond the counter was a large waiting room, its collection of waiting patients distracted at least temporarily from their pains, aches, and sniffles by the sight of three men, all blood-stained and battered, being rushed through the room and into the sanctum sanctorum where the doctors actually saw patients.
It was some measure of how bad all three looked that nobody protested that their own treatment would be delayed.
Dr. Hazzard vanished with Link into the first examining room they reached, issuing orders for various equipment, someone named Gwen, and a sterile operating room. Marco emerged moments later and directed Drum to one examining room, Jay to another, and shut the doors firmly after them as if the chaos they had brought with them might escape.
Jay looked around the examining room—another first, since Castle Donnerjack had a med-unit and Dack personally treated all the bumps and scrapes the med-unit could not. It was small but comfortable, painted a pale yellow that managed to make the light seem brighter but softer, and furnished with an examination table, a chair, and a shelf of medical tools. He was trying to guess what the various tools did, moving slowly lest he reopen any of the wounds that had started crusting over, when the door opened.
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