by Kay Kenyon
"Because it is without merit!"
They came to a widening in the staircase, one that looked out over the city. Below, the plazas and pedestrian ways were still deserted. But something was odd about it. The ground was moving.
As a ripple moved through one of the plazas, Quinn said, "Birds." He pivoted away, resuming his rush up the stairs.
Anzi allowed herself to be led, complaining, "The longer we delay leaving, the worse our chances."
"We don't have a chance anymore. The birds, Anzi. They aren't birds. They're drones, used for cleaning."
It came to him, this knowledge. As though his memories were a deck of cards that up to now had been randomly shuffled, but in his extremity, were dealing him a playable hand. The one he would need to survive.
The flutter of wings thrummed in the distance. "The Tarig have brought them all out at once. Millions of them."
Anzi looked wild with alarm. She began murmuring a prayer: "Do not look at me, do not see me, do not note my small life. Do not look at me, do not see me ...
They had come to a palace where all the side doors and accesses were well known to him. "In here," he said. They ducked through a carved door tucked under an arching gate.
They stood in a semidark, narrow passageway. On either side were panes of glass bulging out to form curved sides. The floor was translucent, but unlit. It was good that this hall was dark. Since the Tarig hated the dark, it meant the palace was empty just now.
At his side Anzi whispered, "What is this place?"
"Lady Chiron's dwelling."
"She will not help you against her own people!"
He started down the passageway, but she grabbed his arm to make him listen. "Do not give up, Dal Shen. There is always a chance. Even when I thought I would take my own life in despair, I thought there was a chance you might survive Tarig captivity. And you did. You must never give up."
"I haven't. There's a way, Anzi-a way out. The brightships. We'll steal one." A spike of elation carved through him. He would oppose them in a way they could not have imagined. He told her, "It will be your crowning theft, Anzi."
She repeated flatly, "A brightship ..."
At the end of the glass tunnel, they came to a round, open doorway, and stepped into a hall cluttered with statues, tall vases, and elaborate chairs. The bright streamed in from a ceiling peppered with skylights.
He chose a path, snaking through Chiron's collections of things copied from other worlds. This whole dwelling-and all the others-were tasteless museums, stuffed with other worlds' cultural and domestic items. The lady was wealthy beyond imagining. But she had no taste. The Tarig, for all their knowledge, created no crafts of their own, no art. Perhaps that is why they had never known what to make of Johanna.
Behind, he heard the outside door open, then shut. Footsteps clicked along the glass floor of the tube. Quinn took Anzi's arm and sprinted with her toward a door, one of several. They ducked through it, into a small chamber with translucent walls. A moment of disorientation caused him to stagger. It had been a long time since he'd taken this shortcut that would instantly deliver them to the second story of the mansion.
Passing through the elevator chamber door, they ran down a winding corridor, deserted. Quinn tried to get his bearings. Chiron liked to reprogram the layout of her dwelling, and he felt lost now, as the corridor became a ramp heading steeply up. Rooms glimpsed on either side of the corridor seemed oversized, as though they were potential rooms, not all of which could fit in the twisting spaces defined by the hall.
"What is this place?" Anzi whispered.
"They live like this," he answered. Experimentally, he wanted to say. But it was no time for discussions. He led her quickly onward, but thought they had lost their pursuer for the moment.
All he needed were a few unchanged features and he would know his way to the brightship, the back way, where he had played at changes of his own.
Down a side ramp he glimpsed a door he recognized, an elaborate door that once had closed upon his trysts with the lady.
Entering, they found themselves in an expansive room with a ceiling so high it seemed to place them in a well. In the center of the room was a platform gilded by a shaft of light falling from above. Quinn walked over to it, to Chiron's bed. Putting his hand into the shaft of light, he felt nothing of the high pleasure that the stream of light seemed to bestow on those who embraced here. He pitied the man who had wanted it. Even pleasure was a cage, if there was too much of it.
Anzi tugged at him. "Hurry."
He took her hand and they rushed to the open veranda, revealing the bright city.
Just before Quinn could step outside, Anzi yanked him back.
A bird strutted outside on the balustrade. Its head swiveled completely around, looking. Then it jumped from its perch, gliding away-not programmed to fly, but able to soar from a height.
"Now," Quinn said, guiding Anzi outdoors and pointing to a ledge. Climbing up, he led the way along it, flattening his back against the wall. Joining him, Anzi made the mistake of looking down. The view fell away ten stories. "Just a short way now, Anzi. Steady."
She sidled along the ledge, finally jumping onto a connecting roof where Quinn waited.
Glancing down, he saw another roof filled with thousands of birds. Strutting, swiveling. Reporting. Anzi and Quinn backed up from this view and turned to climb through the window just behind them. A movement caught their attention.
Someone was standing outside Chiron's bedchamber. It was Min Fe.
The legate made a shallow bow across the small space that separated them. "Titus Quinn," he said.
So, they all did know his name.
The sublegate craned his neck, trying to see Anzi. "Who is that with you?"
Anzi shrank back into the shadows. "No one," Quinn said.
"She is a clerk, but not a clerk. Perhaps the full steward Cho knows her name?" Min Fe was assessing the ledge, judging whether to use it.
"Cho knows nothing."
"We shall see. As I have just discovered, he has pursued the story of your wife, so he knows some things. This will be of great interest to Cixi."
Min Fe moved toward the ledge. "Of course, if I accomplished the capture of Titus Quinn, perhaps I would consider Cho unimportant. I could hide Cho. In return for your surrender to me."
"An attractive proposal, Sublegate." Quinn watched Min Fe sidle onto the ledge. He'd have to go out on the ledge after this fellow. "But who else knows about Cho? Certainly not just you."
Sweat beaded on the sublegate's face, causing his spectacles to slip down his nose. "Oh yes, just me. I am Cixi's eyes in this matter."
"Are your eyes fine enough to see all the way down?"
Min Fe frowned. Then he looked down, seeing the unexpected dramatic drop. He swayed, then flattened himself against the wall, staring outward.
He was afraid. An easy lunge from Quinn could topple him from his perch.
Behind Quinn, Anzi hissed, "Birds." A flock of them were turning to watch Min Fe. Anzi whispered to him from her hiding place, "The birds have seen us."
Quinn saw that they had, and abandoning Min Fe where he stood paralyzed with fear, Quinn plunged through the window opening.
They were in a very long hallway lined on one side with stone carvings. One sculpture was of a being like a Tarig, carved with pronounced insectoid features. The figure held in its four-fingered grasp a sharp golden pole like a lance.
On one side of the hall, windows let in a flood of light. Glimpsed through the windows, specks of black streaked downward. Birds gliding. He and Anzi raced for the end of the hall, where they came to an open porch. Two sets of stairs led in different directions.
At a noise from behind them, he turned to see Min Fe rushing down the hallway they'd just come down. And behind him, a Tarig appeared.
Anzi drew her knife to take a stand, but Quinn urged her down the nearest stairs instead. They fled into a park of yellow trees, down paths bordered by espaliered vines
.
In a few moments they entered a place that Quinn knew well. His former garden. He led Anzi in a dead run across it. His old room was open to the garden, through arched openings framed by columns.
He and Anzi entered the place where he had once lived.
The room was as he'd left it. His bed covers lay smooth, topped with brocaded pillows. Scrolls lay scattered as he had left them. He rushed to the Flemish tapestry hanging on the wall, tearing it down. The wall was smooth, but it housed his great work.
He had spent years experimenting, learning how to program the adobe. He had stolen the needles that, thrust into the surface of the organic stone, could direct its shape, creating vacuoles, pipes. A tunnel, eventually, after thousands of days.
The room had once been his bright cage. But, with a rush of understanding, he knew he had always hated it.
Kneeling by the tapestry, he found the place where, thousands of days ago, he had hidden his working needles in the cloth. He pulled a group of them out of the weave and scrambled to the wall. He inserted them at the correct angle, forming a circle. Immediately, a tiny hole appeared, widening like the outward ripples of a stone thrown in a pond.
Anzi was frantic. "In the garden!" A crashing sound came from that direction.
A Tarig swept into view. The figure stopped in the middle of the grass sward, searching.
Time had shriveled into a wad. He had hoped it might be the Lady Chiron who was coming down that hall, a person in whose eyes he might have found some mercy.
But Quinn turned to face Lord Hadenth.
Hadenth saw him. A stone's throw away from each other, they paused, eyeing each other.
Quinn drew his knife. "Anzi," he whispered, "Go through the hole."
"No."
"Tell Bei what you know. Tell someone. Go now."
"The hole is too small," she whispered.
"It will widen. Don't touch the left side of the wall, do you hear?"
From the garden, Hadenth said, his voice shredding, as though full of static, "Come to us."
Anzi needed only a moment or two more before the door to his tunnel grew large enough for her. "Go," he whispered to her. Then he advanced toward the lord.
The next things happened so fast, he could hardly afterward remember their sequence. From one side of the garden came a scream. Someone ran at him. A sparkling shaft pointed at Quinn's chest.
Hadenth pivoted, flicking out a talon from his hand, and lunging, ripped open the belly of Min Fe, who had been aiming the golden pole from the art gallery at Quinn's middle.
Min Fe fell heavily on the Tarig, and the golden rod fell over Hadenth's ankles, stopping his leap up from the ground where he'd staggered.
Quinn backed up, then fled into the room and dove for the opening in his wall, scrambling into the tunnel, the one he'd spent ten years shaping. Crawling just behind Anzi, he let himself hope that Hadenth couldn't fit in the tunnel.
Zai Gan bent his efforts to recalling the elevator capsule to the top. Such a thing had never been done before, but he knew his city and its mechanisms.
Below him, at his command, the capsule stopped in its swift descent. Then, slowly, it began ascending.
The fool had listed his name on the passenger manifest. But of course, he would have had to. There must be a record of all goings and comings. It was all recorded.
Exultation flooded over Zai Gan. He had secured the fugitive on Cixi's behalf. And not just any fugitive, but Titus Quinn himself. Zai Gan called for reinforcements, and a stout team of Jouts came thudding across the plaza.
Watching all this from the other side of the plaza, Cho watched Zai Gan. Cho felt safely anonymous, hidden there among the many stewards, clerks, and legates who were gathering outside, hoping for a view of whatever came next.
Soon, a contingent of Tarig were swarming in that direction. Overhead, flocks of birds clumped and dispersed, on the watch for the fugitive.
A flurry of activity on the edge of the plaza signaled the return of the capsule to its slot. Presently the door slid aside. Cho watched as Zai Gan plunged through the door.
There were a few moments of quiet as Jouts and Tarig fanned out around the capsule.
Then Z.ai Gan came out, standing with his hands at his side. If Cho could discern his features the least bit at this distance, he would have said the man's expression was halfway between terror and rage.
Then the preconsul shouted something, and the flock of them raced to the next pillar.
Cho had saved Dal Shen ... Titus ... only a few intervals of time.
It was so little, it could hardly be an advantage. But as Cho looked around him at the hidebound officials milling in the plaza, he was filled with a quite unaccustomed pride.
Quinn and Anzi scrambled on hands and knees through the smooth pipe. He heard the Tarig's breathing. Quinn judged that he was at the tunnel entrance, pausing, perhaps daunted by the darkness.
They hurried on, toward the only place the tunnel could go, and matter. The brightship platform.
"Do not touch the left side," Quinn whispered as they hurried, crablike, through the stone passageway.
He might die here in this tunnel, but his heart was strangely lifted. Here was his tunnel, his proof that he'd tried to escape. The agonizingly slow process of manipulating the walls-walls that were old and sluggish, and he without proper knowledge, and unable to ask.
Yes, Johanna, he thought. I fought them too.
The tunnel was not entirely dark because of the light from the opening. It must have been this thin light that emboldened Hadenth to crawl in, sending scuttling noises to Quinn's ears, and the scent of Tarig to his nostrils.
Hadenth could fit.
As Anzi scooted forward, Quinn followed, keeping his shoulder against the right-hand wall, the passage dimming as they moved farther from the entrance.
The lord whispered to him from down-tunnel: "We are inclined to mercy, Titus Quinn. No retributions. Only come to us."
Quinn was in total darkness now, and the lord hated to enter it, perhaps hated the confines of the tunnel as well. But Quinn had little doubt that Hadenth would pursue him through the blackness. When he did, the first retribution would be for making him come into the dark.
Quinn still clutched one of the needles. The programming stylus was small, made for delicate work, not tunneling. But once, he had had all the time he needed. He had had nothing but time. Now, crouching in the tunnel, he inserted the needle into the stone, twirling it to find the correct vector in the dark.
Hadenth's breathing became more labored. He might be breathing harder, or approaching closer. Working quickly, Quinn's own breath came heavily in the suffocating warmth and confines of the tube.
Up ahead, Anzi had found the exit, and called to him. Working furiously, Quinn at last finished his manipulations. Then, a faint buzz zoomed down the left-hand wall where a jet of high-temperature plasma streamed, a weapon he'd planned long ago, in case of pursuit.
Behind him, Hadenth, whose body must have touched the left wall, let out a reverberating bellow. The smell of seared flesh wafted over Quinn, nearly doubling him over with its strength. Stunned for a moment, Quinn remained plastered against the right-hand wall.
"Titus ..." Hadenth's pain-racked voice came to him. "Titus. The girl was in our arms when we blinded her. We told her what was going to transpire, so she could watch it approach."
Quinn had stopped. Listening.
"Her cringing only tightened this lord's grip. The more she shuddered, the harder we confined her. So easy, so small a girl."
It was too bad Hadenth had opened his mouth. Quinn had intended to let him live, but now the creature would be better off dead. Quinn began the tough maneuver of turning around in the tunnel without touching the live side.
Hadenth's ragged voice continued. "The girl squealed when one's talon entered her eye. If she hadn't squirmed so, we could have done the thing without maiming her. It was exquisite to see her suffer, feel her very breath on one's
face. But Titus Quinn knows the glory of such a moment, having killed Small Girl. Ah?"
Quinn forcibly calmed his breathing, making himself speak to the creature. "Hadenth. It's time for lights out." To the Tarig, the dark was an intolerable environment, a psychological horror. "I'm going to shut off the tunnel's end now. You will be in total darkness."
Hadenth whispered, "Do not."
Quinn inserted a needle into the skin of the tunnel. First, he deadened the plasma stream, quenching the light. A faint glow still came from the exit hole, up ahead. Then he directed his needlework to close the opening in his room, to prevent Hadenth's escape in that direction. This took a while, since it was so far removed from Quinn's location.
Hadenth had time to plead. His words sounded like gongs in a minor key. "We did not kill her. She lives, by our grace."
"May God know all your sins, Hadenth. Even in the dark." It was a curse he thought Johanna would appreciate.
"We will forgive you," Hadenth said. "Forgive all."
The Tarig had trouble staying clear on who needed forgiving.
The light dimmed as one end of the tube closed off. He heard Hadenth's heavy, labored panting, like a wounded lion.
Emerging from the tunnel, Quinn applied his needles, closing the wall. As he did so, for a moment he heard a high scream. And then another.
Anzi was crouching by the wall, covering her ears.
The bellow came again and again, each time muffled by further layers of wall as Quinn coaxed the stone closed.
They stood in the hangar at last. Wedge shaped, the enormous launch platform lay between the mansions of Chiron and Nehoov, its lip jutting out of the circular city. Overhead, a wavering field of light provided a shield from wind. Five wedge-shaped bays spread to the perimeter.
On each rested a brightship. Shaped like crescents, their shining forms sat upon numerous black struts, creating a look of crustaceans about to scuttle.