She nodded and patted the satchel that lay on the table between them. "Got a route in?"
Of course he did, but a second body would complicate matters. If he was going to have to work with her, he'd need a better understanding of her capabilities and how she thought. It was time for him to shift the initiative a little, and there was an obvious test to hand. "Step over to the telecom, and I'll call up the data I have gathered on the site. Perhaps you can find a weakness that has escaped me."
By the time they'd worked out their plan, Neko was impressed. Perhaps making this run with a partner would not be so bad after all. If she could do what she said, he might learn something.
Sam sang and watched. The shamans sang, too. The dancers sang as they danced. Feet pounded in unison, beating a rising tempo for the song. The dry ground beneath the dancers' feet began to puff up in dust clouds as feet bare, booted, and moccasined stamped and dragged across it.
Earth was beginning to stir.
Urdli scanned the African landscape around them. This had been a pleasant land once, a savannah. It had been dry much of the time, but that was not bad. Many places were dry. Life had found a way here, once. Now the place was parched and barren. Life did not find it so easy now.
Estios walked at his side. Laverty's aide's skin was already dark, but he still sweated too much. He needed constant reminders to drink enough water.
"Why us?" he complained. "I'd rather be on one of the strike teams."
Urdli scanned the sky. He preferred not to be drawn into that conversation.
Estios persisted. "Why did we draw this location? Why here, Urdli?"
"We are here because someone must be here. I am an obvious choice, given my abilities." The rock and sand reminded him of his home. The animals, the few that they saw, were different, but mat didn't matter. Rock was rock, and animals but ephemeral. Even allegedly intelligent beings such as Estios were ephemeral. "As to you? I do not know why you are here. I will not need your aid in mis quest. Given your mutual animosity, perhaps the Dog shaman merely wished you discomfort."
"More likely he thinks I'll get killed along the way," Estios said darkly.
Urdli shook his head. "If I had thought this were a dangerous retrieval, I would have insisted that we bring soldiers with us. Laverty would have required such precautions as well. There is no reason to expect problems."
"Unless Spider beats us to it." "Perhaps men there might be a few problems," Urdli conceded. "You might even see the combat you wish for. But you are a certified mage, and I am a magician of no small skill. It would take significant opposition to thwart us. I do not think that Spider will have the time to mobilize such resources, especially for just a single device. Her efforts will be directed elsewhere."
"And you are content to let others handle the difficult runs. To rely on Verner."
"I am content at the moment to walk. Matters will proceed safely enough without us, for the time being. Haven't you felt the flow of the astral? Spider has not yet manifested enough to be a magical threat. She still works through earthly agents, and such agents have yet to prove as competent as I feared. Verner's efforts will, at worst, weaken them. For now, secrecy even at the cost of relying on Verner and his friends and swiftness are our allies."
Estios held his hands up to the light and studied them critically. "We won't be a secret if we run into anyone. Why can't we start on the earth path you talked about?"
"It is not yet time." Urdli was not about to let Estios know of his limitations. "We can safely walk this land. To those we meet, if any, we will be two travelers, nothing more. The melanin bloom will peak shortly, and as long as you wear the tinted lenses you will not look out of place. The language spells will work as they always have. Only by carelessness will we appear strangers. There is nothing to fear. We shall be in and out before anyone else completes their portion of this elaborate arrangement, even your friends on the strike teams." And that, of course, was why Urdli found it easy to take such a demeaning part in this effort to control the weapons. Here he would have the upper hand, away from interference. Verner's runners might succeed in their raids, but more likely not. Laverty's soldiers had higher chances, but they would follow the professor's orders to the letter. While the activity might alert Spider's earthly agents, Urdli thought the probability low. From the pooling of data, he had seen that Spider's plans were less advanced than he had feared. Naturally, he had not shared that observation with the others; he saw no reason to let them know they wouldn't be facing active opposition in most of the locations. "You seem amused," Estios commented. "Perhaps I am. I had thought the Dog shaman would demand that I take a more difficult part in his plan,. face a threat that might be a danger to me. He holds me in less regard than he does yourself. A careful assignment of goals would have let him make the elimination of an enemy seem a mere twist of fate."
"Yet he gave us the milk run. He specifically sent us out after the one weapon unlikely to have any guard other than its location. We'll face no opposition beyond the ordinary dangers of travel in this sub-Saharan blight."
"Exactly. The dangers of travel are not really dangers to magicians of our caliber. And will be free to act on our own after we have done what is necessary here."
"So he had underestimated you." Estios smiled. "I see why you're amused."
Urdli smiled back. Verner was not the only one. "I thought you would.''
The elder shamans rose and formed a circle around Sam and the sprouting tree. The larger circle of the dancers stamped and swayed around them. Howling Coyote nodded to Sam, and Sam began to sing faster. The shamans echoed his new cadence as they joined hands. Howling Coyote lifted his left foot and plunged it down and forward. The inner ring began to dance, turning within the greater circle in a tighter focus of power.
The preliminaries were drawing to a close.
Janice looked down the hill at the small group of people gathered there. Four norms and three orks. All, save Ghost, were strangers. She knew their names and some of their general abilities because Ghost had told her, but that made them no less strangers. She wondered if they could be trusted.
She wondered if she could be trusted.
For more than a week now, the only norm she had seen was Ghost. She had fought back the hunger because he was a follower of Wolf, and in some obscure way she didn't fully understand, a member of her pack. She had come to recognize his strong spirit during their companionship in the wilderness. As much as a norm could be a friend to one of her kind, he was one. Of course, he was also cyber-enhanced, a deadly shot, and a vicious fighter who might have a chance at injuring her seriously, but she didn't think that was the real reason she had not made a meal of him. She prayed it wasn't.
These others were different. Norm or ork, they were not part of the pack. All were experienced shadow-runners and therefore theoretically dangerous. But if one were to straggle behind, and let attention wane, then she might…
Might what?
Her stomach growled an answer. She turned away and snatched up Ghost's last offering. Her fangs sank deeply into the deer haunch, but the juices that flowed did little to quiet the insistence of her need. She spat the tasteless meat onto the ground.
She didn't know how much longer she could hold off the hunger. Here, in this land so alive with life and so near to concentrations of people, it got harder every day. Distress warred with longing when she gazed across the sound to the lights of Seattle. The feelings were only amplified by the nearness of the people below. Why was she so disturbed? Dan Shiroi had shown no discomfort at what he was. He had taught her that the hateful norms were proper prey for her kind, rabbits to their wolves. And she was just like him, wasn't she? Something inside her shouted no, its voice barely overcoming the joyous shouting that fired her blood at the thought of meat. Sam had said that after this one run he could do the magic that would transform her back to a norm. Could she believe? Did she dare hope? Did she want to?
Whatever she believed or desired, she had gi
ven her word. In that, at least, she was still like her brother. She would do as she had said, and help these runners to do their part in Sam's scheme. After that? Well, after that, things would be as things would be.
She rose and walked softly down the slope toward the gathered runners. She knew that Ghost would hear her, but she wanted to see how alert the others were. The information might be useful later.
One of the chromed norms, Ghost's tribesman Long Run, was the first to react. As if on cue, Ghost whis pered in the ear of the woman Sally Tsung, he had said she was and she turned to look. The others followed suit.
She kept her moves slow and was careful not to show her fangs. She knew her size was intimidating. She overtopped the tallest of the runners by almost a meter and was easily half again as massive as the biggest ork Kham was his name. For all her precautions, she sensed she had awakened their fear. They tried to hide it and were successful for the most part, but she could smell it on them. The big ork was especially rank.
He straightened up, trying to make himself look as big as possible. Early evening starlight glinted from the chrome hand he flexed nervously. Ghost had told her that Kham's cybernetic hand was a legacy from an earlier involvement in Sam's business, during which the ork was nearly killed. Was he having second thoughts? Kham cocked his head and stared at her with narrowed eyes. "You ain't no sasquatch."
There was no use denying that, but she didn't see what business he had knowing her metatype. So she just said, "No, I'm not." "What are ya den?"
He was a nosy trog. "You don't want to know." "Too bad ya didn't go ork." He sounded halfway sincere. "We orks is tough, and good-looking, too. If ya was one of us, ya wouldn't have ta hide in de woods alone."
And an annoying one. She snapped, "I was an ork once. Didn't like it much, so I changed."
Flinching back at her anger, he quietly eyed her for a few moments. The others found nothing to say in the silence that fell. Kham fingered his broken tusk, and his brow furrowed as if thinking were hard for him. Then, having reached some kind of conclusion, his face relaxed. "Ya must be his sister, den. Heard dey got a lot of bad dings over on Yomi island. Dat's where ya were, right? Heard dey got de virus dere. Youse what happens when an ork gets de virus?"
Hugh Glass's face flashed before her eyes, smiling. "A present for you before I leave, " he said, showing his perfect teeth. He touched her leg and she collapsed in pain, shattered bone tearing through flesh. Hugh faded from her sight, then the sounds began, the sounds of the searching hunters. She swallowed her scream and held in her terror. Unable to run, she would be caught and taken back to Yomi. The hunters came closer. Fear clogged her throat. Closer. She had heard stories about what they did to runaways. She whimpered in her pain and immediately stifled it with redoubled terror. ' 'Delicious,'' Hugh said, and sucked her dry. To her drifting, barely conscious mind, he said, "Someday you may thank me, but more likely you'll hate me for all time. I'd prefer it that way, it tastes better. " Then he was gone, and she had only herself and the darkness and the pain. And the hunger. She shrugged off the nightmare memory. She didn't want to think about that anymore. "Don't know anything about a virus."
"We're not here to be idle," Ghost said, stepping between her and the ork.
She relaxed muscles she hadn't realized were tensed, and lowered her lips to hide her fangs. "All right. Let's get this over with."
"Don't you care what the plan is?" Tsung asked. "No."
The ork with the datajacks on his temples put a hand to his ear. After a moment he said, "Matrix cover says locks are off on the compound. We got a twenty-minute window before the Gaeatronics security checks run their diagnostics. We got to be aboard the submersible by then."
"Right on time," 'Rung said. "We don't get paid till it's over, so let's get moving."
"Ain't like de fairy to be on time," Kham grumbled.
"Even Dodger gets it right sometimes," Tsung said. The trip through the strip of forest between them and the Gaeatronics slip at the dockyards was short. They covered it quickly. Janice guessed that Ghost's tribesmen had already cleared the route. She felt sure of it when another Indian joined them at the outer fence. In moments a hole had been clipped, and the runners slipped through. The Indian who had joined them remained behind to seal the breach.
The dock they headed for was dark, but that didn't bother Janice. She could see a couple of twelve-meter surface craft moored on the left, and out at the far end on the right was a low-riding shape with a tall, conical hump amidships. Stenciled next to the Gaeatronics logo was the name Searaven. They reached the craft with three minutes left in their window.
The Searaven was a deep-water-construction submersible converted to serve as an underwater taxi for the wave-motion power plants Gaeatronics maintained in the Sound. The sectioned forward end, with its command and power modules and their manipulator housings, antennae, and light booms gave the vehicle a wasplike appearance. The imagery was enhanced by the slope of the aft hull where, instead of a normal open cargo frame, the Searaven carried an enclosed and pressurized hull for passengers. The rear of the cabin narrowed down to a docking collar that could serve as a diver's port or, after mating with another hatch, could allow the passengers to cross in relatively dry comfort from the submersible to another vessel or to an underwater station. She could imagine the connection assembly thrusting downward from the machine's belly like an insect's stinger.
She hadn't liked the idea of going underwater when Sam had presented it. She hated the water. It would be dark and cold down there, like a grave. She would be in an alien environment where she would have no control. Now, faced with the imminent realization of her fears, she hesitated.
"What's the problem?" Ghost asked as the others scrambled aboard.
She didn't want to speak her fears aloud. "Who's driving this thing?" "Rabo,"
"Ya got a problem wid dat?" Kham snarled. "Rabo's a good rigger," Ghost said soothingly. "Yeah," Rabo agreed. His voice came from the submersible's external speaker. He had been the first aboard and was already jacked in. "Being ork don't mean nothing in the interface."
"Bruiser like you ain't afraid of going down, are ya?" Kham taunted.
She lied with a shake of her head. Her voice almost cracked when she said, "I don't like water and I don't like tight places."
"Gonna get both." Kham laughed, and disappeared below.
"Come on, Wolf shaman," Ghost urged. "Only got forty seconds till security check. Got to get the hatch dogged."
She forced her fear down and stepped aboard. Ghost waited with seemingly imperturbable patience as she squeezed her way past the coaming. As soon as she had cleared the ladder he was in in a flash of jacked reflexes, and swinging the hatch closed. He spun the wheel as soon as the lip of the hatch touched the coaming.
"How close?" Tsung asked. "Point five," he replied.
"Too close," she said, giving Janice a sour look. "All right, Rabo. Soon as you get clearance from Dodger, get us going."
"What's your hurry? Wichita ain't going anywhere."
Janice was puzzled. Wichita was in Kansas. There was no way to get there by boat. "What are you talking about? We can't get there by boat."
"She's worse dan her brudder," Kham griped.
"Back off," Ghost warned him. To Janice, he said "Wichita is a submarine, Nereid class. She put to sea just before Thunder Tyee's boys overran the Bremerton sub base back in the teens. The warriors had already gotten a few cannon hits on her, and they put a missile into her before she cleared harbor. She went down and exploded, or so it seemed. Salish dredges still bring up bits of debris sometimes, but not much."
"So if we're headed after her," Janice said, "she didn't explode."
"That's what Dodger's data says," Ghost confirmed. "Bad guys know it, too. The Wichita didn't sink when she went under the waves. At least not immediately. Captain Walker was running a scam, but the tech didn't match his nerve. He wanted to run for safe territory, didn't want the Indians getting control of the miss
iles on board. He barely coaxed the Wichita out past Cape Flattery. The sub was in no shape to make it down the coast. Wouldn't have had a prayer of making it to the Canal, so he scuttled her."
That had all happened before Janice was born. It seemed incredibly ancient. "What makes anyone think that the missiles will be any good after more than thirty years under water?''
"Oh, the missiles won't," Tsung said. "But the bombs, that's another matter. Missiles are cheap, but bomb production is quite restricted. There's not so much fissionable material around anymore. What comes out of the plants is strictly monitored by an international commission, which doesn't leave a terrorist squad much chance of getting their hands on anything."
"And we're going to keep it that way," Ghost said solemnly.
The dance was well under way.
Sam rose on the power and felt himself widening, spreading through the sky. He rushed through the hole to the otherworld. He reached the guardian, no longer a Man of Light that mocked him, but something unseen, yet somehow recognizable. Tonight it had no power to limit him. He felt it bow out of his way as he approached.
Beyond the tunnel, another night sky awaited him.
The silver moon hung overhead, its glow full of magic and wonder. Its light lay on the land like a shroud, blanketing the woods and rolling hills in argent stillness. A thread hung from the moon, and from that thread a darkness.
The dark spot descended, growing as it did or only appearing to grow, but appearance was reality in the otherworld. A rush of power swept by Sam, fluttering his clothes. The air carried a scent at once familiar and alien. Familiar, in that he had sensed it once before in a diluted and fragmentary fashion. Alien, in that it was so other in its simultaneous menace and fascination.
When the darkness settled to the ground, it danced before him on eight slender legs. The many-jointed limbs arched out of the forward portion of the great, furred body, rising above it to angle down again to the ground. A shining drop of half-formed silk beaded at the spinneret tipping the end of the abdomen. The rounded head glistened with moonlit highlights that ran in silver streams from its crown to the great mandibles. There were no markings that Sam could see. Spider.
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