“Shig? I’m at Hmong’s house. The quetzals are headed for the hole in the fence. Have Step’s people on alert. I’ve got hits on two of them.”
“Roger that.”
Talina shook the water and mud from her gun. With a screwdriver she saw laying on the backhoe’s deck, she ensured she didn’t have a barrel blockage. Be a bitch to be blown up by one’s own gun at the last moment when she was trying keep from being eaten.
With her weapon as serviceable as it was going to be, she trotted off in the quetzal’s path. Wasn’t like it was hard tracking.
Nor did it take more than a hundred meters of warily stalking her way between domes, around tool sheds, past drying racks and clotheslines, before she found the first quetzal. She pasted her rifle’s muddy stock to her cheek, stepping slowly forward. She was just back of the tail. Could smell the beast’s blood and see the dark fluids leaking from the vents at the rear. The thing was wedged between Marsden’s old dome and the Gatlins’.
Tal tensed as a door was opened, and C’ian Gatlin poked his head out, a bolt gun in his hands. “What the hell hit my house?”
“Quetzal, C’ian. Careful. There’s two more out here, and we can’t be sure this one’s dead yet.”
“Rude bastard,” C’ian growled under his breath, stepped out into the rain, and used his rifle to blow a hole in the quetzal’s pelvic girdle. “That’ll keep it off its feet.”
Even as Gatlin said it, a scream could be heard off to the south. A fusillade of shots followed.
“Stay inside until the all clear,” Talina called. “And lock the door behind you.”
“You got it, Tal.”
“Steaks and leather,” she said, taking the long way around his dome. Figured it was all right to leave the dead or dying quetzal behind her. Especially with that hip shot.
She picked up the tracks where they rounded Kashasvili’s dome and followed the wreckage where the beasts were knocking stuff over and spilling things in their haste.
“Shig? Status?” she asked her com.
“Step here, Tal. Two of them just escaped through the hole that idiot blew in the fence. Did the mach-five sprint, running white hot, mouths open. Probably just until they crossed the ditch and hit the fields. If the rain hadn’t petered out and let them run full bore, we’d have had them.”
Quetzals couldn’t run full-out in the rain. Open-mouthed, doing the ram-air thing, at high speeds they’d drown themselves.
“Third one’s dead. He’s blocking the space between Gatlin’s and Kashasvili’s old dome.”
She sighed, becoming aware of the rage and sorrow felt by her demon. “Yeah, well, this time you guys started it,” she told the beast. “Whitey had his chance. Instead of trying to make me crazy, he could have offered a truce. It’s no longer just a matter of us protecting ourselves from predators. This raises things to a whole new level.”
If the fastest always win, why do so many chamois escape?
“That a quetzal saying?”
The beast chattered in response.
Talina exhaled wearily, feeling the stim starting to wear off. Slogging through the mud, she turned her tracks for the avenue.
First things first. Check on Trish.
Too much to do. Pus and blood, what she’d give for a heaping plate of hot food and tall glass of Inga’s best stout.
She was tramping down the avenue, half wondering how she’d gotten there. Saw Kalico, still standing at her station. “Coming in,” she called, blinking, the world kind of wavering. “Don’t . . .”
She vaguely remembered slamming into the street. The clatter of her rifle could be faintly heard in the distance.
79
How in the name of all of the cursed permutations of hell could things have gone so wrong? Let alone so clap-trapping fast?
Tamarland sat, arms tucked tightly to his chest. His butt was on a packing crate, his back to one of the big containers. Some kind of two-meters-tall shipping boxes stood on either side. Another crate was stacked atop it all, making a reasonable shelter.
Wasn’t the first time that Tam had found himself soaked to the bone, hungry, and absolutely enraged.
For the moment, he could chalk one up for the Donovanians.
One minute he was fully in charge, sitting fat and sassy in the admin dome. He had half of the people he needed to firmly tighten his grip on Port Authority locked away in the next room, and the next thing he knew, that slit Aguila marched in with her marines.
Not to try and depose him. But because some of the local wildlife was loose in the compound?
That’s what led her to take action? Quetzals?
If any upside could be found for the situation, it was that vile siren blowing, Tam had had freedom to roam the city. People had vanished from the streets—not that they’d been out in numbers before. He’d picked the lock on the magazine building where the clay pit stored magtex: the explosive they used to loosen clay. Just for good measure, Tam had used five sticks to take the fence down.
Well, hell, what kind of fools built a fifty-foot-tall fence in the first place? And there’d been armored marine guards on all the gates. Wasn’t like they were just going to let him walk out.
Then, in the dark, he’d made the muddy slog through the rain-flooded perimeter ditch, had to veer wide around the gates where marines stood with their tech. But he’d made it to the shuttle field.
Now all he needed was Torgussen to send the shuttle down.
Vixen had been making dirtside runs once every three days. That meant that Wilson should be dropping out of the sky tomorrow at about eleven. If the shuttle followed protocol, they’d lower the ramp, unload a few personnel for a half-day’s leave, and load up a couple of crates of vegetables for the ship’s galley.
By this time, Vixen’s tanks should be a little more than quarter full. Not that it mattered. All Tam had to do was get back on board. Once there, he was back in his element. Could order the ship refueled from Freelander’s tanks, and they’d be on their way.
The last time, Torgussen had taken him by surprise. Turnabout was indeed fair play, and now it would be Tam’s turn.
Torgussen was Corporate. He understood the rules, unlike these fricking maniac Donovanians. With a gun to his head, the good captain would do anything Tam asked him to do. Especially if the lives of his crew and the safety of his ship were at stake.
Tam made a tsking with his lips. Had to hand it to Shig and Yvette. They’d played him perfectly. Lulled him into thinking he’d grabbed the whole of Port Authority by its dangling balls. Skipping out the way they had? It set him up for failure in a way he could never have anticipated.
Who were these lunatics, anyway?
As rain beat on the containers around him, his thoughts went back to that last session in the conference room. He’d been looking right into Oshanti’s eyes. The woman had known that he’d kill her as soon as look at her. And she’d known better than he that it would have destroyed him.
Who would have thought that humans had that kind of spirit in them? It almost reeked of the mythic stories about the past. Back before The Corporation had finally civilized and tamed humanity into an orderly and productive society.
If only he’d been able to get them to the prison, get them separated, play them against each other, and really make them suffer, he might have been able to beat, starve, and torture that stubbornness out of them. Sure as vacuum he knew all the psychiatric methods to destroy a person’s sanity, break them, and bring them to heel.
If only I’d been given the time.
He’d understood that he’d lost the moment the conference room doors had burst open and his captives had broken out into the hallway. At the sight he’d triggered the block of magtex. And . . . nothing.
Who had unlocked their bindings? Rendered his bomb inoperative?
Not Tallisvilli. The guy
wasn’t courageous enough—let alone possessed of the initiative to have thought of it.
And then he remembered Allison stepping into his office, that half-fearful, half-triumphant look in her eyes.
“The guard at the door would have passed you, my love,” he whispered. “You could have told him anything. He’d have believed you. Thought you were still on my side. And you knew the magtex could only be detonated through my implant.”
What were her words? I’m just trying to limit the bloodshed?
He wondered what she had done with the detonator. Flushed it?
No matter. All he needed now was to get aboard that shuttle. Once he’d made it to Vixen, there were other bolder measures he could take.
80
Dortmund had never been alone. Ever. The closest he’d been to it was when he’d closed his office door to study or work on some paper. But even then it had been with the knowledge that people were passing on the other side of the portal. That he was surrounded by tens of thousands of human beings who were no more than a moment’s walk away.
And he’d been connected through his implants, imbedded in the com net. At the merest thought, he’d be connected to anyone and everyone. Capable of accessing any kind of data.
I am totally isolated.
The reality of it felt crushing. Dortmund’s heart began to pound.
He almost toppled the chair as he ran to the door and charged outside into the morning. The clouds were breaking, the damp air pungent with Capella III’s magical and unique odors. Rays of brilliant light streaked out from the eastern horizon and rimed the patchy white tufts of cloud in silver.
The chime rose and fell down in the drainage, and a flock of scarlet fliers chased among the treetops rising above the narrow band of vegetation around the creek.
Trish Monagan’s bullet-riddled aircar sat abandoned, a charge cable running to its power pack.
“Hello!” Dortmund bellowed.
The planet ignored him.
His was a pointless existence for a suddenly meaningless human being.
“Kylee!” he bellowed out, dropping to his knees.
“Please,” he whimpered. Then he let the sobs come.
“If there is an empty corner of hell, I am in it.”
With all of his heart, he wished for a quetzal to come and eat him. Could imagine it as he’d seen it the other morning. Like a mound of fluid rock, rising, morphing, a monster grown from stone.
It would loom over him, the terrifying mouth splitting open as it reached down to crush and rend his body.
How long did he wait? Fifteen minutes? A half hour? Maybe more?
In the end he couldn’t stand it. His knees hurt too much on the unforgiving sandstone.
He fought his way to his feet, endured the pins and needles of renewed circulation.
His stomach growled. Empty as his soul.
Turning, he walked to the dome, grabbed up the burden basket, and trudged his lonely way down the trail to the drainage. Who knew what awaited him down there? Any of a thousand forms of lurking death.
But if a man had to die, he might as well do it trying to fill his belly.
He’d barely started down the trail, his attention on places where quetzals would hide. So, of course, he forgot to watch his feet. Or remember that the plants on Donovan moved. Which is why he blundered right into the thorncactus.
81
Someone slammed a door; voices intruded on Talina’s dream.
She blinked her eyes open. Stared up at the overhead lights and familiar ceiling. Some part of her derived a morbid sense of amusement that she could instantly place herself. Knew exactly where she was: hospital, room seven.
The quetzal dream clung to her like old cobwebs. She gave a slight shake of her head, tried to rid herself of the afterimages.
As she did, she took stock of her body. Arms, legs, torso, all present. Nothing in a cast. No bandages. No sutures.
How the hell did I get here this time?
She sat up, found herself in a medical smock. The IV told her that while she had no physical injuries that she could either remember or find on her body, something bad had happened.
Okay, think, Tal. What were you . . .
Ah, yes. Hunting quetzals in the rain.
It came back to her. The flight through the storm, the hole blown in the fence. Three of the beasts loose in PA. The one she’d shot.
She sat up, pulled the IV from the back of her hand, and tried to come to terms with the horrible taste in her mouth. Spinning out of images of quetzals, gunshots, and mud came visions of food.
How long had it been since she’d eaten? No wonder her Xibalba dreams had been filled with tamales, enchiladas, chocolate, and carne asado.
She found her coveralls, washed and folded on the visitor’s chair. After the mud puddle, someone had been a saint.
She was dressed, wondering which room Trish was in when Dya stepped in. “Hey, you’re up.”
“Yeah. Figured I was on my back long enough out at Rork.”
“Where’s Kylee? I’ve been worried sick since you came in without her.”
“Last she was seen, it was running with quetzals out at Rork. Dya, I swear, I’ll be out to get her just as soon as I can. Not only that, I think I know just the place for her. A place where she’s going to be safe, and where you can go and see her.”
For a moment, rock-solid Dya wilted, misery filling her face. A tear broke from the corner of her eye. “I just want my daughter back. This is like a never-ending nightmare. Never knowing if she’s alive or dead, or hurt.”
“Yeah, well, don’t blame yourself. And don’t go digging her grave yet. If anyone can survive Donovan, it’s her.”
Dya sucked a deep breath. A moment later, the iron-willed woman was back. “Well, that’s something. I just want to bring my little girl home.”
Just not quite yet, Dya. Tal said, “Listen. Gotta check on Trish, then I’m outta here. I’ve got things—”
Raya appeared in the doorway behind Dya, ordering, “Not so fast. Park your ass back on that bed. You and I have to talk.”
Talina lifted her hands in surrender. “I’m sorry. Ever so sorry that I tied you to your own bed. I needed to get out of PA before I hurt anyone. Figured you’d call out the dogs to keep me here.”
Raya stood like an avenging angel, arms crossed, a scowl on her usually sour Siberian face. “That’s a first, you know. Never had a patient humiliate me that way before. However, let’s set that aside for the moment. What I need to know is what the hell happened to you out at Rork Springs?”
Talina sighed, rubbed her face as she braced her butt on the elevated bed. “I had to fall apart. Then I had to put myself together again. The quetzals and I rewired my brain out there. I’m still me, but I’m different.”
“How so?” Dya asked.
“I feel . . . alien. Part quetzal. Know things differently. The way I perceive time has changed. Sort of like I’m part of a telescoping series of events. Death’s not the same. I am one and many all at once. The quetzal consciousness I call Demon is still down in my gut—a combination of quetzal molecules that hate me and want me dead. More so since I shot that one last night and wounded Whitey. Rocket, Flash, the Briggs and the Rork quetzals are all rolled into one and form a different part of my subconscious, one that rides on my shoulders.”
“You know how that sounds?”
“Like I’m crazy? The thing is, I can shut it off. Use the quetzal sense when I need it. Like the ancient Maya concept of one and many. Right now I need to be human, so I’m human.”
“Sooner, rather than later, I want you in the lab so we run a full analysis.”
“You said Kylee’s still out at Rork Springs?” Dya asked, expression again pinched with worry.
“Soon as I can get a charge in the aircar, I promise I’ll
be out to get her.”
Assuming she’s still alive.
Not that Dya needed to hear that.
“What about these quetzals Yvette says Kylee ran off with?”
“Different lineage than the ones here. And yeah, lineage is big when it comes to quetzals. The last time I had anything to do with the Rork bunch, they were really curious about us. My take, after living with their molecules, they’ve never really dealt with humans before.”
“What about the one that attacked Trish?” Raya asked.
“Can’t tell you. I was still locked away in Xibalba spinning fantasies.”
Dya said, “Yvette told me that Dr. Weisbacher is still out there. Just in case Kylee needs him.”
Talina laughed. “Now there’s a piece of work. Hey, I’m so hungry I could eat a boot. How about we talk later, huh? I just want to see how Trish is doing and be on my . . . What?”
She glanced back and forth.
Raya, tough as quetzal leather, said, “She was already dead when you brought her in, Tal. Didn’t want to drop that on you when you were headed out to battle quetzals. Dya and I tried. She’d been gone too long to bring back.”
Oh, God no.
Talina closed her eyes, felt her heart drop like a stone.
“Sorry, Tal,” Dya whispered.
“Yeah. Fuck.” And the emptiness just kept growing.
82
For a weeknight, The Jewel was booming. Dan had started the evening by announcing a free round on the house for the searchers who’d put their lives on the line during the quetzal scare. He’d had Vik pour liberal amounts of the high proof to fuel the crowd.
As Dan watched the action at the tables, he had to wonder. Was it that they’d dodged the bullet again? That the town survived? Or that the patrons who crowded to bet their plunder at the tables and called for alcohol were just fully aware that they’d made it while fourteen of their number had not?
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