“Are you ready?” She looked up at Galen.
His blue eyes examined the machine. He nodded silently.
“Then we go.” She knelt beside the power source and started flipping switches. The lunch box began to hum. She motioned Galen to her side. “Hold to me.” She moved to the lever.
He stood behind her and put his good arm around her waist. She felt his warmth pressed against her back, acutely conscious that his torso was bare. “Here we go.” She grabbed the huge diamond with both hands and pulled.
It came off in her hands and bounced to the cement, where it rolled away under the machine. The end of the lever, several prongs bent and broken, shot out a jagged blue streak of power. She gaped and they ducked and rolled to the hard cement. Galen grunted in pain. The blue bolt had barely missed them. Ozone drifted in the air, reminiscent of lighting. Gears, barely moving, ground to a stop. The parking structure was silent except for a faint sizzling sound from the lunch box. For the first time she noticed that it was dented.
“Odin’s eye, what was that?” Galen gasped in what must be Norse. But she got the sense.
Lucy blinked. “Egil hit the . . .” She couldn’t think of a word for lever or lunch box, so she just waved a hand toward them. “. . . with his weapon. The machine is . . . damaged.” Was that the right word?
“But you made it come here.”
“Maybe that’s why I’m four months off, ” she muttered to herself. She got to her hands and knees and collected the diamond. “More damaged now,” she said in Latin to Galen.
“What do we do?”
Lucy looked around. Galen was ashen and shivering. “We ask Brad to fix it.” The sigh that thought elicited felt dusty.
“Who is this Brad?”
“My . . .” What was the word in Latin? “My friend.” Galen examined her face, reserve settling in his blue eyes. “Can he fix it?”
“I do not know.” She made a decision. She had to get him someplace warm, and she was not going back into the hospital where she had spun a host of inconsistent lies. “We will go to my house and . . .” How to say this? “Call out to Brad.” She might have just said “shout to Brad.”
“Is your house far?” Galen must have realized his strength was waning.
“Across the city. We will take a . . .” No Latin word for cab. Or car for that matter. “We will hire a . . . cart.” It was the closest she could come. He nodded and she pulled him to his feet with his good arm. Better hope there was a cab in front of the hospital at this hour.
Galen limped down the strangely paved road, leaning on the girl. He was half-glad the metal wheels had not worked. They might come down in the middle of the battle, with him wounded and without a weapon. He would not have lasted long. And Egil would kill the girl or keep her as a concubine slave. Galen wasn’t sure what would be worse for her.
But to be stuck here . . . wherever here was, was equally bad. He looked up at the stark hall where they had stuck needles in him. It was impossibly tall and made of steel like his sword and glass like the little bottles noblewomen kept their scent in, great sheets of it. One got up and down such huge buildings not with stairs but with boxes that moved by themselves. Rooms were lighted by discs that glowed like the moon. Who built such miracles? Gods? But he had seen no gods there, only men and women who tortured him, and this girl.
They walked down a white paved path. He heard a roar and turned. A metal beast with glowing eyes rushed down on them. He crouched and thrust the girl behind him. She shrieked. But the beast passed without attacking them. As it went, he saw that a man sat inside it, both hands on a wheel. He straightened. It was no beast. “What was that?” he muttered.
The girl brushed herself off, looking disgusted. “It was a cart.”
“That was no cart. It moved by itself without a horse.”
“There is no Latin word for it. We call it a ‘car.’ Now come.”
She grabbed his good arm and pulled him toward a “car,” painted yellow with black letters and Arabic numbers and a lamp on the roof that glowed white. She raised her hand in salute, and the car growled like Fenris, the wolf who ate the world at Ragnarok, and its glowing eyes blinked open. It took all his courage to stand his ground.
“Where to, lady?” the wizened man who sat inside the beast asked.
The girl opened a door behind the man, and said, “Sixteen Thirty-two Filbert, a few blocks off Van Ness.” She motioned Galen to get into the cart. He hesitated. To put himself in the grip of magic seemed . . . foolhardy. “You cannot walk,” she said with a frown. “So enter.” She didn’t wait but sat on the seat and pulled her knees in, then scooted across the bench to make room for him.
He was at her mercy and he hated that. But what choice had he? He did not want to linger in a place where they chained him and stuck him with needles. Gingerly he sat and hauled his legs in. The place smelled like old smoke, body odor, and something greasy. She reached across him and pulled the door shut. “Turn up the heater, would you?” she asked the wizened man.
Immediately the cart moved off, picking up incredible speed. The noise whined up and down the scale. Galen braced himself on the seat ahead as the cart careened around a corner. His heart jumped into his throat. The thing would surely overturn and kill them all. But the woman called Lucy was very calm. She buckled a belt around her waist that kept her in place, then reached over and did the same for him. The man in the seat ahead of them began to whistle. Hot air came from somewhere. Apparently this terrifying experience was an everyday occurrence. Galen watched and became sure the man was controlling the cart with the wheel, for he turned and held it in the direction the cart turned. The cart appeared to be run by some kind of power generated in the vehicle itself rather than relying on a beast or a waterwheel.
Galen calmed enough to look out the window. The streets outside the glass were nearly empty, but occasionally another cart passed, going at equally incredible speeds. The halls were grander than any he had ever seen. Some were of familiar stone. Others were needles of black reflection that touched the sky. None were of wood. They towered everywhere. Colored lights blinked in squiggly designs, some of which looked almost like runes or the Latin alphabet. Some flashed lighted paintings of people real enough to capture their soul. The designs changed before his eyes. It felt like many people were shouting at him, competing for his attention.
This city must hold millions of people. It had very steep hills. The cart did not hesitate but went up and down the hills without appearing even to strain, except for a change in the noise it made. As they came over a hill, he saw the glint of black water some way away. Enclosed like this he couldn’t smell the sea, but there it was. He could make out a gigantic bridge hung from a huge rope looped between towers, to hills on the other side of the water. Lights moved across the span. It looked like a spiderweb, delicate but strong. He had ordered his men to make such bridges, much to their amazement, when the Danir army needed to ford streams. He thought the design his own. But here was just such a bridge, and bigger than he could have imagined.
“Who built this bridge?” he asked the woman.
“I . . . I do not know. We call it ‘Golden Gate.’ It goes over the . . . the mouth of the bay.” The name was not in Latin. She must not know the words for it. Her Latin was awful. It sounded almost like she said “gylden geat” in Englisc. That was a good name for a bridge over the mouth of a bay. She leaned over to see what he could see out his window. Her braid brushed his chest. It made his nipples pucker. And not with cold. She would be a welcome bedmate after he had rested. “That island,” she pointed, “is Alcatraz. It was a prison.”
“There are many wharves.”
“This . . . bay is a large port.” Her Latin wasn’t up to saying more.