The loner was very close now. Corbell dialed a number he remembered: two commas crossed, S reversed, hourglass on its side, crooked pi. The car sped smoothly away. Eleven Boys watched it go.
"They tracked us somehow. They'll track us again," Corbell said. "We'll have some time, but not much."
From outside it was a copy of the office building in which Mirelly-Lyra had returned Corbell's pressure suit. In this version the elevators worked. Still following the pattern, Corbell tried the third floor.
It held. Lines of office doors, all closed.
"My name coin doesn't open them." Gording reported.
They kicked at door, it was solid.
Gording asked. "Are there prilatsil not locked behind doors?"
"Yeah. On the roof. The Boys could be there by now."
"Did you at least keep the spear blade?"
Corbell handed it over. Then it occurred to him that there might be indicators for the elevators. He slipped back into the elevator and punched all the buttons. If it stopped on every floor they'd have to check them all. He got out on the fourth floor. As he tiptoed down he heard a pattering above him like a swarm of rats.
Gording had disengaged the thread from the rocks. He had tied one end to the blade and the other to his loincloth. Now he chopped with the blade at the cloud-rug where it ran beneath an office door. "Guard the stairs," he said.
"With what?"
Gording didn't answer, didn't even look up.
Corbell stood barehanded at the stairwell door. The first Boy through would kill him. He knew it. Maybe Gording would get away.
What was Gording doing?
Gording was pushing the blade under the door with his fingers.
He pulled upward on the ends of the loincloth. He heaved. Sounds forced their way between his teeth.
Now he pulled sideways toward the doorjamb.
Now he kicked at if door. It shuddered. Another kick sent it crashing inward. The blade was stronger than the door; the thread had cut the metal around the lock.
Through the office window Corbell glimpsed two Boys working under the tchiple's motor hatch. Then he crowded into the "phone booth" with Gording. When he shut the door there was no light. He opened the door a crack, found the crooked pi and kept his finger on it as he closed the door. He pushed it four times.
Nothing obvious happened.
He opened the door and slipped out into a blackness like the inside of a stomach. He whispered, "We'll have to bet that this is really a subway. Stay here. I'll find the stairs and call you."
"Good," said Gording. Corbell slipped away.
He moved with his hand lightly brushing the wall. Once he found a cloud-rug couch by stumbling over it. He clutched at the stuff to stop his fall, and a sheet of cloud-rug ripped away in his hand. Rotted.
A sound behind him. He said, "What was that?"
Gording didn't answer.
Corbell kept moving. He could feel Mirelly-Lyra in the dark. He kept expecting to hit the stairs, but the wall went on and on. He circled another couch and kept going. There was no sound in this place. Cloud-rug cushioned his feet and blotted up the sound of his breathing.
Stairs!
"Here," he said, no longer whispering.
"Good," Gording said from a foot away. Corbell jumped like a man electrocuted. "A Boy stalked you until I killed him with thread. I think it must have been the loner, from his smell."
"This place may be dead. If the stairs-ah." The stairs moved beneath him. Disoriented, off balance, he sat and let the stairs carry him down into the darkness.
The stairs stopped. Gording said, "What next?"
"Follow the sound of my voice. I know where the cars are; all the way in the back." He walked with his hands in front of him. How was he going to find the right car?
He felt his way around cloud-rug couches.
He brushed a solid wall. Off course. He couldn't hear Gording or anything else. Were there Boys in the dark, stalking him as Gording stalked them? Was Gording already dead? Corbell was moving too fast, stumbling. Only the very oldest Boys would know the layout of this place; but they wouldn't need to. They'd follow him by his breathing.
He had found the doors.
"Gording!"
Light flashed for an instant at the far end. Where had that come from? Gording called, "All right."
Corbell waited in the dark and the quiet. Presently Gording spoke next to him-"Here!" -felt for Corbell's hand and put something heavy in it. "I robbed the loner. Take his sword. I took his fire starter too. Where is the picture of the world?"
"Along-" Corbell guided Gording's hand "-that wall."
The flashlight beam revealed two polar projections with the ice caps still showing. There were no glowing lights or numbers to mark the routes.
Gording asked, "Which is our door?"
"I don't know."
"The Boys have our tchiple. We can't surrender because we've killed the loner. The Boys may have a way to shut down the prilatsil. Do something, Corbell."
"All right. Give me the name coin." He took it, inserted it in the ticket window. Nothing happened.
He tried the next door. Nothing. He was beginning to panic. But the stairs had worked- The third door let them through. The transparent door to the subway car let Gording through, closed after him, and wouldn't open until Corbell had pulled the disk out and reinserted it. They sat down opposite each other.
"Now we sit here for awhile."
"Al! right."
"I don't know how you can be so calm."
"I risk less than you do. Half a Jupiter year-" he had borrowed Corbell's phrase "-and I'll be dead. Against this I balance dikta immortality and freedom from the Boy rule. Unless... Corbel, can we find dikta immortality where we're going? Or will we have to make constant raids on Antarctica?"
"I know it's in Four City. Maybe it's in other places, too."
"The risk is good. Shall we sleep?"
Corbell's laugh was shaky. "Good luck."
V
Gording woke when the door went up. The car slid into the vacuum tunnel; curved downward; straightened out; rolled right; rolled left. So far so good.
Gording, watching his face, relaxed. "I did not want to ask. Where are we going?"
"It doesn't matter. Anywhere there's a... picture of the world that lights up. That'll tell us how to get to Four City."
"A good decision," said Gording, and he went back to sleep.
Maybe he was faking.
But his breathing was very gentle and regular.
Corbell stretched out. He wedged his ankles under a chair arm. There was no sound but Gording's breathing.
Corbell dozed. He twitched and jerked in his sleep: running, running... When the car turned upward he came half awake, then dropped off again. But he felt it when the car slowed, and, groggy as he was, he remembered that first ride. He put his hands over his ears, turned to see Gording copy him.
The car stopped.
Doors popped open automatically. Air puffed across them, hot and wet, like boiling maple syrup in the throat. Corbell cried, "Come on!" and went through.
The great hall was a ruin. Six or seven stories of the great cube had fallen in, leaving a cross section of whatever was up there; Corbell didn't care. He kept his breathing shallow. The scalding air was thick with a taste and smell half chemical, half mildew. Sweat sprang out in droplets all over his body.
The wall map was cracked across, and dark.
He tried his credit disk in three doors before he found one that worked. Gording pulled at his arm and spoke like a man holding his breath. "Wait! Where does this go?"