The guard whirled, started an angry shout at me—then suddenly got a good look at what must have been only a dim silhouette in the bad light at his first glance. His reflexes were good. He lunged while the startled look was still settling into place on the wide, mud-colored face. I got the shot off just as he crashed into me, and we went down, his four-hundred-pound body smashing me back like a truck hitting a fruit cart. I managed to twist aside just enough to let the bulk of his weight slam past before I hit the pavement and skidded. I got some breath back into my lungs, hauled my gun hand free for another shot. But it wasn’t necessary—the huge body lay sprawled half on me, inert as a frozen mammoth.
Dzok was beside me, helping me to my feet with his good hand.
“All right, so far,” he said cheerfully rearranging my hair shirt. “Quite a weapon you have there. You sapiens are marvelous at the sort of thing—a natural result of your physical frailty, no doubt.”
“Let’s analyze me later,” I muttered. My shoulders were hurting like hell where I had raked them across the rough paving. “What next?”
“Nothing else between us and the refuse disposal slot I told you about. It’s not far. Come along.” He seemed as jaunty as ever, unbothered by the brief, violent encounter.
He led the way down a slanting side branch, then up a steep climb, took another turnoff into a wider passage filled with the smell of burning garbage.
“The kitchens,” Dzok hissed. “Just a little farther.”
We heard loud voices then—the Hagroons never seemed to talk any other way. Flat against the rough-hewn wall, we waited. Two slope-shouldered bruisers waddled out from the low-arched kitchen entry, and went off in the opposite direction. We went on, following a trail of spilled refuse, ducked under a low doorway and into a bin layered with putrefying food waste. I thought I had graduated from the course in bad smells, but this was a whole new spectrum of stench. We splashed through, looked out a two-yard-wide, foot-high slot crusted with garbage. The view was darkness, and a faint glistening of wet cobbles far below. I twisted, looked up. A ragged line of eaves showed above my head.
“I thought so,” I said softly. “The low ceilings meant the roof had to be next. I think these people stacked this pile of stone up here and carved the rooms out afterward.”
“Precisely,” Dzok said. “Not very efficient, perhaps, but in a society where slave labor is plentiful and architectural talent nonexistent, it serves.”
“Which way?” I asked. “Up or down?”
Dzok looked doubtfully at me, eyeing my shoulders and arms like a fight manager looking over a prospective addition to his stable. “Up,” he said. “If you think you can manage.”
“I guess I’ll have to manage,” I said. “And what about you, with that arm?”
“Eh? Oh, it may be a bit awkward, but no matter. Shall we go?” And he slipped forward through the opening in the two-foot thick wall, twisting over on his back; then his feet were through and out of sight, and suddenly I was very much alone. Behind me the growl of voices and an occasional clatter seemed louder than it had before. Someone was coming my way. I turned over on my back as Dzok had done, eased into the slot. The garbage provided adequate lubrication.
My head emerged into the chilly night. Above I saw the cold glitter of stars in a pitch-black sky, the dim outlines of nearby buildings, a few faint lights gleaming from openings cut at random in the crude masonry walls. It was a long reach to the projecting cornice just above me. I stretched, trying not to think about the long drop below—found a handhold, scrambled up and over. Dzok came up, as I rolled and sat up.
“There’s a bridge to the next tower a few yards down the far side,” he whispered. “What kept you?”
“I just paused to admire the view. Here, help me get rid of the ape suit.” I shed the costume, caked and slimy with garbage now, while Dzok slapped ineffectually at the samples adhering to my back. He looked worse than I did, if possible. His sleek fur was damp and clotted with sour-smelling liquid.
“When I get home,” he said, “I shall have the longest, hottest bath obtainable in the most luxurious sensorium in the city of Zaj.”
“I’ll join you there,” I offered. “If we make it.”
“The sooner we start, the sooner the handmaidens will ply their brushes.” He moved away across the slight dome of the roof, crouched at the far edge, turned, and slipped from sight. It appeared that there was a lot more monkey in Dzok than I’d managed to retain. I got down awkwardly on all fours, slid over the edge, groped with a foot, found no support.
“Lower yourself to arm’s length,” Dzok’s voice came softly from the darkness below—how far below I couldn’t say. I eased over the edge, scraping new abrasions in my hide. Dangling at full length, I still found nothing under my toes.
“Let go and drop,” Dzok called quietly. “Just a meter or so.”
That was a proposal I would have liked to mull over in the quiet of my study for a few hours, but it wasn’t the time to argue. I tried to relax, then let go. There was a dizzy moment of free fall, a projecting stone ripped my cheek as I slammed against a flat ledge and went down, one hand raking stone, and the other stabbing down into nothingness. Dzok caught me, pulled me back. I sat up, made out the dim strip of dark, railess walk arching off into the night. I started to ask if that was what we had to cross, but Dzok was already on the way.
Forty-five minutes later, after a trip that would have been unexceptional to the average human fly, Dzok and I stood in the deep shadow of an alley carpeted in the usual deposit of rubbish.
This place would be an archaeologist’s paradise,” I muttered. “Everything from yesterday’s banana peel to the first fling that ever chipped is right here underfoot.”
Dzok was busy opening the bundle he had carried inside his jacket. I helped him arrange the straps and brasses taken from the Hagroon I had killed in the cell.
“We’ll exchange roles now,” he said softly. “I’m the captor, if anyone questions us. I may be able to carry it off. I’m not certain just how alien I may appear to the average monster in the street; I saw a few australopithecine types as they brought me in. Now, it’s up to you to guide us to where you left the shuttle. About half a “mile, you said?”
“Something like that—if it’s still there.” We started off along the alley which paralleled the main thoroughfare I had traversed under guard eighteen hours earlier. It twisted and turned, narrowing at times to no more than an air space between crooked walls, widening once to form a marketplace where odd, three-tiered stalls slumped, deserted and drab in the postmidnight stillness. After half an hour’s stealthy walk, I called a halt.
“The way these alleys wander, I’m not a damned bit sure where we are,” I said. “I think we’ll have to risk trying the main street, at least long enough for me to get my bearings.”
Dzok nodded, and we took a side alley, emerging in the comparatively wide avenue. A lone Hagroon shambled along the opposite side of the street. Wide-spaced lamps on ten-foot poles shed pools of sad, yellow light on a littered walk that ran under windowless facades adorned only by the crooked lines of haphazard masonry courses, as alien as beehives.
I led the way to the right. A trough of brownish stone slopping over with oil-scummed water looked familiar; just beyond this point I had seen the harnessed mastodon. The alley from which the shuttle had operated was not far ahead. The street curved to the left. I pointed to a dark side way debouching from a widening of the street ahead.
“I think that’s it. We’d better try another alley and see if we can’t sneak up on it from behind. They probably have guards on the shuttle.”