Or so I thought until a voice came out of it. A voice identical to the one that had addressed us before. “Thank you. There is nothing so boring as an easy hunt. I shall relish the days ahead.”
And with that the machine discharged whatever electrical power it had left directly into my body. I awoke to the smell of burned chest hair. Two faces were looking down at me. One large and one small. Both looked concerned. Sasha was worried. “Max? Are you okay?”
I lied. “Never better. How long was I out?”
“Twenty or thirty seconds.”
“Good. Let’s get the hell out of here before the sonofabitch sends reinforcements.”
An unspoken consensus carried us out into the forest. If the popper could send one maintenance cam, he could probably send more, and the canopy would provide at least a modicum of protection. I waited until we were a good fifty yards out before I allowed Sasha to break out the first aid kit and rub goo on my chest. It continued to hurt after she was done, but not quite as much. I sealed my shirt and we moved on. I was dizzy, sick to my stomach, and determined to hide it.
I wished there was something we could do about the clouds of metallic insects that rose in front of us. circled like windblown foil, and resettled when we had passed. They were like miniature spies, checking on our movements, and reporting them to anyone with the patience to watch. Our only hope lay in the fact that it would take the popper some time to treat his wounds and locate another surveillance cam. Or so we hoped.
The bushes were laid out in rows to facilitate the movement of various robots, and it wasn’t long before we started to encounter them. They came in all sorts of shapes and sizes, ranging from box-shaped contraptions that we called “leaf suckers,” to snakelike machines that slithered through the canopy and trimmed unwanted foilage.
I watched them carefully at first, afraid the popper would use them to spy on us, but, outside of sluggish attempts to move out of our way, the robots continued their work. But that could change, so I continued to keep an eye on them. The whole thing became monotonous after a while. Trees, robots, trees, and more robots, with no sign of the popper or his trail. Then it rained, a fine, penetrating mist that seemed part of the air around us. It coated the leaves, soaked our clothes, and slicked the deck. Joy loved the water the same way she loved everything else. Oblivious to our discomfort, she giggled and did cartwheels up the path.
The mist turned into a steady rain, and I found the blood shortly thereafter. Little brown dots of it, fuzzy around the edges, and dry prior to the rain. The drops came slantwise out of the forest, and a broken branch marked the point where the popper’s path had intersected our own.
I motioned for Sasha to stop, took a careful look around, and considered the risks. Softened by the mist and battered by the rain, the dots were coming apart. In twenty minutes, thirty at most, the trail would disappear. The answer was to pick up the pace, in spite of the fact that doing so would make us less vigilant, and vulnerable to an ambush. The part of me that remembers and takes over at unpredictable times made the necessary decision. I waved Sasha forward and she obeyed.
It was warm, and the humidity increased as we jogged through the bushes, preceded by wave after wave of robotic insects. It felt good to run, good to push my luck, and I found myself grinning like what? An idiot? A wolf on the trail of wounded prey? The second seemed more suitable, and I hoped it was true. But too much time had passed, the trail was cold, and we reached the other side of the forest without spotting the popper. The little brown dots came less and less frequently now, then stopped in front of a stainless-steel airtight door. Had he brought the bleeding under control? Or stepped through and continued to hemorrhage on the other side? There was only one way to find out.
I positioned myself on one side of the portal and Sasha took the other. Joy jumped upwards, hit the large green button, and dropped to a crouch. Our weapons were drawn and aimed as the door swished open. I waited for defensive fire that didn’t come. I started to move but the kid beat me to it. She went through the opening fast, but a hair too high, making herself a better than average target.
I followed, eyes searching for things suspicious, but found nothing more than some unimaginative graffiti. Though a good deal smaller, the corridor was similar to the first one we’d been in, complete with vertical ridges, emergency com sets, fire-fighting gear, and surveillance cameras. I saw no escape slots, however-an omission which could mean that the automated trains didn’t travel this particular passageway, or they did and pedestrians were S.O.L.
Satisfied that the popper had cleared the area, we looked around. There were ten to fifteen drops of blood, all clustered together, and smeared by a bootprint. Some partial prints marched into the distance and disappeared: a clear indication that our quarry had rigged a bandage. I looked at Sasha and she nodded. We hugged the sides as we made our way down the hall, hoping the popper had better things to do than watch the security cameras, fearing that he didn’t. Motors whirred as they tracked our progress.
It was a weird feeling, knowing something was watching, but unsure of whether it mattered. The situation must have spooked Sasha too, because she opted for the vertical ladder the moment we encountered it, and I followed. For reasons I couldn’t quite articulate, I assumed the popper had continued down-corridor, but cameras made me nervous, so I kept my feelings to myself. The cameras tilted to follow us and stopped when they could tilt no more.
The ladder led to a narrow maintenance tunnel. If cameras were present, I couldn’t identify them. Though equipped with rudimentary hand-and footholds, the passageway had been intended for robots, one of which blocked our path. It was shaped like a large turtle, and judging from the noises it made, was engaged in cleaning the gratings beneath our feet. The strong smell of disinfectant reinforced that impression.
Sasha solved the problem by stepping onto the robot’s gently rounded back and off the other side. Joy jumped, caught hold of my pants leg, and held on as I followed suit. If the turtle-shaped machine objected to this treatment, it gave no sign of its displeasure.
We followed the corridor for a hundred feet or so, stopped in front of still another airtight door, and took the usual positions. Me to the left, Sasha to the right, and Joy wherever she wanted to be.
The hatch slid open and I saw darkness beyond. Darkness and the flicker of what looked like flames. The kid made eye contact, nodded, and stepped onto a narrow balcony. I joined her. Below us, three-quarters filled with thousands upon thousands of crates and boxes, was a space similar in size and shape to the one occupied by the forest.
And there, at the hold’s epicenter, burned a large bonfire. The barge’s automatic fire-fighting systems had been defeated somehow. The flames leaped higher as they consumed an especially choice piece of fuel, then fell back, as if tired by their exertions. And, moving around in the foreground, their forms silhouetted against the flames, were people. Lots of people, fifty or sixty at least, all talking, laughing, and swigging from a variety of containers. There was something primitive about the scene, and ominous as well.
I had just turned towards Sasha, and was about to say something stupid, when a beam of white light shot across the hold and pinned us against the bulkhead. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at all. It belonged to the man who had addressed us through the maintenance cam. “Well! Look what we have here! I hoped you would follow. Welcome to hell.”
Sasha turned, hit the door release, and nothing happened.
Another light popped on. This one roamed the crates below, paused each time it touched someone, and moved on. They were a motley lot. I saw men, women, and yes, children. And, judging from the way they avoided the light, as well as the generally ragged condition of their clothing, it was obvious that they had no more right to be aboard the barge than we did. The voice spoke to them. “Look! Look at the catwalk! They are worth ten thousand dollars each! Do as you will to the girl, but keep the man alive.”