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.”
There was silence for a moment while the stowaways considered what the man had said, followed by a howl of approval, and the sounds of movement.
Sasha tried the door, found it still wouldn’t budge, and set out along the balcony. I stuffed Joy into a pocket, checked my weapon, and followed. It’s funny how life works. Just when you think things couldn’t possibly get worse, they sure as hell do.
14
“Surgeon flees after botched operation.”
The headline on a press clipping wadded up in the bottom of Doc’s duffel bag
Our fellow stowaways had been on board at least as long as we had and knew their way around. They swarmed up ladders, dashed through passageways, and burst onto the catwalk. The hatch that refused to work for Sasha opened smoothly for them.
We ran for the other end of the platform. Our boots pounded the metal gratings and our breath came in gasps. I put a dart into every surveillance cam that I saw, but knew that a long sequence of disabled cameras would be like an arrow pointing towards our destination. It felt good, though, and might provide an edge later on.
The catwalk ended where it met the port bulkhead. Sasha pounded on the green button and swore when nothing happened.
We turned to face our pursuers. Knowing we were trapped, and eager to collect the reward money, the stowaways charged. A couple of scroungy-looking men led the attack with some equally ragged women close behind. A collection of scraggly-assed kids brought up the rear. One of the men brandished what looked like a homemade dart gun. The rest were armed with a wild variety of clubs and knives. The balcony was narrow, so they had little choice but to come at us two at a time-a factor that didn’t exactly even the odds but didn’t hurt either.
I turned sideways in an effort to reduce the target profile and felt Joy scramble down my leg. I had no idea where she was headed and couldn’t take time to look. A dart whispered by my shoulder and clanged off metal. I raised my pistol, took aim, and fired. The lead man, the one with the gun, stumbled and fell. The rest jumped over his still-twitching body and kept on coming.