As Lollypop turned back toward the wagon Rivas glanced down at Nigel. One eye was wide open and staring up into a darkening comer of the ceiling, the other was nearly closed, and between them was a deep indentation. Rivas's outstretched arm began to shake, and he wished he was anywhere else on earth.
Lollypop had climbed up over the wagon's stern and unbolted the cabin door, and Rivas hurried forward as it swung open. Three girls were standing inside, blinking in the orange firelight; they were smiling uncertainly, evidently still supposing that Rivas's imitation of a far-gone receiving the sacrament had been genuine.
He peered closely. None of them was Uri.
«Step down, girls,» he said with weary gentleness. «You're free.»
Their smiles disappeared, but they climbed down and wandered aimlessly toward the fire.
«Climb in there,» Rivas told Lollypop, «and, carefully, bring the fourth girl forward.»
The old man disappeared inside the cabin. After a moment he called out, fearfully, «She's dead.»
«Bring her forward.»
«You'll kill me.»
Maybe I will, thought Rivas helplessly. But, «Don't be silly,» he said. «This is just a job to me.»
There was scuffling and thumping in the darkness, and then he saw a long, dark-haired body rolled to the cabin's threshold.
«Let me see her face.»
Lollypop lifted the head and turned it toward Rivas. It wasn't Uri.
Rivas wasn't aware of how tense he'd been until his shoulders relaxed. «Not the one I'm after,» he told Lollypop. «Get inside and shut the door.»
There were tears on the old man's face. «You can't lock me in here! This cabin's built tough, I'd starve to death, just shoot me right now—»
«I'm not going to lock it, relax. I'm just going to pile some stuff in front of the door so I'll hear it if you come out. The dead girl you can leave in there with you or roll out onto the deck.»
Lollypop rolled her back inside. «I can't be alone,» he muttered as he pulled the door closed.
Rivas let the slingshot go slack and tucked it into his shirt, then ran back into the dark garage, picked up the old bed frame and carried it back to the boat-wagon. He threw it onto the deck, climbed up himself, and leaned it up against the closed cabin door. «There,» he called. «If I'm still around when this falls, I'll hear it and come back and kill you, okay?»
The old man was mumbling inside, possibly to the dead girl, but there was no specific reply.
Rivas let the slingshot go slack and tucked it into his belt, walked around to the driver's bench and grabbed the bottle of Currency, then hopped down to the floor. During the day's ride, he had noticed that the harness of the horses was an unusual style, with some sort of hinge and pin arrangement as well as buckles on the harness straps, and a light English saddle on each horse; now he put the bottle down, carefully, and walked up to the front right horse to get a closer look at the harness.
Each of the pins, he saw, had a ring on the top end; he yanked one out of its hinge and the harness strap fell away. He smiled almost sadly. Ready for anything, you boys were, he thought; Jaybird shepherds, punch-bees, the necessity of having to take to the water . . . even, I see, for having to abandon your vehicle altogether and proceed on horseback without unbuckling anything. I'll bet old Lollypop is going to be a little more careful about picking up hitchhikers, though. Rivas yanked out another pin and tried to remember what length he liked stirrup leathers to be.
«Where's the jaybush?» came a voice from right behind him, making him jump and gasp.
He turned to the girl. She was tall, with pale hair; she was silhouetted against the comparative brightness outside, and so he couldn't see her expression, but, knowing Jaybirds, he didn't figure there would be much to see anyway. «Sorry, miss,» he said. «There isn't one anywhere near.» He looked past her. «Where'd the other two go?»
She shrugged.
«Good luck to them.» He went back for the bottle and tucked it into his shirt and then pulled the last pin, freeing the horse from the wagon. «And good luck to you,» he added, wondering if she'd know how to give him a leg up.
«Where are you going?»
He looked back at her in exasperation. Why couldn't she have wandered away with her friends? «South.»
«South?» she said with sudden eagerness. «To the Regroup Tent?»
«No, dammit, I—» He paused. Why not? What better cover could he hope for than the role of a Jaybird who'd become separated from his band and was waiting to be caught up with or reassigned? Especially if he was accompanied by an obviously genuine stray Jaybird girl. «I mean yes,» he said.
«Can we start tonight?» she asked. «I feel terrible being away from everyone.»
«Yes,» said Rivas, leading his horse around so that he could reach the harness pins on the left front one. «I'd like to get away from this place as soon as possible.»
The girl glanced around blankly, apparently giving Nigel's corpse no more attention than she gave the neglected pieces of pork. Obviously home was wherever the Jaybirds were, and every other place was simply a place where they weren't, only to be passed through and not worth a second look. Rivas had read somewhere that toads could perceive only two categories: a fly, and everything that was not a fly. This girl seemed to have the same sort of two-position attention switch.
«Since it's not where everyone is,» he amended wearily. She smiled and nodded, and he went on, «Sure, there's still enough light for us to cut a couple of miles out from between us and the Regroup Tent.» He handed her the reins to the second horse. «Can you ride?»
Her smiled disappeared. «Yes,» she said, taking them.
He realized that it must have been a skill she'd acquired before becoming a Jaybird, during her renounced old life, and that while she was willing to use it to get back into the bosom of the church, she'd take no pride or joy in it.
«Well,» he said, «if I fall off, come back for me.»
Without replying the girl hiked her left knee up, got her sandalled foot into the left stirrup, and effortlessly swung up onto the horse; Rivas noticed that her legs, under the coarse cloth robe, were long and graceful. She'd have fetched a good price in Venice, he thought—and I'm glad I saved her from that. And what the hell am I looking at a girl's legs for when I'm trying to find Uri?
At his second try Rivas got into the saddle. «Follow me,» he said, and led the way out onto the street.
When the quiet tick-tock of the hooves had receded away down the street, the garage was silent . . . but not quite still. The sunlight became redder and dimmer as it slowly advanced across the concrete floor, the remaining two horses blinked incuriously from time to time, and a shadow without a body drifted from the street into the garage, hard to see because it was the same color as the twilight glow. It turned like an unhurried underwater swimmer and tensed slightly when it saw the raw pork, but moved eagerly forward when it saw Nigel's corpse. It lifted its legs in a crouch, and when gravity finally coaxed it down to the floor its insubstantial fingers fluttered over Nigel's face and hands, trying to find an open wound.
Then finally the wagon's cabin door was pushed open, and a bed frame toppled onto the deck with a tremendous crash. The transparent creature, immensely startled, darted away like a minnow, and by the time the snuffling Lollypop had shuffled across the deck and climbed down to the floor, the thing was clinging upside-down to one of the ceiling beams, as tight and still as a pink glass bat.
The old man sat down beside the body and began haltingly whispering to it while the light crept further into the garage and grew dimmer and the creature on the ceiling beam blinked and rolled its big eyes and one of the Jaybird girls, outside, made a steady clanging racket but no vocal complaint as she tried patiently to extricate herself from one of Nigel's intruder alarms.