"What are those?"
Bob squinted through the windshield. "Beats me." He reached back over his shoulder and rapped on the back of the cab. "Coming up on the Arch," he said.
The panel separating the sleeping cubicle from the cab slid back and Sherrine stuck her face through. "The fan club meets in the underground museum, right?"
"That's what Violetta said. They'll give us a place to spend the night." He pulled to the side of the street and turned on his blinkers. A car and two horse carts drove around him. "All clear," he announced.
Alex heard the door to the sleeping cubicle open and shut. He squirmed a bit in his seat; then he gripped his cane, unlatched the passenger door and slid to the sidewalk.
"Hey," said Bob, "where are you going?"
"With Sherrine," he answered. He flourished his cane. "For the practice. And just in case."
Sherrine saw him coming and waited politely on the tiled plaza. She was framed by the gleaming Arch against the backdrop of the river. A barge drifted lazily behind her, keeping carefully to the cannel buoys. He was struck again by her fragile beauty; a beauty she herself seemed oddly reluctant to acknowledge. Most Earth girls seemed terribly short and muscular to him; and he had seen enough by now to realize that pudgy and burly were the norm. Yet, Sherrine continued to allure him.
Was it only a physical thing? Or was it a fixatione--imprinted like a baby duck!--brought on by the fact that she was the first woman he had seen after Mary had… had betrayed him? Now there was a thought!
Betrayed you how, Alex? Because she didn't order you back upstairs after that first missile attack? Because she left it up to your own stupid pride? Ifanyone betrayed you, Alex, it was yourself.
A sudden horn jolted him from his reverie. Two men in a horse jitney shook their fists at him as they pulled around. As if they hadn't the whole street to themselves, Alex thought sourly.
Sherrine said, "Alex? What's up?"
"You don't want me with you?"
Her lips parted to answer him, then she shook her head. "Come on, then. I think the entrance to the old museum is over this way." Alex wondered what she had been about to say. He thought he could make a reasonable guess. Couldn't stick to the flight plan, could you, Alex? And why? To moon along after a woman who… He wanted to say that he found her attractive; that he admired the way she had abandoned her career and freedom to help him; that he wanted to get to know her better. But the words stuck awkwardly in his throat. Held down by gravity.
She led him down a concrete ramp festooned with gaily-colored graffiti and handbills. One large poster, plastered overtop the others, announced a closed-circuit TV address by Emil Poulenc, "Discoverer of the Ice Folk." Whatever that meant. The sun was high in the sky, brushing the shadows from the ramp. Four odd, circular shadows wavered like black spotlights on the paving stones.
Why can't I ever pick a woman who'll choose me back?
Sherrine knocked three times on the boarded-up doors at the bottom of the ramp. A face like a side of beef peered down at her from behind a plywood partition, too high up. With a bit of a stutter she said, "We're knights of Saint Fantony."
His face showed nothing. "Here for the High Crusade?"
"To win victory or sleep with the Angels. By order of Duke Roland."
"Duke Roland" was Oliver Brown.
The giant's face withdrew into shadow. A minute or two later the door opened.
The young man who opened the door was considerably smaller. In the midday brightness he seemed shy and awkward. He blinked up at Alex and held out his hand. "Welcome," he said. "I'm Hugh." He indicated his companion, a giant to rival Thor. "We call him Fafhrd."
"What are those things up there?" asked Sherrine, staring up against the glaring sun at the four bundles dangling from the Arch.
The young man looked up, shading his eyes with his hand. "Scientists from the University. They were accused of practicing nuclear physics."
Sherrine stared at Hugh. "They hanged them for that? Because they were convicted of being nuclear physicists?"
The young man shook his head. "They weren't convicted. We think they were four of the people who ran the museum here. The place was empty after that, and we moved in." Hugh had led them inside. Alex saw a flash of silver at his left hand, then jumped as a huge hominid shadow caught the corner of his eye.
Hugh had a knife in his left hand. He'd had it ready while his right immobilized Alex, while the giant doorman guarded him from overhead. "Duke Roland says you're to be trusted. I trust my senses when I can. Alex, how do you take a shower in free fall?"
Alex said, "It takes forever to get wet and forever to get dry. Wherever water is, it wants to stay. We don't have enough water anyway. Mostly we--Hugh, how would a Downer know if I was lying?"
"This Downer was a physics teacher at KC High. Milady, I might grant you're an angel, but not an astronaut."
Sherrine smiled and colored. "No. I was one of the rescuers."
"I see." Hugh's arm swept in a circle. "Well, welcome all!" Others came from out of the shadows beyond the entryway. Many people, some in armor. "You have friends?"
"Yes. I'll go for them," Sherrine said, but she didn't move at once. "Hugh, if the locals are hanging scientists, are you safe here?"
Hugh's face closed like a wall… and then he said, "We are safe indeed. I am Duke Hugh Bloodcup because I was King Hugh of the Middle Kingdom six years ago. The locals--the Downers-they hanged four scientists here, once. But when others came to disturb us, we buried those bodies and replaced them. The locals see four bodies hanging from the Arch. They never think to examine them, to see if they've been cycled. But there are rumors enough to protect us, and if they won't--"
"Yes. I see. Your Grace, Alex MacLeod will need to sit even in your presence--"
"Yes, of course. A chair for our saintly guest! And an escort for Lady Sherrine!"
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Last Shuttle
"I tell you, Captain," Lieutenant Billings insisted, "something is going on. There's been increased activity in the fannish underground over the past few days. Weird activity."
Lee Arteria nodded to the AP lieutenant standing stiffly before the desk; reached out and rifled through the thick stack of reports. "Yes. Though how can you tell when fannish activity is weird?"
"They've been quiet for so long. The timing must be significant, wouldn't you agree, ma'am?"
"True."
"Someone must be hiding the spacemen, or we would have found them by now."
"But sci-fi fans? Really, Lieutenant. Could a bunch of nerds and geeks have slipped the aliens past the search parties on the Ice? With virtually no notice, mind you." She grinned. "Maybe the Ice Folk have them."
Billings made a face. "Ice Folk. Supermarket tabloid nonsense. A newly evolved race of humans who can live naked on the Ice? And there's that Sherrine Hartley. She never reported back to work. And her boyfriend with the maroon van called in to report he has typhus. Typhus! And vanished. Captain Arteria, this other fannish activity must be related to the spacemen, too."