"One more thing. The DBA has a serious red flag on your ass."
With that, Harsk left.
Nohar watched Harsk weave his way between the moreys, and didn't know what to think. He'd always pictured Harsk as constantly dreaming up new ways to screw him over. Maybe Harsk was right, he was paranoid.
He felt his shoulder. The wound didn't seem to be major. The dressing extended to the back of his neck, which felt tender when Nohar pressed it. He pulled back the sheet. There were five or six dressings on his tail. That, and a transparent support bandage on his slightly swollen right knee, was the only visible dam-
Considering how close he was to Young when the not blew himself up, he'd gotten off light.
"Damn it." Nohar suddenly remembered Cat. He didn't know how long he'd been out, and Cat only had half a day's food in his bowl when Nohar left.
He looked up and down the ward. No doctors, no nurses, not even a janitor. Harsk had been the only pink down here and he had already left. Nohar knew when, or if, hospital administration finally got to him, re would be a few hours of forms to fill out. Just to p the bureaucracy happy.
Ib hell with that.
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He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and gently started putting pressure on his right leg. It wasn't a bad sprain. It held his weight. He stood up slowly and felt slightly dizzy. He was alarmed until he realized it was still from that damn disinfectant smell. Breathing through his mouth helped.
There was a window between his bed and the next one. The fuzzy nocturnal view—Nohar wished he could kill the lights in the ward so he could see better—of the skyline told him he wasn't far enough down the Midtown Corridor to be at the Clinic. That meant he was at University Hospitals and only a few blocks from Moreytown. He was probably in the new veterinary building. Lightning flashed on the horizon. Nohar looked at the bed on the other side of the window. In it was a canine who had an arm shaved naked inside a transparent cast. He—like Nohar, the canine was naked and not covered by a sheet-was watching Nohar's activity with some interest. The canine spoke when he saw he'd caught Nohar's attention. "You blow up?"
It was hard placing the accent, but defiantly first generation. Probably Southeast Asian. Nohar began looking for exit signs as he answered. "Yes." "Pink law's bad news. Best eye yourself, tiger-man—"
Nohar was barely listening. He'd located the exit. "Sure. You have the date?" "Fade side of August two. Saturday is five minutes from nirvana."
Thirty-six hours. He must have been drugged. That was it. He was leaving. The canine was still nattering. Nohar thanked him and started toward the exit.
Most of the moreys here were asleep, but a few watched him leave. There were a few comments, mostly of the "Skip on the pinks"
variety. He did get one sexual proposition, but he didn't pause enough to register the species or the sex the offer came from.
He slipped out of the wardroom, the glass doors sliding aside as he passed, and found himself in a carpeted reception area. There was a waiting room, and a nurse's station across from it. No one in sight. The elevators and the stairs were directly across from the doors to the ward. All he needed to do was cross between the station and the waiting room. Once in the stairwell he could make it to the parking garage.
He limped across no-man's-land and nearly made it to the stairwell.
The elevator doors opened without any warning. He was caught right in front of the elevator. If it hadn't been so damn silent, he might have had a chance to duck to the side.
The last person he expected to see in the elevator was Stephie Weir.
As the doors opened, she took a step forward and her motion ceased. Nohar thought he must have looked as surprised as she did. Neither of them moved. They stood there, staring at each other, until the doors started closing again.
Realizing he was about to blow his escape, Nohar jumped into the elevator. He called out, "Down. Garage level," and pressed the button for the garage level just in case the thing didn't have a voice pickup. Nohar hoped no one else in the building would want to use this particular elevator in the next half-minute.
Stephie was staring at him. Nohar waited until he felt the car moving downward, then he asked, "What are you doing here?"
The question seemed to break her out of shock. She lifted her gaze. "I want to know what happened to Phil. I was waiting down there two hours until Detective Harsk—Christ, what are you doing with no clothes on?"
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That damned pink fetish. "Avoiding bureaucracy."
"What the hell are you talking about? You're naked!"
"Not until they shave me.1'
The doors on the elevator opened and Nohar held his breath. They had made it all the way to the garage. Again, no one in sight.
Nohar turned to Stephie who looked and smelled of confusion. "If you want to talk about what happened, you better come with me."
He stepped out on to the cold concrete. He finally felt comfortable breathing through his nose. The only strong smells down here were the slight ozone smell from the cars, and Stephie's smoky-rose scent.
She choked back a few monosyllables and started walking after him. "Just tell me why, please."
He almost gave her a curt answer, but he decided she deserved something of an explanation. "I need to get back home. Checking out and getting whatever the explosion left of my clothes could take a long while, and they might just decide they want to keep me for a day or two. Besides, I hate filling out forms. They can bill me."
"What's so important?"
"I don't have anyone to feed my cat."
That got her. "You're not kidding, are you?"
Nohar shrugged and started toward the entrance of the parking garage. His claws clicked on the concrete.
She called after him. "Where's your car?"
"I suppose it's still parked outside my office."
"You're going to—" She paused. "Of course you intend to walk home like that.
Come back here. At least let me give you a lift so you won't get arrested." Nohar turned around. He didn't know what to make of the offer. "Can I fit in your car?"
"A Plymouth Antaeus? What it cost, you better fit."
"Sure you want to do this? My neighborhood—"
FORESTS OF THE NIGHT 89
your neighborhood. We need to talk about
Nohar silently agreed they needed to talk about Phil He allowed himself to be led to the brand-new Antaeus.
FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
91
CHAPTER 8
The Antaeus pulled up behind the Jerboa, splashing a deep puddle by the curb. The barriers prevented Ste-phie from driving any closer to Nohar's apartment. When Stephie parked, she turned to face Nohar. She seemed to be making an effort to keep her gaze fixed on his face. "It doesn't sound like Phil."
"It's what happened."
"The cops called it a suicide. Detective Harsk said Phil shot you."
Nohar reached up and rubbed his left shoulder. "Can you explain what happened?"
Stephie turned toward the windshield, shaking her head. She was silent for a few seconds. Finally she said, "He bought that house so he could have a separate address."
So, it was a sham. "He lived with Johnson?"
"Five years now." She still looked out the window. A street lamp shone through the cascading rain and carved rippling shadows on her face. She spoke slowly and deliberately. "I can't believe Phil would kill himself."
Nevertheless, that's what Young had done, as surely as if he had pointed the gun at his own head. Nohar could still picture Young saying they all—Nohar presumed Young meant moreys—were with them. Nohar suspected they were in MLI. "How'd he feel about moreys?" "I don't know—" Very few people do, thought Nohar. "I didn't talk to him much. I knew him mostly