Somewhere down below, a mouse scurried. Those incredible ears picked it up first. Then he got it on visual, and banked toward it. The ground swelled up as he extended his talons. They can run, he thought, but they can’t hide.
Shapur Razmara was doing paperwork. The cop was cussing under his breath as he did it, too. This was the twenty-second century, for crying out loud. When were people going to get the flying cars and the vacations on Venus and the paperwork that did itself ? How long had the bullshit artists been promising all that good stuff ? And how much had they delivered?
“Venus, my ass,” he muttered. He would have liked a vacation anywhere. Tijuana, for instance. Fat chance, with the dollar so weak against the peso. More people were sneaking across the border from the USA to Mexico than the other way around. One more sign the country was really and truly fucked up.
And, of course, there was a war on. The TV and the Net and the blogosphere were all screaming their stupid heads off. They were promising America would kick China into the middle of next week. Lieutenant Razmara had no time to waste on such crap. He figured that, if you did have time to waste on such crap, it had to be because you weren’t doing your job.
Explosions in the distance? Jet planes roaring by six inches above the roof ? Well, yeah. There was a war on. As long as nothing blew up right across the street, Razmara figured he wouldn’t get his knickers in a twist.
Then, after a scream of engine noise that made his fillings dance the fandango, something did blow up across the street. The cop shop shook as if somebody’d kicked it into the middle of next week. The lights went out. So did the AC. In East Los Angeles in the middle of summer, that was even more important. Cops and clericals swore antiphonally.
After a pause, and then a pause on the pause, emergency lights came on. “Move to the stairways!” a loud recorded voice commanded. “Exit the facility in an orderly fashion!”
Move to the stairways? Razmara wondered, even as he did it. Los Angeles was crowded, sure, but that crowded? Well, no. Just somebody talking like a bureaucrat instead of a human being.
He exited the facility in an orderly fashion, too. Then he stopped dead and said, “Aw, fuck!”
A fighter plane’s tail stuck out of the roof of what had been a Korean takeout place: the perfect business to put across the street from a police station. It wasn’t perfect any more, not unless perfectly wrecked counted. The takeout joint and the plane both burned like billy-be-damned. Every so often, something would blow up—something off the plane, Razmara presumed.
Stas Kyriades came up beside him to watch the fireworks. “So much for the bul kalbi,” Kyriades said mournfully.
“No shit, Jackson!” Razmara agreed.
Something else blew up. A secretary maybe twenty feet from the two cops screeched and went down, clutching her leg. Somebody stooped beside her and started giving first aid. “You know, we’re lucky,” Kyriades said.
“Some luck!” Razmara rolled his eyes.
“We are, man,” the sergeant insisted. “Honest to God. Think about it—another split second, and that sumbitch hits the station instead of the Korean place. Then we all go up in smoke.”
“Urk,” Razmara said—he hadn’t thought of that. He wished like hell Stas hadn’t, either. “Thanks a lot, pal. Now when I do the instant replay inside my head...”
“Yeah, I know.” Kyriades nodded, the firelight from across the street shining off his big bald dome. “Me, too.”
“Damn!” One of the Chinese sergeants in a tent outside of Avalon stubbed out his cigarette in disgust.
“What’s the matter?” asked the captain in charge of the company.
“I had ‘em. I had ‘em dead to rights, and I missed,” the sergeant said. His superior made an impatient noise. Grudgingly—miserable nosy officers!—the sergeant explained: “I had the fighter pilot netted pretty as you please. I wanted to fly him into the police station and take out the Americans who were working against the getting Real complex.”
“And you missed?” the captain said.
“Afraid so, sir. I’m still picking up the police officials.” The sergeant hated to admit it. The small-prick bastard with the four little stars on his shoulder boards would probably put it in his fitness report, and then he’d be stuck with it forever.
The captain rubbed his chin. “But you did take out the fighter plane and the pilot?”
“Oh, yes, sir!” the sergeant said. “No doubt of it.”
“All right. That will do,” the captain said. “The other would have been nice, but you did what you had to do.”
“Thank you, sir!” the sergeant exclaimed in glad surprise. Maybe a human being lurked inside the small-prick bastard. Maybe. Who would have believed it?
“The police officials are a worry for another day. Probably for another department, too.” Human being or not, the captain still enjoyed pointing out the obvious. That was part of what made him a small-prick bastard. He also liked to hear himself talk, which sure didn’t help. He went on, “If the pilot had got close enough, he might have endangered us. After all, a savage with a bow and arrow can endanger a chaingun crew if he gets close enough.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said resignedly. None of the American fighter planes had got close enough to Catalina or the other Channel Islands to endanger them. This whole unit—captain, sergeant, and everybody else, right down to the cooks—would have landed in big trouble if any of them had.
Reeducation? the sergeant thought. He shivered, though the night was mild. No thanks!
Snow swirled around Pablo. It had lain on the ground for a while; it had a crust, and crunched under his felt boots at every step. The air was cold. Each breath felt like inhaling creme de menthe. Somewhere up ahead, the enemy lurked. They’d be tough. They always were.
This time, though, Pablo had a trusty comrade at his side. The tall, gray-eyed barbarian swaggered along as if he owned this valley. He carried a massive battle axe. His shoulders seemed too wide to fit inside his wolfskin coat. Like all the men of his clan, he shaved his head. A fox-fur cap kept him from losing precious warmth through his scalp.
The barbarian pointed toward a stand of snow-dappled firs ahead. In their perfect conical symmetry, they reminded Pablo of oversized Christmas trees. (Christmas trees? Just for a moment, the world seemed to waver around Pablo. Then he got Real again. External references and doubts vanished together.)
“They’ll be in there,” the massive axeman growled.
Pablo nodded. “They will.” He drew the blade that had drunk a dragon’s heartblood. “Let’s go get ‘em.”
“Indeed,” his companion said. “For great glory and great reward await us once we triumph. If we triumph. The fight will be hard.”
“They always are,” Pablo said. (The world wavered again. Had he been in fights against these foes before? This terrain seemed new to him. And yet ... He shook his head. Whatever the submerged maybe-memory was, it wasn’t Real—and if it wasn’t Real, it didn’t matter.)
Then the dwarves burst from the wood, howling their harsh battle hymns. Some had the features of black men, some of whites, and some of men with yellow skins. All were hideous. The big shaven-headed man by Pablo roared laughter. “May the gods smite me if those little warts don’t put me in mind of the ministers in a kingdom I left not long ago,” he said.