"There is no way out!" Paul shouted, but she was already crashing through the thick vegetation. His legs as heavy as in a nightmare, he stumbled after her.
All around him the hunters were closing in, narrowing the angle, hemming their escape. Ava was plunging ahead as though the forest would truly come to an end, as though they might burst from the trees to see hills and meadows and freedom stretching before them.
"Come back!" he shouted, but she was not listening. Her billowing nightgown snagged on trailing branches, but she still moved much more swiftly than he could, an elusive phantom. He struggled after her, trying to remember what was ahead of them. Another elevator? No, not on this side. But wasn't there a fire escape? Hadn't Mudd or Finney said something about that the first day?
Yes. "You'd better hope you never have to use it, Jonas," Mudd had told him, grinning. "Because the window's sealed. Mr. Jongleur doesn't like the government telling him how to run his own house."
Sealed. But sealed how? Smacked and poked by branches, stumbling over the bumpy, artificial forest floor, he could scarcely think. Ava was a dozen meters ahead now, calling for him to hurry. He also heard the pursuers clearly, clipped voices passing information to each other, efficient as robots.
"Don't be stupid, Jonas!" Finney sounded only steps behind. "Stop now before you get hurt."
The hell with you, mate, he thought.
"Paul, I can see the end of the trees. . . !" Her voice was full of hope. A moment later she cried out, an animal howl of pain and misery. Paul's heart lurched. He crashed through the last of the branches to find Ava frozen and stupefied at the end of the natural earth, staring at an empty white wall. Seamless, without openings or features of any kind, the wall stretched straight up for ten meters before curving up to roof the entire floor and display the artificial sky. The space between forest and wall also bent away to either side, hidden within a few paces by the tangling trees.
"It's . . . it's. . . ." Ava was stunned.
"I know." Paul's heart was beating so fast he was dizzy. The bland curve of the outside wall gave no hint of what to do. Their pursuers were crashing toward them, only moments away. He had to pick a direction. He had no idea where to find the fire escape. Opposite the elevator—but where would that be? They had run through the forest in a zigzag track and might be a hundred meters from it or more.
Left, he decided, his thoughts flickering like agitated fish. Coin-flip. Fifty percent, and it probably won't matter anyway. He grabbed Ava—she seemed light as a small child, almost hollow-boned—and pulled her along, the curve of the wall.
Some of the tree branches snaked out beyond the bounds of the artificial forest. They scraped at Paul's face as he tugged the girl forward, forcing him to put a hand in front of his eyes. He could barely see, and did not notice at first when the branches stopped touching him. Something cool and smooth pressed against his other side, something more slippery than the wall.
Paul stopped and uncovered his eyes. The sweep of the entire island stretched below him on one side, although the view was strangely distorted, the colors blurry and prismatic. The window ran from a few feet above his head down to knee level, perhaps five by five meters. Beneath their feet lay only smooth parquet—the artificial woodland curved away from the wall and its inset window here, broadening the walkway, forming a space between glass and forest wide enough to park a couple of trucks.
Mudd was shouting in the trees, bellowing like a bull as he hurried closer. It sounded like he was knocking the trunks down with his bare hands.
"He's here!" Ava said in a strangled voice.
"I know." Paul wished he had another rock—it would be a great pleasure to try to smash the fat man's ugly teeth. Or put out one of Finney's little snake eyes.
"No, I mean my friend—he's here!"
Paul looked around, half expecting to see a spectral figure, but of course there was nothing. His eye flicked down to the weird view through the window, the buildings far below bent crazily up toward him as though reflected in the bowl of a spoon. The glass is energized somehow, he thought. Some kind of electrical charge running through it—probably one of those hyperglass things, meant to keep anyone from firing a missile through it and blowing up Jongleur and this madhouse of his. . . .
"Tell him to turn off the window," Paul said. "The power, the electrical power—it has to be turned off or we can't reach the fire escape stairs."
"I don't understand," said Ava, but apparently something did. The window abruptly changed, the view leaping out clear and unwarped, the sky gray, the air full of drizzle, the buildings beneath them now as sharp-edged as some kind of expressionist sculpture.
The wall began to flicker around the window. For a split-instant Paul thought, wildly, that it too might dissolve, everything illusion, leaving them standing naked to the elements. Instead the angry, hawklike face of Felix Jongleur appeared ten meters high along the wall, first twinned on either side of the window, then multiplying outward all the way along the curve.
"WHO SET OFF THE ALARMS?" It was the face of an angry god, a voice like a controlled explosion. Paul shrank back, fighting not to drop reflexively to his knees. "AVIALLE? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
"Father!" she cried. "They are trying to kill us!"
A group of security guards dove out of the bushes onto the walkway and rolled to a crouch, leveling an ugly variety of guns that Paul had not dreamed existed outside of net dramas. The effect of frightening, fatal efficiency was undercut slightly as the guards saw the massive face of Felix Jongleur—one of them even let out a cry of startled surprise. All stared with their mouths open. Finney strode out of the trees just a few meters from Paul, his expensive suit snagged in several places, covered with leaves and dirt.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?" Jongleur roared.
Ava wept, sagging against Paul. "I love him!"
"It's under control, sir," declared Finney, but he looked nervous. Twenty meters down the curve of the wall, on the other side of Paul and Ava, Mudd smashed out of the forest like an angry rhinoceros, followed by a half-dozen more guards.
"There you are, you little Limey bastard," grunted Mudd. He had tried to wipe the blood from his face but had only managed to smear it into a warpaint mask. "Somebody shoot him."
"Shut up," Finney snapped.
"No!" Ava swung herself in front of Paul. "Don't hurt him—Father, don't let them hurt him!"
The nightmare had swung far out of control. Whatever the girl believed, Paul did not think for a second that Jongleur would spare him—they just didn't want it to happen in front of her. He took a quick glance over his shoulder, then flung himself backward and turned to scramble toward the lever at the edge of the window frame. For a moment he had it in his hand, could even look down and see the black metal rail of the fire escape outside the window, then one of the guards' guns went off in a series of explosive pops. The bullets stitched past him, blowing fist-size pieces of construction foam out of the wall and spiderwebbing the heavy glass above his head.