‘We’d better get through the gap before anyone comes.’
‘How many guards were there?’
‘Just one.’
‘Did you kill him?’
The Minstrel Boy’s hat hid his face, but his voice was filled with contempt and revulsion.
‘I said I’d take care of it, didn’t I?’
They started forward again. As they moved through the gap in the wall they had to step over the body of a black helmeted guard. His throat had been neatly cut, almost like a surgical operation.
On the other side of the wall the view was like something out of a nightmare. Spotlight towers dotted the wide flat plain, illuminating line upon line of small hemispherical inflatable tents and hundreds of fighting machines marshalled in straight, orderly lines. There were tanks, ground cars, aircraft of all sizes, light and heavy artillery, earth moving and traction equipment, and trucks of every kind. Huge dirigibles came down on cleared areas picked out with coloured marker lights. Gangs of men swarmed over them unloading mountains of supplies and munitions. Thousands of black suited troops moved around the huge camp like swarms of ants. The cold lights reflected in the rain heightened the effect of implacable evil. The three escapees stopped and stared.
‘God, just look at that!’
‘There must be thousands of them.’
‘Hundreds of thousands.’
‘Nothing’s going to stop an army like that.’
Billy looked at the Minstrel Boy.
‘How did she get hold of all this? Stuff Central must have gone crazy.’
The Minstrel Boy nodded grimly. He looked thoughtful.
‘That could be an answer.’
Olad looked round nervously.
‘Let’s get the fuck out of here before we’re spotted.’
‘Which way do we go?’
An expression of pain passed across the Minstrel Boy’s face. He shut his eyes and concentrated. After a few seconds he opened them again and sighed.
‘We’ll follow the outside of the wall, round to the other side of the city. Then we’ll strike out into the nothings.’
The other two nodded. They moved off in single file, with the Minstrel Boy in front. Again they stuck to the shadows close to the wall. They’d been walking for about twenty minutes, and were about halfway round the city, when they heard the distinctive sound of a patrol vehicle.
‘Down!’
The Minstrel Boy hit the ground, and the other two did the same. They swivelled round and snatched out their guns. The patrol came nearer. It was moving very slowly, scanning the wall with a searchlight. It seemed to be doing a routine check. The three men pressed themselves hard into the damp ground. The car crawled closer. It stopped only a few metres from where they lay. Olad slowly raised his gun. The spotlight played on the wall above their heads. It moved slowly downwards. Billy took careful aim at the patrol vehicle. He held his breath. The searchlight stopped just short of where they lay. It remained still for a few moments and then swung sideways. The car rolled on. Billy let out a deep breath.
‘That was too damn close.’
The Minstrel Boy slowly stood up. He watched the patrol car vanish into the rain.
‘They’ll find the body of the guard pretty soon. We’d best get the fuck out of here.’
They hurried along for another ten minutes. The Minstrel Boy stopped every now and then as though trying to get his bearings. The other two didn’t speak to him. They knew the faculty of wayfinding had unpleasant side effects. What these were, they couldn’t guess at. The simplest thing was just to leave him alone.
They approached one of the ruined gates of the city. The Minstrel Boy halted.
‘We should move out towards the nothings,’
He pointed to the road that ran out from the wreckage of the gate.
‘We can follow the road. It used to link up with a stable wheelfreaks’ highway across the nothings. I expect that’s started to break up now. You both got porta-pacs?’
Billy and Olad nodded, and patted the portable stasis generators on their belts.
‘Okay, let’s go.’
They started across country. When they were a little way from the city they headed for the road. They’d only just set foot on it when a siren went off on the other side of Feld. It was quickly joined by the sound of two or three more. Olad looked round.
‘What do you think that is?’
The Minstrel Boy shrugged.
‘They’ve probably found the body,’
Billy stared back into the drizzle.
‘If they have, they’ll come looking for us.’
Olad quickened his pace.
‘Let’s get into the nothings. They won’t find us there.’
They broke into a jog. The three of them managed to keep going for about fifteen minutes. Then Billy stopped, gasping for breath.
‘I can’t keep this up. Two weeks in that whorehouse have put me right out of condition.’
Olad suddenly pointed back down the road.
‘Look!’
They all turned. Lights were moving around the city.
‘They’re looking for us. That’s for sure.’
‘Maybe they’ll think it’s a resistance killing.’
The Minstrel Boy grunted.
‘Maybe. Let’s just keep going, and keep our eyes open.’
They hurried on. The lights and sirens continued to circle the city. For a while Billy thought the search was being confined to just that area. It looked as though they’d got away. Then lights started coming down the road towards them. Billy looked round wildly.
‘Get off the road!’
There was a ditch running along the side of the road. The three men hit it almost simultaneously. There was about fifteen or twenty centimetres of water in the ditch. Billy, Olad and the Minstrel Boy were forced to lie in it. It didn’t matter all that much, they were already soaked to the skin.
Three patrol vehicles roared past at top speed with their lights flashing and sirens screaming. They were going too fast to notice the huddled figures.
The three refugees moved cautiously along it. Walking in water up to their ankles made the going slow and difficult. Both Billy and Olad tripped more than once, and measured their length in the muddy water. Patrol cars kept howling past on the road. Each time they approached, the three men were forced to crouch down in the wet.
After a long time, the patrol cars stopped moving up and down the road. Billy listened carefully. It seemed as though the search had returned to the city. He emerged cautiously on to the highway. Olad and the Minstrel Boy followed him. The only moving lights were way behind them. Up ahead was dim grey luminescence. As they walked on it grew brighter. Billy grinned at the Minstrel Boy.
‘It’s the nothings. We’re there. We made it.’
The Minstrel Boy pushed back his hat with a gesture of relief.
‘It does look …’
A pair of searchlights snapped on, bathing the trio in blinding white light. The black shape of a patrol car was standing by the side of the road. A metallic voice crackled from a speaker.
‘Stand right where you are. Raise your hands and do not move.’
The three of them slowly raised their hands. Two orange helmeted Ocpol dismounted from the vehicle. They walked slowly towards Billy, Olad and the Minstrel Boy. Their guns were pointed unerringly at the three men.
***
She/They moved into a new, different zone. Her/Their senses were extended to the very limit in the search for the entity that was destroying and converting basic mass and energy. She/They had detected some form of carrier beams stretching out through the chaos of the nothings. She/They had concluded that it was possible that these beams emanated from the entity that She/They sought.
She/They had followed the path of the beams. They flowed through the swirling grey confusion like lines of clear pulsing light. She/They began to perceive that they converged, and obviously emanated from a single distant point. Her/Their hopes rose that, as She/They had first suspected, it would be at this point that She/They would locate the thing that She/They was hunting.