“I'm sorry, but she's not here at the moment.”
The alcohol was gone, but he was drunk with fear, fear that she had gone off for an idyllic holiday with her smooth-skinned young angel and that even now they were tangled in love.
“Her husband,” Davis said. “Could I speak to him?”
She looked at him blankly. “What?”
He was enraged by her inability to understand so simple a request at so urgent a moment. “Her husband, woman! I want to speak to her husband!”
“I don't understand,” she said, looking a bit frightened. “She has no husband. There are only sixteen winged people left. They are all women.”
He felt his mouth unhinge,
He closed his mouth, licked his lips with a tongue that felt swollen and dry. She had known what he felt! And to save him the pain and the loss of public respect, she had cunningly offered him this out. If they were married, they were better apart. And each had been lying to the other. She had known it, but he had been ignorant. She had taken steps to insure his career and his ego. To hell with those! he thought.
“Where has she gone?”
Matron Salsbury looked flustered. “I don't know. She sat here in the lobby for two days. She even took her meals here, slept here. She watched those doors as if she were waiting for someone or—” She stopped as if understanding had struck like lightning inside her head. “And then, just an hour ago or so ago, she left without saying where she was going.”
She was still talking as he ran across the lounge, out the doors and down the steps. Proteus came after him, barely bobbling inside before he slammed on the grav car's stress power, kicked at the accelerator and shot across the field between the two hills, not bothering to use the much longer road that connected them. A hundred feet from the temple, the grav plates gave up trying to adjust to the varying distances to the ground and blew on him. The car jolted up the base of the second hill and came to a noisy halt, settling ruggedly to the ground where the rubber rim was sheared away. He opened the door and ran.
Just as he entered the main hall of the great cathedral there was a flapping of wings. Leah departed from one of the teardrop portals high in the walls. The base of the Face of God was open, the chin now a door. She had been into the corridors of the idol's mind, looking out through its eyes, waiting for Stauffer Davis, the famous novelist, the love-seeker, the — he cursed himself — stupidest man in the Alliance! But he had come in just a moment too late, and she had left without seeing him.
He turned, ran down the echo-sharp hall and out onto the rounded dome of the snowy breast, leaving his footprints in its white skin. He looked for her, searched the sky.
She was flitting off toward the yellow mountains.
He called to her, but she was too far away. She could not hear him.
And the car was useless. He could only run.
He ran.
She flew.
The distance between them grew.
She settled before the trees, stepped into the dark of the woods and was gone from sight.
He screamed, but she was too far away to hear.
He ran.
His chest ached. A fire had been set to flashing life in his lungs. He sucked in cool air and blew out steam. Still, he ran, faster and faster — but not as fast as he thought he had to. He was over the edge of the temple hill, streaking along the fields toward the trees. Minutes passed before he reached them.
He called her name.
She was too far ahead. The thickness of the trees soaked up his words. There was no echo. The snow drifted down around him, filtered through the tight web of branches and sifted the forest floor.
Proteus came behind.
Which way? Would she go straight. ahead or slant to the left? To the right? He sobbed, moved straight on, leaping over fallen logs, kicking piles of leaves up around him as he went. He skidded on the snow once, sprawled onto his face, skinning his cheek. He lay for a moment, tasting dirt and blood. Then he shoved up and went on, aware that a moment's delay might mean the difference between success or failure.
He called her name again.
Silence.
He hurried on.
Then a cry and the howl of wolves. A scream!
He stopped and listened, head cocked to catch the exact direction of the noise. There was a second scream, one that trailed off like a dying siren. It was to his left. He started in that direction. In a moment, a baying of savage hounds moaned through the cold air and snow slithered like thick, cold oil between the trees.
Proteus moved up beside him.
In the darkness ahead, two glimmering red eyes the size of walnuts peered at Davis between the thick trunks of the yellow-leafed trees. A wolf loped closer, skidded to a stop and stared at what it evidently hoped might be its supper. Its jaws hung open, dripping saliva onto the frosted ground. It growled deep in its thick throat, spat, blew snot from its nose.
Proteus opened with his vibra-beam weapon, blasted the darkness with blue flames.
The wolf danced onto two legs, twirled, collapsed onto the snow. Blood spattered outward from the charred body and patterned the whiteness.
Davis stepped over the corpse and moved on.
IV
Snow was falling more heavily now, drifting through the trees where the leaves had been worn away by the tireless hands of autumn, matting Davis's eyelashes so that he had to keep brushing them to see.
There was more howling ahead, deep and gutteral, a brother to the sigh of the wind itself.
He scrambled over a formation of rocks, stumbled on a small log concealed by snow and leaves, and came to the clearing where she was stretched out on the ground, head raised slightly against a yil tree base. There was a wolf circling her, its teeth bared, a snarl held deep in its throat where it was releasing it only a note at a time.
There were teeth marks above her wrist where it had nipped her experimentally, and blood dribbled down over her hand.
Davis screamed to draw the wolfs attention. It turned from her, staring at him with hot coal eyes, its jowls quivering and slopped with crimson. He shouted at it again, screaming nonsense syllables. It looked at him, snarled, bared teeth that were jagged and strong. It turned back to her and started to move in toward her neck.
Davis grabbed a fistful of leaves and snow, packed them together and threw the ball at the beast. It bounced off its flank, and the wolf turned to Davis again, padded away from the girl. It leaped—
Proteus shot the animal, flicked on the vibra-beam and fried its body while it was still in flight. The charred corpse crashed at Davis's feet, its yellow teeth bared in a crisped snarl.
“Go away!” she said, making as if to get up and run.
“I'm not married,” he said. “Anyway, not to anyone but you.”
She stopped trying to get up and collapsed back onto the snowy earth, looked up at him strangely for a moment, then started to cry, though he knew she was not crying in sadness.
Proteus hummed around the trees, alert, searching, its sensors seeking heat and sound and sight and even olfactory stimulation.
He went to her, knelt, took her wounded arm. It was not a serious bite, though it was swollen and blue. Clots had formed, but it should be cleaned and sterilized and lathered with speedheal ointment and a speedheal bandage. He tried to get his arms under her, but she fought him.
