completely, one bearing Subone, his tunic bloody. Meeting them, Subtwo shouldered his way through the small group. His pseudosib lay pale, breathing shallowly.
'What happened? What happened?'
Subone moaned, and groped for his hand. Subtwo wanted to pull away from the grimy touch, but he remained motionless. 'They attacked us,' Subone whispered. 'The freaks. they killed Nicola.' He shook his head, closing his eyes. 'They were dreadful, they were inhuman.'
'Where are the rest of your people? Dead?'
'Perhaps. we could not wait to find them all.'
The medic from Subtwo's camp arrived, panting, with Draco close behind. He uncovered the wound, and began to clean it. Subtwo looked away.
'They tried to cut me off. and Hikaru and the Center girl were leading them—be careful!' He flinched as the cold spray of a mist anesthetic touched raw flesh.
'You should have stayed with me,' Subtwo said. 'This never would have happened.'
'I was afraid you wouldn't help, I was afraid you would stop me.' He gripped Subtwo's hand and pulled him back. 'Perhaps you were right,
perhaps the link has dissolved. I can't tell what you think anymore.'
'I never felt this happen,' Subtwo said, wondering. Hope overcame his doubt. 'Are we finally separate?'
'Can you understand now why we have to finish this? This is what they can do, with leaders who know us.'
'It's all right now, you're back, you're safe.'
'They'll come again. I drove them off, but they'll come. They want us, brother.'
Subtwo drew back and could not answer.
'We are brothers,' Subone said. 'In this.'
Subtwo gazed down at him, at the long diagonal wound beside his collarbone and the scar of the stab Mischa had inflicted, at his elegant, dissipated face. 'Yes,' he said. 'We are brothers in this.'
His anger like acid, Subtwo took Draco aside. 'I would appreciate your impressions of the incident.'
'You could have them,' Draco said, 'except I wasn't there.'
Subtwo had not imagined Draco in any place but the forefront of a disturbance; he wondered if he had misjudged him. 'Then where?'
'We didn't have enough lookers for all the tunnel branches. Subone didn't want to wait. We split up at the junctions. He and Nicola were alone.'
'That was very unwise.'
Draco shrugged elaborately and expressively.
'I am surprised.' But Subtwo did not finish; it was not his and Subone's habit to disparage each other publicly.
'So were we.'
Subtwo sent for the rest of Subone's people; the main camp gathered itself to hunt again.
Chapter 14
Metallic grinding, clanking, the clatter of pebbles, the whirr of bearings against solid lubricant: Jan opened his eyes to blindness and reached instinctively for the light.
'Wait—' Mischa spoke in a whisper that would not carry.
'Is it that close?'
'Maybe. Stay here. I'll be right back.' He heard her get up; he heard the looker stop, as though to sniff the air.
'If you kill it,' he said, 'if it doesn't communicate again, they'll know where we are.'
The pattern of his own blood vessels flashed against his retinas as his mind searched for something to look at. He turned his head like a blind man, listening for Mischa, afraid she had gone on.
'You're right,' she said finally. 'Damn you anyway.'
He reached out to get his balance, until his fingers brushed the wall behind him. Then he felt the cool, dry touch of Mischa's hand; he rose and she led him away. Walking hesitantly, free hand outstretched before his face, he followed her. They moved slowly for the sake of silence. The tunnels, which before wound interminably, now stretched straight and dark forever. The sounds of the looker diminished almost imperceptibly. Jan began to feel the walls moving in and the ceiling coming down around him. This is no time, he thought, this is no time— he felt the cool delicate prickle across his shoulders, warning—no time to indulge—but a wind seemed to blow against him, bringing terror— to indulge your psychological— crystals leaped into flame across his back. His balance disappeared. He flung out his hands, Mischa pulling at him. 'Jan—' But he stumbled and fell.
The impact of his palms on stone, with all his weight behind them, brought him back. He was panting. The sound of his fall echoed around them, and the pain fled in one bright flash as Mischa flicked on the light, kneeling beside him, shielding her eyes. Jan blinked. 'I'm sorry. I—'
'I know,' Mischa said. 'Never mind. Can you walk?'
'I think.' He pushed himself up. 'Yes, okay.' With the light on, the floor returned to its proper position beneath his feet, and the ceiling stayed above him, though they were so alike that he wondered briefly, really, why they should.
Behind him, the looker whirred smoothly toward them, steadily, following the light or sound or both.
They ran.
Jan realized they were trapped.
Twice he and Mischa had turned back to avoid lookers, trying to regain some uncertainty of position, and now it was too late to kill one of the machines and break through to clear tunnels. The lookers no longer moved singly, for the caves had come together like tributaries, and with them the machines. Even the antenna mice seemed to have nested here, for the walls were studded frequently with leads; Jan thought it quite possible that the pseudosibs were now able to watch for them in real-time.
He could hear the lookers behind him, moving down the single unbranched tunnel. He was no longer leading on a merry chase, but being driven. Both he and Mischa were too tired to run any more.
'Faster!'
Jan swung around, and Mischa with him: the voice was Subtwo's, clear, close. But the tunnel was empty to the end of Jan's light-beam, and the voice did not come again, only a mechanical gibber and buzz.
'Subtwo's close,' Mischa said, 'but he's not that close. The caves do that sometimes.' She strove to keep her voice steady, but Jan heard the beginning of fear. He had seen her angry, elated, grieving: but he had not seen her afraid.
They kept going.
'It might branch out again,' Jan said. 'Mightn't it?'
'Maybe. Probably. But who knows when? I wish I'd let Crab stay. He's probably been here.'
'You can't reach him.'
'No. Maybe he can sense me this far but I have to touch him, almost, to get anything clear.'
'What's that up there?'
The beam of Jan's light touched an abrupt ledge, and speared empty darkness.
The ledge was the end of the tunnel. Standing in the opening, Mischa whistled shrilly: the major echo took full seconds in return. Jan's light would not reach the other side. On the floor of the wide cavern, stalagmites glittered damp gray, dull yellow, gray-blue. The shadows of the nearest rock formations were short and round, of those farther away long and attenuated as the angle of the illumination changed.
Mischa took Jan's hand. 'Turn out the light for just a minute.'
Reluctantly, he complied, and waited uneasily for Mischa's eyes to reaccustom themselves to darkness. He did not wonder that the underground people had little conception of time. Time in the light and time in darkness
