wrapped around his forearm. He pulled that rat toward him and upward. He sank his teeth into the weapon arm. A toss of Nohar's head disarmed his attacker and dropped the rat off to his right. Into the same puddle that had saved Bigboy's eye.
Two others. They spooked.
Leader in bus. Bigboy huddled in doorway to pizzeria, trying to hold half his face on. Chain trying to stop the bleeding, hand limp, muscle severed. Fight over.
Slowly, Nohar shut the door on The Beast.
The comedown was hard. He began shaking. The rats didn't notice. They had their own problems. That fifteen seconds of savagery had jacked him higher and faster than these ratboys had ever thought of going. The crash wouldVe killed them.
Nohar stumbled across the street and to the door of his building.
When he staggered into his living room, Cat hissed FORESTS OF THE NIGHT 95
at him. Nohar was covered in rat blood. He wobbled into the kitchen, opened a cabinet, and spilled Cat's food all over the counter.
It would have to do, for now.
Nohar dragged himself into the bathroom and slumped into the shower. He turned on a blast of cold water.
Dipping into his reserve as a bioengineered weapon had its price.
When Nohar woke up, the shower was still going full blast. Cat was asleep on the lid of the John, and the only remains of the night's activity was the taste of blood in his mouth. The bandage on his shoulder fell off the moment he moved. It revealed a puckered red wound where they had dug out Young's bullet. There was a shaved area around it the size of his hand. The flesh was a pale white, contrasting with Nohar's russet-and-black fur. Nohar quickly looked away from it. The skin made him uncomfortable.
The support bandage was still there. At least he hadn't aggravated the injury to his knee. That was good because there was no way he was going to end up in a hospital again.
He stood up, killed the cold water, and hit the dryer. He barely noticed when Cat spooked. Nohar stood under the dryer and shook. He tried to tell himself it was his unsteady knee, but he was too adept at spotting bullshit. He knew it was a reaction to loosing The Beast.
All moreys dealt with The Beast in one form or another. Some, like Manny, lived with it without it making so much as a ripple in their psyche, the techs had let a basically human brain mute the instincts they weren't particularly interested in. Then there were moreys like Nohar, who bore the legacy of techs playing hob with what nature gave them. This was only 'the second time he had
let out The Beast with no restraint. Nohar was grateful nobody had died.
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He had enjoyed it too much.
He saw in himself the potential for becoming another type of morey. The one who gave himself over to The Beast and reveled in the bloodlust. The one like his father—
'No,' he said to his reflection as he left the bathroom. To his practiced ears, it sounded like a lie.
Forget the rats, he told himself. He still had a job to do. Even if it cost him two days, his run-in with Young had given him something besides a gunshot wound and a sprained knee. If Young was not totally out of touch with reality—no mean assumption—Nohar now had some idea of how Daryl Johnson was lulled, if not why.
First things first—he went to the comm and turned it on. 'Load program. Label, 'I lost my damn wallet!' Run program.'
'searching . . . found, program uses half processing capacity and all outside lines for approximately fifteen minutes, continue?'
'Yes.' It was going to take him that long just to run through his messages. While his cards and IDs were being canceled and reordered by the computer, he perused the backlog.
There were no phone messages on the comm, but a pile of mail was waiting in memory for him.
It was early in the morning on Sunday the third. Predictably, bills predominated in the mail. He'd have the comm pay them off as soon as it was done with his lost wallet program. There was the usual collection of junk mail. However, for once, there was something more than those two categories in his mail file.
'John Smith,' his client, had been true to his word to keep in touch. Two days after their meeting, he had left a voice message for Nohar to meet him in Lake-view Cemetery, for noon on Saturday—when Nohar had been zoned in a ward at University Hospitals. About twelve hours after that little bit of mail, Smith apparently found out what had happened. The slimy voice carried little emotion. 'Mr. Rajasthan, I regret FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
97
this incident with Binder's finance chairman. I am unable to meet with you personally, but I finance your medical expenses when I hear what happens to you—'
'Pause.' Nohar was having trouble following the frank's heavy accent. Nohar, living in the middle of Morey town, had to deal with, and understand, an incredible variety of unusual accents. A Vietnamese dog not only had an Asian accent, but a definite canid pronunciation. The problem with the frank was more subtle. Nohar didn't think it was a South African accent—even if that was one of the few countries to have defied the long-standing United Nations ban on engineering humans. Nohar promised himself he'd press the frank a little more closely about his origins next time they met.
'Continue.'
'—I hope this does not prevent you from the discovery of Daryl Johnson's murderer. I increase your fee to reflect your current difficulties. I call to set up meeting when you are released from hospital. There you tell me what you discover.'
It took Nohar a few seconds to figure out exactly what the frank meant.
The next item in the mail file was from Maria. No-bar was afraid to play it. Then he cursed himself and told the comm to play the damn thing. It was the same husky voice, much calmer this time. Nohar wished he could see her face. 'Raj, I thought you deserved a more civilized good-bye. I still can't meet you face-to-face, and for that I apologize. I just want you to know it isn't your fault. We're incompatible. Maybe it would be easier for me to deal with your wholesale contempt for everything if you weren't such a decent and honorable person.'
There was a pause as Maria took a long breath. 'I am going through with it.
You were right about the money—you always are about things like that—but I'm going anyway. California is a lot more tolerant, and the few communities there aren't just glorified slums
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the humans abandoned. I know you can't appreciate this, but God bless you.' Nohar sat, her voice still ringing in his ears, remembering. He had the comm store the message and sighed.
'instructions unclear.'
He had sighed too loudly. 'Store mail. Comm. Off.'
She had been wrong about one thing. He could appreciate the blessing. Especially after their last argument, the night before he had stood her up for that fiasco with Nugoya—
It had started when she suggested they both move to California. Of course, there was no way they could afford it. She brought up God, and Nohar went off. That damned little bit of pink brainwashing infuriated him. Especially when a moreau spouted it. Religion, pink religion, wasn't just a form of mind control, but the primary justification for people like Joseph Binder to consider moreys worse than garbage. Why should a morey believe in God, when people like Binder said they were an abomination in His eyes?
Maria was a devout Catholic and Nohar had been drunk enough to think he might be able to talk her out of such stupidity. How could she be secure in her belief when she only had a soul by dispensation of some sexagenarian pink in a pointed hat? A decision that had more to do with politics than divine inspiration.
Why couldn't he keep his damn mouth shut?
Worse, all his money problems had evaporated with the ten thousand Smith gave him. Maria's message had come in yesterday. Knowing her, she had left town by now.
