horizon—lots of trees. The Levitt needed a clear field of fire; crashing through a tree could set off the charge in the bullet. Nohar kept turning, looking for a high point, above the houses, behind them, without a tree in the way.
Feeling a growing sense of disillusionment, Nohar parked the Jerboa next to the barrier at the end of the street. He had been pounding pavement and checking buildings for most of the day. Evening was approaching and, while he had found a number of buildings both likely and unlikely to hold a sniper, he was little closer to discovering where the sniper had shot from. He was afraid he might actually cross the path of the. gunman and not recognize it.
Fire position number ten was inside Moreytown, Which was a plus as far as likelihood was concerned. Nohar figured you could drive a fully loaded surplus tank inside Moreytown and the pink law would give it just a wink and a nod.
The name of the building was Musician's Towers. It was a twenty-story,
L-shaped building, supposedly abandoned since the riots. Good spot for a sniper. Hundreds of squatters in the place, but there weren't likely to be any witnesses.
There had been a halfhearted effort to seal it up. It'd been condemned ever since a fire took out one wing-as well as the synagogue across the street.
Most of the
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plastic covering the doors and windows had been torn off ages ago.
He slowly approached the doorway, on guard even though it was still daylight. The entrance hall was in the burned-out wing. The hall went through to the other side, looking like someone had fired an artillery round all the way through the base of the building. He had to climb over the pile of crumbled concrete in front of the entrance, debris that came mostly from the facade on the top five floors.
White sky burned through the empty, black-rimmed windows at the top of the building. That was the place for a sniper.
Above the gaping hole that led into the building someone had spray-painted, 'Welcome to Morey Hil- ton.'
Inside, the heat became oppressive. Nohar was nearly used to the itch under his shirt, but in the sweltering lobby—it might have been because of the still lingering smell of fire—he had to take it off. He leaned against the hulk of a station wagon someone had driven into the lobby, waiting to become acclimated to the heat.
No sign of the squatters yet, but Nohar doubted any lived near the first floor. That would be a little too close to the action. The empty beer bulbs scattered across the floor, the occasional cartridge from an air-hypo, the fresh bullet pockmarks, marked the lobby as a party spot for the gangs. Not to mention **Zip-perhead' painted on the side of the station wagon. Hmm, Nohar corrected himself. Gang—singular. Lately, the one gang seemed to be it. He didn't know exactly what to make of that. There had been at least five gangs around when he had been running with the Hellcats. But that was a long time ago—the years before this building burned up—and Nohar really didn't want to think about it.
He decided he had waited long enough and went straight for one of the open stairwells. The winding FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
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concrete stairs were swathed in darkness, and Nohar's view became colorless and nocturnal. Here, the heat was even worse, and the smell of fire was overwhelmed by the aromas of rust, mold, and rotting garbage. The stairs were concrete, but every other footstep fell on something soft.
Nohar tried to ignore the garbage and think like a sniper. The face of the burned-out wing was pointed at the target, so the assassin would take a point amidst the wreckage. Few squatters in the remains of the fire—
Nohar hit floor ten and had to pause because he thought he'd come across a corpse. A lepus was curled in a fetal position in the corner of the tenth-floor landing. An acrid odor announced the fact the rabbit had soiled—him, her? Nohar couldn't tell in the dark—itself. As he approached, the rabbit's twitching showed it was still among the living. An air-hypo cartridge lay-on the ground.
A jacked rabbit—might have even been funny if it hadn't been so obvious the rabbit was on flush, and having a bad reaction. Nohar knelt next to the rabbit. She—Nohar could tell now—wasn't wearing anything. Filth covered her dark fur. He felt a wave of anger when he didn't see the hypo. That meant one of two things. Either someone had done her, or had stolen the hypo. In both cases they'd left her on her own like this. Scenes like this made Nohar think the fundamentalists might be right and moreys were an abomination in the eyes of whatever deity.
It was flush, all the classic symptoms. Near catato-nia, chills, dehydration, voiding the bowels, rolling up of the eyes, shallow breathing, slight nosebleed. She was lucky. In truly severe reactions, the nervous system went. Then he would have found a corpse. She'd been through the worst of it, though. What she needed now was light and water. The darkness tended to perpetuate the hallucinogenic effects of flush. She could
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be psychologically unable to move long after the physical effects had worn off.
Nohar picked her up. She weighed nothing. She was a small morey to begin with, and she was skinny as well. He hoped the squatters still kept those rain barrels up topside.
On the burned-out wing, with the exception of the concrete facade, the top three floors were gone. Nohar carried the rabbit out of the stairwell and into the open air of the seventeenth floor. Nohar saw the orange plastic barrels immediately. Good, the occupants still collected rainwater. He looked at the shivering rabbit, silently asked himself what he was doing, and lowered her face gently into one of the cleaner barrels.
The moment the water brushed the side of her face, her ears picked up. Good sign. They stayed like that, Nohar holding her face just above the water, the rabbit curled up with her neck resting on the edge of the barrel, for close to fifteen minutes. The only thing keeping Nohar from giving up on her brain-lock was the gradual improvement, and the fact she did seem to be drinking a little.
There had to be a better way to deal with this, Nohar thought. He wasn't a trained medic. He was following the home procedure for a bad flush trip. It was a lot easier with a toilet handy—the running joke was, the comedown in the head was the way the drug got its street name.
A sputtering came from the barrel. Nohar hoped she wouldn't vomit. 'Listen to my voice.' Nohar tried to sound reassuring. 'It was a bad trip, but you're coming back. It wasn't real. You can relax now. It's important to untense your muscles, slowly—'
After a decade plus, the lines came back with surprising ease. She didn't say anything as he talked her down, and Nohar counted himself lucky she wasn't a screamer.
'Let go, damnit!'
A wide foot made a hollow slap on Nohar's chest,
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announcing the fact she had regained some contact with reality. Nohar didn't think letting go of her was a good idea, but the rabbit had suddenly erupted into thrashing motion from near paralysis. She was saying something in Spanish, and from the tone of her voice, it wasn't very pleasant. Good intentions only went so far. He set her down next to the barrel. She was panting, and a little unsteady on her feet.
Nohar rubbed his shoulder. It was tightening up after the stress of holding the rabbit above the barrel. He knew he was asking for it, but he said it anyway. 'Are you all right?'
She looked up. She had a scar on one cheek that turned up her mouth in a quirky smile, as if she enjoyed some private joke at his expense. 'Don't do no favors, Kit.'
'Name's Nohar.' He shrugged and started walking toward the windows on the south wall.
He got to the windows, began looking for Johnson's house, and immediately realized the limitations of his vision. The houses were mere blobs.
Nohar turned back to the rain barrel and saw the rabbit, apparently recovering out of sheer cussedness, doing her best to clean herself off with a rag. Oops, not a rag, he had left his shirt over there. Oh, well, the shirt was too hot anyway.
'Hey, Fluffy-'
She glared at him.
