fact is that I can tell you where they are.”
Vendacious’ current plans depended on two incredibly powerful, incredibly infuriating tools. One was Nevil Storherte.
“Thirty-one meters from you—your commset—on a bearing of forty-seven degrees.” You could hear the smirk in the two-legs’ techno-speak. Nevil was supposedly a master of guile, but that was with other humans. His contempt for Tines was strong and obvious.
Fortunately, Vendacious had spent much of the last ten years learning everything he could about humans and the Beyond. There was vast power in their knowledge, even though the religious nuttery sometimes made it hard to tell what was real. In any case, Vendacious could reason with numbers better than any unaided “Child of the Sky.” He looked out at where the Reservation fence stood in his spotlight. Johanna and Pilgrim would be at the fence now, near the right end of his searchers. He squeaked pointedly at the various packs, shifting them to converge on the pile of rubble where his quarry must be hiding.
Tonight should still be a major triumph, but it had turned out riskier than the original plan. He’d expected to find his two greatest enemies crushed and dead in their aircraft. Instead he was skulking through the dark after them, hoping that neither his light nor his noise would attract Tycoon’s interest. And yet, there was a thoroughly delicious side to this. At this very moment, Pilgrim and Johanna were squeezed up against the fence. To cross that fence would mean certain death, torn apart physically or mentally or both. But if they stayed where they were, Johanna would be back in his claws. This time she would not be rescued by Pilgrim’s clever, humiliating lies, for Pilgrim himself would be just as helpless as the human.
Vendacious maneuvered himself closer to his searchers. Normally he loathed every second here in the Tropics, even more when he had to work in the filthy outdoors. Tonight … tonight he was truly enjoying himself.
“I think they know where we are,” said Pilgrim.
Johanna nodded. Even though he was looking into the spaces beyond the fence, she knew he was talking about their pursuers. Looking over her shoulder, she could see occasional members of the searcher packs. They seemed closer, and now the search light was spending most of its time centered almost exactly over her head. The light glittered off the death-heads medallion. “Most of them are on the side we came from. Maybe we could sneak back the other way … flank them.” It was a forlorn suggestion.
“No,” said Pilgrim. “You know, you might not have any trouble with the Choir, mindless as you are.” That was a bit of Pilgrim humor. Johanna doubted the serious point behind his statement. There were stories about what happened to animals in the Tropical cities. Everything here was consumed, in mind or flesh.
Nevertheless she tried to match him. “You might be okay, too,
“Me neither.” Pilgrim’s voice was no longer bantering, but it didn’t have the miserable tone that Johanna had heard in her own. But then Pilgrim was a pilgrim and such as he bragged about their fearlessness. “You know,” the pack continued, “all my life, even back to the myths of earlier me’s, the stories about the Tropics have been the same, that the place is deadly to mind, that you only go there if you want to dissolve in joy. But look at what we’re not seeing.” He pointed a snout into the rain that glittered in Vendacious’ spotlight. “Scarcely a single Tropical member. We hear chanting, but this rain and this humidity damps the real sounds of thought down to nothing. Look at how hunched together each of Vendacious’ packs are. I’ll bet this rain is having even more effect on the Choir, and the chanting we hear is the Choir cooped up, out of the wet! I could probably run right across this street and find us a hidey-hole on the other side.”
“If you don’t get shot by Vendacious’ goons—”
“Piffle.” Pilgrim waved dismissively. Johanna guessed that Wicky didn’t believe any of what he was saying, and was dying to get her out of harm’s way. On the other hand, his voice had that intrigued, calculating tone he used when he was planning something over-the-top. “Honestly, Johanna, this doesn’t look as crazy as when Scriber and I rescued you on Murder Meadows. And … I’ve always wondered what the Choir was like. Imagine getting in, and returning alive.” His Scarbutt member was pulling at a tear in the fence, making it large enough so the pack could sprint through.
“Oh, Pilgrim!” Her whisper was loud enough that even she could hear it. Not that that really mattered any more. She reached out, trying to hold him back. This was way too much like being a little orphan girl again.
“Hei, don’t worry. We’ve gotten through worse.” He wriggled loose from her, but did not immediately rush off. Maybe he was waiting for the arc light to drift away from their part of the fence. “Use your invisible light. Try to see where I end up on the other side. I’ll find some place safe, and wave.”
“Okay.” She gave him a pat. Wicky was right, even if he was blowing smoke. She pulled the commset and other gear close and then shone her violet light out into the space beyond the fence.
A moment passed. The glare of the arc light shifted away, leaving blinding afterimages. That didn’t stop Pilgrim. He sprinted out through the widened hole in the fence. She squinted into the afterimages and—the big light came back, shining right on the running foursome. Pilgrim zigged and zagged. Apparently the gun packs couldn’t get a bead on him, for no one fired.
The chanting of the Choir was growing. Hopefully, the mind sounds were still attenuated by the wetness, but what Johanna could hear sounded like a mob at close quarters. An ambush on top of Vendacious’ ambush? She swung her pale light to the right. There was a trickle of shapes in the rainglow. They were moving past her position, in the general direction of Pilgrim. The trickle became a crowd, a mob, members shoulder to shoulder as she had never seen before among the Tines.
Pilgrim turned, was running away, but all along the far edge of the open space, Tropicals were pushing into the open. They weren’t running. The Tines strolled along almost parallel to the fence. Their numbers grew. Somehow Pilgrim Wickllrrackscar kept his mind. He was running all together, but Llr’s limp kept him from full speed. It didn’t matter. The Tropicals were a mob now, sweeping along the fence like the edge of some giant scissor blade, the cutting point of contact moving faster than any pack could run. Rac fell to slashing claws. The last Jo saw of Pilgrim was little Llr’s body tossed into the air, like a tidbit for some vast carnivore.
Pilgrim was gone, but the mob did not overrun the fence. As a whole, they were sweeping parallel to the barrier. Avoidance wasn’t perfect; the crowd was too jammed together for that. Here and there, Tropical members were rammed through the barrier. Most of them wriggled back; some wandered aimlessly further inward.
The Choir racket was a roar, even to her ears. The higher frequencies would be tearing at Vendacious’ goons, but when she looked behind her: There was a pack with guns on one side. The arc light lit the rain on the other.
A human-sounding voice spoke conversationally. “Run, Johanna, run. Into the Choir. I want to see this.”
It seemed like good advice, even considering the source. Johanna tore through the fence and ran into the Choir.
Well damn! So much for reverse psychology. The two-legs was running. Without thinking, Vendacious whipped up his rifle and aimed at her back. At the same time he was shouting to his troops “Don’t shoot!”
His lips tightened on the trigger just as sense finally percolated all the way through him. There was a
It was her good fortune that Johanna Olsndot had sprinted through the fence just as the passing mob became slightly thinner. She made it twenty feet into Choir territory, forty feet. Now the mob came thick again, the mindsounds even louder than when they had destroyed Pilgrim. Vendacious and his comrades hugged the ground, each pack holding all its own heads together. If not for the rain, some of them might have been destroyed, even on this side of the Reservation boundary.
