Toys

surface.

It was hard to hold my breath and think straight when all I wanted to do was scream. But I stayed underwater, knowing that cover meant survival.

My brain was racing faster than my body now. What next? Normally, I could hold my breath for several minutes, but how far would I be able to swim in that time? Well, let’s see!

I swam straight for the opposite shore-my strokes actually getting stronger-and finally ended up in a partially submerged culvert. The storm sewer it connected to ran up under the Esplanade, an eight-lane highway that bordered the lake.

I entered the first manhole shaft I came to, climbed furiously up, and came out in the middle of a landscaped median full of tulips, roses, exotic grasses, and hybrid cherry trees in full bloom.

The city’s ground traffic was heavy as usual, moving at a crawl-about thirty-five miles per hour.

It was just slow enough for me to sprint after the most anonymous-looking service vehicle I saw, grab hold of its rear bumper, then tuck myself down between the rear wheels, hopefully hidden from overhead police scanners.

In a matter of a few seconds, I had disappeared into the flood of vehicles flowing in and out of New Lake City.

As in the theme song from that old movie-one of the James Bond films, I believe-“nobody does it better.”

Chapter 27

Still playing the superhero in my head-it just might help me survive-I jumped off the service vehicle as it slowed for its destination, a distribution center on the edges of an infamous human slum on the south side of town. I smelled the humans before I actually saw one. No wonder they were called skunks.

Humans aren’t the most fashion-savvy creatures on the planet, but even so, I figured I would stand out in my singed hospital gown. To avoid attracting too much attention, I stayed in alleyways and shadows, scouting for food, shelter, and, yes, clothes to replace the johnny.

It was a depressingly poor and bombed-out area of town, and there weren’t a lot of inviting spaces around. Mostly it was a long row of metal-sided buildings, shuttered loading docks, and gritty, litter-strewed sidewalks.

I’d gone maybe a half mile in the direction of what looked to be a human neighborhood when I rounded a corner and saw a group of jeering Betas-named so by Elite sociologists because they behaved like lawless young male wolves, living lives of opportunistic violence on the edge of the pack. The dangerous human thugs were armed with knives and clubs and were clearly not on their way to help out at an area soup kitchen.

They’d surrounded a girl-she couldn’t have been much more than sixteen years old, and she looked very pregnant. As they shoved her back and forth, her pale, tattered skirt billowed up around her waist. She was screaming at the top of her voice: “Nooo, my baby!”

It was against my Agency training to put myself at risk for a human, but the girl was clearly in trouble. I had to help her if I possibly could. But could I?

“Nice dress, man,” said the lead Beta as I approached the punks.

His friends stopped molesting the girl long enough to size me up and then pull a couple of knives from their belts.

“See anything you like?” I offered up a human-style wisecrack. “Maybe I do.”

“Watch it, pretty boy,” said the leader, a bull-shouldered hulk with a scarred face and a broken nose.

“Aren’t you going to ask me to dance?” I said.

“We’ll dance with you all right-till you’re bleedin’ out of places you’ve never bleeded before.”

“Sounds like fun,” I told him. “Will it hurt? I like pain.”

His buddies had stepped away from the terrified girl and were gathering around me now. The girl took off running down a nearby alleyway. Not even so much as a thank-you.

“Yeah,” the lead trog went on, clearly pleased with himself. “Why don’t we do some slam- dancing? We stand in a circle like this, and you get slammed.”

“Or,” I said, not to be outdone in my knowledge of retro human dances, “we could break- dance. You know, you try to lay a hand on me, and I break your ugly heads?”

His grin widened and then disappeared into an expression of stone-cold seriousness. “Kill ’im, boys. Rip ’im up.”

It so happened that I was already having a very bad day and had some serious aggression to work out. In fact, the hardest part would be checking my fury so that I didn’t overdo it and end up coming out of this fight without any usable clothes from this rat pack.

Of course, usable is a relative term. After I’d won the street fight-in under a minute-and stripped a couple of the skunks’ semiconscious bodies, I almost decided to stick with my hospital gown. Their pants, boots, shirts, and jackets smelled that bad.

At first I was convinced the clothes achieved what I wanted: they made me look-and smell-just like another Beta. But as I buckled up my pants, I realized somebody wasn’t entirely buying the costume. Footsteps were coming up behind me lickety-split. Now what?

I took a breath and got ready for another fight.

It was just the young girl though, and she was very pregnant indeed. Poor thing.

Chapter 28

Normally, I despised sentimentality-except when it came to Lizbeth and my girls-but I found that I couldn’t help myself. Maybe my own recent circumstances were teaching me some compassion. I certainly hoped not.

The girl’s teeth were broken and decayed, and her skin pockmarked by some childhood disease, probably treatable at the time. Sad to say, but hospitals and other medical care for the humans were substandard at best. It was a policy I didn’t approve of, but the president had never asked my opinion on the subject.

“Can’t b-believe you got ’em all,” she stammered, with the slangy inflection of so many humans in these slums. “How’d ya do it?”

“Just dumb luck, I suppose. But I’m sure there are others lurking around. You should go someplace safe. Don’t depend on me, girl.”

She laughed, exposing several more infected teeth. “Safe? In Beta-Town? You’re not from around here, are ya?”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

“Come with me,” she said. “Going to storm hard soon. I got a place.”

She was right about the weather. The sultry air was thickening and held the promise of rain, and this was the time of year that flash floods were common. I was bone tired too-my body wasn’t through with its healing.

Still, I was about to politely decline her offer when she moaned in pain and doubled over, clutching her swollen belly. Then she started to fall.

I caught the girl in my arms and eased her down to the ground. After a minute, her face smoothed out. Actually, the face was rather pretty, so long as she kept her mouth closed.

“When’s the baby due?” I asked.

“Few weeks yet. But those Betas, they punched me here.” She clasped her hands tighter around her stomach, cradling what was inside.

I let out a sigh. “How far is your place?” I asked.

“Not far. I’ll show you. Don’t be afraid-you can trust me.”

As I scooped her up in my arms, I felt wetness drenching the back of her thin skirt.

Good Lord, the girl was bleeding badly. Her baby could die.