Toys

Now what? Follow the kamikaze, of course.

I did the same as Lucy, staying a few yards behind her. Wherever we hit, it was going to be together. Matching grave sites? That seemed a likely possibility.

Gravity sucked us downward with dizzying speed, hurling us straight toward frothing coastal breakers. At the last possible second, Lucy popped her parachute. So did I.

My chute engaged with a jolt that yanked me full around, but I still plunged the last couple hundred feet with the speed of a supercharged Mercedes on an open highway. I hit the shoreline in a tumbling roll that sent a white- hot shock through my blood and bones.

Then I bounced and skittered for a good ten to fifteen seconds before I finally skidded to a stop, face to face with an unresponsive boulder.

At least the earth was solid underneath me. I’d had more than enough sky.

Lucy was about fifty yards away, just getting to her feet.

I walked to join her, taking in the surroundings. Wherever we were, this place was damned cold; it might have been summer back in New Lake City, but here, the ground was half- frozen tundra. It stretched unbroken to the horizon, fading into the misted-over gray light of early morning.

All of a sudden I spotted a small blur moving in the distance-which quickly turned out to be a scene from an earlier century.

Unbelievable!

Two dozen fierce-looking men mounted on shaggy horses and wearing animal skins were riding toward us with astonishing speed. They were black-haired and golden-skinned, not very tall but powerfully built. They sat on their ponies with a confidence and ease that suggested they’d grown up on them.

I got the feeling that the grins on their faces would stay there even if their heads were being cut off-and probably had stayed on while they were cutting off other people’s heads.

As they got close, the wings of their V-formation pulled ahead to form a circle, completely surrounding Lucy and me.

They’d done this before, hadn’t they?

“Oh no,” I said quietly.

The leader leaped off his still-moving horse, landing as nimbly and as well balanced as a cat would, and strode toward us, rifle in hand.

He completely ignored me, throwing open his arms and bellowing a word that sounded like “Mehkween!”

“Tazh Khan!” Lucy cried back, and then she hurried past me into his waiting embrace. The two of them hugged like long-lost lovers, then they talked excitedly and very rapidly in a language that was like nothing I’d ever heard or read.

Hoo boy! So these were the “friends” she’d contacted to help us save the human race from extinction?

Things didn’t look too good for us skunks.

Chapter 58

“There are many tribes-and nations-out here in the real world,” Lucy explained to me a few minutes later. We were riding horses-side by side. In Russia. Siberia, I believe.

“Is he a former boyfriend?” I asked.

“Certainly preferable to your wife,” she answered. “But no, Tazh Khan is just a good friend. We’ve fought the Elites together and kicked some butt.”

“Why do they call you Mehkween?” I asked next, half shouting over the swirling wind that was blowing down like a twister from the frozen north.

“It’s Megwin,” she answered. “That’s what my parents originally named me, and that’s how some resistance people know me. Lucy’s just for the straight world. You can call me Lucy.”

“Thanks much, Mehkween.”

I let it go at that; it wasn’t really much of a surprise compared to everything else that had happened. It turned out that Lucy/Megwin had worked with Tazh Khan and his men for years. Despite their savage appearance, they had not only modern weapons but modern communications technology-and this was the rendezvous she’d arranged for while we were in the plane.

Now the Mongols were taking us to a place where we’d get safe transport across Russia-to England, which, according to Lucy, remained quite civilized. As did France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia.

There was another reason besides the strong winds that made talking difficult. Jouncing along on the ponies that they’d provided had my teeth hopelessly clacking together. Horseback riding had not been included in Agent of Change training; I’d never even been near a horse before.

I found out fast that it wasn’t nearly as easy as these Mongol warriors made it look. Sitting astride the bony little beast was like getting kicked squarely in the ass with every single step. It didn’t help that I was close to a foot taller than everybody except Lucy.

It didn’t help, either, that while the Mongols adored Lucy/Megwin, they didn’t seem to like me one bit- especially Tazh Khan. They didn’t try to hide their mockery of my clumsy horsemanship. Perhaps to drive the point home, one of them would occasionally gallop away from the group to chase one of the large hares that popped up out of the ground and dashed away. In a blur of erratic, side-blitzing speed, the pony would hunt it down while the rider leaned out parallel to the ground with his bow and arrow and skewered it.

Hitting a target like that was roughly like shooting a snowflake in a blizzard. But they never seemed to miss.

“Ey!” Tazh Khan said, trotting up beside me. He might have been thirty years old, or sixty, and looked like he was made completely of leather and bone, like he had existed forever.

“Ey!” he repeated and rubbed his belly, then jerked his thumb toward his mouth-apparently asking if I was hungry.

I waited warily. I was hungry, but I had a hard enough time with ordinary human food and seriously doubted that whatever this barbarian horde ate was any improvement on, say, the human frankfurter.

A long knife suddenly appeared in his hand, its edge worn thin, almost to invisibility, by what had to have been thousands of honings.

He leaned forward to whisper in his mount’s ear, gave it a couple of soothing pats, then touched the blade to one of the pulsing veins that ran along its neck. Hell-he’d just cut his own horse!

As blood welled out, Tazh Khan clasped his mouth over the open cut and sucked in a long, leisurely drink.

The pony never even flinched. Its vein was crisscrossed with neat scars, I now saw. These horses weren’t just transportation, they were movable snack bars.

When he finished, he smeared some kind of ointment around the nicked flap of the animal’s skin and closed the wound. Quite the humanitarian, I was thinking.

Then he surprised me with an offer of his knife.

I did nothing but shake my head.

Tazh Khan spat contemptuously. Then he reined away from me and gave his knife to Lucy.

She flashed me a grin that was as fierce as the men’s-then, without hesitation, she helped herself to a quaff of blood from the neck of her own mount.

What a girl.

Chapter 59