The skycar started climbing, up and away from the field and the waiting lawman.
“Now,” said Smith, “let’s see if I can get myself back inside.”
Cruz gritted his teeth a moment after he’d turned off the highway onto the sideroad leading to Pastoral Estates. The road was rutted and cracked, causing his newly acquired landvan to bounce and rattle.
The giant plaz cockroach atop the roof creaked, shimmied.
On each side of the pale green vehicle were the words
As Cruz drove through the rusted weedy gateway of the decaying housing development a shaggy goat broke free of the cluster of green nomads camped on the nearest overgrown lawn. It ran, bleating, almost into the path of his landvan. Swerving, Cruz nearly drove up onto the opposite curve.
That action scattered the small band of looters, mostly ragged catmen, who were carrying off the shutters and patio brix from another of the forlorn houses.
Getting himself back on course, Cruz drove along Sylvan Lane to Shady Glen and turned left.
Halfway up the next block a dumpy lizardwoman in a polkadot housecoat leaped in front of his landvan.
Cruz whapped the brake button. The van shuddered, and stopped about four feet short of smacking her. The giant cockroach made a protesting noise.
After activating the window-lowering toggle, Cruz put his head out into the gathering darkness. “What is the meaning of this rash act, madam?”
She held her thumb an inch and a half from her forefinger. “About this long,” she said, shuffling around to his side of the cab. “A disgusting scummy shade of brown. Stunted little wings and a bunch of teenie weenie googly eyes. What is it?”
“You nearly get yourself plowed under just to ask me riddles?”
“Whatever it is…I got me ten thousand of the rascals crawling all over my kitchen,” she explained. “We’re one of the few decent families left in this sinkhole of a community. Now, as if we didn’t have enough to bear with nomads barbecuing goats on our lawns and looters and mewts and welfs and…now we’ve been cursed with a blight of disgusting slimy brown things. Oh, and they eat linoleum.”
“I happen to be en route to a home with an even more momentous problem.” Cruz reached behind him. “However, spray this on the beggars and it’ll work wonders until I can get back to you.” He grabbed up a spraygun, tossed it out into the oncoming night to her.
“Bless you, sir…wait now! This says BriteKoat Wallpaint/Lemon Brickle Shade #2. How in Plaut’s name can paint-”
“Trust me. This is, after all, my profession.” He rolled up the window, released the brake and rolled on.
Two blocks farther on he spotted the Pastoral Estates Middle School. Cruz drove on by the weedfilled playground and the ramshackle buildings to park a block away.
As he stepped from the landvan a pudgy humanoid boy of ten popped up on the other side of a dying hedge.
“Better pay me ten trubux to watch your car, chump,” he advised. “Otherwise severe damage and looting is likely to-”
“Ah, I never worry about things like that,” Cruz informed him. “This thing’s equipped with Kilguard.”
“Kilguard? What the heck’s that?”
“Just touch one dainty finger to this vehicle and you’ll get the answer to that question, my lad.” Smiling, Cruz went off.
When darkness filled the schoolgrounds, Cruz moved clear of the overgrown shrubbery at their edge to go sprinting over to the nearest building. Getting inside was simple, since the door had long ago been taken away. Moving around the remains of a nomad cookfire, he eased along the dark hallway.
Bjorn, contacted on the pixphone by the mind-controlled Camilla, had told the imitation junglegirl to come to this abandoned school complex at nine tonight and leave the stunned body of Professor Winiarsky in the pantry of the cafeteria.
Cruz stationed himself in a closet that gave him a view of the only entrances to the cafeteria. It was a few minutes past eight.
There were a radio and a tiny earphone built into his metal arm. Cruz, hunkered in the closet, tried to find a newscast but couldn’t bring in anything but a local music station that was featuring three hours of uninterrupted music by the Sophisticates.
He waited patiently in silence.
Eleven minutes shy of nine Cruz heard footfalls.
Two people approached the cafeteria.
“…like little old aunties,” a harsh croaking voice was complaining. “We ought to quit behaving that way and get tough.”
“That’s not Syndek policy, Otto.”
“Which is exactly why, Mr. Bjorn, if you don’t mind my saying, we’re not getting anyplace in this blasted quest.”
The two men halted a few feet from Cruz’ hiding place.
“We’ll finally have one of the Horizon Kids in a few minutes now,” said Bjorn. He was a tall man with white hair; his companion was a thickset toadman. “And all we need, Otto, is one part of the Westerland secret and we can bargain with Triplan and whoever else is interested.”
“That’s fine, but I still don’t see why we have to keep this guy alive after we-”
“Syndek does business in certain ways. No killing. Ever.”
“Stupid damn way to-”
“Quiet down now, Otto. We’ll go inside to await our delivery.”
Cruz was rubbing his metal thumb knuckle across his moustache. “That wasn’t a faked conversation,” he told himself. “They didn’t have any notion I was lurking nearby.”
If that were true, it meant Syndek agents hadn’t been the ones who’d gotten to Hal Larzon and killed him.
“Who then?” Cruz asked himself as he slipped silently out of his hiding place.
CHAPTER 23
The airfloat train rushed through the sunbright afternoon fields. There were rolling hills, rich with high orange grass, a few farmhouses with sharply slanting sewdoshingle roofs. Far off, in the hazy distance, a herd of grazing grouts.
Smith watched the familiar countryside unwind beyond the windows of his compartment. Just about everything seemed to be the same as it had been when he was growing up in this territory years ago. He felt neither depressed nor elated about being here again.
When the train began moving through shadowy woodlands, Smith stood and lifted his small suitcase from under the seat.
“Crosscut Station,” crackled the voxbox in the compartment ceiling.
The train slowed, shuddered slightly, came to a stop. The platformside door opened with a shushing sound and Smith stepped from the train.
Standing over near the small, sewdoshingle station house, shielded by a striped sunbrella and wearing a three-piece checkered knickersuit, was Saint. Tipping his checkered cap, he came strolling over. “One supposes this is a bit of a sentimental journey, eh?”
Shrugging, Smith followed the green man over to an open landcar. “I haven’t burst into tears yet.”
