Farewell Horizontal

swinging monkeylike, twisting back to front, to reach for the next hold with the other.

Even with his hesitancy, they were fast; by the time the sun came over the top of the building, Axxter figured that he and Sai had covered twice the distance he’d made in his previous traveling. Once the rhythm was established, the peculiar torsion of the hooks as they anchored and then bent around themselves… The few times Axxter had screwed up and missed catching the next hold, his gut had clenched in fear as the image of himself falling snapped into his head. Then Sai had taken pity on him and explained the devices’ interlock system; the previous anchoring point wasn’t released until a microsecond after the new one was locked onto.

“Come on -” Sai’s voice called back to him “You don’t have time to lose, man.”

Another hour of traveling; Axxter caught up to where Sai had snugged himself in close to the wall. Axxter’s arms ached, deep into his shoulders; he rubbed them in turn after reeling out the pithons and latching himself secure.

“You’ll get used to it.” Sai nodded toward Axxter’s hand kneading his bicep. “It’s more the novelty of the motion than anything else. The hooks really do most of the work.” He took bread and water from his shoulder-bag. “Break time.”

Munching away, Sai pointed out to the sky. “Hey, there’s your little friend.”

Axxter turned his head and saw the distant figure of the gas angel. Lahft; as she came closer, he recognized her, smiling happily.

She dangled in air next to him, close enough to touch. “Hi. Hello. Falling?”

He leaned back against the pithons, and shook his head. “No. Not yet, at any rate.”

With little swimming motions, she turned around. She looked over her shoulder and the top of the spherical membrane. “Do more. Do the pretty.”

The designs he’d programmed into the biofoil he’d implanted into her were still there. She’s gotten bored with them. One of the unfortunate qualities of time: everything got old eventually. He wondered if he’d done her a favor by letting her know that, ending even that small bit of her innocence.

“I guess I can…” He hadn’t tried sending out any signal from his transceiver; since the Small Moon’s orbit didn’t include this side of the building, there hadn’t seemed any point. But with the target right in front of him – “Okay. How’s this?” He pulled a tiger playing with a butterfly up from his archive, coded and sent it over the distance of less than a meter. As the screen display dropped from his vision, he saw the image blossoming across Lahft’s membrane.

“Nice.” She turned from admiring herself and looked at him.

“Yeah, it’s nice.” The sunlight coming through the membrane made it radiant, a smooth glowing rose. “That’s the best display I’ve ever had.”

Beside him, Sai nodded. “It’s kind of a shame that all this stuff usually just gets wasted on a bunch of big ugly guys.”

Lahft wasn’t listening to them, letting the breeze slowly draw her away.

“Hey -” Axxter called out to her. “Come back around again sometime – whenever you want – and I’ll do another one for you.”

She considered this, putting a finger to her chin. Then that same unalloyed smile appeared. “When you want. You here, and me -” She flung her arm out to indicate some distant point in the sky. “You make you – like a pretty, but you – on me. Then I come here. To you.” She had floated several meters away and had to shout the last words. Before she was gone entirely, dwindling to a far speck.

Sai yawned, stretching out his arms in front of him “Angels are okay. You could do a lot worse than being on a friendly basis with them.”

He realized for the first time that Lahft had shown none of the usual angelic shyness around Sai. As if she was used to him, or just not scared of him.

“I suppose. I don’t see what good it’ll ever do me, though.”

Sai shrugged. “It’s like those old stories, you know, fairy tales and stuff, where the kid befriends the ants and the birds. And they wind up saving his ass somehow on the last page. You just never know.”

It wasn’t the first time Axxter didn’t know what the hell somebody was talking about. “What about that other one? That girl?” He assumed that Sai, with his spying around, had witnessed that encounter. “I suppose she’s got her uses, too.”

“That circuit-rider broad?” Sai snorted. “You’d be smart to steer well clear of her. People like that can cause a lot of trouble.”

“Yeah, she seemed pretty demented. Talking some crazy stuff about switching around into different bodies. Like she had a wardrobe of them, or something.”

Sai shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. If she were crazy, then she wouldn’t have such a potential for trouble. But she can really do all that stuff – that’s why she’s such bad news.” He tightened the straps on his travelhooks. “Come on. We gotta get moving.”

† † †

“There. That’s it.” Sai pointed ahead of them.

Catching his breath, Axxter looked across the wall. The building’s surface was tinged red by the sun setting at the limit of the clouds. The entry site appeared as a black hole in the middle of reflected fire.

Sai had been pushing to reach the spot before sundown. The speed of their travel, accelerated by his own growing skill with the hooks, left Axxter dizzy, his arms aching underneath the leather straps.

“Told you I’d get you here.” Sai clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on.”

He led the way to the curved edge of the site. Axxter grasped the lip and peered inside. Nothing but dark.

“There should be some of my buddies around. I told them to wait for me here.” Sai leaned his head inside and let out a high-pitched, whistling cry. It echoed inside the building for several seconds. After it died away, yelping whoops came bouncing back in reply. “All right – let’s go on in.” He unstrapped the travelhooks from his arms.

Axxter pulled away from him “Wait a minute. Your friends – people like you – are inside there?” He glanced again at the darkness inside the building.

Sai slung the hooks onto his belt. “Well, sure. Where else?”

He pulled away, a sudden horror prickling across his scalp and arms. “I thought… I thought you were an eveningsider. I thought you lived out here.” He gestured around at the building’s exterior.

“So?” Sai peered at him. “What difference does it make?”

Then he knew. “You’re from in there.” He pushed himself back from the other, the words Dead Center unspeakable, filling his mouth. This one, the smiling figure who’d popped up from nowhere, and all the ones like him, inside, calling back and forth like wolves -

Sai reached for him. “Come on – don’t be an idiot -” Axxter slashed at him with the travelhooks. Sai jerked back to avoid their sharp-pointed tips.

“Stay away from me.” Axxter crawled backward, his belt pithons securing him to the wall. He kept the hooks lifted between himself and Sai, as though he were brandishing a knife. “Don’t come near me. I know what you are. I know what you want.”

Sai looked at him in disgust. “You don’t know shit.” He shook his head, then turned and slipped inside the entry site, into the dark.

† † †

“That was one of your dumber moves.”

The voice came from behind him; startled, Axxter turned his head and saw Felony latched to the wall, regarding him with her level gaze.

She nodded toward the entry site where Sai had disappeared. “What’d you flip out on that guy for? He was doing you a favor. Bringing you all the way here, and stuff.”

Axxter glanced at the dark hole, then back to her. “Isn’t he… isn’t he one of them?”

“‘One of them’ – one of them what?”

“You know.” He still didn’t want to say it aloud. “You mean, the Dead Centers?”