cover to cover, flashed between rocks—”Slow that down!”-now through brush, now where was it? Reds ran fast, but this thing was keeping up with the Red while hiding most of the time.
Louis couldn’t get any notion of its shape.
“Louis, we watched the burning of three Patriarchy ships. I suspect a protector,” the Hindmost said. “Might we have another protector here?”
“Why not just a Ghoul?”
The red dots streaked away in fast-forward, then shifted to normal light. The Red Herder ran alone. Near him there was a suggestion of sporadic motion, and the man’s eyes were constantly shifting.
Something popped up in front of him. His sword came out-
“Give me infrared.”
In infrared Louis found
Louis remembered Ghouls; though they were hidden in brush and shadow, he knew their lanky shape.
But the fifth glow was hiding even from the Ghouls. Louis could make out a hand smaller than a Ghoulish hand, nearly hairless. An old man’s hand, arthritic, with knobby knuckles.
Protector? “Why would a protector bother?”
“Unknown. But see this.” Fast-forward. The vampire woman fell dying. The Red ran, stopped, splashed in the river, and was suddenly fighting half a dozen vampires. The recording went dead slow. The Red’s sword swept around… a woman was uncoiling herself at his back… a hand slapped her ankle.
The hidden one was mud-colored, plastered with mud. Its knotted hand only just touched her, closed and released. The woman swiped with her claws at nothing she could see; returned to the attack, and died on the red man’s sword.
“Minimalist,” Louis said. A rustling sound was trying to find his attention.
“Secretive,” the Hindmost said.
The Red Herder ran along mud. Vampires converged… and they all faded into distance.
“He’s out of my instrument’s range. I lost him for a time. I nearly lost the hidden one, too, and that concerns me. Look.”
The camera viewpoint swung back along the river, caught a splash, then moved fast upslope and into shadow.
Louis said, “I don’t—”
“Here, again, in infrared. The lurked is nearly invisible.”
“Yeah. He was underwater, of course, shedding heat. Where’s he going? Into the vampire nest?”
The sequence ran again, light-enhanced.
“That was the last I saw of it. Clearly it is not a vampire. It guards the Red Herder, and perhaps his companions, too, avoiding notice at all costs.”
In a crunching of brush the Fishers and Sailors were lining up along the pool to stare at Louis Wu afloat in midair; or else at a window in a rock cliff, a view of distant daylit mountains.
Louis asked, “What else have you got?”
“Nothing of interest since three hours ago.”
“Hindmost, my brain really is dying for lack of sleep.”
The Hindmost said, “Wait. This thing—”
“Is thirty-five degrees up the curve of the Arch, five and a half minutes away at lightspeed. Can’t hurt you. You’re right, though, it’s a protector.”
“Louis! You must accept medical help.”
“You don’t have medical help. You put the ‘doc on the lander, remember?”
“The crew cabin kitchen has a medical menu. Louis, it can make boosterspice!”
“Boosterspice doesn’t make a man well. It only makes him young:
“Are you—”
“No, I’m not sick. But humans get sick, Hindmost, and I keep remembering
“But—”
“Leave the window running. I don’t want anyone to think we’re hiding something from them.” Louis stood and turned away.
“Louis, I weary of your not listening to me!”
Louis took two more steps. But he’d refused to listen to the Hindmost for eleven years, and he found apologizing tanj awkward… so he turned back and resumed his seat on the boulder. “Speak,” he said.
“I have my own medical facilities.”
“Oh, yes.” The Hindmost would surely be protected against any concievable [sic-should be “conceivable”] accident or malaise. Nessus had lost a head and neck on their first visit, and Louis had seen it replaced. “Surgery for a Pierson’s puppeteer. What would that do for a human?”
“Louis, this technology was of human origin. We bought it from a Kzin law enforcer on Fafnir, but it appears to have been an ARM experiment of more than two hundred years ago, stolen from Sol system. The system uses nanotechnology to make repairs inside the cells themselves. No second was ever built. I’ve had it modified to heal humans or kzinti or my own kind.”
Louis was laughing. “Tanj, you’re careful!” Most of what was aboard Needle was of human manufacture, and what wasn’t had been carefully hidden. If the Hindmost were caught while abducting his crew, he wouldn’t implicate the Fleet of Worlds.
“Pity I’ll never see it.”
“I can move it to the crew deck.”
Louis felt cold running up his spine like river water. He said, “You’re not serious, and I’m too tired to think. Good night, Hindmost.”
Louis parked his stack of plates next to the guest house. Dry brush rustled as he stepped down. He spoke to the night, not loudly.
“When you’re ready to talk, I’m here. And I bet you’re wearing an embroidered kilt.”
The night had no answer.
Sawur barely stirred when he crawled into the tent. He fell asleep at once.
CHAPTER TEN — STAIR STREET
A whiff of corruption pulled her half awake. Pointed fingernails pressing hard into her elbow pulled her the rest of the way. Vala sat up with a yelp. Harpster ducked below the gun she managed not to fire.
“Valavirgillin, come and see.”
Flup. “Are we attacked?”
“You would smell vampires. I’m surprised they haven’t come to look at us. Perhaps they’re distracted.”
Vala stepped out onto the running board.
Rain was falling in fat drops. The awning kept her half dry, but visibility was low. Lightning played to antispin-starboard, the direction of the vampires’ stronghold. Lightning and something else. Downslope, toward the river, a steady white light.
After all their talk, had Tegger lit a fire? But fire wasn’t quite that color, and fire would have flickered.
Grieving Tube was above them on the rock, on sentry duty. Harpster said, “Will you wake Warvia?”
“Yes.” Vala slipped into the payload shell. No point in waking anyone else, but Warvia could see details; she might even see something that would tell her this was Tegger. “Warvia?”
