their eyes and froze, sitting birds. Guns and crossbows banged and twanged all around her.
The bench shook. Vala whirled around with vampire scent driving her crazy and only her empty gun for defense. A distorted Machine People face looked back at her. Foranayeedli, looking quite crazy, gripped the bench with all four limbs and her teeth.
Vala kept driving.
Round and round. A shadow in the light semaphored both arms. One hand brandished a sword. She drove into the light.
Red Tegger-naked: why? — stepped aside to let the cruisers past.
She saw Warvia leap from the cruiser. The shock when she impacted Tegger sent his sword flying. Warvia’s tunic flew after it. Vala hardly needed to hear the shouts of her companions: it was celebration time, rishathra time.
Someone must keep her wits long enough to guard them.
Vala pulled up in the white light of the dock. She heard fighting. Vampire? No, she heard speech…
Foranayeedli had found her father. They were screaming mortal insults at each other.
Vala tried to judge if they would kill each other. There was a moment in which they paused for breath. Vala touched their shoulders-get their attention, back up
Father and daughter looked at her, shocked.
“You should not have been together when vampires came. I should have parted you. I was wrong. Don’t you understand, we
Barok mumbled, “Don’t think so.”
“But we can’t go home!” Forn waited.
“Rish with someone,” Vala said.
“Boss, don’t you see—”
“
Forn suddenly laughed. “What about you, Boss?”
“I’ve got to button this up. Barok, find Waast—” But that was Waast’s voice. Waast had been found, and by more than one male. “-or someone. Go.” She pushed them in opposite directions, and they went.
Next? The Reds seemed reconciled. That might even last. Tegger must know the power of the vampire scent by now. The scent still fizzed through Vala’s brain and blood, but she’d known it far stronger, and resisted. Well, not resisted, exactly…
A pale child stood before her, half her size, squinting, mutely beseeching.
She stepped toward it.
A crossbow bolt sprouted in its chest. It squawled and ran wobbling into shadow.
Vala turned. It was Paroom. She said, “I thought I’d use the gun butt. It was too young to put out a scent.”
The Grass Giant accepted that. “We may have brought more than one rider. I haven’t seen any but that child.”
“Check the tunnel?”
“I found four vampires dead by blade. Tegger’s prey, I think.”
“That’ll help.”
“One of them had all her teeth knocked out. And… what did you say? That’s right, vampires don’t like the stink of their own dead. They won’t go past.”
“Then… we made it. We’re safe.”
“Good enough,” Paroom said, and folded her in his arms.
The party was ending.
Vala didn’t want to notice. She was wrapped in sexual congress with Kaywerbrimmis. It should be safe. She’d be doing it anyway, but after what he’d been through this past halfnight, she thought, no male could still make a child.
The sun was a blurred silver in the gray-white clouds. All four Gleaners were asleep in a pile. The Ghouls had dropped out early and crawled under an awning. The Grass Giants had begun exploring each other, outside the rishathra pattern-as she and Kay were-and Tegger and, Warvia were talking, just talking.
Kaywerbrimmis relaxed in her arms and was fast asleep.
Vala disengaged herself, rolled Kay’s tunic and pushed it under his head. She strolled-limped-down the dock toward the Reds, alert for body language; but they didn’t seem unwelcoming.
She said, “Tell it, Tegger. How do you lower a floating factory?”
Tegger grinned in pride, and so, Vala believed, did Warvia. He said, “It’s a puzzle. You’ll see the pieces all around you. There are swimming pools and cisterns, and every one of them was empty when I got here.”
Vala waited.
“City Builders were stranded here after the Fall of the Cities. I’ve seen their bones. We know vampires moved into the shadow. They must have come up the ramp. What would you have done?”
“We talked about lifting the ramp somehow.”
Tegger nodded happily. “Every cistern empty. But the Fall of the Cities came long before Louis Wu boiled a sea. They had to have a water supply, but the vampires scared them more. So they let all that mass of water run out, and the city went up.”
“So you plugged all the cisterns—”
“There were some big metal sheets at the dock. I used them for plugs.”
“-and waited for the rain to fill them up, and the city went
“Yes.”
“Thank you for the light.”
Tegger laughed. “Heh, I thought you’d like that. I lit all my torches and dropped them over. Then I poured a canteen’s worth of fuel down on the fire.”
“And now what?”
Tegger said, “Now we’re where we can do something, and now I’ve got fifteen bright friends to work something out.”
Vala nodded. Tegger didn’t have an answer, but he’d done miracles already.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN — POWER
In the blaze of full day, Tegger led them up Stair Street to show them his discoveries.
He found it frustrating. Warvia would dive into houses, jungles of ornamental plants, and half-filled swimming pools, then rush back with questions. Tegger couldn’t follow her; he must keep to the pace of the rest. Gleaners were even faster than she was, and they got into places no Red would fit, then came sprinting back to chatter at the Grass Giants.
“Here, these grasses ought to serve you,” Tegger told Waast, while she was the only Grass Giant handy. She took the handful, smiled at him and, chewing, followed Perilack and Silack into a collapsing house. “I haven’t seen any plant eaters,” he told Coriack. “I looked for droppings. Nothing. Oh, we’ll find something to eat. There’re webspinners if nothing else. Did we bring any insect eaters?” He was talking to Valavirgillin now. “You’d think there must be animals to eat the plants, but I haven’t been able to catch anything but birds, and I haven’t seen any insects.”
Vala asked, “Carrion?”
He guessed her meaning. “Old dry bones. The Ghouls won’t eat until we starve. But I did find these. Pomes, a whole line of pome trees. Here.”
