pieces of BEM, scattered among splatters of dark liquid all over the floor, and all over everything else in the area, including her. Everything smelled like an explosion in a coffeeshop.
Hooting noises began to fill the air. Oh, no, Dairine thought as she grabbed the computer up from the floor and began to run again. Now this place's own security people were going to start coming after her.
They would ask her questions. And no matter how little a time they did that for, the BEMs would be waiting. If they waited. If they didn't just come and take her away from the port's security. And even if she killed every BEM in the place, more would come. She knew it.
She ran. People looked at her as she ran. Some of them were hominid, but not even they made any move to stop her or help her: they looked at her with the blank nervousness of innocent bystanders watching a bank robber flee the scene of the crime. Dairine ran on, desperate. It was like some nightmare of being mugged in a big city, where the streets are full of people and no one moves to help.
The blasterscreams were a little farther behind her. Maybe the one BEM's fate had convinced the others it would be safer to pick her off from a distance. But then why didn't they do that before?
Unless they wanted me alive. .
She ran and ran. That laughter in the dark now pounded in her pulse, racing, and in the pain in the side that would shortly cripple her for running. Something she had read in Nita's manual reoccurred to her: Old Powers, not friendly to what lives: and one of the oldest and strongest, that invented death and was cast out. . Part of her, playing cold and logical, rejected this, insisted she had no data, just a feeling. But the feeling screamed Death! and told logic to go stuff it somewhere. These things belonged to that old Power. She needed a safe place to think what to do. Home. . But no. Take these things home with her? Her mom, her dad, these things would.
But maybe Nita and Kit could help.
But admit that she needed help?
Yes. No. Yes.
But without resetting the transit program, she couldn't even do that. No time. .
'Can you run subroutines of that program before you finish plugging in the variables?' Dairine said, gasping as she ran.
'Affirmative.'
'Then do it, as soon as you can!'
'Affirmative. Name of best friend-'
She wondered for a second whether 'Shash Jackson was still her best friend after she had cleaned him out of his record money three days ago. Then she gave his name anyway. Red lines of light lanced over her head as she ran. And here, the ceiling was getting lower, the sides of the building were closer, there were smaller rooms, places to go to ground. .
The stitch in her side was killing her. She plowed through a crowd of what looked like ambulatory giant squid on a group tour, was lost among them for a moment, in a sea of waving purple tentacles, tripping over their luggage, which crowded aside squawking and complaining-then came out the other side of them and plunged into a smaller corridor about the size of Grand Central Station.
She kept giving the computer inane information as she ran down the corridor, pushing herself to the far side of the stitch, so that she could reach someplace to be safe for a minute. There were more gates here, more signs and seating areas, and of? to one side, a big shadowy cul-de-sac. She ran for it, any cover being better than none.
At the very end of her energy, she half ran, half stumbled in. It was unmistakably a bar. If she had had any breath to spare, she would have laughed with the dear familiarity of it, for it looked completely like other bars she had seen in airports when traveling with her folks and Nita-fairly dim, and crowded with tables and chairs and people and their bags. But no mere airport bar had ever had the kind of clientele that this place did. Tall furry things with too many arms, and squat many-legged things that looked to be wearing their organs on the outside, and one creature that seemed totally made of blinking eyes, all stared at Dairine over their snacks and drinks as she staggered in and past them, and not one of them moved.
Dairine didn't care. Her only thought was to hide. But she realized with horror that she could see no back way out of the place-only a dark red wall and a couple of what might have been abstract sculptures, unless they were aliens too. She heard the cries out in the terminal getting closer, and utter Panic overcame her. Dairine shouldered and stumbled her way frantically among strange bodies and strange luggage in the semidarkness, hardly caring what she might or might not be touching. Impetus and blind terror crashed her right into a little table at the back of the room, almost upsetting both the table and the oddly shaped, half-full glass on it. And then something caught her and held her still.
After her experience out in the terminal, Dairine almost screamed at the touch. But then she realized that what held her were human hands. She could have sobbed for relief, but had no breath to spare. So rattled was she that though she stared right at the person who was steadying her, it took her precious seconds to see him. He was built slight and strong, wearing a white shirt and sweater and a long fawn-colored jacket: a fair-haired young man with quick bright eyes and an intelligent face. 'Here now,' he said, helping her straighten up, 'careful!' And he said it in English!
Dairine opened her mouth to beg for help, but before she could say a word, those wise, sharp eyes had flickered over her and away, taking everything in.
'Who's after you?' the man said, quiet-voiced but urgent, glancing back at Dairine.
'I don't know what they are,' she said, gasping, 'but someone-someone bad sent them. I can lose them, but I need time to finish programming-'
Alarm and quick thought leapt behind those brown eyes. 'Right. Here then, take these.' The young man dug down in his jacket pocket, came up with a fistful of bizarrely shaped coins, and pressed them hurriedly into Dairine's free hand. 'There's a contact transfer disk behind the bar. Step on it and you should materialize out in the service corridor. Follow that to the right and go out the first blue door you see, into the terminal. If I'm not mistaken, the pay toilets will be a few doors down on your left. Go in one of the nonhuman ones.'
'The nonhuman-!' Dairine said, absolutely horrified.
'Quite so,' the man said. 'Right across the universe, that's one of the strongest taboos there is.' And he grinned, his eyes bright with mischief. 'No matter who's after you, it'll take them a bit to think of looking for you in there. And the locks will slow them down.' He was on his feet. 'Off you go now!' he said, and gave Dairine a fierce but friendly shove in the back.
She ran past a trundling robot barman, under the hinged part of the bartop and onto the transfer circle.
On the other side of the bar, as Dairine began to vanish, she saw the fair man glance over at her to be sure she was getting away, and then pick up the iced tea he had been drinking. Glass in hand, he went staggering cheerfully off across the barroom in the most convincing drunk act Dairine could imagine, accidentally overturning tables, falling into the other patrons, and creating a mess and confusion that would slow even the BEMs up somewhat.
Dairine materialized in the service corridor, followed her instructions to the letter, and picked a rest room with a picture sign so weird, she couldn't imagine what the aliens would look like. She found out soon enough. She spent the next few minutes hastily answering the computer's questions while sitting on what looked like a chrome-plated lawn mower, while the tiled room outside her locked booth echoed with the bubbling screams of alien ladies (or gentlemen) disturbed in the middle of who knew what act.
Then the screams became quiet, and were exchanged for a horrible rustling noise, thick soft footfalls, and high fluting voices. The computer had asked Dairine whether she preferred Coke or Pepsi, and had then fallen silent for some seconds. 'Are you done?' she hissed at it.
'Running. Data in evaluation.'
'Get a move on!'
'Running. Data in evaluation.'
The air filled with the scorch of burning plastic again. They were burning the lock of the booth.
'Can you do something to a few of them?' she whispered, her mouth going dry.
'Negative multitasking ability,' said the computer.
Dairine put her head down on the computer, which was on her knees, and took what she suspected might be her last breath.
