Jungle Of Steel And Stone

toon sent the spirit away.

His loneliness dissipates as Veil begins to feel a comforting sense of oneness with God. His heart fills with joy and thanksgiving as he sniffs a small portion of the Nal-toon's blood-shilluk and drifts off to sleep.

* * *

At nightfall Veil-in-Toby rises and moves on through the jungle of the dead. He abruptly stops and drops to the ground when he again hears Reyna's voice calling to him from somewhere in the darkness ahead of him.

He sniffs some blood-shilluk to focus his senses, then creeps soundlessly forward until he comes to the edge of a stand of trees. Before him, thirty running-steps away across an open expanse, Reyna and a man whose features are hidden by the night sit on a stone barrier. Between them is some kind of magic box that makes the sound of Reyna's voice. The box repeats the same message over and over, but Veil no longer even bothers to listen. It is silly magic, he thinks, and now that he knows it is magic, it has lost its stranglehold on his heart.

Veil moves laterally, inside the shrouding darkness of the line of trees. He fears the Reyna-figure most; if she does possess Reyna's skills, she might well see or hear him, no matter how stealthily he moves. But he goes on, moving silently past the position of the man-in-night until the sounds from the magic box can no longer be heard.

He waits, crouched behind the stone wall and peering over its edge until the street beyond is momentarily clear of cars. Then, gripping his carrying sling against his chest, he sluggishly climbs over the wall and runs as straight and fast as he can across the street. Fueled by anxiety, he makes it safely across the street and into the shadows cast by a building.

The effort is exhausting, and now he doubles over as his stomach muscles knot with pain. He waits for the spasms to pass, then turns and moves south along the face of the building, darting from moon shadow to moon shadow.

Suddenly he sees before him a great street that is even wider than the one he had to cross to get to the river. There are a great many fast-moving cars on this great street, their light-eyes cutting sharp, moving swaths in the darkness. Veil waits, but the great street never seems to be entirely empty of cars.

He could wait here forever for the street to empty, Veil thinks. Despite the cars, he must go on.

Veil eases the carrying sling to the ground, lifts the Nal-toon, and allows some of the blood-shilluk to flow into his palm. He sniffs it, but this time the pain does not immediately vanish, as it usually does. He waits for the familiar, warm rush that will wash away his terrible hurt, but it does not come. There is some easing of the pain, but Veil still feels crippled. Recognizing the danger but feeling that he has no choice, he sniffs still more of the blood-shilluk. Finally the rush comes and the pain vanishes. He replaces the Nal-toon in his sling, lifts up the bundle, then walks forward a few steps and crouches down at the very edge of the great street.

A cluster of cars speed by, leaving in their wake a relatively long stretch of darkness. There are more light-eyes in the distance, bearing down on him, but Veil feels that he must move now, for there might not be another moment of darkness as long.

He straightens up and runs as fast as he can halfway across the great street to a stone barrier that separates the cars on his side from those on the other, which move in the opposite direction. His lungs ache and his chest heaves as he gasps for air; sweat pours off his naked body and his vision blurs badly, but he knows that he cannot stop to rest. It is too easy for the Newyorkcities to see him in the light-eyes of their cars.

Everything seems to be spinning around him, but Veil somehow manages to climb over the stone wall. He stumbles into the street, staggers and falls. Despite the fact that he is totally disoriented, he struggles to his feet. He sways, then sits down hard with a jolt that shoots up his spine and sends shock waves of pain through his head.

Suddenly he sees the light-eyes of a car bearing down on him very fast. Veil wills himself to his knees, then up on his feet as the car emits a wave of screeching, blaring sounds like those he heard when he crossed the street by Centralpark. The light-eyes shoot toward him, then suddenly begin to veer wildly back and forth as the screeching sounds build to a deafening, almost physical thing that batters at his ears. He smells something burning. Then the sound abruptly stops as the light-eyes stop, and Veil feels the cool touch of metal against his stomach.

Veil sways as he stares, mesmerized, into the right light-eye of the car. Then he falls forward onto the car's metal skin.

'What the fuck's the matter with you, you crazy son of a bitch? You want to commit suicide, do it with someone else!'

There is a Newyorkcity warrior standing beside him. The man is shouting and waving his arms, obviously threatening him.

'Please help me, Nal-toon. I cannot see well enough to fight. I am too weak to fight.'

'What the hell did you say?'

'Please, Nal-toon. Have mercy one more time.'

'God damn, you smell like a fucking sewer! You're on drugs, aren't you?'

Yes, Veil thinks—the Nal-toon is causing the warrior to stay his hand. Now it is up to him to summon the necessary will and strength. . . .

Veil pushes off the car's metal skin. Holding his bundle against his body with both hands, he staggers the rest of the way across the street, stumbles over an embankment, and falls into night on the other side.

Chapter Thirteen

Veil awoke with a start, momentarily disoriented by the close proximity of his dream-Toby to their present position and by the fact that his dream-Toby's actions had gone far beyond anything Reyna had told him or that he could reasonably assume to have happened.

He looked around for Reyna but could not see her. There was only the sound of the tape recorder playing its loop, and an occasional whoosh of night traffic on the expressway. Alarmed, he leapt to his feet, looked around again, then arbitrarily chose to go to his left—in the direction of the expressway.

He found Reyna standing just inside a copse of trees, staring out over an empty expressway.

'Don't be frightened, Reyna,' Veil said as he came up behind her. 'It's me. What's the matter?'

Reyna pointed out toward the expressway. 'Nothing, I guess. Something happened out there a few minutes ago.'

'What?'

'It must have been a near accident. There isn't that much traffic, but a dog might have been crossing. All of a sudden there was a lot of honking and a screech of brakes. I was terrified that Toby had gone around us, tried to cross the expressway and been hit by a car. I ran over here, but now I can't see. . . . Veil, what's wrong?'

'Nothing,' he replied tightly.

'You look very strange.'

'I was just thinking that it could very well have been Toby who spooked that driver.'

'Well, we really have no way of knowing,' Reyna said after thinking about it for a few moments. 'We can't look for spoor until it gets light, but he couldn't have come through this area without leaving tracks. If we find any, we'll know he's gone on to the next cemetery.'

'He has a few city blocks to cross before he gets there.'

'Yes, but it's dark. It will be dawn in a couple of hours. He knows that, so he'll go to ground at the first opportunity—when he reaches the cemetery. What concerns me is the fact that if Toby has crossed the expressway, it means he's not paying any attention to either me or the totems I left.' She paused, shrugged.