The victory was short-lived, though.
Now what he had was a wounded man-eater hiding in the bush. That wasn't going to make things any easier.
That didn't matter. He had to go after it, and he didn't have time to call up another warning program. He had to go
Jay ran for the jungle.
Peel stood by the greenhouse, wishing he had a cigarette. He had quit smoking years ago, a matter of discipline more than anything, a test of his will. Everybody knew it was bad for you, but as a soldier, he had always expected he would die in the field somewhere; he didn't expect to live long enough for the fags to get him. Besides, his grandfather on his mother's side had smoked two packs a day for almost seventy years, and had died at ninety- four from injuries sustained in a fall, so a lot of it was genetics. Drank whiskey every day right until the end, too. No, Peel had stopped because he wanted to prove to himself that he could. What was the old joke? Quitting smoking is easy, hell, I've done it a dozen times.
The rain had stopped; there was a patch of clear sky directly overhead, and the gathering darkness sported a few stars. It was quiet, calm, with no signs of any problems from his troops around the estate. Goswell had called him in for a visit; they'd had a pleasant drink. There was all that money sitting in a bank. Bascomb-Coombs was about his business, and if it went as well as it had gone thus far, Peel would be rich and powerful beyond belief in the not-too-distant future. Especially since, once the scientist's plans came to fruition, Peel planned to take him out and take over himself.
On the face of it, Peel didn't see how things could be much better. However…
Something was wrong.
There was nothing to point a finger at, no focus for his unease, but on some instinctual level, he felt it. There was a danger lurking here somewhere. Perhaps a cigarette wouldn't help him figure out what it was, but smoking had always settled his thoughts, had given him time to ponder problems. Like Sherlock Holmes with his pipe, perhaps.
Well. He wasn't about to fire up again because of some vague disquiet. A walk around the grounds might serve as well, and he was trying that, but so far, nothing concrete had loomed. It would present itself, if indeed it existed, in due time. It always did. The only question about that was, would he figure it out in time to marshal his defenses against it?
Whatever it was. There was the question.
Tyrone walked down the hall toward his first class, threading his way through the other students, each hurrying toward his or her own rendezvous with education.
'Hey, Ty.'
He stopped and turned, recognizing the voice from those two words.
Belladonna Wright.
'Hey, Bella.'
She wore a tightly wrapped blue dress that fit like spray paint and stopped a foot above her knees, matching thick-soled sandals that added four inches to her height, and she had her long hair up in some kind of curly do that made her look taller still. Two steps and he could touch her.
'How you doin'?'
He shrugged. 'Okay. How about you?'
'Okay. I saw you out with your boomerang the other day.'
'Yeah.' Why was she talking to him? After he had seen her kissing that slackbrain at the mall and called her on it, she had dumped him flatter than two-dee. They hadn't spoken since. And here she was, passing the time of day like nothing had happened.
'Haven't seen you at the mall lately,' she said. She smiled.
'Haven't been there much.'
'You should check out the new food court. It's terrifaboo.'
'Yeah, maybe I will.'
She flashed another of her perfect smiles at him. Took a breath deep enough to push her chest out a little. A wonderful, beautiful, fabulous chest. He swallowed dryly.
'Well. See you around,' she said.
'Yeah,' was all he could manage.
She walked off, queen of all she passed. From the back, she was just as gorgeous.
Tyrone's brain hurt. What was that all about? She smiled at him, practically
The bell went off, and Tyrone jerked himself out of his trance and hustled his butt to his class. He wished his dad was in town. Maybe he would know what this meant.
Michaels suddenly realized how quiet things had gotten at the office, and he looked at the computer's clock. Lord, it was almost midnight.
He was bushed. Sitting hunched over the computer all day had knotted him up again, and his mind was foggy. Most of the British computer systems had come back on-line, but other European nations were still having big problems. Toni had taken the Chunnel train to Paris to coordinate infoflow with the French authorities. She wouldn't be back until Tuesday evening.
He had been making stupid mistakes for the last hour, words on the holoproj running together and not making sense. Time to shut it down and get back to his hotel.
He slipped his windbreaker on — what was it somebody had called it here, a windcheater? — and left the office. Probably wouldn't be a lot of taxis standing out front. He pulled his virgil to call for one as he headed for the building's exit.
'You work late hours,' Angela said from behind him.
Michaels turned. 'Yeah, well, you're still here, aren't you?'
'Just leaving. You need a ride?'
'I was just calling a cab.' He waved the virgil. 'I wouldn't want to put you out.'
'No trouble, really,' she said. 'It's practically on the way to my flat.'
'In that case, okay, sure.'
London was a big city, it never shut down, and even at midnight the streets were still clogged with traffic. There were twelve? fifteen million people here? Too many in too small a space.
'Making much progress?' she asked as they wound their way past a pub that spilled laughing patrons onto the sidewalk.
'Not much.'
'Us, either,' she said. 'Much of the British grid seems to be back up, but the rest of the world is still putting pieces back together.' She waved at the happy-looking people coming out of the pub. 'Fancy a pint and some late supper?'
As she asked, Michaels realized that he was hungry; he'd had a sandwich at his desk at noon, nothing since. 'I could eat.'
'There's a nice quiet place not far from my flat. They serve decent fish and chips.'
Again, the little danger signal cheeped in his mind, but he was tired and hungry and he didn't feel like bothering with it. What harm could there be in a beer and a little fried food?
'Sure, why not?'
The pub was moderately full, but as she'd said, fairly quiet. They ordered fish and French fries — chips — and took pint glasses of beer to their table to wait for the food.
