The thread hung in the air, stopping part-way across the room, poking out of a bookshelf. Browsing readers took even less notice of it than the dog had, 109 but Griffin could see how it twisted up and out, rejoining itself in three-s.p.a.ce elsewhere in the city.
Griffin had been astonished when the signal from his tags had stopped. He sent tracers out along the signal pathway, which only confirmed what he suspected: the Doctor and his fellow creatures had found some way of removing or destroying the tags.
He had hoped to study the effects of the extruded biodata in vivo in vivo. So far, he had been operating indirectly: plucking a string here, pulling a thread there, observing the results second-hand through feedback in the biodata stream. The tags would have allowed him to watch the Doctor"s responses in real time.
He had learned something from the Doctor"s response, however.
He was dangerous.
Not in the way that any specimen might be a little hazardous, with its snapping teeth and its biological poisons. Truly dangerous. The Doctor, it seemed, understood a little of the nature of reality.
D is for Dog.
Only someone who comprehended the higher dimensions could have removed those tags. Griffin had a fair idea of how it might be accomplished, using the biodata strands themselves.
Griffin had never before encountered a specimen who had caught his attention in this way. Who, in some small measure, was like a person person. He had even suggested Griffin ask ask for the information he wanted. for the information he wanted.
He contemplated the fragile thread. Dust motes were dancing and whirling around it in the artificial light.
No. There was too much of a risk. If he snarled the biodata here, there might be permanent damage to the geometry of the network. Better to leave it untouched, for now, better to find more effective ways of dealing with these new and fascinating creatures.
D is for Doctor.
The Doctor ran full tilt through the forest as though the trees weren"t there, as though he"d been running through forests all his life. His hands pushed against bark, low branches brushed past him like cobwebs. He laughed, just once, easily.
The unicorn was slipping through the forest almost as easily, but it was heading for open ground, where it could accelerate its broad bulk to top speed. It didn"t have his ability to slide between the trees. Its horn was getting caught in the branches.
110.
The unicorn burst into a meadow. He followed it, seconds later, watching it gallop away, barely leaving hoof prints. He put his hands on his knees, gathering his breath, and then he followed it across the moonlit gra.s.s, his hair and his coat flashing behind him.
He plunged into the darkness of another stretch of trees. He didn"t expect to catch the unicorn.
Instead, it caught him. When he hit the next clearing he skidded to a halt, sending up a spray of leaves. The unicorn was facing him, sides heaving.
There were twelve of them. They slid into position, surrounding him.
The one he"d been chasing stepped forward. The horn was like a challenge, a barrier. I dare you to cross this line.
Every detail was right, thought the Doctor. He turned slowly, fascinated.
They were shaped like horses, had the size and the muscle of horses. But they were artiodactyl rather than perissodactyl, their cloven hooves sc.r.a.ping at the ground as they watched him. Their tails thrashed, long white whips tipped with a tuft of golden hair, the tails of lions.
The horns were a metre long.
He had seen unicorns once or twice before. These were different. He had the sense of ferocious energy being held in check, their wrath forced down while they considered him. At any moment all that power could erupt in a white explosion of killing, a dozen spiral horns piercing him like the victim of a bungled sword trick.
He raised a hand. The unicorn he"d chased was still snorting and panting, the heat of its body coming off in sweaty waves.
It stared at him along the length of its horn as his fingers came up. He put his hand on its face, softly. It was solid, flesh and bone under his touch.
"Don"t be frightened," he murmured. "I"m not going to hurt you."
Griffin had taken the book from the library, pleased with its solidity, its simplic-ity. It reminded him of his first ever bestiary, the gift of his older brother. The same simple ill.u.s.trations, simple labels, but to him a revelation.
He was playing a gramophone record, for similar reasons. A flat, black disc, the simplest of shapes, but with a hidden complexity that allowed it to warble out "Abba Dabba Honeymoon" all by itself. The music echoed heavily from the brick walls of the storeroom.
He had spent most of his apprenticeship on survey expeditions with his brother, measuring and mapping. His spare time had been taken up with long, 111 lonely rambles, exploring at random, admiring the little creatures he encountered for their beauty or their strangeness.
But that first book had been a revelation. Now he could begin to understand how the life forms related to one another. The book explained that beings from the same biosphere had common genetic origins, and hence common traits. Griffin had spent many happy hours examining those lower creatures, comparing limbs and organs and genes against one another and against his book.
It wasn"t long before he began to collect the beings he encountered. It was too difficult to remember which of the thousands of ent.i.ties he had already encountered and identified; he began to bring them home with him, carefully preserving and labelling them.
His brother thought he was wasting his time, though he was careful not to say so directly. It didn"t matter. Griffin was fascinated and, in the end, his hobby had led to his current employment.
He had sent the Henches out to Golden Gate Park, more in the hope of keeping the Doctor and company on their toes than of successfully capturing them once more. No, they"d be alert now, cautious. But he wanted to see what they"d do.
The Henches were like pets, like the lower creatures that his brother and some of the other surveyors had kept about their persons for affection or en-tertainment. They had bonded to him, so powerfully and so quickly; they were desperate for a master, an owner, someone to give them shape. Griffin felt great compa.s.sion for them, great loyalty to them.
The gramophone recording scratched to its end. Griffin reached over, bent the entire device through a few extra dimensions, and started the record playing again. There, that sounded better, more authentic authentic.
That had been what Griffin had liked best about the book. Without his guide, the natural world had seemed like a great tangle of forms and colours, a jumble of species without names or ident.i.ties. He couldn"t tell them apart, couldn"t keep track of which creature came from what biosphere. Sometimes he couldn"t tell where one organism ended and another began.
With the guide, each creature fell neatly into place. You knew its name, its genome, its provenance, its past and future. You knew precisely what it was.
G is for Goat.
Griffin looked at the chimera. The great bulk of the monster was crammed into a cage just barely large enough to contain it. Muscles rippled beneath her tawny, shimmering coat.
112.
Both heads glared back at him, two sets of yellow, reptilian eyes flashing with hate. A nanny goat"s head rose from the chimera"s back, just behind the heavy head of a lioness. A thick, scaly tail thrashed angrily, rattling the bars.
Three strands of disparate biodata, elegantly braided like a triple helix. Mere genetics could never produce such a perfect fusion.
He had gaffer-taped the chimera"s mouths shut to stop her singeing the floor and walls with her bad-tempered fire. The beast had scorched her own tongues several times before it had learned.
Griffin plucked a test tube from a wooden rack. Inside, a golden fluid was shining with a pale light. He held it up to his eyes, observing its slow movement inside the gla.s.s.
G is for Goat, L is for Lion, D is for Dragon. GLD is for. . . Chimera?
There"s no such thing, thought Griffin. He got up, and went to work.
When Sam and Fitz caught up with the Doctor, he was feeding one of the unicorns a sugar cube.
The great creature hesitated, eyes rolling up from the Doctor"s outstretched hand to confront them as they ran headlong into the grove. They skidded to a halt.
The little clearing was full of unicorns. Sam counted perhaps a dozen of the glinting horns. The Doctor stood in their midst, like a figure from an extrava-gant tapestry.
"What do we do now?" hissed Sam.
"You"re asking me?" said Fitz.
"I was following you you!"
"It"s all right," said the Doctor mildly. Sam didn"t know whether he was trying to soothe the unicorn, or them. "We"ve had a little chat. We"re all friends now."
The unicorn rasped the sugar cube from his palm with a mighty tongue. The Doctor patted its hairy cheek, absently, and motioned to Sam and Fitz that they should sit on the gra.s.s.
"We were talking," growled the unicorn, "about the grey men, and the man who leads them."
"The bloke who kidnapped us," said Sam. The unicorns were a wall of white.
The Doctor nodded. The unicorn said, "He"s a collector. He collects people."
"People?" said Fitz.
"Animals, creatures, people, whatever we look like to you. He"s s.n.a.t.c.hed up mome raths and nightb.u.mpers. He got some of the Mandelbrots, and we know he got that chimera that was tearing things up in Sausalito."
113 "Has he succeeded in capturing any of you?" said the Doctor.
"One of us went missing," said the unicorn. "We don"t know for sure. . . "
"I promise you," said the Doctor. "If we can, we"ll free him."
"What about people?" said Sam. "I mean, humans. Or dogs and cats. Ordinary animals."
"He"s not interested in them," said the unicorn. "Only the newcomers."
"He"s not a naturalist," said the Doctor. "More of an unnaturalist. . . "
The unicorn shook dust and twigs from his yellow mane. "We were on our way to Pippali to gather the rare spices when we were. . . Your language hasn"t got the words. We were torn loose. We fell, here."
"Not here," said one of the other unicorns. "On the streets. It took us a long time to find here here."
"When his grey men began hunting us, we thought he"d brought us here for that purpose. But then we realised how many other beings have been dragged off course by the. . . weight in the air. We don"t dare teleport now. Only run."
"You can teleport? Fascinating. How do you "
"Doctor," said Sam. "There"s a mad scientist after our a.r.s.es. Can the nature lesson wait until later?"
"Very well. You should be safe here," The Doctor told the unicorn. "You"re well hidden, and there"s plenty to eat."
The unicorn lowered his head, his horn pointing straight forward like a lance.
Sam"s heart pounded, and she found herself getting to her feet. "What is it?"
"The grey men," said the unicorn.
In an instant the unicorns were moving, dissolving into the trees like cream into coffee. "Come on," said the Doctor.
They had enough of a head start over the Henches that they made it back to the Bug without breaking a sweat, or interrupting the Doctor"s enthusiastic burble for a moment. "It"s astounding," he said, "Unicorns, jithretani, a chimera so many species have leaked through from across the dimensional barriers, thanks to the scar. I could spend a year here studying them and not run out of things to find. They "
He yelped. Something was staring at them with tiny red eyes from the roof of the Bug.
It scolded them and darted off, chittering, vanishing across the road and into the park. Sam stifled a laugh. "It"s just a squirrel," she said.
"You never can tell," said the Doctor.
114.
Once they got the car moving, the Doctor"s stream of words abruptly dried up. Sam leaned against the window, cool gla.s.s against her cheek. She was so tired her head felt as though someone had been chewing on it.
"So now where?" asked Fitz.
The Doctor"s mind was lost in the traffic. "We can"t go back for the TARDIS the stabiliser"s still not ready yet." He sighed. "What does he want? What does he truly want?"
"He"s like a kid collecting insects," said Sam. "He just wants a jarful of insects to take home."
"You think there"s more to it than that," said Fitz.
The Doctor drummed his fingers on the wheel. "The unicorn said he"d been here for weeks, maybe months. Sorry, Fitz. But what"s he been doing in all of that time?"
"Sorry?" asked Fitz.
"I said but what"s he "
"No, I mean you just said you were sorry."
"Oh, I was terribly rude to you earlier, after the first Wild Hunt hit Sam, I just wanted to apologise. Maybe he"s just been preparing for my arrival. . . "
She could almost hear Fitz"s gearbox grinding as he tried to shift. "Oh. Think nothing of it," he said.
The Doctor frowned. "If he"s been planning something for me, I probably should should think something of it. . . " think something of it. . . "
"Never mind," sighed Fitz, with a hint of a smile. "He"s probably just been busy collecting other creatures. He couldn"t have known for sure you"d turn up, even if he could tell you"d arrived from your biodata somehow."
"How come your contacts never noticed him?" said Sam suddenly. "If the unicorns know about him, how come they don"t?"
"Maybe he hasn"t been trying to collect them," said Fitz. "He"s after unusual specimens, remember, not the locals. Even the weird ones."
The Doctor said, "We"ve got to understand him to know what he"ll do next.
Think. What would we do if we were in his shoes?"
Fitz froze. "Oh s.h.a.g," he said. "We are are in his shoes." in his shoes."
The Doctor turned to look at him. Fitz said, "You"re stuck in an unfamiliar city, looking for someone who"s hiding from you what do you do? Ask people who might have an idea where he is."