Rick knew what had to be done. He said quietly, "d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l," and then he gave the light to Daufin. "Hold this. Keep it aimed at him. Understand?" She nodded, and Rick gripped the rope, eased himself over the side, and started down.
He hung a few inches over the pipe, unwilling to put his weight on it. The way that thing shimmied, he figured a few more pounds of pressure might snap it loose from the walls. "Lockett!" he said. "This is as close as I can get! You"ll have to reach up and grab my legs!"
"No way, man. I"m tired. Can"t do it." It was all he could do to hang on without moving. Any more swaying and his slippery palms might betray him, or the pipe might break. "Oh Jesus, my arms..."
"Don"t give me that jive! Just reach up and grab my legs!"
The soles of Rick"s shoes were about five inches above Cody"s grip on the pipe. Cody knew the only way out of here was to do as the Rattler said, but his strength was draining fast and the effort seemed enormous. The muscles of his shoulders were cold chunks of agony, a stabbing pain spreading across his rib cage. Reach up, he told himself. Just reach up. One hand at a time. He started to, but his willpower collapsed like wet cardboard. His fingers clenched harder, and just that little movement made the pipe moan and tremble. His guts clutched and writhed. I"m scared s.h.i.tless, he thought, and he said, "I can"t do it."
Rick"s biceps bulged, his arms ready for the shock of Lockett"s weight. "Come on, tough gringo!" he mocked. "You gonna start cryin" for your mama?" Lockett didn"t reply. Rick sensed he had given up.
"Hey, I"m talkin" to you, f.u.c.khead! Answer me!"
A few seconds" pause. Then: "Get bent."
"I"ll bend your redneck a.s.s, you s.h.i.tkicker! Maybe I ought to leave you down here and forget it, huh?"
"Maybe you ought to." Cody heard it again: a scuttling from below. His heart was racing as he tried to get his muscles revved up for another effort, but his mind told him the pipe would collapse if he moved.
"Man, my sister"s got more guts than you! So does my grandmother!" Taunting might get him mad enough to reach up, Rick figured. "If I"d known you were such a p.u.s.s.y, I would"ve whipped your tail a long time ago!"
"Shut up," Cody croaked.
He"s almost through, Rick thought. He said the first thing that came to him: "I told my sister you weren"t worth lizard c.r.a.p."
"Huh? What about your sister?"
That had perked him up. "Yeah, Miranda was askin" me all about you. Who you were and everythin". She thought you were okay. Just okay."
"She said that?"
"Yeah." He figured it was a necessary lie. "Don"t let it go to your head, man. She needs gla.s.ses."
"She"s pretty," Cody said. "A smash fox."
Any other time, that remark would have called for a punch to the teeth. Now, though, Rick saw it as a way to get Cody off that pipe. "You like my sister, huh?"
"Yeah. I guess I do."
"You want to see her again, you"ve gotta get out of here. Only way to do that is reach up."
"I can"t, man. I"m done."
"What I"m gonna do," Rick said, "is let myself down a little more. I"m gonna put my feet on that pipe, and I figure it"ll probably break in two. Either you go down or you grab hold. Understand?"
"No. Wait, man. I"m not ready."
"Yeah you are," Rick told him, and he lowered himself another hand grip down the rope and placed his right foot on the pipe first.
There was a squall of stressed metal. The pipe shook violently and began to bend inward, and Rick shouted, "Grab hold!"
Cody"s face sparkled with sweat in the flashlight"s beam. He gritted his teeth, felt the swaying pipe about to collapse. It was now or never. His fingers wouldn"t open. A bead of sweat dropped into his eye and seared it shut.
Rick placed his left foot on the pipe and let his weight settle. "Do it!" he urged as the pipe began to rip loose from the wall and dirt and rocks streamed down.
"You sonofab.i.t.c.h!" Cody shouted, and the fingers of his right hand let go. His shoulder muscles screamed as he dangled by one arm, his right hand reaching up for Rick Jurado"s ankle. He gripped it, clenched his fingers tight-and suddenly the pipe buckled, ripped loose in a shower of dirt, and fell. Rick"s hands scorched along the rope to the bitter end before they locked shut. Now all the pressure was on Rick"s arms and shoulders as Cody held on by one ankle and tried to snag the other. They swung between the slimy walls, and there was a m.u.f.fled crash as the pipe hit bottom another fifteen feet below. Cody caught Rick"s left leg. Pulled himself up to the other boy"s waist. Rick heard the rope groan with their weight, and if that railing up there gave way, they were both in for a long fall. He hauled them up a couple of feet, the muscles and veins standing out in his arms and the blood roaring in his head, and then Cody grabbed hold of the rope"s end and took some of his weight off Rick.
"Come up!" Daufin called. "Come up!"
Rick started climbing, hand over hand, his shoes slipping off the oozing wall. Cody tried to follow, got about four feet nearer the top before his arms gave out. He hung while Rick clambered up and hauled himself through the doorway.
"Pull him up!" Daufin said, and she made an effort at reeling the rope up with her free hand while the other fixed Cody in the flashlight"s beam. "Hurry!" The urgency in her voice roused Rick off his belly and made him look over the hole"s edge.
Something was coming up the wall about six feet below Cody. It was a human figure with white hair, but its face was averted from the light. Its hands were plunged into the slime and dirt, and the thing was pulling itself smoothly up like a mountaineer.
Cody hadn"t seen it. He squinted in the dusty beam. "Come on, man! Help me up!"
Rick placed his feet against the doorframe, grasped the rope with both hands, and started pulling. His own strength was almost gone, and Lockett felt like dead weight. Cody came up another fourteen inches and tried to find traction against the wall, but the slime was too thick.
A hand closed around his left ankle, and he looked down into the Cat Lady"s grinning face. Except now she had a mouthful of silver needles, and her skin was a mottled grayish yellow like a dead snake that had begun to rot in the sun. She was trying to keep Cody between herself and the light, her belly pressed against the wall. Her eyes were full of cold fire. She spoke, in a voice like a rush of steam through a ruptured pipe: "Sloowww dowwwnnn, youuu gerrrmmmm..."
He was frozen for about three seconds, and in that s.p.a.ce of time he knew the meaning of terror. She was pulling him toward her, the cold fingers drawing tighter, her free hand clawed into the ooze and dirt. Rick"s frantic tug on the rope thawed his senses, and he acted on instinct: he kicked her in the face with his right foot. It was like kicking a brick but a spray of broken needles flew from the mouth and her nose burst like a snail.
He jerked his ankle free, felt a blaze of pain as her nails sc.r.a.ped through the boot to flesh, and then he was climbing that rope hand over hand like a born monkey. Rick reeled him up, and Cody came out of the hole so fast he barreled into Daufin and knocked her flat. The flashlight rolled across the porch. Cody scurried away from the hole on his hands and knees, and Rick let go of the rope and pushed himself back from the doorway. He could hear the wet squishing of the white-haired thing coming up.
"The light!" he shouted. "Get the light!"
Daufin, her head ringing, saw the flashlight lying on the edge of the porch. She crawled after it. A hand and arm emerged from the hole. Metallic nails dug into the wooden doorframe, and the monster began to pull itself out. The other hand flailed up, reaching for Rick"s legs, and he kicked frantically at it.
Daufin picked up the flashlight and aimed it at the doorway. The beam hit the creature"s wrinkled, glistening face, and it gave a gurgling cry of what might have been mingled rage and pain and threw a hand up over its eyes. But it was almost free of the hole now, and with a muscular lurch the body flopped out onto the porch and squirmed toward Rick.
It was almost upon him when Cody stepped forward and thrust his hand into the Cat Lady"s face. The hand had an extra finger of metal: the barrel of the.38 he"d picked up from the porch. He fired, point-blank, and part of Mrs. Stellenberg"s jaw caved in. The second bullet plowed into an eye, the third sh.e.l.l took away a hunk of white hair and flesh and exposed not bone but a knotty, grayish-blue metallic surface that writhed like a bagful of snakes.
The mouth stretched open; the sinewy neck elongated and the head came up to snap at Cody"s gunhand. He fired into the mouth, showering silver needles and punching a hole that splattered gray liquid from the back of the head. A hand flashed at him, narrowly missed his knees as he retreated. Rick got his legs out of the monster"s reach, rolling away to the porch"s edge. Daufin stood where she was beside Cody, holding the light steady with both hands.
The Cat Lady"s body shivered. The arms and legs began to lengthen with brittle cracking sounds. Dark, scaly pigment rose through the yellowish skin. The spine bowed, humped up, and the flesh split along the backbone. Daufin grasped Cody"s arm and pulled him back as the thing"s tail uncoiled and hammered upward into the porch"s ceiling. Now the Cat Lady"s limbs were muscular, insectile stalks streaked with bands of leathery scales, and the grotesque body lifted off its belly and shambled forward, leaving a trail of slime.
Cody extended the pistol and fired twice. One bullet hit the center of the thing"s face and caved it in, rocking the head back. The second knocked out more needles and broke the lower jaw loose from its hinges. And then Cody squeezed the trigger and the hammer fell on an empty chamber. The thing flailed at the flashlight"s beam, fingers trying to grip hold of it as if it were solid. The tail thrashed out, the bony spikes whipping back and forth through the light in a vicious frenzy. The single eye in the ruined, dripping face twitched in its socket. Rick had already jumped over the porch railing, and Daufin and Cody backed down the steps away from the tail.
The creature made a high, hissing sound that was a weird combination of human shriek and insectile droning, and then the body retreated to the doorway and scuttled into the hole. The darkness took it. A long way down there was the solid thump of the body hitting, then a skittering noise like a crab burrowing back to its nest.
"Gone," Daufin said. Her throat had constricted. "Stinger is gone."
"Jesus," Cody rasped. Oily sweat was leaking down his face, and he felt close to a faint. "That was Stinger?"
"Stinger"s creation. All the creations are Stinger."
Rick walked away and bent over the gutter. His stomach seethed, but nothing would come up. Cody said, "You all right?"
Rick spat out saliva that tasted like battery acid. "Oh yeah," he managed. "I see freaks like that every day, man. Don"t you?" He straightened up, drew in air that reeked of burning rubber, and held out his hand toward Cody. "The gun. Give it here."
Cody gave it to him, and Rick broke open the extra box of bullets in his pocket and reloaded the chambers. Daufin aimed the flashlight at her face and looked into the light until her eyes were dazzled, then she waved her hand through the beam. "It"s a flashlight," Cody told her. "Works on a battery, like my motor"s headlamp."
"I understand the principle. A portable power source, yes?"
"That"s right."
She nodded and returned her attention to the light. She was used to the harsh illumination by now, but when she"d first seen it-in the house of Jessie, Tom, and Ray-the light had had a startlingly ugly underglow that lit the human faces in nightmare colors. This hard incandescence was very much different from the soft light in the abode of ritual. She placed her fingers close to the bulb and could feel a p.r.i.c.kly heat sliding into her skin-a sensation the human beings probably paid little attention to. "This drove Stinger away," she said. "Not the percussion-cap weapon."
"What?" Cody asked.
"This power source drove Stinger away," she repeated. "The flashlight."
"It"s just a light, that"s all." Rick pushed the last bullet in and snapped the cylinder shut. "It can"t hurt anybody."
"Can"t hurt a human, maybe not. I know this power source is designed to aid human visual perception, but it blinded Stinger. Maybe gave physical pain too. I saw the reaction."
"Only thing it was reactin" to was bullets," Cody told her. "Pump enough sh.e.l.ls into its d.a.m.ned head, and it"ll sure as h.e.l.l react!" He kept watch on the doorway, where a pool of slime shimmered on the porch"s boards.
Daufin didn"t answer. There was something in the light that hurt Stinger, something that didn"t affect humans. Maybe it was the heat, or the composition of the light itself, something in the physical and microscopic disturbance of matter along the illuminating beam. The humans might not realize it, but this light was a weapon much more powerful than the flimsy percussion-cap noisemaker.
"What did you mean, "Stinger"s creation"?" Rick asked the little girl. The street inflections had dropped from his accent. "Was it Stinger or wasn"t it?"
"It was... and was not," she answered. "It was created and is controlled by Stinger, but Stinger remains underground."
"You mean Stinger built that thing and made it look like Mrs. Stellenberg?" Cody asked.
"Yes. What you saw was a living mechanism. Stinger will construct what is needed."
"Needed for what?" Rick clicked on the.38"s safety and eased the pistol into his waistband.
"Needed to find me," Daufin said. "Stinger will use whatever raw materials are available for the constructions. Stinger"s digging underneath the streets, coming up into the abodes, and gathering raw materials."
"Human bodies," Rick said.
"Correct. When Stinger seizes the necessary raw material, sensory signals are returned through organic filaments that connect Stinger with machines on the interstellar vehicle." She motioned through the haze toward the pyramid. "The machines were built by Stinger"s masters, and they translate the signals into physical reality." She realized from their blank stares that they weren"t comprehending, so she made a fast mental scan through the Britannica"s pages again. "Like a baseball game on teeah-veeah," she said. "The pictures are taken apart at their source, and put back together again at their destination. Only, in this case, Stinger has a choice of how to recombine the signals, to make creations that are stronger and faster than the originals."
"Yeah," Cody said, beginning to understand. "Uglier too."
"The creations are powered by Stinger"s lifeforce," she went on. "In essence, they are Stinger, because they think with the same brain. Like a hundred teeah-veeah sets in a hundred different rooms, all tuned to the same baseball game. Stinger remains physically underground, but the creations allow Stinger"s sight and brain to be in many places at the same time."
"You never told me why it"s after you," Cody prodded.
"I escaped from a prison world," she said. "I entered the body of a guard and stole a garbage scow. That"s what they construct there. Stinger"s masters want me returned to"-here she encountered another difficulty of translation-"Rock Seven," was the best she could do.
"Sounds like a radio station," Rick said.
"Rock Seven is an approximate name. It does not translate. Nothing can live there outside the prison." A grim smile crept across her mouth, and the eyes in the child"s face looked very old. "It"s a cauldron of murderers, the diseased, plunderers, and pirates-and even criminals like me."
Cody wasn"t sure he wanted to know, but he had to ask: "What crime did you do?"
"I sang. Stinger"s masters decreed that to be against the law on my world."
"You sang? Is that all? What"s so bad about that?"
"It was the song." Now Daufin"s eyes had a glint of steel in them. "The song stirred destruction. It was an old song, one almost forgotten. But I knew it, and I had to sing it. If I didn"t, all my tribe would die." Her eyes narrowed, and the flesh seemed to tighten across the facial bones. For an instant Cody and Rick thought they could see another face behind Stevie Hammond"s; this one was leather tough, frightening in its intensity. It was the face of a warrior, not a child. "I"ll get home," she vowed quietly. "I"m not a savior, and I never asked to be. But I"ll get home or I"ll die trying, and Rock Seven will never hold me. Never." She sensed a cold pulse of power sweep slowly past her, and she turned toward the pyramid. Cody and Rick had felt it too, but to them it was just a little cool breath of air. Her heartbeat thudded faster, because she knew what it was, and what it searched for.
"It ends here," Daufin said. "Right here. I"ve escaped from Rock Seven twice before. Twice before they sent Stingers after me and took me back. They kept me alive because they wanted to "study" me."
She smiled bitterly, and there was rage in it too. "An indignity-a needle to watch your bowels move, a chemical to malform your dreams. Nothing is sacred, nothing is private. Your life is measured in reactions to pain, freezing, and burning." Her hands curled into fists at her sides. "You are twisted until the screams run out. And all that time of "studying" you know your world is being eaten away to the heart." Her voice cracked, and for a few seconds she trembled but could not speak. Then: "When they"re done, they"ll search for new worlds to ravage. One of them might be Earth." She glanced at Cody and Rick, then back through the murk at Stinger"s ship. "It ends here, with my death or Stinger"s."
"What do you mean, "one of them might be Earth"?" Cody asked. She drew in a long breath, and had to tell the humans what she knew to be true. "Stinger is not only a bounty hunter of escaped criminals. Stinger hunts planets for bounty as well. When Stinger returns to Rock Seven, a report will be given on this planet"s inhabitants, technological levels, and defense systems. According to that report, Earth may be added to the list of planets scheduled for invasion by"-a translation problem-"the House of Fists. Stinger"s masters. I don"t think it will be very long before they send the first fleet."
"Christ!" Cody said. "What do we have that they want?"
"Life," Daufin answered bluntly. "All life but their own is repugnant to the House of Fists. They can"t stand knowing that somewhere a life form flourishes without their permission. They will come here, take prisoners for study, gather whatever minerals might strike their interest, and either introduce a disease into the ecosystem or conduct ma.s.s executions. That is their pleasure and purpose of existence."
"Sounds like real party-down dudes." Rick looked around, his hand on the.38"s grip. The smoke had closed in, and he could see no cars nor people anywhere. "Lockett, you"d better get her off the street. You don"t want any more surprises popping up."
"Right. But if that d.a.m.ned thing can bust up through the ground, where can I take her that"s safe?"
"What is that?" Daufin pointed, and Cody and Rick saw the faint glow of the apartment building"s lights through the haze.
"The "Gade fortress. It"s built pretty tough," Cody said. "About the only place around here that"s worth a d.a.m.n."
"Stinger won"t like those lights," Daufin told them. "I think that"s a safe structure." If any Earth structure was really safe, she thought.
Rick said, "I"m heading back across the river. A lot of people over there are holed up in the church."
He looked at Daufin again; the defiant face-behind-the-face had gone away, and she looked like an ordinary little girl again. "Colonel Rhodes and the sheriff are looking for you. They were over at the clinic about twenty minutes ago, but I heard them say they were going to the Creech house. Know where that is?" he asked Cody.
"Yeah. Dodge Creech"s house. It"s not too far from here." Without any weapons, though, he didn"t care to go cruising the streets with her. There was no telling what might slither out of one of the dark houses. "I"m gonna get her up to the fort first. Then I"ll hunt Vance down."
"Okay. You two watch your backs."
Rick started to stride away, but Cody called, "Hey! Hold on!" and Rick paused. "You didn"t have to come down in that hole," Cody said. This was one of the strangest moments of his life, standing on Renegade territory after dark with the leader of the Rattlers about eight feet away and a creature from another world beside him. He felt a drifty, dreaming sensation, and if there wasn"t a puddle of slime on the Cat Lady"s porch and blood squishing in his boot from his clawed ankle, he might not believe it had ever happened. "I appreciate it."
Thanks from a "Gade-especially from Cody Lockett-was in its own way even more bizarre than the circ.u.mstances. Rick shrugged. "Wasn"t a big thing." His rope-scorched hands would tell him later that it had been.
"I think it was. Hey, did you mean what you said about your sister?"
"No," Rick said firmly. A spark of the old anger resurfaced. "You get Miranda out of your head. Understand?"
"Maybe I will, maybe I won"t." Back to business, Cody thought.
"You will. s.h.i.tkicker." They locked stares for a few seconds, like two bulldogs that refused to give an inch of ground, and then Rick backed away into the cracked street. He turned abruptly, disdainfully, and walked into the haze.
"I won"t. Spitball," Cody said quietly. Then he glanced at Daufin. "Bet they don"t have motorcycles where you come from, huh?"