Part 27 (2/2)
”How do you know?”
”My city geography program extends several miles beyond the outskirts. Do you realize, in a new city, I'll be as lost as you will?” A moment later, he said gently to me, ”Jane, look.”
I looked out of the window, and far away over the snow-sheeted lines of the land, across the gash of the highway, poised at the topmost mouth of the Canyon, where the flyer air lines glinted like golden cotton, other vertical lines of glitter went up. And in the sky there was a tiny cloud, cool, blue and unmoving.
Chez Stratos, that ridiculous house, was still standing, still intact.
Something broke and ebbed away inside me.
”Oh, Silver. After all, I'm so glad.”
”I know.”
A minute more and we plunged down a slope to the ragged ravine that leads into the Fall Side of the Canyon. The cab, not intended to risk its treads, stopped.
It took every coin and bill we had, to pay it the balance. But, in a way, that was ethical.
Soon we were walking down between walls of the frozen earth, he carrying the bags, the guitar, I, the umbrella, to the place where the steps are cut.
The Canyon, which had been created by an ancient quake prior even to the Asteroid, hadn't been touched by the new one. At the bottom, between the tumbled blocks that give this end its name and close it on three sides, there was a ballroom floor of smooth treeless, rockless snow, hard and bluish as a sort of aluminum. A lovely place for a VLO landing. Secretive, and negotiable only in such a way, or on foot.
The last time on the clock had read as six minutes past noon.
”Have we missed it?” I asked. But I smiled at myself. We would have seen it going over if we had, we had been close enough.
”Oh, I should think so.”
It was very very cold in the Fall. It was like standing in the bowl of a metal spoon. Strange echoes came and whispers went. The growl of the plane, when it arrived, would be deafening.
”He is, of course, late,” I said.
”Five minutes.”
”Eight minutes. What do we do if he doesn't come?”
”You'll curse him. I'll carry you back to the city.”
”You'll what?”
”Carry you. The whole twenty, thirty miles. Running at eighty miles an hour all the way, if you like. The highway is comparatively flat.”
I laughed, and my laugh rang around the silver spoon.
”If he doesn't, I dare you to.”
”No dare. It's easy.”
”And terribly inconspicuous.”
And then I heard the plane.
”Oh, Silver. Isn't it wonderful? It's going to work.”
I stared into the sky, but all I saw was its lavender-blue wintryness.
”Can you see the plane, Silver?”
”No,” he said, ”I can't. And the reason for that is, I think, that there isn't one. The Canyon sides are distorting some other sound.”
”Then what?”
”A car. Yes, listen. Brakes.”
”Why would a car stop here?”
”Clovis?”
”Then something has gone wrong.”
I can only describe the feeling this way: It was as though someone loosened a valve in each of my limbs simultaneously, and some precious vital juice ran out of me. I felt it go with an actual physical ache, sickening and final. My lips were frozen, my tongue was wood, but I managed to make them move.
”Silver... The rocks behind us. I can't get by them, but you can. You can run over them, jump them, and go down the other side. And up the Canyon. I won't come because, if you carry me, it would have to slow you, make it that much more awkward. Because the surface-isn't flat. You said, a flat surface.”
He turned and looked at me. His face was attentive, the eyes flattening out, cold gold-red fires.
”It wouldn't be so easy over rocks, no. Much, much slower.”
”You'll need to be fast.”
”What is it?”
”It's-I don't know. But I know you have to run. Now, Silver.”
”Not without you.”
”They can't do anything to me.”
”They can do everything to you. You're no longer coded. If someone wants me, and I'm no longer here.”
It came to me he knew what I meant before even I knew it. He had always known then, better than I, that they-that they- ”I don't care, Silver. Please, please run away.”
He didn't move, except he turned to face the way we had come, and I, helpless, powerless, turned to do the same. As we did so, he said, ”And anyway, my love, they'd have, I think, some means of stopping me from getting very far.”
They. Five figures were coming down the steps onto the ballroom floor. They all wore fur coats, fur hats. They looked like bears. They were funny.
They came toward us quite slowly. I don't think it was deliberate. They were cold, and the way was slippery. I didn't know any of them, and then the snow-light slicked across two panes of gla.s.s.
<script>