Engineman (31 page)

She pulled up, placed a hand on his arm for him to hush. She looked back the way they had come, a tunnel forced through the jungle by those who had passed this way before them. Then Mirren saw their footprints in the slime that covered the street, indicating their whereabouts like so many tell-tale arrows. Caroline noticed his panic and smiled. "Do exactly as I say, Ralph. Find the shop-fronts and backtrack fifty paces. Then stop and wait for me?"

"Where you going?"

"I'll be with you in one minute."

He forced his way through the tangle of vines and creepers, barbed brambles catching his hair and flying suit. In the semi-darkness he collided with the wall of the shop-front, and looked back. Caroline was forcing a path through the undergrowth up ahead, creating a decoy trail.

He headed back down the street, squeezing between the brick wall and the vegetation that had adhered to it for years. He counted out approximately fifty paces, then halted and waited for Caroline. He felt vulnerable without her, an easy target. A tangle of foliage closed around him. There was no sound of the thugs; the only noise was the churring of some insect nearby, and the pounding of his heart. The air was humid, rank, and he was soaked in sweat. He told himself that it would be too much to hope for that the thugs had given up their pursuit. He thought of Dan, Fekete, and the others, and he hoped in desperation that the thugs - if they were indeed going after his team - were doing so one by one, and that he was number one on their hit list.

He had to survive in order to warn the others.

Someone grabbed his elbow. His heart lurched and he almost shouted out.

"Ralph!" Caroline hissed. "Follow me!"

She pushed him into the darkened doorway of what had once been a chemist's shop, a cubicle of space that the jungle had not invaded. Caroline forced the door and stepped through. Mirren followed her into the gloom of the interior. The only illumination was a shaft of moonlight falling through a high window overhead. Caroline indicated a door and they crossed to it, their footsteps cracking glass. They passed through a back room and Caroline led the way to a low window. She kicked glass shards from the rotting frame and high-stepped through with pantomime care. Mirren followed her actions like a shadow. The street outside was a replica of the one they'd left. They fought their way through the obstructing vegetation and crossed the street to a facade of shop-fronts opposite, found a gaping door and entered. They hurried through the fusty, rat-infested building and once more came out into a jungle-choked thoroughfare. Again they cut across the street, through the undergrowth, and climbed through the window of a derelict boutique.

There was a gaping hole in the dividing wall. They passed through it into another abandoned shop. A series of doorways gave access along the entire row. Mirren followed Caroline at a jog. It was obvious by the degree of light entering the succeeding rooms from outside that they were leaving the over-run district behind them. They entered a boarded-up mini-market and Caroline crouched against the wall, sitting on her heels. Mirren joined her. "What now?"

"We wait. We might've lost them for a while if they followed my track along the street."

"And if not?"

Caroline just shook her head. She turned to look at him. "They're connected, aren't they? That Hunter guy and all this. What the hell's going on, Ralph?"

He shook his head. "I honestly don't know."

"You aren't telling the truth, Ralph."

Mirren was taken by the sudden need to confide in Caroline; he'd told no-one about what was happening, and he thought that by doing so he might, himself, come to some understanding. He was about to tell Caroline about Hunter's offer when the deafening crump of an explosion devastated the silence.

"Christ, they really mean to finish you off." For the first time, Mirren heard fear in her voice.

She stood and moved to the boarded-up window, prised back a plank and peered through. A lighted shop-front plunged a beam of illumination into their bolt-hole. Caroline crept back to his side. "They've got a guy posted across the street," she reported calmly.

His pulse surged. "They know we're here?"

"I think they've got the whole area staked out." She thought for a second. "Okay, this way." She all but dragged him down an aisle between emptied food racks and old freezer units. They entered a storeroom. Caroline looked around, then crawled through an air-conditioning duct in the far wall. She reached back for Mirren and he scraped himself through head first. She helped him to his feet and he stood, panting. Her expression was grim. "Look," she said.

Mirren could do little else but look. A metre before his eyes was a curving silver surface. It took him seconds to realise that it was the outer membrane of the dome which enclosed the cultural heritage of central Paris, effectively blocking their flight.

Caroline stood with both feet on the curve of the dome, her back braced against the wall. She edged along, foot over foot, came to the end of the building and peered down the street, then returned to Mirren, fast. Her eyes were wide with alarm. "There's about a dozen of the bastards coming down the street." She banged a heel against the silvered surface of the dome. "I could always blast our way through - but they'd soon find the hole and we'd be trapped in there."

Then she saw the inspection hatch five metres to the left. She moved towards it, feet crossing, and Mirren hurriedly followed. The hatch was an oval doorway set into the base of the dome, secured by a finger-print access lock. Without ceremony, Caroline aimed at the lock mechanism and fired once. The pistol spat and the lock disintegrated. She looked left and right to ensure they were unobserved and hauled the hatch open. She crawled through and Mirren ducked in after her, closing the hatch behind him.

The gap between the outer and inner membrane was less than one metre thick, a confined area of supporting girders and air treatment units. Mirren stood awkwardly, his belly and face pressed against the grime-encrusted plastex. It was suffocatingly hot and pitch black; the inner membrane was darkened in its nighttime phase, and the silver outer membrane admitted no light. Further up, where the artificial starfield began, the backwash of the individual halogens provided erratic illumination. The surface of the inner dome was patterned with regular, indented toe-holds allowing the inspectors and engineers to climb between the two great curving planes.

Caroline clutched his arm. "Up there, Ralph," she ordered. "I'll try to shoot a hole through the inner dome. With luck they'll think we went straight through."

Mirren climbed, finding the indents with difficulty. He pushed his way up, his progress impeded by loose hanks of wiring and the pipes of the air-conditioning which kept the precincts within the dome at a pleasant seventy degrees. He paused when he was a couple of lengths above Caroline and peered down. He could just make out her dark shape, spread-eagled between the planes. He heard two sharp shots. Caroline cursed aloud, tried again. Mirren was thankful that the outer membrane was silvered, so they were unobserved. He wondered how long it would be before the thugs noticed the damaged lock of the hatch.

He looked down, saw Caroline moving towards him up the recessed toe-holds. He felt her hand on his leg. "No good, Ralph. The stuff's reinforced."

"Christ!" Mirren yelled. "We're trapped in here!"

"Just keep climbing."

The confined space became suddenly claustrophobic. The heat seemed to increase by twenty degrees. "Where to?"

She thumped his legs. "Just let me do the thinking, will you? Climb!"

As he moved further up the inside of the dome, the gap became narrower, as if the planes of reinforced plastex converged at the apex. Each step became an effort, the toe-holds harder to find, and his fingers ached from supporting his weight when his feet slipped. They entered the region of the starfield. Mirren tried to keep his mind from the terrible thought of being discovered like this by identifying the constellations. He calculated in which quarter of the city they were positioned, and the degree of their elevation, and then recalled the star-charts he'd studied years ago. He recognised Arneb in Lepus. Ahead was Rigel in Orion and beyond it Hatysa, a close-packed nebulosity. He recalled a time, fifteen years ago, when he'd vacationed on Brimscombe, Rigel II... Then he laughed aloud at the absurdity of his present situation. Behind him, Caroline grunted. "What's so funny, Ralph?"

He called, "I always thought I'd die between the stars..."

She hit the sole of his boot with her fist. "Very funny. Now will you hurry up?"

He climbed. His concentration on the stars was shattered when he heard a sound below him - the opening of a hatch. They'd finally found the shattered lock. He screwed himself round, peered down. Caroline was on her belly, reaching out. To her left, a circular hatch hung open, admitting a shaft of light and affording a view of the rooftops twenty metres below.

"Caroline?"

"Not this one, Ralph. Keep climbing."

As he did so, he noticed the outline of a hatch to his left. They were spaced at regular intervals beside the toe-holds, positioned to give access to the cables which connected the ersatz stars. He recalled seeing fliers hovering beneath the dome's inner surface, off-loading replacement parts and tools to mechanics inside. What he'd give for a friendly, passing flier right now...

He peered back at Caroline. She'd opened another hatch, letting it swing on its hinges as she poked her head over the side. She looked up at him. "Damn!"

"Caroline? What the hell...?"

"Your flier's somewhere down there, right?"

A light pressure of elation filled his chest at the thought - quickly chased by despair. "But how the hell do we get down!" he yelled.

"Leave that to me," Caroline said. "Keep climbing, Ralph. Hurry up!"

Something between desperation and an insane belief in the woman behind him spurred him on. He hauled himself past the imitation stars, his flying suit ripped and soaked in sweat. Below, he heard Caroline trying the hatches one by one.

Then he heard an animal cry, as if from far away, and the first tracer illuminated the gloom like orange lightning. He was thankful they that they were high enough to be out of sight of their pursuers, and the curve of the dome made a direct shot impossible. Then more orange tracer lit the darkness. More shouts as more thugs entered the inspection hatch and gave chase. Caroline cried out, "Ralph, stop!"

He'd already done so, in fright and desperation. He clung to the indents, awaiting the
coup de grace
as tracer and bullets filled the space with light and a ceaseless, deafening rattle. He turned his head as Caroline called to him again. She was no longer below him on the track of toe-holds. He caught sight of her to the right, clinging onto the rim of an open hatch and peering through. Her expression, illuminated from below, was joyous.

"Ralph!" she shouted.

He backtracked, edged down indent by indent, until he was beside her. He reached out, gripped the edge of the hatch and hauled himself across to her. The yells of their pursuers echoed in the confines.

Caroline stared into his eyes. "Jump, Ralph!" she cried. "Jump!"

Central Paris waited forty metres below.

"I'll kill myself!" he screamed.

She laughed. "Look, Ralph. Look straight down!"

Mirren hauled himself to the rim and peered over. His heart almost missed a beat. They were directly above the inflated mylar bubble of the Gastrodome.

"Jump! Your flier's down there somewhere. I'll cover you."

He manoeuvred himself so that his legs hung through the hatch.

Caroline turned onto her back and loosed off a fusillade of fire down the incline. "For chrissake, jump!"

She scrambled up beside him and hung her legs through the gap. Mirren looked at her. "What about you?"

She smiled, reached out and pushed him.

He plummeted feet first with a sudden cry of alarm.

He was aware of the cool rush of the air after the glasshouse humidity, and the sudden noise of traffic. He was falling belly first, spread-eagled. The great bauble of the Gastrodome accelerated towards him, its size increasing by the second. He steeled himself for the impact and when it came, taking him by surprise, it was like hitting the slack membrane of a trampoline. The mylar surface gave, accepting him, and he rolled over and over in a constant, moving depression down the side of the dome. He saw brief flashes of amazed expressions on the faces of the diners inside, then longer glimpses of the starfield above.

He fell the last five metres as the curve of the dome became sheer, landing on his knees in the tilled soil of an extraterrestrial flower exhibition.

He looked up. Caroline had jumped and was rolling down the dome. Seconds later she landed awkwardly beside him with a pained curse. She picked herself up, grabbed Mirren and sprinted through a dense plantation of miniature trees. Overhead, the thugs jumped from the inspection hatch one by one, like paratroopers tumbling from a plane. The first thug landed, perhaps thirty metres away, righted himself and looked around. Caroline dragged Mirren after her as they tore through the undergrowth.

They were on the periphery of the alien garden surrounding the Gastrodome. Before them was the iron fencing which separated the garden from a lighted avenue. Across the avenue was a possible way of escape: the darkened entrance of an alley between two tall buildings. Caroline vaulted the fence and Mirren followed, startling a group of passing tourists, and sprinted across the street and into the alley. As he ran after Caroline down the cobbled thoroughfare he realised he was limping. As they came to the end of the alley and paused before continuing into the busy street, he worried that their physical appearance might soon attract attention. Caroline's jacket and leggings and his flying suit were ripped and stained with mud and leaf mould.