Runner (12 page)

Meanwhile, Lysander continued to shout all sorts of nonsense as Lee threw himself at the sensitive's legs and took the woman down. That was when Rebo bent to grab the boy by the arm. “Come on! Let's go!”

“No!” Lee objected. “Not without Lanni . . . She's in trouble!”

The runner swore as a bullet pinged off a metal chair, reversed the Crosser, and made use of it to pistol-whip the sensitive. He transferred the semiautomatic over to his left hand as her body went limp. “Stay low! Grab a wrist! We'll tow her into the kitchen!”

Lee obeyed and together they were able to drag Norr's unconscious body into the storefront even as the gun battle continued to rage. By that time, Kane had identified the single surviving Dib Wa and shot him. A woman sobbed, a man called for help, and those who could scuttled away. There were shouts as a contingent of the Shah's lancers appeared a thousand yards away and ran along the river walk.

Kane turned to see a man and a boy pull Norr into the restaurant, swore for the second time that day, and backed into the embrace of some welcoming shadows. By the time the lancers arrived, and ordered everyone to remain where they were, the technologist was gone.

Having dragged the unconscious sensitive into the restaurant's steamy kitchen, Rebo and Lee soon found themselves in danger from the cooks. But even a meat cleaver is no match for a semiautomatic pistol, and the kitchen staff were forced to back off as two of their patrons towed a third through a screen door and out into the garbage-strewn passageway beyond.

“All right,” Rebo said grimly as he hoisted Norr into a fireman's carry. “Let's get out of here. These passageways are home to all sorts of vermin, so your job is to watch our back trail and let me know if anyone tries to follow.”

Lee nodded solemnly and soon found himself walking backward most of the time as the runner carried the sensitive down the narrow alleyway. The widely spaced gas lamps created pools of uncertain light, each separated by a hundred feet of gloom, which made for excellent places to hide.

Lee heard what might have been claws scratching against pavers, followed by the
rattle
of a garbage can, and reached for his belt knife. That was when he remembered that he had refused to wear it and why. But nothing pursued them, and the boy felt a sense of relief as they passed under a light before plunging back into relative darkness.

A rectangular glow appeared up ahead, quickly followed by a burst of laughter and the slamming of a door as the light was extinguished. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, a well-illuminated intersection appeared. A promising development insofar as the runner was concerned. Norr didn't weigh all that much, but seemed to be getting heavier, and Rebo knew he wouldn't be able to carry her all the way to the hotel. Not to mention the fact that an attempt to do so would inevitably attract the wrong sort of attention. The answer was to hire some sort of public transportation and move the sensitive in a less-visible manner.

The runner's breath was coming in short gasps by the time he emerged from the passageway into one of the city's lesser squares. A well-illuminated fountain marked the center of an area that was surrounded by shops. Locals strolled, stood in small groups, or sat on benches that faced the fountain. “Wait here,” Rebo commanded. “I'll be back in a minute.” The runner placed Norr with her back propped up against a wall, paused to check her pulse, and was gone moments later.

Lee didn't want to wait there, not all by himself, and wondered if it had been a mistake to rescue Norr. It was a
small thought, a poor thought, and one the youngster regretted. The sensitive groaned and reached up to touch the swelling on the side of her head. “What happened? Where am I?”

“You began to shout, people shot at us, and Jak hit you,” the boy answered earnestly. “As for where we are, I don't know.”

“Damn,” Norr said, examining her hand to see if there was blood on it. “That hurts.”

The sound of footsteps combined with the monotonous squeal of an unoiled wheel caused both to turn as Rebo returned accompanied by a three-wheeled pedicab. “Here she is,” the runner announced loudly. “I told her to lay off the booze, but she wouldn't listen, and passed out. Hold it right there . . . I'll put her in the back.”

“I'll have to charge
three
gunars if all of you ride,” the whipcord-thin pedicab operator observed as he eyed Norr. “Plus another gunar if she throws up on the seat.”

“No problem,” the runner grunted, as he lifted Norr up into the back of the vehicle. “Take us to the Starman's Rest—and if there's a back way, then use it.” Norr felt the flimsy conveyance sway as Rebo took a seat next to her followed by a less-noticeable movement as Lee hopped aboard.

The pedicab operator had to literally stand on his pedals in order to get his rickety vehicle under way, but once the conveyance was in motion, the going was easier. The fact that there were very few inclines helped, too.

Norr closed her eyes, tried to ignore the pain that each bump of the wheels caused her, and felt a sense of hopelessness. Rather than leave the Milos Lysander entity back on Anafa, as the sensitive had assumed she would, the discarnate had followed her to Pooz, a trip that was probably a great deal easier to make on the spirit planes than it was on the physical.

Not only that, but it seemed that Lysander's followers were tracking her, too, because even as the scientist harangued the restaurant's customers, a flesh-and-blood version of the blond-haired man had gotten up from one of the tables, produced a gun, and opened fire. And, had it not been for the runner and his youthful charge, there was little doubt that Kane and his associates would have been able to spirit her away.

Norr's thoughts were interrupted as the pedal-powered vehicle coasted to a stop and light spilled onto the surrounding pavement. There was a jumble of subdued conversation as Rebo provided Mo Jahn with a sanitized version of what had occurred, paid the pedicab operator, and lifted the sensitive out of the vehicle. Norr said, “I can walk,” but the runner chose to carry the young woman into the hotel instead.

Ten minutes later the sensitive was propped up in bed, with a cold compress bound to the side of her head, and her fingers wrapped around a mug of hot tea. Once the hotel's staff had exited the room, Rebo checked the door to ensure that it was locked and pulled a chair up next to Norr's bed. “All right . . . There was a time when I figured that whatever you were running from was your business. That changed earlier this evening. Who is this Milos Lysander guy? And why were those people trying to shoot you?”

Norr opened her mouth to reply, but Lee spoke first. “No offense, Father—but at least three of those people were trying to kill
me
.”

Rebo frowned and swiveled around. “
Really?
What makes you think so?”

“I saw one of them, the woman, aboard the ship. She kept to herself, but she was there, I'm sure of it. Not only that, but she gave orders in Tilisi, a language that no one outside of my religion knows how to speak. Finally,” the
boy said gravely, “she ordered her men to ‘kill
him
.' Not
her,
but
him
.”

Rebo nodded approvingly. “Not bad, son. Not bad at all . . . You paid attention in spite of everything that was going on around you. I'm impressed.”

Lee felt his chest swell with pride. He couldn't remember his
real
father, or mother for that matter, both of whom had been prevailed upon by the order to give him up at the age of two. Now, having been forced to pretend that Rebo was his father, the boy found that he wanted to please the runner in much the same way that he might have sought to please his real parents.

“So,” Rebo said thoughtfully, as he turned back to Norr, “It appears that we were attacked by
two
different groups. Three of them were after Dor here . . . but what about the rest?”

Norr sipped her tea. She was a loner, and for good reason, since it seemed as though once identified by the surrounding society sensitives were nearly always used, abused, and persecuted. As a result she was understandably reluctant to share information that could be used against her. But her present situation was more than she could handle alone, so Norr told Rebo about the first time that Lysander had co-opted her body, about the incident at the spaceport, and the message from Jevan Kane. “He was the one with the blond hair,” she added. “The one who yelled, ‘Take her alive!' ”

“Well, at least they aren't trying to kill you,” Rebo responded grimly. “Now, please don't take this the wrong way, but why not go along with them? You took money in return for demonstrating your abilities back on Seros . . . These people are willing to pay, so where's the problem?”

It was a good question, an excellent question, and one that Norr had struggled with on numerous occasions. But
how to answer without seeming hypocritical? It was Lee who came to her rescue. “The ascended master Teon once said that ‘the freedom to choose' was the first gift that God presented to humanity.”

Norr nodded gratefully. “Yes! That's it. I want the freedom to choose. And there's something more as well . . . Something that might be difficult for a normal to understand. When I surrender my body to another person it's like having sex with them, except
more
intimate, if you can imagine that. When Lysander takes over without my permission it's like being raped.”

“Then why allow him to do so?” Rebo wanted to know.

“I
don't
allow him to do so,” the sensitive insisted hotly. “And the fact that he can do it anyway terrifies me. Most sensitives can block most discarnate entities most of the time. But there are exceptions, and this is one of them. No one knows why.”

There was a long period of silence as each person thought the situation over. “Okay,” the runner said finally, “so here's how I see it. Both the black hats and the techno people know that we're on Pooz. Mo Jahn tells me that the ship to Ning is scheduled to arrive off-planet eighteen days from now. We can hole up here and wait for the
next
vessel, or make for Tra and take our chances. Personally, I figure it's only a matter of time before a member of the hotel staff sells us out, and someone comes in after us. So I favor making a run for it.”

Norr looked quizzical. “Was I mistaken? Or, did I hear an invitation buried in that last statement?”

The runner shrugged. For reasons he wasn't sure of, or wouldn't admit, the idea of sending the young woman off on her own bothered him. “Yeah, I guess you did.”

“I appreciate it,” the sensitive replied, “I really do. But
I'm not sure it's such a good idea. You two have enough trouble on your hands without sharing mine.”

“Odds are that we'll do better together,” Rebo said pragmatically. “Besides, I've got a feeling that both groups view us as a single unit at this point, which means that they aren't going to be all that discriminating.”

“That's right!” Lee added enthusiastically. “Jak's my father—and you can be my mother!”

Norr smiled. “Yes, I suppose I could.”

Back before human civilization had stalled, and the long
gentle slide back into barbarity had begun, there had been a time when no task was considered too great for the ruling technocrats and the scientists that they employed. Those were the days in which the city of Gos lived on the surface of the planet, and was, ironically enough, known as “The City of the Sun.”

Back then, before the Dimba River had been “rationalized,” it followed through a series of long, gentle, east-to-west curves before running into a ridge of upthrusting rock just short of Gos. There were holes in the barrier, but when the river split up in order to take advantage of them, barge traffic was forced to stop well short of the metroplex.

In order to remedy that situation and open the Dimba all the way to Gos, the engineers blasted a hole through the ridge, thereby allowing the water to form a single stream. That left a labyrinth of water-cut channels in the subsurface rock. The passageways, caverns and galleries were little more than a curiosity at first, but eventually, once the dunes began their irresistible march, a group of monks took possession of them rather than dwell within the city itself. And, given the fact that the underground maze was not all that pleasant to live in, no one objected.

Later, after surface conditions grew worse, the subsurface habitat started to look a lot more attractive, and various groups tried to dislodge the monks. But the Dib Wa were a potent force—and kept the would-be invaders at bay.

Since that time the religion had split into two feuding groups, and the schism had led to occasional violence. Now, as torches flared and threw dark shadows onto rocky walls, the latest in what had been hundreds of casualties were borne toward the traditional funeral pyres. The first litter bore the tightly wrapped body of the nun from Anafa. A trained assassin, who along with two local Dib Wa, had sacrificed her current life while trying to prevent the imposter from making his way to the holy city of CaCanth. A very noble thing to do, which was why Lar Thota had insisted on funeral rites commensurate with the high rank of Ona, or truth giver. Happily, from Thota's point of view, no red hats were present to desecrate the solemn ceremony, since the last of the misguided souls had been murdered in their sleep some nine months before.