“Here comes Bill,” the woman said.
The boots stopped pounding. “Took him long enough,” Mooch grumbled.
The guard’s chair was where Lacey had marked it as he went down. He reached for it, rolling to his feet in a motion that seemed too smooth for the red pain it brought him.
“Mooch!” one of the guards cried.
Lacey swung the chair horizontally, not in a downward arc that could have been avoided. Mooch had time to turn his head toward Lacey’s fury. A corner of the chairseat caught him in the ribs, just below his slung weapon. Mooch yelped as the air was smashed out of his lungs. The impact lifted the leader’s feet from the roadbed. He flew forward, stopping only when his skull slammed the wooden frame of the nearest shanty. The structure sagged while its shouting owner tried to brace it with his hands.
Faces turned from either end of the tunnel, interest spreading like ripples in a long pool.
Lacey’s body was white except where blood marked it. The scar on his neck was molten steel. He backed against the wall, waggling the chair. “Who’s next?” he wheezed. “Which a’ you bleeders is next?”
The chair legs wavered like a forest of spears in the face of the black with the chain. He stepped back, then stared into Lacey’s eyes. He took another step backwards.
“Okay, buddy, you made your point,” said a new voice. The speaker was also black and a head taller than anyone else in sight. He wore a powergun in an Army-issue holster. It was as much a badge of authority as it was a weapon, an authority underlined by his score of armed followers. “Now, put the chair down or I’ll blow you in half.”
Lacey lowered his makeshift weapon. He leaned on it, breathing hard.
“Bill,” said one of Mooch’s subordinates, “he—”
“Shut up,” ordered Bill, and one of his own men lowered a shotgun in response to the tone. “Next time Mooch works somebody over before I get there, I’ll do worse to him myself.”
As if in answer, the fallen thug vomited a mass of bright orange blood. His back arched, the shattered ribs clicking together like knitting needles. The next instant, Mooch went limp and still.
The black chieftain scratched at the butt of his pistol. “I’m Bill Allen,” he said, “and you’re in my territory. Who are you, and what do you think you’re doing here?”
Lacey swallowed. The pain he had suppressed for a chance at revenge was returning. “I’m Jed Lacey,” he said, “From Southern Region . . . Greater Greensboro. I . . . am on the street, a bloody queer . . . with his prick out, and he touched me, touched me . . . I don’t know how people can live with slime like—” He looked up, blinking the glaze from his eyes. Bill Allen was frowning. “I cut the bastard,” Lacey said. “Every way but loose. So I had to run, and I ran here.”
“What did he have with him?” Allen asked at random.
The female guard nodded twice to herself and said, “His clothes. And a little knife. And his wallet and a stylus. Mooch searched the clothes and that was all.”
“Then put your clothes on, buddy,” Allen said to Lacey. To the woman he ordered, “Bring me the rest of his gear.”
Lacey limped to his clothing. As the Southerner shrugged on the jacket, his hands tangled with the sleeves, Allen drew the pistol. “Now freeze right there, sucker, until you tell me how a stranger knew that pipe would lead to Underground.”
Lacey held as still as a poised mantis. “Because I’m a cop,” he said. “Because I was being briefed to lead a hundred men from my subregion down here next month. Us, and maybe fifty other subregions, and the Army; and every goddam cop in this city. Because they’re planning to shut this place down for good and all.”
No one within hearing made a sound. Allen’s hand tensed on his gunbutt, then relaxed.
In the same wooden voice with which he had made the announcement, Lacey said, “Now can I put my pants on, citizen?”