Air (and blood?) rattled. “I’ll make it,” Aliyat gasped, “but—oh, shit—no, never mind.” Her weight pulled at him. She minced along, unevenly, now and then staggering. Sweat studded her face and reeked in his nostrils. He had seen corpses less blue-pale.
Nevertheless she moved. And it was as though she gained a bit of strength thereby, until you could almost say she walked. That’s the wild card in my hand, Hanno thought. The vitality of the immortal. No normal human could do this so soon after such a wounding.
But she won’t be able to, either, unless she draws on whatever wellsprings are her own.
In the downbound elevator, she sagged. Hanno and Svoboda upheld her. “You must be firm and walk straight,” the Ukrainian said. “It is only for a little way. Then you can rest. Then you will be free.”
Aliyat peeled lips back from teeth. “There’s … a dance … hi the old dame … yet.”
When they emerged in the lobby, she didn’t exactly stride, but you’d have to look hard to notice how much help she needed. Hanno’s eyes flickered back and forth. Where the hell— Yes, yonder sat the Indian, on the split and peeling plastic of a settee, thumbing through a decrepit magazine.
Wanderer saw them, lurched to his feet, reeled against a man passing by. “Hey,” he shouted, “why’n’chu look where ya going?” with an obscenity added for good measure.
“There’s the front door,” Hanno murmured in Aliyat’s ear. “Hup, two, three, four.”
Wanderer’s altercation loudened on his right. It caught everybody’s attention. A couple of guards pushed toward him. Hanno hoped he wouldn’t overdo it. The idea was to provide two or three minutes’ distraction without getting arrested, merely expelled— Trouble with Wanderer, he’s a gentleman by instinct, he doesn’t have the talent for acting a belligerent drunk. He does have brains, however, and tact.
Into the open. Dusty though it was, sunlight momentarily dazzled. The taxi stood at the curb. Hermes, god of travelers, merchants, and thieves, thanks.
Hanno helped Aliyat in. She slumped bonelessly and struggled for breath. Svoboda took her other side. Hanno gave an address. The cab started off. As it wove its way through congestion and squawks, Aliyat’s weight swayed to and fro. Svoboda felt beneath her coat, nodded pinch-lipped, took a towel from the bag and held it in place, more or less concealed. To blot up blood, Hanno knew; the injury was hemorrhaging.
“Say, that lady all right?” the driver asked. “Looks to me like they shouldn’t of let her go.”
“Schartz-Metterklume syndrome,” Hanno explained. “She does need to get home and to bed as fast as you can make it.”
“Yeah,” Aliyat rasped. “Cmon and see me tomorrow, big boy.”
The driver widened his mouth and rolled his eyes, but pushed on. At the destination, Hanno redeemed his promise of a lavish tip. It should buy silence, did pursuit guess that a taxi had been involved. Not that the story would help the police much, by that time.
“Around the corner,” Svoboda told Aliyat. “Half a block.”
Red dripped onto the sidewalk. Nobody else seemed to notice, or if they did, they chose not to get involved. Hanno had counted on that.
A small moving van stood in a parking garage. Hanno had rented it yesterday, contracting to turn it in at Pocatello, Idaho. Its bulk screened from casual glances how her companions lifted Aliyat into the body of it. A foam mattress and bedding waited, together with what medical supplies one could readily buy. Hanno and Svoboda peeled her clothes off. They washed her, applied an antibiotic, dressed the wound anew, made her as comfortable as they could.
“I think she will recover,” Svoboda said.
“Damn straight I will,” Aliyat mumbled.
“Leave us,” Svoboda ordered Hanno. “I will care for her.”
The Phoenician obeyed. She’d been a soldier, who knew first aid; she’d been a veterinarian, and humans aren’t vastly unlike their kindred. He closed the tail doors on them and settled himself to wait in the cab. At least he could indulge in a pipe of tobacco now, and a slight case of the shakes.
Before long, Wanderer arrived. Hanno had rarely seen him this joyful. “Whoopee ti-yi-yo,” he warbled.