“Do you mean—“ He rumbled for words. This was like a nightmare from which he could not rouse himself. “A cabal inside the government—”
“I don’t know,” sjie said starkly. “If we hang around here till they come after us, we never will know. Now, I’m on my way. Come along or stay, whichever, but don’t anchor me.”
Lilisaire. And action, almost any action was better than standing in helpless bewilderment. It might even be a civic duty to learn more and then, as opportunity offered, report to the proper people … whoever those might be. The woman was bounding off at a vigorous jog trot. He overtook and accompanied her.
“Good,” she said. “I figured you must be the right sort, or you wouldn’t have been picked for this.”
Right sort for what?
The passage branched in a T. She took them to the left. A short distance onward, it terminated. They halted. The air went harsh through his nostrils. He felt sweat trickle rank down his ribs, more than the run warranted. “Wait here,” she ordered.
Stubbornness returned. “Why?”
She sighed. “The tunnel is screened. I asked Juan, the waiter, to call and have a screened car sent to this end. I’ll go upstairs and meet it. When it arrives, I’ll come back for you. If you make a dash, maybe you won’t be detected. Regardless, with luck we should be gone before they can get here.” She opened the exit, slipped through, and closed it on him.
He stood his ground, shivering. Questions whirled. Screens? Against what? “They?” And why chase him and not her?
She’d asked about anything unusual that happened on his journey. When he told her—Hold! He lifted his hands, as if to fend horror off. No, that couldn’t be, mustn’t be. The woman was delusionary. What nest of dements had he stumbled into, and why hadn’t they gotten themselves cured long ago? But, but Lilisaire had engaged Norton. Hadn’t she? Then Norton— Was Lilisaire above using dements for purposes no sane person would touch? No, he’d not think that, not of her. And Norton seemed competent, maybe ter-rifyingly so …
She returned. A metallic fabric lay across one arm. Did he hear laughter seethe below the urgency of her tone? “It’s here already. And it brought this for you. Good old Iscah. Sharp as a shark’s tooth. Put it on.”
He took the object from her and shook it out. A kind of gown with a coif unfolded, made of fine mesh in which nodules glittered against the dark shimmer. “Portable screening,” Norton explained. “Nothing ought to pick you up now. And we’ll go in an ordinary car, which won’t register suspicious on any monitor. I scab’s got to have called somebody nearby who could dispatch it here pronto. He knows folks everywhere around town.” The laughter rattled out, shrill for the contralto voice. He realized what stress she too was under.
He slipped the garment over his head. It hung loose and light, halfway down his shins. Chain mail, he thought: an anachronism no more weird than the rest of this night. Norton led him into an empty basement, up a stair to an empty room lighted only by what trickled through grimy windows. Vacant house, he guessed, reserved for an occasional hideaway orbolthole—by whom? They went on into the street. The vehicle parked there resembled the cab he had taken, except for being nicked and battered in the body, dingy inside. Opposite gloomed a tenement. Two of its own windows shone, with a cold bluish brightness. Kenmuir wondered who lived there.
Three firefly glints darted to and fro above the roofs. Norton glanced at them. “The pursuit, maybe, scouting for us,” she said. “We’re none too soon.”
Would they scan Kenmuir’s outfit and drop down to check? He made haste to enter. Norton was right behind. “Ready,” she to!d the car, and it started off. He twisted his neck to look backward. The fireflies stayed aloft. At short notice, over unfamiliar territory, no matter how well equipped, a squad couldn’t instantly identify everything. It wasn’t as if the resources of the whole cybercosm were marshalled. Relief billowed through him.
Should it? he wondered. Were he seen and seized, would it actually be a rescue?