Permanence

"But who are they?" she asked. She hadn't been afraid when their aircar went down; that had been more of an exercise in soft docking than anything frightening. This, though… that circling car reminded her of the brutal men who'd frequented the bar at Allemagne. She knew what such men were capable of. She kept very still as the car passed directly overhead, but her heart was pounding like it would burst.

"It's landing at the crash site," said Max. "Quick, let's get some distance between us and them."

"Yeah." They ran, with Rue leading, weaving a drunkard's path around the thickets, which blocked their way like the walls of a maze. Every now and then, Rue would catch a glimpse of the distant lights of the monastery. Several times when she did this, she found it was way off to the side and once, behind them. She suspected they were making little progress in its direction, but she didn't have the heart to tell Max.

He was busy anyway, speculating about who their pursuers were. "Gotta be government thugs," he decided. "But which faction? The isolationists won't want anyone to catch the cycler. On the other hand, the generals at the core aren't isos, never have been. They're probably falling all over each other to go after the thing."

Rue was panting from the heat and exhaustion of ru

Every now and then they heard the aircar in the distance. Once it flew overhead again, but the thickets were good cover and their pursuers didn't seem to be using any sophisticated sensing gear.

Just when Rue felt she was at the end of her strength, they crashed through a particularly tall and dense stand of orange bushes and found themselves at the base of a stone wall.

"Safe!" cried Rue. "If we can find the door…"

"Actually…" Max examined the dark stone doubtfully. Rue ignored him and ran along the wall. "I don't think we're there yet," said Max, just as Rue reached a spot where the lichen-encrusted wall had tumbled down, revealing a gap. She searched the sky for the aircar and when she didn't see it, clambered up the rock fall to look at what lay beyond.

They were nowhere near the monastery. Its lights still glowed kilometers away and above them. Between her and it sprawled the dark and overgrown streets of an abandoned city.

"What…" Streets, plazas, hundreds of tall dark towers and treed suburbs spread for kilometers around the base of the monastery's hill. The city was huge, but Rue saw no movement in its unlit streets. Grass sprouted through the sidewalks and vines were slowly covering the windows of the house nearest where she stood. A young tree arrogantly blocked its front door. Only at the far end of the city, near the monastery, did she see the twinkle of lights.

"This is Thetis," said Max as he climbed up next to her. "The old capital. They abandoned it when the sun was built. Everybody moved into the light. Well, all except a few holdouts, hermits and assorted misfits. They live in the mansions on the slopes now." He pointed to the distant lights.

"Why didn't they just aim the sun here?"

"They had originally pla

"What happened?"

"We lost almost all our trade with Chandaka when the Rights Economy conquered it. No chance of attracting immigrants anymore, when they could go elsewhere faster than light. It was political bickering over things like the sun funds that finally led to the coup."

"So." She waved at the broad streets. "How are we going to cross all that without being seen?"

"I've got an idea." Max led the way into the deserted city. Rue wouldn't have taken a step into this place on her own; it was unbelievably creepy, like the graveyards she'd read about in old books. All desolate, the buildings like crystallized despair. Many of their windows were broken and some doors yawned open like waiting traps. She kept imagining she saw movement there— and maybe she did, maybe the killers who'd shot them down were closing in. She clutched Max's hand tightly as he pulled her along. He was looking for something.

"There it is!" He broke into a run. Rue followed, groaning. As he reached a flight of stairs that led straight into the ground, she heard the rising whine of an approaching aircar behind them.

"Hurry!" They stumbled down the overgrown steps and into a space so black even Rue couldn't see anything. Then Max clicked on his flashlight, revealing a long empty chamber with some kind of trench ru

Rue shied away from the black tu

"No, look." Max pointed the light at a dusty map on the wall. He traced the routes with a finger. "We're here. All we have to do is go down Line Five, which is this one and it takes us straight to the monastery. They'll never find us."

"Unless they saw us come in here."

"In that case, we're out of luck anyway. Come on, couz, it's not much further."

She sighed and followed him down onto the tracks and into the dark mouth of blackness.

"W ELL, I GUESS this makes sense," said Max an hour later. They were crouched in a narrow space under the ceiling of the tu

Rue was near tears. They had walked for ages through tomblike darkness, past side tu

"We'll have to go back to the last station," said Max. "I hope the flashlight lasts long enough." He put a hand on the slick wall of the tu

"You got us into this?"

"Yeah." He turned dejectedly and they began walking back down the tu

"Well maybe, but I could have changed my mind, couldn't I?"

"Well, I suppose, but…"

"I'm not a child, Max. It was my responsibility to say no and I didn't."

He grimaced. "So now what? Do we hide out until they leave and then try to sneak home?"

"No," she said hotly. "They're trying to steal my cycler."

"Is it really that important to you, Rue? It wasn't before. Why the change?"

She thought about it. "Maybe… it's because nobody was actually trying to take it away from me before."

His look told her he didn't understand. "Look. If the government had offered me a finders' fee or something I would have jumped at it. But they didn't; Blair told me they didn't even try to find me through him. They figured that a woman like me would never be able to reach the cycler herself, so they just ignored me. Like Jentry used to. And now they're trying to use violence to beat me down— like Jentry used to."

That reason seemed petty; it wasn't right. "But that's not actually it, either," she admitted. "I guess there's two things. The night before I ran away from Allemagne, I had this bad moment when I thought: I can live like this. Allemagne's not too bad. I can cope. I'm an adult now, I can learn to stand up to Jentry. I can carve out my own life like Mom did."

It was pretty hard to resist that urge.