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Twana sat up in the bed, drawing the blankets around her shoulders against the breeze. «Put your clothes on,» said Blade. «We're getting out of here. The storm will hide us and cover our tracks once we're out of the building.» Twana nodded without a word and leaped out of bed.
They pulled on their clothes and picked up their gear and weapons. Meanwhile, the storm outside was mounting steadily. Rain blew in through the window almost continuously, soaking the rug.
The Watcher that guarded the corridor was in its usual place, but getting past it was now routine, even for Twana. They filled their water bottles in the bathroom and continued downward. A last flight of stairs, and then a long ramp led them down to the high-vaulted entrance hall on the ground floor.
There were more robots in the hall than Blade had ever seen in one place, including a dozen Gardeners and five Watchers. He couldn't be sure whether they were on the alert for emergency work on the building or just getting in out of the storm. All he could do was move very slowly, one cautious step at a time, and keep his hands at his sides.
As stiffly as if they'd been robots themselves, Blade and Twana made their way through the crowd toward the entrance. Once Blade had to quickly sidestep a Housemaid that was about to run into him. The nearest Watcher turned its head to look at him and raised one tentacle, but didn't turn on its fan or sound the alarm. Blade stood still for a moment, the Watcher turned away, and he went on.
At last they reached the entrance. By now the wind was blowing a full gale, and the rain was hitting like blasts from a shotgun. It was as black as the inside of a coal mine, and the wind and the thunder together made a roar that would have drowned out a full-scale battle. There'd never be a better chance to get beyond reach of the robots.
Blade found his feet itching a break into a run. He held back, as a Watcher came wobbling in out of the storm, making slow headway against the wind. With one pair of arms, it was towing a Gardener that had apparently been struck by some heavy falling object. Blade waited until the two robots joined the crowd. Then he took Twana's hand and led her out into the storm.
Instantly the wind gripped them, and the rain lashed at them, driving them along like stampeding cattle. Even when they bent almost double, the pressure of the wind forced them to trot. They didn't even try moving against the wind.
Several times savage gusts almost tore Twana's hand out of Blade's grip. After the fourth gust, Blade led her into the lee of some solid trees and pulled the rope out of his pack. He tied one end of it around Twana's waist and the other around his own. Getting separated, disoriented, and totally lost in this howling darkness were real dangers.
As Blade finished tying the last knot, something fell almost at his feet with a crash like an artillery shell. It was a branch-or rather, the whole top of a tree, with half a dozen branches, each as long as a man and as thick as a man's leg.
With this sort of debris blowing about, it didn't matter how fast he and Twana moved. As long as the storm lasted, the Watchers would be seeing a hundred and one things moving fast enough to alert them. They'd hardly be able to track and examine each one of them. There simply weren't enough Watchers.
A weakness? Yes, but not against the primitive opponents the Watchers were designed to meet. Assuming any primitive opponents got this far beyond the Wall, they wouldn't be out and about tonight. They'd be cowering under cover where they could do no harm.
Richard Blade was not a primitive opponent, even for the most advanced technology.
He led Twana back out into the storm, and after that he let it blow them more or less where it would. It would be easier to make up lost ground when the storm died than try to fight it while it was blowing, and they had to get as far as they could before the robots realized they were gone.
So the storm blew them onward. It blew them across a bridge and nearly blew them into the stream under the bridge. They entered the trees again on the other side of the stream and passed down a long, narrow path. The trees on either side looked like pines and stood eighty or a hundred feet tall, but they were bending like blades of grass in the storm. The path was already littered with fallen branches, and more were crashing down every minute.
They came out of the trees onto the shore of a small lake. It was only a few acres, but the storm was whipping up respectable waves. The water was churning ankle-deep over the stepping stones they used to cross the lake. Once Twana slipped and went to her knees in the water, but Blade pulled her to her feet and half-carried her the rest of the way across.
They moved on listening to the roar of the wind and the thunder, the crackle and crash of falling trees, the hammering beat of the rain, until they were half-deaf. They were thoroughly drenched, and Blade was begi
How long he and Twana kept going it was impossible to guess. Blade only knew that it was still pitch dark and blowing a gale when Twana began to stumble and stagger. She shook her head and mouthed the words, «I can't go on.» Blade lifted her onto his back, with her arms clamped about his neck.
His own legs were begi
Inside, Blade and Twana stripped, wrapped themselves in their soggy blankets, and lay down to get as much sleep as they could. Exhaustion quickly sent them off to sleep, with the storm still howling in their ears.
In the morning the storm was still blowing as hard as ever, and Twana flatly refused to face it again. Blade began to wonder if he'd have done better to leave her in the building by the Wall and do his exploring on his own. Twana could cope with the robots, and they would probably protect her from any other danger until he returned.
However, he and Twana were both committed now, and something good might come of her joining him. The more she saw with her own eyes about what lay beyond the Wall, the more she could tell her own people, and the more likely they were to believe her. Blade was sure that knowing more about what lay beyond the Wall would help the villagers. If it did nothing else, it would ease their superstitious fear of the Watchers.
By late afternoon the wind was no more than a stiff breeze, and the clouds were breaking up. Blade saw several Gardener robots pass the house, most of them carrying fallen branches in their claws. He and Twana headed straight west until darkness overtook them, seeing a good many more Gardeners, but only one Watcher. They passed it slowly, and it ignored them as if they were only leaves blown on the wind. There didn't seem to be any hunt on for them yet.
They slept that night on the driest patch of ground they could find, deep inside a pine grove. When morning came, Blade scrambled up to the top of the tallest tree he could find and took his bearings. They'd come far enough so that in the pale morning light he could make out hints of the distant city from this lower perch. It looked as if they still had a long walk ahead of them, so the sooner they got started, the better.
They had to walk all that day and most of the next. Every hour or so Blade climbed a tree to check direction. The city was always there, though for a long time it seemed to be getting no closer. At times during the first day, Blade almost suspected the city was a phantom, receding into the distance, as he and Twana advanced toward where they thought it was.