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The black-haired Boy ran alongside, pulling at the door, for longer than Corbell would have believed possible. Finally he dropped away.
"You said four of anything," said Gording. "I pushed that." Crossed commas.
"I don't know where that takes us. Let's see if we can change it." He jabbed four times at the crooked pi. "I don't even know if there is a subway terminal here. There's no giant cube. Everywhere else it was a giant cube."
"Rest. If we don't find the subway we still have a tchiple. Dial at random."
"I lost my spear."
"I still have the thread."
"That's not what I meant. I thought I was repairing it right. But the way those Boys acted, I must have messed it up somehow. Skip it."
On their crooked run through the city they saw only one other Boy. On the wreck of a skyscraper near the city's center, a lean and ragged loner was mountain-climbing three stories up. As the tchiple zipped beneath him his sunken eyes locked on Corbel's and held them until the tchiple turned a corner.
With the big dark still an Olde Earth year away, one loner and the two bands near the park might well be the total population of Sarash-Zillish. It would be nice to think so... but stupid. Sarash-Zillish had to be on that pattern of close-spaced "phone booths." It was too important not to be. Corbell said, "Some of Krayhayft's tribe probably got here ahead of us."
"They won't know where we're going, will they?"
"They don't know why we want to get to Cape Horn. I'd hate to underestimate them."
The car slowed and settled, bending shrubbery, and stopped. They got out. Gording asked, "Where are we?"
The sparse greenery in the street thickened to jungle as it climbed the slope to their right. Corbell sprang to the rounded top of the tchiple. The patch of citrus jungle was u
"I don't know."
"But why did the tchiple bring us here? Where is the subway?"
"It'd be towering over our heads. Every city I've seen, the subway building was a tremendous cube."
Gording joined him on the car. Together they surveyed the rectangle of jungle.
"But a subway is below ground," Gording said. "Why would it need to be so high?"
"I never found out what was in the upper stories. Maybe places of government." Or offices for rent. No way to say that in Boyish.
"Maybe they made a subway and left off the subway building."
The patch of jungle was about as wide as the great cubes in One City and Four City. Corbell said, "Could be. They put a park on it instead. Then the ice cap thawed and a lot of dead dust fell all over everything." Where did they put the entrances, though? Escalators in the center? No, the trees grew thickest there.
Where the ground sloped up from the street, there in mid-slope was a dip. Water pooled there, forming a small, dirty, weed-grown pond. Corbell expressed himself under his breath.
"I don't know those words," said Gording.
Corbell pointed. "Under the weeds and the water and the scum and the mud, that's where we'll find steps leading down to the doors. After we dig it out. After we find shovels and dig all that stuff out of there. Then we get to find out if anything still works under all that."
"No?"
"They won't let us." Gording pointed.
The sharp-faced loner was trotting toward them from across the wide street. He carried an oddly curved broad-bladed sword. Well behind him, other Boys spilled out of a building.
"Do you think you can take him with your rocks?"
"No," said Gording. "He's ready. He knows we're dangerous. He'll catch the thread on his blade."
"Into the car, then." They clambered down and in. In frustration Corbell demanded, "-How did they get here so fast?"
"Not by car. Are there prilatsil in Sarash-Zillish'!"
"Oh, sure, that's how they did it."
"Can we use prilatsil?"
"Yeah. Yeah! We won't have to dig! Assuming the damn things still work. The subway hasn't been maintained."
The loner was very close now. Corbell dialed a number he remembered: two commas crossed, S reversed, hourglass on its side, crooked pi. The car sped smoothly away. Eleven Boys watched it go.
"They tracked us somehow. They'll track us again," Corbell said. "We'll have some time, but not much."
From outside it was a copy of the office building in which Mirelly-Lyra had returned Corbell's pressure suit. In this version the elevators worked. Still following the pattern, Corbell tried the third floor.
It held. Lines of office doors, all closed.
"My name coin doesn't open them." Gording reported.
They kicked at door, it was solid.
Gording asked. "Are there prilatsil not locked behind doors?"
"Yeah. On the roof. The Boys could be there by now."
"Did you at least keep the spear blade?"
Corbell handed it over. Then it occurred to him that there might be indicators for the elevators. He slipped back into the elevator and punched all the buttons. If it stopped on every floor they'd have to check them all. He got out on the fourth floor. As he tiptoed down he heard a pattering above him like a swarm of rats.
Gording had disengaged the thread from the rocks. He had tied one end to the blade and the other to his loincloth. Now he chopped with the blade at the cloud-rug where it ran beneath an office door. "Guard the stairs," he said.
"With what?"
Gording didn't answer, didn't even look up.
Corbell stood barehanded at the stairwell door. The first Boy through would kill him. He knew it. Maybe Gording would get away.
What was Gording doing?
Gording was pushing the blade under the door with his fingers.
He pulled upward on the ends of the loincloth. He heaved. Sounds forced their way between his teeth.
Now he pulled sideways toward the doorjamb.
Now he kicked at if door. It shuddered. Another kick sent it crashing inward. The blade was stronger than the door; the thread had cut the metal around the lock.
Through the office window Corbell glimpsed two Boys working under the tchiple's motor hatch. Then he crowded into the "phone booth" with Gording. When he shut the door there was no light. He opened the door a crack, found the crooked pi and kept his finger on it as he closed the door. He pushed it four times.
Nothing obvious happened.
He opened the door and slipped out into a blackness like the inside of a stomach. He whispered, "We'll have to bet that this is really a subway. Stay here. I'll find the stairs and call you."
"Good," said Gording. Corbell slipped away.
He moved with his hand lightly brushing the wall. Once he found a cloud-rug couch by stumbling over it. He clutched at the stuff to stop his fall, and a sheet of cloud-rug ripped away in his hand. Rotted.
A sound behind him. He said, "What was that?"
Gording didn't answer.
Corbell kept moving. He could feel Mirelly-Lyra in the dark. He kept expecting to hit the stairs, but the wall went on and on. He circled another couch and kept going. There was no sound in this place. Cloud-rug cushioned his feet and blotted up the sound of his breathing.
Stairs!
"Here," he said, no longer whispering.
"Good," Gording said from a foot away. Corbell jumped like a man electrocuted. "A Boy stalked you until I killed him with thread. I think it must have been the loner, from his smell."
"This place may be dead. If the stairs-ah." The stairs moved beneath him. Disoriented, off balance, he sat and let the stairs carry him down into the darkness.
The stairs stopped. Gording said, "What next?"
"Follow the sound of my voice. I know where the cars are; all the way in the back." He walked with his hands in front of him. How was he going to find the right car?