"Supervisor Capron?"
"Is he in?" A stupid question; the keys visible belonged to empty rooms. "Which is his room?"
"I can't tell you that!"
"It's important." Truth followed with a facile lie. "I've been sent to collect him and some important papers. An emergency at the workings. Only the supervisor can handle it. The room?"
"Two flights up. Turn right. Number twenty-eight." Her hand went to her mouth. "Be careful not to make too much noise."
An unneeded warning; Dumarest moved like a ghost as he climbed the stairs, keeping to the wall so as to avoid creaking treads. The first flight yielded a dusty landing soiled with dried mud and a wad of crumpled, bloody tissue. A solitary wad and the dirty carpet showed no stains. From behind a door down the passage he heard a woman's voice. "Hold still, you fool!"
A deeper tone, "That hurts!"
"Serves you right. The next time you come heavy with me I'll take out an eye. Now let me finish fixing that cheek."
The second landing held more dust and a patch of dampness which could have been water spilled from a jug or seepage from a leaking tank. Dumarest skirted it and stepped softly down the length of the passage. A window opened on a narrow metal ladder which in turn ran to the street below. Touching it he felt a crusted dryness and, looking at his hand, saw the brown flakes of dried blood.
Jarl's?
Quietly he stepped back down the passage and halted outside room twenty-eight. The door was scarred, the number blurred, no light showing through the keyhole or beneath the lower edge of the panel. Pressing his ear to the wood, he heard a moaning susurration as of wind in a chimney. Frowning, he stepped back and moved to the head of the stairs as sound came from below. On the lower landing he caught a glimpse of a woman with a man whose cheek was covered with a plaster. He was younger than his companion and bore no resemblance to Jarl. Back at the door of room twenty-eight Dumarest pushed his foot against the door above the lock. A snap and it was open.
Beyond lay darkness broken only by starlight filtering through the uncurtained window. A low moaning. An acrid stench.
Then, suddenly, madness.
It came with a gust of sound and a blur against the pale oblong of the window. A snarling roar as if a beast had broken free and a shape which lunged forward, hands extended like claws, curved to rip and tear, to strike like hammers from the gloom.
Dumarest dropped as something slammed against his temple, breaking open the minor laceration and sending blood to wet his cheek. Stars flashed before his eyes as he rolled, feeling the numbing impact of a hard-driven boot, rolling again as it stamped on the spot where his head had rested. As he rose he knocked aside a clutching hand, ducked to let the other pass over his shoulder, stepped in and drove his fist hard against a solid body. Blow followed blow in quick succession. All driven with the full force of back and shoulders-none seeming to have any effect.
Before him the thing gibbered, roared, flailed at the air, swayed and came in with lowered head and raking feet, rose to spit and tear at Dumarest's scalp and shoulders with jagged shards.
Falling back, he hit the wall beside the door, felt the impact of the switch against his shoulder, threw it to bathe the room in brightness.
Jarl stood blinking at him from before the window. But Jarl was no longer a man.
The vials lying beside the soiled bed gave the answer; analogues taken to relieve boredom, used now as an anodyne against pain; the compounds used by degenerates addicted to bestial forms. With their aid a man could think himself a snake, a goat, a dog. He would emulate one, act like one, be as unpredictable as any creature of the wild. Jarl had ceased to be human.
He stood like a gorilla, stooped, shoulders hunched, the thorn-ripped parody of his face distorted into a snarling nightmare. In each hand he now held the neck of a broken bottle, the jagged shards reflecting the light in vicious gleams. His mouth was open, slavering, his eyes mere glints between puffed lids. He stank of sweat and rage.
He rushed without warning, hands lifted to raise the crude weapons high. Held like daggers, they swept down to slice the air, missing Dumarest by a fraction as he threw himself to one side. Again, the thing which had been a man moving with the furious speed of a predator, glass opening flesh above Dumarest's ear, shards ripping at the tunic, slicing through the plastic to bare the metal mesh imbedded as a protection in the material.
Before they could strike again, Dumarest had thrown himself clear, coming to rest before the window, steel flashing as he jerked the knife from his boot, metal which glinted with mirror-brightness as he twisted it. He guided it into the creature's eyes, hypnotic, commanding. As they followed the lure he stepped forward, boot lifting, the heel slamming against the jaw. The blow would have knocked an ordinary man unconscious but the surrogate beast only shook its head, snarled, lunged forward in a paroxysm of maniacal fury.
To trip over Dumarest as he dropped before it. To plunge through the window. To be impaled on the railings which stood like rusty spears below.
Chapter Three
"He's dying." Carina was blunt. "You carrying him up here didn't help." She looked disdainfully about the room. "God, what a sty!"
Dirt aggravated by blood, the wreckage of the fight, the whole compounded by his search-which had yielded nothing but items of little value: a gun, some papers, a knife, torn and bloodstained clothing. If Kelly had contacted his partner, he hadn't passed over any of the loot.
"A compliment," she said bitterly. "You leave me to go out and kill a man. All right, so he isn't dead yet, but that's splitting hairs. There's nothing I can do for him. Those railings tore him all to hell inside and you weren't exactly gentle. And why send for me?"
"You're a doctor-or were you lying?"
She said, "One day, maybe, you'll realize just how insulting that question was. Yes, damn you, I'm a doctor and because of that I carry some gear, but only emergency stuff. He needs massive corrective surgery, regrowths, an amniotic tank, months of subjective in slowtime. And before that-oh, to hell with it! What do you want me to do?"
"Make him talk." He met her eyes. "He was in analogue and could still be for all I know. If he is, I want you to snap him out of it and make him conscious and aware. And do it fast-if he's dying as you say then we haven't long."
"Analogue-are you certain?" For answer he handed her the vials.
"The fool. A double-shot which could blow his mind." She reached for her bag. "I'll do what I can but you realize the risk?" His eyes told her of the stupidity of the question. "You don't care," she accused. "You don't give a damn if he goes insane or turns into a vegetable. All you want is for him to talk."
"That's right." He looked beyond her at the figure recumbent on the soiled bed. "Now let's stop wasting time."
The door was shut again, held by a chair propped beneath the knob. A barrier against the inquisitive who had thronged the passage and could still be outside. As the woman worked Dumarest looked again at what he'd found. The gun was a copy of that used by the man he had killed, a weapon designed to fire a mass of shot and lethal at short range. He broke it and checked the load, frowning at what he saw.
With his knife he slit the cartridge and tipped the load into his hand.
Not shot as he'd expected but a powder as fine as talc. Fired, it would have thrown a cloud over the area immediately before the gunner and that was about all. The fine dust would have held little kinetic energy and that little would have been quickly lost. It could sting the eyes, perhaps, but little else. Unless it was more than what it seemed.
Dumarest stooped, lifting the powder to his nostrils, taking a cautious sniff. Immediately he lowered his hand and leaned back, fighting the numbing paralysis which had locked his eyes, his jaw, the muscles of his neck. For a moment he felt helpless while the light seemed to revolve with slow deliberation, the glow haloed with glittering rainbows.
Why hadn't Jarl used that instead of the club?
The boy, perhaps? Anton had stood close and the man could have had fears as to the result of the powder fired at one so young. And the other? Both had tried to use clubs- had they thought the loads were more lethal than they really were?
Luck had been with him; had they used the guns he would have been left helpless to freeze in the brush. Had Jarl not used the analogue he could have fired as Dumarest burst into the room. Then, if not before, he would have been willing to kill and there had been no boy to safeguard. No threat to future prosperity.
"Earl!" Carina straightened from the supine figure. "It's going to be close."
"Do your best."
"What I'm doing is killing him."
"He's as good as dead already." Dumarest put aside the gun and picked up the papers. "And unless he talks others might follow him."
Himself, who would be a natural target if Kelly wanted to make himself safe. Anton for fear he might betray his whereabouts. Fenton, even, for having given the address.
The papers held nothing of value; a letter from a woman, a circular, an old notification of dismissal but the reason was closure of the workings and he could not be blamed. The reason why he had taken to haunting the brush, perhaps, but the basic liking for the way of life would have always been present. The desire to hurt, to bully, to rob and terrorize. How many victims had he and his kind left to die.
"Earl!"
The eyes were still bloodshot and the jaw now bore the purple of bruises but the bone was unbroken and the man could talk.
"Bastard! You stinking bastard!" Jarl moved against the torn sheets which held him to the bed. "We should have killed you."