The Stone Dogs (31 page)

Keep low. From above a boar was all bone and leather and gristle-armour over its vitals. She stooped, crouching, spear held underhand. The ashwood shaft was smooth on the sharkskin palms of her gloves, and the broad point seemed to follow a scribed curve to the juncture of neck and shoulder.

"Haaaaaaa!
" she hawk-screamed, and the point bit. Then the weight of it struck her through the leverage of the spear, and it was like running into a wall at speed, like trying to stop a steamcar.
"Ufff!"
she grunted, and found herself scrambling backward. Then she went over on her tailbone, white pain flowing warm-chill across the small of her back. The spearhead was half-buried in the tough muscle and blood welled around it, but the beast was pushing her backward with her backside dragging, squealing ear-hurting shrill and hooking savagely at her feet as they dangled within striking distance of the tusks.

"Hold him, hold him!" Myfwany shouted, racing alongside and trying to find a target for a lunge.

"Yo' fuckin try it!"
Yolande was half-conscious of screaming.

The spearshaft wrenched her from side to side as the boar lunged and twisted, it was as if she was on the end of a ruler somebody was pounding against trees and dirt with negligent flicks of the wrist. With a supreme effort she threw her weight down on it, using the impetus to draw her feet back and up; the tusk clipped her heel, sending her body sprawling sideways. At the same instant the butt of the spear dug into the turf, caught in the crook of a root. The boar staggered, squealed again as its own momentum drove the razor-edged steel deeper into its body.

Instinct brought its head around, as it tried to gore this thing that bit it. She could smell it, heavy and rank.

Myfwany moved up beside her, throwing herself forward. The wet metal gleam of her spearhead met the taut curve of the animal's neck. The Draka went to her knees as jugular blood spurted down over the bar of the weapon and along the shaft, and the boar seemed to grow lighter. Yolande panted with a sudden joint-loosening rush of unacknowledged terror as the beast's death-tremor shuddered up the spear. It sprawled, toppled over on its side; the little savage eyes grew misted. She rose, feeling exhaustion and bruises for the first time, braced her foot on the animal's body and tugged the spear free. There was blood speckled on her lips, salt-tasting.

"Wuff." Yolande leaned on the spear and hugged Myfwany one-armed.
"Wuff!"
Her friend returned the embrace.

"Yo' had me frightened for a moment, there, Yolande-sweet,"

she said.

"I had me frightened," Yolande replied, laughing with relief.

Suddenly she broke free with a whoop and tossed the spear up into the air, then rammed it point-first in the earth and kissed the other heartily. "Makes yo' feel alive, don't it?" she asked, when they broke free. She looked over to her brother. "Shouldn't we be about findin' the others? I could use a nice long soak an'

dinner in front of the fire."

Frederick Lefarge swung a hand behind himself, palm-down.

Stop
. Marya halted, then eased forward to follow the pointing muzzle of his assault rifle.

Ah
, she thought. Barely perceptible at waist-height, a line of light. Laser light, only showing because of the mist; modern systems were selective enough to take that and not trip until interrupted by something more substantial. And beyond that at ankle height a camouflaged sensor clipped to a tree, capacitordetector. She went to one knee and swung her backpack around before her; it had been her responsibility to come ahead and cache their equipment. Not difficult to "lose"

themselves in the woods, not when everyone else was following the sound of the dogs.

This
would be the difficult part. She stripped off her gloves and flexed her fingers to limber them before assembling the apparatus. A light-metal frame to hold the clamps, so. Close the circles of wire around the beams, so. Her finger hesitated on the switch, then pressed. A modest green light flashed once on the black-box governor. Marya exhaled shakily, letting her palms rest on the cold damp leaves. She looked up, and the cold drizzle was grateful on her cheeks.

Her brother slapped her once on the shoulder, and they nodded. Marya caught up her rifle and followed as he hurdled the gap in the sensor chain she had created.

The two OSS agents froze in unison at the hoarse cries from the path ahead. Then voices, a man and a woman's, laughing.

These woods were more open than those outside the guarded perimeter; they had had to halt half a dozen times to identify and disarm sensors. Marya slowly drew a map from a pocket on the side of her leather hunting-trousers and glanced at it, nodded to the other American. They were right on target… if the information they had received from the underground was correct. If not, there might be nothing waiting for them but a Security Directorate capture team.

Frederick Lefarge stepped through the last screen of brush.

The rain had stopped, but there were puddles on the flagstones of the pathway; beyond it he could see banks of flowers, and then a screen of hedge marking a pavilion. It was obvious enough what the pair had been at; the woman had mud on her knees and was still adjusting her underwear, the man fastening his belt. For a moment Lefarge felt a surge of panic; this did
not
look like David Ekstein. Too thin, too tanned, the complexion too clear… then the bone-structure showed through. The other man's face was liquid with surprise as he stared at the two figures in hunting leathers.

"Hey," he said, drawing himself up. "This is my place!" A neutral Califonian accent. Then, as if remembering a lesson: "Uh, Service to the State, Citizens."

Lefarge felt himself smile, and saw the other man flinch.

"Glory to the Race," he said, and the smile grew into a grin.

The serf girl nodded to the two agents, then stepped back. He stepped up to Ekstein, pushed the muzzle of the rifle into the defector's stomach and fired twice. Recoil hammered the weapon into his hand, augmented by the gases cushioned in flesh.

Ekstein catapulted backward, jackknifing, the leather of his jacket smouldering. Back and spine fountained out in a spray of bone, blood, and internal organs; the air stank of burned flesh and excrement. The body fell to the earth and twitched, was still.

So simple,
he thought. Always a surprise. So different from the viewer, rarely any dramatic thrashing around, no last-gasp curses, not with a wound like this. The body fell down and died, and it was over. A whole universe within a human skull, and then nothing.
Jesus, I hate this job.
It was done. Now they must escape; the easy way, if they could get back to the hunting party, or the hard way, switching identities and oozing out through the underground net.

"Merci."
That was the serf woman. "
Et moi aussi."

"What?" he said sharply in French, looking up. She was young, barely in her late teens; cool brunette good looks, face unreadable as she looked down into Ekstein's final expression of bewilderment.

"Now me," she said, looking up at him. "Surely you were told, monsieur? If you do not I must contrive it, and they will suspect everyone if I suicide. Most are blameless—I am the underground contact here—but that will not spare them interrogation, and I know too much."

He felt his mouth open, and the muzzle of the rifle drooped.

"Merde!
Nobody said a word about that to us!"

She swallowed, and he saw a slight tremor in the hands that smoothed back her disordered hair. "Please, quickly." She turned her back, looked up into the wet sky with fists clenched by her side. "There is not much time before he is missed."

"I—" Lefarge felt himself lock. There was white noise in his mind, caught between must and cannot. Marya stepped past him, with a soft touch on his arm.

"As you wish," she said to the serf girl, an infinite tenderness in her voice. "As you wish."

"I wish we hadn't had to drop the rifles," Marya said. The rain was lifting, finally this time by the rifts in the clouds. Their horses had been waiting where they were left, damp and restless and turning large brown eyes full of reproach on the humans.

Frederick Lefarge shrugged, guiding the big animal with the pressure of his knees; Draka used a pad -saddle and an almost token bit. It would be like carrying a "guilty" sign to have the weapons when the police came around. Not that either of them could stand a close questioning, but if they could slip back into the hunting party… They walked the mounts out into the open; out of the continual patter of moisture from the wet canopy above, but the air was colder where the wind could play. Six cars, parked along the verge. Two big steamtrucks for the horses and dogs, two vans for the huntsmen, two tilt-rotor dual-purpose jobs for the people…
Draka
, he told himself.
Don't get too much
in character.

The tall fair teenager was leaning against the open door of one aircar: Mandy, the just-graduated pilot. And his Draka persona's lady-love, Alexandra, supervising the loading of two dead boar; her ghouloon attendant lifted one under each arm and slung them casually into the bed of the truck. The van jounced on its springs under the impact, and the American felt a slight crawling sensation across his shoulders and down the spine.

That things as strong as a gorilla,
he reminded himself. Rather stronger, in fact, and much faster. It snuffled at its hands, licking away the blood and turned to its owner; standing erect it was easily two meters tall.

"Eat?" it said, in that blurred gravelly tone. "Eat?"

Alexandra laughed and slapped it on one massive shoulder.

The sound was like a palm hitting oak wood. "Later," she said, and the transgene bobbed its head in obedience, tongue lolling and eyes turning longingly toward the meat; drops of rain spilled from the coarse black fur of its lionlike mane.

He turned a grimace into a smile as she looked up at him and waved. It would not do to appear unenthusiastic. Actually, it had been interesting, at least the sex had. That was like coupling with a demented anaconda. The smile turned into a rueful chuckle; it was also the first time he had been called "charmingly shy" in bed.

"Hiyo!" he called, as he and Marya handed their boarspears down to the servants. "Sorry we got separated."

"Whole damn party did, Toni," Alexandra said. "John's out gatherin' them all up, with Yolande and her girlfriend. Ah'm gettin' hungry as Wofor."

"Wofor
eat,
" the ghouloon said.

"I—" Mandy began, and was interrupted by a chiming note.

She leaned in to take the microphone of the aircar's com unit.

"Wonder what the headhunters're sayin'?" she said curiously.

The American felt a sensation like an ice-drill boring through the bottom of his stomach. That was the Security-override alarm. Casually, he whistled the first bar of "Dixie," the code-signal. Marya swung down from her horse and turned toward the aircar; he slid the pistol from his gunbelt and checked it. A late-model Tolgren, 5mm prefragmented bullets, caseless ammunition and a 30-round horizontal cassette magazine above the barrel. He slipped the selector to three-rounds and set the positions of the Draka in his mind. The youngster leaning into the lead aircar. Alexandra ten meters back, by the steamtruck. The serfs could be ignored, they would hit the ground at the first sign of violence and stay there.

"Not bushman trouble 'round here?" he said, with a skeptical tone.

"Gods, no," Alexandra replied. Her hand had gone to the butt of her sidearm automatically, but it dropped away again as she twisted around to look toward Mandy. "I's born not a hundred clicks from here."—
news to me,
the American thought—"and the last incident was the year I born."

Time went rubbery, stretching. His body felt light, almost like zero-G, every movement achingly precise, the outlines of things cut in crystal. Mandy was speaking again.

"Oh,
moo
. Some sort of escape or somethin' from a head-hunter facility. Everyone's to stay put an' report movement until further notice. Eurg, mo' waitin' in the rain."

"Damn," the American said. "And I's real anxious to get out of here."

Wofor gave a growl, and Alexandra began to run back, a casual movement that turned blinding-fast as her peripheral vision caught the muzzle of his Tolgren. Even then, it cleared the holster before the flat
brak
of his weapon stitched a line of fist-sized craters from breastbone to throat.
Falling
, she was falling away in a mist of blood and roar the ghouloon leapt from the rear of the steamtruck, its great hands outstretched and jaws opened to nearly ninety degrees.
Flying
toward him, the huge white-and-red gape, and two pistols fired in the background and he was levering himself backward off the horse. Inertia fought him like water in the simulator tank, back at the Academy. Then he was toppling, kicking his foot free of the stirrup.

The horse shied violently at the ghouloon's roar and the crack of the firearms, enough to throw him a dozen paces further as he fell. Damp gravel pounded into his back, jarring, but he scarcely noticed. Not when the the transgene struck the horse at the end of its flight; the big gelding went over with a scream of fear, and for a moment the two animals were a thrashing pile on the surface of the road. Just long enough to flick the selector on his pistol to full-automatic and brace it with both hands. Wofor rose over the prostrate body of the horse, looming like a black mountain of muscle and fur, yellow eyes and bone-spike teeth.

Even with a muzzle brake, the Tolgren was difficult to control on full-automatic. The American solved the problem by starting low enough that the first round shattered a knee and letting the torque empty the magazine upward into the transgene's center of mass. Wofor's own weight slewed him around when the knee buckled, and the massive animal slammed into the ground at full-tilt, a diagonal line across his torso sawn open by the shrapnel effect of the prefragmented bullets. The earth shook with the impact. Lefarge yelled relief as the pistol emptied itself, screamed again as the ghouloon's one good hand clamped on his ankle. Dying, it still gripped like a pneumatic press, crushing the bone beneath the boot leather and dragging his leg toward the open jaws. The human twisted, raised his other leg and hacked down on the transgene's thumb with the metal-shod heel of the boot; once, twice and then there was a crackling sound. He rolled, pulled free, came to his feet with a stab of pain up the injured limb.