Deep Secret (31 page)

My hands were shaking as I passed my paper cup to the waiting trooper. In fact, tremors were running up both my arms and affecting my knees too. “Yes, I’m certain Knarros was deceived,” I told Dakros. The tremor had got into my voice too. “But the most important thing is that the killers are from Earth. They’re probably back there by now. If you don’t mind, I think I’d better get back there too and get after them. Could one of the hovers take me over to my car?”

Dakros agreed, and we made the usual arrangements to contact one another. But there was one thing he was emphatic about. He wanted the killers brought back to the Empire to be tried and shot. So did I. There was no evidence against them on Earth. “And we may have to take this fake Empress of theirs,” he said ruefully, “unless we can prove a claim for one of those two girls. I hope you can trace the rest of that document, Magid.”

I didn’t think there was any chance of that, but I promised to try and climbed tremulously into a hover. It had a neutral metallic smell inside, which lifted the horror from me slightly. I realised that it was truly urgent to get back home. In the artificial light glaring across the devastated colony, it had felt more like running away, but as the hover swung out over the woods of the hillside I began to see round the edges of my narrow escape and even round the cynical killing of those children. I looked down at the trees and saw that my duty as a Magid was to find these people. For one thing, they knew too much about me for comfort, and for another, they were assuming I knew more than I did about them. But the main thing was that they were using a Naywards world as a base from which to attack an Ayewards one, and that was just not on.

Rupert Venables continued

A
s the hover left the hill and droned the short distance across the plain, I was surprised at how much light there still was out here. The golden, dusty soil and the lighter criss-cross of the lanes were quite clear to see, and the orderly black lines of the vines against the yellow ground. Out in the distance, the lights of the hovers hunting for the young centaur looked like dots stolen from the yellow sky. I was not sure they were going to find Kris out there. People who planned things this thoroughly would surely have been waiting for him in the woods. Kris knew who the murderers were. The peculiar thing was the way they had left him alive at first. And Rob almost certainly knew too much as well. I was suddenly urgently worried about that, and for Will’s safety, if Will tried to defend Rob. And about my car. They could so easily have stolen my car. And Stan, of course. That would make problems I didn’t want to think about.

But the car was there, standing in the lane where I had left it. I was so relieved to see it that I thanked the hover pilot hastily, dropped down into the stinging whirl of dust the hover raised, and sprinted for my lovely sleek silver vehicle.

Its door, which I had left open, was now shut. I nearly stopped. But as the hover swept above and away, taking its drone with it, I could hear Scarlatti tinkling in the gloaming. Maybe all was well. But in case it was not, I readied a fairly massive stasis and came on at a run as if I had not noticed any difference.

The driver’s door started to open. I slammed the stasis on. The door stuck, half open, with someone’s hand on its edge and someone’s foot appearing below. The Scarlatti stopped in mid-phrase. But I could hear Stan shouting as I covered the last few yards and pulled the door open, preparing to do things that hurt.

Nick Mallory toppled out sideways and fell to the ground, still in the forward-leaning crouch of someone getting out of a car. Dust rose around him, white in the feeble shine of the courtesy light, and pattered back on his already dusty clothes. I was particularly astonished at the way the dust made crusty streaks out of the tears on his face. Nick Mallory had never struck me as a boy who cried.

Here Stan’s hoarse croakings got through to me. “Blimey, that was fierce! It’s OK, Rupert. It’s OK, honest! Let him up and let him talk. There’s something real bad going on and he’s not the one doing it.”

“How do you know that?” I said.

“Things I saw and heard,” he said. “Come on. Let him up.”

In the normal way, I would have taken Stan’s word for it, but this was not the normal way. I stayed where I was, holding the car door, half astride Nick. “Tell me what you saw and heard first.”

“If that’s your attitude…” he said. “Oh all right. I
think
I saw this kid arrive – must have been in the other car – but I didn’t take much note of it, just a dust trail over in the distance that I thought must be someone tending a plantation. The first thing that really shook me up was around sunset. Red sky and all that. From up on top of that hill. Two shots.

“
Two
shots?” I said. “Thanks.” Now I knew I was not being paranoid.

“Yes, two,” Stan said. “Rang out real clear from here. Then about half a minute after, there were three squirts of red fire from up there – looked like a signal gun.”

“That was me,” I said.

“I thought it must have been,” said Stan. “People around these troop carriers starting acting like a stirred-up ants’ nest, hovers popping out of things’ bellies, lights, folk running. And the hovers sit there, half up in the air, grinding, troops running to get in them, panic. Took an age for them to get airborne and go howling away up to that hilltop. Looked as if your signal took them by surprise.”

“Yes,” I said. “I think they assumed I was omnipotent. What then?”

“Nothing for a while,” said Stan. “Then there was this sheet of fire—”

“Sheet of
fire
?” I said.

“That’s right, but only for a blink of time, over to your right, quite near that wood. Them in the carriers may not have caught it. It was round the hill from them. I only caught it because in my state it’s like having eyes all round. And I was on the alert anyway, wondering if you were in trouble,” Stan admitted. “Frustrating being pinned inside this car. I kept trying to think if there was anything I could do. But there was nothing going on for a while, and then a whole lot of stuff. First this kid comes bursting out through that vinefield there, acting like he’d run himself legless, and makes for this car, glad like. But just as he gets here, all the hovers start going off in different directions off the hill, like pips squirting—”

“That would be when I told Dakros about the young centaur,” I said. “Did you—?”

“See him? Yes, I did,” said Stan. “And I’ll tell you about it as soon as you let that kid up. He’ll be right royally bruised, falling the way he did, and there’s no need to give him cramp as well. And my word on it, he’s not part of this. He was coming to this car for
help
, Rupert. What’s his name, by the way?”

“Nick,” I said. I looked down at Nick’s sizeable curled-up figure. Stan was probably right. He would be getting cramp. I compromised. I eased the stasis a little and levitated the boy back into the seat of my car in a rattle of dust. The effort brought back the tremors in my legs. “That’s as far as I go,” I said. “Now tell me about the centaur.”

“Then let me tell it in order,” Stan said. “You need to know it all. This Nick here doesn’t want the hovers to see him for some reason. This car’s sitting here with one door open and the light on inside, the way it is now, and instead of getting into it, he dives on his face and crawls under between the front wheels. And I think, Aye, aye! Thinks they’re looking for him, does he? Using the warm engine to hide body heat, is he, in case they use detectors? Well, well. But I don’t think they do use detectors, or they’d have found the centaur kid by now, and I can see them still looking.”

I turned to see over my shoulder. The very distant lights were now bright, droning hither and thither far out over the dark blue flatness. The sky was dark blue too with only a few pale streaks to the west. “Damn. No, they haven’t found him. What happened next?”

“Well,” Stan said, “I took a bit of a hand then, knowing the free way they have with executions in this Empire. I put a real strong Don’t Notice round this car. Lucky I did too. It’s thanks to me you don’t have your tyres shot out. Young Nick hadn’t hardly wriggled out of sight when this centaur of yours comes by like a bat out of hell. Talk about go! They
can
go. Two hearts, two pairs of lungs. Beat any racehorse hollow. And this one had good reason to go. First, he goes flying up this path, and next thing I know there’s a car, normal Earth-style car, screaming round the corner of that vineyard there, shimmying sideways, clouds of dust, and roaring flat out after the centaur. Man and a woman in it, woman driving. She sees the centaur, puts on her full headlights, pins him as he gallops, and the man leans out of his window and starts firing a pistol at the centaur.
Bang, bang, bang
. Centaur jumps sideways like a goat and then hurdles the hedge into the vineyard on the other side. Man missed, I think. I hope. Jumped like a bird flying, that centaur.”

“Did you see the people in the car?” I said urgently.

“No, too dark, what with their headlights on,” Stan said. “Man was on the other side, so I only caught a glimpse after they went past. Head, elbow, flash, crack – you know. Woman was just a shape.”

“Did she wear glasses?” I demanded. If Nick was here, then that car was almost certainly Maree’s.

“Don’t think so,” said Stan. “Anyway, they’re long gone now. They stopped where the centaur went over the hedge, brake lights,
squeal
, more dust, and the man starts getting out. Anyway, his door opens and I know he’s seen this car too. They were both magic users, so they were bound to see it in the end. And I start thinking quick, What can I do to stop him coming back and making a mess of this car, and maybe finding Nick as well? Not a lot, frankly. Then luckily one of those hovers spotted them and comes bawling down this lane, straight overhead of me. I was more or less yelling at them to go and beam their tyres, but they’d got no orders to do that, so they just sit in the air overhead of the other car. Man gets back in. Woman drives off, and they make transit as they start up, and hey presto! Gone. The hover goes back and forth a bit, and they don’t see this car, or maybe they know it’s yours, and anyway they’re after the centaur, but by then they’ve lost him too. So off they drone. Then, after a bit, when things are quiet again, young Nick crawls out from under, gets in the driving seat, shuts the door and more or less cries his eyes out. He was so upset, I wondered whether to speak to him, to tell the truth.”

“Why didn’t you?” I asked.

“He thought he was alone, see,” Stan explained.

“I see.” I looked at Nick, curled up on the seat of my car, and felt slightly ashamed of my suspicions. “The people in that car,” I said, “murdered three children and another centaur up on that hill. The first shot you heard was aimed at me.”

“In that case,” Stan said, “you’ve every right to be paranoid. But I reckon it wasn’t this kid.”

“You’re probably right,” I said, and took the stasis off.

Nick, because of the strength of the stasis, had no idea there had been an interval. He went on with the motions he had been making and scrambled frantically out of the car. “Thank god you’re back!” he said. His voice brayed and squawked with hurry and misery. “
Please
come quickly! My mother’s gone and stripped Maree!”

“What? Opened a world gate through her? Are you
sure
? Where?” I snapped. Of all the hundred questions I wanted to ask, these seemed the most urgent.

“Yes I
am
sure! I was
there
!” Nick brayed. “Over on that hill with the wood, in the lane. Oh
please
can you get there quickly?”

“Get in,” I said, “at once. Give me directions.” While Nick scrambled round the car and tumbled into the passenger seat, I was in the driver’s seat and had the car moving before the doors were shut. If someone has been stripped by being in the exact place where a way of transit between worlds is made, you have to get to them quickly, before the two bodies they have been split into lose touch with one another. And Maree must have been split nearly half an hour ago now. As I snapped on the headlights and zigzagged among the vineyards to Nick’s directions, I cursed my stupid, suspicious delay. “Was your mother alone?” I said to Nick.

“No. She was with a man called Gram White,” Nick said. “They didn’t see me. I kept out of sight. But I couldn’t do a thing to help. Then a centaur boy came out of the woods and shouted they were murderers, and all I could think of was get to your car while they were all yelling at one another. I just ran through vinefields and hoped you’d be back when I got there. Turn right again here.”

I turned in a slew of dust and raced along the lane that ran along the foot of the hill, between the green-black slope of the wood and a bare black hedge, with my headlights lurid on the yellow surface of the track. There was no mistaking the small white body in the distance.

“There! There she is!” Nick shouted.

I screamed up to it and stopped in a slide of gravel. Nick and I both jumped out. “Keep back!” I warned him. “I have to see exactly where the gate opened.”