Seeklight

Wait. Something made the skin across Daenek’s shoulders tighten as he looked at the dark fragment. One of them kicked that off—then they’re not pro-lections. But—He looked up and saw something with a gun-like muzzle and mounted on a tripod being swung down to point at them.

Rennie’s breath came out of her with a single grunt as Daenek slammed her body between himself and the wall of the building.

The thing on the tripod coughed a single muffled whup, and the pavement where the two of them had been walking exploded, showering them with gravel and ash.

“What the—” Rennie wheezed with her first breath.

Daenek put his hand over her mouth and pressed her against the building, only to look up and see the winged figures, silhouetted by the fading light, swivelling their weapon’s snout down upon them again. Daenek looked desperately about for a doorway. But there was only the angle of wall and ground that held them trapped beneath the carefully aimed muzzle from above.

Suddenly, the weapon’s barrel swung away from them. It coughed again, and a section of the building on the other side of the road flew apart. Looking up, Daenek saw the weapon jerk through a spastic arc, teeter on the edge of the roof, and then come crashing down, the tripod’s legs splayed like a metal spider.

From the roof top came the sound of blows and stifled shouts.

The silhouetted figures, some with wings outspread, were struggling back and forth. One of the sociologists landed on his back halfway over the roof’s edge. Another connected with a kick into the ribcage of the outstretched figure, and it toppled over the side, landing heavily beside the broken weapon. The circle of light over its head flickered and went out.

“Come on!” Rennie pulled on Daenek’s arm. “Let’s get out of here!”

He hesitated, staring first at the sociologist moaning in the middle of the street, then swinging his eyes up at the sound of the others fleeing from the rooftop above them.

“Come on, before they come back with more!”

Daenek spun around and ran after her. They had gone only a few streets away when Rennie grabbed his elbow and stopped, pulling him to a halt beside her.

“Wait,” she whispered. “Do you hear anything?”

He followed her gave in the direction from which they had come. “No,” he said after a moment.

“Maybe we’d better go back.”

“What for?” He looked in surprise at her face barely visible in the darkness.

“To find that sociologist,” she said. “The one that got pushed over.”

“That could have been an accident. Whatever was going on up there—it could have just fallen or something.”

Rennie shrugged. “Either way. There’s two of us and one of it.

Maybe we can get some info, if we get there before the others come back for it.”

“I don’t know,” he said slowly, weighing what she had said in his mind.

“Look. What other plans do we have?”

He thought for only a second, then shook his head. “None, I guess.” It was true—the farther they had walked into the city, the less their chances of penetrating any mysteries of the past had begun to seem to him.

They retraced their path to the street where they had been attacked, but there was no sign of the fallen sociologist. Rennie located her pack where she had dropped it against the wall, and took out her small flashlight. She swept the beam over the pavement, then knelt to look more closely at something she had spotted.

“It’s hand must’ve split open when it landed,” she said. A red, hand-shaped blot was centered in the yellow circle of light.

She got to her feet and directed the beam around the buildings on either side of the street. The light stopped on another print like the first, smeared on the corner of the building leading to another street that crossed tthe one they were in.

“That way,” said Rennie, pointing with the flashlight.

They followed the street to which the handprints pointed. It led eventually into the inhabited part of the city. Daenek noticed lights in the windows of the buildings they passed. “I think we’ve lost him,” he said.

“No, we haven’t.” Rennie shone the flashlight on a doorframe in one of the buildings. The same wet handprint glinted under the shaft of light. Rennie went to the door and pushed it partly open. Noise and more light flooded out of the crack. “Hey,” she whispered back to him. “It’s an inn.”

“What’s it doing in there?” Daenek stood behind her and tried to look through the narrow opening.

“I can’t tell. Wait a second.” She pushed the door ¦ open a few more inches. “Uh… there he is.” She fell silent as she pressed her face to the opening.

“Well?” Daenek still could not make out anything inside the building.

“I don’t know about this, but it looks like it’s getting drunk.”