Doc Sidhe (39 page)

He dangled in the wind, the collar of his jeans jacket in Joseph's grip. The giant, with his other hand, held onto the lowest wingtip of one of the ledge gargoyles.

There was a crater in Joseph's back a foot deep and three feet in diameter. Opaque gray fluid poured out of it, something like clay barely diluted with water. The giant's eyes were dull, nearly unseeing.

Far above him was the skyscraper-sized zeppelin-liftship.

Harris looked down. There was nothing between his feet and the sidewalk but a thousand feet of air.

"Harris."

"Yes, Joseph." He reached up and tried to get a grip on the clay man's arm. It was slick with the fluid from his back. Joseph shook him and easily broke his grasp.

"I'm going to die, Harris. When I do, I will fall, and you will fall, and you will die too. But I want you to understand that I do not do this myself. I cannot stop myself."

"I understand." Harris tried to reach up for the ledge with the statues. His arm was a yard too short. He touched the face of the wall and could find no purchase. "Are you sure you can't just tell Duncan to stuff himself? I'd really appreciate it."

"No. My limbs do not move in a direction that disobeys him. Can you forgive me?
Please
, Harris."

"Yes, Joseph. It's not your fault." He felt his throat tighten with grief for the pain Joseph was feeling.

"The explosion was propitious. It allows me to give you a few extra moments of life without disobeying Duncan. And it means I will not be able to harm Gaby."

Harris heard a scrape from behind Joseph; he turned his head back to look.

A rope dangled behind Joseph, ten feet away. It brushed the statuary, stretching from the liftship above to somewhere below Harris. And it was moving, swaying toward him. "Just hold on as long as you can, Joseph."

The rope swayed a yard closer. Harris looked up and saw the liftship's propellers turning. The ship was moving, dragging the rope along with it.

Joseph began to droop. Harris saw that the damage to his back was worse than before—made deeper and rougher by water erosion, Joseph's "bleeding." Harris grimaced.

"I am losing strength, Harris."

"How do you want to be remembered?" The rope edged closer. It almost touched Joseph. Another yard and it would be within Harris' reach.

"It will do no good for me to tell you."

"Tell me anyway."

"I would like to be remembered for having hurt no one. But that would be a lie."

The rope slid to within inches of Harris' hand. Joseph finally saw it. He looked puzzled.

Harris stretched, grabbed it, and dragged it to his right hand. With all his strength, he kicked away from the building face. The move pulled him free of Joseph's grasp.

Harris swung out from the building, then back toward it, hitting the wall two full yards away from the giant. He managed to get his feet up and took the impact with his legs.

Joseph's face twisted into a faint smile. "No, I was wrong. It will please me to be remembered for having failed in my last duty."

He fell, leaving a stain of gray clay on the wall.

Harris watched him disappear. Something hard and bitter swelled in his throat, closing it.

He felt his feet lose contact with the wall; they were now half a foot away from the stone. He looked up.

The liftship was picking up speed, carrying its trailing ropes and Harris away from the Monarch Building.

Gaby woke up feeling tired but peaceful, as though the blast of knowledge through her had washed her clean.

She was in Gabrielle's room. She tried to slide out and back into her body, but couldn't.

That was surprising. It hadn't happened since she'd first put the two halves of herself together. She felt a tug of fear and opened the eye in the communications room.

She saw herself slumped in her chair, her head lolled back, mouth slightly opened. Her eyes moved rapidly under closed lids. She didn't look hurt.

She tried to switch to the eye into the laboratory, but it was gone.

Then memory returned of her unexpected swim in knowledge. She must have fallen into a veritable sea of information.

Data.
Duncan must have brought a computer from the grim world. Hooked it into his communication grid here. She hadn't been prepared to handle that amount of information.

Information—something about information she'd recently received was nagging at her. Names, dates . . . then she had it.

Essyllt Tathlumwright had said that Doc was born in 116 M.X.R. Gaby translated numbers in her head. That would have been Scholars' Year 1303. More than a
hundred and thirty
years ago. Doc was older than even she had thought. She'd read accounts of purebloods who achieved incredible age.

That made him old enough—

She looked into her mirror, sought out a specific eye, and opened it. The face of Essyllt Tathlumwright appeared, looking startled. "Goodness," the older woman said. "I don't think I even had it switched on."

"You must have," Gaby said. "Pardon me for calling back so soon—"

"You've changed."

"What?"

"Your clothes. You've changed. It's very becoming."

Gaby looked down at Gabrielle's dress and smiled. "Thank you. There's something I forgot to ask before. Did Desmond MaqqRee and his wife have any children?"

"Oh, yes." Essyllt looked at a sheaf of notes on the table before her. "One, a son. Named—"

"Duncan?"

"That's right." Essyllt beamed approvingly. "Born One Thirty-Eight M.X.R. You've been doing your research, too."

"Yes." Gaby felt cold sickness crawl through her. She tried to keep it from showing. "I have to run, Essyllt."

"Until later, then. Grace." Essyllt faded away again.

What had it done to Doc to believe that he'd killed his own son twenty years ago? What would it do to him to have to kill him now?

Dangerous as Duncan was, she had to prevent that, for Doc's sake. Gaby frantically looked for another eye.

His arms trembled from exhaustion, but Harris kept climbing. The gaping doors in the bottom of the gondola were not much farther above.

He had seen no one peering through that hole at him. He looked down and saw the skyscrapers of Neckerdam moving sedately below. This time there was no vertigo to bother him. So far, so good.

The rotorkite approached the liftship from astern, rising above it. "We can't stand off and trade fire with it," Doc said. He thought about it for a bare second. "So drop me on top."

"You're insane," Noriko said. "Do you remember being so exhausted you could barely stand, less than a chime ago? You're drained."

"It wasn't as bad as the time in Cretanis. I promised less, it took less. And Duncan is tired, too. He had to have put everything he had into holding that cloud together for so long."

"But his men, his soldiers, aren't. They're fresh and have better guns than you. No."

Doc gave her a surprised look. "When did you become so contrary?"

She looked flustered, also unusual. "I'm simply not going to let you kill yourself so that you will think of me as a good, obedient associate."

"I won't kill myself," he said, keeping confidence in his voice. "Noriko, I
have
to deal with Duncan. No one else can; he's a Deviser. No one else has to. Get me to him. If we don't stop him now, he will be back."

He saw her expression of resignation. She kept the rotorkite on course and said nothing more.

Duncan heard the distant
thup-thup-thup
of a rotorkite. He switched to the cockpit view again.

Captain Walbert turned from the wheel to look at him. "Yes, sir."

"We have more trouble. Doc or some of his men have taken to the air."

"Yes, sir. I've already sent the men to the gun platform."

The liftship's gun opened up before Noriko anticipated it, when the rotorkite was still half a stad away. Doc winced as he heard and felt bullets rap against the fuselage. Immediately the pitch of the engines changed, climbed. Noriko veered, lost some altitude, then gained a little back. She began evasive maneuvers, making the aircraft a more difficult target.

She brought the rotorkite in from astern, so close beside the liftship's great vertical fin that Doc feared a sudden breeze would hurl them into it, so close to the liftship's skin that the man at the ship's tail lookout position ducked down into his niche as the rotorkite passed over.

She was so low, in fact, that the men on the armament platform, toward the bow, couldn't depress their guns far enough to hit her without endangering the liftship. Doc actually felt the rotorkite's landing gear hit the liftship's skin; the kite bounced a little higher and continued forward, just above the curve of the ship's skin, until they were halfway or more to the bow.

"Best do it now," Noriko said. "Hear the engine? We will not get another pass; I have to land."

Doc didn't dare open the gullwing door. He'd be fighting rotor wash and affecting the rotorkite's flight characteristics. He kicked the window out instead. He leaned out.

Five paces below was the skin of the liftship; the rotorkite's window, still in its frame, hit it and began bouncing down its curving slope. "A little closer, Noriko."

The rotorkite's talk-box popped. Gaby's voice: "Is anyone there?"

While Noriko slowly brought the rotorkite down, Doc leaned out further, drew out his clasp-knife, and pulled it open. He'd need to use it to anchor himself against falling, then cut his way through the skin. He pulled on a pair of gloves; liftship skeletons were made of steel, uncoated for reasons of weight, their crews wearing heavy uniforms and gloves as protection.

Noriko finally felt steady enough to thumb the button on the talk-box. "I'm here, Gaby. With Doc."

"Don't let him get anywhere near Duncan. Duncan's his son—"

Doc grimaced and leaped free. He hit the rubber-cloth surface of the liftship and bounced, rolling down the slope. On his second impact, he managed to drive the knife into the ship's skin. He slid further downslope, cutting a rent three paces long in the skin; then he got his free hand into the tear and stopped sliding.

Wash from the rotors pushed at him as the rotorkite banked away. Noriko must have begun the maneuver as soon as she understood Gaby's statement. But it was too late. He was within striking distance of Duncan at long last.

As Harris got his hands on the lip of the bomb bay, his strength failed him. He hung there, legs wrapped around the trailing rope, and waited for his energy to come back.

It didn't.

He cursed. He'd just have to do the job without it.

Then Darig MacDuncan, the Changeling, stepped into view above and kicked him full in the head.

Sudden, shocking pain in his temple—Harris' right hand slipped and he rotated a half-turn, gripping the lip of the bomb bay floor with only his left. He frantically grabbed the rope with his right.

Just in time. Darig, smiling, stepped on the fingers of his left hand. The pain cost him his grip.

The sudden adrenaline was what he needed. He hauled on the rope for all he was worth, popped up over the lip of the floor, and grabbed Darig's ankle. He yanked. The Changeling fell, scrambling frantically as his legs stretched out over more than a thousand feet of air.

Harris grabbed the Changeling's belt and hauled. The Changeling, teeth bared, grabbed the sturdy base of a winch and didn't budge, so Harris used him for purchase. He pulled himself up atop the blond man and onto the metal floor beyond.

He put his back to the wall of this small metal cabin, next to a doorway hatch. "Give up, Darig." His words came out in gasps as he struggled to gain control of his breath. "Or I'll kick the hell out of you and you'll end up a big red smear on a Neckerdam street."

The Changeling glared. "I am not afraid of death, bug. But I will make it worth something." He grabbed Harris' leg and pushed off, rolling out through the hole.

Harris frantically gripped the lip of the hatch beside him. The Changeling's weight yanked at him, threatened to tear him free; the impact stretched him taut. Another second and he'd slide out the hole, paired with Darig in a skydive to death.

With his free leg, he kicked Darig. He felt the kick land . . . and suddenly there was no more weight on his leg. Harris lay exhausted, gasping, and pulled himself back into the relative safety of the bomb bay.

Duncan flipped his talk-box from empty room to empty room. The only scene that told him anything was that of the hangar, where members of the Novimagos Guard collected his men. He knew his radio transmissions were compromised; he'd heard someone call a testing pattern over his radio on the laboratory squad's frequency.

The grimworlder signal on his tracer was much reduced. Joseph had to have killed most of the grimworlders. Still, two signals remained, one back at the Monarch Building and one . . .

Here. He scowled at the little screen. One of the grimworlders had to be keeping up with the liftship, either on the ground or in the rotorkite he'd heard.

The view on his talk-box flickered and was suddenly gone, replaced by the face of Gaby Donohue. She was dressed in archaic fashion and her hair was much longer than the last time he'd seen her.

"Goodlady Donohue. What an unexpected surprise. I see Joseph hasn't gotten to you yet."

"Joseph's my friend, Duncan."

"Not anymore. He's already killed Harris Greene. He'll be coming for you and Doc soon."

He saw her turn pale. He enjoyed giving people bad news. Their reactions were usually memorable.

Her voice was faint. "You're lying."

"I have no reason to lie."

Her breathing became shallow. He thought he could see hatred struggling with despair within her.

One of them won, but he wasn't sure which. She leaned forward. Her voice was a whisper: "Duncan, there's something I've got to know."

He leaned forward to catch her words. "What's that?"

"Are you Doc's son? Duncan MaqqRee?"

He smiled. "I'm afraid so. A word of advice that will do
you
no good: Some fathers think they can dictate their children's lives forever. Why do you ask?"