THREE SOMEONES

1563 4D

Enough, Turiosten said. Andrew slowed himself to a standstill. Jeddin moved a stride further before coming to rest. The air thinned, and Andrew‘s muscles lightened; but fatigue shot bars of soreness through his arms and legs. We must find food very soon.

“Turiosten‘s hungry again. How far are we from the Complex?” Andrew looked ahead at the continuing distance of street. They didn’t seem any further along.

“We’re about two major ringstreets away. And I’ve got both Onnhasshakh and the new one complaining inside me.” Jeddin tensed. “I hear the footsteps again.” He turned to look back.

“See anything?”

“Yes, they’ve followed us. Now what?” Jeddin turned to Andrew.

“You’ve got the extra muscles and nerves. Can you fight? We might as well make a stand. I’ll give it my best.” Andrew regretted tossing away the knives. The two men moved to one side of the street and stood and waited as the dark bulges, hugging both streetwalls, moved closer. The group on the far side of the street resolved itself from a bulge into a huddle of children of different sizes.

It was not the same group as before. In the better light, Andrew spotted a taller girl with a dark pullover dress of crystal fiber, and a fingerbone cap. “Mama Bones?”

She’s got one of ours with her, Turiosten said. Onnhasshakh tells me her name is Faorhnin.

The girl in the pullover spoke. “Someone here wants to see you. Three someones. Here.” And Janny and VeeVee and Billy T pushed through everyone else and jumped up at him and wrapped themselves around him at different levels like tree-rats.

“Daddy!” they cried. Andrew inhaled the smells of them and hugged them, staggering back to lean against the wall. He gulped.

The girl went on, looking at Jeddin. “So you’ve got the hungry friends too now? And yours is Onnashak? And a new one?”

“Yes. And Onnhasshakh is very hungry. We had to get away from another pack of— family of children.” Jeddin turned to the overwhelmed Andrew. “So you know these kids?”

“These are the ones I told you about. But I didn’t know about the girl having an alien.” Andrew nodded at Mama Bones.

Faorhnin knows where we can eat. Can we go now?

Andrew and Jeddin exchanged looks that said, “Is yours saying what mine is?” Andrew carefully pried Janny and VeeVee and Billy T loose and set them firmly on the street. The three stood looking up at him with round eyes.

VeeVee and Billy T wore new garb.

VeeVee‘s purple and orange smock now sported the skin from a human face, tied around it so the eyeholes spread, squinting nearly shut, across the little girl’s chest. Andrew studied the distorted face. At first it only looked oddly familiar, but then the two parallel vertical rows of nostrils registered in his awareness: Parthren, the woman who’d taken him to Arlen‘s garden. His jaw dropped.

Billy T‘s amulet of bird’s legs now dangled many strands of woven pale-green metal vine leaves, caught up into loops around her thin body. The beautiful, indolent Indrio. Andrew frowned, and grinned, and drew the little girls in around his legs. They looked up, grinning back with gaps in their teeth, and hugged him.

Andrew turned to Mama Bones. “Why are you here? We’re trying to get to where it’s safer for us.”

She said, “We chased another family out of Sobi and caught them down here. They were easy to kill.” She pointed back the way they had come, and smiled.

“Why don’t you come with us?” Andrew stopped. These children were safe anywhere in the City. They didn’t need him, especially with an alien of their own. Then he remembered, and muttered, “Turiosten, ask her friend if she’s had qaqanialh, I hope I said that right.”

That’s close enough to the right way. I asked her and she said no. And it will soon be over. Faorhnin would like very much to celebrate with us. She and Onnhasshakh have joined once before.

“We’ll come to where we can join our hungry friends,” Mama Bones said, nodding. “Mine, Faorhnin, is lonely. She complains all the time, even when I feed her well.”

Both Jeddin and Andrew nodded vigorously.

A tiny boy ran up to Mama Bones and curled a message into her hand. She started, looked back along the street, and said, “There’s a group of men coming. They’re armed and armored and moving at a fast march.”

Jeddin said, “It’s probably a City attack force going for the Complex at the bottom. Let’s go.” Without any further discussion the two men and the children broke into a run. To Andrew‘s surprise, the smallest kept pace with the group without apparent effort.

So this means we have to wait even longer to feed.

Andrew, breathing hard, kept silent.

Are you listening?

“No, I’m trying to find a more effective way of telling you to shut up.”

Fine. Call me when it’s meal time. Not before.

“Agreed.”

They ran past one ringway crossing, and approached the next. The smaller children began to lag. Jeddin abruptly turned left into a recess, leading them through a doorway into a stairwell. He waited until all the children had passed in, then shoved the door closed, snapped off the handle, and wedged it between the door and the sill. They all began to climb the spiral steel steps.