Chapter 47

As soon as they walked out we were all three in motion. Asmedogh would ride my chest underneath Sam's fortunately oversize jacket, out of the view of anyone we might encounter. There was a brief delay when Asmedogh realized he'd have trouble holding the beacon while clinging to me, but Cam solved that by whipping out one of her scarves and with a few quick folds fashioning a sort of holster she could strap around his waist.

He stood still for her to tie it, and the now-faint scar on his chest where I'd cut him was visible. As she finished she reached out and traced it lightly with her finger. I could even see the small marks of my stitches, the thread long since absorbed.

"I will carry this mark always," came Asmedogh's voice into my head. "It will be a reminder to me of your great friendship, the friendship that perhaps our two species may share one day."

Camilla heard it too, and she smiled.

Asmedogh took his position and we were on our way. Prudently I carried Brown's gun in my hand as we opened the door, but there was no-one there and I leaned back in and tossed it onto the couch. I'd never fired one in my life, and I sure wasn't getting into gunfights if they saw through our ruse and stopped us.

We took the stairs down a floor, slipped out through the unlatched door onto the one below, and hurried over to ring for the elevator. One came promptly and we got in. Unlike the penthouse car, this one served the parking garage directly. I pressed "G2" and we started down.

At that hour I was hoping for no other passengers and we got lucky, the car didn't stop all the way. I grinned slightly as the indicator showed us passing the lobby level, where presumably Brown and Smith were waiting. Or, if our little masquerade had been effective, perhaps they weren't any more. I hoped; we still had hurdles to surmount.

It took only a minute or two to locate Sam's rental, which was right where he'd said. We got in, Asmedogh concealed himself under the folds of Camilla's skirt, and I followed the signs to the exit. I patiently waited for an obviously sleepy attendant to ring up the ticket Sam had left on the dash, demand what seemed to me an exorbitant $30, take the money and raise the barrier, and then we were on the street.

There was almost no traffic, and after making a couple of turns I could see no-one even faintly interested in us. I got us on the main road and made straight for the desert I'd been able to view out our hotel window.

It took me several more turns to find the right road; I had only a direction to guide me, didn't know the city at all, and annoyingly each street I took seemed to dead-end in shoddy commercial or industrial parks. Finally, though, I came to one going the right way and signed with a state route number, and figured it would do. Sure enough, in short order we were leaving the last vestiges of human construction and there was nothing but emptiness on either side.

Except for Camilla occasionally pointing to street signs none of us had spoken since we'd left the hotel. I broke the silence with a profound sigh of relief. We'd got this far, and the rest seemed easy. I said as much.

"Not entirely, Nick," Cam corrected me. "We still have to get off the road far enough that Asmedogh's rescue ship can get down with nobody seeing. Get down, wait for him to board, and then take off again. And we can't drive through that"—she motioned to the seemingly endless soft sand that flanked the road.

I realized, annoyedly, that she was right. We drove on another eight, then ten, then twelve miles, and the landscape remained unchanged. And time was pressing, for several reasons. First, by now Brown and Smith had certainly unmasked our rather rudimentary trickery and might have set the state patrols to looking for us; there were only few ways we might have gone and they could come across us at any time. Second, I could see the faint lights of another town in the sky ahead, and I didn't want to reach it. Third, time was passing, I didn't know how quickly Asmedogh's people would respond to the beacon, and daylight would make things a lot more difficult if not completely impossible.

It was growing increasingly frustrating when I suddenly found myself shooting right past what looked to be some kind of dirt road heading off to our left. I braked sharply, negotiated a U-turn—there was no traffic in sight, and we'd passed only a handful of cars going the other way since we'd got out of the city—and drove back a lot more slowly. The road, when I found it again, sure didn't look like much, and there were no signs of recent tire-marks, but it was the best bet I'd seen so far. There were no signs, and no lights as far as I could see ahead. I turned down it and proceeded carefully.

We got only fifty yards or so until we came to an unexpected gate made of wooden uprights sunk into the sand on either side, wooden crosspieces and rusty metal mesh. I stopped and Cam got out to open it, but quickly got back in. "Padlocked," she said succinctly. "We'll have to go back."

"Not necessarily," I told her. "What kind of padlock? New?" Was the road still in active use?

"No, it's as rusty as the chain link," she said. "Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?"

"Mmm-hmm. I'll bet this car's tougher than that ratty gate."

She just laughed. "I'll bet you're right. But switch off the headlights first, Nicky. If a car comes by they'll see us from the road. Can't you just drive by moonlight?" There was about a half-moon, and it was still well above the horizon.

I did that, backed up a few yards, revved the engine and then gunned it straight for the gate. We all braced ourselves, but the impact was almost negligible. The wood shattered, the gate flew open with a complaining screech of protest, and we were through.