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Sharrow and Miz ran down through the big ACV's prop wash. `Wish they'd put
those fucking lights out,' Miz gasped.
They splashed through the stream again as Zefla climbed to the door. Tall
splashes in the water announced bullets falling amongst them, and sparks burst
off the rear of the hovercraft; air whistled out of small, ragged punctures in
its skirt. Dloan waited for Keteo, then picked him up and threw the boy
half-way up the ladder. He scrambled the rest.
Cenuij was next, hauling himself hand over hand.
Sharrow and Miz reached the black curve of the ACVs skirt. Dloan made to help
her up, but she nodded him to go next. He paused on the way up as something
pulled at the dark cloth covering his right leg, then he continued.
`Ah!' Miz said, and whirled round. Sharrow looked back to see him glance at
one hand and then stick it behind his back, and look at her. `Nothing,' he
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shouted above the noise of the engines, grinning. Blood dripped into the water
behind him. He nodded at the ladder. `After you,' he yelled.
She stuck the gun in her mouth, gripped the ladder and climbed. Miz was right
beneath her.
Cenuij was in the door, reaching down to her. He looked furious.
`Can you believe it?' he said, grasping her hand. `He threw it away! Thought
it had stopped working, so he threw it away!'
Cenuij pulled her towards him. Roa was further in, yelling into a
communicator. Dloan sat on the floor inside, holding his leg. The ACV was
moving. Shots thumped around the opened door.
Sharrow hauled herself into the doorway and turned to reach down for Miz.
At first she thought Cenuij was doing the same thing, then he slumped heavily
on top of her and tumbled out of the door.
She grabbed at him but missed; he fell past Miz, bounced off the ACV's skirt
and landed slackly on the grassy bank of the stream, limbs flopping spread
around him.
Miz hesitated, looking down and back as spray burst from beneath the
hovercraft's skirt.
Cenuij lay on the grass, staring up at the sky, eyes open, blood pouring from
each side of his head.
The ACV moved away and picked up speed, puffing up great shrouding clouds of
spray into the hollow in front of the waterfall and punching huge, rolling
holes in the smoke from the burning wreckage, all lit by the flames and the
hovercraft's flickering lights. Roa was still shouting. Hands came and held
Sharrow's shoulders.
She saw Miz tense as he looked down at Cenuij, getting ready to leap off the
ladder.
'Miz!' she shouted. He looked up at her. The spray rose about him as the ACV
accelerated, engines barking and clattering.
Cenuij lay still; ten, then twenty metres away as the pulsing light faded
around him. Then the hovercraft's lights finally flicked off.
'Miz!' she screamed into the shadows.
She reached down, felt his hand and pulled him up.
She and Zefla hauled him in through the door.
The small waterfall reflected the fading flames of the planewreck; the hollow
became a bowl of shadows as the
Solo drew away.
Cenuij's body lay motionless on the ground, a dark `X', like something pinned
out, sacrificed to the encroaching darkness.
18 The Dark City
The android crossed the central plaza and walked along the quiet street
through skeins and patches of ground-mist
and past the shells of tall, roofless buildings filled with watery morning
sunlight. The android was slender and a little below the height of the average
Golter male; its outer substance was formed from metal and plastic and it wore
no clothes. Its body had been sculpted to vaguely resemble a rather idealised
male figure, though without genitalia. Its chest was usually said to remind
people of the breastplate from a suit of ancient armour. Its head held two
ear-shaped microphones, two eyes like round sunglass lenses, a flat nose with
two sensory nostril slits, and a small loudspeaker shaped like a pair of
slightly open lips.
Where the buildings gave way to a small park, the android turned and descended
a wide set of curving steps, past arcades edged by tattered, faded awnings,
down towards the mist-strewn waters of the silent harbour. On the esplanade it
turned and made for the Guest's Quarter. Sunlight threw its long thin shadow
behind it, across paving stones that were clean and without litter but cracked
and holed.
The android carried a slim plastic folder in one hand; the plastic went
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slap-slap against its plastic-covered thigh for a few steps as the light
breeze caught it, then the tall figure shifted its arm slightly, holding the
folder further away from its leg. The noise stopped.
Vembyr was a city of many towers and spires and fine, ancient buildings that
curved round a picturesque bay backed by tall forested hills in south-west
Jonolrey. It had been abandoned by humans five millennia earlier after a
nuclear power plant further down the coast had blown up and the winds had been
blowing from that direction. The fall-out had covered the city, forcing its
evacuation. It had lain abandoned for centuries, slowly falling into disrepair
and only ever visited by scientists or their remotes monitoring the slowly
decreasing radiation levels, until the androids had finally won their legal
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