THERE HAD BEEN TWO of them, both carrying highly polished electroknives. When Dan had tried to explain to them what he was doing in the ruins, one of them slapped him hard across the face.
“We don’t want any bleeding backtalk, puffer,” he warned in his whispery voice. “You just keep it buttoned and come along with us, hear.”
“But I’m—”
“What did I tell you about talking back?” The lanky blond young man slapped Dan again.
This blow hit him across the mouth, splitting his lip and drawing blood. Spitting, Dan started at the young man.
The other boy, who was thin and at least a year younger than Dan, stepped between them. “He doesn’t mean any harm, Ludd,” he said, catching hold of Dan’s arm and shoving him back.
“Let him try to come at me, Angel. I’d like a chance to slice his heart out.”
“No, we have to take him back to camp. That’s the rules.”
“Rules, my arse.” Ludd swung his knife up in front of his face, flicking the switch that started the sawtooth blade whirring. “What’s to stop us from slitting him open here and now, taking his dabs, and—”
“That’s against the rules,” warned Angel. “Strangers have to be taken to camp. After that, if Jamaica decides, we can kill him.”
“Whole blooming country’s going to hell because of bloody rules.” He slashed angrily at the air with his knife, shut it off, and jammed it into his thigh holster. “All right, all right, we’ll act like raving twits and take him back with us.”
Angel knuckled Dan’s upper arm. “It isn’t a far walk,” he told him quietly. “Don’t try to break loose, don’t say a bleeding word—otherwise Ludd may decide to do for you.”
After a few seconds, Dan nodded curtly.
After leaving the detective agency offices, Jake walked along Berkeley Street. As the day waned, it grew grayer and colder and a harsh wind filled the crowded walkways. The skytrams flying slowly overhead were brightly decorated for the holiday season; each one playing a different Xmas tune from the speakers planted in its red and green underside.
Stationed on the corner was a chrome-plated newsbot, hawking the Daily Skan. Jake paused, seemingly to listen to the mechanical man recite the menu of scandalous news to be found in this afternoon’s edition.
“Is the VP a puff?” asked the bot in his deep tinny voice: “Who caught Senator Yates-Drake with his trousers down? Are there Martians living in Manchester? Whose knickers were found in the War Sec’s skyvan?”
A plump black man brushed by Jake. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, poking his Banx card into the appropriate slot in the robot’s side.
“Here’s a bloke what knows what’s news.” Whirring and rattling, the robot swiftly produced an eight-page faxcopy of the Skan out of the wide slot across his chest. “Here you are, guv, hot off the blooming presses.”
As the customer accepted his newspaper, Jake moved on. He was certain now, as he’d suspected since leaving Bairnhouse’s, that he was being tailed. Crossing the street, he went through one of the arched entryways to the Berkeley Square Multimall.
It was exceedingly warm on the ground level of the vast mall, and the air smelled of pine boughs and hot toddy. Jake hopped onto a servoramp and let it start him on a slow circuit of the place. He rode by a string of selfserve boutiques—Stylz, Fitz, Ragz—and then past a great, sprawling food market called Farmer Dell’s Hydroponic Farmstand, Branch #225 of My Man Chumley’s Fish & Chips and Branch #316 of Pubz, Inc. He stepped off the moving ramp in front of the St. George & The Dragon Inn. The neowood sign dangling over the wide doorway of the simulated country inn offered a crude depiction of the armored saint slaying a fierce, fire-breathing creature. The paint was convincingly aged to make it seem centuries old.
Jake ignored the main entrance, slipping instead into the imitation courtyard next to the imitation inn. The yard was paved with authentic-looking cobblestones, and a wagon loaded with real straw was parked near the simulated stables.
Running, Jake stationed himself behind the wagon. He couldn’t be seen from here, but he had a good view of the entrance of the courtyard.
Within the shadowy stables robot horses snorted and shifted on their hooves. Even the smell of a real stable, suitably subdued, came drifting out of the shadows.
A moment passed before a figure slipped, cautiously, into the courtyard.
It was a slim young woman, auburn-haired, in her late twenties. She was the one Jake had noticed following him. She might be with Scotland Yard, yet he doubted that.
When she was a few feet from the stable door, he eased out from behind the wagon and poked the barrel of his stungun into her back.
Dan had seen what was left of the vast Westminster Abbey rising up out of the fog. The remains of the Gothic structure lay dead ahead across a wide, weedy field that was pocked with craters and dotted with scrubby brush and a few stunted trees. Most of its nearest tower was gone and there were great gaps in the stone walls.
Dozens of sooty pigeons were circling the abbey in a restless way.
Ludd held up his hand and halted. “Bollocks,” he muttered, moving behind a gnarled tree midway across the field.
Angel stopped, too, yanking Dan over beside him. “Something’s bloody wrong.” He was squinting up at the pigeons as they circled in the foggy sky.
Whipping out his knife, Ludd said, “Something’s gone and got them bleeding birds all excited.” Uneasiness sounded in his voice.
“I’ll slip closer,” offered Angel, letting go of Dan, “to see what’s going on.”
Ludd shook his head. “No, you stay here with the ponce,” he ordered. “I’ll do the bloody reconnoitering.”
“Hell, I’m smaller and quicker.”
“Stick here.” Ducking low, Ludd started a zigzag course across the field.
Dan asked Angel, “What do you think’s wrong?”
He was watching his buddy move closer to the ruined abbey. “Could be most anything,” he answered as the fog swallowed up Ludd. “But those pigeons being agitated like that, it definitely means something must be going on wrong at our camp.”
“Westminster is your camp?”
“I just said that, didn’t I now?”
“But I’m looking for the Westminster Gang.”
“That’s not too smart, since we don’t take kindly to visitors,” said Angel. “Or tourists.”
“Is there a girl named Silverhand Sally with you?”
“How’d you know that name?”
“Somebody told me to ask for her. Is she here?”
“Sal might be or she might not.” He turned to scrutinize Dan. “Why do you want our Sal?”
“Because I’m hoping she can help me find a friend of mine—girl named Nancy Sands.”
“Ar, I see.”
“Do you know Nancy? Is she at the abbey?”
Before Angel could answer, there was a shout from up ahead in the fog. “Been a damned raid!” yelled Ludd through cupped hands. “Get your arse over here, Angel. There’s a lot of people dead.”