THE LEADER OF THE Westminsters had knocked Dan down. “I’ve got no time for this asshole now,” he’d told Ludd and Angel.
Crouched against a pile of rubble, Dan asked, “Where’s Nancy Sands?”
Angel dropped down next to him. “Shut up now,” he advised.
“Is she dead?”
“Take it easy. We don’t know who all’s dead yet.”
He’d been brought inside the lofty abbey. Carved stone walls rose up high on three sides. The fourth wall of this section had long since fallen away, and you could see the weedy, potted field they’d just crossed.
“Bastards,” the lean, black young man who headed the gang was saying. “Goddamn TKs. Swooped down, using all those freak tricks of theirs. Killing, smashing.”
Sprawled across the wide expanse of mosaic floor were at least a dozen bodies.
Dan, hunched, started moving from corpse to corpse.
Nancy was not among them.
“Buggers took stuff, too,” the black Jamaica told Ludd. “Looted us.”
“They always do that.”
“It was worse this time, goddamn it. They carried off the bleeding Coronation Chair—and the Stone of Scone.”
“What the hell they want with that?”
“Maybe they’re planning to crown some bugger king,” said the angry Jamaica. “Maybe they just want to take turns sitting on the fucker.”
Dan made his way back to where Angel was standing. “How can I find out about Nancy?”
Angel caught hold of his arm. “They probably took the injured into the Cloisters,” he said quietly. “We can go look there first off.”
They’d moved only a few steps when Jamaica noticed them. “Where you taking that bugger?”
“I’m just going to—”
“Who the hell is he, anyway?”
“Outsider,” put in Ludd. “Tourist bloke. We caught him and brought him here to see what valuables he—”
“Just kill him,” instructed Jamaica. “We’ve got no time for him. Later you can go through his pockets and—”
“Wait now.” Dan broke free of Angel’s grip and walked up to the leader. “I’m not a damned tourist, I’m here looking for Nancy Sands. I didn’t come here to do you any harm or—”
“Shut up right now.”
“Is Silverhand Sally around?” asked Dan.
Jamaica was sliding a snubnosed lazgun out of his thigh holster. “You know Sal?”
“Nancy does, and so—”
“Jamaica, it won’t hurt to let him chat a bit with our Sal,” put in Angel. “After that, if she doesn’t know him, then we can kill him off. Okay?”
Jamaica dropped the weapon back into its holster. After rubbing his palm across his crimson tunic, he said, “All right, okay. She’s in the nave. Take him there and if he makes any trouble on the way, he’s dead and done for.”
“All I want is—”
“He won’t make any trouble,” promised Angel, tugging at Dan’s arm. When they were walking along a dim, vaulted corridor, he said, “That was very risky, getting beaky with Jamaica. He’s not a chap who’s too awfully fond of debating.”
“Yeah, I know that, but—”
“You on the other hand truly love to argue.”
Dan nodded. “Guess I do, yeah.”
There were seven or eight young people in the large, stonewalled room Angel brought him to. Three of them had been wounded and were bandaged. None of them was Nancy.
Silverhand Sally finished bandaging the third and turned toward Angel. She was a slim girl of about seventeen, blonde, wearing tan trousers, a gray tunic, and a gunbelt that held two lazguns. Her right hand and arm to the elbow were of silvery metal. “Who’s that with you?”
“I’m Dan Cardigan.” He crossed the mosaic floor to her. “You’re a friend of Nancy’s and—”
“Dan Cardigan.” She stood. “Sure, she told me about you.”
“I figured she might be staying with you, so I came to find her,” he explained. “Where is she?”
Sally shook her head. “I’m sorry, Dan. The Tek Kids took some prisoners,” she said quietly. “Nancy was one of them.”
Sally, her chill metallic hand holding his arm, was leading Dan along a shadowy, vaulted corridor. They were moving away from the cookfires, and darkness started to close in. The intricate carvings on the stone walls and the ornate wooden ornamentation were barely discernible. “You should’ve eaten,” she told him.
“Not very hungry.”
“Dog meat’s not bad,” the blonde young woman said. “Takes a bit of getting used to. Mostly, though, that’s because in the world you and I come from, we think of them only as pets.”
“You ever going to go back?”
“Mind that fallen masonry, scrunch over close to this wall,” she cautioned. “No, I’m here for life.”
“Why?”
“Because this is better than that was.”
“Parents?”
“Father mostly.” She guided him through an arched doorway. “After my accident, after I got my imitation arm, he turned much worse. Not that he was ever a very good dad.”
Dan asked her, “The arm you have now—that’s not the one they got you originally, is it?”
“Oh, no, not at all. No, they bought me a very proper, very conventional one. Highly believable and looking just exactly like flesh and blood. Duck your head for a minute along here and keep an eye cocked for bats,” she warned as they entered another long, partially ruined corridor. “Might be a few rats underfoot, too.”
“So why the silver arm?”
“Well, I simply grew tired of the bullshit,” she replied. “Seemed like every time I’d touch anybody with the replacement, they’d cringe or look all nervous. I decided, why hide the damn thing? I got me a nice shiny robot arm and now there’s no question as to whether it’s real or not. If I touch you, you know damn well what I touched you with and fuck you if you don’t like it.”
They’d reached a room that was nearly intact. Statues and carvings ringed it.
Sally let go of him. “You can bunk safely here for tonight,” she told him. “On one of those straw mats yonder.” From under her tunic she produced a squat chunk of tallow candle. “Probably have the place to yourself, since most of them think it’s haunted hereabouts. This used to be called the Poets’ Corner.” Lighting the candle, she stuck it down on a stone bench.
To his right Dan noticed a wall carving of someone referred to as “O rare Ben Jonson.”
He asked, “What’s likely to happen to Nancy?”
“Best not to think about it, Dan.”
“I can’t just let them—”
“It’s tough, I know. But believe me, the TKs will kill you dead if you try to go near their digs at Buckingham Palace.”
“But she’s a friend of yours, too. How can—”
“Living here, being part of a gang, that means you can’t afford to be sentimental.”
“We’re not talking about making stew out of dogs,” he said to her, angry. “This is a girl who may be raped or tortured or even killed.”
Sally touched his arm with her real fingers. “I’d like to help, but there’s nothing to do,” she said. “You saw what happened here, how many of us they hurt and killed.”
“I thought gangs like yours believed in revenge.”
“Sure, but not in suicide.” She walked over, kicking at a sleeping mat with her foot. “Eventually we’ll do something, you can count on that, but it’ll be carefully planned.”
“Meantime, Nancy’s in danger.”
“Yes, but that can’t be helped,” Sally said. “You’d best turn in now. I have to get back.”
“Why’d she come here?”
“You already know that. Nancy was looking for some kind of sanctuary.”
“No, I mean why did she run away from the McCays?”
“She didn’t like them much.”
“Maybe not, but her life wasn’t in danger there and it sure as hell is here.”
Sally said, “Well, she overheard some conversations.”
“About what—her father?”
The girl nodded. “It’s funny, you know, some girls take one hell of a long time to see through their dads,” she said. “Nancy, in spite of everything, had been going along thinking that Bennett Sands was an innocent chap who’d been maligned and framed by the authorities.” She laughed. “And him one of the Tek kingpins. But, you know, you couldn’t get her to believe that.”
Dan moved closer to her. “Why’d she change, what did she find out?”
“She didn’t confide all that much in me, Dan. But I know she happened to overhear the McCays talking about a business venture that was going to involve her father.”
“A Tek business venture?”
“Exactly, and something quite big and important,” answered Sally.
“How’s he going to run Tek business from prison?”
“Maybe he’s not planning to stay in prison. I’m not sure,” she said. “All I know is that whatever Nancy overheard upset her a good deal. She had to get away from there for a while to think everything over.”
“She could’ve come to me for help.”
“I think eventually she was going to,” said Sally. “Confide everything she’d learned to you and your dad. But, see, she still had a feeling that doing that would be betraying her father. That’s why she wanted some time to make up her mind about just what to do. Of course, dear old pop had betrayed Nancy for years and thought nothing of it, but she didn’t see things that way.” Patting his arm, she leaned and kissed him on the cheek. “Bed down. I’ll fetch you early in the morning and we’ll see about getting you safely back to your own.”
After a few seconds he answered, “Yeah, that’ll be the best thing, I guess. Thanks, Sally.”
She left him.
He looked around the Poets’ Corner, at the statues and carvings. “Longfellow, Chaucer,” he recited absently. “Milton, Gray.”
He sat on a straw mat for a while, watching the flickering flame on the fat candle.
When he figured it must be past midnight, he took up the candle and started back the way he’d come.
Soon he reached a break in the wall. Beyond showed foggy night. Extinguishing the candle, he set it carefully down on the stones. Then he slipped out into the darkness.
He was heading for Buckingham Palace.
Behind him in the fog a solitary figure followed.