“That’s right, but only for a blink of time, over to your right, quite near that wood. Them in the carriers may not have caught it. It was round the hill from them. I only caught it because in my state it’s like having eyes all round. And I was on the alert anyway, wondering if you were in trouble,” Stan admitted. “Frustrating being pinned inside this car. I kept trying to think if there was anything I could do. But there was nothing going on for a while, and then a whole lot of stuff. First this kid comes bursting out through that vinefield there, acting like he’d run himself legless, and makes for this car, glad like. But just as he gets here, all the hovers start going off in different directions off the hill, like pips squirting—”
“That would be when I told Dakros about the young centaur,” I said. “Did you—?”
“See him? Yes, I did,” said Stan. “And I’ll tell you about it as soon as you let that kid up. He’ll be right royally bruised, falling the way he did, and there’s no need to give him cramp as well. And my word on it, he’s not part of this. He was coming to this car for help, Rupert. What’s his name, by the way?”
“Nick,” I said. I looked down at Nick’s sizeable curled-up figure. Stan was probably right. He would be getting cramp. I compromised. I eased the stasis a little and levitated the boy back into the seat of my car in a rattle of dust. The effort brought back the tremors in my legs. “That’s as far as I go,” I said. “Now tell me about the centaur.”
“Then let me tell it in order,” Stan said. “You need to know it all. This Nick here doesn’t want the hovers to see him for some reason. This car’s sitting here with one door open and the light on inside, the way it is now, and instead of getting into it, he dives on his face and crawls under between the front wheels. And I think, Aye, aye! Thinks they’re looking for him, does he? Using the warm engine to hide body heat, is he, in case they use detectors? Well, well. But I don’t think they do use detectors, or they’d have found the centaur kid by now, and I can see them still looking.”
I turned to see over my shoulder. The very distant lights were now bright, droning hither and thither far out over the dark blue flatness. The sky was dark blue too with only a few pale streaks to the west. “Damn. No, they haven’t found him. What happened next?”
“Well,” Stan said, “I took a bit of a hand then, knowing the free way they have with executions in this Empire. I put a real strong Don’t Notice round this car. Lucky I did too. It’s thanks to me you don’t have your tyres shot out. Young Nick hadn’t hardly wriggled out of sight when this centaur of yours comes by like a bat out of hell. Talk about go! They can go. Two hearts, two pairs of lungs. Beat any racehorse hollow. And this one had good reason to go. First, he go
es flying up this path, and next thing I know there’s a car, normal Earth-style car, screaming round the corner of that vineyard there, shimmying sideways, clouds of dust, and roaring flat out after the centaur. Man and a woman in it, woman driving. She sees the centaur, puts on her full headlights, pins him as he gallops, and the man leans out of his window and starts firing a pistol at the centaur. Bang, bang, bang. Centaur jumps sideways like a goat and then hurdles the hedge into the vineyard on the other side. Man missed, I think. I hope. Jumped like a bird flying, that centaur.”
“Did you see the people in the car?” I said urgently.
“No, too dark, what with their headlights on,” Stan said. “Man was on the other side, so I only caught a glimpse after they went past. Head, elbow, flash, crack – you know. Woman was just a shape.”
“Did she wear glasses?” I demanded. If Nick was here, then that car was almost certainly Maree’s.
“Don’t think so,” said Stan. “Anyway, they’re long gone now. They stopped where the centaur went over the hedge, brake lights, squeal, more dust, and the man starts getting out. Anyway, his door opens and I know he’s seen this car too. They were both magic users, so they were bound to see it in the end. And I start thinking quick, What can I do to stop him coming back and making a mess of this car, and maybe finding Nick as well? Not a lot, frankly. Then luckily one of those hovers spotted them and comes bawling down this lane, straight overhead of me. I was more or less yelling at them to go and beam their tyres, but they’d got no orders to do that, so they just sit in the air overhead of the other car. Man gets back in. Woman drives off, and they make transit as they start up, and hey presto! Gone. The hover goes back and forth a bit, and they don’t see this car, or maybe they know it’s yours, and anyway they’re after the centaur, but by then they’ve lost him too. So off they drone. Then, after a bit, when things are quiet again, young Nick crawls out from under, gets in the driving seat, shuts the door and more or less cries his eyes out. He was so upset, I wondered whether to speak to him, to tell the truth.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked.
“He thought he was alone, see,” Stan explained.
“I see.” I looked at Nick, curled up on the seat of my car, and felt slightly ashamed of my suspicions. “The people in that car,” I said, “murdered three children and another centaur up on that hill. The first shot you heard was aimed at me.”
“In that case,” Stan said, “you’ve every right to be paranoid. But I reckon it wasn’t this kid.”
“You’re probably right,” I said, and took the stasis off.
Nick, because of the strength of the stasis, had no idea there had been an interval. He went on with the motions he had been making and scrambled frantically out of the car. “Thank god you’re back!” he said. His voice brayed and squawked with hurry and misery. “Please come quickly! My mother’s gone and stripped Maree!”
“What? Opened a world gate through her? Are you sure? Where?” I snapped. Of all the hundred questions I wanted to ask, these seemed the most urgent.
“Yes I am sure! I was there!” Nick brayed. “Over on that hill with the wood, in the lane. Oh please can you get there quickly?”
“Get in,” I said, “at once. Give me directions.” While Nick scrambled round the car and tumbled into the passenger seat, I was in the driver’s seat and had the car moving before the doors were shut. If someone has been stripped by being in the exact place where a way of transit between worlds is made, you have to get to them quickly, before the two bodies they have been split into lose touch with one another. And Maree must have been split nearly half an hour ago now. As I snapped on the headlights and zigzagged among the vineyards to Nick’s directions, I cursed my stupid, suspicious delay. “Was your mother alone?” I said to Nick.
“No. She was with a man called Gram White,” Nick said. “They didn’t see me. I kept out of sight. But I couldn’t do a thing to help. Then a centaur boy came out of the woods and shouted they were murderers, and all I could think of was get to your car while they were all yelling at one another. I just ran through vinefields and hoped you’d be back when I got there. Turn right again here.”
I turned in a slew of dust and raced along the lane that ran along the foot of the hill, between the green-black slope of the wood and a bare black hedge, with my headlights lurid on the yellow surface of the track. There was no mistaking the small white body in the distance.
“There! There she is!” Nick shouted.
I screamed up to it and stopped in a slide of gravel. Nick and I both jumped out. “Keep back!” I warned him. “I have to see exactly where the gate opened.”
He obeyed without question. He more or less tiptoed behind me as I went carefully up to Maree, keeping to the side where the wood and the hill loomed over the lane. Maree lay with her feet towards our blazing headlights, with her head on one arm, almost as if she had gone to sleep in the road. I guessed she had thrown that arm up as a reflex when the gate opened.
“Describe exactly where they were, those other two,” I said. “Better still, move carefully to where you think your mother was and then guide me to where White was standing.”
Nick nodded, a little bleak tremble of the chin, and went sidestepping gently out into the lane, almost to the bare hedge on the other side. He stopped about a foot to the rear of Maree’s motionless white shoe soles and some six feet to one side of her. “The man was pretty well exactly opposite,” he said, “the same distance away.”
“You sure?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I know because I can see the marks where we left Maree’s car, just over by the wood there, beside you. Maree was going to unlock the door and they came out round the back of the car.”