Dark of the Woods

V

She had not regained consciousness by the time they reached the aviary, and though he did not feel good about interrupting her sleep, he administered a stimulant to her with a hypodermic and began vigorously rubbing her cheeks and hands. There was so little time to do so much that he required her assistance every step of the way.

She stirred, muttered sleepily, sat partway up without opening her oval eyes. Her wings uncrinkled a bit, strained to open, then settled back and folded into place. She shook her head, made blubbering sounds, and finally looked up at him. There were dark circles under her eyes, but they only served to make her that much more stunning, intriguing.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“At the aviary with my things.”

The wolves…”

“I'll tell you as we pack things,” he said, pulling her to her feet. “You feel up to working a little?”

“I'm tired. But I can manage,” she said.

“The arm?”

“It doesn't hurt anymore.”

“Let's hurry then.”

She took time to kiss him, once, long and languidly, then they began rounding up compact food products, concentrates, thermos jugs for water, portable electric torches, everything it seemed likely they might find use for and be able to carry without much trouble. Once, she paused to try to persuade him that he should turn her back to them, try to make amends. He convinced her that such a suggestion not only insulted him and underrated his feelings about her but was totally fanciful since the Alliance rep was now out for blood and revenge and would never accept anything less. The packing resumed at the same furious pace.

“But where are we going?” she asked as they worked the last of the items Davis felt they needed into the rucksacks and the single suitcase.

He started to answer, then only packed more quickly. Several minutes later, he said, “If we can get to the woods, buy some time, maybe they'll think we died in the mountains during the winter. Maybe we will. But well try like the devil not to. And if we make it, maybe, in the spring, I'll be able to go into the port city without any trouble, unrecognized.”

“It's no good,” she said.

He shrugged. He knew it was unworkable as well as she. But what else had been left open to them? They were nothing now but two scurrying creatures caught in the web of the megalomaniacs, the power seekers, mice in the walls of an inconceivably vast social order. Their only chance was to act exactly like mice, living off that order, in the fringes of that order, without being discovered and eradicated. Not the best of lives. But better than being dead.

“I may have a suggestion,” she said.

He continued to pack, stuffing the last few items into the bulging rucksack. “What's that?”

“A fortress.”

He looked up as he strapped the flap of the sack down, not quite grasping what she was trying to tell him. “What?”

“A fortress. Remember my telling you about them, about how they were supposed to be the thing that would turn the course of the war in the favor of my people?”

The word clicked into place then, and all the notes he had taken on the subject and studied in detail appeared before his mind with the almost total recall he possessed. According to Leah, the Demosian government had constructed, during the tail end of the war when the sterilizing gases had had their effect and there was a grave shortage of fighters, four fortresses deep within the earth, scattered, over this one large continent on which most of the winged people had made their homes. The fortresses were deep, impregnable shelters against every sort of attack and were equipped with, according to rumors, experimental laboratories for the development of new weapons — and experimental genetics labs which were to find some method of producing more Demosians without the need of fertile men and women. The great push by the Alliance forces had come just as the fortresses were completed, and the men who would have staffed them were needed in the last desperate attempt to stave off the Earthmen — which, of course, failed. The fortresses, if they ever had existed, were never discovered. Leah's grandfather had been an engineer in charge of the heavy construction workers in the building of the nearest of these fortresses and had been assigned, with his family, to occupy quarters there to take charge of the maintenance once the structure was in operation. But he died in the last battle.

“Could these fortresses be myths?” he asked. “A desperate people will evolve all sorts of ethereal fantasies to give them hope.”

“My grandfather was a realist,” she said. “It was no myth.”

“And you know the location?”

“Not exactly. But from listening to my grandfather and analyzing what I can remember, I've since decided it has to be inside the mountain we call Tooth, which is a good ways from here, but not so far that we cannot make it on these provisions.”

He thought a moment, then stood, grabbed the rucksacks. “It's worth a try. We don't have anything better in mind. Don't get your hopes up, love. Even if there is a fortress, it might very well be crumbling and uninhabitable.”

“They were not built to crumble.”

“Perhaps,” he said, smiling. “I'll take these out to the car and come back for the suitcase. You think you can wear that coat without hurting your wings?”

She looked at the two coats he had laid out for them, picked up a huge, furry Alaskan survival coat that would come down below his knees an inch or two but which came to her toes. “It'll be all right.”

He loaded the car, helped her down the rickety stairs since she could not fly while wearing the survival coat, and got her in the car. He wore the fall coat he had, plus several shirts, and he was not too cold — though he wondered whether a day or two spent in the open would have him as warm.

“Trouble,” he said as he pulled the grav car out onto the lane which the snow had obscured.

“What?” she asked.

He pointed to the radio. “The bulb has stopped blinking. Which means they may have decided their rep is in trouble.”

The snow whooshed up around them, obliterating the forest on either side as the grav plates' field disturbed the powdery stuff. Davis drove the car back the lane, toward the Sanctuary, until Leah directed him to the best point of entrance into the woods for the journey to the mountain called Tooth and the fortress that might or might not be there. He angled across open fields at her insistence, which meant the speed of the grav car had to be reduced. He kept anxiously studying the road in the rearview mirror, certain the dark shapes of police vans would glide into view at any moment. It was a good four miles through the rising, sparsely vegetated foothills, always rising, disappearing from the highway for short moments, then reappearing again as they started up the slope of the next hill which was higher than the last. In ten minutes, they arrived at the edge of the woods where he drove the car between the trees, scraping the paint from it, tearing off a strip of chrome, but effectively concealing it from anyone down there on the lane who might chance to look up and see the dark gleam of metal.

“It's on foot now,” he said. “I'm going to give you an injection of adrenalin and a few c.c.s of a speedheal restorative. Roll up your sleeve.”

She struggled with the bulky garment, finally managed to oblige, and didn't protest when the needles punctured her slim arm. Two little marks of blood were left behind, but she had bled enough recently not to be bothered by that.

“I'll carry a rucksack on each shoulder and switch the suitcase from hand to hand until you've built enough energy through those drugs to lend me support.”

“I can do it now,” she said.

“Yeah. Maybe for ninety seconds. Come on, love. I know you're a brave girl and a strong girl, but let's be honest with ourselves. When we're tired, we rest. If we don't make that rule, we'll collapse before we're a third of the way to this fortress of yours.”

They got out, Proteus immediately behind, and Davis loaded up with the gear. As he was picking up the suitcase, both rucksacks firmly on his shoulders, Leah gasped and said, “Look! Down at the Sanctuary!”

He looked back down the rippling landscape at the temple and the Sanctuary, which was only partially visible on the other side of the religious structure. Perched on the hilltop around the ugly place were four grav vehicles much too large to be anything but police vans. Even as they watched, the things began moving away from the Sanctuary, down the lane toward the aviary where he had been doing his research. Their headlights were like the luminous eyes of giant moths, slicing down the darkness that had begun to descend. In minutes, they would find their prey had fled. And, Davis noted miserably, the grav car had left a perfect trail up the foothills to the forest, a trail a blind and noseless bloodhound could follow. The only thing that might possibly yet save them was the night which was rapidly settling over the land.

“Come on,” he said to Leah. “I'll break the trail.” He stomped off into the trees, trying not to look as frightened as he was…