voice. And from farther away came an answer, Shhh.
“Subby Subby Subby,” whispered Goss. “Keep those little bells on your slippers as quiet as you can. Sparklehorse and Starpink have managed to creep out of Apple Palace past all the monkeyfish, but if we’re silent as tiny goblins we can surprise them and then all frolic together in the Meadow of Happy Kites.”
He put his finger to his lips and creep-creeped out of the main road into the alley where the voices were. Subby followed him in the same tippy-toe, into the shadow where someone was muttering.
THE LIFT DOORS OPENED, AND BILLY, LOOKING BACK FROM THE FIRE escape, saw three dark-dressed figures in motorcycle helmets. Dane had his weapon up. There was a percussion.
“Go,” said Wati-Kirk from Billy’s pocket, and “Go,” said Dane without looking back. Billy and Mo dragged Simon down the stairs.
“What about Dane?” Billy kept saying. But Wati was gone again.
It was many floors down. Adrenalin was all that stopped Mo and Billy collapsing under Simon’s weight. They heard scuffles, muffled by walls, above them. Billy felt a horrid crawl of ghosts on his skin as Simon’s tormentors swept through him. When at last they reached the ground floor Billy was gasping, almost retching.
“Don’t fucking stand there,” said the little Kirk in his pocket. “Move.” A random man at his front door stared at the ghosts of Simon in bewilderment so great he was not even scared. Billy and Mo barrelled toward the elevator shaft and the front door beyond it, but it opened and there were two of Tattoo’s men. Grey cam gear, dark-visored helmets, reaching for weapons.
Mo cried out and threw up her hands. Billy stood in front of her and fired the phaser.
He didn’t panic. He had time to reflect for an instant on how calm he was, that he was raising the weapon and pressing the firing stud.
There was no recoil. There was that kitsch sound, that line of light, punching into the chest of the man at the front and flaring in a bruise of light across him as he flew back. The second man was running at Billy in expert zigzag, and Billy shot several times and missed, scorching the walls.
Mo was screaming. Billy threw out his hand. The man stopped hard as if he had run into something. He bounced against nothing visible. The man butted the nothing with his helmet, with an audible percussion.
Billy did not hear the lift arrive or its doors open. He only saw Dane step out behind the Tattoo’s man and swing his empty speargun hard at that featureless motorcycle helmet, in a curve like a batsman’s. The man went down, his pistol skittering away. His helmet flew off.
His head was a head-sized fist. It clenched and unclenched.
It opened. Its huge palm was face-forward. As the man rose it clenched again. Dane punched him hard on the back of his hand-head. The attacker fell again.
“Come on,” Dane said.
They ran a twisting route to Mo’s car, and they helped her lay the shivering ghost-delirious Simon inside. Tribble whickered. “I can’t promise.”
“See what you can do,” Dane said. “We’ll find you. Did they see you?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “And they don’t know me. Even if …” She looked uncertain. There had been no eyes.
“Go, then. Go.” Dane patted the roof of her car as if releasing it. When she had gone he felt the handles of car doors near them until he found by finger-intuition one he liked, and had it open.
“What are they?” Billy said. “Those men?”
“The knuckleheads?” Dane started the car. There were screams behind them. “Takes a certain sort.” He was exhilarated. “There are advantages. You’ve got to like fighting. You should see them naked. Well, you shouldn’t.”
“How do they see?” They sped into night. Dane glanced at Billy. Grinned and jiggled in his seat and shook his head.
“God, Billy,” he said. “The way your mind works.”
“Right.” It was Wati, back in the Kirk again. “Put some distance between us and Goss and Subby.”
“You genius,” Dane said. “What did you do?”
“Just helps to be able to do voices. I’ll be one second.”
Dane accelerated. He waggled the speargun with his left hand. “This is shit,” he said. “I’ve never had to … We’re going to need more than this. It was crap. I need a new weapon.”
GOSS STOOD STILL AS A BONE. HE LISTENED.
“This is a blind, you see, Subby,” he said. “I’m wondering where Sparklehorse went.”