it?”
The Signalman nodded. “He went silent after that.”
“What secrets?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Who’s Sam Self? Is that a real person?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“No.” If it was a real person, there would be a file somewhere, a thousand miles away back east, in the minds of the Engines. But what good was that to Lowry now?
“All right. Well? Fuck off, then.”
Lowry thought for a moment. Then he called Subaltern Thernstrom over.
“Tell all the officers: We’re going to go slow now. For a while. All right? We’re going to stay on that bastard’s track, right enough, but we’re going to give him some room. See how some things work themselves out.”
“Sir—our orders were to pursue with all—”
“You spying on me, Thernstrom?”
“No, sir.”
“No, sir. The target may speak. Maybe the woman’s not so useless after all. Maybe he likes her. No need to risk confrontation, then. We listen. We wait.”
“Sir—”
“And the Agent speaks to the woman; we’ll learn his plans. His secrets. Stay outside his sight, Thernstrom. He won’t expect that. We’ll see who’s cleverer. We’ll see.”
“Sir, our supplies will run out in four days. We lost a lot in the rains, remember, sir.”
“I remember.”
“After that, we don’t have enough to return.”
“I understand. We’re all in this together, aren’t we?”
“Our orders—”
“Are silent. The Engines do not have access to this information.”
Thernstrom looked shocked. Lowry was shocked, too. It had been a dreadful and blasphemous thing to say.
“You have your orders, Thernstrom.”
Lowry watched the Subaltern walk away. He had no idea where the notion of waiting had come from. Much as he dreaded the wilderness, the idea of watching and spying had a strange appeal; so had he acted selfishly? Had he acted from pride or even viler motives? How would he explain himself if and when there was inquiry? He was suddenly terrified. Thernstrom had gone over to talk to Slate and Drum, and the three of them were gesturing and glancing back Lowry’s way. Lowry turned his back to them, so they couldn’t see his face turn green; he stared out over the hills, over the uneven forests, into the mountains and a livid sunset where in the distance an eagle was circling, searching, suddenly diving! It looked like an eagle—who the fuck knew what sort of monster it was in its guts. It swooped low and Lowry’s gut lurched in time and he felt sick and lonely and shameful.
CHAPTER 31
THE GAMES
In the middle of the night—her hands shaking at the horror of what she was about to do—Liv rose, held the little stone arrowhead like a dagger, and crept silently over to Creedmoor’s sleeping body.
Creedmoor lay on his back, snoring. The rope around the General’s ankle was connected to Creedmoor’s belt. Creedmoor lay with his legs and his arms crossed and his head resting on a mound he’d made of dry river-mud.
Liv stood over him. In the moonlight she could count the tiny white scars on his face. She could see how thin and strawlike his hair was; in the moon, it was quite white and he seemed like an old man. She raised the weapon anyway, over his throat.
His eyes opened quite leisurely, and he smiled up at her.
“No, dear,” he said. “Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”
She dropped the crude blade and recoiled in horror.
“I take no offense. It is my fate to be hounded like a wild beast from every brief resting place. I have chosen it. I am well used to it.” Creedmoor sighed; then he winked to show his good humor. Then he rolled over and was soon snoring again.
She thought that she would never be able to sleep again that night, but as it turned out, she was quite wrong.
In the morning, some instinct prompted Creedmoor to shake out his boots; and indeed, there was a scorpion, glistening and white and red and heavy-coiled like a dead thing’s intestines, hiding in the heel of the left—or, as he observed to Liv, the sinister—boot. “The world is very full of treachery,” he said. She flinched, and he smiled to show he bore no grudge.
In fact, scorpions always reminded Creedmoor of his youthful days in a backwoods scorpion-handling cult in Gacy. (The trick was to be so unrighteously drunk, the creatures would disdain to touch you.) The little beasts now afflicted him, not with fear or distaste, but with a kind of affectionate embarrassment. He stamped on it anyway.
The river’s empty gorge stretched on for another day, and they followed it. Dry mud gave way to a loose and shifting