CHAPTER 4
Instinctively, Rafe tried to back up. But the branch dipped under him at the movement, and without visibly setting himself for the effort, the wolf shot into the air toward him. Rafe jerked his dangling feet up level with the branch, and white teeth clicked shut only inches below them as the branch lifted again. Rafe clung to it, not moving.
Slowed by the broadcast power as he was, he had no intention of taking his chances on the ground with a beast like the one below. There had to be other ways of handling this situation than facing a timber wolf with his bare hands.
Lucas was still singing below him in a wavering combination of growl and whine. Feet hooked on the branch now, Rafe leaned forward a little—the branch trembled beneath him—and spoke to the wolf.
“Lucas,” he said. “I’m here to see someone you know. Gabrielle. Can Gabrielle hear me if I talk to you?”
The growling whine broke off for a moment, then picked up again.
“Gabrielle?” said Rafe, raising his voice slightly. “This is Rafe Harald. I talked to you on the phone yesterday—or maybe it was the day before yesterday, now—from the Moon, about Ab. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get here, but Lucas has me trapped on a branch above your front lawn and I can’t go backward or forward.”
He waited. There was no response but the steady, throaty warning of the wolf.
“Gabrielle,” said Rafe loudly. “If you’re Ab’s sister, you know about his work. So do I. That ought to prove I’m no zombie. I know that Ab probably found some way of shielding people against the broadcast influence—or some way of counteracting it. The fact that Lucas here is moving around when the power’s on, in the middle of the night, shows Ab did something like that. If he did, that means that you can probably move around when the power’s on, too. You ought to be able to come out here and keep Lucas off me long enough for me to prove who I am. Gabrielle, can you hear me?”
Still no answer but the sound of the wolf. Rafe looked down.
“All right, Lucas,” he said. “I want to talk to Gabrielle. Gabrielle. Where’s Gabrielle?”
The whine broke into a word. “No,” said Lucas.
“You’re not the one to judge,” said Rafe. “Gabrielle will decide. Gabrielle wouldn’t want you to hurt me. I can’t seem to call her, but you can, I know. Call Gabrielle.”
“No,” said Lucas.
“Why not? Did Gabrielle tell you never to call her?”
“No.” The wolf licked his jaws and whined, his eyes bright and steady on Rafe.
“Then call her. Gabrielle would want you to call her when I come.”
“No. You’re lying to me,” said Lucas. “Gabrielle would have told me if I was to call her.”
“She didn’t know I was coming this soon,” said Rafe. “Look, you go get her. I’ll stay right here.”
“No. But you stay.’
“Lucas—” Rafe shifted the grip of his aching fingers on the branch. His balance on it with his feet up was precarious, sustained only by muscle power. Soon, before he lost his grip entirely, he would have to let himself drop and take his chances with Lucas if he could not talk the wolf into contacting Gabrielle. “Lucas, listen. Ab’s gone, isn’t he?”
Whine and growl from below. No answer.
“That’s right. Ab’s gone,” said Rafe. “And someone’s keeping him prisoner somewhere—” Rafe wondered for a second, fleetingly, how much of this Lucas could understand. “Any moment now, the same people who took Ab may come to take Gabrielle—”
The whine and growl in Lucas’s throat rose to pure growl, to a snarl like thunder on the horizon.
“Unless I can get to Gabrielle and help her, first,” said Rafe. “They’ll take Gabrielle away from you unless you call her for me, right now. Think, Lucas. It’s up to you. You want to do what’s right. You want to call Gabrielle and save her. Call Gabrielle, or they’ll come and take her away . . .”
Rafe let his words trail off. Lucas was slowly backing up along the ground, moving backward from below the branch.
“Good, Lucas,” said Rafe. “Very good. Call Gabrielle.”
Rumbling in his throat, brilliant-eyed with reflected street light, shoulders hunched and tail low, Lucas continued to back away. Suddenly, with an abrupt howl, he turned and raced off into the darkness. For a long second there was silence, and Rafe hastily tried to release his cramped fingers from around the branch so that he could at least retreat to the tree before Lucas came back. Then the deafening clangor of an alarm bell erupted into life, and the exterior of a two-story, half-timbered house burst into appearance a hundred feet from him as floodlights went on all around it.
Gratefully, Rafe let go of his branch and dropped. He hardly felt his landing on the turf and rolled over on his back, stretching his aching arms and numb fingers. He started to lift his head—
And froze. The deep, throaty rumbling of a growl was just beside him. He turned his head slowly, and looked into Lucas’s face, inches from his own. The wolf was crouched beside him, his partly open jaws almost touching Rafe’s throat.
“I won’t move,” whispered Rafe. “Easy, Lucas. Easy . . .”
The rumbling growl went on. Wolf breath blew into Rafe’s nostrils, and saliva dripped from the open jaws onto Rafe’s neck. He felt its coolness through the cloth of his cravat.
“I won’t move,” Rafe said. “Don’t worry, Lucas. I won’t move.”
They stayed together without change for several more minutes. Then, abruptly, the clanging alarm bell shut off in mid-ring, but Rafe’s ears continued to echo the sound of it. There was what seemed like a long time of waiting before Lucas’s growl broke abruptly into a whine again, and his head shifted slightly to look beyond and behind the top of Rafe’s head.
“Gabrielle?” said Rafe. He was careful to continue to lie still. “Are you there? I’m Rafe Harald, from the Far-Star Project on the Moon. I talked to you on the phone about Ab’s being gone, yesterday or the day before.”
The whisper of something like a little breeze approached the top of his head. Lucas’s jaws were still at his throat, and Rafe did not dare turn his head to see.
“Gabrielle?” he said.
“What’s your middle name?” The feminine voice was young, but unyielding.
“Arnoul,” said Rafe. “Rafael Arnoul Harald. When I called you the other day, I reminded you that Ab and I used to drink beer in a little three-two joint just off campus. But I didn’t tell you its name. It was the Blue Jug. You’d just gotten into high school then. Ab was eight years older than I was—and looked younger. Your mother and dad had just died two or three years before. Ask me anything else you want to know.”
“You can get up,” her voice said, “in a minute. Lucas will bring you to me in the house. If you’ve got any weapons, leave them outside.”
“I haven’t,” he said.
There was again that strange whisper like a breeze on the grass, going away from him. He looked at Lucas. After a moment, the wolf rose, backed off slightly, and sat down, now making no sound at all.
Rafe got slowly to his feet. Lucas rose again and moved off. Rafe turned and began to walk toward the brilliantly lit house. A glance back over his shoulder showed Lucas following, head low.
They reached the front of the house.
“Which way, Lucas?” asked Rafe. “The front steps?”
“Yes,” said Lucas.
They went toward the front steps and up them. The front door was not only unlocked but ajar. Rafe stepped in through it, and Lucas pushed through at his heels. Rafe turned to close the door and saw Lucas watching him.
“That’s right, isn’t it?” Rafe said. “Should I close the door?”
“I’ll do it,” said Lucas.
He rose on his legs, putting his front paws against the door and pushing it closed with his weight. The latch clicked. There was a heavy metal bolt above the doorknob. Lucas took the fingerknob of the bolt in his teeth and pulled it closed. Then he dropped back onto four legs, once more facing Rafe.
“Now where, Lucas?”
“Back.” The wolf herded him down a central passageway to a door which let them into a room that seemed half a physical laboratory, half an electrical repair shop. At the far end of the room was a high bench or worktable with a solid front. Visible behind the bench from the waist up, facing him, was a brown-haired, long-boned, and startlingly pretty young woman who at first glance seemed to show no resemblance to the thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl Rafe barely remembered from his university days. Only the rather wide mouth, which he remembered as capable of flashing sudden, all-encompassing smiles, was familiar. It was not smiling now.
Lucas whined.
“That’s all right, Lucas,” she said. “You don’t have to come in. Wait just outside the door—but leave the door open.”
With something close to a single wag of his tail, Lucas turned and went back through the doorway he and Rafe had just entered. He lay down just outside.
“He’s not afraid of anything in here, Mr. Harald—if that’s really who you are,” Gabrielle said. “So don’t think he isn’t guarding you this minute. It’s just that something about this place makes him unhappy.”
“It’s where Ab did the work on him, I suppose?” said Rafe.
She shot a suddenly suspicious glance at him.
“Work?” she said. “What work?’
“There’s something on his skull between the ears,” answered Rafe. “I can’t see it here in the light, but I caught a glint from it, outside. And he does talk. That would be Ab’s sort of work, tying in somehow to the electrical responses of the brain in certain situations and using that tie-in to trigger sets of vocal responses. Something like that?”
She gazed at him for a long moment.
“You’re doing a lot of guessing, aren’t you?” Her voice was dry.
“Am I?” Rafe answered. “But there’s the evidence—the talking and whatever there is on his skull. Although, come to think of it, I don’t suppose most people know enough about a timber wolf’s skull to recognize a change in its shape.”
“Most people,” she said, and her voice was warmer now, “don’t know enough to know a timber wolf from a dog.”
“They do if they’ve got dogs of their own along when they get close to the wolf,” said Rafe. “Haven’t any of your neighbors complained?”
“None of the neighbors close around here have dogs,” she said. “Besides, I keep Lucas indoors during the day and only let him out at night. But I know what you mean. Any of the dogs around here that’ve seen Lucas, or smelled him, seem scared silly.”
The initial suspicion was fading from her voice.
“With reason,” said Rafe.
“Probably.” She looked at him. “You certainly sound like Rafe, the way I remember him. It was only once I saw you—when you dropped by the house to pick up Ab—and that was all.”
“There were also the graduation ceremonies when Ab got his doctorate,” said Rafe.
Gabrielle sighed suddenly like someone putting down a loaded weapon that was no longer needed.
“All right,” she said, “you’re Rafe.”
“Thanks,” said Rafe. “Can I call you Gaby?”
“I never liked the name—” Suddenly she laughed. “But all right. Why not? Somehow, the way you say it, I don’t mind.” Her face sobered. “How did you get here so fast? And traveling at night? How did you know you could move around when the broadcast was on?”
He laughed, a little shakily because of the exhaustion possessing him.
“Is there some place we can go and sit down?” he said. “Then I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I’ve been on the run since I left the Moon.”
“Of course,” she said.
She came around the end of the bench with the same small sound of a breeze blowing he had heard before—and she was traveling in an upright cylinder that fitted her to the waist and slid along on innumerable tiny jets of air.
“That’s right,” she said, meeting his eyes, “I’ve been paralyzed from the waist down for three years. But Ab was helping me get over it. I was one of the first night’s accidents.’
“First night’s accidents?” He followed her as she glided ahead of him, leading the way out into the central passageway and from there through another door into what was obviously a living room—a green-wallpapered room with heavy couches and armchairs. Lucas followed them in and curled up beside one of the chairs as she rode her vehicle to the very edge of the chair, then tilted its cylinder backward, and slid out into the chair. Relieved of her weight, the cylinder returned to upright position again, and the two rested like sentinels on either side of her—the whispering vehicle and the wolf.
Rafe dropped into a chair opposite her. The thrumming inside him was wearing him down, like a nagging pain. He had to fight consciously against the urge to close his eyes and give in to the soporific effect.
“Have you got any stimulants?” he asked.
She looked at him sharply. “Dexedrine,” she said. “But it won’t help you against the broadcast.”
He grimaced, running a hand over his neck as if to clamp down on the top end of the thrumming feeling within him.
“Let me try some, anyway.”
She turned to the wolf.
“Lucas,” she said. “In the doughnut-to-fennel drawer of the lab. Package egg/potato.”
Lucas rose and went out.
“He’s an amazing animal,” said Rafe, looking after him. “The talking’s complicated enough. How’d you get him to memorize codes?”
“It’s an easy code for him,” she said. “We’ve got an alphabet of kitchen odors—A for apple, B for bread, and E for egg and P for potato, in this case. I file things alphabetically and rub each filed item with one to three of the coded substances. His nose does the rest.”
Lucas came back in with a heavy brown bottle in his jaws.
“Take it to Rafe,” she said. Lucas brought the bottle and dropped it on Rafe’s knees. He opened it and took out a couple of heart-shaped orange pills, looking at them distastefully. One of them, after a second, he put back in the bottle.
“Come to think of it, you’ll want some water—”
“No need.” He interrupted her, and hastily gulped down the single pill he held.
“One’s not enough to do you any good, anyway,” she said.
“Don’t be too sure—” he broke off, interrupting himself. “How long until daylight?”
“This time of year?” she said. “Maybe four hours, now.”
“And the broadcast goes off at daylight?”
“Soon after that.” She looked at him curiously. “Why?”
“Because by daylight, you and I are going to have to be far away from here. Never mind that now, though,” he said. “You were telling me you were one of the first night’s accidents? What first night?”
“Didn’t you read about it even up on the Moon?” she said. “The first night they turned on the power broadcasts, everybody had been warned to be safely tucked away at home before sunset when the power would go on. I was one of the ones who shaved my time too thin getting home. I was driving back to the house here when the broadcast came on. When I woke up next morning, I was still pinned in the wreck of the car I’d crashed twelve hours before. They got me out a couple of hours later, and they patched me up. But my legs didn’t work.”
“Nerve damage?” he said.
“Nothing physiological they could find,” she answered. “They told Ab it had to be psychological. He didn’t believe them, bless him!” She blinked rapidly a couple of times. “His theory was that while I was unconscious the continuous power broadcast had conditioned my normal brainwave pattern—held it distorted long enough so that it couldn’t snap back to normal again.”
“Well,” said Rafe. “That was his field—brainwave patterns.”
“Yes,” she said fiercely, “and no one understood what he’d done in it—no one!”
The thrumming inside Rafe was getting worse instead of better. He folded his arms and pressed back hard against his middle.
“Something the matter?” said Gaby quickly. “You’re shaking!”
He managed a small grin.
“I’ve got a hunch taking that dexedrine was a mistake,” he said.
“Then why on earth did you take it?”
The thrumming mounted within him. He felt as if he were shaking apart.
“Never can tell how drugs will work with me,” he said between teeth that were starting to chatter in spite of everything he could do. “Never could take stimulants—on the other hand, had to load me with sleeping pills when they wanted me to sleep. Thought—maybe with the broadcast, things could be reversed—worth trying, anyhow . . .”
The chattering of his teeth and the thrumming inside him were becoming too strong to permit him the luxury of spending effort on talking.
“There’s got to be something that’ll help you!”
“Sedative. Depressant. Any liquor handy—”
“Lucas! Dining room. Scotch—”
But Lucas was already on his feet, tense and motionless, head pointed toward the front of the house. Slowly his head moved and a barely heard rumble of a growl sounded in him.
“What is it, Lucas?” said Gaby. “What—”
“Four,” said Lucas, who was now slowly turning around in a full circle. “One, front door. One, driveway gate. Two at back of house.”
“Four? Four what? Zombies?”
Rafe forced his head up, struggling to ignore the thrumming and the teeth chattering for long enough to understand what was going on—and suddenly the room was full of shadows.
Four shadows, like black paper cutouts of men with clubs in their hands, were converging on him. He flung himself forward out of the chair, lunging stiff-armed at the midsection of the closest shadow, to break clear of the ring of them before they could close in on him. His fist sank home. Something struck heavily but glancingly against his shoulder. He heard the mounting snarl of Lucas, and the wolf had joined him in the fight. Rafe kicked devastatingly at another of the shadow figures, and it went down in front of him. Suddenly, he was struck again, this time heavily on the side of the head.
He stumbled, falling, into a blur of darkness.