Then to the north he saw a sail, and when he squinted at it he recognized the sophisticated rigging the Jaybirds used. All at once thankful for the broad smears of mud on his clothes, he carefully but quickly picked his way along the shoreline until he came to a gap in the bank, a water-cut cleft choked with age-rounded chunks of broken concrete . He clambered up over them, pausing a couple of times to admire the line of decorated tile that ran across one edge of a few of them, and up at street level he shambled toward the clustered, tumbled, vine-hung buildings, hoping at least to find edible vegetation.
He didn't seem to be able to keep his mind on the concerns of the moment, though; just as he'd paused to peer at the century-old decorations on the broken stones, he found himself shading his eyes to look up at the rooftops and balconies around him, where now only lizards, birds and the occasional cat sunned themselves, and he was imagining what it would be like to waste an afternoon picnicking up on one of them with Uri on the return trip. He wasn't considering the odds against his finding her, nor the fact that a lot of hard psychological crowbarring was required to even partially free a person's mind from the Jaybird template. He finally found an avocado tree and managed to knock down a couple of avocados and then he climbed a fire escape to the top of a three-story building and sat there and stared at the slow sunset while he chewed them up.
Two distinct lines of smoke stood up from Long Beach Island in the south, and when the sky began to get dark he thought he could glimpse the winking yellow dots of distant fires.
Chapter 4
The next morning was cold; fog, like the ghost of stone, had spread another sedimentary layer over the already mostly buried old landscape, so that the building Rivas had taken shelter in stuck up out of the indistinct gray flatness like the last spire of a city reclaimed by desert sand. He stood on the roof with one foot up on the crumbled coping, and as the sun made the fog band glow a ruddier and ruddier pink in the east and then rose above it and began to dispel it, he studied the emerging view and wondered where evening would find him.
At last he decided that the fog had thinned enough for travel to be practical, and he started to turn toward the fire escape—but he'd caught a suggestion of motion out of the corner of his eye, and he turned back to the landscape that stretched away below his perch.
A vertical line was slowly moving over the fog far away to his right, which was north, and after he'd stared at it for a few minutes he decided that it was a boat's mast, and that it was approaching. Nothing in that for me, he thought, and he had again started for the stairs when a thought struck him. How, he wondered, can that mast be approaching so steadily when it seems to carry no sails? The river certainly provides no strong current this far south, and at least when I last passed through these parts any oceanic currents would only be moving the other way on this side of the bay.
Curious in spite of himself, he limped stiffly back across the roof to the coping and stared at the mast, which was much closer now, perhaps only a mile away. It was rocking back and forth, and sinking and rising, much more than could be caused by the surface of the bay, and at last Rivas realized that the mast must be attached to a wagon that was moving down the uneven bay side roads.
He watched it until he was pretty sure where it would pass, and then he hurried down the fire escape to wait for it, not sure yet whether he meant to hitch a ride, steal a horse, or just satisfy his curiosity about the vehicle. When he got to street level he hid behind a clump of bougainvillea, confident that the bush and the remaining traces of fog made him invisible.
If he hadn't heard the'clopping of hooves first, he might have thought he'd miscalculated his position and was down on the bay shore, for the vehicle that soon appeared out of the fog, first as a shadowy silhouette and then with proximity gaining detail and color, was more boat than wagon in spite of the four horses pulling it. A wide hull flared like an up-blown skirt above the axles, with cowls around the wheels, and the pole that projected up from the front of the cabin was indeed a mast; from his hiding place Rivas could see the horizontal boom stretching away behind, over the roof of the cabin.
The cabin itself was a wooden shed as compact and solid as a Jaybird recruiting wagon, and Rivas thought he could guess what business these early morning travelers were in. His suspicion became virtual certainty when the vehicle approached close enough for him to see the freshly splintered and dented spots along the hull, and a couple of broken ropes that swung in the air and flicked an occasional drop of dew from their fog-wet, frayed ends.
As Rivas mentally put together a cover story that might make him seem to be a useful hitchhiker, he squinted now at the men themselves, who were slouched on the high driver's bench, which was shielded at the rear and the sides by sheets of aluminum so frequently dented that they now had a uniformly hammered look. The men seemed to have fared about as well as their boat-wagon: they too were battered but evidently still functioning. The wagon was close now, and would pass him if he waited much longer.
Rivas took a deep breath, crossed his fingers and then stepped out from behind his bush. «Good morning,» he said cheerfully.
The driver snapped the reins and pulled a brake lever, and the wail of the brake shoes echoed away up and down the street as the wagon ground to a halt, the mast swaying overhead.
«What do you want,» the other man said, looking down without enthusiasm at Rivas. «We don't pick up hitchhikers.» A bowler hat sat loosely on top of a blood-speckled turbanlike bandage, and under it his tanned face was so lean and pinched that it was hard to imagine him ever having eaten a decent meal, or even ever having smiled.
«Too risky,» jovially agreed the driver, a white-haired old man wearing a baseball cap and overalls. Like his companion, he too wore several bandages.
Rivas smiled at them. «I was just wondering if you ran into the same gang of Jaybirds that jumped me last night.
I managed to run clear, but they got my wagon and all my . . .stock.»
The old man stared down at him. «Stock,» he said thoughtfully.
«What, uh, do you gentlemen deal in?» Rivas inquired, his eyebrows high.
After a pause in which he glanced cautiously around at the nearby buildings, the old man said, «We're redeemers, son.»
His partner nodded absently.
And I know what sort, thought Rivas. «Ah,» he said. «Commendable. I'm a . . . pharmacist, myself.»
«You're a Blood dealer,» said the old man.
«And you're pimps,» said Rivas affably.
After another pause, the old man nodded. «Correct, son. And yes, it was a gang of Jaybirds—those damn shepherds, resenting us cutting a few ewes out of their flock. They get all your Blood?»
«All I had with me. And my horse and wagon. I'm lucky I still have my head.»
«Ah. Too bad. Blood's the only thing that'll quiet 'em down when they've got the birdy fits.»
«Yeah.» Hence my story, thought Rivas. «You know Ratty Frazee?»
«Sure,» said the lean man. «You know he's dead?»
«I heard something about it. What happened?»
«Some damn redeemer.»
«One of the out for hire redeemers,» the old man clarified. «They say it was Greg Rivas, snatching some girl for her parents. You knew Frazee?»
Rivas shrugged. «Did some business with him.»
The two men up on the bench seemed to relax a little. The lean man took his hat off and peered into it. «Where do you go for more Blood?» he asked, apparently addressing the hat.
«I've got some stashed in a sewer outside Hunningten Town.» Rivas guessed that this pair had at least a couple of girls in their wagon—the Jaybirds wouldn't have sling-shotted the vehicle so savagely otherwise, and the fact that these two were alive was proof that the Jaybird shepherds hadn't caught up with them—and hijacked Jaybird girls were nearly always routed to Hunningten Town and then by sea up to Venice, because the pacifying Blood was so plentiful there. Perhaps the main complaint the average prostitute runner had about the universe was the fact thatfemale communicants, unlike the less readily saleable males, never did reach the placid, tractable far-gone stage, and in order to be used had to be regularly tranquilized with doses of Blood.