«Do you want him dead?» Barbara asked when she sat down again on the bunk.
«Yes,» said Rivas.
Barbara smiled at him. «Really? There isn't any little bit of you that would like to . . . merge with the Lord, stop being you?»
Swallow me. You win. You're the boss. Rivas reached out and put the crystal down on the torn blanket between them, and it was a relief for him to stop hearing the voice. «Okay, maybe there is. And when I took a huge dose of Blood recently, there was a part of me that wanted to just relax and go down. But have you seen any real Blood freaks? Well, you've seen real far-gones.»
«Sure, but their outward form, we're told, isn't the whole story. If I take a boat to get somewhere, and then later you find the boat all rotted and decrepit on some shore, you can't tell anything about where I've gone or how I am.»
She touched the crystal, and her eyes widened in shock. After a few seconds she took her finger away. «What would have happened if Uri had swallowed it?»
«She would have become Jaybush.»
«He'd have been with us again?»
Rivas nodded unhappily. It was very late, and he was exhausted and scared and his head hurt.
«Swallow it,» said Barbara suddenly. «Quick, without thinking about it. You know you want to.»
«No,» snapped Rivas, «I want—» He paused, thinking about what he'd started to say, and then he said it quietly, with a smile. «I want you to.»
«Me? But then I'd be him. And you're the guy who killed him.»
«If I wanted him back that wouldn't make any difference to me, the fact that he might kill me right away.»
She nodded sadly. «I know what you mean. Better that your parents find you and beat the daylights out of you than that you spend the night lost.»
Rivas laughed softly. «We both . . . sort of . . . want him back, but neither of us wants to be him.» He looked down at Uri. «We shouldn't have stopped her.» He smiled at Barbara, and said, «We should wake her up and feed it to her.»
And then suddenly his words weren't a joke at all. Barbara snatched the crystal and stood up. Rivas thought he should say something to stop her, and he meant to, but not right away. He had to catch his breath first.
At that moment a voice spoke from outside the wagon. «Swallow me. You win .»
Barbara dropped to her-knees, and Rivas fell back onto his soggy pillow, his eyes tightly shut.
»You're the boss ,» the voice went on. «I'llwork for you . . .»
It's him, Rivas thought dizzily, somehow he's right outside, he's gonna break down the wall and get us, he'll burn us to ash just by looking at us, consume the souls out of our bodies like a big spider emptying a couple of captured flies, we'll absolutely cease to be and what is he waiting for?
Abruptly the familiar litany stopped; Rivas opened his eyes; and then it started up again—»Swallow me. You win . . . «—but in a different voice.
Barbara stood up and tottered to the back door. She lifted the bar and pulled the door open and peered around outside.
Rivas could hear other voices now. «He isn't gone!» someone exclaimed. «His spirit is still with us!»
«Tell us how to find you, Lord!» cried a woman's voice.
»Swallow me . . . » the second voice droned on.
Barbara closed the door and carne back to the bunk. «It's a gang of Jaybirds,» she told Rivas, «evidently without a shepherd. Why are their far-gones saying the same things as this?» She held up the crystal.
«They're picking up his thoughts,» Rivas said. «Evidently without a brain to project them the thoughts don't carry very far.» He sighed. «Do you still want to feed it to Uri?»
Barbara's shoulders slumped with loss. «No. Not right now.»
«Is this moon bright enough to drive by?»
«I don't know,» she said dully. «I guess so.»
«Then I think maybe we ought to get a head start on the morning.»
On the floor Uri snored on.
Chapter 12
Despite being shy one pedal, the bicycle ratcheted rapidly up the street and a couple of doors east of Serena's Cantina the boy laid the bike down in a controlled slide that left him, after a couple of running steps, right in front of the place. The boy peered into the bar from the doorway until he'd spotted Fracas McAn, and then he darted in and yanked on McAn's sleeve before the bartender could yell at him to get out.
When McAn saw who it was, he raised his hand to prevent the bartender's outburst. «What is it, Modesto?» he asked the boy. «Have you seen him?»
«I think so, man. He's traveling with two women.»
«Two of them? I don't see—well, no, that sounds like Rivas, actually,» he said. «Afoot? On horseback?»
«In a donut wagon.»
«A . . . a donut wagon.»
»Si. »
«Coming from the south, is it?» McAn asked hopefully. «He's at the army checkpoint?»
The boy looked apologetic. «No, man. He's coming in from the west, on the Ten Highway.»
«Like from Venice? Hell, I'd like to be able to let you have the fifth, Modesto, but I don't see how this—»
«The kid really can't hang around in here, Frake,» said the bartender. «Sorry, but you'll have to take it outside.»
McAn looked indecisive for a moment, then shrugged. «Okay, Modesto,» he sighed. «I'll listen.» He drained his glass of Ellay Red and tossed a couple of jiggers onto the bar. «Uh, don't put the bottle away, Sam,» he said. «Okay, come on,» he added to the boy.
Outside the air was cool with early evening, and rats could be seen in silhouette scampering along roof edges. «Well now,» said McAn to Modesto, «what makes you think it's Rivas?»
«Well, he looks like Rivas, in a beat-up way—he looks even worse than you said he would, big bandage on the head—and he's with at least one lady who's not wife or girlfriend . . . and there is a haste about them, hurry to get here. I asked to buy a donut, but they didn't have any.»
McAn glanced toward the western wall of the city. Torches were already flickering by the newly erected barracks, and tomorrow it might be difficult to get in or out. «How near are they?»
«Maybe at the gate by now,» Modesto said. «I rode my bicycle as fast as I could, but, as I told you, this is not a donut wagon that stops to sell donuts.»
«May as well go see, I guess.»
McAn started walking west, Modesto wobbling along slowly on his bicycle beside him. Twice, as they made their way toward the gate, kids looked up from scavenger labors and called fast questions in Spanish and then swore when Modesto grinned and nodded. Each of them was of course hoping to be the first to sight the San Berdoo army, but private watch-for-'ems like McAn's paid a lot better than the Ellay government's.
The boy's confidence began to infect McAn. «Well, if this isn't Rivas,» he said, mostly to himself, «then I doubt if he'll be coming back at all. Tomorrow it'll be a week since I saw him in Irvine.»
Ahead of them they could see the high black band that was the wall, its uneven top edge indenting the orange sky. In one of the palm trees overhead a parrot exclaimed, «Hooray, it's Gregorio Rivas!» McAn grinned at Modesto and held up crossed fingers.
«Ah, mira, man, there is the wagon now!»
The boy was pointing at a wagon that was just entering the gate, being pulled by one overworked horse. When the two of them got closer to it, McAn sprinted to the curb to be able to see it better than just as a head-on silhouette. It was battered and powdered with dust, but he could read da-doo-ron-ron donuts on the side of it.
«It's who you described,» McAn admitted, trotting back to the center of the road. «Let's see if it's who I'm after.»
The horse was panting deeply and seemed to be letting the wagon coast, and McAn guessed that simply getting inside the Ellay walls had been these people's goal.