"Yes."

"Mind if I take it?"

Curt said, "Lordy, Lordy, Lordy," and fresh sweat sparkled on his face. He closed his eyes for a few seconds; when he opened them, the same old world was still there, and he thought he could feel it spinning on its axis like a runaway carnival ride. He had a thirst like a chunk of sun lodged down his throat. He stood up, a sneer warping his mouth. "The day I let a wetback kid do my job is the day I'm not fit to be p.i.s.sed on," he said, and his hand closed around the Colt.

54 The Cage

Cody heard Miranda moan. She was coming to, and Cody crawled across the leathery floor to her.

"My head... my head," she whispered, pressing her hand against the blue bruise and knot on her forehead above her left eye. Her eyelids fluttered, and she tried to open them but they were just too heavy.

"She gonna be all right?"

Cody glanced over at Sarge, who sat about five feet away with his arms locked around his knees. Sarge's face had taken on a chalky cast in the violet glow of the cage's bars. "I don't know," Cody said.

"She took a pretty hard knock." She was still moaning, her voice softer as she drifted off again. Cody had spat up a little blood, and he was breathing in gasps around the pain of a broken rib, but otherwise he was okay. He was more mad than scared, and his muscles were pumped full of adrenaline. Miranda lay still again. Cody checked her pulse for the sixth or seventh time; it felt a little slow to him, but at least it was strong. She was a lot tougher than she looked.

Cody stood up, holding his side, and made another circle of their cage. It was a cone about fifteen feet around, with bars of purple light. He'd already tested the bars by kicking at them, and the sole of his boot had been burned almost clean through, fiery speckles of melting rubber shearing off and those bits exploding again as they went into the bars. What those beams would do to flesh he didn't want to know. The entire cage was suspended about three feet off the floor, which was made of interlocked black scales.

He didn't know what he'd expected the inside of the s.p.a.ceship to look like-maybe full of high-tech, polished chrome gizmos that whirred with mysterious purpose; but this place smelled like an overflowed cesspool and puddles of ooze shimmered on the floor. Pipes that looked as if they were made of diseased dinosaur bones hung from the ceiling and snaked along the walls, and from them came a rushing, thrumming sound of something liquid pa.s.sing through. The musty air was so cold and damp that Cody could see his breath, but the chill had sharpened his senses. The impression he got of the s.p.a.ceship was that it was not a marvel of alien technology, but rather the inside of a medieval castle that lacked heat, electricity, and sanitation. Slime festooned the bony pipes, and when it dripped, it made slithering sounds on the floor. One thing he thought he'd seen but couldn't be sure of: not only were the floor's scales absorbing the ooze, but every so often they seemed to swell an inch or two upward and deflate again, as if they were alive and breathing.

Cody stopped his circling. He stood close to the bars but could feel no sensation of heat; the beams burned with a cold fire. On the chamber's floor was a small black pyramid about the size of a s...o...b..x. He'd seen Stinger's boot touch that pyramid when his head was dangling down and the thing's arm was about to crush him. The pyramid had glowed from within with dim violet light. There'd been a droning noise, and the next thing he knew he and Miranda were being dumped onto a black dish that turned out to be the cage's floor. As the cage's bars had illuminated, the cage itself had ascended. Later-and how much later Cody didn't know because his brain was still jammed up-a creature with Mack Cade's face and the head and shoulders of a dog growing from its chest had entered the chamber carrying another body. Cody had watched as the creature's boot had touched the pyramid. The violet light had come on, the cage had begun to settle, and when it reached the floor the beams had extinguished. Then Sarge Dennison had been added to the cage, the creature had touched the pyramid once more, and the bars had flickered to life. Again the cage rose off the floor, and Stinger had looked at Sarge and asked his name, just as he'd asked Cody what the girl's name was. It had taken Sarge a few seconds to even understand what the question was, but finally he'd stuttered his name out and Stinger had left-but not before Cody had seen the black sphere gripped between the dog's jaws. He stared at the small pyramid, now dark. An on-off switch, Cody a.s.sumed. Touching it would lower the cage and turn off the bars. But it was three feet below them and at least another three feet beyond the cage's edge. Way too far to reach, even if he could get his arm between the bars without burning it off up to the elbow. Still... that was the only way out he could see, and he didn't know what Stinger had planned for them but he figured it wouldn't be pleasant.

He dug into his pocket and came up with a dime, four pennies, and his lighter. How much pressure was needed to trip the switch? The weight of the lighter hitting it might be enough-but he quickly dismissed that idea, because if the lighter was punctured, the fluid would explode all over the cage. He put the lighter back in his pocket, lay down on his stomach, and stretched his flattened hand toward the bars edge-on while his thumb trapped the coins. The s.p.a.ce between the bars was wide enough to accept his hand, and he kept gliding his wrist through, grateful for his slim build. The pain in his ribs flared up again; when he gasped for breath, the movement made his arm drift a fraction to the right. The hair on his forearm crisped, burning away with faint crackling noises. Cody held himself as still as he could, but the effort was making his arm shake. Now his palm was sweating. He tried to get the coins in position to flick them at the small pyramid, and he promptly lost the dime and one of the pennies, which fell straight down to the floor. His hand was cramping, and he had no time to aim: he flung both coins out with a snap of his wrist, saw one hit beyond the pyramid and the other to the left.

"s.h.i.t!" he said, and pulled his arm and hand back through the bars. All the hair up to the middle of his forearm had been burned away, but his skin was untouched. Another fraction of an inch, though, and the cage would smell of burned meat. His arm was trembling right down into the shoulder socket, and he saw that tripping that switch was pretty much hopeless. He crawled away from the edge and sat back on his haunches, rubbing his shoulder. He looked up; overhead eight feet or so the violet beams merged together at the top of the cage, and the mechanism that hoisted the cage was somewhere above that. His gaze returned to the small pyramid on the floor. "Got to be some way to reach it," he said.

"Reach what?" Sarge asked.

"That thing there." Cody pointed down to it, and Sarge saw what he meant and nodded. "I think it controls the cage. If I could trigger it with somethin' I might be able to-"

"Cody?" Miranda's voice was a pained whisper. She was trying to sit up, her eyes wide and bloodshot. "Cody?"

He got to her side. "Take it easy. Come on, just lie still."

"What happened? Where are we?" She looked around, saw the violet bars that circled them.

"Rick... where's Rick?"

"Rick's okay," he lied. She blinked up at him. "He made it over the bridge."

"We... hit something, didn't we? Oh... my head..." Her hand found the bruise and knot. She winced, fresh tears trickling from the corners of her eyes. Her memory was hazy; she remembered a figure in front of them on the bridge, a jarring collision, and a sensation of falling. Mercifully there was nothing after that. "Are you all right?"

"I've been better." Cody smoothed the damp curls away from her forehead. Concussion, he figured.

"Can you feel this?" He rubbed her hands, and she said, "Yes." Then her ankles. "Yes," Miranda responded, and Cody relaxed some. She had friction burns on her arms and a split and swollen lower lip, but he figured it could've been a lot worse: a broken back, broken arms or legs-and surely a broken neck if Stinger hadn't been stopped.

"We hit... the Mumbler, didn't we?" she asked.

Cody smiled faintly. "We sure did. Knocked him on his a.s.s too."

"I... thought you said you could drive that motor."

"I think I did a pretty good job. We're not dead, are we?"

"I'm not sure yet." Now it was her turn to offer him the hint of a tough smile, though her eyes were still vague. "I think I should've stayed in Fort Worth."

"Yeah, but then you would never have met me."

"Bit s.h.i.t," she said, and he knew she was going to be okay. The strength was coming back into her voice.

He decided Miranda wasn't going to pa.s.s out again, and he had to tell her what had happened and where they were. "We're inside the s.p.a.ceship," he said. "In what looks like a dungeon, I think. Anyway, we're hangin' in Stinger's idea of a jail cell." He waited for her response, but there was none. "Stinger could've killed us. He didn't. He wants us alive, which is just fine with me."

"Me too," Sarge said, and Miranda lifted her head to see who'd spoken. "I'm Sarge," he told her.

"This is Scooter right over here." He gestured into the empty s.p.a.ce.

"Scooter's his dog," Cody quickly explained. "Um... Sarge doesn't go anywhere without Scooter, if you get my drift."

Miranda eased herself into a sitting position. Her head still pounded, but at least she could see straight now. She wasn't sure who was crazy and who wasn't, but then Sarge started rubbing an invisible dog and said, "Don't you worry none, Scooter. I'll take care of you," and she realized Sarge lived in a permanent twilight zone.

"Sorry I got you into this," Cody said to her. "You ought to be more particular who you ride with."

"Next time I will be." She tried to stand, but she felt so weak she had to rest her head against her knees. "What's that thing keeping us for?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't want to guess, either." Cody thought that the noise of fluid rushing through the pipes had gotten louder. There was another sound too: a distant reverberation, like a m.u.f.fled ba.s.s drum or a heartbeat. Whole d.a.m.n ship's alive, he thought. "We've got to get out of here." He crawled over to the cage's edge, just short of the light bars, and stared down at the small pyramid again. Got to trip that switch, he knew. But how? "Don't happen to have a slingshot on you, do you?" he asked half jokingly, and of course she shook her head no. He lay on his belly, his chin resting on his hands, and just looked at the pyramid. His belt buckle was jabbing his stomach, and he shifted his position. Belt buckle, he thought.

He abruptly sat up, unbuckled the belt, and reeled it out of the loops. Sarge said, "Hey, don't do that in front of a lady!"

"How far would you say that thing is?" he asked Miranda, and pointed at the pyramid.

"I don't know. Seven feet, maybe."

"I peg it closer to six and a half. I wear a twenty-eight-inch belt, and..." He looked at Sarge, saw the scuffed black belt in the man's dungarees. "Sarge, hand me your belt."

"My belt? Boy, what's wrong with you?"

"Take it off, Sarge! Come on, hurry!"

Sarge did, reluctantly, and handed it to Cody. "What size is this?" Cody asked. Sarge shrugged. "The church ladies buy all that stuff for me. I don't keep up with it."

"Looks a good forty inches." Cody was already knotting the two belts together so the buckles were on opposite ends. "Maybe we've got us a long enough reach here. We'll find out." He gave the knot a tug to make sure it wouldn't come apart.

"What're you going to do?" Miranda asked.

"I'm pretty sure that thing down there is the control box for this cage. I think that if I trip it, it'll lower the cage. So I might be able to get us out of here."

"Don't mind him," Sarge whispered to Scooter. "He's crazy, that's all."

"Listen to me, both of you." The urgency in Cody's voice stopped Sarge's whispering. "I'm gonna slide my arm out through the bars as far as I can. If I can't keep steady, they'll burn my arm up real quick. Sarge, I want you to hold my legs. If my arm catches fire, I want you to pull me back as fast as you can. Got it?"

"Me? Why me?"

"Because you're a lot stronger than Miranda, and because she's gonna be keepin' an eye out if Stinger comes back. Okay?"

"Okay," Sarge answered, in a small voice.

Cody pushed the belt ahead of him between the bars, and the buckle on the other end went over the edge. Then Sarge grasped Cody's ankles as Cody slid forward with his face only inches from the beams. Slowly he eased his hand through, then his wrist, then up to the forearm where the hairs had been burned away. The buckle was lying on the floor just underneath the cage; now the trick was flicking his wrist to snap the buckle against the control box.

His face was right up on the beams, and he could hear their deadly hum. Now was the time to try it if he ever was. He snapped his wrist upward. The belt buckle sc.r.a.ped along the floor, stopped two or three inches short of the pyramid. He drew it back and flicked it forward again; once more, the buckle fell short.

Cody strained his arm another quarter inch between the bars. There was about enough room for a toothpick to fit in between them and his skin. A few hairs sparked and crisped away, in pinpoint flames. His heartbeat was making his body tremble. Steady... steady, he told himself. He flicked the belt forward. Still too short. A drop of sweat rolled into his right eye and blinded him, and his first impulse was to wipe it out, but if he moved without thinking, either his face or his arm would go into the bars. He said, "Sarge, pull me back. Slow."

Sarge hauled him away from the edge, and Cody kept his arm rigid until the fingers had cleared. Then he rubbed his eye with his other hand, got on his knees, and pulled the belt up. "It's not long enough," he said. "We need another couple of inches." But he knew there was nothing else to be used, and he was about to toss the knotted belts aside in frustration when Miranda said, "Your earring."

Cody's hand went to his earlobe. The skull earring hung down a little more than two inches. He took it off, knotted the small chain to one of the buckles so the silver skull had as much play as possible, then gripped the other buckle and said, "Sarge, let's try it again."

Working slowly and carefully, Cody dropped the buckle with the tiny skull dangling from it over the cage's edge and let its weight pull the rest of the belt down. Then he slid forward, Sarge grasping his ankles again, and negotiated his hand, wrist, and forearm between the violet bars. When he was set and ready, he snapped his wrist upward. This time he thought the extension would reach; again it just barely fell short of contact. He had to push another quarter inch of skin through. He started sliding his arm forward, millimeter by millimeter. Beads of sweat were heavy in his eyebrows, and one of them popped and sizzled as it touched a beam. A little more, he thought. Just a little more. The hairs on his arm were afire. A little more. Now he could see no room between his skin and the bars. A fraction more, that's all...

There was a soft whuff as a lock of his hair grazed the bar before his face and caught fire. The flames crawled toward his scalp. Miranda cried out, "Pull him back!" He felt Sarge's hands tighten on his ankles, and at the same time Cody flicked the belt with a quick jerk of his wrist. He heard it: the metallic, almost musical tring of the silver skull hitting the control box. But whether that was contact enough to trip the switch he didn't know, and in the next second Sarge was hauling him away from the bars and Miranda was plucking away burning hair. The muscles in his forearm cramped rigid, and as the belt came up over the edge it wandered into one of the bars and was sliced in two as cleanly as by a white-hot blade. He lay on his back, rubbing the cramp out of his arm, the buckle still clenched in his hand.

And then he realized, with a start, that the cage was descending. He sat up, a stubble of burned hair still smoking above his left eye. The pyramid glowed violet. The cage settled gently to the floor, and the circle of bars went dark.

55 Stinger's Realm

Matt Rhodes was the first down the rope into the hole beneath Sonny Crowfield's house. The bull's-eye lantern was tied to his waist and a fully loaded automatic rifle from Crowfield's a.r.s.enal was strapped around his shoulder. As soon as his shoes squished into the ooze at the bottom, he took the lantern off and aimed it into the tunnel ahead. Nothing moved in there but the slow dripping of gray slime. He looked up, saw Rick Jurado's light about twenty feet above. He pulled on the rope, and Rick started down. Rick had the second of Crowfield's rifles, as well as one of the flashlights they'd gotten from people at the fortress. When Rick made it down, the rope was hauled up and a few seconds later came down again tied around the device Daufin had suggested they make: four of the bright battery lamps wired together and with a wire handle like a basket of light. It illuminated the tunnel with a powerful white glare, and Rhodes breathed a lot easier when it reached the bottom.

Jessie climbed down next, carrying a flashlight and the Winchester strapped to her shoulder. Tom followed, with Daufin clinging around his neck. The last down was Curt Lockett. Hanging at his chest was a hiker's backpack, brought from the hardware store, that held the five sticks of dynamite and the hogleg Colt.

Tom set Daufin down. The tunnel that stretched before them was about seven feet in height and another six or seven feet wide. In the muck around them were pieces of the house's floor, a mattress, and a broken-up bed. Crowfield was probably lying in it when the floor split open, Rick figured. He unstrapped the rifle, propped its stock against his hip, and kept the flashlight's beam pointed ahead. Rhodes gave his lantern to Tom and took the bundle of battery lamps. "Okay," Rhodes said quietly, his voice echoing. "I'll go first. Daufin behind me. Then Jessie, Tom, Lockett, and Rick brings up the rear. Lockett, I don't want you throwing those sticks without my order. Got it?"

A flame flared. Curt lit a Lucky with the Bic lighter. "Got it, boss man."

"Rick, make sure you watch our backs. And everybody keep as quiet as you can: we want to be able to hear anything digging." He swallowed thickly. The air was wet and heavy down here, and the rotten-peaches odor of the gray ooze stung his nostrils. The slime hung from the ceiling and sides of the tunnel like grotesque stalact.i.tes, pools of it shimmering an iridescent silver on the floor. "What's this wet s.h.i.t all over the place?" Curt asked. It was about two inches deep underfoot, as slick as engine grease.

"Stinger digs these tunnels," Daufin answered. "It sprays them with lubricant so it can move faster."

"Lubricant!" Curt grunted. Little ants of fear were running figure eights in his belly. "Stuff looks like snot!"

"One thing I want to know," Rhodes said. "Does the power source that runs the replicants come from Stinger or the ship?"

"From Stinger." Daufin peered down the tunnel ahead, alert for any sign of movement. "The replicants are expendable, meant to be discarded after their use is finished."

The replication process must be incredibly fast, Jessie thought. The creation of living tissue bonded with metallic fibers, the inner organs, synthetic bones-all of it was too much for an earthbound mind to comprehend. Her own questions about what Stinger looked like, and how it created the replicants from human bodies, would have to wait. It was time to go.

"Everybody ready?" Rhodes waited for them all to reply, and then he started into the tunnel, careful of his footing in the slime and trying very hard not to think about the size of the monster that had drilled through the Texas dirt.

Rick shone the light behind them. All clear. Before leaving the 'Gade fort, he'd knelt down beside Paloma and held her hands between his. Had told her what he had to do, and why. She'd listened silently, her head bowed. Then she'd asked him to pray with her, and he'd rested his cheek against her forehead as she begged G.o.d's mercy on her grandson and granddaughter. She'd kissed his hand and looked at him with those sightless eyes that had always seen to his soul. "Dios anda con los bravos," she'd whispered, and let him go.

He hoped she was right, and that G.o.d did indeed walk with the brave. Or at least watch over the desperate.

Since leaving the apartment building, they'd seen neither the creature that had grown out of the horse nor any of the human-sized Stingers. They'd found two fifteen-foot lengths of rope at the hardware store and had come across the bridge, where Rick's heart had sunk when he'd seen the battered remains of Cody Lockett's motorcycle still burning. He didn't know if Cody's old man recognized the machine too, but Curt Lockett hadn't made a sound.

The tunnel veered to the right. The lamps revealed an intersection of three pa.s.sages, all going in different directions. Rhodes chose the center of the tunnels, which continued in what he thought was the way to the black pyramid, and Daufin nodded when he looked at her for rea.s.surance. They went into it, their lights glinting off the wet walls. In another moment they could hear a steady pounding ahead, like the beating of a huge heart.

"Stinger's ship," Daufin whispered. "The systems are charging."

Rick kept his flashlight aimed behind them. And it happened so fast he had no time to cry out: a hunchbacked figure scurried into the beam about twenty feet away, lifted its hands before its face, and quickly retreated to the darkness.

Rick stopped. His knees were rubbery. He'd seen the weaving tail, and the thing had resembled a mottled eight-legged scorpion with a human head. "Colonel?" He said it louder: "Colonel? "

The others had gone on a few paces, but now Rhodes halted and looked back. "What's wrong?"

"It knows we're here," Rick answered.

From in front of them came a woman's Texan drawl: "I wouldn't come any closer if I were ya'll."

Rhodes swung around and held the lamps up. Twelve or fifteen feet ahead, the tunnel wound to the left and he knew the creature must be standing around that turn.

"You bugs sure like to live dangerous," Stinger said. "Is the guardian with you?"

Daufin took a step forward. "I'm here," she said defiantly. "I want the three humans set free."

There was a cold little laugh. "Lordy Mercy, was that an order? Honeychild, you're in my world now. You want to come on and give yourself up, I might think about lettin' the bugs go."

"Either you set them free," Daufin said, "or we will."

That brought another giggle. "Look behind you, honeychild. You can't see me, but I'm there. I'm in the walls. I'm up over you and down underneath. I'm everywhere." Anger was creeping in. "I've got your pod now, honeychild. That'll be good enough for my bounty. Plus I've found a whole world full of bugs that can't fight worth a d.a.m.n, and I ought to thank you for leadin' me here."

"It doesn't matter. You're not going anywhere."

"No? Who's gonna stop me?"

"I am."

There was silence. Daufin knew Stinger would not rush forward into the glare. And then Stinger hissed: "Come on, then. I'm waitin' for you. Come on, let's see what color your guts are!"

"Get down," Curt said quietly, and he touched the fuse of the dynamite stick he was holding to the red tip of his cigarette. The fuse smoked and sparked, began to burn, and Rhodes shouted, "I told you not to-"

"f.u.c.k it," Curt said, and hurled the stick toward the bend in the tunnel. Rhodes grabbed Daufin and threw both himself and her into the muck. The others. .h.i.t the ground and two seconds later there was a blast like a dozen shotguns going off. The tunnel's floor shook, chunks of dirt flying through the air and showering down. Rhodes sat up, his ears ringing. Daufin struggled out from underneath him and got to her knees. She looked back in amazement at Curt, who was already on his feet and taking another puff from his bent cigarette. "That's what dynamite is," he said. Stinger's voice did not return. But from around the bend there was a terrible gasping sound, like air being drawn into diseased lungs. Rhodes stood up, c.o.c.ked his rifle, and held it as steady as he could, then began walking forward. He crouched and rounded the bend, ready to open fire. Something was on the tunnel floor, trying to crawl away through the ooze. It had one arm, the other a blackened ma.s.s lying several feet away, and its head was a misshapen lump. In the torn face, the mouth full of broken needles gasped like the gill of a bizarre fish, and the single remaining eye flinched in the light. The spiked tail had risen from its backbone and thrashed weakly from side to side. The thing's hand started clawing frantically at the dirt, trying to dig itself in. Rhodes held the bundle of lamps closer to its face, avoiding the twitching tail. The awful ruined mouth stretched open, spilling gray fluid, and the eye began to smoke and burn in its socket. A charred, acrid chemical odor hung in the air. The eye popped open, melted in a rivulet of ooze, and the body shuddered and lay still. The tail thrashed once more before it fell like a dead flower. Electric light burns out the thing's eyes, Rhodes thought. And once they were blinded, Stinger had no more use for the replicants-which were, in essence, walking and talking cameras-so the power source that animated them was simply turned off. But if all the replicants were in some strange way part of Stinger-powered perhaps by Stinger's brainwaves-then it was likely Stinger could feel pain: the impact of a bullet, or the blast of dynamite. You hurt me, he remembered the creature saying to him in Dodge Creech's house. All the replicants were Stinger, and Stinger was vulnerable to pain through them. Rhodes led the others past the burned shape on the ground, his pace faster. Daufin glanced only incuriously at the thing, but Jessie didn't let herself look at it. Curt tapped his ashes onto the mangled head, though he moved past as rapidly as everyone else.