Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [99]
“Vinaldi,” I said, “we’ve got to hurry. The Rapt’s going to come on again soon.”
He considered this, nodded, and then pointed up the path. “I’ll go through to the other side. You start the circles. If you see anything, shout.”
He crept across the opening and onto the other section of the path, warily looking all around him. I headed off at an angle into the clusters of huts, peering through windows and round corners, seeing nothing except tendrils of orange light. The huts themselves were antiseptically empty, sterile as if stamped from molds. In one, I saw a small collection of leaves in the corner, looking as if they were having a meeting, but nothing more interesting than that. The leaf meetings never seemed to amount to very much. I think it was just a kind of play for them.
When I’d finished the first quarter I crossed the path we came in on and went over to the opposite side. I caught a glimpse of Vinaldi, now at the far end of the village and heading back toward the center.
I was checking yet another hut when I heard a sudden sound from behind me. I whirled around, trigger all but pulled, and saw a small flock of the orange birds fountaining up out of nothing into flight. They chittered and guffawed happily before disappearing with a shudder of air. Then everything was quiet again.
Well, not everything. When the last of the flapping noises died away I heard something the other side of the village. A human utterance of some kind. My first thought was that Vinaldi might have found something and was calling out to me, so I abandoned the current hut and ran in a crouch back toward the central path.
By the time I stepped onto it the sound had faded, and Vinaldi was nowhere to be seen. I debated calling out to him, then realized that if it hadn’t been Vinaldi, and there was anyone else here, I should probably keep my mouth shut. I retreated slowly back to the center of the village, eyes smarting at being open so wide for so long, my ears feeling as if they were swiveling on stalks.
Then I heard something that was definitely a shout, and stopped dead. The noise came from the far corner of the village, and any words contained in it were indistinguishable.
It was very bad timing for me to have to make a decision. My fingers were beginning to feel very long, my mind extremely vague. At any moment I could be Gone Away and suddenly I had to think.
There were two options. The first, go forward, threading my way through the huts until I saw what was going on. Downside: if Vinaldi wasn’t calling for me because he’d found something, I’d walk straight into the trap which Yhandim had undoubtedly set. With sudden clarity, the idea of going into a village struck me as irredeemably stupid. Why else would we be here unless we’d followed the clothes? Yes, we had to find out where Yhandim’s camp was—but not at the expense of walking straight into it.
So I took a second option, and quickly retreated out of the village. When I was at the perimeter I turned right, keeping my back to the forest, and ran round the edge of the houses, checking the spaces between buildings and trees. It was colder outside the village, much colder. Another night was coming. Night isn’t really night in The Gap. It is simply a period of indeterminate length when it will be darker and even less fun to be there.
Then I saw a figure, on the other side of the village—standing before one of the huts. It looked like Vinaldi, but he wasn’t moving. I was relieved, but only momentarily. There was something strange about his posture, as if he was holding his hands up in the air. As I tried to work out what he was doing, and wondered whether to shout, the second Rapt rush really hit home and suddenly things became difficult and strange. I teetered on the edge of being Gone Away for a moment but managed to hold it off.
I moved very close to the wall of the nearest