A heavy, loud rain poured from the night sky. Half a mile away, fire engulfed a building and, undaunted by the rain, sent up dense clouds of acrid smoke; damp ash drifted in the air.
Mallon ducked into a shallow alcove, the door boarded over, security-sealed. Exhausted, his clothes soaked and water dripping from his hair, he closed his eyes and pressed back against wood and brick so the rain did not touch him. He'd come a long way in a short time, most of it on foot; he hoped it was worth it.
Sleep tried to shut down his mind, his body; concentration was difficult, and he could not hang on to complete threads of thought. An explosion rocked the air, shook the building he leaned against. Mallon opened his eyes, pulling out of a doze. On the street, a grinder roared past, chewing up the surface of the road, spraying rock and dirt to both sides, its armored body almost hidden by damp flying dust; its siren wailed as it passed.
Mallon remained in the alcove a few minutes, resting. When the grinder was long gone--the only sounds now were faint shouts, distant gunfire, the rain falling on stone and water--he stepped out into the street and pushed on.
As he neared the fire, he could see it burning in a number of buildings, perhaps an entire block engulfed in flame on the other side of Track Canal. Just before he reached the canal, Mallon turned down a street, crossed it, and stopped in front of a three-story building of charred stone and wood--the survivor of several previous fires. He approached the metal door, rapped on it. A gray panel at eye level shimmered a moment, became almost translucent, then went back to gray. The door opened and Terril, a big man dressed in glass and steel, nodded at Mallon, stepped aside to let him in. Terril closed the door, cutting off the sounds of the streets and rain, then retreated into his cubicle built into the wall.
Mallon walked slowly along the corridor, the way lit by strings of diffuse blue phosphor lights trailing from the ceiling. The building was quiet, but muted voices and other unidentifiable sounds filtered through the doors and walls on both sides. At the end of the corridor he turned to the right and started up a flight of wooden stairs.
The second floor was quieter than the first, the corridor darker, the ceiling higher. Only one door led off from the corridor, near the end. Mallon tapped lightly on the thick wood, and almost immediately the door was opened for him. He stepped inside, and the door was pushed quickly and quietly closed.
The room was large and dark, lit only by the glow of the raging fire fully visible through the immense open windows in the opposite wall. Two chuurkas, each nearly eight feet tall, stood in front of the largest windows. With their neck membranes fully spread, they "watched" the fire with the organic arrays of infrared receptors. A small, thin human squatted just behind them, a tiny black box implanted at the base of her skull (Mallon thought it was a girl, though he couldn't be certain). She adjusted the stands of burning incense at the chuurkas' sides. The incense rose, swirling, and Mallon could see the gill-like folds beneath the neck membranes flutter, guiding the incense into the narrow, slitted openings.
The man who had opened the door for him crossed the length of the room to another door in the far wall, stepped through it, and Mallon was suddenly alone in the room with the two chuurkas and their tender.
The chuurkas did not turn toward him, but Mallon knew they were aware of his presence. Their hearing was intensely acute, their sense of touch even more so; they would have picked up the vibrations of his steps as he climbed the stairs, approached the room and entered. If they turned toward him now, they would see him with their small, strangely lidded eyes, but mostly they would "see" him with their spread membranes, sense his body heat, the warmth of his breath.
The room was sparsely furnished--a few cushions scattered about the floor, a small table and chairs near the second door, a cot against the wall in the back corner. Mallon wanted to drop onto the cot, close his eyes, and sleep.
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