"Is there a problem?" Valentine asked.
"Just checking with central."
"Should I wait?"
"If you don't mind." She turned and checked a clipboard again.
Valentine hated to do it, but he took out the horse tranquilizer. With one quick step, he got behind her and jammed it into her neck. He pulled her down, one hand on her mouth, and waited until her legs quit kicking.
"You certainly got her cooperation," Gail said.
"Let's not have any attitude tonight, okay, Gail?" Valentine asked as he pulled the nurse into a file room. He found a length of surgical tubing and tied the door shut.
Gail offered a wheeeee as he raced her down the hall to the elevator. On the ride down he stripped off his scrubs.
"I've never been here before," Gail observed as they entered the basement corridor. Ahn-Kha helped her get dressed. "Oh, pretty," she remarked, as Valentine slipped a feathered mask on her.
They walked her out to the Lincoln, Ahn-Kha half carrying her across the road. The Golden One climbed in the back cargo area where his disassembled puddler waited, along with Valentine's weapons.
"Keep her quiet back there, and out of sight," Valentine said.
He drove the Lincoln around the building perimeter to the veterinary office. "Glad you remembered the heavy coat," Valentine said as Dr. Boothe slipped into the passenger seat.
"You give good instruction. Is this Paoli's rig?"
"I like to make an exit," Valentine said.
Pepsa's eyes widened as she saw Ahn-Kha in back.
Valentine passed out masks to Dr. Boothe and Pepsa. "Just on our way to a party, okay? Once we're past the gate, you'll be driving."
As they rolled around the hospital the headlights illuminated a figure at the roadside in harsh black and white, gleam and shadow. A pale face, exaggerated and immobile as a theatrical mask, held them like a spotlight.
A Reaper.
Boothe sucked breath in through her teeth. Valentine's heart gave a triple thump. The Reaper could upend the Lincoln as easily as it might lift a wheelbarrow. Then what chance would they have, still within Xanadu's walls. If it moved he'd have to-
But it didn't.
After they passed it crossed the road behind them. How could it not know they had an expectant mother inside the SUV? Of all forms of lifesign, a pregnant woman's was the strongest, and Valentine had one experience involving a Kurian and an infant's lifesign that he'd rather die than repeat. Perhaps the Kurian animating it was sick, or sated, or . . . someone was letting them go.
The gate warden hardly looked at them as they followed a bus full of Halloween partygoers out of Xanadu. Ahn-Kha lay flat in the back cargo space, holding down Gail Foster. "Have a good time, Dr. Paoli," the sergeant said. Valentine nodded and Boothe waved in return.
Pepsa tapped her hands against the leather seats as Valentine pulled away from the gate. "We've done it!" Boothe said.
"We've done it, alright," Valentine demurred. "Now what are they going to do about it?"
Escapes: Nearly every part of the Kurian Zone is traced with "pipelines," or channels for escapees to reach safety. Other networks supply guerillas and underground information distributors, and a few do double, or even triple duties as criminal organizations involved in smuggling and black-market trading. In the better-run networks, each person at a pipeline junction only knows her links in the next stage of the operation, making it harder for a pipeline to be rolled up. Generally, the less that is known about a pipeline the safer it is to travel.
This has a drawback, however. Without careful preparation work, operatives who venture into unfamiliar territory will have no idea who to trust and who not to, as the man next door in the New Universal Church hostel might be the local pipeline operator or a Kurian informer.
A grim vocabulary exists among those who shuttle material, human or logistical, through the pipelines. Shutdowns and spills are bad, involving loss of a route, and a penetration is the worst of all, indicating that the Kurians successfully uncovered a line and cleaned it up after their "mole" crept its way through. A "rabbit" is an escapee that makes a try for freedom without any guidance whatsoever. Rabbits are useful in that "rabbit runs" divert resources that might otherwise be used to uncover a real pipeline.
Like a cottontail's dash for cover, most rabbit runs are fast, panicked, and quickly finished.
* * * *
Valentine switched places with Boothe as soon as they passed out of the light of the gates. It was a cloudy evening and the woods were black as a mine shaft. Only with wide-open Cat eyes could he distinguish a tree trunk or two. He relaxed a little once they passed where he had sensed the Reaper pickets on his reconnaissance and made it out of the hairpin-turn gully-if Valentine had chosen a spot to ambush the big-framed Lincoln, it would have been there.