At twenty-nine-twenty a single flash of hard white light shot out from Geiger's house like a wave of Jovian lightning. As the darkness folded back on itself and ate it up a thin tinkling scream echoed out and lost itself among the rain-drenched trees. I was out of the rickshaw and on my way before the echoes died.
There was no fear in that scream. It had a sound of a sexually pleasurable shock, an accent of drunkenness, an overtone of pure idiocy. It was a nasty sound. It made me think of smart machines in antiseptic white and barred windows and hard narrow cots with plastic wrist and ankle straps fastened to them. The Geiger hideaway was perfectly silent when I ht the gap in the hedge and dodged around the gap that masked the front door. There was a retro iron ring in a lion's mouth for a knocker. I reached for it, took hold of it. At that exact instant, as if somebody had been waiting for the cue, three shots boomed in the house. There was a sound that might have been a long harsh sigh. Then a soft messy thump. And then rapid footsteps in the house – going away.
The door fronted on a narrow run, like a footbridge over a gully, that filled the gap between the house wall and the edge of the bank. There was no porch, no solid ground, no way to get around to the back. The top entrance was at the top of the flight of metal stairs that rose from the alley-like street below. I knew this because I heard the clatter of feet on the steps, going down. Then I heard the sudden whine of a starting ground-car. It faded swiftly into the distance. I thought the sound was echoed by another ground-car, but I wasn't sure. The house in front of me was as silent as a cryogenic vault. There wasn't any hurry. What was in there was in there.
I straddled the fence at the side of the runway and leaned far out to the draped but unshielded french windows and tried to look in at the crack where the drapes came together. I saw light on a wall and one end of a media storage rack. I got back on the runway and took all of it and some of the hedge and gave the front door the heavy shoulder. This was foolish. About the only part of an unshielded Habitat residence you can't put your foot through is the front door. All it did was hurt my shoulder and make me mad. I climbed over the railing again and kicked in the french window, reaching through to open the mechanical bolt that fastened the window to the sill. The rest was easy. There was no top bolt. The catch gave after a little attention. I climbed in and pulled the drapes off my face.
Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.
Part 2