Dark Of The Woods

not—if they were alive and came to Demos—even recognize him. He could walk among them and be unknown. The form, the mannerisms, the tic in his left cheek they had given him—all these things had been sloughed away, and only the essence had been left: the mind which he had faithfully scrubbed of their hatred years ago and which Leah had helped him to free in these past months on Demos. He would no longer have to look in the mirror and see the long, thin, patrician nose that reminded him, always, of his mother—or the square, heavy jaw that was distinctly his father's. Yes, this was the seed of the blooming joy: that he no longer had even the slightest ties to those people he loathed so much, to that twisted and hate-filled couple who had conceived him.
    The bubble of the elevator came to rest, and Leah thumbed for the doors to open. The fake rock partitions slid back, and they walked out onto the observation niche near the top of Tooth Mountain. The forests and peaks of Demos spread out before them, majestic in the multicolored light of the dust-filtered sun.
    Spreading his arms (and his wings behind them), Davis dashed to the edge of the niche, leaped into space, and barely managed to get air under the thin membranes in time to avoid a collision with a long antigrav bus which was using its plates against the side of the mountain to negotiate high enough to give the passenger's inside a thrill. On the side of the vehicle was lettered PIKE'S WOLF HUNT TOUR. The men and women inside, dressed in hunter's camouflage and holding drinks, looked at him wide-eyed, as if he had materialized out of nowhere. He saw them look above, where Leah still stood on the niche, and he knew that their respite from the pursuit of the authorities had ended in one, short second when he had been too stupid to look before leaping.

Chapter Thirteen
    Davis stood by the request keyboard of the fortress computer and punched out every subject heading he could conceive of that might concern the existence of the other three fortresses. Spools of tape slid into the delivery slot in alarming number, and he dropped them swiftly into a sack he had brought for the purpose. When he could not think of anything which might contain critical data about the other hideouts, he started punching out headings dealing with the Artifical Wombs, hoping to have time to deny all of that to the Alliance as well.
    "Here," Leah said, entering the room and dumping a pile of spools into the sack. "Those are the ones I got you this evening. They were still on the study desk."
    "Thanks," he said. "Food?"
    "All packed."
    "Water?"
    He punched out another topic; more spools slid into the tray.
    "Got it," she confirmed.
    "Two heat blankets?"
    "Yes, and electric torches. And, though Fortress Two might very well have weapons, we'll need some while we're getting from here to there. I packed four guns."
    "Damn!" he snapped, pounding a fist into the keyboard.
    "What is it?"
    "I don't see how we're going to have time to get all the pertinent data out of the library. And even if we do, we'll not be able to take it all with us. And it's burn-proof film. I could cut it up—and they'd put it back together."
    "What about acid?" she asked. "There should be a great many kinds in the labs, don't you think? One of them ought to destroy the stuff."
    He gave her a mock kiss. "Great!" He fished in the sack, handed her some spools. "You go down and find something that works. I'll stay here and push for as many topics as I can come up with and join you when I think I've got everything."
    She took the spools and raced through the door, into the elevator across the hall and down to the lower reaches.
    For some reason, as Davis stood there punching out subjects, he felt like the legendary little Dutch boy at the wall of the dike, trying to plug up the leak with a finger. Instead of water spilling out across his shoes, there were data films, dozens of them. At last, when he could not conjure up another title on any pertinent subject, he filled the sack with the spools. He was well enough acquainted with the library to know there were a few thousand other topics covered, but he had no more time to worry about those.
    When he reached the first lab floor and got off, Leah almost collided with him. "What is it?" he asked.
    "The acid idea is out. Unless you've boned up on your chemical formulas recently."
    "Huh?"
    "They don't have stuff sitting around in bottles. It looks like each lab table has a