Dark Rivers of the Heart

distance. Each time he spotted them, he whipped out of sight into another branch of the midway maze.
        Around the corner from the Galactic Prison, past the Palace of the Parasites, beyond a screen of ficus trees and a red-flowering oleander hedge that were surely drab compared with the shrubs that grew on the planets of the Crab Nebula, he found a two-lane service road that marked the back of the park. He followed it.
        To his left were the trees, aligned twenty feet on center, with the sixwall that was featured in the public portions of the perimeter, a chain-link fence rose ten feet high, topped with coils of barbed wire, and beyond it lay a sward of desert scrub.
        He rounded a corner, and a hundred yards ahead was a pipe-andchain-link gate, on wheels, controlled by overhead hydraulic arms. It would roll out of the way at the touch of the right remote-control device-which Spencer didn't possess.
        He increased speed. He'd have to ram the gate.
        Reverting to his customary prudence, the dog scrambled off the passenger seat and curled in the leg space before he could be thrown there by the upcoming impact.
        "Neurotic but not stupid," Spencer said approvingly.
        He was more than halfway to the gate when he caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of his left eye. The Chrysler erupted from between two ficus trees, tearing the hell out of the oleander hedge, and crashed into the service way in showers of green leaves and red flowers. It crossed Spencer's wake and rammed the fence so hard that the chain-link billowed, as if made of cloth, to the end of the lane.
        The Explorer trailed that billow by a split second and hit the gate with enough force to crumple the hood without popping it open, to make Spencer's restraining harness tighten painfiiily across his chest, to knock the breath out of him, to clack his teeth together, to make his luggage rattle under the restraining net in the cargo area-but not hard enough to take out the gate. That barrier was torqued, sagging, half collapsed, trailing tangles of barbed wire like dreadlocks-but still intact.
        He shifted gears and shot backward as if he were a cannonball returning to the barrel in a counterclockwise world.
        The hitmen in the Chrysler were opening the doors, getting out, drawing their guns-until they saw the truck reversing toward them.
        They reversed too, scrambling inside the car, pulling the doors shut.
        He rammed backward into the sedan, and the collision was loud enough to convince him that he'd overdone it, disabled the Explorer.
        When he shifted into drive, however, the truck sprang forward. No tires were flat or obstructed by crumpled fenders. No windows had shattered.
        No smell of gasoline, so the tank wasn't ruptured. The battered Explorer rattled, clinked, ticked, and creaked-but it moved, with power and grace.
        The second impact took down the gate. The truck clambered over the fallen chain-link, away from Spaceport Vegas, into an enormous plot of desert scrub on which no one had yet built a theme park, a hotel, a casino, or a parking lot.
        Engaging the four-wheel drive, Spencer angled west, away from the Strip toward Interstate 15.
        He remembered Rocky and glanced down at the leg space in front of the passenger seat. The dog was curled up, with his eyes squeezed shut, as if anticipating another collision.
        "It's okay, pal."
        Rocky continued to grimace in anticipation of disaster.
        "Trust me."
        Rocky opened his eyes and returned to his seat, where the vinyl upholstery had been well scratched and punctured by his claws.
        They rocked and rolled across the eroded and barren land, to the base of the superhighway.
        A steep slope of gravel and shale rose thirty or forty feet to the east-west lanes. Even if he could find a break in the guardrail above him, no escape could be found-and certainly no salvation-on that highway.
        The people who were seeking him would establish checkpoints in both directions.
        After a brief hesitation, he turned south, following the base of the elevated interstate.
        From the east, across the white sand and the pink-gray slate, came the mold-green Chevrolet. It was like a heat mirage, although the day was cool. The low dunes and shallow washes would defeat it. The Explorer was made for overland travel; the Chevrolet was