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had taken the leo for master, all questions were for Sweets forever answered.
It was really all he had ever wanted.
The tunnel wasn't far north of the meat-packing houses the pack had used
to haunt in the early morning, snatching scraps and suet from the discard
bins, till the men armed with long stinging batons came out to chase them
away. Since the time one of the pack had been cornered there by men and beaten
and stung to death by those sticks, they had avoided the places. But Sweets
remembered the tunnel. It was a dark, open mouth closed with barricades; above
it, orange lights went on and off in sequence. The city streets swept down to
it from several directions between stone bulwarks and then into its maw.
Sweets had never speculated about where it led or why, though once he had seen
a policeman mounted on a bike go in and not come out again.
By the time winter had grown old and filthy in the city, Painter had
settled on the tunnel, of all the exits Sweets and he had investigated.
His and Sweets's breath rose whitely on the pale predawn air. Painter
looked down into the tunnel from the shelter of the bulwark's lip. A broken
chain of dim yellow lights went away down its center, but they lit nothing.
Painter knew no more than Sweets what was in there, but he supposed it led to
the Northern Autonomy; it was anyway the passage west, to the wild lands, and
that was all the freedom he needed, just now, to imagine.
Why were there no guards, as there were at the bridges? Maybe there
were, at the other end. Or maybe it was one of those ancient duties that had
come to be neglected, left up to signs and fierce threats: DO NOT ENTER. NO
THRU TRAFFIC. VIOLATORS SUBJECT TO ARREST DETENTION RELOCATION. PROVISIONAL
REGIONAL GOVT. It's not in a leo's nature to speculate about threats, dangers,
punishment for ventures. He had tried to work out what would happen once they
were all inside, but nothing came. So he only waited for the pack to gather.
They had come downtown through the night in their way, separately, yet
never disattached from another's odors and presence; they stopped to mark
their way, stopped to investigate smells, food smells, rat smells, human
smells. They circled downtown in a three-block quadrille. Sweets had stayed
close to Painter in the vanguard, nervous over the direct, unhurried,
unconcealed way he took but unwilling to be far from him. Now as the light
grew he paced nervously, marked the place again, and kept his nose high for
news of the others, In ones and twos and threes they assembled, all nervous at
being so far from the smells of home as day broke; Duke especially was
excited, his one proud ear swiveling for sounds.
Painter waited till he felt no further reluctance in Sweets to go (he'd
never counted the pack or learned them all; only Sweets knew if they were all
present) and then went down onto the tunnel approach, walking steadily through
the yellow slush. The pack swarmed down behind him, staying close together
now, not liking the tunnel but preferring its darkness to the exposed
approach. Painter broke a place in the rotted wooden barricades; some of the
pack had already slithered under, some clambered over. They were inside,
moving quickly along the pale tiled wall. The clicking of the dogs' nails and
the steady sound of Painter's boots were distinct, loud, intrusive in the
silence.
The tunnel was longer than Painter had expected. lt took wide, sinuous
turns, as though they walked through the interior of a vast snake; the yellow
lights glinted fitfully on the undersides of its scales. He thought they must
be nearing the end when they had only passed the halfway mark, and he didn't
know that at that mark -- a dim white line at the river's center -- their
passage touched off a sensor connected to a police shack outside the far end
of the tunnel.
Sweets ran on ahead, knowing he should around some turning see the
daylight at the other end, wanting to be able to take Painter to it, to hurry
him to it; but at the same time he wanted to be next to him. There was the
pack also; impossible to keep them from lingering, from sounding when they
passed through dark stretches where the light had failed. The best spur he
could give them was to run on ahead and force them to follow; and it was when
he had raced a distance ahead that he first heard the bike approaching them
down the tunnel.
He stood stock still, fur standing, ears back. By the time the others
had caught up with him the sound was loud. No, keep on, Painter said, and went
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