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but he did. And he also knew I was so stupid, I wasn't likely to see through
their trick.
"This way," I said. "I know where she's gone."
Unshummin palace is shaped like a Mandasar queen. Really. A long central body
with eight legs sticking out at the sides the legs are actually separate wings
of the building, three stories tall and up at the head, the queen's "claws"
are four more building wings stretched out on diagonals. The claw parts even
end in crescent-shaped rotundas, so from the air they look like pincers.
Much farther back, where the palace's "tail" meets the wider part of the
body, there are two big glass domes to represent venom sacs. The domes are
actually huge greenhouse roofs; beneath them lies the Royal Conservatory, with
tropical-zone plants under the right-hand dome and temperate-zone plants under
the left.
The right-hand part is the closest thing to a jungle you'll find within a
thousand kilometers of Unshummin. That's where I led the five guards.
"There's this little girl," I whispered to them. "And she has this secret
place where she goes when she's really scared."
They nodded and even smiled, like they understood. What I said wasn't
true Innocence could never have gone from the infirmary to the conservatory
without being seen by dozens of people but the guards were willing to believe
me. They didn't suspect I suspected... till I led them into the middle of the
dark trees and vines, then suddenly dashed away through a grove of Koshavese
fire oaks.
The trees grew too close together for the warriors to follow me; and I moved
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fast enough that I was out of sight before they could bring their stunners to
bear. The guns whirred anyway, but I didn't feel a tingle what with the dark
and the tree cover and the gas masks on the guards' faces, I guess they
weren't aiming very well.
Nice thing about those gas masks: the guards couldn't sniff me out. A
Mandasar warrior depends so much on his nose, he's at a numb disadvantage when
his smelling's sealed off. Mandasar eyes are just as good as human, and their
ears are sharp enough to hear a big guy like me blundering his way through the
bush... but without their noses, they lose their edge: a fraction slower on
everything they do. That was good after a year of being sick, I was a fraction
slower too, and I don't mean a tiny fraction like one over a thousand.
My plan was just to lose the soldiers in the conservatory, then duck out a
door to find Innocence. Just one problem: there were three doors one toward
the head of the palace, one toward the tail, and one that led through a bunch
of potting rooms to the other half of the conservatory. While I was still
dodging through the undergrowth, the sergeant sent three of his men racing to
cover those exits. That left two of them to search for one of me... and they
had all the guns.
I've already said I'm not one of those guys who can creep through the dark
without making a sound. Lucky for me, most Mandasars are even worse at being
stealthy than I am; there's no such thing as a silent bulldozer. There's also
no such thing as a Mandasar who can climb trees great big lobsters have no
monkeys anywhere in their evolutionary past. Your average warrior never looks
for trouble above head height... which is probably true for human soldiers
too, but our species should know better.
Up I went into some kind of tree with easy-to-climb branches. Its bark felt
like moldy cheese: hard underneath, but with an outer layer of mushy fuzz. It
smelled like moldy cheese too... moldysomething anyway, all pulpy and rotten.
I wasn't happy getting the stuff on the front of my uniform, but I had an easy
time digging in my fingers for handholds. Without much noise, I pulled myself
up a story and a half above the ground, then settled into the shadows between
a big branch and the trunk.
The sergeant passed cautiously below me. I considered dropping onto his head,
but decided against it considering how out of practice I was, I wouldn't take
him out instantly. Anyway, it would be sure to cause noise. The other warrior
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