The Practice Effect by David Brin Page B

overhead, mussing Dennis’s hair with its wake.
    Gil’m stared at his now empty left hand, shimmering with a thin coating of bright fluid. “Hey!” he complained. He turned barely in time to see the gremmie vanish through the gateway into town.
4
    Dennis would have decidedly preferred a more leisurely first tour of a Coylian city.
    Back at the gate there was a mass of confusion. The initial hilarity of the people in the caravan dissolved into shouts and screams as the guards stepped in with truncheons.
    Dennis didn’t hang around to watch the melee. He pounded across a beautiful, ornate bridge that arched over a canal. Pedestrians stared as he wove among gaily painted market stalls, dodging vendors and their customers. The guards’ hue and cry followed only a little behind him as he fled. Luckily, most of the citizens quickly turned away in order not to get involved.
    Dennis leaped past a street-corner juggler and ducked the folling pins to dive into an alley behind a pastry stall.
    He heard boots pounding on the bridge not far behind him. There were yells as the guards tripped over the hapless juggler and his pins. Dennis continued dodging through the twisting streets and alleys.
    The buildings of Zuslik were ziggurat high-rises, some over a dozen stories tall. All had the same wedding cake type of design. The narrow lanes were as serpentine as interdepartmental politics back at Sahara Tech.
    In a deserted alley he paused to wait out a stitch in his side. All this running wasn’t easy with a heavy pack on his back. At last he was about to go on when suddenly, just ahead, he heard a newly familiar voice cursing.
    “… like to burn this whole damn town to the groun’! You mean
none
of you saw that gremmie? Or those thieves who snuck in our guardhouse while we weren’t lookin’? Nobody saw nothin’? Damn Zuslikers! You’re
all
a buncha thieves! It’s funny how a stripe or two can jog a memory!”
    Dennis backed into the alley. One thing was certain, he’d have to ditch his pack. He found a dim corner, unbuckled the belt, and let it slide to the ground. He knelt and pulled out his emergency pouch, which he slung onto his Sam Browne belt. Then he looked around for a place to stash the pack.
    There was rubbish in the alley, but unfortunately there were no real hiding places.
    The first floor of the building next to him was little more than seven feet high. The next level was set back a meter or two, so the roof formed a parapet just overhead. Dennis stepped back and heaved the pack onto the ledge. Then he backed away again and leaped for a handhold.
    Dennis swung his right leg to bring it up, but just then he felt his hold begin to slip. He had forgotten the coating of sled oil still on his right hand. His grip was too slick to hold, and he fell to the ground with a painful thump.
    Much as he would have liked to have lain there groaning for a little while, there just wasn’t time. Shakily, he got up for another try.
    Then he heard footsteps behind him.
    He turned and saw Gil’m the Guard enter the alleymouth about ten meters away, grinning happily and holding his weapon high. The halberd blade gleamed menacingly.
    Dennis noted that Gil’m wasn’t using his left hand at all and assumed it must still be coated with the sled oil. The stuff was insidious.
    Dennis popped the flap of his holster and drew his needler. He pointed it at the guard. “All right,” he said, “hold it right there. I don’t want to have to hurt you, Gil’m.”
    The soldier kept coming, grinning happily in anticipation, apparently, of slicing Dennis in twain.
    Dennis frowned. Even if no one here had ever seen a hand weapon like the needier before, his own self-assurance at least should have given the fellow pause.
    Perhaps Gil’m was unimaginative.
    “I don’t think you know what you’re facing here,” he told the guard.
    Gil’m came on, holding his weapon high with one hand. Dennis decided he had no choice but to play out his