The man drew the massive concrete square back over his shoulder. And threw it at him.

Harris dived behind the nearest tree, fetching up against the rough bark, and saw a gray-white flash as the concrete sailed past. The slab flew across the median and the street beyond. It smashed into a stone wall, the ­impact sounding like the world’s largest porcelain jar shattering, and threw gravel-sized chips in all directions.

Wide-eyed, Harris looked back at the man who’d thrown it. The stunted man was already in motion, running his way.

Harris bolted, running beside the median, cursing the pain in his leg as it slowed him. There was no question of him trying to defend himself against a man like that. A glance over his shoulder showed the short man catching up—damn, he ran fast. Like a sprinter, like an Olympic gymnast charging toward the vaulting horse.

But just beyond the short man was a truck, passing him by and headed Harris’ way. It looked like an Army truck, but dark crimson instead of green.

As it came abreast of Harris, he angled toward it, got his hands on the tailgate, and hauled himself into the rear.

Dragging himself over the tailgate and dropping into the truck bed sent fiery pain through his injured thigh. A gold-and-red haze obscured his vision. He lay on his back, gulping in air, waiting for the haze to fade.

He was either someplace very strange, or he was having a psychotic episode. After all his recent disappointments and all that vodka, he could believe the latter. But he didn’t; this was all too real.

After half a minute his vision returned to normal. He could see wooden crates lashed down to the front half of the truck bed. He sat up wearily and looked out over the tailgate.

The squat man was still there. About fifteen feet back, he was running hard and fast. And as he caught sight of Harris, his eyes gleamed redly again; he put on another burst of speed, gaining a couple of feet on the truck.

He’d lost his beret, sweat poured down his face and into his gray mustache and beard, his shirt was askew with its tails free of his pants, and he was still running faster than any man Harris had ever seen. Harris froze, shocked beyond thinking.

The truck bed beneath him vibrated and rumbled; Harris heard its gears shift. It slowed and the short man gained another half-dozen feet. Harris forced himself to rise to a half-crouch, ready for a futile fight against this unstoppable little man.

But the truck accelerated. The gap between two-legged pursuer and four-wheeled prey widened. Harris might have cheered, but all his air seemed to be going to fuel the pounding of his heart. The short man was twenty feet back, twenty-five and still running, then thirty . . . and at last Harris saw him give up the chase, stopping in the middle of the road, shaking a fist furiously after the truck and its passenger.

Then, finally, Harris felt he could slump back down behind the tailgate and get his heart under control.

The skyscraper loomed up fifty or more stories, but was round instead of square, with its upper floors shaped like the top of a medieval castle’s tower. Electric light poured out of round-topped windows on each story. Stone gargoyles lurked on ledges every few stories, and their neon light eyes blinked on and off. The building stood between other skyscrapers equally tall, equally strange. Then the truck left the building behind and a slight bend in the road hid it from sight.

More neon blinked, advertising storefronts: “Pingel’s Cafe,” “Gwenllian’s Beauty Salon,” “Drakshire Opera House.” Many of these signs were tall vertical marquees extending from the faces and corners of buildings. Harris saw signs with neon lines twisted like Celtic knotwork to frame glowing, blinking words.

“The Tamlyn Club. Featuring Addison Trow and His New Castilians. Light, Dark, Dusky Welcome.” Men in tuxedos and top hats, women in evening dresses and gloves reaching nearly to their shoulders, walked in and out of the club’s double doors, admitted by uniformed doormen. These patrons seemed short and slight, with ­unlined faces, so that it looked like a parade of acne-free teenagers out for a night on the town.

The tuxedos weren’t normal. Dark green, dark red, dark gray—no black. The women’s dresses were more brightly varied in hue, some of them in lamé that caught the light and held it, shimmering with color.

A newsboy—work shirt, shorts with suspenders, ­beret—hawked newspapers on a street corner, mere feet from a cart laden with fruit; its hand-lettered sign read, “Apples 1p, Pomegranates 5p.”

The buildings were all of stone or brick, many with ornately carved lintels or panels flanking the doorways. They bore no graffiti, no metal bars on the windows or across closed storefronts. Few buildings had windows on the first floor.

The cars, brightly colored blocky things with extended hoods and running boards, most with steering wheels on the right, all drove on the wrong side of the road.

Harris watched this parade of bewildering images whenever he could no longer resist, but most of his atten­tion was focused on his injury. Bounced around by the motion of the truck, he managed to brace himself in the corner by the tailgate, then pulled off his shoes and pants to look at the wound.

There was a lot of blood, but the parallel slashes were not deep . . . just long. Swearing, he pulled off his denim jacket and shirt, then tore the latter into strips. As well as he was able, he bound his injury, cinching the ­impromptu bandages as tight as he dared. Then he pulled his clothes on again.

By now the street scenery had become monotonous: block after block of stone-faced residential buildings, ­curiously clean, the streets free of trash. Here, there were windows on the first floor, about eight feet off the ground, and Harris could see into the apartments. Occasionally he caught the smell of meat roasting.

The truck pulled over and parked. Harris scrambled up and over the tailgate as fast as his leg would allow him. But as his feet came down on the brick of the street more pain jolted through his wound and his head swam with dizziness. It was a moment before he could turn to the sidewalk. Once again, he wasn’t fast enough.

From behind him: “Here, now!” A man’s voice, clipped, deep.

Harris sighed and turned.

The truck’s driver stood at the left rear quarter of the truck. He was a short man, no more than five and a half feet tall, but very broad shouldered. He wore a flannel shirt and dark pants but, incongruously, was barefoot. His gray hair, flowing long from beneath his fedora-type hat, suggested that he was an older man, but his face was ruddy and unlined. He held an elaborately curved pipe in one hand and an unlit match in the other as he looked gravely at Harris. “You steal anything, son?”

Harris shook his head. It was a stupid question; he couldn’t have stuffed one of those wooden crates under his jacket.

“Imagine that,” the man said. He lit his pipe, puffing a moment, and then tossed the match into the street. “Truck full of talk-boxes and you don’t try to take a thing. Must be an honest man.” He spoke without irony. There was a faint accent, an odd lilt to his words, but Harris couldn’t place it. “You look like you’re fresh off the boat. Looking for work? I have a fair of sisters’ worth of deliv­eries left tonight. Could use a man to unload. I’ll pay a dec.”

Harris tried to follow the man’s odd words, couldn’t quite grasp all their meaning. “Uh, no, I can’t. I—” He gestured vaguely at his leg. “I got hurt.”

The barefoot man glanced, and his eyebrows rose. “You did. Lot o’ red, son. You have any money?”

Harris shook his head.

The barefoot man fished around in one of his shirt pockets and drew out something that glinted silver in the streetlight; he pressed it into Harris’ hand. “Get to a doctor before that cut fouls. I saw enough of that in the war, don’t need to see it at home.”