The Sagittarius Whorl

  I managed a grunt, then blinked and swallowed.

  It wasn't hard to do, it was rather easy. And my previously numb toes and ringers and tongue were starting to tingle.

  Hello!

  They'd shot me with a toxin that preserved consciousness, going for the leg after my armored anorak had foiled the body hits. A jab in the lower calf would have worked nicely on somebody wearing conventional executive footgear.

  But I was a cowboy.

  The injector had penetrated the tough leather of my boot with difficulty. It must have been slightly deflected and failed to deliver the entire dose. I'd taken in enough chemical to paralyze me, but the stuff might already be starting to wear off.

  I sat absolutely still. We were traveling through the rainy night, out from under the force-umbrella now, soaring over Toronto's eastern suburbs. I speculated briefly upon the reason why my captors hadn't taken me to the Haluk embassy or even Oshawa Starport out in Lake Ontario rather than heading out of town toward Peterborough.

  North of the interchange at kilometer 122 were roads leading into the Kawarthas, a picturesque region of lakes, rolling woodlands, and pretty little towns: Bridgenorth and scores of other dormitory exurbs, modest art colonies and resorts like Fenelon Falls where my friend Bea Mangan and her husband had a technocottage, enclaves of stunning affluence such as Mount Julian, where top Concern executives maintained pseudorustic pieds-a-terre on Stony Lake.

  Come to think of it, when he wasn't hunkered down at Galapharma HQ in Glasgow, Alistair Drummond had lived up in the Kawarthas, too ...

  The demiclones talked freely to each other in the difficult Haluk language, confident that their paralyzed prisoner, like so many lazy translator-addicted Earthlings, was unable to understand them.

  Mistake.

  During my politically active phase, when I was eloquently disparaging the secretiveness of the Haluk before one of the commerce committees and it looked as though the Delegates were starting to take me seriously, the Servant of Servants of Luk made a diplomatic gesture intended to defuse a deteriorating public relations situation.

  The Haluk leader proposed a guided tour of Artiuk, their principal colony in the Perseus Spur, to show that his race had nothing to hide. The invitation was extended to twelve influential members of the committee, three media representatives from Newsweek, Cosmos Today, and the Times ... and me, badass motormouth celebrity. Because of delicate Haluk cultural inhibitions, no audiovisual recording devices would be allowed; but we visitors would be able to dictate copious notes into handheld computers.

  The SSL's invitation was eagerly accepted.

  Alone among my human colleagues, I chose to take a sleep-course in the Haluk language during the eight-day trip out to the Spur. It was something I'd been meaning to do for a long time: know thine enemy, and all that. The other members of the group opted for the greater convenience and efficiency of mechanical translators. I intended to wear one, too; but I'd hatched a vague plan to discard the thing conspicuously at some point during the tour, hoping to provoke our Haluk hosts into making imprudent comments in the belief that I wouldn't understand them.

  As it happened, my subterfuge wasn't necessary. The translators worn by us humans malfunctioned almost from the first moment we set foot on Artiuk—perhaps because its solar system was in the throes of a sudden ionic storm, perhaps for another reason altogether. Whatever the source of the problem, the fritzed-out devices reduced Haluk speech to incomprehensible gibberish, and they could not be repaired with the tools available on the alien world.

  This might have put a serious damper on our visit, had not the Servant of Servants graciously provided each one of us with an English-speaking Haluk escort. These high-ranking officials of his personal staff subsequently accompanied us everywhere and filtered all conversations between us and the Artiuk locals.

  The Haluk facial structure is not conducive to emotional display. I was able to discern that the instant translations the guides provided us were often very creative.

  As I'd expected, the "fact-finding tour" turned out to be little more than a puff job. It revealed only superficial aspects of Haluk life and absolutely nothing about their military-industrial capability. We were allowed close contact only with gracile-phase humanoid individuals.

  "It would be depressing for you to meet the poor lepido-dermoids, much less view the dormant testudinals," our hosts said, gently reproving curious members of the delegation. "And besides, there are no longer very many nongracile Haluk residing on Artiuk, thanks to the miracle of your PD32:C2 genetic engineering vector, which has changed our lives so marvelously by eradicating the curse of allomorphism."

  So we saw what the Haluk wanted us to see: performances of dissonant Haluk music, displays of beautiful Haluk artwork, timid Haluk children at crowded primary schools who presented us with bouquets of alien flowers, Haluk agronomists operating impressive hydroponic farms that grew produce mildly poisonous to the human digestive tract. It was all very edifying, and to sophisticated human galaxy trotters, duller than belly-button lint.

  Unless one happened to understand what the non-English-speaking Haluk were actually saying about their distinguished visitors.

  The adults hated our collective entrails because we had cruelly stalled Haluk emigration to the Milky Way and charged extortionate prices for PD32:C2 and other vital technology. The poor little Haluk kids were scared rigid of us because the adults had told them that humans were cannibals who ate misbehaving children.

  I did my best to share eavesdropped intelligence with the Assembly Delegates and the reporters, but my well-known anti-Haluk bias bent my credibility. In the end the relentless hospitality of the Servant of Servants and his minions won the hearts of our group.

  When we returned to Earth, the media special reports were glowing. A month later the Haluk treaties were ratified by the Assembly.

  From my alarmist point of view, the trip had been worse than useless. All I'd really gained was a superficial knowledge of an abstruse alien tongue, most of which faded from my mind almost immediately.

  But not all of it.

  Under computer control, the limousine roared along the storm-lashed elevated road. The rain was now mixed with ice pellets. Brown Fleece relaxed behind the wheel, lit a cigarette—the vice had spread like wildfire among the blue aliens resident on Earth—and spoke in the Haluk language to the leather-jacketed demiclone seated at my right.

  "Blah blah will be up a copulatory orifice because we are so late. One fears the road blah blah blah. It is the last day of the normal human work blah and blah blah blah"

  Black Leather said, "One might as well be fighting the blah back home on [some Haluk planet]. Great Almighty Luk help our blah posteriors if we blah blah blah"

  Fleece: "One is carefully watching the blah blah. At present the sky road is blah all the way to Peterborough."

  Leather: "Thank Almighty Luk ..."

  The demiclones were complaining about Friday night traffic. Welcome to the club.

  Fleece said, "One presumes that our next blah blah will be to take the brother."

  What!

  Leather: "Ru Balakalak will decide. The angry human blah still strongly resists that idea. He blah blah blah. And he thinks the brother lacks blah blah."

  I exerted all my willpower to avoid flinching in dismay. Were these turkeys referring to my disreputable brother Daniel?

  Fleece: "This one believes the revised plan using the brother is superior. And the blah younger sister would blah blah blah his disappearance."

  Leather: "Perhaps. The brother is surely more easily blah than the appalling human blah. But does he possess blah blah to accomplish blah blah blah!"

  Fleece: "Maybe not, if one can trust blah of the angry human blah."

  Leather: "Curse all humans! The plan itself is excellent but blah blah of it stinks like lepido nose wax. This one will continue to urge strongly that a Haluk blah blah be used, rather than any human blah."

  Fleece: "Wh
o will listen to one? Ru Balakalak leads. He is a stubborn [epithet] and favors the quickest blah blah in order to please the Servant of Servants. The danger blah blah blah."

  Leather: "[Epithet.] One wishes we would blah blah blah and put an end to it."

  Fleece: "We are not ready. One knows that. When we are ready, it will happen."

  There followed an interval of portentous silence, during which I felt my guts twisting into a granny knot. Were they talking about an attack against humanity? And what kind of plan would they have that would involve me, my wretched brother, my sister Beth, and another human? I was trying to sort this out when my thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a resounding Haluk curse from Black Leather.

  "Are we slowing down?" he called out to his compatriot. "We are!"

  Up front, Brown Fleece was studying the navigation display, which was not visible from the passenger compartment. "Almighty Luk! The blah indicates a blah blahl" He broke into a tirade of alien vituperation.

  Black Leather spoke impatiently to the car in Standard English. "Navigator, why is traffic decelerating?"

  The robot voice said, A vehicle on-board computer has malfunctioned catastrophically and caused a multiple-car accident with injuries at kilometer 100.4. All six eastbound lanes are blocked at that point.

  A sea of red brakelights glowed in the sleet storm outside as the marvelous automated speedway reverted to ox-road status. Pavement deicing equipment had kicked in, adding clouds of steam to the atmospheric melange.

  "Exit!" Leather commanded his associate. "Hurry, before we are blah"

  But we had just passed the ramp at Enniskillen. Fleece asked the navigator, "What is our next exit option?"

  Exit 80, the Lindsay-Clarington freeway, fifteen kilometers ahead. Estimated time of arrival at this exit is now approximately 21:10 hours.

  Black Leather spat more exotic obscenities and smacked his fist furiously against the refreshment console just in front of our seat. Our speed was now less than 40 kph and still dropping. We were going to be hung up for over an hour, creeping at a snail's pace toward the next exit together with hundreds of other luxury vehicles and their fuming occupants.

  I wiggled my toes. The tingling had faded.

  "Can we not summon an aircraft to blah us out of this fex-pletiveJT' Black Leather asked his companion.

  The limousine, of course, could be programmed to exit the highroad all by itself if we were evacuated via hopper. Perhaps other trapped bigwig motorists were also considering that extreme option, although private aircraft were forbidden to land on the highroad, and the storm made the prospect of being winched into the sky through the roof hatch an uninviting one.

  Fleece said, "One doubts that would save significant time, since our blah blah aircraft are blah at Mount Julian."

  Leather groaned. "[Convoluted expletive.] Then we are truly blah, my friend."

  "One must blah blah our delay." Fleece began to speak in an undertone into the driver's communicator.

  Muttering, the alien sitting on my right opened the refreshment console and took out a packet of cigarettes. The limo was rolling more and more slowly. At speeds of less than 10 kph it would be possible to unlock the doors manually from the inside.

  I flexed the fingers of my left hand. They worked. So did the other muscles of that arm, which I tensed gingerly without making any suspicious motion. The paralyzing agent seemed to have almost worn off.

  Right. Wait for the moment.

  Slower. Slower.

  Now.

  Black Leather was holding a flameless electric lighter to his smoke. I slammed a roundhouse left hook into his face, singeing my knuckles on the glowing cigarette tip as I drove it and the red-hot lighter against his mouth.

  He let out a hideous cry and clawed at me like a madman. I slammed his head down onto the console and flicked the lock switch. In the front seat, Brown Fleece whirled around, gabbling in Haluk. He was too far away to reach me. I tore open my door, dropped outside onto the road shoulder, picked myself up, and stumbled toward the inner guardrail.

  Fleece was opening his own door as I vaulted over the barrier onto the median safety catwalk that separated the eastbound highroad lanes from the westbound. It was very cold. Traffic was now nearly at a standstill on our side, and vapor from melting pavement ice swirled amidst the driving sleet. Crouching low, I raced back the way we'd come, forgetting that I would be silhouetted against the headlights of oncoming cars. I still wore my Anonyme anorak. With the hood off I was half blinded by the torrent of stinging sleet pellets. They hissed against the vehicle surfaces like a nest of rattlesnakes, almost drowning out the roar of turbo engines powering the automobiles of more fortunate motorists in the open westbound lanes.

  Solid ground lay thirty meters below the catwalk grating, hidden by mist and the purple glow of the powerful anti-gravity reticulum that buoyed up the ribbon of reinforced pavement. The AG field was generated by machinery housed in huge pylons situated every 500 meters along the highroad. The only emergency exits for pedestrians were inside those pylons. Under normal conditions, auto breakdown service and ambulance evacuation for accident victims were accomplished by Highroad Authority hoppercraft. The police used hoppers, too.

  Over the noise of the westbound traffic and the storm I heard ominous sharp pinging sounds. A volley of stun-darts zipped around me, striking the ceramalloy stanchions and railings.

  Running flat-out along the catwalk, I managed to pull up my armored anorak hood an instant before one of the darts struck the back of my skull and bounced off. The impact caused me to see stars momentarily and stagger with pain.

  I recovered my senses, belatedly realized that the unimpeded stretch of catwalk was a perfect shooting gallery, and flung myself back over the railing onto the shoulder. Bobbing and swerving, I darted like a cockroach into the six lanes of crawling cars, now spaced precisely three meters apart by the traffic-control computer. A few startled drivers honked and flashed their headlights frantically. Most of them ignored me.

  Brown Fleece was galloping along the shoulder, showing no inclination to follow me out among the moving cars. Darts loaded with sleepy-juice flew through the sleet-streaked headlight beams like supercharged fireflies, missed me, and ricocheted off the vehicles.

  Nobody opened a car door and invited me inside to safety.

  My bruised head hurt like hell. The sleet was changing to heavy flakes of wet snow and visibility was terrible.

  Another dart hit me in the back of my armored jacket. I thanked God that my vulnerable legs were shielded by the surrounding cars. All I could do was continue to zigzag through the traffic jam, taking small comfort from the realization that Brown Fleece certainly had orders to take me alive. His weapon was probably an Ivanov stun-pistol that typically fired small missiles with a limited range. It would be virtually impossible for the Haluk demiclone to use the gun's none-too-reliable autotargeter system while taking snap shots in a storm.

  I was moving faster than Fleece, but for a time he nearly kept pace with me, not having to lose ground by dodging. Two more darts hit my right arm and upper body, painful but not incapacitating. There was a lull in firing when he might have replaced the magazine, then the pops came faster and more furiously. All of the darts missed. I had pulled well ahead of him.

  Less than a hundred meters away was one of the massive pylon structures, barely visible in the thickening snow. If I reached it I could escape down the emergency stairway that spiraled through its interior. Perhaps the alien wouldn't follow. Some of the motorists might have reported the running gun battle to the police by now, if only because of superficial damage done to their expensive vehicles by the fusillade of stun-darts.

  I heard a distant shout in the Haluk language and understood only one word: coming.

  I didn't dare look over my shoulder, but I had a bad feeling that Black Leather had pulled his scorched shit together and joined the chase. Slush was beginning to accumulate underfoot in spite of the deicing grid.

&
nbsp; Run, Helly, run! It's not far now. Don't slow down ...

  But I was. Residual chemicals circulating in my bloodstream had diminished my stamina. My lungs were on fire, my vision was going blurry and weird, and my leg muscles were seizing up.

  Rats.

  The two Haluk behind me were shouting back and forth to each other. No one in the soundproofed vehicles would hear them, much less catch the alien intonation. Brown Fleece had once again stopped shooting at me with the Ivanov. Maybe he was out of ammo.

  I quit jinking among the cars and did a straight sprint, tearing along the line of glowing little eyes that divided lane five from lane four, squinting into the misty headlight glare. Snow pelted my face. My mind was empty of all thought except attaining the shelter of the massive pylon that arched above the road ahead of me, floodlit and crowned with ruby aircraft-warning lights.

  I was only forty meters away when I skidded on a slippery patch, lost my footing, and crashed to the slushy pavement right in front of a slow-moving Volvo taxi. I rolled aside just in time to avoid being crushed, then heard a sudden loud noise followed by shrill female screaming.

  My fall had apparently saved me. I hauled myself up and saw that the safety-glass windshield of the Acura sedan next in line had been holed and spiderwebbed by a missile. The hysterical woman behind the wheel cowered away from the empty front passenger seat, where a slim black object with a distinctive shape was embedded in the headrest. It was a magnum stun-flechette from an Allenby SM-440 or some other high-powered carbine. Black Leather had brought in heavy artillery.

  "Lady, get down!" I yelled. She dropped out of sight, still wailing, as her car moved on. A second flechette barely missed my head and soared over the traffic into the darkness beyond lane one.

  I took a dive myself, scrambling along on hands and knees, hugging the shelter of the slow-rolling automobiles. Then Black Leather changed his tactics. Big darts began to whiz beneath the vehicles, clanging occasionally against their undercarriages and wheels. The flechettes were no danger to the cars' self-sealing tires or sturdy chassis, but I wasn't at all sure that the thin armor of my anorak would protect me from them.