The Sagittarius Whorl

  "At that point I thought I'd had it. There seemed nowhere else to go. I set about exploring a jumble of large rocks and suddenly put my boot right into a rattler nest. The snakes were rather small, but they were striking at me viciously and I knew they were venomous. I shot at them with the Lanvin and fried a few—but the rest fled into a crevice among the rocks that I hadn't noticed. Every single snake disappeared. I checked out the crevice and discovered the source of the wind. It was rubble-choked crawlway too narrow for my body, with sunlight at the end. I blasted rocks until the charge in the Lanvin pistol was exhausted, and shifted the pieces with my hands. I got out. I climbed down the mountain and followed a dirt track fifteen kilometers to a highway. I hitchhiked to Phoenix in a ranch truck and contacted Tyler Baldwin, the demiclone Galapharma security chief... and told him about the idea I'd conceived while lost inside the gold mine. He took me to the Haluk leaders. I think you can imagine the rest."

  "That's amazing," Joanna said.

  "Do you really think so, Professor?" He'd told the story directly to her, and as he spoke his eyes had toured her leisurely from north to south, with several scenic detours that had made me grit my teeth in fury.

  Before she could reply, I said, "You got lucky. But the Haluk aren't going to give you a third chance at the jackpot, so what's your new game plan? Holding us for ransom?"

  Reluctantly, he shifted his attention from Joanna to me. His voice was quite courteous. "A variation on that theme. Following the Assembly vote tomorrow—whichever way it goes—you will invite Adam Stanislawski and the seven members of the Rampart Board of Directors presently in Toronto to confer with you here at the lodge. The meeting will be conducted under conditions of the utmost secrecy, with no other persons present—"

  "I won't do it," I said.

  His gaze flickered to Joanna. "I think you will, given the proper incentive."

  "It'll never work. You can't hold hostages here. The security's not good enough. Remember how you grabbed Dan. Others know Joanna and I came to the lodge. They'll be suspicious—"

  "We and our guests won't remain here," Drummond said airily. "We'll all be aboard Makebate, one of the fastest star-ships in the galaxy. And one that is very well armed. A deal will be struck. I guarantee it. If not—" He shrugged, cocked his head and listened to the edgy music. "—at least the denouement will be appropriately Wagnerian."

  He gave us a mocking toast and tossed down the last of the champagne.

  Joanna was staring at him with an expresion of objective interest. Her voice had taken on a clinical tone. "That's what you really want, isn't it? A dramatic ending. To destroy Helly and Adam and the Rampart leadership, because they defeated you twice over."

  Alistair Drummond put down the empty champagne flute and lifted the Ivanov. "You're a very lovely woman, Joanna. I'd like you to share my bed tonight."

  "No, thank you," she said politely. "I'm afraid I've just started my period."

  "You lying bitch!" Drummond snapped.

  "No, it's true. Why don't I clear away these supper things into the servitron?" She rose from the couch, picked up a china plate, and suddenly scaled it expertly at Drummond like a Frisbee, missing his head by only a few centimeters. The plate smashed against the granite fireplace.

  Drummond shot her in the breast with the Ivanov. Two darts. She fell back against me. "Lying bloody bitch!" he shouted.

  I struggled to shift her body and get at him, but it was useless. He popped me twice in the shoulder and I felt the world dissolve into a red-black abyss.

  The last thing I remember was Drummond calling, "Roberta! Clean up!"

  She was sitting beside me on the edge of the king-sized bed, fully clothed, wiping my face with a damp towel. When I made an inarticulate noise she lifted my head and held a glass of water to my lips.

  "Careful, dear. Just take small sips."

  I did. My mouth felt like week-old straw in a mule stall.

  She took the water away. "Thank God you're finally awake. We've got to act quickly before he comes, and I'm not sure how to work the damned thing."

  "What?" I struggled to sit up. We were in a beautifully appointed bedroom. A clock on the nightstand said it was 1333 hours. What was going to be the most memorable day of my life was already half gone.

  I stretched my arms, flexed my legs. Except for a sore spot on my shoulder where the darts had penetrated, I felt almost good. Maybe I'd send the Ivanov people a testimonial.

  Joanna had left me and gone to a large pottery vase on a low dresser that held an ornamental arrangement of dried grasses. She rummaged around in it. "I hid it in here, in case he came in before you woke and decided to ... search my clothes."

  She pulled out the new Lucevera 4500 she'd bought in Timmins and handed it to me.

  I said, "Jesus Christ!"

  "It was in my inside jacket pocket all the time. Drummond never thought that I might have been carrying two phones. Thank heaven he shot me in the opposite boob." She made a face. "Incidentally, the dart wound still hurts like hell. I was afraid that if I used the phone to call the Rampart emergency code, the call would register somehow on Drummond's own phone. That's why I waited for you to wake up."

  "No, it wouldn't. He and I have separate phone codes. All we share is the computer data and system-links. But I'm glad you waited. We'll call Karl instead of arguing with ExSec. They're likely to be kinda uptight and antsy at this point in time."

  The armored shutter on one window was open. Outside, fat snowflakes fluttered straight down in a winter wonderland. I climbed out of bed and checked the compound. The Mitsubishi-Kondo was gone.

  "He's moved the hopper," I said. "He must have put it into the garage out of sight. Along with the orbiter gig."

  She said, "The door of our suite is locked and it's not ordinary wood. I think it's made of the same armor as the shutters. The glass in the windows looks very thick, too."

  "They're unbreakable and laser-proof. This suite was designed to be ultrasecure. A good thing, too. We're going to lock Alistair Drummond out of here, then make some big botheration."

  I began tapping pads.

  "What are you doing?" Joanna asked apprehensively. "Won't he know if you access the lodge systems?"

  "Not unless he's looking at the phone display. Pray he's got it stowed in his pocket... Hah! Gotcha. The original code for the secure-suite lock was deactivated when the lodge was shut down. A new one hasn't been installed. That means Drummond must have used his simple password to engage the lock. The dumb galoot even gave the password to that idiot robot."

  Tap tappety tap tap tap.

  "I don't understand," Joanna said. "Secure suite?"

  "Never mind. Look." I showed her the phone's data-strip. It said:

  list passwords: glasgow 1/1

  "He didn't encrypt it. Why should he? Anytime we want, we're out of here, babe. But not yet. Definitely not yet!"

  I installed a new code for the lock—encrypted, of course—killed the Glasgow access, and locked us in. Then I closed the window shutter that Joanna had opened.

  "We're going to make sure our fish doesn't get away," I said. "Then we call for help. Crawl under the bed."

  While she gaped at me in stark disbelief, I summoned another menu. This one was for Makebate's gig. I explained: "Both Drummond's and my phone have links to the nav-autopilot system of the starship gig. If I park the gig somewhere, or even leave it inside the starship, I can call it to come pick me up—just like a car or a hopper."

  "But the gig is already here," Joanna protested. "In the underground hangar along with the Macrodur hopper."

  I took her arm and urged her onto the floor. We both slithered under the bed. "I'm going to send the gig home to Makebate. Unfortunately, I'm going to forget to open the garage door first."

  "Oh..."

  "The lodge is a very sturdy building," I reassured her. "We should be all right. Ready?"

  I pressed the pads that would light up the gig's engines. Did the requisite preflight
rigmarole. Then I told the orbiter to lift off. The phone began to shriek like a banshee. I could hear a tinny computerized voice saying, Danger. Danger. Overhead obstruction scanned. Liftoff aborted. Liftoff aborted.

  No doubt Alistair Drummond heard it, too.

  I told the phone, "Override alpha-three-one-one. Go!"

  The concussion did not lift the house off its foundation, nor did it break the armor-glass windows. The hangar was carved out of bedrock and the major force of the fuel blast was directed upward, with a secondary Shockwave rushing along the subterranean tunnel, where it severely damaged the deserted staff quarters wing.

  We clung together while bits of demolished machinery rained down on the ceramalloy roof like a hailstorm from hell. The bedframe had leaped off the floor and thumped down harmlessly. A tall chest of drawers and a bookcase had toppled and scattered things. The ceramic bedside lamps had crashed, and so had the vase with the grasses, a couple of large framed pictures, and a passel of nameless sundries that had fallen off shelves and out of cabinets in the adjacent bathroom.

  "Are you all right?" I asked Joanna.

  "Yes. My God, it was just like a bomb!"

  "Exactly like one." The clinging was very nice. "Did you really start your period?"

  "It's a standard antirape ploy. Men are so squeamish."

  "All the same, I'm glad you threw the plate ... On your feet, babe."

  We crawled out into the mess. I opened the shutters on all three bedroom windows. A tall column of smoke swirled from the hangar hole in the middle distance. Not much debris was visible; it had sunk out of sight in the deepening snow.

  Next order of business: I called Karl Nazarian's personal code.

  "It's Helly, at the lodge. Alistair Drummond's here. I've destroyed the transportation. Send a SWAT team fast. He's armed with a Tala-G and God knows what else. Joanna and I are barricaded in Dan's old secure-suite. We'll be okay."

  "I copy your emergency," said the cool old cucumber. "Hold while I talk to ExSec and dispatch the team."

  I waited.

  Joanna said, "I hear something at the door."

  Scratching sounds. Then the sharp yelp of a photon gun, one with less power than my Tala-G, perhaps a Claus-Gewitter, weapon of choice for serious meat-hunters. Maybe Drummond didn't know how to operate the more esoteric combat piece.

  Cheeow cheeow.

  I muttered, "Give it up, sucker. You and your Haluk goons couldn't blast your way in here when you came for Dan. You had to torture two guards to death to get the lock-code."

  Joanna's eyes were wide with horror. "Helly ...?"

  Another photon blast, then silence.

  "I'll explain later," I told her. Karl was back on the phone.

  "The team'll fly out of our Oshawa facility inside of half an hour," he said, "five hoppers and thirty personnel. You're looking at a ninety-minute ETA. They'll try to take Drummond alive."

  "Goody. Did the Macpherson Tower raid come off?"

  "You haven't heard?"

  "Drummond was waiting for us when we arrived. Joanna and I have been stunned-out for over twelve hours."

  "Well, shit. You missed some crazy action. Eve made her pitch to the media and then to the Servant, who denied everything in a rebuttal newscast. Couple hours later a mysterious armed hopper shot sleepy-gas grenades into every floor in the top half of the tower. Toronto Public Safety and ECID were shocked. Shocked."

  I laughed. "Let me guess. The hopper escaped. The cops entered in force to assess damage to the embassy and injury to the poor alien occupants. They found the Halukoid folks."

  "All safe, all removed to Toronto General Hospital—including your brother Dan, the only human being in the place who actually looked like one. There were no demiclones in Macpherson. They must have all been evacuated. Of course the media had a field day. And the Servant filed a formal protest with Xenoaffairs, claiming the cops had kidnapped innocent Haluk, not transformed humans."

  I snorted. "Stick with the Big Lie, right to the edge of the Grand Canyon drop-off."

  "The vote!" Joanna exclaimed. "What about the goddamned vote?"

  "Did you hear the professor's respectful query?" I asked Karl.

  He said, "The Assembly approved the three hundred new Haluk colonies by a margin of forty-six votes. The Speaker invited a Citizen Veto Poll. The PlaNet hits are still being tabulated and verified, but it looks like the veto won."

  Joanna and I cheered.

  "What's more," Karl said, "there's a groundswell growing for the recall of the Delegates who voted for the Haluk colonies. Some Reverse spokespersons are demanding top-to-bottom reform of the Assembly to eliminate the influence • of the Hundred Concerns. We're living in interesting times, my friend."

  "And here we are," I lamented, "sitting it out on the sidelines with a homicidal maniac."

  "I'll be on my way to the lodge myself after I talk to some people. Turn on your holovid and catch up on what's happening in the universe. Sit tight till the cavalry arrives, and don't do anything stupid."

  "Have I ever?" I asked, and ended the call.

  Joanna was already examining the holo projector in the adjacent snuggery, prodding its remote keypad without result. "Nothing but a blank blue field," she mourned. "The projector seems all right, so I suppose the antenna was damaged in the explosion."

  The phone buzzed. I looked at the display. The instrument was in intercom mode.

  I said, "Hello, Alistair. Did you enjoy the fireworks?"

  "It's not over," he said softly.

  "Yes, it is. Tell you what. I'll see that you get your real body back before they chain you to the bed in the funny farm."

  "I'm leaving now, Frost, but we'll meet again. I doubt that the pleasure will be mutual. I intend to have something very special waiting for you—and for Professor DeVet. Dream about it." He ended the call.

  Leaving?

  Something medium-large sped past the windows, then reappeared and cut a sharp right turn, kicking a rooster tail of snow against the glass.

  Cursing, I ran to check it out. The snowmobile's track led from one of the outbuildings to the lodge. Drummond had deliberately buzzed our suite. Now he was heading directly toward us at low speed, the twin headlights of the sleek Ski-Doo haloed by floating ice crystals.

  The machine was classic yellow-and-black with nice scarlet flashes. The helmeted figure in the saddle lifted a hand with two gloved fingers extended. Peace?... V for victory? ... Nope. In the British Isles the double-digit salute had another meaning.

  Fuck you.

  An instant later a portable force-field shield enveloped the Doo in a hemisphere of golden sparks. Drummond did a 180 and headed straight out onto the frozen lake at maximum speed, leaving a huge white cloud of powder snow in his wake.

  I dug in my pocket for the phone, frantically called up the lodge-exterior menu and switched on the defenses he had deactivated. Too late. The damned sled was traveling at nearly 200 kph and it was already outside the perimeter and gone away.

  I rushed to the door of the suite, spoke the unlock code, and began galloping down the hall. Joanna was right behind me as I crossed the living room—where there was remarkably little damage from the blast—came into the entry and took a detour into the service wing. The com room door was wide open. My Talavera-Gerardi lay centered on a small table, neat as a display in a gunshop.

  I swiftly checked the weapon out. It seemed completely undamaged, the barrel was clear, and the ready display said full charge. I slung the piece over my shoulder.

  Joanna said, "What are you going to do?"

  I pushed past her, heading for the mudroom. Our enviro-suits, helmets, and overboots were still there. The Ivanov was gone. I propped the long gun against the wall and began to dress.

  "I'll need to take the phone," I said. "You'll have to make a note of the door code so you can lock yourself in the secure-suite."

  "But—"

  "Drummond might double back. The exterior defenses are useless because he
can access them. When I'm gone, get back into the suite and stay there until the SWAT team arrives."

  "You can't go after him!" she stormed. "Don't you understand? It's what he wants you to do! He's not trying to escape. He'll be waiting for you out there."

  I tinkered with the helmet, establishing the phone link and the system feed with the suit and boots that I hadn't bothered with during the short trip from the hopper to the lodge.

  "Find something to write the code on, Joanna."

  "Wait," she said tightly. She went into the kitchen and returned with a recipe e-book.

  I read out the alphanumerics, tucked the phone inside my suit, and zipped up.

  She said, "Don't do this, Helly. Not if you love me. Don't go after that man to kill him." Her face was very pale, with an odd hectic flush on the cheeks that had nothing to do with makeup. She clutched the little book tightly in one hand, holding it at her side like a missile ready for throwing.

  "I'll bring him back alive if I can."

  Speaking in a strained whisper: "The SWAT team can do that better than you. Stay with me. Please don't leave me alone again."

  "I can't let Drummond get away. If he reaches Central Patricia, he could commandeer a fast Park Service hopper and fly down to Thunder Bay Conurb. There's a starship shuttle service at the skyport—"

  "He's not trying to get away." Her eyes were bright with moisture. "He left your weapon when he could have taken it himself or destroyed it... And I'm sure you'll find an operable snow machine waiting out in the equipment building. If Drummond wanted to escape, he'd have disabled it. He's playing a game with you, Helly. An insane game!"

  "Will you kiss me goodbye? I love you, Joanna."

  She let me embrace her, passively accepted my hard lips, the alien tongue we'd laughed about and enjoyed. When we broke apart her tears had overflowed.