Eventually she’d have told him how to find Polly. Now he’d lost both.
Or…?
He ran toward the main entrance, dodging police who tried to run through his solid bulk. He would meet Laney at the vivarium—if she got there. But he knew only one route to reach it.
The great bronze doors swung open as he approached. Matt hesitated at the bottom of the wide stairs. Electric eyes? Then three uniformed men trotted through the entrance and down, and Matt trotted up between them. If there were electric eyes here, and men watching them, they could never keep track of the last minute’s traffic.
The doors swung shut as he went through. They almost caught him between them. He cursed in a whisper and stepped aside for a running policeman with a whistle in his mouth. Like the ultrasonic whistle the gateman had used to get in last night. He’d need one to get out. But later. He needn’t think about leaving yet.
His legs ached savagely. He slowed to a brisk walk and tried not to pant.
Right, up a flight, take a right, then a left…
VIVARIUM. He saw the door down the corridor, and he stopped where he was and sagged gratefully against a wall. He’d beaten her here. And he was horribly tired. His legs were numb, there was a singing in his head, he wanted to do nothing but breathe. A taste in his mouth and throat reminded him of the hot metal taste of the void mist when he’d bored for the bottom less than thirty-six plateau hours ago. It seemed he’d been running forever, terrified forever. His blood had carried adrenaline for too long. The wall felt soft against his back.
It was good to rest. It was good to breathe. It was good to be warm, and the Hospital walls were warm, almost too warm for a cold-weather crewish overjacket. He’d ditch it when it got too hot. Probing idly in his pockets, he found a double handful of unshelled roasted peanuts.
Corporal Halley Fox rounded the corner and stopped. He saw a crew resting against a wall, wearing his overjacket indoors. There was a ragged tear in the crew’s ear and a pool of blood below it, soaked into the neck of his overjacket. He was cracking and eating peanuts, dropping the shells on the floor.
It was strange, but not strange enough.
Halley Fox was in the third generation of a family which traditionally produced Implementation police. Naturally he had joined Implementation. His reflexes were not quick enough to make him a raider, and he made a better follower than a leader. For eight years now he had been a competent man in a good position that did not require much responsibility.
Then…last night he’d caught a colonist invading the Hospital.
This morning there’d been a break from the vivarium, the first since the vivarium was built. Corporal Fox had seen blood for the first time. Man’s blood, not drained into an organ-bank tank but spilled recklessly along a hallway in conscious murderous violence.
This evening the Head had warned of an impending attack on the Hospital. He’d practically warned Corporal Fox to shoot his own fellow guards! And everyone was taking him seriously!
Minutes ago there’d been a hell of a big blast outside the windows…and half the guards had deserted their posts to see what had happened.
Corporal Fox was slightly punch-drunk.
He had not deserted his post. Things were confused enough. He stuck to his training as something he knew to be solid. And when he saw a crew resting against a wall eating peanuts, he saluted and said, “Sir.”
Matt looked up to see a police officer standing stiff as a board, holding the short barrel of a mercy-bullet pistol slantwise across his forehead.
Effectively he disappeared. Corporal Fox continued down the hall, stepping wide around the vivarium door. At the end of the corridor he stopped, half turned, and fell.
Matt got unsteadily to his feet. The sight of the guard had damn near stopped his heart.
Laney came around fast. She saw Matt, dodged back, poked the gun around—
“Stop! It’s me!”
“Oh, Matt. I thought I’d lost you.”
He moved toward her. “I saw someone come after you. Did you get him?”
“Yah.” She looked down at Corporal Fox. “They’re badly trained. That’s something.”
“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”
“Never you mind. Come on.” She moved back toward the vivarium.
“Hold it. Where do I find Polly?”
“I really don’t know. We’ve never known where they administer the coffin cure.” She reached for the door handle. Matt caught her wrist. “Come now, Matt,” she said. “You had fair warning.”
“The door’s Booby-trapped.”
“Oh?”
“I saw the way that guy walked around it.”
She frowned at the handle. Then, with effort, she tore a strip from the bottom of Matt’s jacket. She tied it to the handle, moved back as far as it would reach.
Matt backed away. He said, “Before you do something irrevocable, won’t you please tell me where to find Polly?”
“Honestly, Matt, I don’t know.” She wasn’t trying to hide the fact that he was an unneeded distraction.
“Okay, where’s Castro’s office?”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“I’m a fanatic. Like you.”
That got a grin. “You’re crazy, but okay. You go back the way I came, turn the only way you can, and go up another flight. Follow the hall until you see signs. The signs will take you the rest of the way. The office is up against the hull of the Planck. But if you stick with me, we may find an easier way.”
“Pull then.”
Laney pulled.
The handle came down and clicked. Immediately something fired from the ceiling: a conical burst of mercy-bullets spattering the area where anyone would have stood to pull the handle. And a siren blared in the corridor, loud and raucous and familiar.
Laney jumped straight back in surprise, fetched up against the wall. The door swung open a couple of inches. “In,” she cried, and dove through, followed by Matt.
The puffs of mercy-bullets were lost in the sound of the siren. But Matt saw four men in the room, crouched in target-shooting position in a line opposite the door. They were still firing as Laney fell.
“Doomed? Really?” Even to himself Harry sounded inane. But he’d expected no such easy capitulation.
“How many Sons of Earth are there?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“I can tell you,” said Millard Parlette. “Less than four hundred. On all of Mount Lookitthat there are less than seven hundred active rebels. For three hundred years you and your kind have been trying to build a rebellion. You’ve made no progress at all.”
“Precious little.”
“You enlist your rebels from the colonists, naturally. Your trouble is that most colonists don’t really want the crew to lose control of the Plateau. They’re happy the way they are. Yours is an unpopular cause. I tried to explain why before; let me try again.” With obvious effort he moved his arms enough to fold his hands in his lap. Random muscles in his shoulders twitched from time to time.
“It’s not that they don’t think they could do better than the crew if it came to the point. Everybody always thinks that. They’re afraid of Implementation, yes, and they won’t risk their good blood and bone to make the change, not when Implementation has all the weapons on the Plateau and controls all the electrical power too.
“But that isn’t the point. The point is that they don’t really think that the crew rule is wrong.
“It all depends on the organ banks. On the one hand, the organ banks are a terrible threat, not only a death penalty, but an ignominious way to die. On the other hand, the banks are a promise. A man who deserves it and can pay for it, even a colonist, can get medical treatment at the Hospital. But without the organ banks there’d be no treatment. He’d die.
“Do you know what your rebels would do if they could beat the crew to their knees? Some would insist that the organ banks be abolished. They’d be killed or ostracized by
their own members. The majority would keep the banks just as they are, but use the crew to feed them!”
His neck was stronger now, and he looked up to see patient stares. A good audience. And he had them hooked, finally.
“Up to now,” he went on, “you couldn’t start a rebellion because you couldn’t convince enough fighting men that your cause was just. Now you can. Now you can convince the colonists of Mount Lookitthat that the organ banks are and should be obsolete. Then wait a little. When Implementation doesn’t disband, you move.”
Harry Kane said, “That’s exactly what I was thinking, only you seem to be way ahead of me. Why did you call me silly?”
“You made a silly assumption. You thought I was trying to keep the ramrobot package a secret. Quite the contrary. Just this afternoon I—”
“I’ve finally got it,” said Hood. “You’ve decided to join the winning side, have you Parlette?”
“You fool. You bad-mouthed colonist fool.”
Jay Hood flushed. He stood perfectly straight with his arms at his sides and his fists clenched. He was no angrier than Parlette. The old man was trying to shift his weight, and every muscle in his body was jumping as a result. He said, “Do you think so little of me, to think I’d follow such motives?”
“Relax, Jay. Parlette, if you have something to say, say it. If we jump to the wrong conclusions, please assume that you’re expressing yourself badly, and don’t try to shift the blame.”
“Why don’t you all count to infinity?” Lydia Hancock suggested.
Parlette spoke slowly and evenly. “I am trying to prevent a bloodbath. Is that clear enough for you? I’m trying to prevent a civil war that could kill half the people in this world.”
“You can’t do it,” said Harry Kane. “It’s coming.”
“Kane, cannot you and I and your associates work out a new…constitution for Mount Lookitthat? Obviously the Covenant of Planetfall will no longer work.”
“Obviously.”
“I made a speech today. In fact, I seem to be spending the whole damn day and night making speeches. This afternoon I called an emergency session—rammed it through the Council. You know what that means?”
“Yah. You were talking to every crew on the Plateau, then.”
“I told them what was in ramrobot package one-forty-three. I showed them. I told them about the organ-bank problem and about the relationship between ethics and technology. I told them that if the secret of the ramrobot ever reached the colonists, the colonists would revolt en masse. I did my damndest, Kane, to scare the pants off them.
“I’ve known from the beginning that we couldn’t keep the secret forever. Now that thirty thousand people know it, it’ll be out even faster, even if we were all killed this instant. I did all this, Kane, in order to warn them. To scare them. When they realize that the secret is out, they may be scared enough to dicker. The smart ones will.
“I’ve been planning this a long time, Kane. I didn’t even know what it was that Earth would ship us. It might have been a regeneration serum, or designs for cheap alloplasty components, or even a new religion. Anything. But something was coming, and here it is, and, Kane, we’ve got to try to stop the bloodbath.” Gone were Parlette’s shortness of breath and his clumsy attempts to make his lips and tongue work against a sonic blast. His voice was smooth and lilting, rising and falling, a little hoarse but terribly earnest. “We’ve got to try. Maybe we can find something both the crew and the colonists can agree on.”
He stopped, and three heads nodded, almost in reflex.
Interview With the Head
XIHe saw the four men, and be saw Laney stagger. He tried to turn and run, and in that instant there was a godawful clang, a sound like being inside a church bell. He jumped to the side instead, knowing the hall must be full of sonics.
“Shut the damn door!” a voice yelled. One of the guards jumped to obey. Matt felt the, numbness of the sonics, and his knees went watery. He kept his eyes on his four enemies.
One bent over Laney. “All alone,” he said. “Crazy. Wonder where she got the clothes?”
“Off a crew, maybe.”
Another guard laughed brayingly.
“Shut up, Rick. Come on, lend a hand. Let’s get her to a chair.”
“A hunting gun. Wouldn’t you hate to get shot with this?”
“She came a long way to get to the vivarium. Most of ’em we have to bring.”
The braying laugh again.
“Gas bomb didn’t go off.” One of the guards kicked a metal canister. Immediately the canister began hissing. “Nose plugs, quick!”
They fumbled in their pockets, produced things that looked like large rubber false noses.
“Good. We should have done this before. If we keep the room filled with gas, anyone who comes charging in will drop right away.”
Matt had gotten the message. He’d held his breath from the moment he heard the hiss. Now he walked up to the nearest guard and wrenched his false nose away. The man gasped in surprise, looked directly at Matt, and crumpled.
The false nose had a band to fit around the neck, and some kind of adhesive to form a skin-tight lock around the nose. Matt got it on and found himself breathing through it, with difficulty. It was not comfortable.
“Rick? Oh, that idiot. Where the Mist Demons is his nose plug?”
“I’ll bet the jerk forgot to bring it.”
“Get me Major Jansen, please.” One of the guards was using his handphone. “Sir? A girl just tried to crash the vivarium. Yes, a girl, in crew clothing…That’s right, just one…She’s sleeping in one of the seats, sir. We figured as long as she’d gone to all that trouble getting here…”
Matt still felt dizzy, though the door must be blocking the vibrations of the big sonics. Had he been hit by an unnoticed mercy-bullet?
He bent over Laney. She was out of it, for sure. Punctured by far too many anesthetic slivers, her lungs filled with gas, a rhythmic sleep-inducing current playing through her brain…?
He found three wires leading to her headset. He pulled them. Now she was a time bomb. When everything else wore off, she’d wake up. More of a firecracker, actually, with four armed guards in the room.
“One more thing, sir. The place is full of gas. It’s just as well, we think.
“No, sir, we haven’t. If you’ll turn off the sonics, I’ll look.” He turned from the phone. “Watts, check in the hall and see if anybody dropped dead out there.”
“But the sonics are still going!”
“They should be off. Try it.”
A ballpoint pen peeped from the shirt pocket of the unconscious guard. Matt saw it, snatched it, and drew rapidly: a heart on the guard’s forehead, three drops running down the straight bridge of the nose.
The one called Watts opened the door a crack. No sonic numbness touched him. He opened it farther. “Hey!” He snaked out and ran down the hall toward Fox’s body. Matt was on his heels.
“It’s a guard,” he called back.
“Check the ident.”
Watts began going through Fox’s pockets. He looked up once as Matt sidled past him, then continued with his work.
“It’s Elaine Mattson,” said Jesus Pietro. “Has to be. You’re sure she was alone?”
“If there’d been anyone with her, he would have been in the same condition. I think she was alone, sir.”
That made sense. Which was hardly a guarantee, Jesus Pietro thought. “Thank you, Major Jansen. How are the hunting squads doing?”
“They’ve found nothing, sir. They’re still quartering Alpha Plateau. Shall I see how far they’ve gotten?”
“Yes. Call me back.” He hung up and tilted back his desk chair, with a frown wrinkling his forehead.
They had to be somewhere on Alpha. And they couldn’t all be attacking the Hospital.
Elaine Mattson, captured. Well and good. She must have set off that mysterious explosion to cover her entrance. Had she also worn that Implementation uniform? It might be.
She’d pass at a distance, long enough to knock out a crew woman and get a better disguise.
Maybe. Maybe.
He picked up the sixth dossier, the one lying alone next to the stunner. Polly Tournquist’s life:
Born twenty-two years ago, firstborn in a family with no known connection to the Sons of Earth. Her father’s left eye had come from the organ banks, after he’d lost his own to a fishing fly. A good, loyal colonist. A disciplinarian in his own family.
Raised on Delta, sector four. Studied at Colony University, with good grades. She’d met Jayhawk Hood there. Her first love affair. Why? Hood would have made a bad gigolo—small, puny, not good-looking—but some girls like a man with a mind.
Finished high school and college, went to work at Delta Retransmitting Station. Affair with Hood had cooled to friendship, apparently. But she’d joined the Sons of Earth. Revolting against authority? Her father would have turned her in, had he known. Look at the lines of disapproval in that ferret face…hmm? Without those lines, he’d look something like Jayhawk Hood!
It all helped. By now she’d been in the coffin cure for thirty hours. If a voice came to her now, the only sensory stimulus in her cosmos, she’d listen. And believe. As others had. Especially if the voice appealed to the right incidents in her past.
But for now she’d have to wait. The Sons of Earth came first. One down, four to go…Jesus Pietro reached for his cup and found the coffee stone cold.
A question touched, his mind. He grimaced, pushed it back to wherever it had come from. He opened his deskphone and said, “Miss Lauessen, will you order me more coffee.”
“Are you sure? You’ll be awash with the stuff.”
“Just get it. And”—the same thought crawled out into the light, and before he could stop himself—“get me Matthew Keller’s file. Not the one on my desk, the one in the dead file.”
She came in a minute later, slender and blonde and looking coolly remote, carrying a folder and a pot of coffee. He opened the folder at once. She frowned at him, started to ask something, saw that he wasn’t listening, and left.
Matthew Keller. Born…Educated…Joined Sons of Earth tenth month, 2384, in middle age. Why so late? Why at all? Became a professional killer and thief, stealing for the Sons of Earth, killing Implementation officers foolish enough to venture into the colonist regions in insufficient numbers. Thief? Damn! Could Keller senior have stolen that car? The car Keller junior rode straight down into the void! Trapped in Sector 28, Beta, fourth month, 2397; captured, convicted of treason, disassembled for the organ banks. Oh, Jesus Pietro, you clever liar, you. Half the Hospital must know he really went off the edge, forty miles down to Mist Demons and hellfire.