Matt started down, looking over his shoulder, trying to hold eight eyes at once.
“Dammit, Hood, help me up.”
“Parlette, you can’t possibly expect—”
“Help me over to the phone.”
“We’d be committing suicide,” said Harry Kane. “What would your army of relatives do when they learned we were holding you prisoner in your own house?”
“I’m here of my own free will. You know that.”
“But will they know that?”
“My family will stand behind me.” Parlette set the palms of his hands on the chair arms, and with tremendous effort, stood up. But once up, he was unable to move.
“They won’t know what’s going on,” said Harry Kane. “All they’ll know for certain is that you’re alone in the house with three escaped vivarium prisoners.”
“Kane, they wouldn’t understand what’s happening if I talked for two hours. But they’ll stand behind me.”
Harry Kane opened his mouth, closed it again, and began to tremble. He had to fold his hands on the table to keep them from shaking. “Call them,” he said.
“No,” said Jay Hood.
“Help him, Jay.”
“No! If he uses that phone to turn us in, he’ll go down as the greatest con man in history. And we’ll be finished!”
“Oh, phut.” Lydia Hancock stood up and wrapped one of Parlette’s arms around her neck. “Be sensible, Jay. Parlette is the best chance we ever had. We’ve got to trust him.” And she walked him over to the phone.
Almost time to resume the interrogation. Jesus Pietro waited while the lab man deposited his tray on the “coffin” and started back up.
And he realized that his pulse was racing. There was cold perspiration dribbling wetly down his ribs. His hand throbbed like a heart. His eyes flicked here, there, all about the room, looking for something that wasn’t there.
Within seconds, and for no reason at all, the interrogation room had become a trap.
There was a thump, and every muscle in his body jumped. Nothing there, nothing his eyes could find. But he, the nerveless, elephantine Castro, was jumping at shadows. The room was a trap, a trap.
“Back in a moment,” said Jesus Pietro. He strode to the ladder, looking every inch the Man in Charge, and went up.
A guard said, “But, sir! What about the prisoner?”
“I’ll be right back,” said the Head, without slowing.
He pulled himself through the doorway, reached down, and closed the door. And there he stuck.
He’d had no planned destination. Something had screamed at him to get out, some intuition so powerful that he had followed it without question—right in the middle of an interrogation.
What was he afraid of? Was he about to learn some unpleasant truth from Polly Tournquist? Or was it guilt? Surely he no longer lusted after the colonist girl. Surely he could control it if he did.
No Implementation man had ever seen him thus: shoulders slumped, face set in wrinkles of fatigue, standing in a hallway because he had no place to go.
In any case, he had to go back. Polly Tournquist was waiting for the sound of his voice. She might or might not know things he needed to know.
He pulled himself together, visibly, and turned to face the door, his eyes sliding automatically around the bright frosted pane in the wall. Men who worked in the slowboats developed such habits. As ceiling lights, the panel would have been just bright enough. As wall lights, they hurt the eyes.
Castro’s eyes slid around the pane, caught something, and came back. There was a blue scrawl on the frosted pane.
Matt was almost down the ladder when the man in the lab coat started up.
Matt addressed a subvocal comment to the Mist Demons, who made no obvious response. Then, because the lab man was about to bump into him, he swung around to the underside of the ladder and dropped. He landed with a thump. Every head in the room jerked around. Matt backed into a corner, stepping softly, waiting.
He’d known it from the beginning: He couldn’t count on this power of his. At some point he would have enough of being afraid; the glandular caps over his kidneys would stop producing adrenaline…
The guard turned their eyes back to the ceiling. The lab man disappeared through the doorway and closed the door after him. Only Castro himself continued to behave peculiarly; his eyes kept darting around the room as if searching for something that wasn’t there. Matt began to breathe more easily.
The man with the coffee had appeared at just the right time. Matt had been about to leave, to see if he could find a fusion control room before he got back to Castro. He had, in fact, discovered that the frosted glass in the hall light would take ink; and he was marking it to show which door led to Castro, when someone had rounded the corner, carrying coffee.
Castro was still behaving oddly. During the interview in Castro’s office, Matt had never ceased to be afraid of him. Yet now he seemed only a nervous man with a bandaged arm.
Dangerous thinking, thought Matt. Be scared!
Suddenly Castro started up the ladder.
Matt nibbled his lower lip. Some comic chase this was becoming! Where was the Head going now? And how could Matt hold six eyes, two above and four below, while climbing a ladder?
He started for the ladder anyway.
“But, sir! What about the prisoner?”
“I’ll be right back.”
Matt backed into the corner again. Prisoner?
Coffin. The word was nearly obsolete on Mount Lookitthat, where crew and colonist alike cremated their dead. But that box against the wall was easily big enough to hold a prisoner.
He’d have to look inside.
But first, the guards…
“It’s the Head calling, Major.”
“Thank you, Miss Lauessen.”
“Jansen, is that you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve found another bleeding heart.”
“In the Planck?”
“Yes. Right above the coffin room, on a light. Now here’s what I want done. I want you to close the Planck’s airlocks, flood the ship with gas, then come in with a squad. Anyone you can’t identify immediately, play a sonic over him to keep him quiet. Got it?”
“Yes, sir. Suppose the traitor is someone we know?”
“Use your own judgment there. I have good reason to assume he’s not a policeman, though he may be in uniform. How long will you need?”
“About twenty minutes. I could use cars instead of elevators, but it would take just as long.”
“Good. Use the cars. Seal off the elevators first. I want as much surprise effect as possible.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Execute.”
The guards were no trouble at all. Matt stepped up behind one of the men, pulled the gun from his holster, and shot them both.
He kept the gun in his hand. It felt good. He was sick of having to be afraid. It was a situation to drive a man right out of his skull. If he stopped being afraid, even for an instant, he could be killed! But now, at least for the moment, he could stop listening for footsteps, stop trying to look in all directions at once. A sonic stunner was a surer bet than a hypothetical, undependable psi power. It was real, cold and hard in his hand.
The “coffin” was bigger than it had seemed from the doorway. He found clamps, big and easy to operate. The lid was heavy. Foam plastic covered the inside, with a sound-deadening surface of small interlocking conical indentations.
Inside was something packed very carefully in soft, thick white cloth. Its shape was only vaguely human, and its head was not human at all. Matt felt the back hairs stir on his neck. Coffin. And the thing inside didn’t move. If he had found Polly, then Polly was dead.
He began unwrapping it anyway, starting with what passed for the figure’s head. He found ear cups, and underneath, human ears. They were blood-warm to the touch. Matt began to hope.
He unwrapped cloth from a pair of brown eyes. They looked up at him,
and then they blinked.
Hoping was over. He had found Polly, and she was alive.
She was more cocoon than girl. Toward the end she was helping to get the wrappings and paddings and sensory wires off her legs. She wasn’t much help. Her fingers wouldn’t work. Muscles jerked rhythmically in her jaw, her arms, her legs. When she tried to step out of the coffin, Matt had to catch the full weight of her falling body, and they went down in a heap.
“Thanks,” she said unsteadily. “Thanks for getting me out of there.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“I remember you.” She got up, clinging to his arm for support. She had not yet smiled. When Matt had uncovered her mouth and removed the clamps and padding, she had looked like a child expecting to be slapped. She still did. “You’re Matt something. Aren’t you?”
“Matt Keller. Can you stand by yourself now?”
“Where are we?” She did not let go of his arm.
“In the middle of the Hospital. But we have a fair chance to get out, if you do just as I say.”
“How did you get in?”
“Jay Hood tells me I have a kind of psychic invisibility. As long as I can stay scared, I can keep people from seeing me. That’s what we have to count on. Hey, are you all right?”
“Since you ask, no.” She smiled for the first time, a ghost grin, a rictus that vanished in a split second. She was better off without it.
“You don’t look it. Come here, sit down.” She was clinging to his upper arm with both hands, as if afraid of falling. He led her to one of the chairs. She’s still in shock, he thought. “Better yet, lie down. On the other floor. Easy…Now put your feet up on the chair. What the Mist Demons were they doing to you?”
“It’s a long story.” Her brows puckered, leaving a sudden deep V between her eyes. “I can tell it fast, though. They were doing nothing to me. Nothing and nothing and nothing.” She lay on her back with her feet in the air, the way Matt had placed her, and her eyes looked up past the ceiling, looked up at Nothing.
Matt wanted to look away. Polly was no longer pretty. Her hair was a housecleaners’ nest, and her makeup had gone every which way; but that wasn’t it. Something had gone out of her, and something else had replaced it. Her pale face mirrored the ultimate horror of what she saw, looking up at Nothing.
Presently she said, “How did you get here, Matt?”
“Came to rescue you.”
“You’re not a Son of Earth.”
“No.”
“You could be a ringer. Harry’s house was raided the night you came.”
“That’s highly ungrateful for a maiden in distress.”
“I’m sorry.” But her eyes were watchful and suspicious. She took her feet off the chair and rolled to sitting position on the floor. She was wearing an unfamiliar garment, like a playsuit, but made of soft, flimsy fabric. Her fingers had found a corner of the cloth and were playing with it, kneading it, pulling at it, rolling it, crumpling it. “I can’t trust anything. I’m not even sure I’m not dreaming. Maybe I’m still in the box.”
“Easy,” he said, and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. “You’ll get over—”
She snatched at his hand to hold it there, so quickly that he almost jerked away. Every move she made was exaggerated. “You don’t know what it was like! They wrapped me up and put me away, and from then on, it was like being dead!” She was squeezing his hand, feeling the fingers and the nails and the knuckles, as if she’d never touched a human hand before. “I kept trying to remember things, and they were always just out of reach. It was—” She stuck, her larynx bobbing and her lips twitching without sound. Then she jumped at him.
She knocked him flat on his back and wrapped herself around him. It was nothing like affectionate. She clung to him as if she were drowning and he a floating log. “Hey,” said Matt. “The gun. You knocked the gun away.”
She didn’t hear. Matt looked up at the door. It didn’t move, and there were no ominous noises.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s okay now. You’re out.” She had her face buried in the hollow of his shoulder, and she was moving against him. Her arms were tight around his chest with a grip of desperation. “You’re out now.” He massaged her neck and shoulder muscles, trying to do what Laney had done night before last.
The way she kept touching things, kneading them—he understood now. She was making sure they were real. The time in the coffin must have been worse than he could imagine. She must have lost all touch with reality, all her faith in the solidness of things outside that artificial womb. And so she ran her hands along his back, traced the lines of his shoulder blades and vertebrae with her fingertips; and so she moved against him with a sliding motion, with her toes, her thighs, her arms, her body—as if sensing, sensing with every square inch of skin…
He felt himself coming alive in response. Trapdoors and curved metal walls, guns and Implementation police, ceased to matter at all. There was only Polly.
“Help me,” she said, her voice muffled.
Matt rolled over onto her. The soft, flimsy-looking fabric of her jumper tore like tissue. Fleetingly, Matt wondered why it was there at all. And that didn’t matter either.
Presently Polly said, “Well. I’m real after all.”
And Matt, drifting peacefully down from some far peak of Nirvana, asked, “Was that what you meant by help?”
“I didn’t know what I meant. I needed help.” She smiled slowly, with her eyes as well as her mouth. “Suppose it wasn’t what I meant. Then what?”
“Then I’ve callously seduced you.” He moved his head back a little to look her in the face. The change was incredible. “I was afraid you’d gone off the beam for good.”
“So was I.”
Matt glanced up at the trapdoor, then stretched to reach, for the sonic. Nirvana was over.
“You really came to rescue me?”
“Yah.” He didn’t mention Laney, not yet. No point in spoiling this moment.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. We’ve still got to get out of here.”
“You don’t have any questions to ask me?”
What was she doing, testing him? Didn’t she trust him now? Well, why should she? “No,” he said, “no questions. But there are things I’ve got to tell you—”
She stiffened under him. “Matt. Where are we?”
“In the Hospital. Deep in the Hospital. But we can get out.”
She rolled away and came to her feet in one smooth motion. “We’re in one of the slowboats! Which one?”
“The Planck. Does it matter?”
She scooped the other guard’s sonic stunner from his holster in what looked like a racing dive. “We can set off the fusion plant! Blow the Hospital and the crew into the void mist! Come on, Matt, let’s get moving. Are there guards in the corridor? How many?”
“Set off—Are you out of your mind?”
“We’d wipe out the Hospital and most of Alpha Plateau.” She picked up her ripped mock-playsuit and threw it down again. “I’ll have to depants one of these police. And that’ll be it! We’d win, Matt! All in one stroke!”
“What win? We’ll be dead!”
She stood up with her hands on her hips and regarded him with disgust. Now she wore a pair of Implementation uniform pants too big for her. Matt had never seen anyone more thoroughly alive. “I’d forgotten. You aren’t a Son of Earth. All right, Matt, see how far you can get. You may be able to get out of range of the blast. Personally, I doubt it.”
“I’ve got a personal interest in you. I didn’t come all this way to have you commit suicide. You’re coming with me.”
Polly donned a guard’s shirt, then hurriedly rolled up the pants, which were much too long. “You’ve done your duty. I’m not ungrateful, Matt, but we just aren’t going in the same direction. Our motives aren’t the same.” She kissed him hard, pushed him back, and whispered, “I can’t pass up this chance.” She started for the ladder.
Matt blocked her way. “You haven’t a prayer of getting anywhere without me. You’re coming with me, and we’re leaving the Hospital—if we get that far.”
Polly hit him.
She hit him with stiffened fingertips just under the sternum, where the ribs make an inverted V. He doubled up, trying to curl around the pain, not yet trying to breathe, but gaping like a fish. He felt fingers at his throat and realized that she’d seen the gas filter and was taking it.
He saw her as a blur at the corner of his eye, climbing the ladder. He heard the door open, and a moment later, close. Slow fire was spreading through his lungs. He tried to draw air, and it hurt.
He’d never learned to fight. “The luck of Matt Keller” had made it unnecessary. Once he’d struck a guard on the point of the jaw. Where else would you hit somebody? And who’d guess that a slightly built girl could hit so hard?
Inch by inch he uncurled, straightened up. He drew his breath in shallow, painful sips. When the pain over his heart would let him move again, he started up the ladder.
It All Happened At Once
XIIIPolly moved at a gliding run. The gas filter was in place over her nose. She held the sonic straight out ahead of her, pointed around the curve of the inner hull. If an enemy appeared, that was where he would be, right in the gunsight. Nobody would come at her from behind. She was moving too fast.
As one of the inner core of the Sons of Earth, Polly knew the Planck as well as she knew her own home. The flight control room was a diameter’s distance from airlock. She ticked off the doors as she passed under them. Hydroponics…Library…
Flight Control. The door was closed. No ladder.
Polly crouched and sprang. She caught the handle at the top of her leap. The door was not locked; it was closed, because nobody ever used the flight control room. Unfortunately the door opened inward, upward. She dropped back, frustrated, landing silently on her toes.
If she’d chosen the fusion room…but the fusion room was for fine control. There, the Hospital electricians kept power running to the colonist regions. She’d have run into people, and they might have stopped her.