Daughter of Regals and Other Tales

  “Inspector,” I said carefully, “I’m a big boy now. I’m here of my own free will. You’re not sending me out on this just because you want me to adjust. Why don’t you tell me why you’ve decided to ignore the computer?”

  He was watching me like I’d just suggested some kind of unnatural act. But I knew that look. It meant he was angry about something, and he was about to admit it to both of us for the first time. Abruptly, he picked up the file and shoved it at me in disgust. “The last person on that list of dead is Nick Kolcsz. He was a Special Agent.”

  A Special Agent. That told me something, but not enough. I didn’t know Kolcsz. He must have had money, but I wanted more than that. I gave the Inspector’s temper another nudge. “What was he doing there?”

  He jumped to his feet to make shouting easier. “How the hell should I know?” Like all good men in the Bureau, be took the death of an Agent personally. “He was on leave’ His goddamn transceiver was off!” Then with a jerk he sat down again. After a minute, all his anger was gone and he was just tired. “I presume he went there for the hunting, just like the rest of them. You know as well as I do we don’t monitor Agents on leave. Even Agents need privacy once in a while. We didn’t even know he was dead until his wife filed a complaint because they didn’t let her see his body.

  “Never mind the security leak—all that metal in his ashes. What scares me”—now there was something like fear in his bleak eyes—”is that we hadn’t turned off his power pack. We never do that—not just for a leave. He should have been safe. Wild elephants shouldn’t have been able to hurt him.”

  I knew what he meant. Nick Kolcsz was a cyborg. Like me. Whatever killed him was more dangerous than that.

  2

  Well, yes—a cyborg. But it isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. People these days make the mistake of thinking Special Agents are “super” somehow. This comes from the old movies, where cyborgs were always super-fast and super-strong. They were loaded with weaponry. They had built-in computers to do things like think for them. They were slightly more human than robots.

  Maybe someday. Right now no one has the technology for that kind of thing. I mean the medical technology. For lots of reasons, medicine hasn’t made much progress in the last twenty years. What with all the population trouble we have, the science of “saving lives” doesn’t seem as valuable as it used to. And then there were the genetic riots of 1989, which ended up shutting down whole research centers.

  No, what I have in the way of equipment is a transceiver in the mastoid process behind my right ear, so that I’m always in contact with the Bureau; thin, practically weightless plastene struts along my legs and arms and spine, so I’m pretty hard to cripple (in theory, anyway); and a nuclear power pack implanted in my chest so its shielding protects my heart as well. The power peck runs my transceiver. It also runs the hypersonic blaster built into the palm of my left hand.

  This has its disadvantages. I can hardly flex the first knuckles of that hand, so the hand itself doesn’t have a whole lot it can do. And the blaster is covered by a latex membrane (looks just like skin) that bums away every time I use it, so I always have to carry replacements. But there are advantages, too—sort of. I can kill people at twenty-five meters and stun them at fifty. I can tear holes in concrete walls, if I can get close enough.

  That was what the Inspector was talking about when he said I hadn’t adjusted. I couldn’t get used to the fact that I could kill my friends just by pushing my tongue against one of my back teeth in a certain way. So I tended not to have very many friends.

  Anyway, being a cyborg wasn’t much comfort on this assignment. That was all I had going for me—exactly the same equipment that hadn’t saved Nick Kolcsz. And he’d had something I didn’t have—something that also hadn’t saved him. He’d known what he was getting into. He’d been an experienced hunter, and he’d known three other people on that list of dead. (He must’ve known some of the survivors, too. Or known of them through friends. How else could he have known the place was dangerous?) Maybe that was why he went to Sharon’s Point—to do some private research to find out what happened to those dead hunters.

  Unfortunately, that didn’t give me the option of going to one of his friends and asking what Kolcsz had known. The people who benefit (if that’s the right word) from an exclusive arrangement don’t have much reason to trust outsiders (like me). And they certainly weren’t going to reveal knowing about anything illegal to a Special Agent. That would hurt themselves as well as Sharon’s Point.

  But I didn’t like the idea of facing whatever killed Kolcsz without more data. So I started to do some digging.

  I got information of a sort by checking out the Preserve’s registration, but it didn’t help much. Registration meant only that the Federal inspector had approved Sharon’s Point’s equipment. And inspection only covers two things: fencing and medical facilities.

  Every hunting preserve is required to insure that its animals can’t get loose, and to staff a small clinic to treat injured customers (never mind the crippled animals). The inspector verified that Sharon’s Point had these things. Its perimeter (roughly 133 km.) was appropriately fenced. Its facilities included a very well equipped surgery and dispensary; and a veterinary hospital (which surprised me); and a cremator—supposedly for getting rid of animals too badly wounded to be treated.

  Other information was slim. The preserve itself contained about 1,100 square km. of forests, swamps, hills, meadows, it was owned and run by a man named Fritz Ushre. Its staff consisted of one surgeon (a Dr. Avid Paracels) and a half dozen handlers for the animals.

  But one item was conspicuously absent: the name of the breeder. Most hunting preserves get their animals by contract with one of three or four big breeding firms. Sharon’s Point’s registration didn’t name one. It didn’t name any source for its animals at all. Which made me think maybe the people who went hunting there weren’t hunting animals.

  People hunting people? That’s as illegal as hell. But it might explain the high death rate. Mere lions and baboons (even rabid baboons in packs) don’t kill forty-five hunters at an exclusive preserve in twenty months. I was beginning to understand why the Inspector was willing to defy the computer on this assignment.

  I went to the programmers and got a readout on the death certificates. All had been signed by “Avid Paracels, M.D.” All specified “normal” hunting-preserve causes of death (the usual combinations of injury and exposure, in addition to outright killing), but the type of animal involved was never identified.

  That bothered me. This time I had the computers read out everything they had on Fritz Ushre and Avid Paracels.

  Ushre’s file was small. Things like age, marital status, blood type aside, it contained only a sketchy résumé of his past employment. Twenty years of perfectly acceptable work as an engineer in various electronics firms. Then he inherited some land. He promptly quit his job, and two years later he opened up Sharon’s Point. Now (according to his bank statements) he was in the process of getting rich. That told me just about nothing. I already knew Sharon’s Point was popular.

  But the file on Avid Paracels, Ph.D., M.D., F.A.C.S., was something else. It was full of stuff. Apparently atone time Dr. Paracels had held a high security clearance because o(some research he was doing, so the Bureau had studied him down to his toenails. That produced reams of data, most of it pointless, but it didn’t take me long to find the real goodies. After which (as my mother used to say) I could’ve been knocked over with a shovel. Avid Paracels was one of the victims of the genetic riots of 1989.

  This is basically what happened. In 1989 one of the newspapers broke the story that a team of biologists (including the distinguished Avid Paracels) working under a massive Federal grant had achieved a major breakthrough in what they called “recombinant DNA research”—”genetic engineering,” to ignorant sods like me. They’d mastered the techniques of raising animals with altered genes. Now they were beginning to experiment
with human embryos. Their goal, according to the newspaper, was to attempt “minor improvements” in the human being—”cat” eyes, for instance, or prehensile toes.

  So what happened? Riots is what happened. Which in itself wasn’t unusual. By 1989, crime and whatnot, social unrest of all kinds, had already become the biggest single threat to the country, but the government still hadn’t faced up to the problem. So riots and other types of violence used to start up for any reason at all: higher fuel prices, higher food costs, higher rents. In other words (according to the social scientists), the level of general public aggression had reached crisis proportions. Nobody had any acceptable outlets for anger, so whenever people were able to identify a grievance they went bananas.

  That newspaper article triggered the great granddaddy of all riots. There was a lot of screaming about “the sanctity of human life,” but I suppose the main thing was that the idea of a “superior human being” was pretty threatening to most people. So scientists and Congressmen were attacked in the streets. Three government buildings were wrecked (including a post office—God knows why). Seven apartment complexes were wrecked. One hundred thirty-seven stores were looted and wrecked. The recombinant DNA research program was wrecked. And a handful of careers went down the drain. Because this riot was too big to be put down. The cops (Special Agents) would have had to kill too many people. So the President himself set about appeasing the rioters— which led, naturally enough, to our present policy of trying to appease violence itself.

  Avid Paracels was one of the men , who went down the drain. I guess he was lucky not to lose his medical license. He certainly never got the chance to do any more research.

  Well, that didn’t prove anything, but it sure made me curious. People who lose high positions have been known to become somewhat vague about matters of legality. So that gave me a place to start when I went to Sharon’s Point. Maybe if I was lucky I could even get out of pretending to go hunting in the preserve itself.

  So I was feeling like I knew what I was doing (which probably should’ve told me I was in trouble already) when I left the duty room to go arrange for transportation and money. But it didn’t last. Along the way I got one of those hot flashes, like an inspiration or a premonition. So when I was done with Accounting I went back to the computers and asked for a readout on any unsolved crimes in the area around Sharon’s Point. The answer gave my so-called self-confidence a jolt.

  Sharon’s Point was only 80 km. from the Procureton Arsenal, where a lot of old munitions (mostly from the ‘60s and ‘70s) were stored. Two years ago, someone had broken into Procureton (God knows how) and helped himself to a few odds and ends—like fifty M-16 rifles (along with five thousand loaded clips), a hundred .22 Magnum automatic handguns (and another five thousand clips), five hundred hand grenades, and more than five hundred antipersonnel mines of various types. Enough to supply a good-sized street mob.

  Which made no sense at all. Any street mob these days—or terrorist organization, or heist gang, for that matter—that tried to use obsolete weaponry like M-16s would get cut to shreds in minutes by cops using laser cannon. And who else would want the damn stuff?

  I didn’t believe I was going to find any animals at Sharon’s Point at all. Just hunters picking each other off.

  Before I went home, I spent an hour down in the range, practicing with my blaster. Just to be sure it worked.

  The next morning early I went to Supply and got myself some “rich” clothes, along with a bunch of hunting gear. Then I went to Weapons and checked out an old Winchester .30-06 carbine that looked to me like the kind of rifle a “true” (eccentric) sportsman might use—takes a degree of skill, and fires plain old load slugs instead of hypodarts or fragmentation bullets—sort of a way of giving the “game” a chance. After that I checked the tape decks to be sure they had me on active status. Then I went to Sharon’s Point.

  I took the chute from D.C. to St. Louis (actually, it’s an electrostatic shuttle, but it’s called “the chute” because the early designs reminded some romantic of the old logging chutes in the Northwest), but after that I had to rent a car. Which was appropriate, since I was supposed to be rich. Only the rich can afford cars these days—and Special Agents on assignment (fuel prices being what they are, the only time most people see the inside of a car is at a subsidized track). But I didn’t enjoy it much. Never mind that I wasn’t much of a driver (I hadn’t exactly had a lot of practice). It was raining like hades in St. Louis, and I had to drive 300 km. through the back hills of Missouri as if I were swimming. That slowed me down so much I didn’t get near Sharon’s Point until after dark.

  I stopped for the night at the village of Sharon’s Point, which was about 5 km. shy of the preserve. It was a dismal little town, too far from anywhere to have anything going for it. But it did have one motel. When I splashed my way through the rain and mud and went dripping into the lobby, I found that one motel was doing. very well for itself. It was as plush as any motel I’d ever seen. And expensive. The receptionist didn’t even blush when she told me the place cost a thousand dollars a night.

  So it was obvious this motel didn’t get its business from local people and tourists. Probably it catered to the hunters who came to and went from the preserve. I might’ve blushed if I hadn’t come prepared to handle situations like this. I had a special credit card Accounting had given me. Made me look rich without saying anything about where I got my money. I checked in as if I did this kind of thing every day. The receptionist sent my stuff to my room, and I went into the bar.

  Hoping there might be another hunter or two around. But except for the bartender the place was empty. So I perched myself on one of the barstools and tried to find out if the bartender liked to talk.

  He did. I guess he didn’t get a lot of opportunity. Probably people who didn’t mind paying a thousand dollars a night for a room didn’t turn up too often. Once he got started, I didn’t think I would be able to stop him from telling me everything he knew.

  Which wasn’t a whole lot more than I already knew-about the preserve, anyway. The people who went there had money. They threw their weight around. They liked to drink—before and after hunting. But maybe half of them didn’t stop by to celebrate on their way home. After a while I asked him what kind of trophies the ones that did stop by got.

  “Funny thing about that,” he said. “They don’t bring anything back. Don’t even talk about what they got. I used to do some hunting when I was a kid, and I never met a hunter who didn’t like to show off what he shot. I’ve seen grown men act like God Almighty when they dinged a rabbit. But not here. ‘Course”—he smiled— “I never went hunting in a place as pricey as Sharon’s Point.”

  But I wasn’t thinking about the money. I was thinking about forty-five bodies. That was something even rich hunters wouldn’t brag about. Probably those trophies had bullet holes in them.

  3

  I promised myself I was going to find out about those “trophies.” One way or another. It wasn’t that I was feeling confident. Right then I don’t think I even knew what confidence was. No, it was that confidence didn’t matter any more. I couldn’t afford to worry about it. This case was too serious.

  When I was sure I was the only guest, I gave up the idea of getting any more information that night. There was no cure for it—I was going to have to go up to the preserve and bluff my way along until I got the answers I needed. Not a comforting thought. When I went to bed, I spent a long time listening to the rain before I fell asleep.

  In the morning it was still raining, but that didn’t seem like a good enough reason to postpone what I had to do. So I spent a while in the bathroom, running the shower to cover the sound of my voice while I talked to the tape decks in the Bureau (via microwave relays in St. Louis, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, and God knows where else). Then I had breakfast, and went and got soaked running through the rain out to my car.

  The drive to the preserve was slow because of the rain. The road wound up an
d down hills between walls of dark trees that seemed to be crouching there, waiting for me, but I didn’t see anything else until my car began picking its way up a long slope toward the outbuildings of Sharon’s Point.

  They sat below the crest of a long transverse ridge that blocked everything beyond it from sight. Right ahead of me was a large squat complex; that was probably where the offices and medical facilities were. To the right was a long building like a barracks that probably housed the animal handlers. On the left was the landing area. Three doughnut-shaped open-cockpit hovercraft stood there. (Most hunting preserves used hovereraft for jobs like inspecting the fences and looking for missing hunters.) They were covered by styrene sheets against the rain.

  And behind all this, stretching along the ridge like the promise of something deadly, was the fence. It looked gray and bitter against the black clouds and the rain. The chain steel was at least five meters high, curved inward and viciously barbed along the top to keep certain kinds of animals from being able to climb out. But it didn’t make me feel safe. Whatever was in there had killed forty-five people. Five meters offence were either inadequate or irrelevant.

  More for my own benefit than for Inspector Morganstark’s, I said into my transceiver, “Relinquish all hope, ye who enter here.” Then I drove up to the squat building, parked as close as I could get to a door marked OFFICE, and ran through the rain as if I couldn’t wait to take on Sharon’s Point single-handed.

  I rushed into the office, pulled the door shut behind me—and almost fell on my face. Pain as keen as steel went through my head like a drill from somewhere be-hind my right ear. For an instant I was blind and deaf with pain, and my knees were bending under me.

  It was coming from my mastoid process.

  Some kind of power feedback in my transceiver.

  It felt like one of the monitors back at the Bureau was trying to kill me.