Snick started to say something else, but he held his hand up for silence. A faint noise, a murmur as of many voices, had come through the doorway. She came closer to him to hear it.
“What’s that?”
He looked around the corner again, Snick squeezing between his body and the doorway side to look also. The two ganks by the cars had their backs to them. Presently, the lights around the curve became brighter. A patrol car, headlights blazing, appeared. As it rounded the curve, several ganks on foot, their weapons in their hands, came into sight. Behind them, marching in an undisciplined manner, came the first of the parade, obviously demonstrators under arrest. They were shouting slogans, some of which Duncan could hear in the din.
“Let us live every day!”
“Down with the government!”
“A fair trial for Caird and Snick!”
“Up the revolution!”
“Give us immortality, too!”
“Off the pigs!”
“They’ve rounded them up and are herding them to the staircases,” Duncan said. “Or maybe they’re going to put them in some theater and lock them up until they have time to deal with them individually.”
The ganks in the apartments looked out the doorway. Their curiosity satisfied, they went back into the apartments. A minute later, they left them and entered the apartments next door.
“We try to join the crowd?” Snick said.
“No. They’ll be sniffed, you can bet on that.”
Soon, the last of the hundred or so demonstrators disappeared around the curve. The patrol cars and foot ganks making the rear guard also went around the curve. The two officers who had been standing by the cars got into them and drove them a few yards closer to the doorway in which Duncan and Snick stood. They started to watch the doorways on which their searchlights were centered. Then, hearing more crowd-noise to the west, they turned to look in that direction.
Duncan and Snick ran out into the street, the sounds of their feet muffled by the noise from the mob. This was, however, decreasing, indicating that the demonstrators were being herded along a street at the end of this one. When twenty feet away from the ganks, Duncan and Snick fired their proguns, set on maximum stun. Struck in the backs of their necks, the ganks fell heavily and did not move thereafter.
Duncan entered the apartment doorway on his left. Snick took the doorway of the apartment across the street. Duncan could see the front room, well illuminated by the searchlight. The hall was less bright but far from dark. When he heard voices coming from the stoner room, he slowed down.
17
The door of the stoner room was partly swung open. Looking through the opening between the door and the wall, he saw two ganks standing before a cylinder. The woman was directing a flashlight beam on the open door. A progun was in her other hand. The man held a cylindrical and shiny gray sniffer by the handles on its top. His eyes were fixed on the glowing display screen mounted on the machine.
There was enough light so that Duncan could see that only two stoners had not been opened. They were looking for an outlaw hiding in a stoner or for a whiff of molecules indicating that the outlaw had been in the stoner.
The woman said, “We’re taking too much time. The orders were to just make a quick sweep.”
“This is about as quick as we can be and still be efficient,” the man growled. He stood up and moved to the next cylinder. With one hand, he pulled on the door handle while the woman, poised to one side, pointed her flashlight and gun at the inside of the cylinder.
“This is crap,” the man said. “They wouldn’t be stupid enough to stay here. Not while the power’s off. Anyway, how the hell do they know they’re in the tower?”
Duncan stepped in and shot the woman in the back. She crumpled soundlessly at the touch of the violet beam. Before she had hit the floor, Duncan stunned the man. The flashlight, gun, and sniffer fell almost inaudibly onto the thick rug. The man slumped face-first into the cylinder doorway.
When Duncan got back to the street, he saw Snick coming toward him. “Easy, no trouble,” she said. Each lifted up a gank by the armpits and dragged them into the living room of the apartment from which Duncan had just come. After they had dropped the bodies against the wall, out of sight of anyone looking through the doorway, Duncan said, “We know the uniforms at Tan’s apartment fit us. We’ll put those on.”
Carrying flashlights taken from the unconscious officers, they ran to the residence of Tan and Shurber and to the Cloyds’ cylinders. The uniforms and helmets had been cached on the bottoms of the stoners. As quickly as they could, sweating, breathing the thick stale air, they exchanged their clothes. Then they ran back to one of the patrol cars, a roofless and doorless vehicle.
Duncan turned the car around so that it faced westward. He drove off, leaving the other car behind him, its lights still on. He intended to use the stairway by the elevator banks past the Blue Moon Plaza. That, he thought, should be much less crowded than the emergency stairways at the tower perimeter. He did not know just when the deserted patrol car and the stunned ganks would be found. But he calculated that he had at least twenty minutes before that happened. His and Snick’s scent would inevitably be detected by the sniffers. The ganks would search all neighborhood residences. They would quickly find the outlaws’ odors to be especially heavy in Tan’s and Shurber’s apartment. When power was restored, and that could be any minute now, all those in the apartment would be degorgonized. That would be the end for the OMC members even if they had been injected with anti-TM. By one means or another, the ganks would get the truth out of them.
Duncan felt sorry for his colleagues, but he could do nothing for them. He wished he could at least warn Erlend, Simmons, and Diszno that the ganks might track them down. However, he and Snick would be lucky if they saved their own asses.
Snick’s muttered exclamation shifted his thoughts.
“Oh, oh!”
Her hand closed on the butt of the gun on her lap.
About two hundred feet ahead of them, four electrically powered tricycles, two in the lead illuminated by the two behind them, had rounded the corner of an intersection. They were heading toward Duncan and Snick. But the vehicles passed them, horns honking in greeting. Duncan honked back. Snick waved.
Ahead was the Blue Moon Plaza, the great square lined by many stores, some theaters, a sports arena, a gymnasium, a grade and high school and a junior college, a hospital, a precinct station, a superblock administrative office, and several warehouses.
Big portable lights were spaced along the edge of the square and around the now-dry fountain. These illuminated a crowd of perhaps two hundred citizens near the fountain and several large groups of organics. A very large armored vehicle with a watercannon sprouting from its turret was at the far end of the crowd. Patrol cars filled with ganks ringed the mob. The beams of the watertank and the cars blazed on the twisted faces and shaking fists of the prisoners. Though Duncan was too far from them to hear their words, he knew that these were insulting or defiant.
Duncan turned the car to go up the avenue that crossed the street at right angles. He did not want to cross that square. There were too many ganks there. Though they might assume that he and Snick were fellow officers, one of them might recognize him and Snick. The lights were too bright there.
He would go up the avenue and take a street running past the square. This would lead him directly to the elevator banks and the adjacent staircases.
He said, “Oh, damn!”
Up the street were the many lights of a cavalcade, a swarm of organic cars and tricycles and two very large headlights above the others. Another watertank. The lights showed a dark mass behind the lead vehicles. More prisoners.
There was no room for his car to pass through. He would have to stop it as near to the apartment fronts as he could get it and wait for the mass to flow by his vehicle.
That was not to be. A voice amplified by a bullhorn spoke from the front of the crowd. “This is Colonel Pecka
pore speaking! Turn around! Go to the plaza!”
Duncan, keenly aware of the spotlights now centering on his and Snick’s faces, stopped the car. He backed it up in a half-circle and then started back along the way from which they had come.
“Peckapore apparently doesn’t care what our supposed mission is,” Duncan said. “He’s requisitioning all the personnel he can get.”
“Want to make a run for it?”
“No. We’ll ride it out, slip away the first chance we get.”
Since he had not been ordered to station the car at a particular place, Duncan drove along the edge of the plaza to a place near the watertank. The car was pointed to the west, toward the staircases.
They got out of the car and stood by it, their guns in their hands. The cavalcade rolled into the plaza. There was a lot of shouting and some confusion for a while. The newly arrived group of prisoners was hustled with bellowed orders and cattle prods to a place alongside the fountain. Now there were two masses of arrestees, each separated from the other by the fountain. These did not hold their ranks as commanded but surged back and forth, expanding and contracting and forming pseudopods like two gigantic amoebae.
Over the cries, screams, and shouts soared the voice of Colonel Peckapore via his bullhorn, turned to full decibel level.
“You will cease this resistance and this noise at once! Be quiet and do exactly as you’re ordered or I will have you all subjected to stun beams!”
While he was bellowing, a captain stormed up to Duncan and Snick. “What the hell are you two doing just standing there? Get in there and help restrain the prisoners!”
“We had no orders to assist,” Duncan said. “We were just told to come here.”
“Jesus Christ!” the captain said. Her face was bent with anger. “Where the hell’s your initiative?”
The lights came on then. For a moment, there was a comparative silence. Peckapore quit shouting, and the prisoners stopped yelling. Then, as the surprise faded away, the noise began again. The captain seemed startled, though not so much by the reappearance of the lights. Duncan and Snick had started to move away when she said, “Hold it! Come here, you two!”
Duncan, turning back toward her, said, “What is it, captain?”
She went up close to him. Her eyes narrowed, she looked intently at him and then at Snick. Alarm sliced the anger from her face. She reached for the gun in her holster, at the same time shouting, “You’re under…”
The violet beam from Snick’s gun caught her in the chest, and she fell backwards, her loose weapon ringing on the hard floor.
Duncan whirled to look beyond the watertank, the bulk of which partly hid him and Snick. No one seemed to have seen the shooting, but it would not be long until someone spotted the captain’s body. He leaped to her, hoisted her over his shoulder, strode to the car, and dumped her onto the floor below the back seat. Snick leaped into the driver’s seat. As soon as Duncan had run around and scrambled into the seat beside her, she pressed the accelerator.
Electrically driven, the vehicle did not have a high acceleration, but she gave it all it had. Two ganks on tricycles were coming into the plaza from the west. They had evidently seen him throw the captain into the car. They stopped their vehicles and got off. Duncan shot one of them with his gun, which he had reset to MAX BURN. Snick, steering with one hand, shot the other. The ganks fell backwards, their guns dropping to the floor. Thin smoke rose from their scorched chests. The car sped past the sprawled bodies and then was on the avenue. By now it had reached its top velocity, thirty-five miles an hour.
“They must’ve radioed in,” Snick said.
“I’m not sure. They only had time to draw their guns. They looked pretty surprised.”
He doubted that the two they had beamed were dead. They had been close to the end of the full-power range of the proguns. But they would be badly wounded.
The huge round columns enclosing the elevator banks and the staircases were visible a few minutes before they got to them. The car had to turn off the avenue onto a street and go two blocks. Duncan smiled when he saw that the street monitors in the last two junctions had been sprayed with black bond-paint. The monitors on this junction had also been blinded by the demonstrators. That gave him and Snick an edge. Though the power was on, these monitors could not now view the outlaws.
However, two ganks were stationed by the two columns enclosing the elevator shafts and the staircases. These reacted only as they would if they saw two fellow officers approaching in a car. They fell, struck by beams from guns set back onto MAX STUN. The nearby monitor screens would transmit no pictures of the shooting to HQ. They, too, were covered with black paint.
He and Snick got out of the vehicle and dragged the three bodies through the open door of an apartment across the street from the columns. The captain and a gank went into empty stoners. The third one was jammed into an occupied cylinder. Then, panting and sweating, Duncan and Snick went to the staircase entrance.
Now that power was restored, the dispossessed citizens would be returning to their apartments. This would be a long and somewhat confused process and would require that most of those searching for the outlaws would have to assist. However, it would not be long before the ganks they had left in the apartments near the Cloyds’ would be staggering out. Also, those under the captain’s command would be wondering what had happened to her.
The indicator lights above the elevator doors were flashing the level numbers. They must be bringing up the citizens now, though it would be a long time before those who had left the 112th level could use them. The number of people who had gone down the staircases was probably large. Very few would want to climb back up to the higher levels.
They started swiftly down the stairs, one hand sliding along the banister. The steps were twenty feet wide, and went straight down to the landing. There they turned and ran down the next. By now the wallscreens had been activated, though for only one channel.
The newshead had been replaced by an organic major, Prewett. While he spoke, a section beside him displayed the icons of Duncan and Snick. Below these: BE ALERT FOR THESE CRIMINALS. REPORT OBSERVATION OF THESE TO THE NEAREST ORGANIC OFFICER OR PRECINCT STATION. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO APPREHEND. THEY ARE ARMED AND DANGEROUS.
Major Prewett’s voice paced them as they hurtled down the steps.
“Full power has been restored to the La Brea Tower Complex. All citizens will return to their residences as directed by the organic officers. Please be calm. Order is being restored.
“The two wanted criminals, Jefferson Cervantes Caird, a.k.a. William St. George Duncan, a.k.a. Andrew Vishnu Beewolf, and Panthea Pao Snick, a.k.a. Jenny Ko Chandler, have been sighted on the 112th level. For the moment, they are still at large. The reward for any information leading to their capture or death has been raised to 75,000 credits.
“Full power has been restored to the La Brea Tower Complex. All citizens…”
Duncan thought, the ganks do not know yet that we’re in uniform. Otherwise, they would be broadcasting that data.
By the time he and Snick, panting, had reached the 12th level, the situation had changed.
“…have assaulted and overcome a number of organic officers and donned the uniforms of two. The criminals are now posing as organic officers. We urge…”
A third section sprang into glow, showing Duncan and Snick in patroller uniforms. The operators must have worked fast to simulate these.
Immediately thereafter, he and Snick had to slow down. A mass of men, women, and children were trudging up the steps, jamming them from wall to wall. Though many of them must have seen the displays, no one of the mob recognized them or seemed to do so. It was possible that, if any did, he obeyed the order not to attempt to apprehend the criminals. On the other hand, thought Duncan, that reward would surely have overwhelmed fear. The person who first cried out their names and so was responsible for their capture would earn 75,000 credits. Duncan reassured himself that the weary and flustered citizens
had not matched the icons with the ganks who suddenly appeared.
Then he and Snick were forcing their way downward along the wall. Even though most people tried to let them by, the press of bodies made for slow going. But it had its advantages. He saw the helmets of two ganks going upstairs. They were near the banister, and, if they saw his and Snick’s helmets, they did not think anything of it.
After ten minutes of pushing, they had only gotten down three levels. Then the mass suddenly decreased. For one flight there was only a score or so coming up, latecomers. Then, there were none.
When they reached the second level landing, they looked down around the corner. Leaning against the end of the banister on the first level were two ganks.
18
Duncan and Snick retreated to the gigantic sliding doors which gave entrance to the second level. They glanced through the big windows and ducked back out of sight. Two ganks were standing near it, talking, their tricycles a few feet from them.
“They must’ve stationed officers at every staircase exit on every level,” Snick said.
“If so, they just did it,” Duncan said.
He did not know why the two ganks on the first level had gone inside the doors. What mattered was that they had. He frowned and quirked the right corner of his mouth. The monitors must be on, but whoever at HQ was watching this staircase was not reporting on the appearance of the criminals. Or perhaps someone at HQ had set the monitors to fail as he and Snick went from level to level. That meant that some high OMC official was protecting them as well as he could. Diszno? Simmons? It would not be so dangerous to do so if no one was watching the operator. There would be just a momentary blanking out for each level.
If that was happening and it was not just a malfunction, then the operator must be getting uneasy. He must know that Duncan and Snick were blocked by the ganks outside the door on this level and the two ganks at the foot of the staircase. He could blank out the monitors only so long.