She meant every word of it, he knew. It was an honest, straightforward outpouring of affection. It made him tremble inside.
“Everyone has problems,” she went on. “If any of what you say is true, then who’s better equipped to understand them and sympathize with your troubles than me?”
“You have no idea what I might do,” he warned her. “I don’t know myself. As I get—older, I can feel myself changing, and I’m not referring to the passing of adolescence. It’s deeper than that. It’s physical—here.” He touched the side of his head again.
“Changing how?”
“I don’t know. I can’t say; it’s impossible to tell. There’s just the feeling that something major is happening to me. Something I can’t control. Once I thought I knew what it was all about, that it was something I could study and learn to master. Now I’m not sure. I have this feeling that it’s much more than I originally thought it was. Maybe a lot more than what my designers intended. The mutation is mutating, and whence it goes, nobody knows.
“As you get older, you’re supposed to start finding answers to your questions. I only seem to come up with more questions. It’s maddening sometimes.” Seeing the look that came over her face, he hastened to reassure her. “I don’t mean maddening in the sense of going insane, but maddening as in frustrating and puzzling.”
She managed a small, wan smile. “I have moments like that myself, Flinx. Everyone does. I just want for us to be together. I think if we’re together and you come to feel for me the way I feel about you, there’s nothing we can’t cope with. I have access to sealed records. My security clearance is very high. Coldstripe may be small, but our contacts are excellent.”
He was shaking his head. “You’ll never get into the Church records concerning the Society. There’s a moral imperative lock on them. I know, I’ve tried. You can work your way through the government copies with bribes and coercion, but you can’t do that within the Church.”
“We’ll manage. Anything’s possible when you’re in love.”
“Are you so sure you’re in love?”
“You don’t give a centimeter, do you?”
“I can’t afford to. Are you?”
“I’m not sure, now. I thought I was, but—is anyone ever really sure?” Her smile expanded. “See, you aren’t the only one who can be badly upset by something happening inside them. What I don’t understand is why you keep pushing me away when all I want is to help and comprehend. Why won’t you let me help you?”
“Because I am dangerous. Isn’t that obvious?”
“No, it isn’t. Just because some misguided people tinkered with your genes before you were born, if any of that is true, doesn’t make you a threat. When I look at you, all I see is a young man unsure of himself and his future who went out of his way to help me when I was in trouble, and who could just as easily have ignored me and gone on his merry way. A young man who risked his life to save that of a stranger. A man who is kind and gentle and intelligent, if a bit cynical at times. Why should I see a threat in that?”
“Because you don’t know what I might do. Because I don’t know what I might do.” He was almost pleading with her now, wanting to keep the distance he had opened between them but not wanting to frighten her.
“The Meliorares wanted to improve humanity, as I recall it. If your mind reflects your ethics, then I’ve nothing to worry about.”
“Clarity, you’re just not seeing it, are you?”
“You said I couldn’t. Help me to understand, Flinx.” She took a step toward him, then stopped. She wanted desperately to hold him, to embrace and comfort him and tell him that no matter what was wrong, it was all going to turn out all right. Yet at the same time she could not put aside his warning that it might be better for her if she did not.
Both were torn between what their hearts wanted and what their minds ordered, though for differing reasons. They might have settled everything then and there, might have changed their lives one way or the other, except that their conversation was not allowed to continue.
Chapter Ten
The explosion seemed to echo endlessly down the tunnels and corridors. The chemical fluorescents attached to the ceilings and walls did not flicker and go out since each was independent of its neighbor.
A second explosion followed close behind the first. It came from the entrance to Coldstripe’s cavern, up past the laboratories and living spaces.
“Accident,” Clarity shouted.
Flinx was shaking his head. “I don’t think so.” He recognized the report of a shaped demolition charge but did not want to alarm her until he was absolutely certain.
At the same time he damned himself for an overconfident fool. There were sidearms on board the Teacher. He had left them there, confident that he had time to deliver Clarity to her colleagues and then move on. He had expected persistence on the part of her kidnappers, but not speed. And her tour of the installation had subsequently engendered in him a false sense of security, now rudely shattered. No installation was impregnable. Tse-Mallory would have been disappointed in him. That old man had tried his best to stuff his young friend’s skull as full of tactics and strategy as he had of humanities and science.
“Our civilization is founded on law and reason,” he had once told Flinx, “but never forget that the forces of darkness are always roaming its fringes, testing its strength, always probing for a way in. Nor am I speaking solely of the AAnn. I fear them less than I fear internal corruption and a breakdown of morality, those for whom ethics is merely an inconvenient concept. You must always be on guard against them. They’ll slip up on a civilization like a bad cold, and before you know it, the body politic is comatose with pneumonia. It can strike individuals as easily as institutions.
“That’s why we have the United Church, to provide moral leadership and succor to those who need it. Perfect it’s not, and the padres know it.”
I need a gun right now, Flinx told himself as he and Clarity raced hand in hand up the corridor, not moral suasion.
Confused shouts and panicky yells mixed with the explosions’ dying echoes. “Your friends have come back for you!” he shouted above the noise.
“Impossible! There’s no way they could get past port Security.”
Pip buzzed her, master’s head, constantly sweeping the corridor ahead with her eyes. “What if they came in someplace else?” he asked her.
“There is no place else,” she insisted. “The best VTL shuttlecraft would have a fifty-fifty chance at best of setting down off the landing strip in one piece. The odds for a successful lift-off would go down. As for the outpost itself, there’s only the single entrance, and you saw the barrier door we taxied under. It would take a direct hit from a warship to penetrate that. Everyone comes in that way.”
“Since I’ve been here, all I’ve heard about are the extensive caverns of Longtunnel. If they could get down intact, isn’t it possible they could find or enlarge another entrance? There must be other openings to the surface besides the one that’s utilized for the formal port of entry.”
“I suppose. Yes, I guess that would be possible. Anyone trying it would have to come in with full spelunking gear: ropes, lights, everything. There are some horrendous pits and sheer drops, but it’s conceivable they could do that, if they were determined enough.”
“Or fanatic enough.” As they rounded a corner a third explosion, smaller than the others, boomed down the tunnel. Flinx came to a halt just in time.
The next charge went off ahead and slightly to their right, close enough for them to feel the heat and see the flash. The ceiling had been cleanly shorn or they might have been skewered by falling stalactites. The force of the blast was still powerful enough to dislodge rock from the roof and knock both of them to the ground.
“You all right?” As Flinx helped Clarity to her feet, he caught a brief glimpse of a tall blond woman in a chameleon suit running into a room up ahead whose door had been blown away. Several smaller people, similarl
y clad, followed her inside. Several of them looked too old to be engaged in such business, but then, fanaticism knows no age.
They had used the suits to help them infiltrate the facility; now that they had been discovered, they had thrown back the hoods in order to see and hear more freely.
Two bodies lay in the corridor. One was moaning and rolling on the floor, clutching his torn left arm. Clarity started toward them, and Flinx had to grab her from behind.
“That’s Sarah! She’s hurt.”
“We can’t do anything here. They’re right in front of us. If they get you back, I won’t be able to help you again. Someone else will take care of her.”
He dragged her with him as he retreated. In addition to being bigger than her, he was much stronger than his slight frame suggested. The legacy of hanging from his fingers to avoid the attentions of the police and of leaping from wall to window, he told himself.
A fresh explosion erupted in the room the attackers had assaulted. Yellow flame burst upward and spread out across the ceiling.
“Oh, God,” Clarity moaned. “That was our microsurgery! It takes years to get delivery of some of the equipment that was in there.”
“You’d better start worrying about the equipment between your hair and your boots. That takes even longer to replace,” he warned her tightly.
The cavern was alive with the sound of small arms fire: the crackle of needlers, the soft hiss of lasers. Shots easily pierced spray-plastic walls. The corridor was beginning to fill with smoke as flammable materials reacted to the kiss of heat-generating weaponry.
They could hear the flames that ate at the cool cave air. Other rooms and laboratory facilities were being put to the figurative torch. The attackers were methodical in their destruction. However they had come in, Flinx surmised that they had first moved to seal off Coldstripe from the rest of the outpost. Then they had begun working their way backward, destroying everything they encountered as they advanced.
“Why?” Clarity was crying as Flinx half walked, half carried her down the tunnel. “Why, why?”
“Kidnapping you wasn’t enough,” he muttered, his eyes checking each door and passage before racing onward. “Your escape forced them to move openly. You as much as told me that they wanted to shut you down.”
“Not like this! Not killing and burning.”
“They’re probably looking at it as some kind of twisted cleanup operation. I don’t think they’re really keen to murder. It’s the facility here they want to destroy. That doesn’t mean they’re going to stop and reason with anyone who thinks differently or gets in their way.”
She looked up suddenly. “Do you think they know I’m back here?”
“Maybe. Obviously their information’s better than anybody thought.”
It was becoming hard to see through the thickening smoke. Just then someone stepped out of the murk on his right. The sight was so unprepossessing that for an instant Flinx was not sure how to react.
The man was short and electively bald, with heavy white sideburns framing his jowly face and a potbelly protruding from his midsection. His suit was too big for his body and hung in wrinkles around his chest and thighs, which distorted its camouflaging ability. A breather clung to his face like some seagoing arachnid, its presence proof that the attackers expected to have to deal with smoke and bad air.
He had stepped out of a service corridor awash in acrid smoke. Though he looked less than dangerous, there was a madness burning in his eyes that belied his appearance, and there was nothing laughable about the high-powered needler he was gripping in both hands. The instant he caught sight of Flinx and Clarity, he began bringing it around to bear. He spoke in a high, maniacal voice that was anything but humorous.
“Over! All over for you now, damn you! You’re done here; you’re finished. We’re putting an end to this blasphemy forever. This is only the first step, only the beginning.” The gun was still moving. “Death to all destroyers of the environment!”
Flinx shoved Clarity hard and threw himself the other way. His arm jumped involuntarily as the near miss from the needler grazed his shoulder. He landed and rolled fast, then came up to see the muzzle of the gun swing toward him.
The second shot was never fired. The man ripped his lungs screaming as Pip’s venom caught him square in the eyes. Probably he never saw the flying snake. Pip had been so involved in keeping herself positioned between her master and the greater threat far up the corridor that she had been late in getting back to deal with this unexpected one.
The little man fell backward, flung his weapon aside, and began clawing at his disintegrating face. Steam rose from his skin as venom ate into the flesh. Though he did not know it, he was already dead. By the time Flinx had helped Clarity back to her feet, their assailant lay motionless on his back.
Clarity was bleeding from shallow scratches on her arms and legs where she had struck the ground. Making sure she could stand by herself, Flinx went to remove the dead man’s breather, not forgetting to pick up the needler he had thrown aside in his agony. A couple of power cells for the gun fit neatly in two empty pockets. A quick search of the man’s suit and inner clothing turned up nothing that could be used to identify him or the organization to which he belonged.
Flinx was checking out the handgun as he rejoined Clarity. “Whoever they are, they’re very thorough. No identification whatsoever. Nothing to lead the authorities to them or to their base of operations.” When she continued to stare blankly past him, he raised a hand as if to strike her. “Clarity! Wake up!”
She instinctively raised both arms to protect herself. It was enough to shake her out of the daze into which she had lapsed.
“Sorry. I’m—I’m okay.”
A laser hissed into the ceiling behind them, boring a hole through damp limestone. In one smooth swooping movement Flinx brought the heavy needler around and fired. No body appeared out of the swirling smoke, but his return fire was not answered, either.
“They aren’t trained for this,” he mumbled, as much for his own reassurance as for Clarity’s. “They’re not soldiers. They’re relying on determination and surprise, both of which they’ve brought in quantity. It’s not a real military operation. If they were professionals, we’d be dead or captured by now.” He tried to see through the roiling smoke. “Some of the security people must be putting up a fight.”
The upper reaches of Coldstripe’s cavern were filled with smoke and flame. In such conditions it would be difficult for both attackers and defenders to tell friend from foe. The local ventilation system was still functioning or they would have already suffocated, but if vital fans or ducts were destroyed, the air could turn unbreathable rapidly. He tried not to think about the possible airborne toxins that might have been released into the enclosed atmosphere when the invaders had blown up the company labs.
The fanatics had come equipped with breathers. Coldstripe’s people might not be similarly prepared. Having effectively eliminated the research station as a viable entity, he found himself wondering, would the invaders be content to stop there? Victory could be a powerful narcotic. They might well attempt a takeover of the entire colony.
Even now they might have a small army of fellow fanatics waiting in orbit, anxious to follow their shock troops down via cargo shuttle. If they could take control of the port, they could hold everyone hostage. Demands could be drawn up and presented to the government. The newsfax attention would be extraordinary.
“Is there another way around to the port and hangar facilities?”
Her eyes were watering from the smoke. She hacked and coughed out a reply. “No. Each concern has its own complex. The only way back to the port is the way I brought you—brought you in. Some of the university people share space to save money, but every private outfit like Coldstripe has its own cavern with its own access. That’s to ensure company security. If they break out into the main port area. . . .”
“That’s what’s been bothering me. At least now we know th
ere’s more than one way out to the surface. They didn’t blast their way in. If there’s one natural passage in, there might be another leading from here to the port.”
“Then it hasn’t been mapped,” she insisted as they stumbled along, racing the smoke. “Not even a crawl space.”
His eyes required constant attention. It seemed strange that ordinary smoke could sting so badly. Burning Mylar and spray-walls might have released irritating chemicals into the air.
“We’ve got to have a light we can carry with us.” He longingly eyed the chemtubes that showed the path, but they were bolted down tight.
“Somehow we have to get clear of this complex. I don’t think they’re going to take the time to look for you specifically. At least not right away. Too many bodies around. First they’re going to secure what they’ve taken and make plans for holding on to it. They they’ll decide on follow-up measures.”
“It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter anymore.” She was sobbing, and not from the effects of the smoke. “They’re destroying everything! All the work we’ve done, all our specimens, the records—all ruined!”
“Did you think they’d be selective in their destruction?” he said. It came out sounding harsher than he had intended. “Discrimination requires a system of values. Much simpler to condemn it all and engage in wholesale destruction than to waste time trying to decide if something might be beneficial. They’re operating on their own private moral code, not civilization’s. You saw the expression on that man’s face.” He gestured behind them, in the direction of the dead man who had tried to shoot them.
“There’s something much more exciting about taking part in physical action instead of a debate. Instant gratification. Right now they must be thinking they won the world. All they hold is a little piece of this one, but you’d never convince them of that. Not now, not at this moment.”
Her sidetail swung up against her ear. “How come you know so much about mass psychology?”