The Sagittarius Whorl: Book Three of the Rampart Worlds Trilogy

  “I think someone had better go along with you, in case you need help.” She called out: “Mohammed!”

  A skinny teenage boy with sunken eyes and four missing front teeth came into the cubicle. Like the others, he wore winter clothing. The Dark Path was cold. My Ivanov stun-pistol was stuck in his belt.

  The kid glowered at me. “So the Haluk’s awake. About time.” I recalled that he’d helped with my care while I was flat on my back, passing in and out of consciousness. He was a lot stronger than he looked. Young Mohammed adored Mama Fanchon and didn’t trust me one micron’s worth.

  She was rummaging in one of the storage pods and said to the boy, “Supper will be ready soon, angel. Please get Helly a nice warm jacket from the hope chest, and take him to the rest room after I check him out. Eeyore finally found a new power cell for my diagnosticon. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  She waved the device expertly around my bod while Mohammed went off. “Very, very good! Your collarbone is just fine now. It’ll be tender for a week or so, but it’s stronger than ever. Put your clothes on, honey-bunch. You can eat at the table with us tonight.” She left the cubicle.

  “Polish sausages almost ready!” Santa Claus called out. My mouth began to water. Three or four other members of the tribe drifted toward the kitchen.

  Mohammed stood by while I pulled on my track suit and stuffed my feet into sneakers without bothering with socks. He handed me an Eddie Bauer car-coat with the price code still attached. The “hope chest” had nice merchandise.

  Trailed by the armed boy, I trudged off to what had once been a public lavatory. Now most of the white tiles were cracked and stained black with mildew, and the mirrors were so cloudy that they were almost opaque; but someone had reconnected the water with jury-rigged plastic piping, and the old-timey tank toilets and sinks worked.

  Mohammed scowled as I relieved myself. “You can’t be human. Not with those.”

  I shrugged. “I told you, it’s what happens when Haluk genetic engineers build a demiclone from your DNA. First they inoculate you with some Haluk genes. You end up looking like an alien on the outside.”

  “I’d kill myself!” the boy declared.

  “When I get my life sorted out, I’ll go back into the vat and get fixed. Look just like my old self again.” I finished my business, had a fast wash, and slipped off the coat. “How’s the wound on my neck looking?”

  “Got a dry scab. The scab’s purple. You’re healthy, man … I mean, Mr. Haluk! Time for you to hit the road.” He touched the pistol and his face was like polished golden marble. “You’re not hanging out here anymore. No matter what Mama Fanchon says.”

  “No,” I agreed. “I’m very grateful for your help, Mohammed. And for Mama’s, and all the rest of the tribe’s. But I won’t try to stay with you. There’s something I have to do, a place I have to go. I’ll need help to find it, though, traveling the Dark Path.”

  “Where?” he asked suspiciously.

  I gave him an address in ultrafashionable Cabbagetown, just east of the city’s central core, where once upon a time poor Irish immigrants grew their favorite veggies right in their front gardens.

  “It’s a long way,” he said, looking dubious. “Can’t get there direct. The DP’s broken at Yonge. You’d have to detour south to the Inner Harbor, come back north through the Parliament Street drains.”

  “Will you take me?”

  He laughed.

  “I’ll make it worth your while. When I’m a man again.”

  “Horseshit,” Mohammed scoffed.

  “My name is Asahel Frost. Once I was a convicted criminal and a Throwaway, just like Mama and the others. Then I became the Chief Legal Officer of Rampart Concern. I was rich and important. That’s why the Haluk stole my identity. Do you watch the news on Mama’s TV? Did you ever see the man who uses my name? Saying what terrific people the Haluk really are?”

  “Never watch those talking-head dudes. Boring.” But the boy’s gaze had momentarily shifted. He’d seen Alistair Drummond, all right.

  “The fake Asahel Frost is a traitor,” I said. “Crazy as an outhouse rat, and just as vicious. He wouldn’t give a damn if Earth and all the human planets became alien property. I’m going to cut his nuts off and stuff them down his lying throat.”

  A spark flickered in his bruised-looking young eyes. “Who lives in Cabbagetown?” he asked me abruptly.

  I told him.

  His mouth dropped open, showing the pathetic gaps in his teeth. Replacing them had been beyond Mama’s skill. I wondered what else had been done to Mohammed in the world Upstairs. Who’d been responsible. Wondered whether I might do something about it someday, just as I intended to do something for Mama and the others if I ever became a man again.

  “You’re shinin’ me on.” His skepticism was weakening.

  “Nope. God’s own truth. I’ve got nowhere else to turn, Mohammed.”

  He was silent, then: “The Haluk really did … that to you?”

  “They had help from some stupid and evil human beings. But, yeah. Haluk did it as part of their Grand Design to take over the damn galaxy. Some nerve, huh?”

  “Motherfuckers,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s for real? This alien plot?”

  “It’s a nightmare, and it’s for real.”

  “Jeez.”

  “I gave Mama Fanchon the opal ring,” I said. “When we get to the place in Cabbagetown, I’ll see that you get some money.”

  “Okay,” he said softly. “I’ll take you where you want to go. You ruin those blueberry fools, hear me?”

  “That’s my plan,” I told him. “Now let’s eat.”

  Together, we went back to the dim corridor where the others were already sitting at the kitchen table.

  The next day, after Mama Fanchon checked me out again with the diagnosticon and gave her reluctant approval, we were ready to leave. Santa Claus had supplied us with a pack of food and bottles of water. He’d even refilled my flask with some of his own brandy. I wore my dark track suit over heavy polypro underwear from the hope chest, the new car-coat, the Blue Jays baseball cap, and gloves. Mohammed was all in black. He still had my Ivanov and the magazine pouch of stun-bolts. I was armed with the exotic switchblade and the sedative injector. (Mama didn’t want that for her hospital. She preferred to use minidosers, which were much more common and easier to steal than high-pressure drug cartridges.)

  The whole Grange Place Tribe decided to accompany Mohammed and me as far as the old Spadina Street utility tunnel, which was to be our principal route south. Santa Claus led the way with his blaster. The girl runaway named Leah was at his side, lighting the way with a brilliant argon lantern. Most of the others had glolamps. Mama placidly smoked her pipe, walking with the Thrown Away Omnivore executive called Johnny Guitar, who strummed his instrument in solemn march tempo: brrrump, brrrump, brump-brump-brump. Before long we were all whistling “Colonel Bogey.”

  Weirdly, other troglodytic figures carrying lights of their own emerged from shadowy side tunnels to join us as we moved through the debris-strewn Dundas West concourse. When we reached the utility tunnel, a crowd of almost fifty people gathered around me, smiling and shyly wishing me good luck. I was astonished and deeply touched.

  “The word got around,” Santa Claus explained. “Mohammed never could keep his mouth shut. These other folks … they heard you were a Throwaway, heard what the Haluk did to you. Most of them know how it feels to have a good life, then wake up one day to find the universe turned upside down.”

  So I made a little speech of my own, thanking them, making some wild promises that were greeted with disbelieving hoots and spatters of applause. Then the Dark Path people began to wander away.

  Mama Fanchon kissed me on the cheek and slipped something into my hand. “Here’s what you wanted, Helly. My pocket phone. Take it with you. Not too many of these down here. Most of us haven’t much need of them, but sometimes other tribes call me when a person’s really sick or hurt bad.”

/>   “I can’t take this,” I protested. “Let me make my call now, right here.”

  “I don’t think that would be wise. Wait till you’re in Cabbagetown, after you’ve checked the place for a stakeout. You’ll want to be sure your friend is at home—and I’d also suggest that you give fair warning about your big surprise.” She turned to Mohammed and spoke sternly. “And you won’t take any money from Helly! Not a single dollar.”

  He shrugged. “I’ll bring back your phone.”

  The journey was long, tedious, dirty, cold, and frequently dangerous. Our convoluted route covered over eight kilometers and took seventeen hours. I was strongly reminded of my trek through the caves of Cravat, several years earlier. But there had been no human crazies in that little planet’s underworld; Bronson Elgar and his homicidal crew had been extremely sane, and the Haluk hiding in the Cravat caverns were unexpectedly lacking in malice.

  On Toronto’s Dark Path, there were malicious denizens galore. I never would have gotten to Cabbagetown without Mohammed.

  He knew exactly how to calm nervous tribes ready to kill any stranger—especially one that looked like an alien—who entered their territory. Mention of Mama Fanchon’s name turned them from enemies to cautious allies. The roving gangs of well-armed robbers and sex criminals infesting undefended no-man’s-land regions would have been more of a challenge; luckily, we didn’t encounter large groups of outlaws during the southbound leg of our trip.

  Small groups and loners, yes.

  A pair of knife-wielding muggers sprang at us out of the dark when we were halfway down the Spadina tunnel, just above King Street. Mohammed stunned them neatly, and after fettering them with the plastic wrist restraints I’d taken from the Haluk guards, he called the nearest tribe on Mama Fanchon’s phone and coolly asked for “garbage disposal.”

  I didn’t ask what that meant.

  We continued on. A few minutes later a third robber dropped on me from a ceiling beam in the ruined King Street subway station. We grappled while my young companion danced around waving the pistol, afraid to shoot for fear of hitting me. The thug was a raving crankhead, the drug giving him almost superhuman strength. I finally thumbed his eyes and he turned me loose, giving Mohammed his chance. He plugged my frenzied attacker with three darts.

  “That’s usually fatal, you know,” I told him when I managed to catch my breath. “Not that I’m complaining.”

  “Then I guess we don’t have to bother the disposal folks. The rats’ll take care of him.” Mohammed helped himself to the late bandido’s money and wristwatch before resuming his interrupted guide duties.

  Our narrowest escape happened hours later, down near the Inner Harbor, almost directly beneath what had once been Galapharma Tower. I presumed the structure now contained Rampart’s Toronto headquarters, or would very shortly. In either case, the place offered me no refuge. Au contraire …

  After a strenuous crawl through an abandoned sewer, we had come to a very old masonry culvert, part of some antiquated stream-diversion system buried deep under the old quay. The tall arched tunnel was half full of fast-moving black water. By that time I was exhausted, since we’d been on the go with hardly a letup for nearly eight hours.

  I rested on a wide ledge with a lantern perched beside me, while Mohammed searched with his flashlight for the improvised bridge over the stream that existed in Dark Path folklore—and also, we hoped, in reality.

  Suddenly, a pack of hideously diseased scavengers came rushing out of the darkness, screaming like wildcats, intent on separating us from our possessions. I think they were human, but the few glimpses I caught of them in the lamplight were inconclusive. We fought. I threw four of the smelly varmints into the rushing water, where they either drowned or ended up dog-paddling in Lake Ontario. Mohammed used the last of his Ivanov darts subduing the other five.

  We finally found the makeshift bridge, crossed over, and entered the Queen’s Quay Dark Path. It was an abandoned goods-delivery system that once served waterfront buildings, now inhabited only by rats. They minded their own business and so did we, traveling eastward for three miserable kilometers through passages partially flooded with icy water. We nearly perished from hypothermia before finding a friendly tribe of genuine Indians, Throwaways from Infinitum, the gambling and entertainment colossus, near the Parliament Street junction. They let us dry out in front of their space heaters and gave us hot food and coffee. My Halukoid appearance didn’t seem to bother them in the least.

  The last part of the trip was anticlimactic, 1,500 meters of dry storm drains—we were still beneath the force-field umbrella—cramped utility conduits with snarls of ancient fiberoptic and electrical cable, and the walled-off subbasements of vanished public housing units.

  We arrived in Cabbagetown shortly before midnight, emerging through a drain grate into a small park.

  “The town house you want is in the next block,” Mohammed informed me. “Make your phone call.”

  I sat in deep shadows with my back against a tree trunk. The little park was forlorn and deserted, its shrubs leafless, the flowerbeds empty, and the fountain turned off for the winter.

  Mohammed crouched beside me. “Go ahead,” he urged. “What are you waiting for? I want to get home tonight.”

  I hesitated because I was afraid. The long, perilous journey hadn’t terrified me, but the prospect of making this phone call did. I stalled. “How do you expect to get back to Grange Place tonight? It’s too far. Too dangerous.”

  “Damn right it is, man. But only if you take the Dark Path. I’m going to walk crosstown on the surface, right down Dundas Street for three klicks, till I get to Spadina and our regular bolt-hole. It’ll be a breeze, now that I don’t have a fuckin’ Haluk fugitive in tow. Make the phone call!”

  Dex Assistance gave me the code. I tapped it in, keeping the viewer inactive. Got an answer and a face.

  “Yes? Who is this, please?”

  “It’s Helly,” I whispered. “I need to see you immediately.”

  “Helly?”

  “Please listen. I’m in trouble. Serious trouble. You know what—what’s going on in the Assembly. The free-for-all about the three hundred new Haluk planets. My own close involvement as Rampart syndic.”

  “Yes. But I don’t see—”

  “The demiclone spy accusations. They’re true. The—The person using my name, giving statements to the media, is an impostor. A clone. I’ve been kept prisoner by the Haluk for seven months while this other man has used my identity to discredit Efrem Sontag’s investigation.”

  A protracted silence. “This isn’t … some sick practical joke?”

  “No. It’s true. I only escaped from the Haluk tower a few days ago. I’ve been hiding in the Dark Path. Under the city.”

  “Good God. And you want—”

  “Your help. Please. There’s no one else I can turn to. No one who would believe me.”

  “Your voice—”

  “I know. I’ve been through hell. It’s not the only thing about me that’s changed. But I can prove who I am. Here’s a secret password: Kashagawigamog.”

  “The lake where you almost drowned when you were five years old.”

  “Where Eve saved my life, then beat the shit out of me for disobeying orders and going out in the canoe alone, without a life vest. I told you about it when we visited that art gallery in Haliburton.”

  Another interminable pause, then: “All right. I’ll listen to what you have to say. Come to my town house. Do you know where it is?”

  “Yes. I’m only a block away. I’ll use the back door. You wouldn’t want your neighbors to see me coming in.”

  “Why not?”

  “Trust me.”

  “Very well. I’ll leave the rear garden gate unlocked. Come through the alley.”

  “There’s something I have to warn you about. My appearance. I don’t want to frighten you, but—”

  “I don’t frighten easily. You of all people ought to know that.”

&nb
sp; “Yes. I’m sorry. But I’d better show you what was done to me by the Haluk. I’m not the man you remember.” I activated my viewer pickup.

  “Jesus Christ,” Joanna whispered.

  “They demicloned a Haluk, gave him my DNA. This—This change is a side effect of the genen process.”

  Her eyes were full of sudden tears. “Oh, Helly!”

  My name. She used my name. “It is me, Joanna. I need you so very much.”

  “Come,” my former wife said.

  So I did.

  Chapter 8

  I jogged wearily toward Joanna’s place with my baseball cap pulled low, praying I wouldn’t meet another night-runner who’d notice my filthy athletic clothes and outlandish features. I figured the chance of Haluk agents physically watching her place was vanishingly remote. More subtle varieties of spying were possible—even satellite eyes. But I’d had no relationship with Joanna for years, and I was fairly certain that the aliens would have discounted her as someone I’d call on for help. They’d be concentrating their surveillance efforts on Karl Nazarian and my other associates, on my family, and on Efrem Sontag.

  That night, the pleasant streets of Cabbagetown seemed almost deserted. Paving-stone sidewalks, lamp posts that simulated gaslights, big old trees. A two-meter-high ornamental iron fence surrounded each row of town houses. The locked gates in front of each unit had security boxes with viewscreens. Following inner-city guidelines, there was no private hopper pad anywhere nearby. You didn’t fly into affluent enclaves like Cabbagetown; you drove or cycled or walked, and you didn’t leave your vehicle parked overnight in front of the house, either.

  There were six large town houses in Joanna’s row, built in the gracious style of the previous century—gray clapboard facades, heavy white window frames, overhanging eaves, attic dormers on the third floor, multiple chimneys, little sheltering porticos with hanging lanterns above each front door. The houses shared a two-story mews in the rear that had garage space for twelve cars below, exercise and hobby rooms upstairs.