The Silicon Dagger

by Jack Williamson

  The old clock began to toll the hour.

  “Six.” Decisively, she stood up. “You’re wasting your time. If she was ever up, she’s gone back to sleep.”

  “Won’t you knock on her door? She said she had something important—”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Barstow.” She waved me out. “She never liked nosy reporters. I doubt she likes you.”

  On the walk outside, I saw a car parked on the drive in front of what must once have been a garage. The old doorway had been bricked up, the new wall broken by a window and new entrance. The window blind was drawn. The new door hung open. Burst open, I saw, the lock splintered out of the frame.

  A telephone was ringing inside.

  I stepped closer and stopped to listen. Silence, except for the impatient phone. I walked to the shattered door, called Lydia’s name, heard no answer. I walked inside.

  One narrow room, an unmade sofa bed on one side, shelves of well-worn books and a kitchen counter on the other. Coffee perking on the counter. Two doors at the back of the room were open. One showed a narrow closet, clothing hung on a rack, the other a basin and toilet.

  And two naked legs sprawled on the floor.

  Lydia lay in the doorway, staring blindly at the ceiling. A blue terry cloth robe had been ripped half off her, one arm still in the sleeve. The hilt of a heavy kitchen knife thrust up between her breasts. Blood made a crimson sash around her torso and soaked the robe beneath her. She had been drying her hair. The broken dryer lay beside her. Three oak acorns were spaced around her head on the golden fan of her loose, blood-spattered hair.

  I stared down at her, racked with shock and pity. Her eyes were wide, her mouth slightly open, fine teeth shining. Pale from loss of blood, her face seemed strangely composed, almost as if she slept. It still held some faint ghost of the life and charm I recalled. I stood there sick with shock till the ringing phone broke into my daze. I picked it up.

  “Acorn Five?” a male voice asked. I thought it had a slight foreign accent. “Acorn Five.”

  I hung up. Back beside Lydia, I called her name. She didn’t move. I bent to feel for a pulse. Her wrist was lax and dead, but I found a cryptophone in her hand. I put it to my ear. There was only silence, till I heard Mrs. Starker’s hoarse scream close behind me.

  “Murder! He’s killed my daughter!”

  She shrieked and fled when I turned.

  Running for my bike, I found the cryptophone still in my hand, sticky with Lydia’s blood. I dropped it into my shirt pocket, wheeled the bike across the sidewalk, and pedaled up Walnut as fast as I could.

  Police cars were soon howling behind me.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BLIND TERROR . . .

  My heart thudding, I pedaled frantically. Lydia’s image filled my mind, the blade between her pale-nippled breasts, the blood-freckled fan of her hair. Her mother’s shriek echoed in my ears, louder than the sirens.

  At six, the town was only waking. I heard a whining lawn mower. Far off, a rooster crowed. A dog barked. A battered pickup roared past, loaded with an upright refrigerator, a mattress and a motorcycle, all anchored with ropes. The sirens came closer. Two blocks up Walnut, I turned into Sixth. Three blocks farther, I wheeled into an empty alley and stopped to think.

  The stupidity of flight broke over me. Mrs. Starker had seen me standing over Lydia’s body, her blood on my hand. My fingerprints would be found on the telephone. Lydia’s bloodstained cryptophone was still in my shirt pocket, where I had dropped it on the chance of some clue to the killing.

  I couldn’t go back to my room. Not since I’d left my Freeman press card with Mrs. Starker. Bull Burleigh was chief of police as well as sheriff since the city-county union. He and Hunn would be as skeptical as Lydia’s mother had been about anything I could say. Call a lawyer? Kit Moorhawk was the only one I knew. Even as a fellow member of the Citizens Congress, he would have little reason to defend me.

  Yet, even with nowhere to go, I had to move. Still breathing hard and shaken with the nausea of terror, I was about to mount my bike again when a cryptophone beeped. Lydia’s? It was my own, snapped to my belt. I put it to my ear and heard Beth’s voice.

  “Clay, you’ve got a problem.”

  “You’re telling me!”

  “Where are you?”

  “In the alley off Sixth, between Hazel and Pecan.”

  “Stay there till I can pick you up.”

  I leaned my bike against a dumpster and stood waiting, listening to the sirens. A dog came by, sniffed at my shoes, ran on. A moving van crept down Sixth, the driver craning to find house numbers. He glanced at me. Beth was suddenly beside me in the alley, leaning out of a quiet electric sedan.

  “Leave your bike,” she said. “Get in the back. Down out of sight.”

  I left the bike and crouched down in the back of the car, feeling stunned and utterly bewildered, this miraculous rescue as hard to believe as was the sight of Lydia with the knife in her heart. Beth drove carefully, stopping for signs or lights. The last stop was in a garage. Light dimmed and I heard the door closing.

  “Okay, Mr. Barstow. Come on in.”

  I followed her into a big kitchen and stood looking around, grateful but hardly daring to relax. The walls were hung with historic antiques: a double-bitted axe, a powder horn, a bullet mold, rusty implements I didn’t recognize. An enlarged Matthew Brady battlefield photograph hung over a fieldstone fireplace at the end of the room, flanked by long-barreled Civil War rifles that must have fired Minie balls. A breakfast table was set for two. An aging black woman in a white apron and a prim white cap stood beside the stove, staring at me in silent astonishment.

  “Orinda,” Beth said. “This is Mr. Barstow. Set a place for him.” “Yes, ma’am.”

  Orinda nodded at me and turned to get dishes from the cabinet. “My father’s in the garden,” Beth said. “I’ll call him in.”

  “I heard about you on the infonet.” Calmly curious, Orinda looked at me when she was gone. “They say you murdered Miss Lydia Starker and ran away.”

  “I did run. I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “I never said you did.” She was staring at my hands. “Do you want to wash?”

  In my daze, I’d forgotten the blood. She showed me to a bathroom and handed me a clean towel. When I came out, Beth had returned with her father, Colin McAdam, in brown chinos and a white sweat shirt. I knew him from the portrait in her office, though time had stooped his thin shoulders and silvered his flowing hair. He had brought a basket of ripe tomatoes and summer squash. Handing them to Orinda, he turned to look at me.

  “Mr. Clay Barstow.” She introduced me rather formally. “Alden Kirk’s brother and research assistant. He came to investigate his brother’s death and stayed here in spite of my advice.”

  “I met your brother.” He gave me a vigorous hand. “Rather liked him, but I think he found more terror than he came to look for.”

  “About Lydia Starker?” I turned to Beth. “And how you came to pick me up? I never expected—” I looked at her father and back at her. “I did see Lydia dead. It knocked me out.”

  She turned to her father. “Dad, are you in touch with Stuart?” “Stuart?” He shrugged, with an uneasy laugh. “Always Stuart. His rally was on the infonet, I don’t know why. A mad world! Breakfast might help us think a little straighter.”

  Orinda had set another plate. He waved us toward the table and we bowed our heads while he murmured grace. Orinda poured coffee, passed hot biscuits and bacon. He ate a bowl of oatmeal and asked her to slice his fresh tomatoes. Beth buttered a biscuit, took a slice of bacon, and left them untasted on her plate. Her coffee cup quivered and almost splashed when she lifted it. I drank a little coffee and sat trying to recover myself till McAdam grinned at me, wryly sympathetic.

  “You’re in quite a deep hole, Barstow.”

  “Which he dug himself,” Beth said. “In spite of me.”

  “Now she wants to pull you out.”

  “I don’t want his
blood on my hands, if I gave his little game away.”

  “In that case,” he said, “I’ll stand by. Relax and eat your breakfast.”

  He asked Orinda to pass the food again and bring a jar of her apricot preserves. The tomatoes were temptingly red and juicy, tangily sweet when I tasted a slice. The biscuits were thin and brown and crusty. The butter was real. When he urged me to try the jam it had the flavor of summer. Suddenly ravenous, I was the last to push my plate away. Orinda cleared the table and refilled our coffee cups.

  “Now, about your guest?” Colin turned from Beth to me. “You are a fugitive from justice?”

  “But not the killer.” I looked into his time-seamed face, trying to see if he believed me. “Lydia Starker was dead when I got to her room. Her mother saw me standing over her body, blood on my hands. I heard the cops coming and panicked.”

  He studied me intently.

  “Do you want to surrender?”

  “I think I need a lawyer.”

  “That might not save you.” Beth shook her head. “Hunn and Burleigh are running hard for reelection. They seemed to feel that your brother was asking for what he got. They’d love a juicy infonet sensation for the campaign. With Mrs. Starker for a witness, they could nail you.”

  “Mr. Barstow,” her father said slowly, “you’re in quite a pickle.”

  Miserably, I nodded. “Mrs. Starker has my press card. I can’t go home. Or anywhere.”

  “What made you go there?”

  “Lydia called me. Promised to tell me who mailed the bomb to my brother. She sounded desperate. Urged for me to hurry. Do you think—” I looked at him and then at Beth. “Could my brother’s killers have got her too?”

  “If they did—” He gave me a probing glance. “They’ll assume that she did tell you. I’d say you’re in the same danger she and your brother were.”

  Beth nodded. “That’s why I picked him up.”

  “Not a pretty picture.” McAdam shook his head, absently holding his cup for Orinda to fill it again. “So many people hate the government, hate private capitalism, hate our whole system. Some of them are longing for their own Red October, their own Nazi putsch. ”

  Remembering that he had been a historian with a habit of analysis, I tried to listen patiently.

  “Yet they’re never evil in their own minds. Nobody is. A point your brother made when he was here for dinner. They’re concerned about the same problems that bother everybody, but they’re convinced that their answers are the only answers. That’s what makes them dangerous. A kind of contagious insanity. Even good people catch it.”

  “You and Alden Kirk,” Beth said to her father, shaking her head. “Professional pessimists. Always looking for troubles that seldom come. I think you’ve brooded too long on the evils of slavery.”

  “Long enough to see new shapes of slavery all around us. The evil heritage keeps coming down to every new generation.” He shrugged and sipped his coffee, frowning at her. “You knew Lydia. Do you remember anything that might give us a clue?”

  “Nothing that connects.” Her face was pinched with pain. “Though I was on the phone with her till the moment she died.”

  “You were?” Astonishment sharpened his voice. “Why?”

  “She called me after she called Clay.” She looked sick, her voice hushed and quivering. “Called on a cryptophone Rob had given her. I heard her die. It was dreadful.”

  “Yes?” He waited.

  “Nothing I could do.” A helpless shrug. “She was begging for help. Trying to tell me anything she could, but it happened too fast. All over in just a few seconds. She had no time to say much of anything.”

  She shivered, her hands clenched tight, and sat a long time staring into her empty coffee cup before she looked up and went on.

  “She was just out of the shower, drying her hair, when she heard them. She had me call the cops, and tried to describe them. Two big men in ski masks. One she thought she’d seen marching with the militia, but she gave me no name.

  “She screamed for her mother, but nothing stopped them. One had a gun. The other told him not to shoot. He grabbed a knife off the kitchen shelf and came at her with that. She was screaming again when her voice changed to a bubble. One of them muttered something I’m not sure I got. It sounded like ‘Score one more for Shadow Man.’ The other snapped at him, ‘Shut up and come on.’ I heard them tramping out. That was all.

  “Lydia Starker.” Orinda was offering the biscuits and bacon again. Beth shook her head and went on, her voice hushed almost to a whisper. “In first grade she was my best friend. She was always begging to stay the night with me, to get away from her folks. I never blamed her, not since I stayed once with her.”

  She made a face.

  “Cold people. Cruel as their cruel God. Her mother scolded her about her homework and made her mop the kitchen twice because she’d left a dry spot. We couldn’t play outside or watch TV. Before breakfast, her father made us sit straight with our heads bowed while he read a chapter from the Bible and prayed a long time in a dismal voice. We had to eat oatmeal, and Lydia hated oatmeal.”

  She grinned at her father.

  “I never went back, but I admired her. A free spirit. She used to run away from home. The first time I let her hide in our barn till the Starkers got here with the cops. The last time she rode a bus to Louisville to be a singer. She had ambition and looks I used to envy, but never had much luck. Never got beyond the nightclub gigs-

  “She told me she’d tried life as a call girl. Not bad, she said, so long as you picked the right johns. I was glad when Stuart found her and brought her home. He said he was going to marry her, but he never did. She finally left him. Went back to college till her money ran out. Moorhawk’s secretary for a year or so. Worked for Pepperlake on the Freeman. Lately she’d been on the infonet desk at KRIF. We always kept in touch, but there must have been a lot she never told me.”

  “So you’re involved,” her father said. “If the cops find a record of the call.”

  “They won’t.” I pulled Lydia’s cryptophone out of my shirt pocket. “It was still in her hand. I’d picked it up. I found it still with me when I got to my bike.”

  Uneasily, he frowned at the smear of drying blood and then at Beth.

  “So you’re obstructing justice,” he told her. “Harboring a fugitive. Concealing evidence.” He nodded soberly at me. “What are you going to do with Mr. Barstow?”

  “Hide him here,” she said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  "I CAN’T ASK you to do that,” I tried to protest. “If you’ll just

  drive me somewhere out of town—”

  “Where would you go?”

  I didn’t know.

  “You can’t go home to Georgetown.” Beth was crisply decisive. “Or even call. The police will be warning travel facilities, putting up road blocks, tapping phones.”

  I sat dumb, feeling sick, remembering how Marion had begged me not to come here and how Tim had taken my hand with his grave wish that I got back safe. Orinda was offering coffee. I shook my head and pulled out my wallet. Two fives and a one, besides the credit cards.

  “Get rid of the plastic,” Beth said. “Better get rid of the wallet. You can’t write a check. You can’t buy a ticket. You can’t show your face. They’ll have your photo on the infonet.”

  “You’re all in danger if you try to keep me here.”

  “In danger if we don’t.” McAdam let Orinda fill his cup. He started to sip, set it down and looked sharply at me. “I’ve lived with problems. My wife was a difficult woman. Always too hard on Stuart, made him the rebel he is.” He gave Beth a quizzical glance. “My children have conditioned me to surprises, but this is a bigger shock than most.”

  “I saw no choice,” Beth told him. “I was already in it up to my neck. They know I was Lydia’s friend. They’ll have records of my calls to her and the cops. And—” She caught herself, frowning. “That’s not all.”

  After a moment of
silence, her father cast her a sharp look. He asked, “Was there any witness to your dramatic rescue?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Desperate people.” With a philosophic shrug, he sipped his coffee. “Desperate times.”

  “Maybe not that desperate.” A little relaxed, Beth turned to me. “I hope nobody saw me pick you up. You can trust Orinda. All you have to do is keep out of sight.”

  “For how long?” McAdam asked.

  “Till we can manage something better.”

  “I was desperate enough,” I said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “No thanks due.” Beth’s quick smile cheered me a little. I did need cheer. “I’m not in your fix, but I don’t want questions. Certainly not from Burleigh and his crew. They have it in for us McAdams.”

  “What’s done is done. Maybe overdone.” McAdam sat back in his chair and asked Orinda to pass the breakfast again. Beth accepted her plate. I stirred cream in my coffee.

  “I used to smoke cigars,” he told me. “Beth cut me off when she was still a kid. I could use a good Havana now.”

  He pushed his cup away and wanted to know about my life and my work with my brother.

  “I reviewed his book for one of the infonet history journals,” he told me. “It struck me as a penetrating look at unrest in Amer—

  When we left the table, he told Orinda to settle me in. She showed me to a room walled with shelves full of old law books, their spines stamped in faded gold. His father had been a lawyer, she said, who built it for an office. It had a private bath and a door to the walk outside. The cold air had a dry bite of dust and stagnation.

  Stuart had taken the room when his grandfather died. The walls above the bookcases were hung with images of his boyhood heroes. A dusty print of Hannibal in Carthaginian armor, riding an elephant through an icy gorge in the Alps. An amateurish oil painting of John Hunt Morgan, the Confederate guerrilla leader, charging up a hill on a great black horse, his red saber held high. Neil Armstrong climbing down to the Moon.