“Hm, yes.” Valencia nodded. “Lift the spacecraft, set it down again in Ecuador or Australia.”
“A beautiful thought. Unfortunately, it’s bound to have occurred to anti-me. Whether or not we can pass off our launch as legitimate, we’ll be tracked from the first. Armed police flyers are aloft in force, all the time. They have to be, to make this Chaotic scare plausible, but they’re ready for business. If we do anything funny, like doubling back to Earth, they’ll move to intercept. They’re fast, while a descending spacecraft is necessarily slow. They carry light missiles as well as guns, and a spacecraft is completely vulnerable to a single well-placed shot. Never mind if the kill takes place over somebody else’s territory. The Covenant gives national police the right of hot pursuit of criminals. Future can claim the vessel was hijacked—which, in a way, will be true.”
“I might be able to evade,” Kyra said slowly.
“Given more luck than skill,” Guthrie retorted, “and we agree you’ve got skill in tonne lots. No, if we can lift off, we’ll continue outbound. There are no armed ships in space. As for L-5 and Port Bowen, I have some ideas.” His eyestalks swung from the woman to the man and back again. “Enough talk for now. It’s a waste of time till we have further information. The ravenous snails are overtaking us. Contact Wash Packer.”
His confidence freshened Kyra’s heart. She stepped toward the phone. Valencia caught her by the wrist. His grip was light and, she sensed, unbreakable. “Por favor, no, Pilot Davis,” he warned. “The director’s lines are certainly monitored.”
“Damn, I forgot. Gracias, Nero.” She gave him her lingering smile. “Besides, we’d better figure out what to tell him.”
He released her. “I suggest we screen a map of the area and a classified directory.”
Mission first, yes, yes. But did he have to maintain that persona of an armed butler? Guthrie wouldn’t care, would he? Kyra thrust her exasperation down. She could make things clear to Nero later. Maybe no later than their next free hours actually began.
Deboost that!
The data retrieval was primarily for his benefit. She knew this town pretty well. Guthrie took only a small part in their planning. “You’re a coyote, Valencia,” he said at the end. “It’s a bloody good thing you’re on the side of God, motherhood, and apple pie.” The remark bemused Kyra—something from his life’s antiquity, she supposed. “Go to it, kids.”
They left him watching the multi, for if anyone came in to snoop he’d be found regardless, and went their separate ways. Kyra walked about a kilometer before she looked for a public phone. No sense in giving a clue to her location. It should otherwise be safe. Valencia had used a second false ident to register them as man and wife. (The glow tingled.) If the Sepo checked her out through their computer net after they listened to her talk with Packer, nothing would point to the Bill Mendoza who’d driven her south from Portland. She doubted they’d be that suspicious. She’d try to avoid causing it. But Valencia took every reasonable precaution. He was one workmanlike hombre.
When she rang Kamehameha, her name got her straight through to the boss. That was no big surprise. The spaceport had been idle for days. The lean, white-polled visage stiffened, then broke into a grin doubly brilliant against the chocolate complexion. “Pilot Davis! Wonderful! I’ve been worried about you, chica.”
“Really?” Kyra’s back between her shoulderblades ached with tension. This had to sound convincing, and she was no actress. “I’m sorry. I took for granted the call from Quebec had explained the situation.”
Packer blinked. “What call?”
“When I’d decided I should report back here. A few days ago. You spoke with Pierre Thibodeaux, actually, I think. Don’t you remember? Maybe you, uh, had a lot of Fireball business on hand, moreurgent than this.”
“Oh, that call. It slipped my mind for a second.” Packer shrugged. “To be frank, I haven’t much to do, the way things are. That’s precisely what is blasting me out of my wits.”
Relief cascaded. Her knees shook. He was as quick in the brain as she’d counted on.
“Come around anyhow,” she heard through the drumming blood. “Everybody will be glad to see you, especially now while we’re on hold. I’ll have to get clearance for you to enter, so be sure you do at the main gate.”
She thought a mantra. A measure of coolness returned. “Sir, I can’t. Not right away. It’s personal. You see, I went first to Portland where I have a good friend, and something came up—”
He peered from the screen. “You choked?”
“Uh, no. No. A stray thought.” Hurriedly: “I need your counsel, sir. Could we meet somewhere private? I mean, these days, your office, even your home— It’s personal, but, but very personal, and it will affect me professionally, and you’re such an understanding man—”
He smiled. She thought she saw the grimness behind that show of teeth. “Me, a father figure?”
“You’ve raised two fine daughters, sir.”
“And have a boy at home yet,” he said—warily?
“Sir, por favor, I am a consorte of Fireball, and . . . I’m in want of help.”
She recognized that he caught her real meaning. “Troth,” he said, as much for the listeners as for her. “Muy bien, Pilot Davis, I’ll come. Where and when? Lunch?”
“Gracias, but really, nothing that fancy. I know a little cafe where the kona coffee is ultra. I’d feel, uh, at home there.”
“As you wish.” She gave him the address and set the time at ninety minutes hence. Before they blanked, they swapped the V salute,
Valencia was already back in the hotel room. “I have a car rented,” he told her. When she had related her conversation: “I’ll arrive a bit late, to make sure he’s there and his tab is paid. Meanwhile I’ll reconnoiter.” He nodded and was gone before she could speak further.
“Esther Blum found us a savvy lad,” Guthrie remarked.
Kyra sank into a recliner. She might as well try to relax. “True,” she said, mainly to herself. Her gaze sought the sky.
The lenses aimed at her. “You like him, eh?”
“M-m-m-h’m.”
“Not your breed, though.”
“I suppose not, but— Never mind!” Kyra snapped.
Guthrie had the grace to change the subject. “If Wash mentioned lunch, he hasn’t eaten yet, and I doubt he’ll send out for a burger before leaving. Check the menu. When he gets here, call room service and have a place ready to hide me. I daresay the two of you will have an appetite also.” He chuckled. “A healthy young couple.”
When he got here. If he got here. Kyra played the scene over in her head for the—dozenth?—time. Packer sat nursing his cup. Valencia sauntered in, identified himself in a few low words as her emissary, led him out the rear door that she remembered, to the car he had parked nearby, and they were off, anonymously into traffic. Simple, easy. For a professional. But Packer was no gunjin. He might balk, he might do or say something that betrayed them, he might be hailed in the street by somebody he knew and thus fatally delayed. Or maybe the Sepo who trailed him was more thorough than Valencia anticipated. Maybe the Sepo wouldn’t watch unobtrusively from outside the cafe, but go in too. Maybe the Sepo knew about that back door and had posted another man in the alley. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
“Don’t fret,” Guthrie advised. “You’ll only etch your stomach. This is like a tight situation in space, where you’ve done all you can and the rest is up to the vectors and the machinery. You’ve waited that out calmly, haven’t you?”
“But this is different!” she exclaimed. “It’s more than a ship or even myself. There’s too much else to be afraid for. The whole future.”
“Now, now, let’s not get apocalyptic. I’ve seen crises come and go, everything from wars to elections for dog catcher, with all their excitement about how the outcome would either bring on a glorious new dawn of hope for the whole world and else topple it forever into a bottomless latrine. That never came about, the one way or the
other. The human race slobbed on pretty much the same as always.”
She stared at him as if she could read his facelessness. “But if the Avantists get Fireball on their side, they’ll weld themselves down,” she protested. “Onto the Union, at least. My country, jefe. I care.”
“It would take a while to maneuver Fireball into such a policy,” he replied. “Sayre and company are overoptimistic about the time span. It’s a couple of generations, I’d guess. You can’t change basic attitudes and institutions fast, especially among individualists. The Avantist state won’t hang together that long. It’s terminally ill already, chronic dogmatitis. What aid my faked-up self might be able to slip it without tipping his hand can only prolong the misery and allow the theocracy of theory to finish its evolution into raw dictatorship. Which isn’t a viable form of government either, amongst spacecraft, hypercomputers, light-speed global communications, and molecular factories.”
Kyra bit her lip. “How many people would die meanwhile, or worse than die?” she challenged.
“Yeah, that is a consideration. Also, I grant you, it’d be nice to bring the Advisory Synod and their toadies to justice. Rough justice for choice.”
Kyra leaned forward. Her fingers clenched on the arms of the seat. “And you, what about you?”
“No big deal.” She could almost see him as he would have conjured his image or been in the flesh, a shrug, the mouth crinkling upward. “I won’t quit without a fight, but it’s been a good run for the money and an old machine isn’t worth even one young life like yours.”
“You’re wrong!” she cried. “You’re Fireball!”
“It’ll survive me, maybe better off when new blood, real blood, takes over.”
“No, it won’t.” She sprang to her feet and stood above him, glaring, fists on hips. “That other you will be the master. He believes in Avantism, doesn’t he? When he sees it fail the way you predict, what’ll he do, what’ll he work toward?”
“That is right,” he admitted slowly. “A perverted Fireball could be a whopping force for . . . call it evil. Or it could simply fail to do something right that was in its power and nobody else’s. Which might well be worse.”
The thought wrenched at her. North America was dear to her but was merely where she had spent her childhood. And, yes, it was where certain ideas once lived, liberty, limitless hope, hard work and daring guided by intelligence that took no word unquestioned. They lived on in Fireball, because Anson Guthrie had brought the seeds of them with him into space. Fireball was her true country, fatherland, motherland, land for her to bequeath inviolate to her children.
“We’ll fight!” she said.
“Haven’t got much choice by now, have we?” he answered prosaically. “Do ease off, honey chile. I notice a minibar. Have a drink, sprawl back, play some music or watch a show or let your ol’ uncle tell you a story.”
A part of her observed how fast her anguish ebbed. That voice of his, the sudden harsh purr and undertone of laughter— He knew how to handle people, she thought. Experience. But surely, too, a gift. He must have been quite something among the women, back when he was mortal, big, strong, bluff, knowing. Pity she hadn’t been around then, to get him into bed . . . Her own laughter welled forth.
“That’s right,” he approved. “What pastime would you like?”
If she found herself comical, she could make a joke of him. “A story, Uncle.”
“What about?”
Searching memory, she widened her eyes and cocked her head. “About Winston P. Sanders and the drunken mermaid.”
“Ay de mi! No, you’d rather hear about, uh, the time an enterprising sort wanted to contract with us—we were fairly new in business and hungry for money—to construct what’d be an orbiting cathouse.”
Kyra stuck her lower lip out at him. “You promised,” she whined.
“I did not specify—”
“Exactly. You asked me, ‘What about?’ No restrictions. I thought you were a man of your word, Sr. Guthrie.”
“Uh, well—”
When Valencia and Packer arrived, her ribs ached, in spite of her being mildly appalled.
Mirth tumbled aside from joy, which fell before the starkness on Packer’s countenance. Valencia must have sketched the situation on their way here. The director strode to the dresser and stood looking down at Guthrie. His hands reached before him as if to grasp the case, but trembled helplessly. “Jefe,” he rasped. “Oh, jefe.”
“I’m okay, Wash,” Guthrie said.
Packer drew a ragged breath. “You are. But that other one. He’s you too. Isn’t he? And they did that to him.”
“As for us,” the download said flatly, “we’ve several square light-years to cover in two or three hours at most and had better get right down to spreading the manure around. Valencia, can’t you see when a man wants a drink? Davis, you were supposed to study the menu and produce ideas about lunch.”
Again his voice worked. (Though the memory of his image and the weight of his history must also be with him, Kyra thought.) And, of course, everybody in the room was a pragmatist, not given to torments of doubt and sensitivity. (You did your thinking, your balancing of rights and wrongs, consequences and possibilities, before action. If anything, it was the more painful because you knew it would end in what you did or what you did not do, and that you must bear the responsibility ever afterward.) Within minutes, their session was under way.
The spaceport was closely guarded by national militia and a Sepo cadre. Only one ship was there, the one in which Kyra had landed. Kamehameha was, after all, a secondary facility, the big Earthside layouts being in Ecuador and Australia; and obviously Fireball wouldn’t send more vessels to it till matters were resolved.
“Damn!” she said. “I’d kind of hoped for a torchcraft. Now I’ve got to hope the enemy can’t get one after me while I’m free-falling.”
“Hsh!” Valencia whispered in her ear. “Packer doesn’t need to know that.” She frowned at him. If they couldn’t trust the director, their cause was lost. At the same time she was aware of Valencia’s closeness. The faint, warm impact of his breath stayed with her.
Packer had ignored the exchange. “The Sepo will want to know how and why I disappeared on them,” he warned.
“Stall for a short while,” Guthrie answered. “Claim secrecy. Then they’ll see you get instructions making clear that this was what you were ordered from on high to do.”
“How?”
“You didn’t imagine, did you, that over the years my agents wouldn’t have developed a few access lines into the official net and planted a few moles and computer worms? Or that I’d have come to North America without first getting an update on them? I will point out as well that if my copy can claim to be me, I can too.”
“Ungn. Risky.”
“It is that. Which is why I haven’t made use of it hitherto. Now I judge we’re at the showdown, and we’ve got to toss this chip into the pot.”
Packer looked straight at the lenses. He was a loyal man. But. “I have a family,” he said.
“I’ve not forgotten. We’ll scoot you and them to safety right after we make our play. Exactly how is among the matters on today’s agenda.”
Discussion continued, rapid-fire, interrupted only when they must conceal Guthrie while room service brought in food. The download set forth his basic strategy. It met with horrified objections. He overrode them. He had thought this out while alone in darkness considering contingencies, including the one that had become reality. The scheme was neither certain nor fail-safe, but he deemed it the best that could be attempted. He persuaded the others and they all set themselves to hammer out the details.
Packer’s gang would need no more than a couple of hours to prepare the spacecraft for liftoff. He could load practically anything into her if the incantation “Top Secret” was his to utter. That included the small launcher on which half the plan depended. Several were in the supply depot, like other frequently used items.
What with the surveillance which everybody on base must endure, Kyra was the sole choice for pilot. The orders Packer was to receive would specify her. This should, furthermore, make the Sepo speculate less about why she had phoned him and sneaked him off today.
“But your trick for getting into the base, it’s loco,” Packer protested.
“Do you have a better proposal, sir?” Valencia replied. “Sr. Guthrie can’t direct that security at the gates be reduced. That would instantly alert them that something’s wrong. A Guthrie detector will be at every entrance, and any bags or packages will be opened in case they are screened against it. Whereas, if we simply appear, walking toward the ship, whoever sees us should take for granted that we came by the usual route and passed inspection.”
Packer shook his head. “Swimming in, though,” he muttered.
“How else?” Kyra demanded. “I know that little beach. Oh, I know it well! Favorite resting place when we’ve been romping with the Keiki, right? Nothing there but a chain link fence, mainly so casuals like me won’t stray inshore and get underfoot. The Sepo haven’t electrified it or anything, have they?”
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