by Karl Beecher
“You stay out of this, missy,” warned Gilper from the side of his smirking mouth.
Finally, she realised it. All the while Hanson had been standing there preaching calmness and mercy, the police had been kettling the non-believers unnoticed.
“You’re going to beat them up, aren’t you?”
“They need teaching a lesson,” the Deputy declared. “We can’t have heretics marching around, disturbing the peace. Best to nip dissent in the bud.”
“You can’t do that!”
The Deputy turned to her. His face boiled over with barely concealed rage. “Now you listen here. It may be considered all right in your fancy Alliance for a woman to speak out of turn, but round here, women know their place. I’m not going to listen to another peep out of you, you hear?”
He turned back to watch the unfolding proceedings.
In the distance, the sergeant screamed more orders at his officers. In response, they began to close ranks and creep towards the trapped civilians. Each officer held a buzz-truncheon, a hefty metre-long club whose end fizzled blue with raw energy. The voices in the crowd grew louder. Some begged to be let go, others hurled obscenities. A couple of them made a break to escape but bounced off the officers’ shields, each one a two-metre high wall of forcefield energy. An electric jab with a truncheon sent them scuttling back into the herd with a scream.
Tyresa looked on anxiously. She wanted to get back to Colin. A voice in the back of her mind pleaded with her, telling her he was in danger. She couldn’t bear to watch the violence that was about to unfold, but just turning her back on these people was unthinkable.
She brought up her wrist computer and tried again to contact Ade. As before, she was met with static.
Gilper smiled at her. “It’s no good trying that,” he said. “We put up signal dampeners all around.”
That’s why she couldn’t get through to Ade. Dampeners were fields that soaked up all signals in the area within a specific frequency range.
“Why?” she demanded.
The Deputy shrugged. “Standard operating procedure.”
Yeah, right. Don’t want pesky reporters or terrified victims being allowed to broadcast what was happening.
Tyresa remembered the homing beacon on Colin’s wrist. It broadcast a simple signal on a much higher frequency; with luck, it wouldn’t be affected by the dampeners. She pulled out her slate, which still displayed the list of True Origin Society members. She dismissed the list and brought up the beacon locator program. It displayed a map of the hospital. A red dot flashed somewhere in the neurology department.
She breathed a sigh of relief. At least she knew where Colin was. Now she could concentrate on helping the non-believers—and seeing that list of True Origin Society suspects had given her an idea.
She turned to Hanson, who had joined Gilper in watching the tightening noose of riot police in the distance. “Hanson, you’re this man’s friend,” she implored, pointing at the Deputy. “Tell him. Tell him to see sense. Tell him to exercise that mercy you just talked about.”
“Don’t interfere, Jak,” Hanson responded lazily. “This is none of your business.”
Fine. There was nothing else to do. She had one shot at saving the non-believers’ skins, but there was no guarantee it would work.
“Hanson, I have to talk to you,” she said. “In private.”
“Forget it.”
“It’s important. It’s about Colin. It’s about his true origin.” She laid the emphasis on heavily. “And it concerns you.”
That sure as hell got his attention.
“All right,” he said, sounding casual but looking rattled. “I’ll indulge you.”
They took a few steps out of earshot of the Deputy.
“I give you this one chance,” she said quietly. “Persuade him to call off the cops, and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
“About what?”
She knew the information from Dad-Joke was speculative, but all she could do was hope there was some truth to it. She had to bluff.
Tyresa shot him the most deadly earnest look she could muster. “I know all about you and your membership of the True Origin Society. And I know about your role in its leadership.”
A distinct change came over him. He folded his arms and gripped his elbows so tight that his knuckles turned white. The look on his face was of a man desperately trying to hide the fact that a snake had just crawled into his underwear.
Bingo, thought Tyresa.
Hanson glanced around in fear, then craned his neck forward. “Who told you that?” he rasped.
“That’s not important,” replied Tyresa. “You tell the Deputy to call them off, and your secret stays secret.”
She was gambling that his membership of the TOS was secret for a reason and that he wanted to keep it that way. It seemed to be paying off. Otherwise, he’d have called her bluff and dared her to blab already.
Instead, he was sweating like an AI trying to solve a logical paradox.
“What makes you think I can persuade him?” he asked.
Tyresa shrugged. Now it was her turn for some mock chivalry. “You’re a powerful man around here. A popular man. You’ve got influence and a silver tongue.”
“But what if he doesn’t listen to me? You can’t still go public.”
“Then you’d better try real hard, Hanson.”
He gritted his teeth and glared at her, but within seconds he was beside Gilper.
Tyresa glanced at the riot police. They were now within arms reach of the crowd, and a few buzz-truncheons were beginning to swing wildly through the air.
Meanwhile, Hanson and Gilper were talking. Tyresa couldn’t make out what they were saying, but their conversation grew heated. Arms began flailing. There was shouting and pointing.
Was it working? Was Hanson talking the Deputy around? If he failed, would Tyresa follow through or was she bluffing? Even she wasn’t sure.
Finally, the conversation cooled. A resigned look appeared on Gilper’s face. He spoke into his communicator, and Tyresa observed the distant sergeant listening to his own communicator. After some talking back and forth, the sergeant voiced flared up, and he stood his men down. The truncheons disappeared back into their holders. The riot shields deactivated.
The violence had been averted.
Tyresa sighed with immense relief as an opening appeared in police ranks, and the non-believers streamed through it. It wasn’t pretty a sight—a few of them limped and were held steady by a friend; a couple of others clutched a hand to a bloodied head wound—but, on the whole, most were unharmed, just shaken, scared and angry.
Hanson shuffled back to Tyresa, his face thunderous. “Well? Happy now?”
She stood and watched the people leaving the hospital grounds until satisfied they were out of harm’s way.
“Good enough.”
Hanson gave her a sneering look. He turned to leave.
“And Hanson,” said Tyresa. “I don’t know what it is you want with Colin, but you’d better make sure no harm comes to him either. He’s here for his operation, and that’s it.”
Hanson raised an eyebrow. “As you say.”
Tyresa dashed into the hospital lobby and tried to orientate herself with a wall map. She hurried through the corridors, tracing her way back to the neurology department. Arriving at Colin’s door, she noticed that the scar-faced bodyguard was nowhere to be seen. The worried, sinking feeling returned.
She jabbed the door release button. It opened.
The room was empty.
Nothing seemed unusual. The bed was unmade. A magazine lay open on the table. Beside it, lay a tray containing the remains of a half-eaten meal…
… and a small wristband. It was Colin’s homing beacon. From the looks of it, someone had cut it off.
“Oh shit,” muttered Tyresa.
At that moment, she heard a noise from behind her. A quiet, electronic, whooshing sound.
“Oh shit,” she muttered again.
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It was unmistakeably the sound of a proton pistol being loaded.
38
“Don’t move,” came the little voice. “Or I shoot.”
Tyresa’s hands were still on the table in front of her, obscured from the person behind. Carefully, slowly, while she still had the chance, she tapped a button on her wrist computer that silently sent a distress signal to Ade. It worked on a much higher frequency, and she prayed the dampeners wouldn’t block it, the way they were blocking ordinary communications.
“Now,” came the voice again. “Put your hands up and turn around.”
“You said you’d shoot me if I moved,” Tyresa replied.
“D-don’t get smart,” the voice said. “You can move, but only to turn around.”
“And my hands?”
“Yes, your… the…” the voice spluttered. “Hands up too.”
“Just checking.”
Tyresa turned to see a short, slightly-built man with a youthful face. He was standing beside the privacy screen next to the bed, presumably where he’d been hiding when Tyresa walked in. He didn’t exactly look like your scariest nightmare, but that didn’t matter. He was pointing a proton pistol at her.
Even an armed toddler has to be treated with care.
She noticed the Saint Barflet’s uniform, but it couldn’t have belonged to him. It clearly didn’t fit. Either that or they didn’t make uniforms in size ‘short-ass.’
Who was he? Another crazy trying to get access to Colin?
She tried to play it as cool. “Hi there.”
He didn’t answer. He just looked anxiously at her.
“I was just looking for Colin, is he around?”
“It’s no good,” the man replied. “He’s gone. We’ve taken him.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“Uh-uh. You don’t get to know that.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
He just shook his head.
Tyresa looked at the muzzle, pointing at her. “What’s with the pistol?”
He swallowed. “It’s my job to see you don’t interfere.”
“Oh, you don’t need a pistol for that. You should have just said. I’ll let you guys get on with your business.” She lowered her hands and made for the door. “I’ll just be on my way.”
“Stay where you are!” the man shrieked. He sidestepped over to the door, blocking the way.
Tyresa froze, and her arms snapped up again. She was trying to look calm, but in truth, her heart was pounding, and her skin was breaking out in a sweat. The man before her was a quivering wreck, but a quivering wreck armed with a proton pistol. However small and pathetic he appeared, one twitch of his finger would be enough to fire a bolt of super-charged particles across the room and create a charred hole right through the middle of Tyresa’s body.
“Honestly,” he said. “I’m sorry to do this. But I have to.”
“You’re going to kill me?”
“Y… yes.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Just orders.”
She tried to focus as half a dozen options flashed through her mind, most of them bad. Clearly, this guy was not the muscle of the organisation, but she couldn’t tackle him while he was armed. Nor was he the brains if he was under orders, meaning she’d have no chance bargaining with him. But he had the look of a gofer about him, a put-upon dogsbody more afraid of his boss than anything else. Maybe she could use that to her advantage.
The only thing she could think to do was delay until Ade showed up. If he showed up at all.
“What do you hope to achieve with all this?” she asked.
His eyes lit up. “Promotion. A proper uniform. My own office. Well, a shared office probably but—”
“No, I mean, why go to all this trouble, kidnapping a lunatic who thinks he’s a prophet?”
The man thought for a moment. “It’s no concern of mine whether he thinks he’s a prophet or not.”
In that brief, dismissive gesture of his hand, the man’s pistol appeared in profile. Tyresa recognised it: a Schmuck & Wesley Model 39.
The standard sidearm of the Erd Security Force.
Her heart sank. Could this really be an Erd man, pursuing Colin because of his claims about Earth? Damn, these guys were quick. Was she a target, too? Why not. She was mixed up in it. She knew too much. Doubtless, she was about to become the latest person who got on the wrong side of Erd.
Tyresa struggled to hold herself together and cling to her one chance. If this guy really was a dogsbody, he might still be terrified of failing his boss.
“I’d have thought you’d have been more interested in Colin’s brother…” She reached for a name. “… Kollum.”
The man’s face began to drop. “His what?”
“His twin brother, Kollum,” Tyresa said innocently. “He’s in the room down the hall. He’s a loon like his brother, Colin. He’s being treated because he thinks he comes from some mythical planet called… Bearth or Earth, or something.”
The man began to look nervous. “His… br–brother?” he stuttered. “Colin’s brother is the one who says he’s from Earth?”
Bingo. This was definitely an Erd man.
“Yes,” she said. “They’re both insane. Colin thinks he’s a prophet, and Kollum thinks he’s… oh, dear.”
“What?”
“I see what you did,” said Tyresa, her voice full of mock concern. “You mixed them up, didn’t you? It’s easy enough to do, they’re similar names: Kollum Douglass. Colin Douglass. Oh, dear, oh, dear. What will your boss say?”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it. Imagine what will happen to you when it turns out you took the wrong man.”
Something akin to a landslide occurred on the man’s face. His gun-toting arm began to droop. “B-but… but…” He was three shaky breaths away from sobbing. “I did everything I was told!”
“That’s not going to cut it, is it? Your boss is hardly going to let himself look foolish. He’ll need a scapegoat. And you were in charge, after all.”
“I wasn’t in charge,” he protested. “Inspector Tiffin was in charge!”
“Tiffin? Who’s he?”
Suddenly, the man shook his head. Somehow he’d managed to maintain a tenuous grip on himself.
“Wait a minute,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “You’re just trying to confuse me. There is no twin brother.”
“Sure there is,” replied Tyresa, stepping forward. “I’ll take you to him.”
Before she could move further, his arm snapped back up. “Enough! No more of this.”
It wasn’t working, and she was running out of ideas.
“Look,” she said. “If your boss finds out—”
“No!” he yelled. “I have my orders. I’m going to carry them out.”
Tyresa gulped. “Okay. But if were you, I’d look behind you.”
He laughed. “Ha! D’you think I’m an idi-uuuggghh!”
The little man was suddenly in distress, probably because an arm had appeared from behind him, grabbed his gun-holding wrist with a pale-skinned hand, and twisted it to within a hair’s breadth of snapping in two.
“I’d be grateful, sir,” said Ade, ever so politely, “if you would drop the weapon. You might harm somebody.”
The man grabbed the android’s hand and tried to yank his own arm free, but it would have been like wrestling with a stone statue. He let the weapon fall into Tyresa’s waiting hand. He looked at her through eyes filled with dread.
“Thank you,” she said sweetly, feeling the balance of the Schmuck & Wesley. “Nice pistol. Erd Security Force, right?”
He just whined. Now he was just two breaths away from sobbing.
She put the gun to his forehead. “Now,” she said, “either you tell me where Colin is or I’ll—”
The man wailed, staring crossed-eyed at the muzzle. His head wobbled, and he muttered some gibberish. He began to hyperventilate, and his eyes rolled backwards. Finally, the li
ttle man flopped back onto Ade’s chest. His legs gave way, and he slid down the android’s body into a heap on the floor.
Ade looked at him and then at Tyresa. “I believe, ma’am, you’ve rather overwhelmed him with your style of questioning.”
“Bah! Some security man,” she exclaimed. She gave Ade an affectionate punch on the arm. “Thanks for bailing me out by the way.”
“Always a pleasure, ma’am. Am I to deduce Mister Douglass has been abducted?”
She nodded. “Erd. They took him.”
“If I may be bold, ma’am, what are we to do now?”
Tyresa thought. This man’s accomplice must have taken Colin. But where? Nowhere on Abrama, surely. Off-world? That could only mean…
“The spaceport, Ade! To the spaceport!”
39
“This thing is a death trap!” Tiffin yelled as he wrestled with the ambulance’s controls. He flung the vehicle violently round a corner and narrowly avoided a street lamp.
It was most unlike piloting a spacecraft. This primitive contraption had no computer-assistance, leaving absolutely everything down to him: speed, direction, engine mode, avoiding pedestrians. Driving it was like playing pat-a-cake with an octopus. It had made for a hair-raising journey through the city.
He glanced over his shoulder into the back of the ambulance. By some miracle, Colin’s wheelchair remained upright, although its unconscious occupant had long since slumped over one arm and now waved around like a wilted plant in the breeze.
Despite all that, Tiffin had made it in one piece. Ahead of him stood the imposing grey perimeter walls of the spaceport. The entrance gate was dead ahead. That was the good news.
The bad news Tiffin noticed as the ambulance came closer to the gate. A forcefield—a translucent blue, electric screen—had been erected across it and was flanked by two security guards. That was a worry. The entranceway wasn’t normally secured like that. Perhaps word had already leaked about Colin going missing. Curse that useless Mokk! He should never have trusted a trainee.
On the other hand, maybe this was merely a precaution rather than a lockdown. If the authorities knew for sure who Tiffin was and where he was going, the gate would have been guarded by a squad of armed police rather than a couple of fat security guards. Maybe Mokk was being tortured for the information at this very moment.
