"Take me to Kennedy Hoverport. Take me there now."
He said the words aloud. His voice was forceful, powerful. As the men in the driver's compartment heard it, he felt the ambulance turn and head east as they followed his instruction.
The Grey Man. Anderson. William Ganz. Kennedy Hoverport. They were moths draw to the heat of a burning flame.
Soon, there would be a reckoning.
"You're talking about landing in the middle of a hoverport, for Grud's sake," the H-Wagon's pilot had said to her first. "I don't care if we're over the terminal building. It's restricted airspace. It doesn't matter what kind of emergency you claim this is, we can't land there without clearance. I can put us down on the H-Wagon landing pad, east of the terminal. If you run fast from there, you can get to the Brit-Cit departures desk inside ten minutes."
"What do you mean ten minutes is too long?" the pilot had asked her. "What? Of course we're equipped with anti-grav chutes. Anderson? Hey, that's the door control! Anderson! What do you think you're doing, you crazy bi-"
Whatever he had said to her next, she had not heard it.
Leaping through the open side door of the H-Wagon in mid-air, she counted to five before activating the hand-held anti-grav chute she had taken from the H-Wagon's storage locker. Below, the departures terminal for Kennedy Hoverport seemed to jump in her vision as the chute deployed and the rate of her descent suddenly decreased. Releasing the chute a few feet above the plascrete, she hit the ground running, her hand already going to her radio as she crossed the short distance to the main terminal entrance.
"This is Psi-Judge Anderson, requesting contact with the Senior Judge in charge of hoverport security. Over."
"Acknowledged, Anderson. This is Senior Judge Urich. Did I just see you jump out of an H-Wagon in mid-flight?"
"Roger that, Urich. This is a hot pursuit. Request you assign all available manpower to apprehend rogue psychic Thomas Gray, AKA Carlyle."
"Already on it, Anderson. There's no sign of the drokker as yet. I'll meet you at the terminal entrance. Over and out."
Inside, the terminal building was crowded with citizens awaiting their flights. As she stepped through the terminal door, she saw a thickset Judge in his forties waiting for her.
"Drokk," she said as she ran to meet him. "Is this place usually this busy at four in the morning?"
"You think this is bad, you should see what the afternoon shift has to put up with," Urich replied. "I've got Judges working the crowd and Surveillance has been issued with a description of your perp. They're about to give the last call for check-in on the Brit-Cit leaving at four-thirty. What say we set up near the Departures Desk and see if you can spot him?"
"I think it would be a better idea if I went to your Surveillance Control Centre," Anderson told him. "I can telepathically send the image of the perp into the minds of the Judges monitoring the cameras so they'll know exactly what he looks-"
Suddenly, as the crowd momentarily parted before them, she caught a glimpse of Carlyle. Startled, as she stared at him their eyes met. Carlyle smiled, apparently in recognition, and she felt a bolt of psychic energy surge towards her through the psi-flux like a dagger of the mind. She raised her defences, feeling the mindbolt shatter against her shields as she went for the Lawgiver in her boot holster. Carlyle smiled again, wider. His hands went inside his coat, emerging with the lethal weight of a pump action stump gun held between them. Even as she wondered how in Grud's name he had managed to sneak a gun of that size into the hoverport, she was already calling out a warning to Urich beside her.
"Urich! Look out!"
The warning came too late. As Carlyle fired, she saw Urich thrown backwards, a great red flower of gore blooming from his chest. People were screaming. The crowd began to run. Working the slide on the underside of his gun, Carlyle fired again. A woman ran in front of Anderson and took the blast in her face. Even as Carlyle worked the slide again, Anderson's own hand moved with nightmare slowness. Finally, she raised the gun and levelled it at Carlyle. They fired in unison, Carlyle's shot going wild to hit a screaming mother carrying her child, while Anderson's shot hit her target between the eyes. His head snapping back, Carlyle looked at her for a moment in dumb amazement as blood seeped from the hole in his forehead. His eyes grew empty. The bright smile grew dim.
"Anderson!" She heard Urich's voice. For a moment she was confused. She wondered how he could speak so loudly with a chest wound. Then she looked around her and realised that there was no sign of the carnage she had witnessed seconds earlier. There was no Carlyle. No blood or wounded bodies littered the concourse. The crowd went about its business as normal.
"Anderson! I thought you said this was a hot pursuit? What the drokk are you doing just standing there?"
Turning, she saw Urich standing beside her, looking like he was all but ready to shake her. She wondered how long she had been in a daze.
"He's here," Anderson said. "Carlyle. He just tried to use some kind of mind-trick on me. He's good at it, too. The whole thing seemed so real." She shook her head to clear it.
"Let's go," she said. "Carlyle's just shown us that he's here. Let's go and find him."
She found him by the baggage carousel, just to the side of the opening in the wall where the track of the conveyor belt returned unclaimed luggage to the baggage department. There was a woman standing next to him and Carlyle had his left arm loosely around her shoulder while his right hand was in his jacket pocket.
"Hello, Cassandra," he smiled as Anderson approached him. "You don't know what a pleasure it is to finally meet you."
"You are under arrest." As Anderson levelled her Lawgiver at him, Urich and a file of Judges spread out to either side of her and did likewise, while the crowds of travellers in the area began to flee. "Put your hands up and step away from the woman."
"Arrest me? I don't think so, Cassandra." The woman beside him seemed paralysed and hardly aware of her surroundings. "As for the woman here, you might as well use her name. It's Suzanne, in case you're interested. With a little psychic prodding I've temporarily disabled her body's motor skills, so don't expect her to start dancing anytime soon. Oh, and she's the mother of three children: Jack, Chloe and Beatrice. I thought you'd want to know their names before you make any decisions that might turn them into orphans."
"Release her and put your hands up," Anderson said. "Don't make this more difficult than it has to be."
"More difficult? Oh, I think you'll find it's already more difficult than you think it is, Cassandra." Opening his left hand, Carlyle revealed the round shape of a frag grenade. "You'll notice I've pulled the pin. Now, if I should be compelled to release the grenade for any reason, say for instance by being shot, then let's just say we will all be going to meet our makers together."
"You're surrounded," Anderson told him. "You must know you're not going to get away from here. Surrender and I promise you will be treated fairly."
"By being caged in a psi-cube with all the other delinquent psychics, you mean? Come on now, Cassandra, I'm sure the Justice Department teaches better hostage negotiation skills than that. You might do better by asking me what I want first, and we can negotiate from there. Tell you what, why don't I tell you..." Carlyle paused as if to clear his throat.
"I want you all to drop your guns and leave them on the floor!" Even as he said the words, Anderson could feel the psychic force in them. While she still kept her Lawgiver tightly gripped and levelled at Carlyle, the other Judges around her dropped their guns on the floor.
"Hmm, it seems we have had a slight change in the balance of power, Cassandra." Carlyle's smile grew insufferably smug. "Of course, I could order one of your fellow Judges to pick up his gun again and shoot you in the back of the head. Then, this whole business would be over."
"For the both of us, you mean," Anderson said. "You're forgetting that my Lawgiver is pointed at your chest. If I die, I'm taking you with me."
"What, and kill the delightful Suzanne? Not to ment
ion making orphans of her three lovely children? I don't think so, Cassandra. Why do you think I subjected you to that little psycho drama with all the poor innocents getting caught in the crossfire as we blazed away at each other with guns? I wanted you to know what it's like to be the cause of innocent deaths. Though of course, you know that already don't you? What with your sterling service during the Apocalypse War."
"That was war."
"Ah, I see I hit a nerve," Carlyle purred. "I must say it's remarkably easy to push your buttons. No, I don't think you will shoot me, not when that would mean killing Suzanne. Granted, I could be wrong, and frankly, the results would be catastrophic for me if I am wrong. Do you play chess? In chess, they would call this a stalemate. Neither side can win. Of course, there's a difference between games and real life. In games, you just pack up the board and play again tomorrow. "While in real life, people die."
The Grey Man was a Red.
William entered the terminal as the panicking crowds moved in the other directions, and he saw the twin objects of his hatred ahead of him. He could see Anderson, her soulshadow dazzling and brilliant, but what shocked him was that he could see the Grey Man's soulshadow as well. It was as red as Anderson's, burning with unbearably bright scarlet fire. Seeing it, the rage inside William's heart grew all the wilder. The Grey Man had lied to him. He had betrayed him. He had tried to destroy him. Now, to add insult to injury, it turned out that he had been red all along. Suddenly, the balance of William's hatred shifted where he had once hated both Anderson and the Grey Man equally, now he realised that the Grey Man was the primary target for his vengeance. The Grey Man had tricked him. The Grey Man had deceived him.
The Grey Man must die.
In his hand, William held a las-scalpel that he had found in the ambulance. It was not as reassuringly heavy and solid in his hand as his Bowie knife had been. But the Bowie knife was gone, lost when the Judges had arrested him. The las-scalpel would do its work well enough. The edge was hot and sharp.
Unnoticed as Anderson and the Grey Man talked amongst themselves, William moved closer. Suddenly, the words they were saying slipped through the fog of his mind.
It sounded like they were talking about him.
"Is that what this is all about?" Anderson asked him. "You like to play games? HelixCorp, the murder victims, Mortimer, Ganz. It was all a game?"
"A profitable one, I assure you," Carlyle replied. "Of course, any game must have its pawns. What did you think of Ganz? An interesting specimen, wasn't he?"
"Interesting? I don't know if that's the word I'd use."
"No? Personally, I found him fascinating. His father was a past associate of mine. He was a rather repulsive type, a psychic, like ourselves, whose psi-talent allowed him to create the most realistic illusions. Sadly, those same psychic abilities had left Peter with an unfortunate appetite: fear. If he wasn't able to regularly gorge on human fear, Peter began to sicken and die. Accordingly, he preyed most often on his family members. First, his wife, and then, when he had driven her to suicide, he preyed on his son, William. Really, I suppose it's not surprising that when William's own psi-talents developed, he used them to kill his father. But the really interesting part is the effect the whole ordeal had on him. William perceived the aura of psychics as red in colour, like his father's. What's more, thanks to his appalling childhood, William experienced psychosomatic pain whenever he saw a red aura. And, of course, that pain drove him to kill. I have to admit that I'd had my eye on the boy for some time, but I'd never had the opportunity to use him. Then, when the HelixCorp matter came along, it seemed a match made in heaven. A very useful pawn, all told. It's a shame really that he's no longer with us."
"Red!"
Startled by a scream behind her, Anderson turned in amazement to see William Ganz charging across the terminal towards Carlyle with a las-scalpel in his hand. Seeing the scalpel himself, Carlyle reacted swiftly, his right hand emerging from his jacket pocket with a small laspistol held inside it. He carefully took aim.
"No!"
As Ganz screamed in rage, the command in his voice deflected Carlyle's aim. His first shot going wild over Ganz's shoulder, Carlyle fired again.
"No!"
Again the command, again the shot went wild. Closing with Carlyle, Ganz stabbed the scalpel into his chest even as Carlyle fired the las-pistol at point-blank range at William's face. His features half burnt away by the blast, William stabbed Carlyle again. Both men were screaming. Horrified, Anderson saw Carlyle's fingers loosen on the grenade, even as the woman Suzanne was released from her paralysis and started screaming herself. Moving swiftly, Anderson did the only thing she could. Leaping across the intervening space, she careened into Ganz and Carlyle, tipping them both onto the revolving baggage carousel behind them. As they fell locked together on the conveyor, still stabbing and shooting at each other as the belt carried them away through the opening in the wall and into the baggage department, Anderson grabbed Suzanne and pushed her to the ground. Diving on top of the struggling woman, Anderson held her tightly to the floor as the two combatants disappeared along the conveyor belt into the opening. Suddenly, the grenade went off, the explosion out of sight, and the sound muffled.
For a moment, everything was still. Then, picking herself up off the floor, Anderson saw that the other Judges had followed her example in diving for cover. It seemed that no one had been injured; the explosion had been confined to the other side of the carousel. Advancing on the conveyor belt, Anderson carefully looked into the opening to see what had become of Carlyle and Ganz.
Now they were both red.
EPILOGUE
THE GREAT ESCAPE
Carlyle was not dead.
Driving her lawmaster towards Psi Division Headquarters a few weeks later, Anderson brooded on that news as she rode along the megway. She had just received a call from Control informing her of the results of a DNA test performed on the remains of the two bodies on the luggage carousel. The DNA positively identified one of the bodies as belonging to William Ganz. Born in Brit-Cit of British parents, he had lived for most of his life in the Latin American city-state of Ciudad Baranquilla. The other body on the carousel had been identified as that of one Steven Christopher Lincoln, an unemployed former used car salesman reported missing by his family a month ago. The results had been checked and re-checked to ensure their accuracy, but as far as Anderson could see they meant only one thing.
Carlyle was not dead.
Given some thought, she could see how he must have done it. From what she had seen and felt of it, the extent of Carlyle's psi-talent was truly extraordinary. He must have kidnapped Steven Lincoln, subjected him to a face-changer to alter his appearance, and then used his powers from afar to control Lincoln and force him to play the part of an ersatz Carlyle. Presumably, the whole scene at the hoverport had been a gigantic ruse allowing Carlyle to fake his own death. Anderson remembered Mortimer telling her that Carlyle had enemies. She wondered how bad a man's enemies would have to be to make him go to such lengths. Then again, considering the nature of Carlyle himself, she could quite understand that he probably made enemies as easily and as regularly as other people used shampoo.
There had been an even more disturbing revelation recently, however. In their exhaustive trawl through HelixCorp's records, Tek Division had been able to find no reference to the processes that the researchers of Project Changeling had used to breed latent psychics. Worse, the Teks suspected that someone had systematically purged the majority of the information regarding the project from the records. In the meantime, HelixCorp had declared bankruptcy after becoming the target of a number of lawsuits and a dozen different ongoing Justice Department investigations. The remaining latent psychics from Changeling were currently undergoing evaluation while Psi Division decided what to do with them. The nagging suspicion remained that someone had escaped with the records of Project Changeling before purging all other copies from the HelixCorp database. That person now had control of a secret
that was potentially worth billions, even trillions. Gambling on anything other than the Megalot might be illegal in Mega-City One, but Anderson would have been willing to put money on that person being Carlyle.
Still, there was at least one bright spark amid all this doom and gloom.
As she pulled into a parking space in front of the Psi Division Headquarters building, Anderson saw a group of new Psi-Cadet inductees being led down the steps by their Psi-Tutor. It was the most recent intake of cadets to be accepted for training. Most of them were five years of age, but one boy was older and taller than the rest. Strictly speaking, it was against protocol to distract cadets while their Psi-Tutor was talking to them, but Anderson waved at the boy all the same.
Smiling, Psi-Cadet Alexei Voysich waved back.
The synthi-veal parmesan was like chewing dead flakes of skin, the wine list was dismal, the service atrocious, and the robot Mariachi band did nothing for the ambience, but the view. The view made it all worthwhile.
Not the view from the window by his table overlooking the black and toxic waters of the Mediterranean. No, the view that Carlyle found almost enchanting, as he sat at his table in the La Bella Puttana restaurant in the Mediterranean Free States, was the sight of the sweating and overweight figure of Dmitri Vulkharin waddling towards his table.
Ah, the game begins again, he thought. Suddenly, the veal seemed passable and the wine's bouquet reminded him of the aroma of apricots and oranges, rather than sump oil. Even the Mariachi band's ill-considered rendition of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" did not seem entirely inappropriate.
"Carlyle!" As he sat at the table, Dmitri was all boisterous smiles and expansive gestures. "How are you, my friend? You know, I was concerned that you might not make our meeting. One hears the Judges of Mega-City One killed you." He roared with laughter as though he had made a joke.
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