Apparent Catastrophe

by Michael Stackpole

  Levine’s eyes narrowed. “That’s it? This is what you’ve come to me with? Voices from shadows?”

  “I don’t know. I have a feeling.”

  “A feeling. Hardly reassuring.”

  “Feelings kept me alive a long time.”

  The dregs of humanity do seem to rely on their gut instincts. Levine rubbed a hand over his forehead. “What do your feelings tell you? Do you think someone has discovered your connection with this office?”

  “Ain’t got no reason to think that. Maybe. Prolly not.” Wilson scratched at his chin. “Only reason to ask me in is cuz I know the land up north. Places to hide. Seems most likely.”

  “Very good. Now that makes sense. So, what you will do is to convince them to pick a specific place, then you will tell me where that is.”

  “But you ain’t wanting them to get that far.”

  “No, but if they do, I will need people waiting there to get them.” Levine smiled. “So, after your meeting or initiation or whatever they want you to do, you will come to me and tell me all you can. Assuming they operate on a cell system, that won’t be much, but we will break the others down and take the network apart.”

  Wilson tapped a finger against his skull. “I’ll tell you everything bright and early tomorrow morning.”

  “Did you not listen to what I just said?” The commissar came to his feet. “I said after your meeting. Directly after. This is not the sort of thing that can be allowed to fester unchecked. In fact, if you don’t get here by ten, I shall send proctors looking for you.”

  “Yes, sir.” Wilson nodded curtly. “I won’t disappoint you, sir.”

  “Good. If you do, I will guarantee that any torture I plan to visit upon you, I shall visit upon your nephew, while you watch.”

  “No, sir. I understand, sir. He’s a good boy, sir.”

  “Then be a good example for him, Wilson.” Levine waved him toward the door. “Go. I am eager to hear what you learn.”

  Ash and Sophia had their serving uniforms already half off when Walter tossed each a packet of new clothes. “How did it go?”

  Sophia caught the packet. “Night shift proctors tucked into the table and ate fast. A few of the proctors getting off their shift decided to stay and eat. No one complained.”

  Ash pulled a black jacket on over the white blouse and black trousers she’d worn to serve the proctors their evening meal. She fished in a pocket and produced an identification card. “This looks real.”

  “It is, or real enough.” He thought that taking the time to explain that a high proctor who was also a murderer had produced them would be ill spent. “You two head toward the Admin building, tunnel 9C. Angelis and his crew are already there and will get you out. And don’t be surprised to see Jacques there. He’s coming with us.”

  Sophia caught his wrist in her hand. “You’ll get him?”

  “On our way now.” Walter shouldered an overstuffed canvas laundry satchel. “Jim, you’re with me.”

  She hung on. “Don’t forget what I said the other night.”

  “Don’t forget my answer.” He winked at her. “Get clear and good luck.”

  Litzau University had a long tradition of being an institute of higher learning whose greatest security problem lay in students drunkenly celebrating sports victories and the end of term. The university, with a student body of five thousand, wasn’t much bigger than Swindon in the off season. Its entire security force had consisted of six full-time officers and a dozen students working part-time to earn tuition money. The campus police force headquartered in small suite near the surface, which included six cells—two suitable for isolation, the others being large enough to let groups of intoxicated students slumber their way into hangovers.

  Proctors had replaced the campus police, but changed little else in how they handled the detention center. They carried stun sticks, but no guns. They did have access to them, in a locked cabinet in a locked closet. If prisoners managed to get out of their cells somehow, the proctors would have ample time to unlock the guns before the prisoners could open the heavy door that led to the cells.

  Walter and Jim Conason, the latter similarly burdened with a heavy bag of laundry, entered the detention suite. One proctor sat behind a low desk with a monitor, while another was getting herself a cup of coffee. The man at the desk looked up. “What are you doing here?”

  Walter set his bag down. “I got the stuff for Soamstone, for his going into general population.”

  The proctor scratched his head. “I don’t . . . Susan, do you know about that?”

  “No.” She approached the desk. “I haven’t seen any order come through.”

  Walter picked up his bag again. “We was told.”

  “Doesn’t matter. If it’s not on this screen . . .”

  The proctor’s explanation ended abruptly when Walter threw his bag of laundry into the man’s chest. The man’s chair rolled back, then toppled as the proctor twisted to shove the heavy bag off himself. By then Walter had come around the desk and kicked the proctor full in the stomach. The man vomited, then curled up around his stomach. Walter kicked him in the head, and the moaning ended.

  The other proctor, Susan, had flown across the office and crashed into the gun closet. She slumped bonelessly to the floor.

  Conason smiled, laundry bag dangling from his hand. “Like hitting someone in a pillow fight, just with a twenty-kilo pillow.”

  “Nice.” Walter appropriated his victim’s stun stick and gave him a jolt. “You crack the closet, I’ll tie them up.”

  Conason grabbed keys from the desk drawer. “Roger that.”

  Walter secured the proctors hand and foot, then took the keys from Conason and unlocked the door to the cells. He dragged the proctors in and locked them in one of the larger cells. He frisked the proctors and found a sharp little folding knife on Susan, which he happily appropriated.

  By the time he’d finished, Conason had changed into a proctor’s uniform and had armed himself. Walter righted the overturned chair and rolled it back to his partner.

  Conason handed him a flechette pistol already holstered on a belt. “I believe this is what you wanted.”

  “What I wanted was a Blackjack, but this will have to do.” Walter grabbed his laundry bag again. “Be back soon.”

  “Yeah, really don’t want to be hanging around here too long.”

  Returning to the cells, Walter unlocked the isolation cell holding Ivan. Light from the hallway revealed the young man sitting on the floor in a corner, knees drawn up to his chest, head resting on his knees. Walter had never seen him look so small and fragile.

  “Spurs, time to get a move on.”

  Ivan’s head rose and mouth gaped. ”Wal . . . Uncle, how?”

  “You didn’t imagine we were going to leave you behind, did you? Unless you want to spend the rest of your life on Sian.”

  “No, God, no.”

  Walter tossed the bag at Ivan’s feet. “Top proctor uniform is yours. Not a high proctor, mind, but it’ll have to do.”

  “I will cope.” He tore into the bag and just pulled the new uniform on over the old. “How did you . . .”

  “Long story. Kinda funny. I’ll fill you in later.”

  Ivan tugged at his jacket’s cuffs. “What about you? Aren’t you changing?”

  “In a bit. Look, Conason is at the desk out front. Tell him to get you out of here.” Walter nodded. “I have one more thing I have to do.”

  “I’m not leaving you behind.”

  “I’ll be with you before you notice I’m gone.” Walter pointed toward the exit. “Go.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Ivan ran from the cell. Walter caught a flash of uniform as Conason and Ivan headed out. Then Walter fished for a new key and unlocked the other isolation cell.
/>   Soamstone sat up slowly on his bunk. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  “Need to know, Proctor Soamstone.” Walter thumbed the knife open with a click. “And I’m here because where you’re concerned, there’s some unfinished business to be concluded.”

  Walter strolled swiftly through the campus tunnels in the proctor’s uniform he’d donned in the detention center. He still carried the laundry bag, but no one made any comments about it. The proctors he passed on his way barely acknowledged him, stared right through him, or had nodded off.

  That part of the plan worked. At Walter’s request, Jacques had upped the dose of jimsonweed in the proctors’ evening meal. The chef added some other things, describing the mixture in terms that made him sound more like a pharmacist than culinary genius, and guaranteed it would be undetectable to taste. The proctors appeared, for the most part, to be off in their own little worlds. If they realized they were impaired, they seemed singularly unmotivated to notify anyone of their situation.

  Walter got into the heating plant accessways and jammed the door behind him. Angelis had marked the correct route with chalk arrows on the floor. To follow, all Walter had to do was ignore the direction in which the arrow pointed and choose the other path. At any four-way intersection, Walter turned 90 degrees left of the indicated direction. It wasn’t meant to confuse pursuers for a long time, but delay them a little, or scatter their forces as they headed down alternate routes.

  Walter caught up with the other escapees in the university’s horticulture hall. They’d quickly changed into civilian clothes for the next leg of their journey. Walter pulled his set from the laundry bag. The clothes had been appropriated from the piles of clothes confiscated as new arrivals to the camp got processed. He put on dark pants, a warm woolen shirt and dark jacket, then buckled the pistol on and tugged the jacket down to cover it.

  Walter and Conason crept from the classroom they’d used for changing into one of the greenhouses attached to the building. At the far end Walter rubbed a glass pane dry, then took a small flashlight from his pocket and hit the pulse button twice. He waited for a two-count, then hit it again.

  “They’re signaling back.” Conason turned toward him. “Three over two.”

  “Then we’re good to go.” Walter handed Conason the flashlight. “I’ll head over first. You signal, we’ll signal back, then you send groups of four.”

  “Roger that. Good luck.”

  Sophia came in the last group with her brother, Ash and Jim Conason. Light had flashed from a building two hundred meters south, at the edge of the campus. It seemed so tiny a distance, but no matter how many steps she took, it wasn’t getting any closer. Sophia knew it was an impossibility, but she found herself trapped in one of Zeno’s paradoxes. To reach any point, the paradox stated, one had to cross half the distance to it. And then half the remaining distance, and half that, such that, philosophically at least, reaching your destination was an impossibility.

  The fact that they were instructed to walk calmly contributed to the sense that the journey would never end. To all appearances they were just four friends walking across the campus. Ash proved particularly adept at the charade, dancing a few steps in front, then turning and laughing as if sharing some brilliant joke or other. Conason and even Ivan managed to join in, but Sophia could not. She could barely breathe.

  Then it was over. They stepped into a large outbuilding—a garage for groundskeeping vehicles—and joined the others at the far end, near the rolling door.

  Which was when her heart rose to her throat. “What is he doing here?”

  Walter held a hand out, palm up. “Easy. He’s the reason you all have ID that will pass muster.”

  Ivan shook his head. “But he was imprisoned, then they . . . He was the reason they took me out of the kitchen. He exposed me.”

  “No, he didn’t.” Walter jerked a thumb toward Calvin Galarza. “He’s the reason the three of us weren’t flagged as having been swept up in the Rangers camp raid.”

  Sophia choked down the sour taste in her mouth. “But how could you trust him? We all saw him murder people in cold blood.”

  Galarza dropped to a knee and bowed his head. “Please. I know what I did was wrong. The Collective, believing in the dictum ‘an enemy of my enemy is my friend’ freed me and gave me responsibilities. But I was never their friend—their freeing me did not absolve them of murdering my family. No matter what you think of me, I’ve always been loyal to the Rangers and the Litzau family. Helping you, helping now, I do out of that sense of duty. I don’t expect mercy or a pardon. I just hope I can look at myself in a mirror again after this.”

  Ray Angelis frowned. “Loyalty to the old guard is great, but I’m not seeing a lot of relevance here.”

  Walter rested a hand on the kneeling man’s shoulder. “About that. I should have shared this with you before. My nephew Spurs, here, he’s not actually my nephew. This is Ivan Litzau, the Chairman Presumptive.”

  The other escapees turned to look at Ivan, half gaping, the rest squinting. Then they followed Galarza’s lead and dropped to a knee. Sophia moved to join them, but Ivan caught her arm and kept her on her feet.

  “This is my sister, Sophia.”

  Conason shot a sidelong glance at Walter. “You played that close to the vest.”

  “Well, we got this far, I figured you needed to know the full score.” Walter glanced at a watch he’d appropriated from one of the proctors. “Our transport should be here soon, right?”

  Galarza nodded. “A minute or two, no more.”

  Suddenly bright lights flashed on from outside, and limned the garage’s rolling door. A voice crackled through a loudspeaker. “In the building—you will lay down your arms and come out with your hands up. You have one minute to comply, or we will light the building up.”

  Walter waved people back behind the large vehicles and the snowplow blades mounted on them. “Any other way out of here, Ray?”

  Angelis shook his head. “Just the way we came in.”

  “Shit.” Walter crouched beside Sophia and Ivan. “I don’t know what happened.”

  The outside voice boomed again. “And for you, Wilson, Commissar Levine had a very specific message. He said that you’re nowhere near as smart as you think you are, and he’s nowhere near as stupid as you needed him to be.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Golden Prosperity Reeducation Camp, Rivergaard

  Maldives

  23 December 3000

  Commissar Ian Levine stared down from the height of his darkened office at the garage in which Wilson and the escapees had taken refuge. “Yes, Hazleton, very good. Proceed as necessary.” The Collective official touched the button on his earphone, cutting the contact with the officer below.

  Levine had been upset with himself for not seeing through Wilson’s duplicity immediately. The man’s visit earlier in the day had seemed unremarkable, save for it being a prior notification of action he was going to take. While Wilson had been an effective agent, he’d never asked permission to take an action. Levine decided it was the threat of an escape that had blinded him to what the man was up to.

  But as he reviewed the conversation in his mind, Levine had seen how effortlessly Wilson had guided him to the conclusions he wanted drawn. Thus, the only reason for Wilson having reported in was to make sure the commissar would be in his office making plans to preempt an escape attempt two days hence. The inescapable conclusion Levine had drawn from that was that the escape attempt was planned for that very night. He’d taken the precaution of borrowing anti-riot units from another commissar and setting them up around the campus’ southern perimeter—primarily because Wilson had been directed to send the escapees north.

  Someone knocked on his office door.

  “Come, quickly.” The commissar glanced back over his shoulder as the proc
tor slipped into the room. “Do you have a report? Do we know how many are gone?”

  Down below, the riot proctors opened up on the garage, peppering it with red laser bolts. “There, now you know we are serious.”

  “Commissar, there were a dozen of them. They came from the soccer teams.”

  “Of course they did. We’ll round up the rest and have them disassociated.” The commissar smiled. “Go, do that—or is there something else?”

  “There is, sir.” The proctor came forward. “I have a message for you from Wilson.”

  “That bold bastard shall pay for his temerity. What is it?”

  Soamstone snapped open the knife he’d been given when released. “He said to tell you, you’re not as smart as you think you are.”

  The garage door came alive with a constellation of red hot spots. The metal sizzled, and paint on the inside ignited. Walter looked at Ivan. “The walls aren’t going to hold forever. Your call. Fight or surrender?”

  Ivan’s blue eyes grew wide. “If we surrender, they’ll kill everyone.”

  Walter settled a hand on Ivan’s shoulder. “Okay, Spurs, surrender or not, all of us are dead. You and Sophia, you’ll likely get a show trial first, with a side order of waterboarding or worse. You’ll end up dead, or maybe they’ll convert you to the cause. Well, they’ll do that anyway. Sophia, as we talked about before, probably gets married off to someone in the Collective for purposes of tradition and legitimacy.”

  Sophia’s eyes narrowed. “He won’t see his first anniversary.”

  “Admire the intent, Sophia, but that just means they’ll keep Ivan as a hostage against your good behavior.”

  Conason noisily checked the clip on his flechette pistol. “I’m all for fighting.”

  Ivan looked at him. “But . . .”

  Ray Angelis smiled. “We were all in on this escape before we ever found out who you are. And they don’t have a clue as to who you are. Not yet. We fight.”

  The laser hot spots cooled down and the loudspeaker crackled again. “This is your last chance.”