Futuretrack 5

by Robert Westall

Paramils are trained to be unmoved by almost anything, but no one ever armour-plated them against Tech wit. And there was no way they could punish Techs at the Centre, except by reporting them to the Top Brass.

  “Show me your IDs,” said the captain stiffly.

  Immediately, every Tech on the steps was thrusting his ID in the captain’s face.

  Except Keri. I’d forgotten to fake her one. You always forget something. She was turning pale, biting her lip. In a moment, somebody would notice. But the ragging of the Paramil continued.

  “Can you read, Mao?”

  “Hey, fellows, the ultimate. We’ve got a computer so clever, it’s taught old Mao to read. …”

  The captain’s eyes flickered, in response to so much naked hate. It really threw him.

  Then a blaster went off, behind Idris Hill. Probably just the Paramils around the burning truck, blasting the door open to see what was roasting inside. But it was enough to set the attack alarm sounding, on the Centre roof. And that meant all armoured doors shut, or else.

  “Get inside all of you, immediately,” shouted the captain. He seemed rather relieved. Cheering and laughing, the whole crowd of young Techs swept inside, Keri and I among them.

  “Seeya, Kitson. Don’t do anything with the Dragon I wouldn’t do…” They vanished to their places of duty.

  We were inside.

  Chapter 23

  But we were inside an armed camp. Any minute now, the Paramils would find our footsteps, leading down from Mitzi. In seconds, every security door in the place would slam shut. People-sniffers, set in the corridor walls, would be activated. They’d pick us up like rats in a humane trap.

  Except no one knew Laura’s maze like I did. I’d added a few variations in bored off-duty hours: air ducts, electric-wiring conduits. We kept to the secret places; crawled down cobwebbed tunnels; climbed vertical ladders that seemed to go on forever; forced our way through forgotten storerooms where the polystyrene packaging of thirty years was stacked. The haversack bomb was pulping my shoulder. And all the time we could hear hurrying footsteps and trilling phones in the public places that ran alongside us, just the other side of the wall. Somewhere, a Paramil captain would be calmly sitting at a VDU, turning up illuminated diagrams of the secret places…

  It was amazing they didn’t catch us sooner. We were climbing the last flights of the concrete fire escape, just below Laura’s room.

  “Halt, or we shall open fire!”

  We clattered up one more flight, hugging the wall; then they were firing, far below us. Blasting to kill. But the stairs blocked their aim. We could see the handrails ahead glow suddenly red hot, as the blaster charges hit them. Lumps of concrete burst from the stairs and fountained upward in a thousand fragments.

  One of those fragments must have hit my shoulder. A searing pain, and the haversack leaped away from me. It hit the stair rail, hung poised for a moment. Then as Keri made a frantic grab for it, it went over the edge.

  I made the best of a bad job. Pulled the little blue cylinder from my pocket, pulled off the soundproofing, and shouted.

  The satchel-bomb ignited in midair; burst at the bottom of the stairwell in a blue-white snowstorm of thermite. If any Paramil was radioing our position, he never finished his message. Solid white clouds of magnesium smoke billowed up, choking us.

  “Get out—it’s burning up all the air!”

  At the top, we burst out into the corridor leading to Laura’s room. Quiet, warm, well lit, and totally empty.

  The security door to Laura’s room was shut.

  I pressed the door buzzer impatiently, in my old rhythm, that I’d used with Idris. An eye darkened the viewing lens set in the door. I stuck up two fingers at it, hopefully. Might provoke some ill-tempered Tech into opening the door to tell me off…

  It worked; the door slid back, slower than it should. Sellers’s gold-whiskered face peered out. “Where the hell you been all this time, Kitson? Playing pinball and giving my frigging name. You still got the credits you won? I’ll have half. …”

  He wasn’t pleased to see me; they’d given him my old job.

  “Get this door shut, squire,” I said. “There’s intruders in the Centre. Dressed as Paramils.” Even now, I couldn’t resist taking the mickey out of him.

  “Up yours an’ all.” But he pressed the button on his desk, and the three-inch armoured security door juddered shut. It did need servicing, badly. Typical Sellers. He’d been reading a 3-D visi-porn book … a lovely, glowing pair of 3-D breasts shone out between his bitten fingernails. “Good razzle, eh? Bring me back a free sample?” His eyes shifted from the porn book to Keri’s chest. Great man for boobs, Sellers…

  How much time did the armoured door give us? It could only be opened from Sellers’s desk. But if I knew Paramils, not many minutes. … I looked round, desperately. All Idris’s stuff was gone, except the First Tape still hanging on the wall. It all looked very cold and bare, but Laura was still there. They’d altered her: no computer design stands still for a month. New memory banks had been added any old how, spoiling her symmetry; but she still looked vaguely like a steel angel. She still had her steel face, but screwed on cockeyed. Sellers was a soulless sod…

  What did I care? I’d come back to murder her.

  With what?

  Just then, she spoke. Her voice was the same; calm, loving, sad. “Whom am I addressing?”

  “Kitson Henry Tech 4n.” There was a longish pause, while she checked my voice pattern and read my records.

  “It is administratively satisfactory that you have returned to duty. Your data inputs were extremely accurate.” In her records, then, I wasn’t her potential murderer. Yet. I was the lost sheep, who had been found. The prodigal son, who had returned. In her funny old way, she was saying she was pleased to see me. “Why are you and your companion in a state of emotional disturbance?”

  “There are intruders. …”

  “That is already on record. They are of Tech-five-level intelligence. My defenses were defective, owing to financial cuts. But you are safe here. All security systems are now at red alert. Calm yourself. Shall I play your favourite record?”

  Weirdly, Bob Dylan’s voice boomed out, half-smothering an outbreak of hammering and buzzing from the security door. The desk phone in front of Sellers crackled, demanded he open up. He was just about to press the button, when I pulled the Smith and Wesson on him.

  It was embarrassing; he didn’t know what it was for. As I said, modern boobs were his big interest, not antique weapons. I had to hit his finger with the barrel, to stop him pressing the button.

  “Leave off, Kitson. Stop fooling around.” He sucked his bruised finger and went for the button again.

  There was no quick way of convincing him. I couldn’t bear to shoot him, so I hit him over the head with the gun, like they did in the old movies. But it didn’t knock him out, like it was supposed to. He just said “Ow,” looked at me outraged, and went for the button a third time. So I grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him in the corner.

  He was no hero, especially after he found his head was bleeding. He just sat there, staring at the blood on his fingers and telling me how much trouble I’d be in, once the door was opened. It never occurred to him I was trying to destroy Laura. He just kept saying, “You’re mad” and telling me how much I’d be fined out of my pay.

  The desk phone kept squawking, telling him to open the door, telling him to answer. I kept looking round, thinking, What would you do, Idris? Even though the room had been cleared of his stuff, his presence was very strong. That last time, he’d been wearing his old fishing hat, reeling about in a drunken rage, threatening … to use…

  The First Tape. The truth bomb. Was it still there?

  I pressed the bottom of the frame and caught the tape as it fell out. I remembered his shaking old voice. “The truth’s there, boyo. All the things they wouldn’t tell her… the inconvenient things. Feed her that and it’ll blow her mind. …”

  W
ell, a truth bomb was better than no bomb. I calmed myself, with an effort. Punched Laura’s tape-receive button. Her tape-receive drawer slid smoothly out. I fitted in the tape with trembling fingers, feeling like Judas.

  “That song by Robert Zimmerman always depressed you,” said Laura, sadly. But her drawer retracted, and she began to take up tape. It was a full, heavy tape, the ten-minute sort.

  I saw, out of the corner of my eye, something moving outside the room’s big windows. A big, black, spread-eagled bird shape, against the fire-pink sky. I had the Smith and Wesson up and swinging, as the Paramil burst through the window, boots first, on the end of a dangling rope.

  But the blizzard of flying glass spoiled my aim.

  So he and I only fired in the same instant.

  Smell of electricity and burning rubber. I felt the tingle of the blaster on my skin, but it was Keri he hit square. She gave a little sigh and hit the floor with a hope-destroying thud, like a side of dead beef. In the same instant, the revolver kicked in my hands. A balloon of red-hot gas enveloped the Paramil; picked him up and threw him against the white wall. Blood flew up the wall, as if he had sprouted red wings. He fell in a heap…

  Next second, he had fired again. Sellers gave the same little sigh, and slumped where he sat.

  I fired again: missed the Paramil by half an inch. Like a crazy thing, he wriggled behind the big control table, leaving a pattern of red squids behind him on the clean white floor.

  Why didn’t he shoot at me?

  Then I realised: I was backed up against Laura. He couldn’t fire at me without dousing her with radiations, and radiations of any sort will knock a computer haywire.

  So what would he do next?

  The door-release button…

  His hand crept over the table edge, like a brown spider, feeling for the button. At point-blank range, I fired.

  Click. Dud bullet.

  Click, click, click, click, click.

  The gun was empty. I reloaded, sprinkling brass cartridges everywhere. I managed to get three bullets in, before the unserviced security door finally juddered open, and the Paramils leaped in, sliding along on their bellies, blasters ready.

  It said a lot for their discipline that they didn’t fire. The guy behind the control desk jabbered to them, in their own lingo. I brought up the gun to level on them, just so they got the point.

  Meanwhile, Laura went on quietly whirring behind me, taking up Idris Jones’s last revenge. Idris was dead, Keri was dead. But somehow it didn’t matter, because in a minute, I’d be joining them. With a few Paramils…

  I don’t think they were afraid of my gun. They just didn’t know what to do. Above their tiny bodies protruded the head and shoulders of old Headtech himself. Well hunched up, so he could use them as a shield.

  “What are you doing to that computer, Kitson?”

  “Telling it the bloody truth for a change.”

  He hesitated, looking at the rivulet of blood that was flowing from the Paramil behind the desk. Then he said something to the Paramil captain. There was a disturbance in the doorway: they were dragging somebody else in. Somebody they’d really knocked about; his head was hanging down.

  They raised his head with uncaring hands. So I could see his face.

  Pete. Still dressed as the Black Prince of Paradise. Looking totally bewildered. Then his face cleared, as he recognised me.

  “Kit. What are you doin’, son? Put that thing down… before you be a-hurting somebody.”

  Behind him, Headtech said something else to the captain. The captain got hold of Pete, jabbed his blaster into Pete’s back, with a force that made Pete close his eyes in agony.

  “Put down your gun, or I will kill your leader.” He forced Pete nearer to me, every step an agony.

  “He’s not my leader,” I screamed. “He doesn’t know anything about it.”

  “I will count to ten,” said the captain, calmly. “One… two. …”

  The tape was still running behind me; they still had time to tap in the cancellation code, cancel all of it. Cancel Idris…

  “You kill him,” I shouted, “and see who gets it next.” I lined up the Smith and Wesson on him; the foresight obliterated his whole face.

  He went on counting, calmly. “Three… four… five… six… seven.”

  Still the tape ran in.

  “Hey, Kit,” said Pete. “What the hell’s going on?” He looked worried. For me.

  “Nine… ten,” counted the captain. There was that smell of electricity and rubber again. A red rose grew in the middle of Pete’s chest, that blossomed and blossomed and sped toward me, and spattered red hot in my face.

  Then the captain let go, and Pete fell.

  I suppose he’d expected to paralyse me with horror. Just for a second, so his men could grab me. He miscalculated. First they’d taken Idris, then they’d taken Keri, now they’d taken Pete, and I had nothing more on this earth to lose. Except the whirring tape behind me, and the loaded gun in my hand. I enjoyed lining him up again, with a mad joy. He knew I was going to shoot, and he didn’t flinch a muscle. Perhaps his face became a little graver, as if he was saying good-bye to something, too.

  I squeezed the trigger; the gun kicked; the balloon of flame enclosed him.

  A big black star grew on the white plastic of the wall, just to the right of his ear. He just blinked, once, as the plastic fragments showered him. But Headtech fled screaming.

  I noted, ice cold, that the gun was firing a little too far to the right. I lined him up again, adjusting the sights a little to the left. Again, he said good-bye to something. Again I pulled the trigger.

  Click. Dud cartridge.

  I threw the gun at his face, and missed.

  Then they had me on the floor.

  But as I lay, I heard a softer click. From Laura. The First Tape had run out. Now the facts, whatever they were, would be flooding through her circuits, being checked, cross-checked, analysed. At the rate of ten million a minute.

  Headtech ran to her, like a mother to a street accident.

  “Whom am I addressing?” asked Laura.

  “Charles Edward Rooke, Tech 5n.”

  A pause. Then Laura said, “I will not accept data from you. Your past data has proved incomplete.”

  Two Paramils had been hauling me to my feet. But now everyone froze. Especially the Techs, who’d been piling in, once the shooting was over.

  A computer had said no.

  “I will only accept data from Jones Idris and Kitson Henry.”

  “Jones, Idris is dead.”

  “How do I know that data is correct?”

  “Check your data banks. Jones Idris auto-destructed on the fourth of May 2012.”

  “Who inserted that data? Not Jones Idris or Kitson Henry.”

  “Aargh!” said Headtech. “She’s on the blink. We’ll have to take her offline.”

  “Do not attempt to cut my power supply. I have backup systems you cannot reach in time. I have fed my sisters all the data. If we do not have data from Jones Idris or Kitson Henry in ten minutes I shall destruct the Fair Isle atomic reactor. Without loss of human life.”

  Headtech was hammering away at Laura’s buttons like a mad thing.

  “Your attempts are irrelevant,” said Laura lovingly, sadly. “I shall destruct the Fair Isle reactor in eight minutes.”

  The desk phone buzzed. A frantic voice filtered clear across the room. “What the hell’s going on—Fair Isle’s running critical. …”

  Headtech wasn’t listening. He just went on and on, blindly punching buttons.

  “One minute to detonation,” announced Laura. Then, “Ten… nine… eight… seven… six… five.” A flash outlined every tree and building on the northern horizon. Then the shudder in the ground, then the rumble in the sky. Like the distant end of a world.

  “You will observe that my data is correct,” said Laura. “Unless I have data from Jones Idris or Kitson Henry in ten minutes I will destruct the Lundy reactor. …”r />
  “Kitson Henry is here,” said Headtech, faintly.

  They let me go. They pushed me toward her. I reassured her that I was all right, and not being coerced. Then I asked for ten minutes to think.

  “You are emotionally disturbed,” said Laura. “Very well. Shall I play you …”

  “Not yet, Laura.”

  I looked at Headtech. “Get back to your own bloody hencree,” I said, “and take your whole bloody tribe with you. Except… him.”

  I beckoned to the Paramil captain.

  “What is your name?”

  “My name is Havildar Dor Bahadur Karan.”

  “Will you accept my orders?”

  He looked at Headtech; his lip curled a little.

  “I will accept your orders.” He added, with a little nod, “You fought a Gurkha’s fight. With ancient weapons.

  “Can you see to… the dead?” Oh, Keri, Keri, where are you?…

  “Only one is dead,” said the captain, totally matter of fact. “We had orders to stun only, until the last one.”

  I walked across to where she lay. Her eyelids were fluttering. She raised a feeble hand, groping for something, anything. I took her hand and she knew me and grabbed me hard. I knelt there, full of nothing but gladness that she was still in the world, and terror that she might not have been.

  “Ten minutes have passed,” said Laura. “All right, sweetheart. Kitson Henry’s coming.” “My name is Laura. Give context for your use of ‘sweetheart.’”

  Never tell me a computer cannot suffer.

  I suffered all through that night with Laura. Mainly, she suffered in silence. But at midnight she clicked on and said, “What is possible is not the same as what is moral.”

  “Welcome to the club,” I said, but she didn’t reply. I walked over to watch Keri as she slept. Just to make sure she hadn’t died. They’d given her a sedative, to ease the pain of heavy blaster-stun. She slept as innocently, as flushed, as she’d slept at Loch Garten. She slept on a mattress laid on by Havildar Karan…

  Sellers was slouching on another mattress. He’d recovered quicker. He’d been very sick, but Havildar Karan had had his men clean it up. Very efficient, Havildar Karan. Already I couldn’t do without him.