by Timothy Zahn
She continued on around the track, keeping an eye on the guards in their little discussion group until they disappeared out of sight behind the corner of the building. She gave it another ten paces, just to be sure. Then, taking a deep breath, she put a hand on the mesh fence, vaulted over it, and ran for the wall.
The phantom guards reacted, of course, swinging their guns toward her and shouting for her to halt. But even here they reacted with the slight hesitation that showed her guess and her gamble had been right. Even as they continued to threaten her they could do nothing but stand impotently in place as she blew past them. The wall loomed ahead; bracing herself, she crouched down and leaped.
She slammed chest-first into the stone, sending a shock straight through to her spine. But Carl’s pillow talk and her own brief glimpses proved to be correct. Her fingertips slipped through the supposedly solid rock and caught onto the edge of the genuine wall. Weeks of fingertip pushups and bicep isometrics now proved their worth as she pulled herself up and got a leg onto the top. Rolling herself up and over, she caught a glimpse of the other prisoners staring at her in astonishment and chagrin as she slipped through the wall and out onto the far side. With her fingers still gripping the top, she managed to turn herself upright again as she dropped the short distance to the ground, landing on her feet.
The landscape surrounding the prison was about as bleak as anything she could imagine: flat, dusty ground as far as she could see, with clumps of grass and small brown bushes the only vegetation. Miles and miles of nothing, with hunger and thirst the only promise for anyone foolhardy enough to make the effort.
But she wasn’t fooled. There was no wilderness here, only the lying CURL feeding hopelessness to her eyes. There was a town out there somewhere, a town she could disappear into if only she could get to it.
But the prison still had one trick left up its sleeve. Instead of heading straight away from the wall, she turned and ran parallel to it, keeping as close to the stone as possible. Carl had insisted that the invisible moat wouldn’t be fatal, but would merely send the unwary escapee sliding helplessly down a gentle slope to a deep containment pit where she could be retrieved at the guards’ leisure.
Unfortunately, with this particular illusion her shadow trick wouldn’t be of any use. But she didn’t need tricks anymore. She knew human nature, and she understood how the real world operated, and she knew there had to be a road somewhere across the moat to let in the midnight truckloads of supplies used to restock the prisoners’ food bins. And the logical place for the five real guards to have clustered was the spot where that road came in, where they would be going out again when their shift was over.
From inside she could hear the alarms blaring the news of her escape. But once again the state’s stinginess was going to work in her favor. Half the prisoners in the yard had seen her go through the imaginary wall, and the guards’ absolute first priority would be to bully or bluff or batter them back into their cells before they realized that their prison was a tissue of lies and made their own mass break for freedom.
Once again, she was right. She reached the spot where the guards had been clustered and slowed to a walk, easing herself away from the wall now as she carefully probed at the ground with her foot. It was just as well she’d stayed close to the wall: barely four feet away from it the toe of her shoe dipped beneath supposedly solid ground as she found the moat. She continued on, one foot sliding along the moat’s edge, until a half dozen steps later she hit solid ground again.
With the alarms still blaring, a few more tentative taps were all she dared take time for. But she had no doubt she’d found the road. Taking a couple of deep breaths to replenish her lungs, she headed away from the prison. Her eyes told her she was running on dusty, uneven ground, but her feet felt the smooth hardness of pavement beneath them. She kept going, wondering how far she would have to get before the feed to the CURL was cut off …
And then, as if she’d broken through a curtain she hadn’t even known was there, the world around her suddenly changed.
The wilderness vanished, leaving her pounding along a new blacktopped road amid a field of lush green grass. A hundred yards ahead another blacktopped road encircled the prison grounds, and beyond that were the modest homes of a small town stretching toward the green Oregon hills beyond.
The sheer shock of it caught her feet in a stumble, nearly toppling her flat onto her face. It was one thing to know on an intellectual level that what she’d been seeing in the prison wasn’t real. It was something else entirely to get clear of the CURL’s influence and actually see the reality for herself.
There were no cars moving along any of the streets within her view, but the first house past the circular road had a small blue Ford parked in the driveway. Smiling grimly to herself, she picked up her pace. Where there was a car, there was probably someone home.
“Because, you see, unless you physically lock a person away in something the size of a coffin, it’s simply impossible to give a one-hundred-percent guarantee that he or she won’t ever get out,” Mr. Jacobs said. “Unfortunate, and potentially disastrous. But that is the way of the human spirit.”
The man who answered the door barely had time for his eyes to go wide before Angel gut-punched him with every ounce of her weight and strength. He gave an agonized cough and staggered backward as she came in, kicking the door closed again behind her. “Car keys,” she snapped. “Where are they?”
“Here,” he managed, fumbling in his pocket with one hand as he clutched at his stomach with the other. His shaking fingers misfired, dropping the key ring on the rug with a muted tinkle.
“Money?” she asked, giving him a shove backward and retrieving the keys.
“Wallet,” he said, nodding toward the kitchen table. Already his breath was coming a little easier, she noted as she crossed to the table. She might need to hit him again.
And then, even as she picked up the wallet, she spotted the real jackpot lying on the counter beside the sink. A jackpot in the form of a nice shiny Colt 9mm autoloader.
“Well, well,” she said, dropping the wallet into the top of her jumpsuit as she stepped over and picked it up. The weight felt good in her hand. “What have we here?”
“It’s not loaded,” the man wheezed carefully.
“No?” She worked the slide halfway, glancing down long enough to confirm there was a round in the chamber, then looked up again. “Looks loaded to me.”
“Okay, look,” he said, trying to cajole through his gasping. “You got what you need, right? How about just going away now. How about it, Babe?”
She stiffened, the old familiar pain and rage stirring inside her. “What did you call me?” she asked softly.
“What?” he asked. “Oh. You mean ‘Babe’?”
“Yeah. That,” she said, taking a step toward him. “You know what happens to men who call me that?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“This,” she said, and squeezed the trigger.
The blast was deafening in the small room. The man toppled backward, twisting over to land heavily on his face on the rug. If he’d screamed, the sound of the shot had covered it up.
Pity. The screaming was usually the most satisfying part.
Stuffing the gun inside her jumpsuit beside the wallet, she slipped out the front door. That shot would certainly have been heard, but small-town people were always slow to react, and she would be well on her way long before any of them thought to call 911. Jogging across the lawn to the driveway, she circled around the car to the driver’s side and jabbed the key into the keyhole.
Or rather, jabbed it straight through the keyhole.
And straight through the entire car.
For a horrible second she froze; and then, swearing viciously, she dug her hand into her jumpsuit and hauled out the gun.
But it was too late. Even as she tried to bring it
around, invisible hands closed around her wrists.
There was no chance—she knew that from the start. But she fought them anyway, lashing out with all her strength as the fury and hatred and frustration came boiling out of her. She fired round after round from the gun, knowing full well that she was merely shooting into the air but unable to stop herself. More invisible hands grabbed at her arms as invisible bodies pressed against her, trying to force her to the ground. Still she fought, spitting curses at the cowardly attackers who didn’t even have the guts to show themselves.
The bodies pressing against her chest seemed to part slightly, as if allowing someone or something through. Before she could take advantage of the lull, she heard a familiar crackle, and smelled the familiar stink of ozone, and the strength suddenly evaporated from her muscles as the high-voltage jolt from a taser arced through her.
And as she collapsed into her attackers’ arms, the CURL in her forehead sputtered … and for a single fraction of a second she saw the genuine reality around her.
There was no town here, no roads leading off to green hills and freedom. The single road she’d run along from the prison wall continued ahead of her to a pair of tall, chain-link fences with rolls of razor wire between them. What she’d seen as nice little suburban houses were instead storage buildings, the house she’d invaded nothing but a large guard post.
And then her eyes closed, and the darkness took her.
The darkness, too, was reality.
“And so, thanks to our brave volunteer, the CURL itself, and the fact that Angel Morris didn’t think to confirm that the bullets in her gun were real instead of blanks, we have now had a unique opportunity to see exactly what this vicious serial killer would do if she ever genuinely escaped from prison,” Mr. Jacobs concluded his presentation. “According to Oregon law, as you know, a jury must answer three questions in the affirmative if it is to impose the death penalty: first, whether the death of the deceased was committed deliberately and with the reasonable expectation that death of the deceased or another would result; second, whether the conduct of the defendant in killing the deceased was unreasonable in response to the provocation, if any, by the deceased; and third, whether there is a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society.
“The first two you have already answered in the affirmative. The third has now, I believe, been definitively proved.
“The People rest. We, and this court, await your sentencing verdict.”
The Ring
It had been the fifth freefall day in a row on Wall Street, the kind of day that grinds all the anger and frustration out of an investor and leaves him feeling nothing at all, unless it’s a weary desire for rest or death and either would be fine with him.
Which was why Nick Powell, department store floor manager and formerly-hopeful stock market investor, walked completely past the small curio shop on his way home from work before the exotic gold ring sitting on its black velvet pad in the window finally registered.
Even then, he almost didn’t stop. His modest and carefully nurtured portfolio had been nearly wiped out in the bloodletting, and there was no place for impulse purchases in a budget that included food and clothing and a Manhattan rent.
But his girlfriend Lydia loved odd jewelry, and a week’s worth of preoccupation with the markets had turned their permanent simmering disagreement about money first into a shouting argument and then into a cold and deadly silence. A suitable peace offering might help patch things up.
And who knew? In a little shop like this the ring might even be reasonably priced. Retracing his steps, Nick went inside.
“Afternoon,” the shopkeeper greeted him. He was an old man, tall and thin, with wrinkled skin and a few gray hairs still holding tenaciously to his pale skull. But his blue eyes were sharp enough, and there was a sardonic twist to the corners of his mouth. “What can I do for you?”
“That ring in the window,” Nick said. “I wonder if I might look at it.”
The old man’s eyes seemed to flash. “Very discerning,” he said as he left the counter and crossed to the window. Nick winced as he passed, something about the air that brushed across his face sending a tingle up his back. “Antique German,” the shopkeeper went on as he turned around again, the ring nestled in the palm of his hand. “Here—don’t be afraid. Come and see.”
Don’t be afraid? Frowning at the odd comment, Nick leaned over to look.
Sitting behind a dusty window in the fading sunlight, the ring had been impressive. Pressed against human flesh in a bright, clean light, it was dazzling.
It was gold, of course, but somehow it seemed like a brighter, clearer, more vibrant gold than anything Nick had ever seen before. The design itself was equally striking: a meshed filigree of long, thin leaves intertwined with six slender human arms, each complete with a tiny but delicately shaped hand. “It’s beautiful,” he managed, the words catching oddly in his throat. “German, you say?”
“Very old German,” the shopkeeper said. “Tell me, are you rich?”
Nick grimaced. So much for any peace offering to Lydia. It probably would just have earned him a lecture on extravagance anyway. “Hardly,” he said, taking a step toward the door. “Thanks for—”
“Would you like to be rich?”
Nick frowned. There was an unpleasant gleam in the old man’s eyes. “Of course,” Nick said. “Who doesn’t?”
“How badly?”
The standing disagreement with Lydia flashed through his mind. “Badly enough, I’m told,” he muttered.
“Good.” The old man thrust his hand toward Nick. “Here. Take it. Put it on.”
Slowly, Nick reached over and took the ring. The old man’s skin, where he touched it, felt cold and scaly. “What?”
“Put it on,” the old man repeated.
“No, it’s not for me—it’s for a lady friend,” Nick said.
“It doesn’t want her,” the old man said flatly, an edge to his voice. “Put it on.”
Nick shook his head. “There’s no way it’ll fit,” he warned, slipping the filigreed gold onto his right ring finger. Sure enough, it stopped at the second knuckle. “See? It—”
And broke off as the ring somehow suddenly slid the rest of the way to the base of the finger.
“It likes you,” the old man said approvingly. “It knows you can do it.”
“It knows I can do what?” Nick demanded, pulling on the ring. But whatever trick of flexible sizing had allowed it to get over the knuckle, the trick was apparently gone. “What the hell is this?”
“It’s the Ring of the Nibelungs,” the old man said solemnly.
“The what?”
“The Ring of the Nibelungs,” the old man repeated, the somber tone replaced by irritation. “Crafted hundreds of years ago by the dwarf Alberich from the magic gold of the Rhinemaidens. It carries the power to create wealth for whoever possesses it.” His lip twisted. “Don’t you ever listen to Wagner’s operas?”
“I don’t get to the Met very often,” Nick growled, twisting some more at the Ring. “Come on, get this thing off me.”
“It won’t come off,” the old man said. “As I said, it likes you.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” Nick shot back. “Come on, give me a hand.”
“Just take it,” the old man said. “There’s no charge.”
Nick paused, frowning. “No charge?”
“Not until later,” the other said. “Shall we say ten percent of your earnings?”
Nick snorted. The way things were going, a deal like that would soon have the old man owing him money. “Deal,” he said sarcastically. “I’ll just back up the armored car to your door, okay?”
The other smiled, his eyes glittering all the more. “Good-bye, Mr. Powell,” he said softly. “I’ll be seeing you.
”
Nick was two blocks away, still trying to get the Ring off, when it suddenly occurred to him that he’d never told the old man his name.
There weren’t any messages from Lydia waiting on his machine. He thought about calling her, decided that it wouldn’t accomplish anything, and ate his dinner alone. Afterwards, for the same reason people tune into the eleven o’clock news to see a repeat of the same multicar crash they’ve already seen on the six o’clock news, he turned on his computer and pulled up the data on the international stock markets.
Only to find that, to his astonishment, the six o’clock crash wasn’t being repeated.
He stared at the screen, punching in his trader passcode again and again. The overall Nikkei average was down by nearly the same percentage as the Dow. But somehow, impossibly, Nick’s stocks had not only survived the drop but had actually increased in value.
All of his stocks had.
He was up until after four in the morning, checking first the Nikkei, then the Hang Seng, then the Sensex 30, then the DJ Stoxx 600. It was the same pattern in all of them: the overall numbers bounced up and down like fishing boats in a rough sea, but Nick’s own stocks stubbornly defied the trends, rising like small hot-air balloons over the violent waters.
He fell asleep on his desk about the time the London exchanges were opening … and when he awoke, stiff and groggy, the NYSE had been open for nearly an hour, he was two hours late for work, and already he’d made up nearly everything he’d lost in the past two days. By the time the market closed that afternoon, his portfolio’s value had made it back to where it had been before the freefall started.
By the end of the next week, he was a millionaire.
He broke the news to Lydia over their salads that Saturday at Sardi’s. To his annoyed surprise, she wasn’t happy for him.
In fact, just the opposite. “I don’t like it, Nick,” she said, her face somber and serious in the candlelight. “It isn’t right.”
“What’s not right about it?” Nick countered, trying to keep his voice low. “Why shouldn’t one of the little people get some of Wall Street’s money for a change?”
