Mindwarp

by James Follett

  She crouched at the side of the residential block, listening intently for the slightest sound that indicated that her descent of the cable had been seen. Satisfied that all was well, she darted imp-like around the building to the front and waited in the shadow of Calen’s car for a minute to get her breath. She had to keep reminding herself that there was no hurry. There was no point in overexerting herself before the assault on the building. She loped easily and silently towards her target, avoiding the glass pyramid and following a shadowy route under a line of palm trees that she and Ewen and worked out from the bedroom window.

  Senate House had a broad entrance canopy that luckily did not extend around to that side of the building that she had selected for the climb. Other than a low apron, the windows reached the ground. She reached the foot of building and looked up. Its gloom-shrouded height nearly caused her to lose her nerve. A few final adjustments of the suction pads and she was ready. Without pausing for thought, she jumped onto the apron and pushed her left elbow and right knee firmly against the glass to trigger the suction pads’ pressure sensors.

  The solenoid motor in each pad yanked on the inner diaphragm causing the suction pad to collapse against the glass with a soft sigh. The four pads in the set were radio-linked to each so that two pads were always gripping before the motors released the grip of the other two pads. Jenine set the master control on her left elbow pad to auto and, literally, started crawling up the side of the building. Once she was climbing, the jitters in her stomach vanished.

  By counting the glazing bars that separated each pane of glass, she was able to keep a tally on her progress without the unnerving business of looking up or down. With twenty of the tough glass panels traversed, she reckoned that she had climbed two-thirds of the way up the seven floor building, and was making remarkably good progress.

  At the twenty-fifth pane she rested for a minute, allowing all four suction pads to take her weight so that she could relax. She resumed climbing. At the twenty-sixth pane she became aware that something was wrong: as she pushed her knee or elbow against the glass, it flexed too much, causing the suction pads to lose their grip slightly and slide down a little as she pushed upwards. To her horror, an elbow pad suddenly lost all suction and came away. Prompt action to shift her weight and reposition the pad quickly near the edge of the pane saved the situation, but for a terrifying moment she had been hanging by only the pad on her right knee. She realised what the problem was and cursed herself for not anticipating it before the climb. To reduce weight and loading, the building’s architect had used a thinner gauge glass on the upper floors. It was standard practice for high buildings.

  She was forced to change her climbing technique so that three suction pads were always supporting her weight before she risked extending a free arm or leg upwards. Another five panes crossed. Her ears, finely tuned to the whine of the solenoids in the pads, noted that they were sounding sluggish. There was another problem that she had overlooked. Recently she had gained a lot of weight around her hips; she was no longer skinny. The extra load was draining the batteries faster than she had calculated, also it was taking the pads longer to achieve maximum grip and therefore slowing her down which, in turn, added to the drain on the batteries. Her instincts screamed at her to go faster but the only thing to do was slow down and allow the pads to establish a good grip before easing her weight up.

  When the battery in her right knee pad finally failed, she faced the possibility that she was going to fall. This wasn’t like the pyramid where you reduced suction when you wanted to go down, and simply slithered to the bottom. The pyramid was perfectly smooth all the way down whereas this building was criss-crossed with a matrix of protruding glazing bars. The pads wouldn’t ride over them if she slipped; they would lose suction and she would fall. To add to her problems, sweat began trickling into her eyes, partially blinding her, and every muscle in her body was aching abominably.

  Another two panes. She tried to win suction from the failed pad by banging it against the glass to force the air out. It worked, but the effort of pulling it free cancelled any gain. By now she was climbing just to remain in the same spot, and the batteries in the three remaining pads were failing fast. The pain in her thigh muscles became a torture.

  To add to her mounting terror, she was suddenly blinded by a brilliant light. Someone had entered the room whose window she was clinging to. She risked a quick wipe of her eyes on her forearm and saw that the window consisted of obscure glass, perhaps a shower room or toilet, but should a passer-by look up, they could hardly fail to see her silhouetted against the light. The light went out and she felt her body sliding inexorably down the glass. Her only hope was to increase her reach. She stretched up as far as she could but the tight bodysuit under her armpits restricted her reach. In panic she ripped at the material with her nails and tore it free. The night air touched her exposed breasts, but at least she could now fully straighten her body. Her foot encountered a glazing bar. It was a precarious toehold but it was just enough for her to stretch her arm up a little further. To her joy, her fingers closed on the balcony railing of Tarant’s penthouse.

  10.

  There were comfortable loungers on the balcony with thick mattresses. It seemed sensible to Jenine to lie on one for a few minutes to recover from her harrowing ordeal. There was no point in entering the apartment while panting and still trembling.

  Gradually the fatigue drained from her and she became accustomed to the bliss of being on firm ground and out of danger of falling. Taking care to prevent her datapad swinging against the glass, she tried opening the sliding door a fraction. Thankfully it wasn’t locked. She listened. A faint snoring from within the darkened room. She eased the door open a little more and slipped inside. Her breasts gleamed palely in the gloom. She allowed her eyes to adjust to the darkness, and crept across the room to the far door, feeling with her foot before each step to avoid knocking anything over. The door led into the biggest living room that Jenine had ever seen. She felt a little pang of jealousy. To have such an amount of living space was something she dreamed about. There were several doors leading off the room. The second one she tried opened to an anteroom which in turn opened to the office in which she and Ewen had received a bawling-out from Tarant a few hours before. Emergency lights were on therefore she didn’t need the discharge lamp in her pouch.

  To her relief the seismoscope was exactly where it had been earlier. She lifted it onto the chief technician’s desk and connected it to her datapad’s data transfer cable. A few commands on the touch controls and the data transfer lights winked rapidly, indicating that the precious seismographs were being copied from the seismoscope’s memory to the datapad’s memory. There was nothing to do now but to wait.

  So, with nerves keyed to razor alertness, Jenine sat in the chief technician’s chair and waited while idly trying to pull the torn material of her bodysuit across her breasts.

  Jenine’s presence would have escaped attention were it not for an extremely embarrassing prank that had been perpetrated against the chief executive recently. A student, or students (they had never been found) had pooled their funds and visited one of the more doubtful parts of Arama to recruit a very petite but very voluptuous young lady who earned an excellent living by putting her delectable back into her work. In the early hours of Tarant’s birthday, the young lady was smuggled into the Centre and placed in a beautifully-wrapped gift box. The glittering present was awaiting Tarant in the morning when he entered his office. Also present were several members of his staff who were curious to know (a) what the present was, and (b) who it was who thought so much of the chief technician that they would think of buying him a birthday gift. The mystery was solved when Tarant tugged at the wrapping and the young lady leapt naked from the box to smother the unfortunate dignitary with very wet, experienced kisses. Holograms of the event had appeared in a students’ magazine. Since then, Tarant had resolved that he would never be caught again. He had ordered that Senate House
doors be locked at night, and had installed an infrared intruder alarm and emergency lighting in his office .

  The soft but insistent bleeping earbug woke the chief technician. He glowered at the screen beside his bed that had come on automatically. A woman clad from head to toe in a bizarre, badly ripped black bodysuit, with a black face but white breasts was sitting at his desk. His first reaction was to alert the security staff but he stayed his hand. He swung his stocky frame out of bed and pulled on a dressing gown. He would use the weapons of surprise and terror to find out for himself from the wretched creature who had hired her.

  The last seismograph was being downloaded to Jenine’s datapad when the door burst open and Tarant hurled himself into the office. The chief executive thought he had the advantage of surprise and strength but Jenine had heard him outside and launched herself sideways out of the chair. She was fast, but not fast enough.

  “Got you!” Tarant roared as fingers closed on Jenine’s bodysuit. Her foot whirled, connected with his chin and knocked him backwards. He was more surprised than hurt. The stupid girl who had jumped out of the presentation box had dissolved with terror when she had encountered the full blast of his fury. Not this one. She leapt on him before he had a chance to get up and pummelled his face and chest with a strength born of desperation. He threw her aside. Jenine jumped to her feet and looked frantically around for a weapon. She snatched up an aluminium desk lamp. It was a lightweight, flimsy weapon that wouldn’t stop a determined man of Tarant’s build. Nevertheless she brought it down on his head with enough force to smash it just as he charged.

  He rocked back and forth. His eyes blazed with recognition. “You!” he spat. “I might have guessed!”

  Jenine hit him again with the remains of the lamp. This time her blow was more scientifically-aimed and she drew blood. Tarant’s eyes glazed with the effort of remaining conscious. His legs buckled and he fell in an untidy sprawl on his back, blood oozing from a cut in his scalp.

  The stillness and silence in the office was as sudden as it was shocking. Jenine’s eyes widened with horror as the enormity of her deed sank in. Convinced that she had killed the chief technician, she checked his pulse and was overwhelmed with relief to discover that it was beating steadily, and that his breathing was regular. She raced into bedroom, found a jacket and struggled to get into it. She realised that she was still wearing the suction pads and ripped them off. Another quick look at Tarant. He was showing signs of life. Jenine’s thoughts flew ahead. It seemed likely that Tarant hadn’t called security before bursting in on her otherwise they would be here by now. There was a chance of salvaging something from the disaster if she could delay him. She dashed back into the bedroom, ripped up a sheet and bound his hands and ankles. It was a far from expert job but she did her best.

  “You’re finished!” Tarant groaned as Jenine rolled him over and lashed him to the desk pedestal. “You and Solant - finished. I shall personally see to it that-” Further policy statements from him on the matter were silenced by a gag.

  Jenine snatched up the datapad and entered the corridor. Rather than risk taking the lift down to the lobby where a security guard might be sitting at the reception desk, she got out on the first floor, and ran along the corridor towards the rear of the building. Her luck held: the freight lift was waiting with its doors open. It took her to the ground floor where she was able to release the night latch on a fire escape door and flee into the night.

  11.

  The commotion woke Calen. He entered the living-room, hair uncharacteristically awry, and watched Ewen and Jenine frantically stuffing clothes and belongings into travelbags. Ewen gave him a rundown on recent events while cramming what was left of the army ration packs into one kitbag.

  “Brained our chief-technician?” Calen queried. “Somehow I don’t think that even my dear old Uncle Trevan’s legal skills will be enough on this occasion.”

  “That’s what we thought,” said Jenine curtly. “Will you run us to the station?”

  “It would be better if you stole my car,” said Callen generously. “As soon as you start buying metro tickets, you’ll be pinpointed.”

  Ewen stopped packing. “That’s very good of you, Deg. What’s the access code to start it?”

  “Four-Nine-Six. I’ll write it down.” He scribbled on a scrap of paper. “Have you thought about where you’re going?”

  “Our first thought is to get out,” said Jenine, struggling out of the ripped bodysuit and into a two-piece maintenance suit.

  Calen looked mildly surprised at the sight of her breasts but passed no comment. He wrote down two more codes and handed the slip of paper to Ewen. “The second number is the destination code for our holiday house out at Brayle. It’ll be empty now. The car’s fully-charged. It ought to find its way there in an hour.” He gave a thin smile. “Somehow the GoD receptor circuits at the house got damaged once and have never been repaired. You could spend a few days there until you work out what you’re going to do. The third number will override the front door’s fingerprint ID panel. And there’s some money in the car.”

  Ewen was overcome with gratitude. He clasped the older student’s hand. “You’re a good friend, Deg.”

  “We don’t want to get you involved, Deg,” said Jenine anxiously.

  Calen looked alarmed. “Me? Involved? Never. You’ve stolen my car, and I heard you say that you were going to Keltro. I shall tell them everything. Your problem’s going to be your food unless you can derive some nourishment from those wretched biscuits you’re both addicted to.” His usual imperturbability nearly deserted him when he saw the plasma discharge sidearm that Ewen pushed into an open bag. “A souvenir of the front, I take it? Now that is something I definitely haven’t seen.”

  PART 6. Fugitives.

  1.

  Ewen entered the destination code on the car’s control panel. The worn motors rattled into life, and the open-top vehicle grated noisily out of its charging slot. Ewen had been in the car before; it was in better condition than it sounded although its tyres were suspect. The car permitted Ewen manual steering by means of the short tiller arm it until its sensors locked onto the induction cable beneath the road, and the auto-system took over. Jenine glanced up at the lights burning on the top floor of Senate House and willed the car to go faster.

  “Where did you get the gun?” she asked.

  “I made it up from cannibalised spares when I was at the front.” Ewen glanced into the rear seat well where the PD weapon was sticking out of the bag.

  The car entered the service road tunnel and picked up speed. The tunnel widened into the main road feeder road that linked all the domes of the Centre. A few unmanned freight pallets, little more than platforms on balloon tyres to handle a wide variety of loads, passed them heading in the opposite direction. There were no other private vehicles about. Street lights tracked their progress, switching on ahead of them and automatically extinguishing in their wake. The road broadened into four lanes as they approached the main entrance to the Centre. Normally security was minimal because no-one would enter the huge complex unless they had business there, and there were no checks on vehicles leaving. But tonight was different.

  There were lights on at the one security desk that was manned. The car swung across the lanes in response to the signals from the control cable beneath the road and rolled to an automatic standstill beside an unarmed guard sitting at his control console.

  “What’s the problem?” Ewen asked affably.

  “A check on all male students leaving the Centre, sir,” the guard replied. He was holding a medallion reader. He moved to the car but took an involuntary step back when Ewen levelled the PD weapon at him.

  “Re-activate this lane!” Ewen snapped.

  The man’s eyes bulged with shock.

  “Don’t stand gawping! Do it!”

  The guard saw Ewen’s finger tighten on the trigger and almost fell over his desk in his haste to touch his control panel. The car surged forward and
gathered speed. Ewen twisted around, took careful aim and fired a single shot. A lance of raw energy blazed from the muzzle, tearing a section out of the console’s pedestal and setting it on fire. The guard gave a yelp of fear and threw himself flat.

  “That wasn’t necessary,” Jenine yelled. “Aren’t we in enough trouble as it is without you shooting at guards and starting fires?”

  “Hopefully I’ve destroyed the comms junction box,” said Ewen calmly, pushing the weapon out of sight. “It gives us a few more minutes.” He over-rode the speed governor. The car’s radar sensors checked that there was no traffic ahead and permitted increased power.

  2.

  “And another thing, your excellency” said Tarant to his screen while a technician-doctor tended his scalp wounds. “The girl had breasts!”

  The image of Inman’s hollow-cheeked expression on the screen had remained impassive while he listened to the chief technician’s woes, but this piece of information caused him to frown.

  “Breasts?”

  “Two, sir!” said Tarant, proud of his powers of observation while under duress.

  Inman’s expression hardened. “They have to be stopped. Have you alerted the Centre police?”

  “Yes, your excellency. Solant is armed therefore I’ve ordered them to be issued with arms.” Tarant hesitated. “But a shoot-to-kill order requires your authorization, your excellency.”

  Without hesitation, Inman replied, “You have it, Tarant. It is imperative that they are hunted down and destroyed. I will alert the civil police.”