Strings

by Dave Duncan

  The circular hallway was much smaller up near the top. There were numbered doors. Conscious of the wild beating of her heart, of a strange warmth that had started in her loins and was raging through her like a forest fire, she walked around until she found the one that felt right.

  It was not locked.

  The light was off and he was asleep.

  But even in the dark, she knew. Her heart was trying to beat its way right out of her chest. She shivered with desire like a fever. She was reaching for her zip even as she closed the door, and she crossed the room without a stumble, undressing as she went.

  Most women would hesitate to climb naked into a strange bed, but she did not. She knew who was breathing there. She was almost sobbing with happiness and excitement and longing.

  He was important! He was, he was!

  19

  Cainsville, April 10

  HUBBARD CEDRIC D. had had a rotten day. Bored, angry, and frustrated in everything he tried, he had finally decided to catch up on his sleep. He had gone to bed early. Perhaps, therefore, he had been sleeping lightly. But he had certainly been dreaming of Alya—dreaming she was in his arms and kissing him. And suddenly it was no longer a dream. It was really Alya—and this time he was on top again and right away he—oh glory!

  “You’re quite sure you’re not a dream?” Cedric mumbled a few minutes later.

  “Do I feel like a dream?”

  “You feel marvelous. Soft and warm. Dreamy.”

  “Would a dream be weeping all over you like this?”

  “Maybe a wet dream. Ouch!”

  Now he knew. Dreams did not pinch.

  She had been a dream, though. Now she wasn’t. He had not been really awake, but he had been very ready, because he had been dreaming of her. He hoped he had not been too rough—those were real tears on his chest. He had been dreaming, and she had suddenly been there…He wondered if maybe he had established some sort of world record. He knew that a man was supposed to take more time than that and be more considerate. He just had not been properly awake. He would be more careful in future. But, oh, what a way to waken!

  “I didn’t hurt you?”

  “For the third time, darling: no, you did not hurt me. I wish it was always so good. You hear me. I wasn’t faking that, I swear.”

  Wow! “You weren’t?” He sighed and adjusted his hands slightly. “I was ready.”

  “So was I. Now, tell me.” The question seemed to be addressed to his left nipple.

  “Tell you what?”

  “How come you’re not trapped on Nile?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Ow!”

  “You will tell me, or you will suffer a grievous mutilation.”

  “Let go—no, don’t,” he added hastily. “Just don’t squeeze. All right, it was a fake, a fraud. There was no broken string. All they need do, Abe says, is twiddle the knobs a bit and the window goes unstable, as though the string’s about to snap.”

  “I saw you and Abel heading along the corridor. I saw another man.”

  He grunted. “Did you, now? I wonder how many others did.” He shivered at the memories. “It’s not a very nice story.”

  “I want to hear it, anyway.”

  “Well, Abe warned me even before the press arrived. ‘If I give you a signal,’ he said, ‘like this, then do as I say, and no arguing!’ I said fine. Funny, you know I trust him? I trust you, of course, but not anyone else. Not in Cainsville.”

  “Wise, I think.”

  He tried to kiss her, and she told him to finish the story first. He wondered how short he could make it.

  “I’ll be quick, then! But when Abel stops smartypantsing, he’s all right…So we were about halfway to target and suddenly Devlin began cursing, and turned us around and started back toward Contact. The radar was showing instability. Did you know that a window shows up on radar? I didn’t. But I could see over Pandora’s head—the echo had started to, well, sort of wriggle. Like a shimmy, you know? We began bouncing pretty bad.”

  “I saw.”

  At the time Cedric had not realized he was being watched. He should have done. Quite likely he was being watched right now, by infrared maybe, lying in bed with a beautiful girl’s head on his chest and torrents of her hair spread all over his belly. Let them weep their eyes out!

  “Go on!”

  “Mm?” There were so many better things to do with lips than talk…“Then Abel gave me a tap and jerked his head. So we unstrapped ourselves and headed back to the rear. It was a pretty wild trip, and he wouldn’t say why.”

  “And then the other man fell out of the door.”

  “Yeah. He had nothing on. He must have been lying on the bunk and just bounced off. He was out cold by the time I saw him.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Abe told me Wilkins something.” Cedric had wanted to go and try to help, but Baker Abel had insisted that it was too risky, he would just get himself hurt. So they had gone on into the lab module at the back.

  “It was bouncing even worse, but there was another radar there, and Abe turned it on and we strapped ourselves into a couple of operator chairs and watched.”

  She squirmed. “And you saw the window close?”

  “Well, Abe was grinning and telling me not to worry—but it was a nasty feeling. And everything happened at once. We got to Contact—there was a lot of blue light coming down, showing up all the jungle in creepy colors—and the ramp had gone. And then the window closed. And Abe pulled a switch, and that disconnected us.”

  She lifted her head, as though trying to see him in the dark. “Disconnected who?”

  “The lab cab. The third module of the skiv. He shut the doors between and unhooked us from the rest of the skiv. Then the window opened again and a crane reached down and lifted us back up, but it was into David Thompson Dome, you see. They’d faked the broken string in de Soto Dome, with all those reporters watching, and then opened up the same string from Thompson. By the time everyone realized what had happened, we were back already.”

  “But Devlin?”

  That was the bad bit. Cedric wished he did not have to tell her, because he was feeling guilty and dirty, although there had been nothing at all he could have done. In fact he had begged Fish to open the window again and rescue the others.

  “They’re still there—him and Eccles Pandora and the Wilkins man, if he’s alive. It was only me and Abel came back, the rear cab.”

  He felt her shudder in his arms. “No! Oh, Cedric!”

  “Yes. Bad.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know. They wouldn’t say.”

  There had been about six people waiting when Cedric and Baker Abel had come out of decon. Fish had been in charge, but Bagshaw Barney had been there, grinning like a big ape, and a ranger called O’Brien, and some others Cedric had not recognized. They had cracked a few jokes, and there had been a smell of satisfaction around, but the mood had mostly been grim—as it damned well should have been. That planet was real hell.

  “Fish said something about letting them meditate on their sins for a few days. Then he went away. I did ask, darling. Even for Eccles. I begged!”

  Worst of all had been something Bagshaw had said: “You ought to be feeling good, Sprout. Your Glenda’s been avenged. That Eccles woman deserves what she’s got.”

  He told Alya as well as he could, thinking he was not doing it very well.

  “I don’t feel that way at all!” he said. “I don’t know why. It won’t bring Glenda back, I guess, and I expect Glenda had a lot more peaceful death than that. I don’t feel good about it.”

  “Not your fault,” she said. “They used you. You didn’t know.”

  That helped a little. But he had agreed to appear on Pandora’s special because Bagshaw had said he could avenge Glenda. He had, and now he wished he hadn’t.

  “Fish said they’d be rescued at the next window?” Alya asked.

  “Not exactly.” Fish had just been shutting him up,
giving him time to get used to the idea. Of course, Eccles was not going to be brought back! What could they say to her? “Oops, sorry over that?” The Institute could never admit what it had done. There could never be a rescue. If he had worked that out, then Alya certainly would. She was a lot smarter than he was.

  “But why? Why leave them there?”

  “Well, the Wilkins man was the spy who sold the coin to Eccles. So Fish said. But I was told not to worry about him. He was almost brain dead anyway.”

  He felt her shudder again, harder. “How brain dead? What did they do to him to make him brain dead?”

  “They did nothing. So Fish says. He was a plugin freak, and he’d got a heap of credit for the coin. He took an OD. Fish says if he ever does wake up, he’ll be a raving lunatic from the pain, because of the way it burns the nerve ends.” Cedric hoped he believed that.

  “And Devlin?”

  None of them had been willing to talk about Devlin, Cedric said.

  “He was after your grandmother’s job.”

  Cedric knew a lot more about his grandmother than he had a few days earlier, but even so…“Surely she wouldn’t kill a man just because of that?”

  “God, I hope not!” Alya said.

  “And why Eccles Pandora, anyway? There must be hundreds of people in the world with clone organs in them, or stored in the icebox.”

  “I don’t know, dearest,” she said. “But—I think you’re right. There must be more than that to Pandora. She was deliberately snared. So was Devlin.”

  Snared by him, by Hubbard Cedric Dickson. For a moment he lay in silence, softly kneading the marvelous woman beside him. Then it was his turn to shiver. “The Judas cow!” he said. “The one that leads the herds to slaughter!”

  She punched him. “Stop that! You didn’t know! And there’s obviously a lot we don’t know yet. It’s hard to see how they could have organized this without Devlin’s help. He was a sleazy type, but he wasn’t dumb. Could he had been sneaked back the same way you were, leaving just Pandora?”

  Cedric shrugged. “I suppose.” Fish and Bagshaw had been very uncommunicative about Devlin.

  “After all,” Alya said, “if he did suspect, then he would have made certain he had a return ticket. Devlin looked after his own skin. He was no kamikaze fanatic dispensing justice like—”

  “Arrh!” Cedric bellowed. He spasmed as if he had been electrocuted, hurling Alya off him. Terror! Pain! He howled and curled up and clamped his hands over his ears to stop the screaming—a child’s voice screaming: I won’t! I won’t!

  The voice in his head dwindled away into whimpers and then silence. Someone—Alya—had spoken the lights on and was pulling his hands away from his ears. At least his legs had stopped thrashing. She was trying to hold and soothe him—not too easy with him wrapped up in a ball like that—and she was cooing like a mother to a baby: “It’s all right…you’re quite safe…I’m here…nothing to be afraid of…” Then she went back to the beginning again. How many times had she repeated that refrain?

  He straightened out, realizing that he was soaked in sweat and yet his teeth were chattering with cold.

  She sighed with relief, got an arm around him properly, and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Cedric? Darling?”

  “I’m all right, I think.” But he wasn’t. He had a horrible feeling he might be going to weep—what would she think of him then? He burrowed down, and she clasped his head to her breast and held him. Long silence…heart thudding…shakes getting better…

  “What startled you?” she asked softly.

  He stuttered—he did not know. Idiot! Ninny!

  “I can’t remember.” He uncurled himself again. “I must be going crazy!”

  “No. No, you’re not that.” But she looked worried. “Just a reaction to the hard day, I think—lots of hard days. Nobody’s indestructible, Cedric. But don’t let it bother you.” She grinned and placed a very careful kiss on his throbbing nose. “Let’s think about tomorrow! Abel’s back, so he’ll still be leading the Tiber expedition?”

  “I guess so.”

  “He has to! And you, too—you’ve got to disappear, too! You’re an unperson, darling!” She must have seen his doubts. “No?”

  Bagshaw had turned strangely shy when Cedric had asked about Tiber—not his usual self at all.

  “I hope so,” Cedric said. “Oh, I do hope so!”

  She sighed and squirmed against him sensuously. “Lights off!” The room went black, leaving just Alya’s faint, fast-fading afterimage. “Now forget all that!” she said. “Because I love you. I love you madly and I’ve got some wonderfully decadent things I am going to do to you.”

  But he still felt shaky from that weird fit he’d had, and memories of the skiv, and Fish’s expression when—“I’m not sure I’m in the mood anymore,” he said. “But I love you.”

  “You’ll come around,” she said, chewing his ear. “Depravity is lovely—try a little foreplay and see what happens.”

  How little a woman had to do to take a man’s mind off his troubles! “Sandpaper? I’d better go and shave.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “How about your bruises?”

  “Forget them. Forget everything. Just start.”

  His fires had begun to glow already. “You’re not sleepy?”

  “I’ve been drinking liters of coffee. I’m going to keep you busy till noon, and anything you’ve ever dreamed of—just ask! So come on, lover—no holds barred. Do your damnedest.”

  He felt excitement and desire explode inside him. “Sign this release then,” he muttered hoarsely, and kissed her.

  Any day that had started that well could not improve as it went along. Cedric was wakened by a kiss. A gray dawn showed in the skylight, and Alya was already dressed. He felt bad about what he saw then—her lip was swollen and her cheeks scraped. He had some scratches and nibble marks here and there himself. Some of their lovemaking had been gentle and soft, some wild and jungley, but all of it had been sweet beyond longing.

  She slid away before he could grab her. “Clean up and join me for breakfast in half an hour.”

  “Wait!” he said. “I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “I’m in jail. A prisoner.”

  He thought he saw fear then, swiftly covered by anger. “How can you be a prisoner?”

  “You may be one, too!” He sat up and looked around for clothes. “We’re at the top of the dome. The only way out is down the spiralator, and if I get on it, it reverses.”

  Bagshaw had explained very patiently. “Step on there,” he had said, “and System will know. It’ll reverse the motion and run it as fast as necessary to keep you where you are. Don’t even experiment, because anyone else using it may get hurt.”

  Wondering why getting dressed in front of Alya somehow seemed more embarrassing than just being nude, Cedric pulled on pants while telling her what Bagshaw had said. There were at least three cameras trained on the spiralator. Cedric had tried going near it, and that had made the lights flicker. The cameras were tamperproof. He had no tools.

  Alya showed her teeth. “We’ll see about this! I’ll talk to your grandmother. Or O’Brien. Or somebody. I’ll come right back, or I’ll call you.”

  “Maybe not. I can’t call out. I don’t know if anyone can call in.”

  “I’ll tell them that I’m not going without—” She stopped suddenly. “You do want to come with me, darling?”

  How could she doubt? He was vertical and decently clad by then, so he clasped her tightly to him. “Of course I do. I’ll follow you anywhere. Pick a world, any world.”

  It took some time to say goodbye after that. He insisted that she go to Tiber without him if necessary and let him find his own way there. She was determined not to go without him. They almost ended up back in bed again, to settle the argument properly, but obviously they had to discover whether Alya was a prisoner also. Apparently not—Cedric watched from a safe distance as the spiralator
bore her swiftly down and out of sight. She had not been supposed to find him; she might not be allowed near him again. They had both known that. He sighed and wandered around the little hallway to the food machine. He punched for orange juice. He was chewing a breakfast of nut bars when he heard the com bell in his room and went in to see.

  In the holo, Bagshaw Barney was stripping off his uniform. His face had a shocked, sleepless look to it.

  “Just checking on you, Sprout. Need anything?”

  “Liberty. Explanations. I’d like to be treated with a little consideration for my feelings once in a while.”

  “So would we all, son. So would we all.”

  “How long am I going to be here?”

  Bagshaw’s face was smudged and haggard, but it bore no sign of needing to be shaved. He stepped out of his pants and from somewhere produced a suit of vast purple pyjamas. “Lad, I don’t know. But I think just till tonight. I know it’s rough. I don’t like it, but I gotta obey orders.”

  “Do you really? That makes you feel all right?”

  “Aw…” The big man gave him a look of pure exasperation. He started to speak, and it became a cavernous yawn. “Look, I’m bushed. I’m just going to bed. I’ve hardly slept in a week. You think I’d do this if I didn’t feel it was important? There’s a lot more folks than you involved in this—half of the world, seems like. I think you’ll be out tonight, for better or for worse, but I’m not certain. And you’re happier there than on Nile.”

  “For sure,” Cedric said. “I expect it’s quick.”

  Bagshaw took another look at him. “What is?”

  “‘Better or worse,’ you said. The worse part would be handing me over to Hastings Willoughby, wouldn’t it? Or is that the better part?”

  The bull sighed heavily. “Sprout, what in hell are you getting at?”

  “You know! He said he hadn’t known he had a grandson, because he never did. I’m his clone. He lost most of his own legs years ago, and now the replacements are ready. Custom-made legs.”