by Paul Preuss
“We’re not going far. Get in.”
Blake eased himself into the driver’s seat, hunched forward because of the heat-sink unit between his shoulder blades, intensely aware of the gun muzzles pointed at his neck from the back seat. Baldy slid in beside him. Blake eased off the clutch; the motors whirred and engaged and the car slithered over the muddy track. When he reached the paved country road, Blake turned in the direction of the lodge’s main drive.
They drove slowly and silently, until Blake asked, “How did you happen to get to my car ahead of me?”
“Not something you need to know.”
“Okay, but are you sure you want me to drive you all the way back to the lodge in this thing?”
“Just drive.”
Blake glanced at the pale blue digital display on his left wrist. “I have to get out for a minute. Just for a minute.”
Baldy smirked at him. “It will have to wait.”
“It won’t wait.”
A muzzle pressed Blake’s neck, and an intimate whisper sounded close to his ear. “We don’t care if you fill up your whole body-baggie,” said the boy behind him. “You’re not getting out of this vehicle until we tell you to.”
Blake shrugged and drove on, down the tree-crowded road, his headlights illuminating bare tree trunks like ghosts in the darkness.
The little electric car was slowing for the lodge’s double steel gate when Blake’s heat sink went critical. The unit started to whistle.
“What the hell’s that?”
“I need to get out of the car right now,” Blake said, groping for the door handle.
“Watch it!” yelled the boy in the back seat. “Hands on the wheel.”
In seconds the whistle was a shriek.
“Let him out,” said the girl in the back. “Let me out too.”
Too late. A high-pressure column of blue flame erupted from the unit between Blake’s shoulders; from the back it must have seemed that his head was a volcano. The plastic upholstery burst into flame, releasing acrid black fumes. A hole opened in the thin sheet metal roof of the car.
Spouting a spectacular plume of flame, Blake stumbled and staggered out of the car, a man burning alive. His terrified captors scrambled out of the vehicle behind him, staring at him in horror.
Reeling from the awful heat, dying before their eyes, Blake stumbled back toward the smoking vehicle and collapsed into the driver’s seat. With a last agonized spasm, an unconscious reflex of escape, he threw the pots into reverse high. The burning car jerked away and spun around, throwing flaming bits across the wet roadway, careening crazily off into the forest.
But somehow the car stayed on the road. Blake hadn’t watched all those action-adventure holoviddies, with stuntmen lunging around cloaked in flame, without getting the technique down pat.
9
Blake tugged the knot of his silk tie and smoothed it to lie flat against his white cotton shirt. He snugged his suit jacket neatly around his shoulders and, a moment later, rose as the magneplane slowed for the Brooklyn Bridge station. Someone looking closely might have noticed the red welt across the back of his neck, but a quick glance around reassured him that no one was watching.
He stepped off the plane, briefcase in hand, and briskly marched to the escalator. Minutes later he was on his way back uptown on a restored antique subway train. A century ago it would have been rush hour, but the bright, clean subways were never crowded these days. He got off at a midtown station. As he emerged from underground, the rising sun was touching the tops of the glittering towers around him with pale yellow light.
The physical exhilaration of the attack and narrow escape had drained away, and he experienced a moment’s dejection. He wasn’t even sure who or what he’d been fighting—or why, now that Ellen had rejected him, except for some vague sense of his own injured pride. Simple fatigue is a great discourager of pride. With self-hypnotic effort, he regained at least a temporary feeling of confidence. He was on the way to another job interview, and this was for a job he wanted.
The offices of the Vox Populi Institute occupied a three-story brick building in the east 40s, within walking distance of the Council of Worlds complex on the East River. Plain as it was, the building was worth a fortune.
Inside, the decor was even plainer—steel desks, steel chairs, steel filing cabinets, crumbling bulletin boards, crumbling paint (institutional green to shoulder height, institutional cream above), and aggressively plain and surly office help, one of whom finally agreed to show Blake the general direction of Arista Plowman’s office. Dexter was not in today.
Arista, it was said, was less tolerant of human foibles than Dexter—theirs was a prickly partnership—she being as far out on one end of the political spectrum as he was on the other. Arista championed humanity at large, Dexter championed the individual human with an actionable grudge. Their differences hardly made a difference to anyone but them, since Dexter’s favored weapon in defense of the individual was the class-action suit, and Arista’s tactic in defense of the People was to take up the cause of a single, symbolic Wronged Innocent.
She glanced up when Blake appeared at her door and knew instantly she was not dealing with a Wronged Innocent. She growled something like “siddown” and made a pretense of studying his resume.
Arista was a bony woman with heavy black brows and grayish black hair that was contracted into tight waves against her long skull. Her severe dress, black with white polka-dots, hung askew from her wide shoulders, and the way she leaned her elbows on her desk top and perched her skinny bottom on the edge of her chair conveyed her desire to be somewhere else. She shoved the resume to one side of her desk as if it had offended her. “You worked for Sotheby’s, Redfield? An auction house?”
“Not on staff. They frequently retained me as a consultant.”
Her mouth twisted sourly at the sound of his Brit-tainted accent. Her own accent was good American, pure Bronx—even though she’d been born and raised in Westchester County. “But you were an art dealer.” The emphasis alone neatly conveyed her opinion of those who sold things, especially expensive, decorative, useless things.
“In a manner of speaking. Rare books and manuscripts, actually.”
“What makes you think you have anything to offer us? We’re not here to serve the whims of the rich.”
He indicated the scrap of fax she’d brushed aside, his resume. “Extensive research experience.”
“Well, we have no shortage of researchers in this office.” She started to rise, intending to terminate the interview after thirty seconds.
“Also the work I’ve already done on a case of utmost interest to your Institute.”
“Redfield… Mister Redfield…” She was at the office door now, opening it and holding it open.
He remained sitting. “Powerful agencies of the Council of Worlds have been infiltrated by a pseudo-religious cult, which seeks to take over world government in the name of … of an alien deity.”
“A what?”
“Yes, it’s crazy. These people believe in an alien deity. I managed to join an arm of that cult. I can recognize several of its members and at least one of its leaders. Because of what I know, several attempts have been made on my life, the most recent only last week.”
Arista let the door swing closed, but she remained standing. “What sort of cult did you say? UFO nuts?”
Perhaps he’d been lucky after all. Arista Plowman’s fascination with conspiracy had engaged her attention. Her brother might have just laughed and referred him to the police.
“They call themselves the prophetae of the Free Spirit, but they have other names and cover organizations. I penetrated a branch working out of Paris and helped put it out of business”—after all, no reason for modesty—“They worship a being they call the Pancreator, an alien creature of some kind who is supposed to return to Earth to grant the enlightened—meaning themselves—eternal life, and carry them off to some sort of Paradise. Or perhaps establish Paradise righ
t here on Earth.”
“I’m not vulnerable to every conspiracy theory that comes down the pike, Redfield.”
Oh, I think perhaps you are, he thought happily, keeping a straight face. “I can document everything I’m telling you.”
“Well, but what possible interest do you suppose Vox Populi might have in this bunch?”
“The prophetae are crazy, but they are numerous and extremely influential. Less than ten years ago, members of the Free Spirit started the Multiple Intelligence program inside North America’s Security Agency. That program ceased operations—and its leaders disappeared—when the subject of one of their illegal experiments escaped their control. But not before they had murdered a couple of dozen people. Burned them to death in a sanatorium fire.”
“Ten years ago, though. A dead issue by now, unfortunately.”
“Less than a month ago, the Space Board discovered an interplanetary freighter, the Doradus, which had been converted to a kind of pirate ship. The chief of one of the largest corporations on Mars was implicated. Jack Noble. He’s disappeared.”
“I heard about that. Something to do with the Martian plaque.”
“I was there. I’ll give you whatever details you want.” Blake leaned back in his chair and looked up at her as she thoughtfully returned to her desk. “Doctor Plowman, you’re supposed to be in the business of getting government back into the hands of the governed—after people like my father, if I may speak off the record, helped take it away from them. This is exactly the kind of group I should think you’d want to put out of business.”
“Your father is a member of this Free Spirit?”
“I assure you he is not.” He couldn’t tell whether the prospect appalled her or further whetted her appetite. “He is just a well-meaning … aristocrat.”
Arista Plowman resumed her seat behind the steel desk. “Your resume doesn’t say anything about the things you’ve just described to me, Redfield.”
“I’m a marked man, Doctor Plowman.”
“So with you here, we could be a target.”
“You’ve been a target for so long that your defenses are excellent. I made sure of that before I came here.”
She smiled thinly. “Are you safe in your own home?”
“My parents have had so much money for so long that their defenses are almost on a par with yours.”
“Why didn’t you go to the Space Board in the first place?”
Blake’s smile was grim. “Why do you think?”
“Are you implying that the Board of Space Control itself…?”
“Exactly.”
Her eyes glazed over with the possibilities, and her feral smile made him feel sure he had a job offer. But it wasn’t to be quite that easy. Long experience had taught Arista Plowman caution.
“Interesting, Redfield, very interesting. I’ll talk to my brother. He’ll want to meet you in person. Meanwhile, don’t call us. We’ll call you…”
Outside, Blake realized that the interview—not to mention the night’s events—had left him exhausted. Exhaustion is hard on the reflexes. When a tall, emaciated young man crossed the street in front of him and darted into the nearest infobox, throwing a hurried glance over his shoulder, Blake thought nothing of it. Indeed, he hardly noticed, until he’d come within a few meters and the man suddenly wheeled and raised his arm.
Blake spun on his heel, in that instant finally recognizing the man, and threw himself backward toward the curb.
The bullet blew a crater in a marble slab on the side of the building, just about where Blake’s head had been. More bullets—real metal bullets, fired with zeal and accuracy that, if less than perfect, was too great for even a split second’s complacency on the part of the target—following Blake’s breathless roll and scramble along the gutter until he reached the shelter of a parked robotaxi. People were screaming and running—this sort of thing never happened in Manhattan—and in seconds the block was deserted.
Blake swore at himself for not spotting his assailant sooner, for he knew him quite well. Leo—former wimp—one of his buddies from the Athanasian Society. Blake wished he had a gun. He didn’t carry one, not just because they were strictly illegal in England, where he’d resided for the last two years, and not because he had any qualms about defending himself, but because he’d looked at the statistics and calculated the odds and figured he had a better chance of staying alive without one.
Deliberate assassination wasn’t included in the odds. He reached up to open the front door of the cab. He slipped inside, keeping his head low, and shoved his I.D. sliver into the meter.
“Where to, Mac?” the cab asked, in a good imitation of early 20th-century New Yorkese.
Blake stuck his head under the dash and spent a few seconds fiddling with the circuitry. Still crouched on the floor, he said, “Is there a skinny long-haired guy in the infobooth on the next corner, to your left?”
“He just left the infobooth. Now he’s in the doorway this side of it. Looks like he’s thinking about coming this way.”
“Run into him,” Blake said.
“You puttin’ me on?”
“There’s a twenty in it for you.”
“Twenty what?”
“Twenty thousand bucks. You don’t believe me, take the credit off the sliver now.”
“Yeah, well … look, Mac, I don’t do stuff like…”
Blake poked savagely at the circuitry.
“Yo,” said the taxi, and leaped forward, onto the sidewalk. Bullets splintered the windshield of the Checker—then a grinding jolt threw Blake hard against the firewall.
He kicked the door open and rolled out onto the sidewalk. He vaulted onto the big square trunk of the Checker and threw himself across the cab roof like a runner diving for home plate.
The taxi hadn’t touched Leo, but it had him trapped in the recessed doorway with only millimeters to spare. Leo was frantically trying to lift his big feet past the mangled bumper when Blake flew over the roof, into his face, knocking the big nickel-plated .45 revolver sideways and out of his hand. Leo’s head crashed backward into the building’s art deco stainless steel door, and when he tried to jerk away from Blake’s hand around his throat he found that Blake’s other hand held a black knife, poised rigidly upright under the angle of his jaw.
“Rather have you alive, Leo,” Blake gasped. “So tell me.”
Leo said nothing, but his round terrified eyes said he’d rather stay alive too—although Blake got the impression he’d been ordered to die instead of letting himself be captured.
The flutter of helicopter rotors sounded high above the urban canyon, and the scream of sirens converged at street level.
“Tell me why, Leo, and I’ll let you run. If the cops get you, the prophetae won’t let you live even one night in jail.”
“You know. You’re a Salamander,” Leo croaked.
“What the hell’s a salamander?”
“Let me go,” he croaked. “I won’t come back, I promise.”
“Last chance—what’s a salamander?”
“Like you, Guy. Initiates once—now you’re traitors. The ones who know you best … we’re sworn to kill you.”
“You bombed my place in London?”
“Not me. Bruni.”
“Yeah, she always had more guts.”
“You didn’t even hide, Guy. If you’re gonna let me go, please do it now.”
“My name’s Blake. Might as well get it straight.” He released his grip on Leo’s throat, but held the knife ready. “Cabbie, back up a little,” he yelled. “Go slow.”
As soon as the Checker had backed far enough away from the doorway, Leo bolted. Blake slipped the knife into its sheath at the small of his back and slid down from the cab’s hood. “We need a story,” he said, sticking his head in the taxi’s window.
“It’ll cost you more than twenty thou,” the taxi said sourly.
“Charge what you think is fair.”
“Okay, Mac. What do you want m
e to say?”
Blake reached into the taxi and retrieved the briefcase he’d dropped on the floor. “The guy tried to rob me. You came to my rescue—that’s when he shot at you. You almost had him trapped, but he got away.”
“What about all the extra dough on my meter?”
“The truth—I let you charge off my sliver as a reward for saving me. Also to patch your dents.”
“Sure, Mac. Think they’ll buy it?”
“You’re programmed for gab, aren’t you?”
“Hey! Am I a Manhattan cabbie, or what?”
The first police car, a sleek powder blue hydro—no quaint antiques here—whistled to a halt as the police chopper settled in to hover overhead. Blake watched the cops approach, faceplates down, shotguns leveled. At this rate, who knew which side they were on?
After almost two hours’ interrogation, the police let Blake go. He got off the subway in Tribeca and walked toward his parents’ home, past columns of steam issuing from manhole covers, down deserted asphalt streets where the robotaxis prowled like jungle beasts. Manhattan had become a showplace in this century, an exclusive enclave of the wealthy, and here and there the atmosphere of old New York was maintained for amusement’s sake.
Things were busier at the waterfront entrance to his parents’ building. Blake nodded at the guard captain as he punched the code into the lock of the private elevator to the penthouse. The other guards were out of public view.
Avoiding his mother—his father was on business in Tokyo, business which required his physical presence—Blake went straight to his room.
He stripped off his torn jacket and soiled shirt and tie and gingerly applied Healfast salve to his blistered neck. The growth factors went to work immediately. By afternoon there would be little evidence of his second-degree burns.
Comfortably dressed in baggy pants and a blousy, Russian-peasant-style shirt, he took his scarred briefcase into his father’s office and emptied its contents across the top of the desk—the loot from his raid on Granite Lodge.
