Liege-Killer

by Christopher Hinz

  Jerem twisted violently, forcing Paula to let go of his wrist. “Just stay with me,” she warned.

  The Guardian in front of the car wore a gold lieutenant’s bar on his cap. He appeared to be their leader. With Jerem at her side, Paula approached him.

  He looked resplendent in his snug black-and-gold uniform. Wavy blond hair edged out from beneath the dark cap. He wore the armpatch insignia of the Lamalan contingent. A high-powered thruster hung from his belt.

  She stopped a pace away. He nodded to her. “Ma’am, we’ve been assigned to watch your house just in case there’s any trouble. We were observing from the woods—we saw your taxi go by. We thought we’d check in, let you know that everything’s all right.”

  Paula smiled. “Thank you.” She hesitated. Outside, in the daylight, in the company of three Guardians, her fear that someone was in the gallery seemed silly, almost childish. But since they were here ...

  “Officer, I believe someone may have broken into my gallery while I was away. Could you and your men take a look?”

  The Guardian who stood on the other side of the car turned to her. He was a shorter man, wearing wraparound sunglasses. His uniform fit poorly.

  Paula tensed.

  The first officer smiled. “Ma’am, we’d be glad to check things over for you.”

  The shorter man removed his sunglasses and threw them into the front seat of the cruiser. Paula’s gaze was drawn toward the car, to the third officer, seated behind the wheel. He was not moving.

  The first officer chuckled. “Don’t worry about him, ma’am. He’s dead.”

  For a moment, her mind refused to accept the words. A stream of mad thoughts wafted through her—she noticed a strip of the low decorative fence that Jerem had peeled off with a knife, years ago. She had spanked him for it. I should have had the fence repaired. The house would be worth more.

  She threw her arm around Jerem and pulled him to her. Senseless thoughts dissolved; awareness leaped back to the present. Her body shook. She knew. She wanted to scream. She could not.

  The tall Guardian, smiling madly, brought his hand up to his face. He sneezed.

  The shorter one grinned. “My. Allergies!”

  The scream came. She opened her mouth to release it. Too late. The taller one moved with blinding speed. His hand clamped across her mouth.

  No! She kicked, aiming for his crotch. His crescent web ignited; her foot bounced away as if it had struck a layer of thick rubber. She lost her balance. The tall Guardian, his hand still plastered across her mouth, caught her, spun her, shoved her along the path toward the house.

  She grabbed for the arm, clawed at the floppy sleeve, tried to pull his hand from her mouth. Abruptly, he let her go.

  He said, “Think of your son, Ms. Marth.”

  She uttered a sharp cry. The shorter man had a hold of Jerem. His right arm encircled her son’s neck. The arm was squeezing. Jerem’s eyes bugged open as he struggled for air.

  The taller one laughed. His smile grew to full intensity, burning across his cheeks, twisting his mouth, distorting the shape of his face as if he were a machine being fed power far beyond rated amperage.

  His voice remained calm. “Scream, Ms. Marth, and I’ll rip your son’s head off.”

  Paula threw her hands over her mouth. Please don’t hurt him! Please don’t hurt my son!

  “Please!” she begged.

  “Pretty word,” snapped the shorter one. He tightened his grip on Jerem’s neck. Her son’s legs kicked wildly.

  She whispered, “Please let him go! Please don’t hurt him! Please!”

  “Will you be good, Ms. Marth?” asked Smiler.

  Tears burned at her cheeks. She nodded her head.

  Sad-eyes eased his viselike grip. Jerem sank against the tway’s body, heaving as he sucked in air.

  “My,” said Smiler. “See how easy things go when you cooperate?”

  She cried, “Please! Please...”

  “Now, Ms. Marth, no hysterics. If you listen carefully and do as I say...”

  “ ... I’ll let you live,” finished Sad-eyes.

  She gasped. “Anything!”

  The smile receded until only a faint glow of satisfaction remained. “I suggest we go inside.” He held out his arm. “After you, Ms. Marth.”

  She stumbled up the path, fighting tears, fighting the panic. I’ve got to do something! We’ve got to get away!

  “I’m pleased to find you home today, Ms. Marth. Truly!” Smiler sighed with mock exasperation. “I only came here this afternoon to plant my little bugs. I really thought I’d have to wait days, even weeks, before you came back. But here you are!”

  “Thrills!” said Sad-eyes. “I’m so lucky.”

  Mind racing, she stepped onto the porch, led them into the house, into the hallway. I’m alive. My son’s alive. I must not give in. I will not!

  Smiler closed the front door. He seemed to study the dark paneling in the hallway for a moment. Then he chuckled. “I’ve been watching your house from the woods for the past few hours, watching to make sure that no one had set any traps.”

  “Not that it would do any good.”

  “For as most people should know by now...”

  “Jeek be nimble...”

  “Jeek be quick...”

  “In other words...”

  “I’m hard to catch.”

  Smiler laughed. “Anyway, there I am, standing in the woods, when your taxi goes cruising past...”

  “Goodness! Things sometimes have a way of working out far beyond your expectations.”

  Jerem looked up at Paula with an imploring look, a little-boy expression he had not risked in years. Mommy! Do something! Make it better!

  She wanted to reach out for him and hug him and tell him it was going to be all right but she couldn’t because it wasn’t all right and she didn’t know how to make it better.

  No matter what she said or did, she knew that this monster was going to kill them.

  No! I must not give in!

  She clenched her fists and suddenly anger overcame her and she couldn’t hold it back.

  “What do you want with us?” she demanded.

  The tways laughed, a horrid cackle, ebbing and flowing between them, out of control, like some endless wave ricocheting between two shore points.

  Smiler said, “You’re going to be the bait, Ms. Marth. You’re going to help us catch a man.”

  Sad-eyes hissed, “A man we’re desperate to meet!”

  “How desperate?” asked a third voice.

  Everything became a blur of motion. Smiler yanked her off the floor, tucked her under his arm, raced down the hallway, propelling her headfirst in front of him, toward the gallery, where the third voice had come from. She had a sense of incredible speed, as if the hallway had become a tunnel and she a missile, rocketing toward the open door.

  She glimpsed a man moving inside the gallery, and then Smiler had them through the portal, into the room. Jerem came flying in behind them, carried by the other tway.

  And then the ride was over and she was on her feet again, in front of Smiler, her body cushioned against his front crescent, his web humming in her ears, his right arm wrapped tightly around her neck, fist clutching the Cohe, thin needle protruding.

  Ten feet away, Sad-eyes held Jerem in a similar fashion. Both tways had drawn their thrusters.

  On the opposite side of the twenty-five-foot-square gallery, beside a dais displaying a miniature turret lathe, stood Gillian. Paula studied him, hoping against hope.

  Tall, maroon jacket, dark pants, dark brown hair cropped short, piercing gray eyes—calm eyes—trained on the empty space between Smiler and Sad-eyes, his left elbow cocked, forearm aimed upward, hand clutching a thruster pointed at the ceiling, Cohe needle peeking from his right fist.

  Gillian said, “Hello, Reemul.”

  Smiler’s arm tightened across Paula’s neck. “My! Oh, thrills! You’re a clever one!”

  “Oh, yes!” screeched Sad-eyes
. “So clever!” The tway’s head gyrated. His eyes panned across the white pine walls of the gallery, then up to the darker ceiling timbers, where the brass lanterns hung, spotlighting the exhibits.

  Gillian smiled. “No traps, Jeek. No one waiting above us, no targeting robots, no bombs. No one else even knows I’m here.”

  Gillian thought, Almost perfect—a plan unfolding with Ash Ock clarity, structured down to the minutest detail.

  He had known, in the Council chambers, that Codrus would react to his lie about having strong feelings about Paula Marth. He knew Reemul would be ordered to trap Gillian by using the Marths as bait. He knew the Jeek would come here.

  “You’re slipping, Reemul. You’re becoming predictable.”

  The shorter tway, holding Jerem, stuck out his tongue and licked at the air.

  Almost perfect. Only one slight flaw. The boy and his mother are not supposed to be here.

  He said, “Let’s end it, Jeek.” If I show any sign of weakness toward Jerem and Paula, Reemul will kill them.

  The taller tway recovered his composure. He broke into a fresh grin. “My. You don’t want me to slice them up...”

  “ ... do you?” finished Sad-eyes.

  Gillian said, “Go ahead—do it.”

  Smiler’s arm tightened across Paula’s neck. She felt the needle of his wand prick her skin, below the ear. She drew a sharp breath.

  Gillian stared at Paula, at the wide-open eyes, flooded with fear, and he saw that her mouth had narrowed to a quivering line, a mere scratch in the flesh above her chin. He sensed patterns of fright, some visible in the sharp muscle etchings beneath her cheekbones, some unclear, glimpsed only through gestalt: vague intimations of terror.

  He allowed his mind to drift, float into an ocean of intrinsic perceptions, seeing Reemul as a gathering of forces, tangents of danger, the locus of the storm.

  And he knew that he had found the way.

  He stared at Paula and she dissolved into a shower of gold. He felt his body go rigid with tension. But this time he did not fight it. He did not run. He gave his subconscious feelings full rein, allowed them to overwhelm him, and suddenly the gallery mutated into an exploding maelstrom of golden light—Paula and Jerem and Reemul, the machines and the walls and the ceiling—everything flashing, streaks of golden fire coming at him, blinding him.

  Paula shuddered as she watched. Gillian twisted and jerked his body from side to side as if some terrible crippling affliction had suddenly come over him. She stared at Jerem, still held in the tway’s iron grip, and her gaze was drawn to the tway’s face and she saw that Sad-eyes had assumed a strange faraway look. He appeared to be transfixed by Gillian’s behavior.

  Gillian squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, a savage blink.

  But in that short space the golden lightning coalesced into the form of a woman by his side, a shimmering blend of colors, blinking in and out of existence—a vague presence, struggling to become real. It disappeared, came back, vanished again, returned furiously, fighting the elements that conspired against its unity.

  I need more! I need something more!

  He stared between the two tways and shouted, “Come on, Jeek! Show me! Show me the way!”

  He perceived fascination on Reemul’s faces, and amusement. But there was more. Through Gillian’s agitated senses—hyperalert, scanning for details, for vague patterns—he read deeper, saw that Reemul hid behind other feelings: confusion, doubt, wonder.

  Gillian raised his right arm, waved the thruster over his head. Beside him, the lightning struggled for form, for solidity. It appeared and disappeared, reappeared again; the process repeating, faster and faster, like a light switch being thrown on and off with mad abandon.

  Faster. Now at the speed of a strobe, blasting the gallery with golden flashes. He whipped the thruster above him and screamed.

  “Come on, Jeek! Take me! Take me!”

  As if he were caught up in Gillian’s excitement, Reemul jerked forward, both tways panting, edging toward that infinitesimal moment of repose: the assassin’s crest, when everything came together, when muscles flexed into rhythms of violence.

  A scream arose within Gillian, but before he could release it, his body image vanished and he plunged into terrifying disunity—sensation vanishing—no feelings—no torso, no arms, no legs, no sense that his body even existed. Only by an effort of will could he convince himself that he was still alive.

  He sensed that disunity was part of the process and he flowed with it, rode out the terror. And then the moment passed and his body image seemed to implode from the outside in, and he came alive again, feeling everything at once. The dialectic of unity/duality—the whelm—thundered through his consciousness, and Catharine burst forth at his side, a living essence, elfin face and carefree smile, wild brown hair thrashing in its own wind, and Gillian felt himself receding, no longer a whole consciousness but a mere fragment, reinforcing the whole.

  And then the interlace formed and he came back and he was Empedocles of the Ash Ock.

  He swung his thruster down, fired at Sad-eyes, whipped his other hand up and sent the black beam of the Cohe spiraling across the gallery, toward Smiler, toward the tway’s unprotected side portal.

  Reemul moved.

  Paula barely had time to catch her breath. Again, she felt that sense of blurred motion, everything speeded up, too fast for her senses to register. She saw Jerem being shoved violently away from Sad-eyes and then she was up in the air and Smiler, with a strength she would not have believed him capable of, was hurling her across the chamber. She landed on her feet, stumbled, hit the floor on her knees, somersaulted, slammed upside down into the wall, her shoulders crunching against the carpet, her feet nailing the recessed panel of exhibit controls.

  She lay there in the corner, stunned, pain held at bay by the sight that confronted her.

  Gillian and Reemul danced across the gallery between exhibits, seemingly everywhere at once, hands flashing, arms sawing at the air, black beams cutting and twisting as if some concentrated lightning storm had entered her gallery. The din of thrusters reverberated in the confined space, sounding like a triplet of screaming infants. Smiler and Sad-eyes twisted and jerked, repelling thruster blasts, trying to move closer to Gillian, and Paula sensed what they were attempting—to get on both sides of Gillian, get him in the center.

  And suddenly terror struck her. Jerem!

  She spotted her son in the middle of the chamber, lying on the floor beside the table saw, on his back, perfectly still.

  She swallowed her shock, forced feelings into obedience. He’s all right. He’s going to be all right.

  Empedocles, hyperalert, both bodies twisting rapidly in tandem, dodging death, studied his opponent.

  He won’t allow himself to be directionalized—he’s too quick of mind. And I don’t have a team to force him into such a defensive posture.

  I don’t even have a tway, not really.

  Empedocles knew he was a Paratwa. He existed in two distinct locations, he saw and heard and felt through two tways. But only Gillian, only that tway and his senses, were physically real. Catharine remained a memory shadow, a distilled concentrate recovered from the repressed consciousness of Gillian, from beyond Gillian’s deepest pains.

  Empedocles had been torn in half but he had never perished. The power of the interlace had always existed within the very fabric of Gillian’s being, the body image of Catharine had been imprinted within his very cells. It had merely taken the proper fulcrum to bring on the whelm—to bring Empedocles back to life.

  Sad-eyes jumped up on a dais, compressed his weight, and leaped for the ceiling rafters. Smiler crouched. The tway came up on his toe, stretching out his Cohe arm.

  Spinsaw!

  Empedocles squatted, tumbled away from Smiler. The tway broke into a skater’s spin. His Cohe beam sliced through the air like a scythe, whipping above the daises, faster and faster, until it seemed like a solid dark plate hung in the air.

  E
mpedocles came out of hip roll, ducked behind a dais. He can’t get me with spinsaw. Too many obstacles. He’s trying to set me up for the other tway.

  Empedocles jerked his head up, saw Sad-eyes dropping from a rafter, bellyflopping toward the floor. As the tway fell, a thick gray mist spurted from the side portals of his web.

  Acid twister!

  Empedocles roared to his feet, hunching low, trying to keep his rear crescent arched up over his back to prevent the deadly organic acid from spraying him. Sad-eyes hit the floor, vaulted halfway across the chamber, landed on another dais. The tway’s black beam lashed out at Empedocles, seeking entry through the weak side portals of his web.

  Smiler came out of spinsaw, crouching low, firing his thruster in rapid one-second bursts, trying to keep Gillian facing him.

  Empedocles tucked his arms into the crescent, leaned forward, felt the hot acid coming down all around him, sizzling as it touched his web, burning holes through the ivory carpet, through the floorboard beneath, and he did the only thing he could—he charged toward Smiler and sent his Catharine-tway toward Sad-eyes. It was pure reaction, knowing that Catharine wasn’t real, knowing that she couldn’t help him.

  Sad-eyes leaped from the dais, landed in front of the Catharine-tway, fired his thruster, through the imaginary Catharine, at Gillian. He missed. The exploding energy blasted the modular ice cutter and sent the machine crashing to the floor.

  Pure instinct. Empedocles sensed his Catharine-tway in the path of the thruster and he convulsed, moving both tways, and it was that reaction that saved him from Smiler’s Cohe, from the black whip that half-circled the gallery and would have nailed Gillian through the left side portal had not Empedocles turned into the beam.

  But that put his right side toward Smiler’s thruster. The weapon shrieked. He took most of the blow on the edge of his front crescent, but some of the discharge spilled through his portal and he felt himself being lifted, hurled backward.

  I can’t win.