by Jake Elwood
"Unless there's something important you're not telling us," she said, all the friendliness suddenly gone from her voice. "Something that would make them stay interested in you."
Jerry shook his head.
"We want to round these people up," she told him, her voice calm and reasonable. "If there's anything else you know, I strongly suggest you tell us. The sooner we have them in custody, the longer you're likely to live."
Jerry didn't answer, just spread his hands.
She reached into a shoulder bag and drew out his PAD. "I've sent you our contact information. Get ahold of us immediately if you have any more contact with the Society, or if you think of anything we ought to know." Which, Jerry thought, was quite a diplomatic way of saying, "If you decide to stop lying." He took the PAD.
"We'll leave you to your rest now," Kress said. "The doctors tell me you'll be released later today. This might be a good time for another off-planet trip. Good day, Mr. O'Malley."
She headed for the door. Jerry and Al Fazil exchanged stiff nods, and the Inspector followed his colleague. As soon as the door slid shut Jerry activated the PAD and sent a quick message to Cassie. He hoped Kress was right about the Society having no further interest in him. He thought she probably was. But if she was wrong, the simplest way to get Jerry's cooperation was to snatch Cassie and hold a gun to her head.
After that he sat up and tried to swing his feet to the floor. A wave of dizzy nausea washed through him, and he flopped back down, resigned to waiting until the medication ran its course.
Episode 2 – The Closing Trap
Chapter 5
Cassandra Marx strolled through a showroom full of handmade quilts, smiling blandly, her fingers itching with the need to shoot someone. It was an unworthy impulse, she reminded herself for the thousandth time. She was going straight now. And surely the quilts could be interesting, if she would just give them a chance.
"Oh, my, look at this one! Isn't it lovely? It shows Hal Forrest discovering the orb." Myrtle Numquist beamed at Cassie, then turned her full attention to the quilt in question. As soon as she turned away Cassie let the plastic smile fall from her face and grimaced at Forrest's bland face immortalized in pale cotton. She greatly doubted the man had been so broad-shouldered, with that heroic jaw barely marred by stitches. He'd been a colony leader. A bureaucrat, in other words. That meant a heroic paunch and hunched shoulders, in Cassie's experience.
"It's, ah, lovely," she said. "I like the way the fabric matches the sand outside." Despite her cynicism she had to admit that the quilt was marvellously well-made. The artist had found irregularities in the cloth and arranged them so they suggested wind-blown dunes. Forrest was kneeling, his gloved fingers brushing sand away from a pale silvery shape, and Cassie could almost hear the rasp of leather against sand. Quilting had seemed so simple to her a few months ago, just stitching together a few chunks of fabric, but it was an art form that could be lifted to dizzying heights.
Of course, that didn't mean it was actually interesting. She watched as Myrtle examined the stitching minutely, then peppered the woman behind the table with questions that Cassie could barely understand.
Cassie turned away, surveying the room, seeking distraction. And found more than she bargained for. Two men stood in the doorway of the showroom, hard men as badly out of place as rats in a salad bar. She felt her pulse quicken, boredom and lethargy falling away. She recognized both men. Not personally, but she knew their type. She'd seen them on dozens of worlds, in dozens of roles, from cops to thieves to hired killers.
The one on the left, the slim one with the dark eyes and a hint of a slouch, would be the one in charge, the brains of the duo. He wore a charcoal suit that couldn't hide a predatory aura.
The one on the right was all muscle. He loomed half a head taller than his companion, the unconscious opening and closing of his hands revealing the violence in his thoughts. He was dressed like a laborer, in a long-sleeved jersey that pulled tight against his biceps. It was baggy enough at the waist to hide any number of weapons. He had no body armor, she noted. The way his muscles strained against the fabric of the jersey made that plain.
Of course, it was possible they were someone's brother and cousin, here to pick up a quilting enthusiast and take her to mid-morning tea. They were clearly looking for someone, their eyes scanning the room.
The big man looked directly at Cassie and stiffened. He nudged his companion, both men looked straight at her, and they started through the showroom toward her.
The big man came at her, one hand going to the back of his waistband. He was armed, then. The smaller man angled to the left, boxing her in. His hand was under his suit jacket. He was armed too. Cassie glanced back, checking to see if Myrtle and the woman behind the counter were in the line of fire.
Myrtle turned, stared at the big man, and lifted her eyebrows. Her mouth started to open, the hint of a smile appearing. She recognized him.
Cassie hit her. The punch caught Myrtle on the jaw, lifting her off her feet and knocking her sprawling on the quilt of Forrester and the orb. Then Cassie sprang at the big man. If he realized Myrtle knew him, he might kill her to eliminate a witness. Cassie had to capture his full attention.
He was good, faster than a big man had any right to be and smarter than he looked. His right hand came around from behind his back, a dark blue pistol in his grip. He didn't try to use it, though, except as a club. He timed the blow carefully, waiting until she'd committed herself to a leap. She flew at him, her left arm came up to protect the side of her head, and he swung his arm across his body. She caught the blow on her bent arm, but he was brutally strong. Despite the block the force of the blow slammed her sideways and sent her sprawling across the floor.
"Don't worry, ladies. Miss Marx hasn't been taking her medication. We're going to get her back to the hospital where she belongs, before she can hurt anyone else."
Cassie shook her head to clear it. Before she could begin to push herself up from the floor, a hand like a cargo mover closed on her shoulder and hauled her to her feet. She felt the muzzle of the big man's pistol in the small of her back. The smaller man was empty-handed, looking grave and benign and respectable as he escorted Cassie and the bruiser out of the showroom.
By the time they reached the corridor Cassie's head was clear. The gun in her back was a stunner, she thought. Zemoth had pretty good gun control. Lethal weapons were more trouble than they were worth, for the most part.
That gave her options. Getting shot with a stunner would only make her situation marginally worse. It was worth risking. She didn't know where they were taking her, but she knew she wasn't going to like it.
She heard a babble of excited voices from the showroom behind her, fading rapidly as her captors hustled her toward a set of bounce tubes. Doing her best to sound panicky, she wailed, "Who are you? Where are you taking me? You're not from a hospital!"
The hand on her shoulder tightened. "Pipe down, sister, or I'll—"
She never got to hear what his threat was. She flung herself backward and sideways, trying to get her body beside the gun barrel instead of in front of it. She snapped her head back, aiming for his teeth, and drove an elbow at his ribs.
The stunner fired, and her right side went cold. His left hand was still locked on her shoulder, and she could see the other man in her peripheral vision, moving out of reach and bringing a stunner of his own out from under his jacket. She had no chance, no chance at all.
So she collapsed. She'd been moving when the stunner went off. The bruiser wouldn't know for sure if he'd grazed her or hit her square on. Cassie let herself go limp, closed her eyes to narrow slits, and lay still.
"Bloody bitch," muttered the big man. A hand closed on her right wrist. Cassie opened her eyes a tiny bit more. He'd put his gun away, and he was leaning over to pick her up. A few paces away, the smaller man had his back to her, his hands empty while he spoke soothing words to the ladies crowding the doorway of the showroom.
&
nbsp; She wasn't going to get a better opportunity than this. She twisted her arm hard against the bruiser's thumb, and her wrist popped out of his grasp. He was bent over, his feet touching her side, and she reached up with both hands, grabbed his jersey, and yanked. He tried to step forward to catch his balance, his foot nudged her ribs, and he toppled forward, catching himself on his hands. Cassie lay on her back, the bruiser kneeling over her, arms straight, both hands on the floor. She slammed the heel of her hand against the back of his elbow, and he howled in pain.
She squirmed out from under him. The small man turned, reaching for his stunner. Cassie was on the floor, her feet toward him, and she wriggled closer to him. As the gun slid out from under his jacket she hooked a toe around the back of his heel and booted him on the kneecap.
He fell, and she scrambled to her feet. The bruiser was rising, and she swung hard for his jaw. It was a moving target, and once again he was quicker than she expected. She missed his jaw, and her fist slammed into his throat.
The smaller man was on his feet now. His stunner lay on the carpet between them. His eyes went to the gun, and Cassie took a step toward him.
He whirled and ran, shoving his way through a knot of quilters in the corridor behind him.
Cassie turned back to the bruiser. He was on his back, his face purple, both hands clutching his throat. His eyes bulged and he made tortured wheezing sounds as he fought for breath. He was no longer a threat, and she lowered her fists, panting for breath.
"Are … are you all right?" The voice came from one of the quilters.
Cassie turned to the crowd. "I think so." She looked down at herself. "Sometimes you don't feel an injury in the heat of combat, but I think I'm okay." She looked at the row of shocked faces before her. "Er, that's what I've read, anyway." She looked down at the bruiser. "I wonder what that was about."
"Pardon me. Coming through. Excuse me. Make way." The ladies parted for the tinny mechanical voice, and a red and white medical robot bustled through. The robot marched up to the injured man, let its legs collapse, and used firm metal hands to tug the man's arms away from his throat. More arms touched the area of the wound, while still more arms applied dermal drug patches to the man's wrists.
Cassie took advantage of the distraction to slip past the quilters and into the showroom. Myrtle sat cross-legged in front of the table she'd landed on, rubbing her jaw. Cassie walked over and sat down beside her.
"What happened?" Myrtle looked baffled and shaken. "What's going on?"
"I think you fainted," Cassie told her blandly. "The stress, I guess."
Myrtle gave her a dubious look. "My jaw hurts."
"You must have bumped it when you fell."
"I … guess."
"Listen, Myrtle. Those two men who barged in here. Do you know who they were?"
Myrtle's eyes grew wide. "They seemed so nasty! What did they want?"
"I don't know. I thought you recognized one of them, thought."
A vague expression crossed Myrtle's face. "Someone said they had guns."
Cassie thought about leading Myrtle into the hall to look at the fallen man, but that would only scatter her thoughts further. Swallowing her impatience, she said, "The really big man. Lots of muscles. Very tall."
That earned her a hesitant nod.
"Do you know who he is?"
"Why would they have guns?"
"Focus, Myrtle!"
The woman gave her a startled, hurt look.
"Sorry. It's okay. I just really want to know who it was."
"You mean George?"
How the hell would I know if I mean George, you idiot? Cassie closed her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. She'd learned to deal with adrenalin and violence so long ago that she couldn't really remember what her first crisis had been like. She'd seen others, though, when they faced human savagery for the first time. Myrtle wasn't particularly foolish. She was just overwhelmed.
Cassie opened her eyes. "George. Is he a big fellow? About thirty?"
"Well, you saw him. Didn't you think he was big?"
Cassie, still charged up from the fight in the corridor, found it remarkably difficult not to punch Myrtle in the face. She told herself sternly to calm down. The task before her called for a different skill set. "So that was George, then? The big man in the blue jersey?"
Myrtle nodded. "George Hampstead. From Devonsham. I know his mother."
Booted feet echoed in the corridor, the unmistakable sound of authority, and Cassie rose to her feet. "You stay here and recover from, ah, fainting. I need some fresh air." Then she headed for the emergency exit at the back of the showroom. The door slid open when she palmed it, and she stepped onto an outdoor landing with a dirty metal staircase. She thought she heard a familiar voice call her name as the door slid shut. Having no desire to talk to Constable Holcroft of the town police, she trotted down the stairs and lost herself in back streets.
She had no idea who the two would-be kidnappers were, but she had a long, checkered past littered with mortal enemies and outraged victims of theft. At least Jerry and Lark were out of it, she reflected happily. They were both half way around the planet. Still, it would be best to warn them. Jerry might come home and blunder into something, and her enemies, whoever they were, could target Lark to get to Cassie.
In a quiet doorway on a side street she took out her PAD. There were three messages from Constable Holcroft, all within the last two minutes. She rolled her eyes and ignored them. There was a message from Lark, and she opened it, scanning it just long enough to be sure it was nothing urgent. There was a lot of chatter about the things she was seeing on her field trip, and Cassie smiled as she closed the message. She would read it later, to cheer herself up after she waded through Holcroft's messages.
She opened Jerry's message. It was brief and to the point. SOME PEOPLE ARE AFTER ME. THERE IS A SMALL CHANCE YOU COULD BE IN DANGER. I'LL EXPLAIN EVERYTHING LATER. LOVE, JERRY.
Cassie glared at the PAD, wishing she could put a fist through the screen and give him a fresh cleft in his jaw. What had that imbecile gotten her into now? That might have been the tiniest bit unfair, she knew, but she was in no mood to be fair.
YOUR TIMING IS EXECRABLE. WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO? She sent the message, then pocketed her PAD. She found one of the town's vast fleet of public cars, slid into a seat, and told the machine to take her to Devonsham. It was time to find out who George Hampstead was, and if his mother knew what he was up to.
Chapter 6
Zemoth was a planet of mountains and mesa tops, at least from the perspective of the settlers. Someday the entire planet might be habitable, but for now only elevations above three thousand meters or so were safe for humans. Severnaya Plateau was a vast island in a sea of toxic air, home to fourteen thousand people, most of them living in Zemlya City. To the north of the plateau, though, a series of hills made miniature islands of their own, just beyond the edge of Severnaya. Devonsham was a village on one such island, a hill called Maly Taymyr.
She looked out the window as the car took her across the spindly steel bridge that connected the two mesas. The land on the plateau was covered in alternating green and brown stripes, showing the limits of irrigation bands. As the ground fell away beneath the bridge the land turned a darker green. It looked almost pleasant, a tempting place for a hike, but she knew the air would turn toxic not very far down the slope.
That dark green covering was terraforming at work, a hardy grass called Devil's Weed. A marvel of genetic engineering, Devil's Weed could thrive in incredibly harsh environments. It covered Zemoth almost from pole to pole, except in the inhabited areas where an ungrateful population had eradicated it. Devil's Weed emitted oxygen in a slow trickle, and over the course of centuries it had turned a lifeless planet into a place where humans could live and breathe.
The problem with terraforming, though, was that mistakes took generations to manifest themselves and generations more to correct. As Devil's Weed flourished, grew, and died,
it eventually started to decay in an atmosphere full of carbon dioxide and inert gasses. The anaerobic decay of the weed released hydrogen sulfide in tiny amounts that accumulated over the years until Zemoth's layer of breathable air floated on a vast ocean of stinking, poisonous gas.
Cassie sniffed the air, knowing it was foolish but unable to help herself. The characteristic rotten egg smell was, of course, absent. She didn't think Maly Taymyr was really any more dangerous than Severnaya, but still, it baffled her that anyone would choose to live there. The mephitic lowlands were so much easier to ignore from the middle of a good, big plateau.
The bridge was more than a kilometer long. She could see Devonsham ahead, a cluster of buildings decorating a brown knob of hill. Everything looked irritatingly quaint, a settlement modeled on a salesman's fantasy of life back on Earth.
The bridge ended at last, and Cassie rolled her shoulders, releasing the tension that had built up during the crossing. She was annoyed with herself for indulging in irrational fears and annoyed with Hampstead's mother for choosing such a stupid place to live. With mysterious gunmen trying to kidnap her out of quilting shows she really didn't need imaginary fears as well.
The car stopped in an open grassy square in the middle of the village, and Cassie climbed out, trying to push her rising grumpiness from her mind. She was good at theft, good at violence and survival, but the current situation called for different skills. Softer skills. The traditional feminine skills that, like quilting, had never struck Cassie as being particularly worthwhile.
She wrinkled her nose, wishing George or his friend would turn up. She felt like hitting someone. Instead, she was going to have to rely on gossip and charm.
She hated being charming.
The village square was picturesque in a self-conscious kind of way. Everything had the same faux-historical look, as if they'd hired sentimental painters instead of architects to design the place. She was surrounded on every side by cottages with rounded thatch-like roofs. There was hardly a straight line or a sharp corner in the whole place. In the middle of the square she saw a wishing well surrounded by paths paved with flagstones and benches designed to look like wrought iron.
