I took a long drag, my lungs already scarred enough to take it. “Yeah, and they’re running a Stop-N-Shop on Interstellar 84.”
“Stop and—?” He walked behind the desk. “A joke, of course. But do you see that even the possibility would make the map invaluable?”
“But the Roadbuilders are long dead, or so rumor has it.”
“Ah, but the remains of their civilization? Surely something has survived. The Skyway has. Think of the secrets, Mr. McGraw. The secrets of the most technologically advanced race in the known universe. Perhaps in the entire universe.” Well, now I knew his estimation of the phantom map’s value. It was close to mine.
He leaned over the desk, propping himself with arms extended, huge hairy hands splayed over gray metal. He looked at me intently. “Who constructed the portals?” he went on. “Only that race which had mastery over the basic forces of the universe. Consider the cylinders. Masses more dense than these could not exist, except for black holes. Yet the cylinders are clearly artifacts. How were they constructed? Why do they not destroy the planets upon which they rest? What titanic forces keep them hovering centimeters off the surface? Questions, Mr. McGraw. Mysteries. Have you never wondered?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I have another question for you. Why in the name of all that’s holy does everyone think I have the answers? Why do you?”
Petrovsky lowered himself into the squeaky swivel chair, took another cigarette and lit it. “I, for one,” he said between furious puffs, “do not.”
“You don’t?” I did a triple take. “Huh?”
“But that is my personal opinion, you understand.” He shot pale smoke about four meters across the room. “I put the Roadmap in the same category as … say, Solomon’s mines, Montezuma’s gold, the philosophers’ stone, and so forth. What is the phrase in English? Fairy tales. No, there is another.”
“ ‘Objects of wild-goose chases’ will do. I understand, but you didn’t answer my question. Why me? Why do you think I have it?”
“You may have something. Or, more probably, you may want people to believe that you have something. A convincing forgery—although I cannot imagine what that could be—could fetch a high price. As to your question, I can only speak for the Colonial Authority. We are concerned with you on the basis of the rumors.”
“What? I can’t believe it.”
Petrovsky plucked the fat cigarette from its nesting-place in his mustache, blew smoke at me. “Perhaps I have misled you. I may have given the impression that all available forces of the Authority are marshaled against you. No. I lead a special intelligence section within the Militia. Our chief function is to investigate all matters pertaining to the mystery of the Skyway. I have an office staff of five, and a few field agents. My rank obtains for me the cooperation I need to conduct operations such as the one you witnessed early this morning.” He took off his helmet and tossed it on top of the briefcase. His short hair was the color of fresh carrots. “This is one of many investigations. Many. We have looked into many reports of strange sightings, phenomena… rumors. None have proved to be anything other than wild-goose chases, as you so colorfully put it.” He dropped the butt, still lengthy, and stamped on it once. I think he was getting sick of them too. “I will be more than frank with you, sir. I do not like my job, but it is my duty. As for the Roadmap, I do not really have an opinion as to its reality or lack of it. When I see it with my own eyes, I will believe it. Do you understand?” His eyes thawed the tiniest bit, just for a moment.
“Yes.”
“So.” He slapped the desk. Back to the reader.
“Tell me,” I said, trying to draw him out on other matters, “Why the raid? Why couldn’t you have simply come to the house with a warrant? Or without one?”
“I was about to speak of that,” he said. “As I have told you, we are not alone in our interest in you, nor in our surveillance. We also follow those who follow you. The Reticulans particularly intrigue us. We follow them, and they lead us right to you. Always. Most uncanny. But who can understand aliens?” He smiled, the first time. It was genuine, but fleeting. “As I was saying, we traced the Reticulans here, ergo you. They did not go to Uraniborg, as we did. We lost their trace in Maxwellville. However, a constable on a routine patrol found them stopped on the Skyway east of the city. Naturally, he could do nothing. He asked if they were having mechanical trouble. They said no, but he reported them anyway. The vehicle they drove was capable of carrying a smaller off-road buggy. At about the same time, we succeeded in tracing you to the Teleologists’ farm. It was not difficult, but took time. But it was apparent what the aliens planned to do. They were stopped on the Skyway at a point about seventy kilometers from the farm by an overland route. I immediately ordered the ‘raid,’ as you termed it.” He smiled again. “Do you see, Mr. McGraw? The raid was to protect you. We fully expected the Reticulans to have already captured you. Fortunately, we were in time.”
“I see.” Somehow, it was hard to argue with him. What with Roland having fallen asleep, and all of us dead-tired, we might not have stood a chance against the Rikkis. But there was the matter of Darla. “Where are my friends now?” I asked.
“I don’t know. They were questioned. We have no interest in them.”
“Did you warn them about the Reticulans?”
“Not in so many words. We told them to expect intruders. I assume they left and came into town.”
Again, conspicuous in its absence was any mention of Wilkes in all of this. But Wilkes had friends in high places. Doubtless Petrovsky knew he was involved in this Roadmap affair, but it was not clear to me how Wilkes was involved with the Reticulans.
Characters danced on the reader screen. Petrovsky squinted at it, steel jaw muscles tensing. He punched the keyboard with a sausagelike index finger, and the pipette began to rewind. He looked at me. “I think, sir, that our interview is at an end.”
“Uh-huh. Then, I can go?”
He didn’t answer. The reader went ka-chunk, and he picked it up, put his hard hat back on, cracked the briefcase open, and threw the reader into it. He leaned far back in the chair and clasped his hands over his belly. “I am afraid… not just yet.” The chair groaned as if the metal were about to fatigue and snap. “I do not have the facilities here to continue my investigation. You will have to accompany me to Einstein, where this affair may be concluded.”
“Then you mean to run a Delphi series on me?”
“If necessary.”
The twisted logic had my brain in knots. “Look,” I said, trying to keep an edge of exasperation in my voice from cutting through, “you’ve as much as said that you don’t believe I have the Roadmap. Yet you want to run a Delphi on me to find out if I do or not.”
“I must follow procedure, despite my personal feelings. If you know anything, we will know. If the Roadmap is indeed real, we will know that. If the whole affair is simply a hoax, or a political ploy, we will know that as well.”
The word had sounded an odd note, with intriguing overtones. “Political? How could it be?”
“All possibilities must be covered,” he said, his gaze deflecting a bit, as if he regretted having mentioned it.
“Anyway,” I said, thinking just then that now would be as good a time as any to make a break, “a Delphi would be quite illegal.”
“Without proper authorization, yes. But I have that authorization.” The hands unclasped and went out at wide angles to his midsection, flopped together again. “The technique is not permanently damaging. You know that.”
Was Frazer just outside the door? Likely was. “Yes, but I’d be disabled for quite a while. Lobotomized.”
“An exaggeration.”
“I thought the Colonial Assembly recently passed a law against the Delphi process.”
“Ah, but exceptions were provided for. The language of the bill was quite clear.”
And who cared what the Assembly did? Rubber stamps just bounce. “Still,” I went on, “you have nothing on which
to hold me.” How many outside the door? One? Probably two. Frazer and another.
“You are wrong,” Petrovsky told me. “We have the deposition of the manager of the motel.”
“Perez? What could he tell you?”
“From him we pieced together what transpired.”
“I have the feeling,” I guessed, “that Perez did not actually witness an accident.”
Petrovsky tilted his head to one side. “True.” I had to admit, the man was scrupulously straightforward in some matters.
“However, his testimony gives us the ‘probable cause’ you brought up earlier. Besides—” He gave a helpless, resigned shrug. “There is a dead body to be explained. You must understand.”
“Oh, yes.”
Petrovsky was honest, but he was hoarding most of the cards.
“Of course,” he went on, thumbs back to twiddling in the general area of his solar plexus, “if you have some information for me, and would be willing to volunteer it, the Delphi series would be unnecessary.”
“That’s a fine specimen of medieval logic.”
Petrovsky frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“I think you do. By the way, have a chair.”
I brought it up from between my legs and threw it over the desk right at him. A powerful arm went out to ward it off, a little late. The back of the chair caught the bridge of his nose and sent him leaning back precariously, hands over his nose, until he toppled over and crashed into a tier of metal bookshelves capped with cups and trophies. The shelves tumbled over on him thunderously.
By that time I was scrunched up against the wall by the door. It burst open and Frazer rushed in, hand on his holster. I let him go, but neck-chopped his partner, who followed close behind. The cop went limp in my arms and I propped him up with one arm and grabbed his gun. Frazer was by the desk, turning around, still fumbling at his holster. “Hey!” was all he could get out before his partner came lurching toward him, propelled by one of Frazer’s spare boots applied at the small of the back. They embraced and fell over the desk. I checked out the corridor, went out, and slammed the door.
I was halfway down the hall to the left when I heard someone about to come around the corner of an intersecting corridor. I squeezed off a few dozen rounds into the wall by the corner, sending splinters of Durafoam into Old Fred’s face just as he made the turn. He staggered back with his hands up around his eyes.
I doubled back down the hall, covering my rear with a burst every three steps, and while en route, met poor Frazer again as he rushed out of the office with his pistol finally drawn. I body-checked him and added an elbow to the chin into the bargain, sending him tottering back into the office and the gun skittering down the hall floor. I turned right at the corner and found this corridor empty. I ducked into a dark office to wait and listen, thinking to let forces pass me by as they converged on the starting point of the disturbance.
I checked the gun. It was a standard issue Gorbatov 4mm pellet-sprayer. The clip held 800 rounds and was nearly full, but the charge on the thruster was down. I pulled out the metal stock a bit more to fit snugly in the crook of my arm, then poked my nose out the door. I heard pounding footsteps, shouts. Which way was out, though? I had lost my bearings. Down this hall and to the right—but no, that led toward the desk and front entrance. A back door should lead to a parking lot and squad cars. But where?
Two men tore around the corner to my right, and I eased the door closed and waited until they passed. I waited five more heartbeats, then slipped out and tiptoed in the direction they had come from, hoping to find the way to a rear entrance. I gave a look behind as I ran and saw a shadow leak across the floor. I whirled, hit the floor and fired, the Gorby buzzing like an angry hornet. The man behind the corner got out, “Drop—!” before the gun flew out of his hand, followed by a few fingers. The rest of him was shielded by wall except for his right leg to the knee. His trouser leg flew into tatters of bloody cloth and the hardened foam of the wall smoked into powder as the Gorby vomited its fifty rounds per second. I stopped firing and rolled to the other side of the hall, huddling against the wall. I heard a groan and a thud.
I didn’t like where I was. I looked down the hall behind me, but nobody seemed to be approaching.
Hushed voices, arguing. Then, a hoarse whisper. “I don’t want him killed!” Petrovsky.
I took advantage of the hesitation to get up and run, spraying the corridor behind me with superdense, hypervelocity BBshot. I ran through the next intersection and surprised two cops who had been sneaking up for a rear attack. I continued firing behind as I ran, cut to the right, ran past shelves of cartons and equipment, ducked left this time past stacks of empty packing crates, down past a row of lockers, and then found a set of double doors. I backpedaled, crouched, and carefully nudged one door open. It was a garage, with a few squad cars up on jacks and no mechanics around, but no vehicles that appeared operable. The large garage doors were closed, but there was a smaller door, and I sprinted across to it, knowing full well that I had lost time, expecting all exits to be covered by now. I hugged the wall and gripped the doorhandle, threw the door open. Automatic fire riddled the air where I would have stood if I had wanted to commit suicide. A coherent-energy beam sizzled through and started a small fire among the shelves of boxed parts along the far wall—one good reason why such weapons were impractical for indoor use. They were throwing everything at me. High-density slugs thumped into the foam, ricocheting lead and steel sang all over the garage.
One of the doors was swinging; someone had come through. I looked around for cover, but I was ten paces away from anything suitable.
“All right, kamrada. It’s over, so drop the gun.”
It was Old Fred again, pointing a sniper rifle at me across the top of the clear bubble of a squad car. He was grinning evilly, and something told me it didn’t matter whether I dropped it or not. But I had no choice, and let the machine pistol clatter to the floor. Fred raised the sights up to eye level, taking his time, drawing a deep breath as if he were in the finals of a Militia sharpshooter tourney, doing it all by the book, eyes on another platinum-iridium trophy for the collection on the mantelpiece, and all it took was one neatly placed shot dead center, nice as you please, one expert squeeze, all coming down to that, one constriction of a flexor muscle, and it was off to a watering hole with the boys and girls for soybeer and snappers…
Petrovsky came barreling through the doors and slammed into him, sending Old Fred cartwheeling over the floor to crash into a stack of tool boxes. When the clanking and tinkling stopped, Fred was on his back under a pile of metal, out cold. Long before that I had made a fraction of a move to go for the dropped gun, but Petrovsky had already drawn a bead on me with his pistol. I was astonished at how quick he was, both on his feet and with his hands.
“So, Mr. McGraw,” he said, “there will be no more quibbling over a reason to hold you. Correct?” No triumph in his voice, just finality.
“I’m glad it’s all settled,” I told him. I really was.
A snatch of conversation came to me from out in the cell block just as the transparent door to my accommodations slid shut and cut it off.
“Colonel-Inspector, I realize that your rank and your special authorization from Central command our complete cooperation, but I must point out to you—”
The speaker wore lieutenant’s pips and had accompanied the procession bringing me here. He had looked like an Elmo. I sprawled across the bunk. Petrovsky had his problems, I had mine, but I didn’t care about either right then. I was content to lie there and let the filtered air from the overhead vent wash over me, listening to the dull throb of machinery conduct through the walls to temper the silence of the cell. The mattress was lumpy and reeked of mildew and urine, but I didn’t mind that so much either. I let my brain idle for a while, allowed it to perk along and mark off the seconds, the ineluctable increments by which my allotted time was measured, one for each beat of the heart, for each millimeter of bloo
dflow, for each regret, each sorrow. And then one thought came to me: you can easily recognize the good parts of your life because they are starkly outlined in crap. The good things are mostly negative quantities: the absence of pain, the lack of grief, no trouble. Love, the absence of hate; satisfaction, a dearth of deprivation.
And I told myself: To hell with all that.
I decided to attempt active thinking again, there being a number of things to try it out on, such as the Paradox—if there really were one. The Paradox seemed to be saying, You will get out of this, you will see Darla again, only to lose her once more. And that would be the final time. I didn’t like it, but there it was, for what it was worth. As I thought it through, I came to regard the notion as another specimen of crap. There was so little hard information to go on. Did I really have a doppelgänger out there, a future self who had found a backtime route? Did my paradoxical self really have a Roadmap? Questions. More of them: Who had told Tomasso and Chang to be at Sonny’s that day, light-years off their usual route? Did anybody? Oh, there were more mysteries, by the score, by the truckload. Wilkes, the Reticulans, the Authority, the chimera of the Roadmap—who? where? what? why? And what did politics have to do with any of this?
Petrovsky’s slip had been the most significant part of the interview. Of course, the Roadmap would be a great boon to whoever had the luck to snare it. But the Colonial Authority was the only power in Terran Maze, with only a weak Assembly passing rhetorical wind to the contrary. There were dissident elements within the Assembly, true, but they had been bugged, compromised, infiltrated, double-agented, and neutralized long ago, or so the roadbuzz had it. Oh, everybody talked of one glorious day when the colonies would achieve some measure of independence from the mother planet, but what was not spoken about so much, was the glum fact that the Authority had already gained a sort of de facto independence and continued to rule all of T-Maze as if it were the Cradle of Mankind, and not merely Terra’s proxy among the stars. The CA was a self-perpetuating, bloated bureaucracy, a chip off the old monolithic Soviet system that had spawned it, and it was entrenched on planets closest to the home system by the Skyway, with its grip gradually loosening the further out you got.
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