“We want the Eridani creature.”
“Uh-huh. Can’t help you, Corey.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Sorry. These sailors down here ought to be able to tell you she hasn’t shown up.”
“They were posted after we learned about the girl. She could have brought the creature down before that.”
“Girl?”
“Yes, the sailor-girl Jake recruited to help him hide the creature. Before we knew about it, we assumed Winnie—is that her name?—we assumed she was still topside with Jake. And then Jake dragged a red herring in our path. Nice touch.” He turned to me. “Where in the world did you meet Hogan, of all people?”
“At a literary luncheon,” I said.
Wilkes cackled. “Anyway. We still want her, Sam. And we’re going to get her, or somebody’s going to get hurt.”
“Yeah, yeah. Corey, did anyone ever tell you that you were the slimiest piece of merte ever to get flushed into a plasma torch?”
Wilkes’ eyes flared. “Yes, several times, and in even more colorful language. Did anyone ever tell you that I was the one who had you killed?”
“You did? How?”
“Oh, it was beautiful. The people who got the contract assured me it was foolproof. The man driving the buggy that ran into you did it deliberately. He had special impact padding, all kinds of anticrash gear. An expert. No one even began to suspect it was anything other than an accident.” “Congratulations. So what?”
Wilkes thumped a fist into his chest in mock pain. “Oh, Sam, you strike even from beyond the grave. Here I am, maybe the first murderer ever to have the satisfaction of gloating to his victim after the fact, and I can’t get a rise out of you.”
“You’re talking to a machine, you know.”
“Am I? I’ve heard that an Entelechy Matrix transfers a person’s soul to a machine.”
“Soul, my ass. Look, let’s lose the verbal sparring and get down to cases. Exactly what’s going to happen if you don’t get Winnie, as if I didn’t know?”
“You don’t know.” Wilkes sighed. “Oh, well. Come on, Jake. I want you to see this.” He rose and crooked his finger at me, walking over to the connecting door. He opened it and pointed.
I got up and walked over, robotlike. I looked into the room. My eyes were drawn first to the sight of Lori. She was naked, slumped in a chair in a far corner, under the wand’s spell. Then my gaze drifted to the four Reticulans, Twrrrll among them. They were regarding me impassively, standing around a strange piece of furniture, made of black wrought iron, which looked like a cross between a table and a bed. The legs were fashioned into alien animal limbs, adorned with ornamental tracery exhibiting runic symbols. An elaborate headboard was executed in the same manner. Across the top of the table lay a network of troughs, not unlike the bottom of a roasting pan, with tributaries branching out to the edge and running off into gutters that would conduct blood, or any kind of body effluent, down to the foot of the bed, there to spill into two large copper pails. The pails were chased with more cryptic markings. To one side stood a much smaller table done in the same style, upon which lay an assortment of strange bladed instruments.
“Roadmap!” Wilkes whispered hoarsely into my ear. The electric tension flowed out of me and I went limp, swaying on my feet. “The Reticulans have always been hunters, Jake. They never lost the impulse, as we did. It’s still the driving thrust of their culture. Interesting, don’t you think? Long ago they depleted their home planet of ‘honorable game,’ as they call it. Then they discovered the Skyway. You’d think fifty or sixty new planets would hold them for a while. But the Reticulans are an old race, Jake. One of the oldest on this part of the road. Very recently, a few hundred years ago, they took to hunting outside their maze. They’re feared and hated everywhere, as well they should be.”
He craned his head around to whisper in my other ear. “Can you imagine what it’s like to be vivisected, Jake? That’s how the Reticulans will honor you, their sacred quarry. Unless you hand over Winnie, in which case I might persuade them to let you loose for a little while longer. They probably consider it a challenge to track you without the mrrrllowharrr.”
He closed the hatch, then shoved me toward the chair. I sat down heavily.
“How much good will it do, Corey,” I asked, “to tell you I don’t know where she is?”
“None at all, I’m afraid,” Wilkes said airily. He got a cigarette from a gold case on the table and lit it, blew smoke at the ceiling. “Your little girl friend says the same thing.”
“What did she say?”
“She says she hid Winnie up on the poop deck in an unused radio shack. She went back later and the animal was gone.”
“You don’t believe her?”
“Yes, I do, but I can’t believe both of you don’t know.”
“Winnie may have got frightened at something and run.”
“Fine. Then Pendergast’s people will find her eventually, and everything’ll be wonderful. But I’m only giving you another hour, Jake. Then—”
“It’s a big ship; Corey,” Vance said, fiddling with my newly bought revolver. “Maybe we should give it a little more time.”
“Okay, two hours.” Wilkes threw up his arms. “Hell, I’ll wait all night. I’m easy to get along with. But somebody knows where she is, and personally I think it’s you, Jake. But we’ll wait.”
Chapter 22
WE WAITED.
Conversation was desultory. Vance and Darla sat at a table at the other end of the room, drinking coffee brought in by another of Wilkes’ bodyguards. At various intervals they all popped pills to keep up their immunity from the wand’s effect. Wilkes told me it was still on low power.
At one point, Darla came toward me, bearing a cup and saucer.
“No, Darla,” Wilkes told her.
She stopped. “You said he was your guest,” she said sarcastically.
“Don’t want you slipping him any tranqs.”
“Do you think I would?”
“I don’t know, and don’t care to take the chance. But I don’t want to be inhospitable. I’ll pour him a cup.” He got up and went to the table and did, then fetched it over to me. “Enjoy, Jake.”
“Thank you.” I sipped it and found that it wasn’t coffee but some kind of grain beverage, with a bitter aftertaste. “Corey,” I said, “there’s one thing that’s been bothering me since the start of this thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Why didn’t you just kill me?”
Wilkes looked over the newssheet he was reading. “Good question. You can’t say I haven’t had plenty of opportunity.” He folded the sheet and put it aside, then went back to tapping on his lips with his fingers. “This damned Paradox thing set me to thinking. If I just up and killed you, it very well could have turned out that nothing would have changed. You’d be dead, and the map would still be in circulation, brought back from the Great Beyond by the ‘you’ that never died. Paradox. Or maybe there’s really no Paradox and somebody else brought the map back—one of your religious friends, for instance. They could be in on the whole thing.”
“They’re not,” Darla said emphatically.
Wilkes shook his head sadly. “Another statement that I can’t accept at face value. For all I know, they could be part of your dissident network. Maybe they brought the map back and pumped Jake’s image up into a legend. Who knows? No, I came up with a plan of sorts. I had to nab you, and I wanted to wait until you shot a potluck to be certain you had the map. After all, none of the stories about you say exactly when you got it.”
“So you herded me through a potluck.”
“Right, and it wasn’t pure luck that you chose the Splash portal. If you think back over all the options you had, you’ll find there were few. You could have gone elsewhere, however, which is why the mrrrllowharrr was necessary.”
“Back at the motel—you sent your crew to flush me out of there?”
“Yes, to keep you running.
Knew you’d find a way to escape, and you did. You’re slippery; Jake.” He kept crossing and uncrossing his legs in a compulsive, jerking movement. “Anyway. I had to get that punking map, find out … no! First I had to find out if it even existed, then find out where it came from.” He looked uncomfortable. “And I still don’t know.”
“I’ll tell you where it came from, Corey,” I said. “You created it.”
“How so?”
“If you’d have let me alone, I never would have hid out in that motel, never would have met Winnie, etcetera, etcetera.”
He laughed. “The irony hasn’t escaped me. Believe me, I’ve thought about it. But what was I to do? Talk about having few options. No matter what I did seemed doomed from the start… He trailed off and looked at the ceiling. ”Well, that’s neither here nor there,” he added offhandedly.
After a pause, Vance said, “I wish you’d finish that, Corey. I’m still in the dark as to how getting the map now will alter reality or in any way change the fact that the dissidents have it.” He got up from the table and walked over to Wilkes, stood over him, and said pointedly, “I really wish we could clear that up once and for all.”
My head was beginning to congeal a little, but it had taken me the better part of an hour to think through what I said next. “There’s nothing to clear up, Van,” I blurted out. “Can’t you see that your little drug scheme is going right out the port?”
He slowly brought his eyes around to me. “What do you mean?”
“He means to drive a wedge between us, Van,” Wilkes said mildly. “Oldest trick in the book. Don’t fall for it.”
“Suddenly I’m very interested in what he has to say. What exactly did you mean, Jake?”
“First, tell me a few things. How did you get in on this, and why?”
He was annoyed. “Doesn’t strike me as pertinent.”
“Then we don’t play.”
He went over and sat on the bed, picked up the revolver and absently fiddled with it, looking at me..
“Thinking of shooting someone?” I asked.
“Huh?” Aware now that he had picked it up, he said, “No. Don’t even know how this thing works.” He tossed it aside, then glanced at Wilkes and looked back at me. “All right, you win. A little history. Word has been out for a year or two that I’m to be purged. Oh, it’s an outdated word, of course. They want to ship me back to Terra for ‘evaluation and reassessment.’ Fortunately the mills of the Authority grind slowly, and I had some time. But where would I go? Easy. Someplace like the Outworlds. But the cost of living’s pretty high here. And strictly cash, no Authority vouchers. I had no gold socked away to speak of. Of course, here you can go up into the hills and pan for it—they actually do that, you know—but I’m not the prospector type. Corey approached me about this drug thing. Sounded good, cornering the market and all that. He needed me, he said, to work out all the details about diverting raw material from Hothouse and secreting it out here.” He shrugged. “I had no choice, really. I went along.”
“Why the raw stuff?” I asked. “Why not the finished product?”
“Actually,” Wilkes said, “that was my original idea. Van talked me out of it.”
Vance nodded. “The controls are just too tight. The Authority guards its monopoly well. When you get right down to it, it’s the source of their power.”
“Okay,” I said, “so you got the idea to process the stuff here.”
“A big investment on my part,” Wilkes reminded him. “You should keep that in mind, Van.”
“I will. We have a small factory and lab near Seahome, about ready to become operational.”
“And what about the Reticulans? What’s their motivation for letting you truck gold back through their territory?”
“Same as anybody’s,” Wilkes answered. “They need gold as much as any race does for intermaze trade. I know it sounds mundane, but their economy is royally screwed up. Their social structure is top-heavy with nonproductive ruling classes who’re preoccupied with quaint pastimes like hunting and riding eightlegged beasties around in the woods. They won’t stoop to getting their hands dirty. Most technological things are left to slave classes. Beside, Reticulans think it more honorable to take by conquest rather than to create. Only the Roadbugs have prevented them from running amuck, taking over every maze in sight. So, they’re hard up for cash.” He extended a hand deferentially to Vance. “Sorry. You were saying?”
“I was about to say that when we heard the Roadmap rumors, we knew that it was only a matter of time before the Authority would come barging into the Outworlds. Anyway, that was my fear. I’d have no place to hide.” He picked up the revolver again and began to twirl it on his finger. “Now. Tell me about how the whole plan is null and void.”
I drained my cup and tried to put it on the lamp table next to me, but I misjudged and sent it clattering to the carpet. “Sorry. Could I persuade you to turn that gadget off? I’d rather have a gun leveled at me, or be tied up.”
Vance looked at Wilkes tentatively, but Wilkes shook his head. “I’m a little shorthanded, Van. Jake has a habit of brutalizing my bodyguards.” He gave me a grouchy look.
“No? Okay. Van, it looks to me like you’re going to be up merte creek without a paddle. Wilkes doesn’t want to change reality, he just wants the map. Once he has it, he’ll sell it to the Authority. Or to the Ryxx, or the Hydrans, or to the highest bidder.”
“Beautiful, Jake, beautiful,” Wilkes marveled.
Vance lowered his eyelids in deep thought. When he came out of it, he exhaled noisily. “I’m getting the distinct feeling that I’ve been very, very stupid.”
The hatch opened, and Wilkes’ bodyguard showed Pendergast in.
“Where the hell is the Peters girl?” the Captain bellowed at Wilkes.
It was the first time I’d seen Wilkes slightly embarrassed. “George, just a moment.”
“She’s a crewmember, Wilkes. You may be running the drug thing, but I’m still captain of this ship. If you’ve done anything to—”
Wilkes got up and hastened toward him, extending a placating hand. “In the hall, George, please…”
“Oh, Captain? May I have a word with you?”
Pendergast spun around. “Who the bloody hell was that?” Even I had forgotten that Sam’s key was still sitting on the coffee table.
Wilkes motioned to his bodyguard. “Turn that thing off.” To the Captain he said, “It’s nothing. An open circuit to McGraw’s rig computer.”
Pendergast shouldered past him into the room. “What do you want?—wherever you are,” he said looking around the room.
“Tell Mr. Wilkes what happens to the gizzard of a whale when it gets perforated by a floater missile. Go on, tell him.”
Pendergast’s brow furrowed into dark lines. He turned slowly to Wilkes. “You say this is a computer?”
“Entelechy Matrix,” Wilkes murmured. “On the table there.” The Captain’s eyes finally found it. “Let me tell you what happens,” he barked at Sam. “The entire GI tract of the beast goes into convulsions. You wouldn’t survive—” He halted, tongue-tied with the absurdity of what he had said. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
“I might even stop breathing, huh?”
“What do you want?” Pendergast said evenly, walking toward the table.
“First, I want this hold cleared of your crew. Everyone. And I mean up the elevator and out of scanner range. Second, I want my son and his companions delivered down here safe and sound.”
“Your son?”
“McGraw,” Wilkes supplied.
“It’ll be done,” Pendergast said.
Wilkes walked back into the room. “Captain, we can’t, not just yet. He’s bluffing.”
“You know me well enough to know I’m not, Corey.”
“I won’t take chances with this ship!” Pendergast shouted.
“Sam,” Wilkes said. “You’ll have them when we have the creature.”
“I said I wanted my so
n and his companions, and I meant all of them.”
“You’ll have them,” Pendergast said, “and you’ll have safe conduct to debark this ship. But I guarantee that you’ll never make it off Splash.”
“We’ll take our chances.”
“George,” Wilkes said soothingly, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You forget that we don’t have the creature to give. Another thing—the Reticulan’s tracking technique is inoperative at this point. We could lose him for good.”
Pendergast’s eyes widened, and he turned his head sharply to the connecting hatch. “Is she in there?” he breathed. “With them?”
“You don’t have to worry, Captain,” I broke in, as things began to lose their dreamlike quality. I now realized why the coffee had tasted bitter. “They won’t rip her apart. She’s not sacred quarry.”
Pendergast strode to the connecting hatch and threw it open savagely.
“No, but you are, Jake,” Wilkes said darkly.
The Captain lunged at Wilkes, but the bodyguard got in the way. Pendergast elbowed him aside, but the boy brought his gun up menacingly. Pendergast stopped, his face dark with fury. “You think you can threaten me?” he growled at Wilkes.
“George, take it easy. I thought she was hiding something when you talked to her, and she was. Jake paid her a lot of money to hide the creature. I had to question her myself. She was in no danger.”
Pendergast put a hand to his forehead, his rage suddenly ebbing. “What’s going on?”
“The wand, George. You haven’t taken the antidote.”
The ship’s warning siren keened again. “What is it, George?”
“The pirate mega,” Pendergast said, his voice detached.
“Pirate?”
“Yes. We’ve been tracking her. We’re expecting an attack at dawn.” He shook his head to clear it and rubbed his temples. His communicator began beeping inside his pocket, but he ignored it. “I’ve got to get out of here. I’m needed on the bridge.” There was a distant look in his eyes, as if none of us were present. “Winds must have changed,” he mumbled, then walked unsteadily out of the room.
“Jimmy, close the door,” Wilkes said. He went to the coffee table and picked up Sam’s key. “Sorry, Sam. He probably won’t remember your threat, not for a while anyway.”
Starrigger Page 27
