The Alien Trace [Cord 01]

by H M Major

  "If you wish to clean up, there are facilities for washing in there." She nodded toward the door from which she'd come. "Red for warmer, blue for cold, and green when you want to dry off."

  He did as she said. The cubicle filled with a warm, damp mist, but it must have been something more than mist, too, because it seemed to float sweat and dirt away, and to leave him refreshed. Touching the green control caused the mist to vanish. Cord wondered whether to expect warm air or a heat lamp. There was neither. Instead, he simply found that he was no longer damp.

  Emerging into the main room, he found Julia ready to leave.

  "I'll be right back," she told him briskly.

  Cord paced the room in restless anxiety. She could betray him so easily. Even if she didn't, he still had to rescue Bird, and he was beginning to feel that would be no small accomplishment.

  CHAPTER 11

  Julia McKay returned with a bundle.

  "These should fit. Put them on. I brought something else too. It occurred to me that you have that big box-I suppose you want to take it with you."

  "Yes, I'll need it." The problem had been worrying Cord. Always before, he and his parents had known what they were likely to need in a chase, so it had not been necessary to carry everything. Now he could not afford to leave any of it behind. Some might be useful if he needed goods or money- having failed to trade with the humans, it was likely he would-while others might be vital to his and Bird's survival.

  "In that case, my efforts were not wasted." Julia produced a small boxlike object with sliding grippers evidently meant to hold a crate firmly. Attached to it was a wire lead.

  "We'll have to get this under your box. Can you tilt it? Oh, thanks. The slides will contract to hold it. Now push the button on the handgrip."

  The equipment case floated gently to about Cord's waist level and hung there.

  "You'll have more mobility this way."

  "Yes, I see. Thank you, Julia. But won't someone notice it's missing?"

  'It's kept in an unlocked closet for use by anyone who needs to move something large or heavy. Its not being there won't be thought suspicious. What will cause people to wonder is how you will know where to find your friend. So I'll take you there, and we will pretend that you came to me- since we are known to be acquainted-and forced me to take you to the security department."

  "Will your people believe such a story?" Cord asked skeptically.

  "They are traders. They have no very high opinion of missionaries. They will think I was easily frightened. It is true that I am very timid."

  "I don't think so. I don't think I've ever met anyone like you."

  "Perhaps not," she responded. "Anyway, when you've got Bird, you can leave me-push me to one side; I'll seem to be stunned. But please don't let yourself be captured. Under questioning, you won't be able to keep from revealing who helped you."

  "I won't be caught. I can't. I have a responsibility to Bird."

  "Even if it means killing?"

  "With any luck at all, it won't come to that," Cord said, thinking of his anesthetic gun.

  Julia looked unconvinced. She had noticed the weapon, of course, but he had not mentioned it was nonlethal.

  "We should start," she said. "Can you break through locked doors?"

  "It may depend upon the lock."

  "They will all be like this one." She indicated the lock on her own door. "A burn ray would probably deactivate it in a second."

  "I have something which should work, but won't there be more complicated security devices where we are going? If it is used for prisoners…"

  "With a dangerous prisoner, they would use extra precautions. They did not bother in your friend's case. She is in restraints, after all, and as a rule that is enough. She can't free herself, and no one else would. Everyone in a trading port like this is psych-screened before assignment."

  Cord was stowing the cutter gun from his equipment chest in one of the pockets of his tunic. It had a loose cowl, which he pulled over his head.

  "Let's go," he said. Now that action was imminent, he was calm. Why not? He had been trained all his life for similar situations.

  They left Julia's room and proceeded to the nearest trans tube, Julia walking slightly in front of Cord. He casually held his right hand in his pocket. If anyone remembered seeing them afterward, it would seem that Julia had been his prisoner.

  Four levels down, they left the tube. Julia turned right and indicated to Cord that they would take the speedwalk. It rushed them along faster than they could have walked: so fast that Cord, glancing from side to side, could not take in their surroundings. When Julia led Cord off the walk, it appeared to Cord that they had traveled all the way to the far end of the building.

  The color of the walls and floor shifted to a bright orange-red, and ahead of them the hallway ended in a cul-de-sac.

  "This door." Julia spoke for the first time since leaving her room.

  Cord gave a quick glance around him. This was not a busy section. No one was in sight, none of the doors stood open. He tried the one before him experimentally. It was locked.

  "Hurry," Julia breathed.

  Cord withdrew the cutter and motioned Julia to stand aside. With the ray at its narrowest setting, he gave the trigger a brief squeeze. When he tried the door a second time it gave way.

  He slid it open and entered, cutter gun in hand. Julia, following him, slid the door shut.

  "In the next room," she told him.

  The outer room in which they stood was nothing more than an office. Cord passed through it in three strides. The next room was bare by contrast: just a large machine in one corner, and a metal table on which Bird lay. Heavy straps bound her wrists and ankles. She was pallid, and there were shadows beneath her golden eyes. She stared toward the door, cringing. Cord remembered too late that she could not have felt this approach, with his mind shielded as it so often was. Immediately he poured out reassurance.

  At the sight of him, Bird gasped.

  "It's all right," he said, working to free her hands. Julia struggled with the straps at Bird's ankles.

  "It's all right," he said again as he helped her sit up. Bird was shaking. She clung to him. Her hair had come loose from its braid, and she was unable to keep her voice steady enough to utter more than a word or two. Her emotions were a cascade of fear, apprehension, loathing. Cord had never known her to be so distraught, physically or mentally.

  "You'd better hurry," Julia said. She remained calm.

  "Can you walk?" he asked Bird.

  She continued to tremble but replied, "Yes."

  "Good, Bird. We'll be out of here in no time at all." He turned to Julia. "I don't know how to thank you. I couldn't have gotten this far without your help. Why don't you change places with Bird? When you're found it will be obvious that I forced you to bring me here, then left you bound."

  "I have a better idea: I'll go with you as a 'hostage.' If anybody notices you and Bird at all, he'll probably hold his fire with me there."

  "Probably…?"

  Julia smiled faintly. "One must take some chances." On a more practical note she added, "Of course, very often people don't notice at all. Perhaps if we all simply walk to the entrance, everyone will assume you've got a right to go out."

  "We'll find out." Cord was not optimistic-but who would have believed he'd get this far without challenge?

  "How soon is the security chief due back?" he whispered as they approached the speedwalk. They would get to the trans tube nearest the entrance, then hope they could make it to the door.

  "Very soon now, I think. But she will be coming from a different direction-we won't meet her in the tube. I ought to have thought to bring clothing for Bird," Julia continued. "If I had, you could stroll out without a second thought."

  They entered the speedwalk, Julia first, followed by Bird, with Cord close behind. Bird held the lead to the antigravity device. A woman bringing a crate through the halls might be inconspicuous enough. As protective
coloration, Julia had combed Bird's scalplock, parting it in the middle, so the hair fell to either side of her head. Bird's ears had posed a problem until she herself had solved it by laying them back along her head. With her hair over them, they were invisible. She had also doubled her tail under the short gown she was wearing.

  Cord prayed to his ancestors that she would be taken by any who saw her as another member of the trading party, if an unfamiliar one.

  Their transfer from the speedwalk to the trans tube went unnoticed. A few humans were passing. They all seemed to have places to go and things to think about; no one did more than glance at them.

  "We're almost there," Julia said softly.

  They were in the concourse, with the entrance before them like a hope of future bliss. Only an expanse of empty floor separated them from it.

  "Hey!"

  At the shout, Bird gave a little cry, almost inaudible. Opening his mind, Cord caught her panic and, as strong but opposite in character, the suspicion and doubt of the one who had shouted.

  They had all frozen. Cord turned an inquiring face to him as he came toward them. Julia, he noticed with approval, was remembering to play her hostage role. She appeared tense and held a fine line between seeming nervous enough to attract attention and being so relaxed that she might later be accused of aiding the Mehirans. Cord thought they might be able to talk themselves out.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Out," Cord replied. Maybe he should come up with some explanation, but he did not know enough about the port's operation to sound convincing.

  "Got your passes?"

  "Passes?"

  "To go out, of course. Don't you know we're under Condition Yellow? Nobody goes out without… I don't recognize you. Name and department?" The man's mild distrust sharpened.

  Cord fired the anesthetic gun though the pocket of his tunic. It was a thin, high-pressure stream and the distance was short; Cord reckoned the intervening fabric would not dissipate it too much.

  "What the hell…?"

  The human looked down at the wetness on his jacket. He should have been stretched on the floor by now, oblivious to them. Either the drug did not work on the human metabolism or else its passage through the layers of material-his own pocket and the human's clothing-had cut its efficacy.

  The human was sending out impulses of anger. One hand went to a stud on his belt. Cord did not know what it was, but that it was a menace he did not doubt. By reflex, he simultaneously threw up his shield and drew the cutter gun left-handed and fired.

  The hole in the man's chest was quite small, but red frothed from it. Through his shield Cord was still rocked by a brief flare of surprise and pain. The human folded in on himself very slowly, and began to fall.

  "The alarm," Julia said, low-voiced. "That was what…"

  "I wasn't fast enough, it would seem," Cord answered, sweeping back and forth with the cutter in search of possible attackers. "Move toward the door, Bird," he ordered.

  Bird staggered at the mental output of the dying human. It was distressing, but not as much as the idea of remaining a prisoner at the humans' mercy. She obeyed his command without hesitation.

  Cries of surprise and fear came from the far end of the great lobby, as a small group of humans became aware that something was terribly wrong. They threw themselves flat on the floor and tried to seek cover. The rapidity of their reactions argued a certain familiarity with violence. Julia had already hit the floor and rolled under a bench, away from the two Mehirans.

  Cord's mind was open now for early warning of attack. And so he heard the mental energy of the two guards even before they reached the concourse. He could determine the direction from which they were coming-a door to his right. He waited, receptive to their emotions…

  And raked the cutter's ray across the door. The beam itself was almost invisible except for a faint opalescence, but its track could be followed in the damage it inflicted. It passed through doorframe and door as though they were paper and also through the bodies on the other side; the door remained in place with only a hair-thin slit across it. His shielded mind was assaulted by the psychic protest of a pair of dying human brains. He gasped but steeled himself against it, hoping that Bird was too numbed to feel.

  He began to back toward the entrance, careful to watch and feel for the coming of more humans. Behind him, Bird uttered a soft cry. Her output was a haze of fear and anxiety, but she said, "The door guard, Cord!"

  By the time she spoke his name he had swung around to face the new peril.

  The human on duty at the entrance had left his post in response to the alarm. He was raising his own gun when Cord snapped off a shot at him, missing by a handbreadth as the guard leaped for shelter behind a tapered obelisk mounted on a rough stone base. It offered adequate cover-the base was man-height, the stele half again as tall. Its faces bore elaborate carvings and what might be script.

  A tan hand holding a pistol darted out from the base and fired. Cord flung himself down a fraction of an instant before the projectile passed through the point in space where his stomach had been. He heard the dart explode against the wall. Ugly, he thought. If he hadn't ducked in time or if the human had been able to aim more accurately…

  "On the floor, Bird," he called. "Let the carrier settle and crouch behind it."

  There was a moment's lull. The human did not care to risk showing himself, and unless he did, he could not expect to hit Cord. And neither could Cord hit him. But the human needed to do nothing. As long as he stayed there, whether he fired or not, Cord and Bird could not get past him to the door. Meanwhile there were surely more guards coming.

  Cord slithered over to join Bird behind the equipment case. With an eye always on the obelisk, Cord inverted the cutter and adjusted the setting. The wider beam would not cut as quickly, but it would cut a broader swathe. It might work, he thought, as he trained the tool's sight on the point where the great metal slab met its base. Or it might be a waste of time and of the cutter's power pack. He needed skill and blind luck and the aid of his ancestors, and all of them together might not be enough. He fired, holding the firing stud down to maintain a continuous beam.

  Cord, with his extra sense alert, felt a surge of apprehension from the guard behind the block. So the human guessed what was happening! So much the better.

  The ray was disintegrating stone and metal with steady efficiency. Cord estimated that the pillar was eaten away halfway through its thickness.

  The panicked human fired three rapid shots. Twice he missed (though not by much); the third shot detonated against the equipment box. Bird caught her breath sharply. Cord felt her trembling throughout his body, they were lying so close behind the scant cover. Cord wished he could reach out with arms and mind to comfort her, but there was no opportunity now.

  "Cord, if… if we aren't going to make it, please kill me."

  "Bird!" He was dismayed at the request, but his aim on the obelisk did not waver.

  "I mean it. You don't know what they're like. I can't go back, I can't, I can't." Her voice broke.

  Cord thought she was weeping in silence. He could not spare the time to look.

  "If it comes to that, Bird, I'll kill both of us. I promise." Our ancestors grant it will not be necessary, he added to himself.

  A groaning sound came from the stele. The whole weight of the monolith was supported now by a pillar no thicker than Cord's wrist. Perhaps the metal sang in protest at the strain. With desperate haste, Cord switched the setting back to narrow beam and continued to cut it away.

  The pillar tottered on its new, shaky foundation. With a suddenness that made Cord flinch, the human darted out. He dashed headlong for the cover offered by a heavy bench near one wall, well beyond the arc of the obelisk. Cord's shot cut him in half. Bird screamed in unison with the human; Cord doubled over in pain. The sound was lost in a greater one as the metal monolith finally toppled. It hit the floor with a roar.

  Stumbling to his feet, he pulled Bird up wi
th him. He groped for the antigravity control and succeeded in floating the box. Still watching for attack, Cord pushed Bird toward the door.

  The humans in the lobby seemed stunned-and they were not armed. Still no sign of more guards.

  Bird moved ahead of him readily, pushing open the entrance; they emerged into the golden light of late afternoon. He ran toward the nearest ground car, but Bird caught his arm.

  "Aircar!" she cried.

  They veered off and with one mind, they ran toward it. Bird might be exhausted by her ordeal, but she was not hampered by the equipment case, which dragged at the lead looped around Cord's wrist. Bird reached the aircar first and climbed behind the controls. Cord shoved the case into the back of the car and cut the antigravity. The box dropped to the floor, and Cord clambered in after it.

  Bird was already throwing the switches; the reassuring hum of a Mehiran aircar in good maintenance and ready to ascend filled Cord's ears. He gave Bird full credit for reacting so well in a situation she could never have anticipated. There was still distress in her signals, but it was overlaid by her determination and efficiency. With Bird at the controls they were already moving and gaining speed.

  With a lurch, they were airborne. The machine was a powerful model, good for a flight halfway around the globe. Below, shrinking to toy size, humans were running out of the port building to stand gazing after them.

  The humans' anger and hate dwindled to nothingness, leaving them touched only by a cool wind of relief. They stared ahead blindly, and said not a word.

  CHAPTER 12

  "Where are we going?" Bird finally asked.

  The question brought Cord back to reality. To cover it, he struggled into the front passenger seat from his crowded position in the storage compartment. His planning had gone no further than getting them out of the building and into a vehicle. At that, he'd been expecting to use a ground car. This was better: it eliminated the need to run the Mehiran blockade of the port. The Council would not be pleased if he damaged their vans.