Sunburst

by Phyllis Gotlieb

  “I thought you respected the truth quite a lot,” said Shandy.

  “Stuff that,” LaVonne said. “We want Doydoy.”

  “Thought you were playing it smart,” said Curtis. “Give up two little psis so the big one could get away? You didn’t figure we’d get your Imper and your plans’re shot to hell.”

  “She has nothing to do with it,” Jason said quickly.

  “We think she’s got a lot to do with it. She’s an Imper, ain’t she? Nobody knows what’s in her head. We’ll find out.”

  Jason moved over and stood in front of Shandy. “Don’t try it.”

  LaVonne snickered. “Lookit the great protector. Little gentleman!” She leered up at him and a raw flush seeped up from his neck and out to the rims of his ears. LaVonne outraged his manhood.

  “Listen, you know you’ll have to take the two of us”—he indicated Prester—“before you get her. You don’t want to waste even our psi.”

  “Little man,” LaVonne giggled, “you got funny ideas. Think we wouldn’t do that to get Doydoy?”

  Shandy thought they would. They would risk a lot to get Doydoy because they needed him in more ways than they would admit. Not only for power. He was their memory and their reasoning ability as well. Their memories were so short and their attention span so limited that without him they forgot not only what they had read in his mind but also most of what they had learned for themselves from experience.

  She stepped out from behind Jason. “I believe you—but you don’t have to do anything. I don’t know where Doydoy is.”

  “I don’t believe you!” LaVonne spat. “But I won’t have to waste much time breakin’ you.” The Dumplings began to move in.

  But Shandy kept watching LaVonne. The most horrifying thing about her now was that she had so involved herself in evil she was inextricable. There was no appeal to be made to her and nothing worth saving about her.

  Without taking her eyes off LaVonne, Shandy said, “I didn’t know you’d retired, Curtis.”

  “What’s that?”

  She crossed her arms and leaned on the console in back of her. “Looks like you’re letting LaVonne take over.”

  “Take over!” Curtis Quimper sneered. “Who said anything—”

  “She’s doing most of the talking, isn’t she? You know, LaVonne’s so strong and smart she can keep any thoughts she likes hidden from you… She could even fix things so her left hand didn’t know what her right hand was doing, and she’s your right hand, Curtis.”

  “You’re nuts!”

  “Maybe, but I’m not stupid.”

  “You just think you’re smart,” LaVonne said through her teeth.

  Shandy ignored her. “Curtis… I’m not a psi, but I bet somewhere in a corner of your mind you’re tired of this…you don’t really want to have to fight Jocko, or Colin, or Buttsy, or whoever else gets big ideas—even with LaVonne helping you. I haven’t got your kind of power, but I did do a lot to get Doydoy out of the Dump, and he’s not going in again whatever happens”—she searched the depthless planes of his eyes—“because he helped us.

  “You’re burning out. You won’t be any use to this bunch soon, and you’ll end up dead…but you could be a lot of use to us for many years.” She thought Jason might stick his neck out for anything at this point. “Help us now and there might be something in it for you.”

  His glance flicked at Jason, and a play of emotions swept over his face. LaVonne watched him. After a moment, he snorted: “You got some offer there. You’re offering to let me help you!”

  A waste of breath. But she had shifted their attention for the moment from herself—and Doydoy. “I’m not offering. I’m begging you to help us and save yourself before Prothero gets here and spoils your chance.”

  LaVonne snapped, “Tell us where Doydoy is before Prothero gets here and maybe we’ll leave you alive. Maybe.”

  “I don’t know where he is—but I bet he’s not far away; I bet he knows what’s going on down here—and if I were Doydoy I’d have picked off Jocko while you were shooting off your mouth about what you were going to do.”

  LaVonne’s face twisted. “Whaddya think you’re—” She stopped short and licked her lips. She whispered, “Jocko?”

  The Dumplings moved, blinked, turned on small axes and stared at each other. The machines chattered around their silence.

  Curtis turned to Shandy. “What’s going on here?”

  She gasped, “I swear—”

  “Read me!” Jason snarled. “She’s got no psi. I monitored all her—”

  But Curtis Quimper had no more time to waste on them. “Somebody’s gotta get up there! Fast!”

  One of the Dumplings tp’d to the doorway. “Trail’s gone!”

  “Gone! Somebody hiding something here?”

  “It wasn’t any of us, Quimp, honest!”

  Curtis was breathing hard. “Get up there! Any way! Burn a hole, but get up there! You, Nick! You hear me?”

  “Me? Awright, I’m going.” He backed out of the door. “Okay, o—”

  Silence.

  “Nick?”

  “Nick! Where is he? Now what’n hell’s going on here!”

  “I got him! He—no, he’s lost!”

  “Nick?”

  “He’s fadin’ out! He—”

  “Lost! Goddamn, he just went outa this door! How—” Curtis Quimper swung round to face Jason. “Somebody’s playing games.”

  “Not us, Quimp.” Jason’s mouth barely twitched with a smile. “This is somebody with real power.”

  “Doydoy? Hey, Doydoy!”

  “Come on, Nick!”

  “—and he—he’s scared, he—”

  “Lead and steel,” said Jason. “That’s the beauty of it. Too bad we couldn’t have done that with the Dump.”

  “You talk too much,” said LaVonne. Jason slumped to the floor. Shandy screamed and dropped to her knees beside him.

  Prester said quickly, “Leave him. It’s a pinched carotid, he’ll only be out a couple minutes.”

  Marczinek. Jason. Shandy’s glance flicked from one to the other. Every breath spread the stain of blood on Marczinek’s shirt; Jason’s face was white and sick. They were helpless. But she was not. If Doydoy were really anywhere near…

  She pulled over very slightly toward Prester and whispered, “Shield.” His eyelids twitched.

  Somebody yelled, “What’re we gonna do now? You got us into this!”

  “Yeah! Jocko’s gone, Nick—”

  “—ain’t gone, they’re—”

  “—screaming! Goddam walls!”

  They looked at each other. Sweat beaded their faces. LaVonne planted hands on hips and scoured them with contempt. “Scared, babies? Wantcher didies changed?”

  Curtis poked her. “Shut up, Pigface!”

  She had cringed at the name before it reached his lips. Her eyes slitted. “Gee, Quimp, you looked like you were punkin’ out. I thought you needed a little help.”

  “I can ask for it.” He faced the Pack, glaring. They shuffled their feet and he reinforced the message: “Stick together, keep ’em scared. Bust out, we can run into a bomb. You want it? Okay!”

  Shandy had crawled back, inching, till she was half-hidden by a console. Prester moved over slightly, still in view, but at watch and shielding. She whispered, “Can Doydoy shield and still read you?” His nod was almost imperceptible.

  “Can you open up to him without their knowing?” Nod. “Listen: you’re no more use here. I’ll give them something to think about, and I want Doydoy to get you and Jason and Marsh out.”

  Before he could protest she began to crawl, as slowly as if she meant it, past the console, toward the shelter of the next one, and beyond it, the door. Prester plucked at the leg of her jeans, but she pulled away. She did not expect to get far. The co
mposition floor, flecked with gold and pearl, was cool and smooth under her hands. Pawn to King four, she crossed the square lines. To the shadow of the next console…

  “Look what we got here!”

  The pop of tp and two feet planted before her at the edges of her fingernails. She looked up. Curtis Quimper was regarding her with amusement. She thought of Helmi, and of the woman by the road near Pineville, and her mouth went dry.

  He pulled her up by the neck of her jersey. Beyond the laughter of the Djinns rebounding from the walls, beyond the helpless fear, she saw that his skin was as dark, his hair as black, his eyes as blue as her own.

  “Talk about punkin’ out?” His mouth was tight. He pushed her back at the end of his arm and pinned her with a hand against the console. The Pack moved in, waiting. They had forgotten their fear, and she had not many hopes left for Curtis Quimper. She kicked, clawed, twisted. Now Prester, she begged silently.

  Curtis laughed. “Lookit the bug on the pin,” he said. “How far did you expect to get?”

  A small explosion broke the air behind them. They whirled.

  Shandy stopped struggling. “There it is.” Marczinek’s chair was empty, Jason and Prester were gone. The unconscious bodies in the corner had disappeared. The Dumplings gaped. “That’s just as far as I hoped to get,” she said, and closed her eyes.

  There was a roar. Hands grasped and threw her; hands caught, tossed, caught. The breath drove out of her chest, her hair broke free and swirled, the shoes flew off her feet. She opened her eyes as her hair swept the soundproof tile of the ceiling, and fell in a soundless scream to be caught, tossed, skimming a console-top, caught half an inch short of the wall; eyelids fluttering in nerveless blink caught light off now bared savage teeth, now flickering dial, now eye whites; spread-eagled on the floor foot planted against ribs ready to crush, and gibbering, baying—

  “STOP IT!” It was Curtis Quimper. From habit they stopped; the foot rose. Flat on the floor, eyes closed, she lay half-dead.

  “—the hell you—”

  “—for Chri—”

  “—gone soft in the nut?”

  She forced her eyes open a slit, and a frieze of legs flickered before them.

  Curtis howled, “You mutts, we got no more hostages!”

  LaVonne laughed, a hoarse, ugly bark. “You got no more hostages!” As her voice thinned in a scream at the last word, Curtis rose in the air, twisted in a tight arc, landed on his shoulder with a crunch of bone, and lay still.

  LaVonne screeched, “Now you listen to me!” But Frankie Slippec turned on her.

  “I had enough of your snot!” He ran for the door.

  She looked at him. He stopped in mid-leap, shivered, and collapsed.

  “Dead…” They trembled with his pain, and were quiet. They had committed obscenities, they had killed, but always, within their own distorted code, on fair terms. This was different.

  “Now will you listen!”

  They waited. LaVonne raised her head and screamed at the ceiling. “Doydoy! Doydoy! You hear me, Doydoy, it’s your last chance! You come down here and get us out or I break this place. Hear me? I’ll break it! You know what that means, Doydoy? You come down here!”

  They knew what it meant. The communications and controls of the whole country and half the world.

  Silence. Around the center of silence the machine racketed on.

  “Is that..

  “He’s—”

  “Here?”

  A presence whispered around them. Shandy, astonished, felt it. A power so strong it found response even in her unresonating mind. Doydoy?

  “There he is!” A group clubbed itself together at one side of the room, suddenly. “Come on!”

  “What’re you talkin’ about?” LaVonne gaped at them.

  “He’s down the hall!”

  “No he ain’t, he’s—”

  “There he is, I see him! Doydoy!” Ten Dumplings vanished.

  LaVonne screeched after them, “You boobs, he’s tricking you, he’s—”

  They became still, turned, listened. Buttsy whispered, “He’s upstairs.” Ricci, Gloria, Lenny moved over beside him, faces upturned.

  Doydoy appeared, hovered beneath the ceiling, blinked once, and disappeared. Buttsy’s group shouted and vanished with him.

  “It’s not him!” LaVonne hissed. “It’s not him, he’s faking a—”

  “This is me.” They wheeled. Doydoy was crouched against the slanted deck of one of the console tables. He was no longer afraid of Dumplings. He smiled like a Cheshire cat, rose in the air, and vanished through the door to the scanning room.

  Before they could follow, LaVonne called, “Wait!” She ran over to where Shandy was lying half-dazed with pain and began to tug at her. “It’s our hostage. Come on, help me.” She and Colin Prothero got her up and, half-dragging, half-stumbling, pulled her along with them. Through the silent library, memory stores, scanning rooms where machines spun reels of microfilm and glared at flicking pages through lenses, their steps scuffled and scattered.

  There was nothing there. Even the sense of his presence had died.

  They whispered, “He’s gone.” They pushed further, gasping for breath, glazed with fear, in rooms where components were stored, books, papers, small machines rattling to themselves. To the end. Blank walls of steel.

  LaVonne, sobbing, streaming with sweat, cried, “Go on!” A wall melted, lead beyond. “Go on!” LaVonne screamed. Lead quivered like jelly and ran down to their feet, hissing and slopping. “Go on!” Holes, cracks, fissures grew. Rock beyond.

  “There’s nothing! Where’s the others?”

  “…alone…nothing.”

  “I say he’s here! He’s here!” They stared at her and began to back away. She breathed hard. “I tell you, he—” But there was nothing she could tell them. They scattered through doors, walls, columns of air.

  LaVonne, still clutching Shandy, wept. Colin was the only one left with her. He had not had the courage to leave.

  “Doydoy…he did it,” she sobbed. “That little bastard…”

  He had not even brought them to the surface to rage or scatter before they could be netted. He had merely deployed them in the labyrinth, lost without coordinates or links to the outside, to beat against the heavy shielding walls, to scream loneliness and fear to every other member of the Pack, to melt a wall of lead and steel and find more walls beyond.

  Every time they had given in to their careless fury he had taken another and another. Doydoy, the only gentle one, the most powerful, and the one who most hated power, was teaching them the only lesson they could be taught.

  LaVonne panted, “I’m not finished. I can do something, too.”

  “Don’t,” Colin whispered. “Don’t do that.”

  “You want—what Frankie got! That’s what you—”

  “No, no, LaVonne, don’t!”

  “Then get going!”

  “Let’s leave her here, at least.”

  “We’ll leave her in the middle of it! Now come on!” Shandy’s feeble struggles were no match for the power of fury and despair. They pushed, shoved, dragged her, panting and sobbing, back to the control room. Curtis lay alone there, unconscious. The machine paid them no heed. It chuffed and chattered hugely in emptiness.

  LaVonne swung her Medusa head. “Now!”

  Colin cried, “No! No!”

  LaVonne smiled evilly. “I don’t need you.” He fell. Shandy, without his support, found her legs buckling, and she slid down beside him.

  From the floor, eyes glazing, too far gone for horror, she watched as LaVonne clenched her fists and spun like a gyroscope. Bells rang, lights flashed, the air quivered with hoots and whistles. LaVonne, gasping, raised her arms, clawed air with her fingers, eyes turned back in the sockets till the blind whites stared; alarms hooted around he
r, maps broke on the walls, sirens screamed, consoles split and crashed to the floor in a white heat and sank in puddled tiles. Shandy felt the scorch through her clothes, tried to pull herself up and fell back. Dials snapped, racks shattered, walls of panels trembled, rippled, and dropped in molten rains. The machine and its world died in fury around them.

  LaVonne howled, a coyote’s empty triumph. Her eyes lowered and found Shandy.

  “You,” she whispered. “You did it too. Now you.” She tottered over and reached down.

  The hands groped for her neck, and Shandy stirred feebly, without hope. She thought, with a deeply private agony: Now I’ll never find out.

  About herself; about everything in the world. Everything.

  Behind LaVonne, someone moved. Curtis Quimper, groaning in pain, reached out and pulled at her leg. She turned to kick him away.

  Something fell into the room, hissing. She looked up. A metal cylinder, with a thin vapor flaring from it. She blinked in a daze, took two wobbling steps, and fell.

  No Dumplings, no machine broke silence. Only the stream of gas hissing from the bomb.

  Shandy knew one more thing before she went down into the blackness. A towering, bulky-suited figure waded into the room and began to search through the wreckage. Through the bubble-helmet she recognized Prothero. He found what he was looking for at her feet and bent over the body of his son, face scarred with the marks of his bitter, helpless love.

  Sunburst: 14

  Once she woke in the dark. She saw lamplight through slitted lids and shapes moving before it. Her mouth was dry and she moved her head back and forth, unable to speak. A hand steadied her, a glass tube was offered at her lips; she drank.

  A voice rumbled, “How is she?” Prothero. Urquhart’s voice said, “She’ll be all right.”

  A cool hand trembled on her forehead. “I don’t want you wearing her out.” Grace Halsey.

  He said with asperity, “I’m just as concerned as you are. I intend to be careful.”

  Shandy unlimbered her tongue along the roof of her mouth and licked her lips. “Marczinek,” she whispered.