“Stand your ground!” Ayala shouted. “They are only puppets! We still outnumber the real troopers! There are only fifteen!”
“He’s good,” Borden commented, in Daivid’s other ear.
“Hope he can use that numerical skill in hell,” Wolfe retorted.
From hidden trap doors all over the pavilion, the rest of the Wingle characters arose. Nanny Goat marched proudly at their head waving the Cockroach banner and her knitting needles. Dimmius Grebs stumped heavily up a ramp as panicked Insurgents shot grenades and bullets at him. With a puzzled, patient look on his face, he picked them up one at a time and flung them at the ruin of the Carrot Palace. The mad unicorn ran around goring soldiers, impervious to bullets that sang his way. Ginophant stomped on anyone that got in his way. He lifted one oversized foot to apologize to one of the Bizarro Twins, who lay flattened on the pavement.
“Ooh, sorry,” he said in his deep, slow voice, and backed very deliberately onto a mortar team who were trying to load their weapon. “Sorry again.”
But far more terrifying was the undulating presence of the huge red dragon. Twice as long as a shuttle, its purple eyes rolling and golden tongue flicking, snaked in and out of the attractions on low, taloned feet. It could move with the speed of a tank, preventing any of the Insurgents from leaving the pavilion. Every time a group of soldiers attempted to flee, it chased them down, herding them back into the park center.
“Get into the ruins,” Ayala instructed them. “We can defend ourselves there! Move!”
Wolfe directed the operation from a distance, monitoring the Insurgents as they made their way to what was left of a magnificent structure, the signature building of Wingle World, and the symbol of a gallant and wise man. He hoped Wingle would have approved of what he had done, and what he was about to do. He watched the Insurgent colonel clamber over pieces of orange masonry. Wolfe tracked him by his red-in-blue signature as he dashed through the building, trying to find a way out. Wolfe bounded after him, ignoring the pain in his knee. He got to the west stairs as Ayala attempted to escape down them, and blasted at him with the machine pistol. He was not going to get away. Firing back over his shoulder, Ayala retreated into the ruins.
The Cockroaches and their allies followed as the Insurgents fell back, covering one another with increasingly wild gunfire. Once behind the crumbled walls they were able to hammer the Cockroaches with little chance of being hit themselves. Somewhere in there Ayala was undoubtedly trying to plan an escape, maybe already searching for the trap doors that had allowed the Cockroaches to slip out without being noticed, but the tunnels had already been moved. Frantically, the Insurgents fired at the shadows dancing around them. Wolfe tracked the red-in-blue image of Ayala. He was almost in the center of the ruin.
“Dragons, keep everyone in there,” Wolfe instructed. Lin and Jones zoomed overhead, peppering the ruins. Heads bobbed up, fired, and ducked down again.
“Ow! Frax a dax,” Boland yelled. “One of those crazy bastards just holed me in the side.”
“Go below and see Doc,” Wolfe ordered.
“In a while, sir. I want to see the fireworks.”
“Why not? I want an end to this,” Wolfe said, keeping an eye on Ayala’s shadow as it bobbed up and down, shooting hopelessly at the troopers and puppets who were just too far out of reach. He wouldn’t be able to get out. Wingle’s vengeful spirit would be appeased. “Lin, the word is given.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
O O O
This time he had the sense to mute the audio in his suit, but the force of the second explosion still knocked him backwards off his feet. The blast was a thing of beauty, catapulting the carefully collapsed ruins of the Carrot Palace high into the air. Lin must have used every spare kilo of explosive, propellant, and flammable substance in the entire city of Welcome, because the shards and chunks of masonry leaped higher than the Carrot Palace had been tall before ending their upward arc. They descended in a hellish rain of destruction. Wolfe and the others ducked underneath any roof they could find to protect themselves from stone and plascrete boulders from landing on them. No one in there could have survived. Wolfe saw no indicators from intact armor. Ayala was dead.
While orange and green gravel and less identifiable pieces were still falling from the skies, Wolfe and his force turned their attention towards the remaining Insurgents, who had been making their way toward the rubble when it blew. He was surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of costumed characters, some badly damaged by gunfire and explosives. Nearly all of these were armed with a projectile weapon of some kind. Their faces inside the bubble helmets were set in stern expressions, the kind of faces that took no quarter and expected none. The Insurgents backed up a pace or two, realizing that they were outnumbered and outgunned.
Very slowly, and very carefully, every one of the survivors put their guns on the ground and raised their arms in the air.
***
Chapter 22
The first thing Lin and Jones had done after the prisoners had been rounded up was to go in search of the remains of Adri’Leta and Vacarole. Wolfe was determined that the former would be buried there on Dudley. Her wishes, expressed to him in front of witnesses, would be honored. No more Adri’Letas, and to hell with the faceless foundation that kept bringing them to life.
Sparky was gone forever. Wolfe felt as though he had lost a comrade-in-arms. Not really a friend, since all the puppet had ever done was annoy him, but he wished he could find the ‘body’ and lay it to rest with honor. He spent some time kicking through the shards of the Carrot Palace in hopes of finding any trace of the puppet.
He turned away to survey what was left of the Meadow Pavilion. The park was a mess. Gunfire and explosive charges had knocked down or blown up numerous attractions and damaged countless others. Hundreds of puppets had been destroyed. He’d ruined Wingle World.
Once the all clear had been given, thousands of people began to pour into the park from all over the region. They gathered up the damaged puppets, and began to survey the ruined pavement, rides, and gardens. Wolfe wandered among them like a ghost, unable to surrender his hard-won territory to the people who actually belonged there. Borden found him limping aimlessly around Wingle Lake, and tried to steer him toward the exit.
“Go back to the hotel for a while, sir,” she said, loudly. “You’re still a little hazy from the blast.”
“No, I’m not,” Wolfe said. “I screwed up. I just tried to tell Aaooorru that it wasn’t his fault that Mr. Wingle got killed on his watch. Fortunes of war. He and I both knew that’s a heap of slag. I wouldn’t be satisfied with it, either, if my CO handed me a line like that.”
“It’s true, though,” Borden insisted.
“It’s not. The only thing that would have saved this whole situation from being a complete and utter clusterfrax is if we could have found the chip. Mr. Wingle told me just before the fighting started that he was finished with it. He put it in a safe place. Well, Ewanowski says his lab is a mess. The grenades that hit after Wingle was killed shredded most of what was in there. If the chip is still intact we will never find it.”
“You need a drink.”
“I don’t deserve one.” Though Wolfe had to admit that lying down for a while sounded like a good idea. Once he was rested, he would pitch in and help restore what he’d destroyed.
“Look,” Borden said. They spotted a pair of huge pink feet toes up in the midst of a crowd of park engineers. Daivid opened his stride to hurry over.
Glaijet looked up at him. “Sorry you have to see this, lieutenant.”
“Bunny Hug is dead?” Wolfe asked forlornly.
Bunny Hug lay on the ground, motionless, his big face frozen in a smile. Daivid felt a wrenching sense of loss, remembering the pat on the head, the hug that was such an important part of Bunny Hug’s welcoming and loving personality. He shook the great paw, but it didn’t move.
“Well, Mr. Wingle is,” Glaijet corrected him. “Of course, it was his charact
er. Bunny Hug is always performed by a Wingle. It’s their heritage. It’s special to them.”
Daivid nodded. Bunny Hug showed a part of Oscar Wingle that he never demonstrated in person, a loving, open, sympathetic side, but he could let it all out in the form of a ridiculous nine-foot-tall pink rabbit. Or a smart talking freckled youth who always interrupted one’s darkest thoughts with a non-sequitur. Daivid felt sad, thinking he never really got to know the man behind one of his childhood heroes.
Daivid finally realized Glaijet was still talking. “… We have to contact his son.”
“His son?” he gawked.
“Oscar VIII,” the engineer replied. “He’s visiting some of our souvenir manufacturers. It’s the off-season, you know. Eight does a wonderful Bunny Hug. He’ll be ready to perform by the time the park opens—if we can get the mess cleaned up in time. Your ensign said he’d help, and we could use it. Oscar IX is still in school. He’s learning acting and marketing, though he’s got a natural talent for both already. Pretty precocious for a ten-year-old.”
Daivid felt his heart lift just a little bit. “So the dynasty goes on.”
The man gave him a poignant but sincere smile. “The dynasty goes on.”
“It’s an omen,” Daivid told Borden, with more energy than he had felt for an hour. “Maybe all is not lost.”
“I don’t believe in omens,” the junior lieutenant replied severely.
O O O
“It’s a mess,” Wolfe said, surveying the laboratory.
“I told you so,” Borden replied.
The room had looked like a crowded moving van when they had first seen it. In the aftermath of the battle, it now resembled landfill. The furniture nearest the burst ventilation duct had been blown to splinters. The communications console, the Waldo device with the enormous magnifier, and every other piece of sensitive equipment had blown and burned. Wolfe scanned the big room to see if anything at all was intact, and nearly jumped out of his skin to see Oscar Wingle VII looking at him.
“Oh, slag!” he panted.
“It’s just Dudley,” Borden said coolly.
It was. The gray-haired puppet stood in his box with a little smile lifting his mouth under the heavy moustache. Wolfe almost smiled back. He started picking through the ruined cabinets and drawers in hopes of coming across a package with his name on it, or any other kind of identifying mark.
“He was a genius,” Wolfe said, after he and Borden had spent a frustrating hour turning over broken boxes and shaking out books. “He would not have put that chip where it couldn’t be found. He said he was putting it in ‘a safe place. A very safe place.’ I wish he’d been more specific.”
Grinding and crunching noises made them both reach for their sidearms. Wolfe ducked down behind an overturned desk. A figure emerged from a sliding panel, a silver figure of a woman. She undulated towards them, her hips swaying like those of a real human female. Daivid was transfixed.
“Maria,” he breathed.
“Mr. Wingle was very specific,” she said.
“You speak!”
“Of course,” the android said. “I am a prototype. I also think and act. Here. He wanted you to have it, but you had to have asked for it correctly. You did.” She held out her hand and opened it. On her smooth palm was a small silver cube. Wolfe took it, with admiration for the genius who had invented it, and her. No one could have broken through that ball of steel without destroying the contents.
O O O
Wolfe never felt the ground under his boots, nor the cold of the snow falling on his head as he danced through the park in jubilation. They had fulfilled their mission! Borden followed him, disapproval writ large on her face. She had taken charge of the chip, not trusting him in his current giddy state. She was such a spoilsport, Wolfe thought. He had to share his joy with someone.
“Daivid!” Connie waved to him. She was wearing a blue uniform and carrying a cutout gun under her arm. He waved back. He ran to her and swept her up in his arms.
“I am so glad to see you’re all right!” he exclaimed, relieved down to his bones.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” she protested, as he brought his lips toward hers. “I’m a …”
“A puppet,” Daivid finished her sentence for her. He kissed her deeply anyway, and the warm, red lips yielded to him. “I know. I’ve known all the time, since I went into Tennie’s. I was wearing my helmet. It shows the pink heat signature of everyone in the room. You didn’t have one.”
Connie drew her head back, the eyes wide in surprise. “You knew?”
Daivid smiled. “Yes. I think that’s why I let myself fall in love with you. You were … safe. That’s why I could let go of the emotional mess I didn’t even realize I’ve been carrying around with me for three years. But the point is, I did. I love you. I love the person behind you. I would like to get to know the real you.”
“But this isn’t really me,” Connie protested. “It could never work out.” She pushed gently at his chest and he set her free. “I have to go. But I am so glad you feel I helped you break through a barrier.” Her dimple showed. “You’re all heroes. Congratulations.”
O O O
“Do you see?” asked the woman sitting beside the bay window in the little house on a corner near the park. Daivid had gotten a good night’s sleep, showered and shaved to make himself presentable. The dark blue eyes twinkled, seeming to like what they saw, and the deep dimple by the side of the mouth deepened just for him. “What you think you love is just an illusion. I’m happily married. I have three grown children. I operate twelve other characters in Wingle World. Connie is just a part of me, though she is a favorite. My grandchildren like her to take them through the park. She’s got more pep than I have, and she’s a lot prettier. I’m getting old.”
Daivid came to kneel beside the woman and took her hand. Her hair was almost entirely white, and wrinkles cross-hatched the corners of her eyes and mouth and netted her plump cheeks. “Most of love is illusion, as I found out the hard way a long time ago. You’re just as beautiful as Connie. Thank you.” He kissed her on the cheek, then stood up, her hand still in his. “I’ll always remember you as the girl I fell in love with.”
She smiled. “That is the nicest thing anyone has ever told me. Goodbye, Daivid.”
O O O
“She okay, looey?” Thielind asked, looking up from the robot controller he was repairing on a worktable.
“Um-hm,” Daivid said thoughtfully, scanning the multitude of repairbots all repairing each other and the cleanerbots that clustered around them waving their brush and scrubber arms, all waiting their turn. “Her lawn’s a little crunchy from the fallout of the Carrot Palace, but there was no damage to the house. No one was hurt.”
“What’s she like?”
“Beautiful,” Daivid said, with a sigh. “But she’s married. You knew Connie was a puppet.”
Thielind tilted his head. “Aye, sir. Installed her heat generator myself. No one wanted to say. We wanted you to be a little happy. We could tell you weren’t. She was really nice, wasn’t she?”
Daivid nodded. He noticed that most of the Cockroaches, who were helping out with the cleanup, were very carefully not listening to their conversation. “She was. How’s it going?”
It was strange being in the secret depths of Wingle World, in the real inventor’s lab, knowing that the man himself, the legend, was never coming back again. The puppets being repaired or created anew under their hands would never know the master’s touch. But they’d know the next generation. It didn’t make it all right in his heart, but it made things better.
“There you are, Lt. Wolfe!”
The three town councillors bustled up to him. The man with arched black eyebrows took his hand.
“We are very grateful to you and your … Cockroaches for saving us all,” the puppet said, shaking energetically. “Your leadership saved the townsfolk from a threat we could never have withstood alone. In spite of the ill way we t
reated you in the beginning, you did us an enormous favor. We owe you a debt of gratitude.”
“Oh, no,” Wolfe cautioned them, his hands held out in protest. “Not a favor. You don’t mean that.”
“We do mean it,” the plump woman said. “And we know what it means, too. We know who you are. We looked you up. You visited us when you were small. Do you remember?”
“I’ll never forget it,” Daivid said, fervently. “That visit or this one.” Very reluctantly, he took the small database chip out from under his uniform tunic and entered the favor as a Class 5 favor.
“Your dad will be pleased,” Thielind said, absently. The ensign lifted the repairbot down and raised the next one to the worktop. He stroked his fingers gently over the manipulative arms, looking for broken components. One of the tanklike tracks that ran around two of its wheels was missing. It obediently rolled over and opened its access hatch for him.
“What do you do, baby?” he asked it.
“That’s a monotrack repairbot,” the redfaced councillor said. “Vital to the maintenance of about half the rides. It lays the filaments and repairs them.”
“Oh, I see,” Thielind said, reaching for a cable cutter. A repairbot on the floor found one and slapped it into his palm like a surgical nurse.
The councillors froze for a moment. Wolfe guessed they were conferring.
“You have an amazing affinity for our machines, Mr. …”
“Thielind,” the ensign replied, not looking up.
“Would you possibly be interested in staying on? We could use your help in getting the park in shape. The first day of the season is only ten days away.”
“Oh, I’ll help until our transport comes,” Thielind said. “I’m having a good time.”
“But what about after that?” the woman asked. “I speak with the full authority of Oscar Wingle VIII. We’re willing to offer you 150,000 credits a year.”
The monotrack robot rolled onto one side so Thielind could attach its new tractor guide. “Oh, no, thanks. I’ll stay in the Space Service.”
Strong Arm Tactics Page 41
