He realized, too late, that there was more to this maneuver. His hand was rotated and jabbed into his own groin, the prong making contact with one of the most highly innervated parts of his body.
His vision went red as his consciousness retreated inside his skull, trying in vain to hide from the false signals running through his nervous system. He curled up in a twitching ball of agony.
Escape
Tsekoh, Capital of Chaco Benthic
“That was a little dramatic, don’t you think?” The agent cast Rick a wry look. “A little more difficult trying to slip away, after all those gymnastics.”
“He was about to stun you,” Rick protested. “You had no idea he was even back there.”
“I knew he was there, same way you did,” the agent answered, waving Rick down a side corridor.
Rick frowned. Did he have pre-cognitive ability? Did every Human? All this time, generations of his people had thought they owed their ability to their planet but what if it was something else?
“The folks approaching us were alarmed,” the agent explained, “shifting out of the way as quickly as they could.” He grinned. “I don’t cause that kind of reaction, so it had to mean a Stoner.”
Rick was surprised at the man’s ability to function without pre-cog. Back on 3428, there was a young woman, Sarah, who’d lost her sight a few years back. She got around the ship as easily as anyone else, having a nine-second warning of any accident or collision she might have been about to have.
She used her pre-cog ability to compensate for the loss of her sight but this man used his sight to compensate for the absence of pre-cog. He had no way of knowing what he was missing, of course, so perhaps it wasn’t really compensation.
Still, Rick would rather lose his vision than his pre-vision.
He followed the man around a corner and up a ramp to the next level, stopping half way to talk to some filthy-looking vagrants. To Rick’s surprise, the agent took off his coat, nodding for him to do the same. He had just finished buying the brightly colored jacket and now he was giving it away?
They handed over their jackets and continued up the ramp. Rick probed his guide, learning the importance of adaptive camouflage. He also realized the man was expecting the question. He took smug satisfaction in not asking.
They boarded a pair of small vehicles, barely large enough for the driver and a passenger to straddle. The agent gave both operators directions and they lurched into motion, accelerating hard. Pedestrians blurred past them, inches away, and then they were out in the open space of the atrium. They rolled over to dive toward the mist and Rick could feel the pull of artificial gravity on his feet.
Even though the engineer in him understood the relative safety of his situation, he still had no intention of removing his white-knuckled hands from the grab bars. It turned out to be a good decision. The operators were absolute maniacs, weaving their way through narrow gaps with maneuvers extreme enough to overcome the vehicles’ restraint systems.
After a few near-misses and several years off Rick’s life, they slid to a halt next to a railing thirty levels down and a couple of kilometers north of where they’d started. After the ride, Rick hardly even registered the danger of climbing from the vehicle to the pedway.
They were standing at the edge of a large crowd.
“Foolish,” the agent muttered.
“What’s going on?”
“One of them has an educated child but no money to buy a lift ticket.” He nodded at the group. “They’re donating money so the child can get off world and pledge at a monastery or convent.”
“So, why’s that foolish?”
“Because they’re laborers – all of ‘em – and the company doesn’t like it when laborers gather in large groups, especially when they’re skulking around down here.” He gave Rick a gentle push. “C’mon, we need to get away from here. If a magister gets wind of this, it’ll get ugly fast.”
They started moving away. Rick resisted the urge to look back over his shoulder. Then he remembered he had problems of his own. “What did your boss tell you, when you called in?”
“He told me to keep you alive for a few days and then get you up to the hotel on the counterweight. We’ve got a long-range patrol in the area and they’re being tasked to swing by and pick you up.”
“Why don’t I just go back up there now?”
The agent shook his head. “More places to hide down here and they get suspicious of anyone who wants to spend a week sitting in that fleabag.”
Spark
Tsekoh, Capital of Chaco Benthic
Graadt eased up to a sitting position, the last of the shock still wearing off. The crowd flowed around him as if he wasn’t even sitting there. He wasn’t visible to pedestrians until they were right on top of him and they mostly had the sense to weave around him as if he weren’t there. It wasn’t healthy to stand and stare at an embarrassed Stoner.
And Graadt was definitely embarrassed. He’d allowed himself to tunnel-vision on the target. He wanted to catch the Human so badly that he’d abandoned all consideration of situational awareness and he’d paid for that mistake.
A residual shudder ran through his body and he shook his head in anger. He wouldn’t let his comrades find him on the floor. He forced his body to stand, grinning as the space around him opened up. He was visible from a greater distance now and nobody wanted to catch his eye.
He heard a commotion to his right and he allowed a faint glimmer of hope that he might be able to reacquire his target after all. The big Stoner moved in that direction as though the plaza were empty. Folks tended to stay out of the way when it enhanced their safety. It left him in the middle of a small bubble of personal space.
Moving through the crowd like a drop of soap in dirty water, Graadt reached the edge of a much larger bubble and merged with it. Inside were three magisters and their latest victim – a separation plant worker, from the look of his uniform.
His helmet was lying on the floor, credit chips spilled around his feet.
Graadt had seen it several times in the last few days alone. Taking donations for an educated child had spread like wildfire in Benthic. On most worlds, something like this would spread much more slowly but the atmosphere down here was so oppressively hopeless that the people had become living tinder. Any tiny spark of hope ignited them like a gas leak.
The magisters stopped what they were doing, looking at him apprehensively. They darted glances around the crowd, no doubt searching for Graadt’s two associates. They would have heard by now of his interfering with another group of magisters and they wouldn’t want to risk another confrontation.
Graadt had no intention of intervening. Most likely, the man was breaking no laws but he was by himself. If he had brought his child along, it would have been different. He began scanning the faces around the perimeter of the bubble, knowing it was unlikely his target would have stayed in the area but still not willing to lose him from sheer carelessness.
The magisters looked at each other, unsure of how to proceed while the unpredictable Stoner was still standing there. The senior officer turned to look back at Graadt and his gaze widened in shock.
A large fitter’s wrench sailed toward him in a graceful arc, slamming into the side of his face and dropping him, shrieking, to the floor of the plaza. His two cronies froze, too shocked to even come to his aid. Their comrades had faced taunts and jeers in a previous incident but, this time, one of their own had been attacked.
Graadt knew what was coming next. The two standing magisters looked as though they hoped to avoid it by becoming statues but they stood no chance. He looked over his shoulder, trying to figure out who’d thrown the wrench, but it was a hopeless task. He was unsurprised to see his own bubble of personal space shrink as the crowd surged forward.
The wrench had transformed the crowd from a collection of angry individuals into a mob. They’d already been halfway there in the first place. Shared anger, coupled with the electromagnetic fields of hundreds
of brains and cardiac muscles had already begun to tie the crowd together.
The tinder was piled, the spark struck.
He turned back to the horrified magisters as the mob flowed past him. One of them was hoisted above the seething mass, arms and legs twisting as hands grabbed at him.
Graadt instinctively winced as the Dactari magister’s tail was twisted, almost shrieking along with the hapless victim. Though Stoners had lost their tails generations ago, there was still an atavistic revulsion that would take centuries to eradicate.
A twisted tail was the least of the magister’s problems. A grisly snapping heralded the first of what would be many dislocated joints. Bobbing heads surrounded the magister who’d taken a wrench to the face. His screams were rapidly cut off as the angry mob kicked him to death.
“Boss, behind you…” Nid’s voice sounded in his earpiece. He turned to see their carrier hovering over the crowd. Kaans threw him a harness from the side door.
Graadt hooked a leg into the harness, wrapped an arm around the cable and gave the signal. As he lifted out of the surging mass of unleashed anger, he could hear a chant begin to take form.
“Stoners!” they were shouting.
It was hard to tell but he thought they were screaming approval, rather than hatred of his race. He stepped into the hatch and took his leg out of the harness.
Kaans grinned at him. “What the hells did you do down there?”
Graadt looked out the door as Nid maneuvered back out to the atrium. “Not a gods damned thing,” he said ruefully. “But that’s not how the local administration will see it.”
“Where are we headed?” Nid asked.
Graadt stared absently at the jumble of rail structures flashing past the open hatch. The revolution had almost certainly begun. Tearing three magisters limb from limb was the kind of thing that couldn’t be swept under the deck plates.
There would definitely be a harsh response from the company in an attempt to crush the uprising but it would be too much – too late. The economic slaves of Chaco Benthic had their first taste of blood and the madness was in their eyes.
This was what the Human excelled at. He was like a hench-worm burrowing into fruit, finding a patch of rot and revelling in it. Once the fire had been lit, he’d leave, as he had on at least six other worlds.
“He’ll want to get out,” Graadt announced, “before things get too unstable and they have to lock down the elevator.”
Accelerated Plan
Tsekoh, Capital of Chaco Benthic
Cal took another bite of the apple-shaped sausage. It was far more pungent than anything he’d had on Earth and it was far more expensive. Belfric had spared no expense to make this a special day for his daughter, refusing to postpone it over the recent unrest. Perishable food had been brought in on a special order and he’d staunchly refused to let Cal cover the cost with organization funds.
They were celebrating the recent birth of Bel’s first grandchild and Cal had finally accepted the Ufangian’s invitation. It was probably a bad idea but his second-in-command was relentlessly inclusive.
Ufangians, in general, were like that. They were fiercely loyal to family but, if you knew one for any length of time, you’d be rolled into the family group. If a circle of friends had an Ufangian in it, he or she was probably the one who’d put it together.
Bel had been Cal’s (or C’al’s) first recruit to the movement. In his first days on Chaco Benthic, he’d played the role of a confused traveller desperate to find work. It had been Bel who got him out of the ore dressing plant and into the survey group.
Cal had learned decades earlier the fastest way to build up an insurgency movement from scratch – recruit an Ufangian. They came with a vast network of contacts and, if they were of a mind to rebel, they usually knew at least a dozen like-minded individuals.
He’d never really given much thought to how he had misled his oldest friend in the world – this world – but now, seeing him with his extended family, Cal felt a twinge of guilt.
Bel was one of the best people he’d ever met and he still thought C’Al was a Tauhentan.
The Human from 3428, on the other hand, knew exactly what he was. How exactly he’d figured it out so quickly was still a mystery and Cal didn’t care for mysteries. The young man had looked at him for a few seconds and then confidently identified him as a Human.
How many others might be able to tell?
He realized the Human was talking to him and he shook his head to clear out his doubts. “Sorry, what?”
He was spared the need to talk to the disturbing young man when Bel and his wife approached. “C’Al,” Bel boomed, “maybe now that you know what you’ve been missing all this time, you’ll be more inclined to come to our get-togethers.”
Cal grinned, gesturing with the spherical sausage. “I’d move in if I thought you had any more room! Are these from your home world?”
A nod. “A taste of home.”
“One day…”
“One day soon…” Bel looked over at his wife.
Kimric was a perfect example of why Cal preferred to recruit Ufangians as the core of any cell. She knew everything her husband knew and she kept him on an even keel. Her fierce desire to see a better future for her family made her one of the most trustworthy members of their group.
Cal knew she’d never talk to the authorities. Most species had a strong sense of family but they paled in comparison to the Ufangians. She’d never risk her family, even in the unlikely event that she wanted her husband dead or locked up.
And she always seemed to know what was needed, even before her husband did. She stepped up to the young Human visitor, linking arms with him. “You’ve been drawing a few glances, young man,” she announced brightly. “Come – let me introduce you to some nice young ladies.”
Cal caught the man’s questioning glance as he was being led away and he grinned. “Just be careful not to breach the family code or you might leave this party as a gender neutral…”
The young man’s eyes widened.
Kimric laughed, dark eyes flashing with mischief. “Gender neutral is just an old saying,” she explained, waiting for his features to relax again before continuing. “You get to keep the twig, we just cut off the berries…”
Cal and Belfric chuckled as they waved at the alarmed young man. “You’re a lucky man, Bel,” Cal announced. “I mean really lucky.”
“So she keeps telling me,” Bel replied. He turned to face Cal. “You heard what happened after you left the square?”
Cal chuckled. “Tell me you had a wrench that won’t trace back to you.”
“I did. I usually use legacies so I don’t have to keep buying replacements from the company.”
Legacies were tools salvaged from dead workers. If a shield suit failed or a landslide crushed an employee, his coworkers always took any useful tools before the company could put them back into inventory and sell them a second time. They were free and, in this case, untraceable.
“I couldn’t let the moment go to waste.” The Ufangian shrugged. “The crowd was on the blade’s edge. All they needed was a little push.”
“So you threw a wrench at a magister’s face?” C’Al had to admire his friend’s presence of mind. “And who started chanting Stoner?”
“Who d’you think,” Bel demanded. “A chance to shift the public mood from helplessness to revolt and turn the administration against their most potent allies at the same time?”
Cal took a deep breath, tilting his head in homage to his friend’s abilities. “Gods help me if you and I ever end up enemies…”
Belfric nodded his grudging agreement. “Unless, of course, you stay on my wife’s good side, in which case I might be in trouble.” He looked over to where she was introducing the young visitor to a group of young women. “What’s the plan for him?” he asked. “You plan to get him off world, yes?”
“I do,” Cal replied. “His information can help us, if we can get him to a fri
end of mine, but I may need to get him out faster than we’d intended.”
“The dung has definitely hit the atmo recyclers,” Bel said cheerfully. “Folks will start lining up for a ride out, whether they have the credits or not.”
“Well, he has the money,” Cal muttered. “Hardly any time in that casino and he’d already won enough money to put his life in danger.”
Casinos murdered lucky customers all the time. If a magister managed to get wind of it, they’d simply point to an unlikely string of luck, explain it as cheating and offer the magister ten percent of the recovered credits. Cal had a feeling this young man might have been able to avoid their clutches but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why he thought so.
“Could get a bit cracked,” Bel warned. “The water price was cut in half this morning – biggest price drop in years.” It was a clear indication the company expected the recent violence to lead to even worse confrontations. “You sure your boy’s up for it?”
Cal laughed. “You think he could get any more frightened than he is right now?”
They laughed, watching the clearly nervous young man as he respectfully talked with several young Ufangian women. In truth, they were free to experiment with any young man who caught their eye.
If Ufangian men ever tried to instill patriarchal control over the amorous choices of the women, they’d certainly fail horribly. Cal had met a few of them and some were leading cells on other worlds. He couldn’t imagine an Ufangian woman being told she couldn’t see a particular young suitor, at least not without punching the offending male in the throat.
He could imagine his Human visitor developing a sudden reluctance to leave this planet, however, and that was the main reason for his fabricated warning. He saw one of the young women reach out to place a hand on the visitor’s forearm. The Human jumped as though he’d been electrocuted, causing some amused giggles.
“I’d better get him out of here,” Cal said, “before his heart gives out.”
“Or before he finds out we lied to him.” Bel let out a cheerful burp. “Wouldn’t be hard to find a girl he likes from that bunch. While you’re at it, better get him straight to the departure station.” He looked over at C’Al, face serious. “You need my help?”
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