by Paul Kenyon
"Naah," the voice said, "there's nothing."
"You better stay there and keep an eye out, chum," the other said. "The Big Cheese is nervous."
Penelope smiled to herself in the darkness. She didn't wonder that the Org was nervous, after ripping off the Syn a few hours ago. It was probably an armed camp inside. But if Vinnie was going to stay alert, she had a problem. Even if he didn't keep watch on the opposite rooftop, he couldn't fail to see Sumo and the others when they dipped to the lowest part of their swing, only twenty feet above ground. They'd be hurtling straight at him, like bats flying out of the darkness. She was going to have to get them across the empty lot some other way.
She began to walk up the side of the building. The polymer line held her horizontal, like a spar. The powerful spring in the handle of the Spyder reeled her in as she went. At each step she flicked the barrel upward to gain a foot or two of slack. The Spyder's irislike clutch, controlled by the lever under her thumb, gripped the thread to keep it from sliding out of the muzzle again.
She paused halfway up the wall to take her bearings. She was high enough to peer over the low rooftops past Tenth Avenue to the black waters of the Hudson and the lights of the Jersey shore beyond it. Somewhere a fire siren screamed at the night. She craned her neck backward and got an upside-down view of Sumo, almost on a level with her, peeking from behind his chimney. She motioned him to stay where he was.
She resumed her horizontal walk, knees bent and tail tucked under her to keep the angle of the polymer thread from growing too wide as she approached the top. The end of the muzzle clinked into brick. She let go of the handle with one hand and groped upward for the edge of the coping. When she had it, she let go of the Spyder with the other hand and heaved herself over the top. She lay there for a moment, panting. Then she retrieved the Spyder, snipping off the embedded piton with the little molybdenum blade sheathed at the tip. The severed end of thread flicked back into the muzzle like a snake's tongue.
Down below, Sumo waved cautiously from behind his chimney. She thumbed another piton into the chamber. The groove along the side of the piton caught the thread like a bobbin. A drop of epoxy flowed into the groove and hardened instantly.
Penelope sighted along her forearm and aimed at the tenement roof near Sumo's feet. The Spyder hissed.
Sumo bent and pulled at something invisible between his feet. He nodded and stepped back. Penelope walked backward with the Spyder, unreeling more line, and snubbed it around an air-conditioning duct.
She rummaged in the leather bag and found the trolley: a pair of deeply grooved nylon wheels set in a rectangular frame. She fed eighty feet of line out of the Spyder, watching the little meter in the butt, and tied the end to the eye at the end of the frame. She weighted the trolley with a small wrench and sent it down the line to Sumo.
Sumo fashioned a sling out of his coveralls and attached it to the hook at the bottom of the frame. Fiona, the lightest of the three of them, sat in the sling and Penelope hauled her up the line.
It was easier the second time, with Fiona to help her pull Inga up. Sumo came last. He vaulted easily over the coping and landed on his sneakered feet.
They spent the next few minutes assembling their automatic weapons. The pipelike objects and plumber's tools in the coverall pockets became carbine barrels and breeches, folding wire stocks, skeletonized pistol grips. There was no component more than a foot long. Inga produced the clips from her bag, and they snapped them into place.
The roof exit looked normal, but they all knew it wasn't. "What do you think, Tommy?" the Baroness said.
He frowned. "No telling what's behind that door. Trip wires, electric eyes, radar alarm, TV monitor. I don't think I'd better even try to open it."
The wiry electronics expert fished in the coverall's pockets and came up with a small gray box. He watched the dials. "Yeah, they're using radar. That means I better not feed microwaves into there. Let's check them for an ultrasonic alarm. If they've got one, we're cooked."
He fitted something that looked like a stethoscope into his ears. He crawled around the roof, listening. "Nope," he said. "We're okay. Let's break out the sonar."
The wave generator looked like an electric mixer with a trumpet bell instead of eggbeater blades. He plugged in the jacks of another device. It was a cigar-box-size computer with a liquid crystal display screen.
As he passed the trumpet bell methodically over the rooftop behind the door area, the white lines of a magic sketch began to appear on the screen. When he finished, there was a perspective drawing of a pair of skeleton boxes, joined at an angle. Each line was accompanied by a figure showing its length.
"Here's the stairwell," he said, tapping the canted box. He took a tape measure and stretched it along the roof behind the door. "Back wall's here. Should be safe enough."
He drew a chalk square on the rooftop and looked up at the Baroness. "Do you have the thermite?" he said.
Penelope took over from there. She spread the thermite over the chalked square and covered it with a fireproof mat. She sealed the edges of the mat to the roof with asbestos tape, leaving a small hole for the fuse. "Stand back," she said as she fit it.
A sizzling sound came from the mat. She could feel the heat on her face twenty feet away. She waited forty-five seconds, then put on an asbestos glove and peeled the mat away.
There was a square hole in the rooftop, its edges on fire. The Baroness used the mat to beat out the flames. She swung herself into the opening and dropped lightly down.
The others followed. They were exactly where Sumo had calculated, at a back wall, safely behind all the security devices. There was a TV camera in a bracket over their heads, pointing at the door, and a radar sentry guarding the forward area.
There was also a pair of shotguns mounted in a stand, pointing at the door. The triggers were connected to a delayed-action trip wire.
"These people play rough," Inga said, shivering.
"Time for John to make his move," Penelope said. She touched the transmitter button of her watch. There was an answering electric shock as Farnsworth acknowledged.
"Let's go, children," she said.
* * *
Down below in the reception area, a bald man with a cigar looked up as a customer walked across the naked floor toward him. The bald man was sitting on a high stool behind a chest-level partition, flanked by two other men in shirtsleeves. He'd seen the customer enter the door on the hidden TV monitor built into the counter, and followed his progress around the bends of the lobby.
He was a middle-aged dude with gray hair and mustache, trying to look hip in a black turtleneck. He carried a bundle of fiberboard film boxes and a New York Times tucked under his arm. Probably an advertising agency art director, on his way home after an all-night session, dropping off the film first.
"Can you give me a rush on this?" the gray-haired man said.
"Whatcher got?" the bald man said, bored. He took the film boxes and got out an order pad.
"The top one's exposed film — not to be opened until you get it in the darkroom. I need a dupe negative on the second. The third's an interneg. I need two hundred release prints on it."
The bald man yawned and started to write up the tags, passing each box in turn over to one of the shirt-sleeved men, who put them into the two dumbwaiters. He looked up. The gray-haired man was still standing there.
"Yeah?" the bald man said.
"Are you sure I'll get them tomorrow?" He seemed nervous and fussy — probably a fag, like all those art guys.
"Everything but the release prints. Look, don't worry, okay?"
The gray-haired man made no move to go. Annoyed, the bald man opened his mouth to let him have it.
There was a dull explosion, upstairs from the darkroom floor. Smoke started to pour out of the dumbwaiter shaft. The bald man turned, the cigar dropping out of his mouth.
One of the shirtsleeved men screamed as the film box he was holding burst into flame. The box dropped to
the floor, sizzling with a white, unnatural fire.
Somehow, the gray-haired man was behind the counter with him. It didn't seem possible that an old guy like that could have climbed over the partition so quickly. Before he had time to think about it, the gray-haired man was pulling a long wire bent in the shape of an L out of his New York Times. He tucked the end of the L into the hollow of his shoulder. The New York Times fell away. The gray-haired man was holding some kind of a toy-sized machine gun.
Only it wasn't a toy. Its filed-off tip spurted flame. Across, near the dumbwaiters, one of the shirtsleeved men was slammed back, the revolver he'd drawn spinning from his grasp. Instinctively the bald man went for his own gun in the clip under the counter. The muzzle of the little machine gun swung toward him. He saw the round opening, bright with file marks.
It was the last thing he saw.
* * *
They waited on the eighth floor landing until they heard the explosion inside. Then Penelope kicked open the door.
An alarm went off. Only it didn't matter anymore.
It was full of smoke inside. Men were running back and forth, yelling. A chunky man in a rubber apron ran out of the smoke toward her, heading for the fire extinguisher next to the door.
She hit him along the side of the head with the gun barrel. The lightweight weapon only dazed him. She brought up a sneakered foot in a sideways swing that looked like a ballet kick. The side of her heel caught him in the head again. He crumpled to the floor.
It was a long dingy room with work counters along both sides. There were rewind reels with cranks, guillotine splicers, 16mm action viewers bolted to the counters. Canvas film baskets, looking like laundry carts, cluttered the floor.
Another rubber-aproned man ran toward them. He swung a metal stool at Inga. She ducked and fired a burst from her machine gun. He grabbed at the bib of his apron and toppled over.
Sumo was running along the top of one of the counters, delivering karate kicks to the white-gloved men sitting on stools. They tumbled over backward like a row of dominoes.
Fiona was trying to make up her mind whether or not to shoot a heavily jowled man in a striped shirt. "For the love of God, lady!" he pleaded. She hesitated, then jabbed him in the belly with the gun barrel. When he doubled over, she rabbit-punched him.
The button men started to come out of the woodwork. Penelope caught a flash of white under the counter. A cotton-gloved hand was pointing a gun at Inga. Penelope fired a short burst. There was a scream and the gun fell out of the hand.
They'd worked their way halfway across the long room. A mob of the rubber-aproned, white-gloved men were surging toward the staircase door. Penelope wasn't ready to let them go yet. She sprayed a stream of bullets over their heads. They looked around, some stopping, some carried forward by momentum, falling over their co-workers. A heavy boxlike Moviola editing machine rested on its four wheeled legs near her. She gave it a mighty kick. It skidded down the long room, knocking the rubber-aproned men over like pins in a bowling alley. It came to rest in front of the door, blocking it, trailing movie film from its reels.
The little direction finder strapped to her wrist said that the bugged film case was somewhere ahead, through the door at the far end. She headed toward it, her automatic weapon ready, Inga at her side. Sumo and Fiona were crouched behind her, walking backward, protecting her rear in case any more of the aproned types turned out to be button men.
One of them was. He jumped up, yelling, bringing up a shotgun that he'd had hidden in an editing bin. Sumo mowed him down with automatic fire. The hood staggered backward and fell into a canvas film basket. It rolled six feet on its casters before it bumped into the Moviola. It came to rest, the trousered legs and black patent leather shoes sticking out over the rim. Sumo continued backing up, loading another clip while Fiona covered him.
Penelope kicked the door open. Another alarm went off. A man in a dark suit was standing there, a sawed-off shotgun in one hand. He'd just been reaching for the doorknob.
His face was familiar. Her mind racing at the speed of fight, Penelope recognized him. He was one of the Org hoods who had raided Baynard Warren's party about a million years earlier that evening. Perhaps he was the one who had killed Terence.
The little machine gun stammered and jerked in her hands. She emptied the whole clip into his chest. His shotgun went off in his death reflex, spattering pellets at the floor. His feet suddenly disappeared below the ankles. His body dropped six inches and landed on the splintered ends of the shin bones. Penelope elbowed the still-vertical body sideways and rushed through the door, loading another clip as she went.
There were more hoods, erupting from a fire door at the side of the room. She flung herself flat, getting off a low-angle burst as she fell. She hit the floor with hip and shoulder and immediately began rolling sideways. A hail of shotgun pellets rattled against the linoleum where she'd been a second earlier. The man who'd fired them was already dead.
Sumo and Fiona were through the door now, adding their firepower to Inga's. There was a sustained yammer of automatic fire, and four soldati lay sprawled in the ungainly postures of death.
Like, the black shadow of a cat, the Baroness bounded toward the fire door. She kicked aside a body that was blocking it and popped her head through the door frame. There was a shot from below and a rifled slug splattered against the lintel. By that time she'd already pulled her head back to safety.
But she'd taken it all in, in that split second. Three floors down, a bunch of sweating hoods were toiling up the stairwell, heading for the floor where the explosions and gunfire were coming from.
She hoped she was diverting some of them from the ground floor. There was a limit to the number of soldati that Farnsworth could handle by himself. Don't push it, John, she thought fiercely; get out. Now.
She found a grenade in her shoulder bag and pulled the pin. She gave it the last possible moment, then tossed it through the doorway into the stairwell. There was a rattling explosion below, and screams. She tossed another grenade after the first one. This time there was an explosion, but no screams.
Sumo leaned close to her, his face streaked with grime from the greasy smoke that was pouring through the place.
"I'm getting worried, Baroness," he said. "We're pushing our time. And our luck."
She nodded. The direction finder on her wrist buzzed insistently. "It's somewhere nearby," she said.
The room they were in was a shambles. This was where Farnsworth's booby-trapped film case had gone off. Metal shelving, twisted and blackened by the explosion, lay on its side, its contents spilled. A spaghetti tangle of shredded 16mm film littered the floor.
"Too bad, America," Fiona said sardonically. "There go all your deodorant commercials."
The Baroness quartered the room, trying to get a reading. "Through there," she said.
There was a red warning fight over the door. She turned the knob and stepped through into darkness.
"Close the door," a voice said.
She realized, after a moment, that the room was heavily insulated against sound. Its occupants hadn't been aware of the commotion next door. She sniffed the air. It was cold and clean, scrubbed by an efficient filtration system.
Her eyes were becoming adjusted to the dim light spilling from the open door behind her. There were bulky rectangular shapes dispersed over the floor, like a herd of mechanical rhinos pausing to graze. Some of them clicked and gurgled, as the chemicals in their square bellies digested millions upon millions of photographic images. The men who moved among them like silent herdsmen wore dark glasses despite the absence of light. They were blind, every one of them. The Org never wasted a thing. This was a rehabilitation project for sightless hoodlums. They made good darkroom workers.
"Who the Christ is there?" one of the blind men said querulously.
Penelope followed the buzzing of the detector to a cluster of vats and piping in the corner. The fiberboard film case she'd bugged was there, open and empty.
A row of take-up reels turned, clicking, pulling ribbons of film out of the apparatus one frame at a time.
She shined a penlight over the strips of film, and tiny images sprang to life in vivid color. It was the government official's wife and the man with the leopard headband, striving together in their miniature lust, their naked posture duplicated a thousand times over.
Penelope reached up and turned off the machine. The reels stopped turning.
"Who is it?" the blind man said. "What are you doing?"
Penelope raised her voice. "Listen to me. This place is going to go up in about three minutes. I'll give you all that long to get out of here. Take the fire exit stairs down. And don't trip over the bodies."
The blind men began to move in aimless panic. "Smoke!" one of them wailed. "I smell smoke!"
"Stay cool," Penelope said. "And follow the fire drill."
The struggling mass of men calmed down. Each put a white-gloved hand on his neighbor's shoulder. One by one they groped their way toward the growing chain until they were all a part of it. They marched in single file through the door, the leader tapping a cane in front of him.
Inga was looking at the ribbons of duplicate film. "It looks like we got here just in time, Baroness," she said. "By morning there would have been dozens of prints, all over the city."
Sumo had retrieved the original reel. He handed it to Penelope.
"That's the one," she said.
They found more duplicate reels in a canvas bin next to the processing machine. They made a big pile of them. Penelope took the plastique out of her bag and peeled it out of its oiled wrappings. She molded it like a long clay rope around the film and over the machine. She pushed the little radio-triggered fuse, about the size and shape of a cigarette, into the rope.
Inga and Fiona were moving efficiently through the room, sticking small shaped charges of plastique to the major equipment. The Org wouldn't be turning out any porno films in a hurry.
Like a cook adding a last touch, Penelope sprinkled thermite over the concoction.
