by Chris Bunch
Very deliberately, concentrating only on what his hands were doing, he began making a pot of tea.
The mirrors of the workout room reflected two stools. On one sat the Lumina, flaming brilliantly. On the second was a ripe multistriped melon.
The stone ‘burned’ higher, and then, for an instant, there was the blink of a hand extending, fingers held together in a knife thrust.
The tips of the fingers barely touched the melon, and it exploded, spraying juice and pulp across the room.
Joshua Wolfe was suddenly visible in the mirrors.
He stared at the shattered fruit, nodded once, and began to clean up the mess.
SIXTEEN
BOMBS ROCK LUXURY HOTEL
1 Killed as Blasts Shatter Penthouse
Press for More
Two bombs exploded just after dusk today in two floors of Carlton VI’s most luxurious hotel, the Hyland Central, killing one hotel employee.
Police are seeking the leaseholder of the hotel’s penthouse to aid in their inquiries.
Dead was Peter Loughran, 45, a long-time employee of the hotel assigned to the night security detail.
Police bomb experts said the twin devices were professionally made and set. The lieutenant in charge, whose name by government policy cannot be revealed, said, ‘It appears the first bomb went off in the Hyland’s penthouse and was triggered by Mister Loughran, making a routine check of the apartments as ordered by the penthouse’s tenant.’
‘A few moments later,’ the lieutenant continued, ‘a second bomb, obviously linked to the first, destroyed a smaller room two stories below.’
Police theorize that the penthouse’s leaseholder, Mister Joshua Wolfe, was the target of the attack and the bomb was inadvertently set off by Mister Loughran.
The purpose of the second bomb is unknown at this time, and the room’s occupant, a Mister Samuel Baker, who held the room on a long-term lease, is being sought for questioning.
Damage to the hotel was extensive and will require rebuilding of both floors the devices were detonated on.
Little information was available on Mister Wolfe at press time. He was considered a model tenant who kept to himself and never caused trouble. Hotel records as to his profession and employment were non-existent, however, which has aroused police suspicions. He is currently believed to be offworld.
Mister Baker was unknown to any of the hotel employees, and no information whatsoever appears available. The relationship between the two men, if any, is also unknown.
Anyone with information as to the whereabouts of either of these men should contact Carlton VI platentary police at C-8788-6823-6789.
34ERS 45MCS MDU89 QZ3RE . . . IT IS IMPERATIVE YOU COMMUNICATE SOONEST WITH YOUR STATUS, CURRENT DESTINATION, AND ANY FURTHER DATA WHICH MAY BE USEFUL, SO MAXIMUM FEDERATION SUPPORT CAN BE MADE AVAILABLE.
CISCO
‘Standing by for response.’
‘There won’t be any.’
Joshua crumpled the page from the one-time pad and pushed it into the trash destructor slot, then turned to the screen with the contract he’d been studying when Cisco’s message came in.
‘And they say there’s no such thing as slavery any more,’ he finally murmured. He picked up the lightpen and signed it: Ed Hunt. Then he touched the TRANSMIT sensor.
‘Hi-ho. Hi-ho. It’s off to work we go.’
SEVENTEEN
Steam clouds hissed up and grew larger as the cargo ship’s drive nudged it toward the yellow pillars that marched from the shore deep into the jungle.
‘All contract workers, Lock Bravo for immediate disembarking. This is the last call.’
The ship nosed up to the floating dock below the structure, and magnetic grapples clanged. The ship rolled slightly in the sullen surf that washed up on the beach about a hundred yards away.
The ship’s lock extended out over the dock, and the portal irised open. The half a hundred men waiting inside tasted the world’s air. It was humid, sticky, threatening.
‘Lumberpigs first, old lags second, virgins last,’ someone shouted. Men picked up their duffels and made their way up the lighter’s ramp to the dock and into an elevator.
Joshua slung his carryall over one shoulder, then bent to pick up the square leather-bound case beside him. A dark man who’d been in the same compartment with Wolfe in the short jump from Lectat IV to Montana Keep grabbed the case’s handles and lifted.
‘Jesu, buddy, what the hell you got in there? Rocks?’
‘Books,’ Joshua said.
‘A reader, eh? Be interestin’ to see if you can stay awake long enough offshift t’ turn a page. I never can.’ The man shouldered his own gear, and the two joined the line snaking off the craft.
A man wearing a protective helmet and an officious expression waited on the dock. He held a notebook and checked names as the men went past.
‘Virgins, over here. All new hires, let’s go. Come on, virgins, ’ he said monotonously. Wolfe stepped out of line, nodding good-bye to his acquaintance.
‘See you up the Centipede,’ the man said, and disappeared into an elevator.
‘Name,’ the helmeted man said.
‘Hunt,’ Joshua said. ‘Ed Hunt.’
The man keyed sensors. ‘Right. You’re unassigned, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Go topside, second companionway to the right, down two levels. Personnel will plug you in.’
Joshua started away.
‘Hang on.’ The man took a sensor from his back pocket. ‘I’m assumin’ you followed orders and didn’t bring any hooch or high, right?’
‘I don’t get cooked on the job.’
‘Yeh,’ the man said, disbelieving. ‘Nobody does. That’s why we don’t gotta shake all you lice down to keep you from gettin’ fried and fallin’ in the scaler.’ He ran the sensor up and down Joshua’s body. ‘You’re clean. Open the bags.’
Joshua opened the carryall. The man probed through it, found nothing. He opened the leather-bound case, then hesitated. He looked up and met Joshua’s steady gaze. The man looked puzzled for an instant, then shook his head and closed the case without examining it.
‘’Kay. You ain’t carryin’ nothing. Go on or you’ll be late for noon meal.’
Joshua went into an elevator, rode it to the top, and stepped out onto the structure’s flat deck.
It curled from the shore two miles into the jungle, more than four hundred feet above the jungle floor, and was made of a series of cylindrically legged segments. The deck under him hummed from hidden machinery. Each segment’s top deck had a wide, toothed centerline belt with rough-trimmed logs on it. When the belt reached the structure Joshua stood on, it disappeared into the depths of the building, and Wolfe heard the screaming rasp of high-speed saws and smelled sawdust.
He found the second companionway and clattered down the crosshatched steel stairs.
There were three bored clerks in the office. Joshua recognized a few of the men he’d come out with in lines in front of them. He waited until one was free, then went to him and gave the man his name. The clerk touched sensors on a pad.
‘You never contracted with us before,’ the clerk said. ‘Correct.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Correct.’
‘Have you ever done any logging?’
‘No.’
‘Any idea where we could plug you in?’
Joshua shrugged.
The clerk looked at a screen. ‘I got half a dozen slots. Four of them are in the mill here at base. Two outside. You rather work inside or out?’
‘Outside.’
‘One’s oiler on the treadway. You get bored easy?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then that isn’t for you. You done construction?’
‘Some.’
‘Ever drive a crane?’
‘Once. Four . . . five years ago. For six months.’
‘You kill anybody?’
‘Nobody worth mentioning.’
‘Pat y
our head and rub your gut, mister. I’m not joking.’
Joshua blinked, grinned, obeyed.
‘Okay,’ the clerk said. ‘You got separation there. Maybe you’ll work out. One of the drivers is going below next rotation, so we need a replacement. They’ll show you what you need to know up at the head. If you don’t work out, report back here and we’ll reassign you. That’s assuming you aren’t dumped for cause, in which case you go below and become their headache. Here.’
He handed Joshua a blue metal disk and a red bar. He said in a bored litany: ‘The red one’s your debit card. Buy what you want - we got a thorough company store. It’ll come out of your wages before you leave or take any rotation leave below. If you lose it, you’ll be responsible for any purchases made by whoever found it until you report it. The blue disk has your bunk and mess hall assignment on it. You’ll sleep -’ The clerk looked at his screen. ‘- three legs back from the head. There’ll be a set of company regs on the shelf above your headboard.’
‘Thanks.’ Joshua picked up his bags.
‘One other thing, Hunt. You ambitious?’
‘In what way?’
‘You said you like being outside. You got any interest in being a lumberpig?’
‘I don’t even know what he is.’
‘The cutter. The man down on the ground in the suit. The guy who lasers the trees that you’re going to be lifting up to the Centipede.’
Joshua shook his head. ‘Not me. Looks like a good way to get dead.’
‘It is. That’s why we keep looking for new blood.’ The clerk smiled. ‘Sorry. Bad choice of words.’
There were two smaller beltways on either side of the lumber drag. Joshua stepped on the one churning toward the end of the ‘Centipede’ and set his bags down.
The smell of cut wood grew stronger and the clang of machinery louder as he rode.
He looked over the railing, down at the treetops. He spotted movement and saw a great leather-winged reptile with a drill-like beak hanging from a branch. Wolfe heard crashing in the jungle and looked away but could see nothing. But the tops of the trees waved frantically. He wondered what beast was passing under the shelter of the canopy.
Sitka GMBH practices the most ecologically sound lumbering possible. The use of the MaCallum-Chambers Logtrain enables you, our most important employee, to work in a relatively safe environment.
The Logtrain, sometimes humorously called the ‘Centipede,’ is built, segment by segment, from an area accessible to transports, either sea- or air-based, deep into uncut forest. It is therefore possible, from overhead, for your foremen to choose exactly the desired trees and communicate their instructions to the men on the ground, the cutters.
Once the log has been cut, it is secured by cranes at the cutting head of the Logtrain, lifted to the conveyor belt, and passed to the rear for processing.
After an area has been logged of all lumber of the type contracted for, an additional segment will be added to extend the Logtrain by you and your comrades, and once again logging will commence.
We welcome you to this, the most exciting and productive form of logging the fertile Human Mind has yet produced.
It is entirely due to the foresight and genius of Sitka GMBH Founder Harold . . .
Wolfe tossed the pamphlet aside, opened the leatherbound case, and took out a battered volume.
‘. . . I thought it was a place
Where life was substantial and simplified -
But the simplification took place in my memory,
I think. It seems I shall get rid of nothing,
Of none of the shadows -’
‘Hey! You. Cherry boy!’
Wolfe looked up.
‘You want in?’ The beefy man held up the game counter. He had more bills in front of him than did the other three at the small, stained table.
‘No thanks,’ Joshua said. ‘I’m not lucky.’
The beefy man laughed as if Wolfe had said something funny. ‘You’re gonna learn, out here, up near the head, we all gang together. Ain’t no place for solo artists. Except maybe jackin’ off. Best do what’s sensible and get on over here.’ Two of the others laughed too loudly.
Joshua grimaced, set the book down, and got up.
‘That’s better,’ the beefy man said. ‘Time to learn -’
Joshua booted the chair out from under him. The man sprawled, rolled to his feet, and charged forward, roaring like a bull. Joshua knelt, sweep kicked, and the man crashed to the deck. He scrabbled up and came in again, fists milling.
Joshua’s left shot out in a palm-up fist. The strike hit the man in his upper chest, the blow masking the darting motion Joshua’s right hand made, two fingers tapping the beefy man’s forehead.
The man’s arms flew wide, and he pitched backward as if he’d run into a wall.
Joshua didn’t watch him land but turned to the table. None of the other three had moved, although one man’s hand was slipping toward his coverall pocket. The man’s hand stopped.
Joshua waited, then went back to his book:
‘. . . that I wanted to escape;
And, at the same time, other memories,
Earlier, forgotten, begin to return . . .’
One of the gamblers went to the beefy man and began slapping his face. After a time the man groaned, sat up, then vomited explosively.
Joshua turned the page.
A violet laser blast cut through the green below and sliced sideways into the tree trunk.
‘Awright,’ the crane driver who’d introduced himself as Lesser Eagle said. ‘Now, I’ve already got my grabs on the upper part of the log. Watch close. The pig’ll cut it through on both sides . . . see? It’s just hanging on the stub, ready for me. Now, I’m moving in a second set of grabs just above the cut. Got it. Now, there isn’t any way that goddamned log is gonna go anywhere, unless I want it to.’
The suited man four hundred feet below moved hastily back as black machinery moved in on the tottering tree, a move echoed in various scales and angles by the screens around the crane cab.
There were three other cranes around the head and the same number of cutting teams down on the ground.
‘I’m clear,’ the radio bleated.
‘And I’ve got it,’ Lesser Eagle said into his mike. ‘Okay, I’m going to want to fell the tree to the left.’
‘Why left?’ Joshua asked.
Lesser Eagle looked puzzled. ‘I can’t tell you that. It’s just . . . the right way to do it. Maybe after you’ve been making lifts for six months or so, you’ll get it.
‘Maybe not. So when you don’t know, always drop it where there’s the least amount of crap. Liable to foul your lift or maybe kick up a widowmaker and take out the pig.’
His hands swept across the booth’s controls as if he were conducting an orchestra.
Far below the tree trunk broke from the stump to the left. The cable to the upper grab went taut, then the lower one, and the tree came up, swinging to the horizontal as it lifted toward the cutting head. Lesser Eagle swung the boom and neatly set the hundred-foot-long tree into the ‘basket,’ which in turn brought the log lumber up onto the lumber drag over Joshua’s head.
‘How about that, my friend? A little different than heaving iron, isn’t it?’
‘Not much,’ Joshua said. ‘A little hotter, a little noisier.’
‘Hey, Prairie Flower.’
Lesser Eagle keyed his throat mike. ‘I’m listening, McNelly.’
‘I’ve been down for two hours. Coming up.’
‘Man, you ain’t got no. stamina,’ the Amerind said. ‘You ought to be good for a double, triple shift, the way you go on about what a great pig you are. Paul the goddamned Bunyan or whoever it was.’
‘Stamina my left nut. You get in this stinkin’ suit one time and see how many minutes it takes you to start sweatin’ off the pounds. Friggin’ Sitka oughta put less money in bullshit and more into air-conditioning .’
‘Not a chance, McNelly. I’m one
of the privileged classes. Plus you could stand to lose a few ounces. Make you sexier next time you go below. Who’s replacing you?’
‘Hsui-Lee. So get ready for amateur night.’
Another voice came up on the com:
‘Your ass sucks buttermilk, piglet. I’ll spend most of my shift cleaning up your shit. I’ll be lucky if I send up more’n a few hundred feet of wood. Might as well have a brush hook as a cutter.’
Wolfe heard machinery grind, and cables lifted the cutter, awkward in his bulky sealed suit, out of the jungle up toward the head of the Logtrain. Another suit came down into Wolfe’s view, close enough so he could almost see through the faceplate. The pinchered arms waved or, more likely, tried to make an obscene gesture, and Hsui-Lee went down for his shift on the ground.
The monster came out of the jungle fast, a gray-green blur that hit the cutter and sent him spinning, life-support and lift cables tangling.
The radio screamed something, then cut off, then:
‘Emergency! We’ve got a man down . . . and some goddamned critter’s about to take him! Where’s the sonofabitchin’ shooter?’
There was a gabble of chatter on the circuit that Wolfe couldn’t distinguish. He was the only one in the booth - Lesser Eagle had gone to help another driver reprogram his crane, telling Wolfe to keep his goddamned hands off the controls. ‘Let Hsui-Lee take the wood down. We’ll get it on the ground. If you want to be doing something, boom over to a clear area and practice tearing saplings out or something. ’
Now Wolfe could make out the horror below. It stood about thirty feet tall, on four legs, with a body jutting up from the first two. He thought of some kind of lizardlike centaur, but the beast’s upper body was a dark cylinder, its head not much more than an enormous maw of dagger fangs. Four arms scrabbled at the downed cutter.
The man’s laser sliced toward the creature, cutting away one arm. Wolfe heard the nightmare roar, then his hands were busy on the controls, and the boom swung slowly, far too slowly, back from where he’d been practicing.
