I still felt as if Billy Conklin and his construction crew were a source of simmering dissatisfaction, but you have to put up with a certain amount of bitching when you’re in charge of something. Katranjiev even noticed the bad looks Conklin and Kalabratov gave me behind my back and told me, which surprised me, seeing as how I wasn’t exactly his number one boy. Maybe he just wanted to lecture me about his management style, which was to come down hard on anyone who’s attitude “wasn’t right.” I thanked him and went about my business.
Katranjiev seemed to think people’s attitude was really important and maybe he was right but I didn’t think so. I want people to do their jobs. If they have a shitty attitude about me but do a good job, I can live with that. Besides, if you keep people busy and they do good work, sooner or later their attitude usually comes around.
I sure kept Conklin and his crew busy, mostly digging shelters. He got a laser torch working and used it to cut up a couple metal cargo containers, used the steel and composite components as the braces for the overhead cover, shored them up with lengths of scavenged steel pipe about fifteen centimeters in diameter, and even got some lights and ventilation blowers installed. The “Big Attack,” which is what we called it for lack of a better term, had come in during the predawn hours of the fifth day after the coup, Seventeen of Eight-Month Waning. By nightfall on Nineteen of Eight-Month Waning, Conklin had enough shelters to hold five hundred people, with more under construction. If we were lucky, all that effort would end up wasted. I didn’t think we were that lucky, though.
Sookagrad mostly shut down at night those days, since electricity was in short supply and not much got diverted to lighting except at the clinic and other work areas. Most folks not working stayed indoors and turned in early, so I didn’t see much foot traffic on my way from the building site back to the metal storage unit we’d rigged up as my office and headquarters—another job executed quickly and efficiently by Conklin and his crew. Maybe his plan for getting even with me was to never give me something to complain about.
I had some things to think about on my walk. I’d talked to Doc Mahajan about my postdeath experience two years ago and how it had included contact with dead people, two of whom it turned out weren’t really dead. She didn’t say anything at first but then told me about the physiology of near-death experiences: oxygen starvation of the brain producing random firing in the optic nerves—the sensation of light and increasing movement along a narrowing tunnel as the peripheral nerves shut down, then a big shot of endorphins to send you on your way happy, along with a lot of other brain chemicals that produce hallucinations and false memories.
“So you’re saying it’s all bunk?” I asked.
“No,” she answered, “I am simply telling you what we know happens, chemically, inside the brain near the final moments of life. I have no insights to offer regarding transcendental truth.”
No, she didn’t, but I did. In my postdeath world there had been dead people I now knew weren’t really dead. Hard taking that as anything but a hallucination.
Low clouds killed any moonlight but numerous fires burned in the Inter-Arcology Park District—not within a kilometer of us but the glow from the fires reflected faintly from the cloud cover and provided enough ambient light for me to find my way through the twisting, cluttered alleys. Ahead of me I saw someone talking, I guess to the people in a lean-to. I crossed to the other side of the alley, such as it was, so as not in intrude on their conversation, but one of them called out softly to me.
“Excuse me, but could you help us? We’re looking for someone.”
“Sure,” I said, and joined them. I saw the lean-to was empty so they must have been just talking among themselves. There were four of them and the guy who called me over had a Standard accent, so he was educated.
“Who are you looking for?” I asked.
They exchanged a brief glance and one of them turned away, watching down the alleyway, and another did the same in the opposite direction, almost as if it was standard drill, and I felt my heart speed up, blood flow to my face. I took a slow breath to steady myself. Whoever these guys were, I didn’t want to let them know I was on to them, not that I was really on to anything about them except they weren’t quite right.
“We are looking for Dr. Naradnyo. He is here, isn’t he?”
Doctor Naradnyo? They were looking for my father, not me. “Is he looking for you?” I asked.
“We have a message for him,” a second guy said, also in a flawless Standard accent English, “from his brother.”
“Wow!” I said. “You guys walked through the Militia lines? You got more guts than me, that’s for sure. Well, let’s see if we can find your friend for you. He’ll probably be happy to hear his brother’s okay. I know where to ask. Come on.”
Brother, huh? Well, unless I also had an uncle I’d never heard of, that was bullshit. I didn’t know what these guys were up to, but I had the feeling I wouldn’t like it if I knew. Otherwise why the lies and secrecy? I also wondered if my father would like seeing them.
The four of them fell in behind me, one to my right, one behind and to the left, and the other two farther back, all but disappearing into the shadows. I didn’t have a lot to go on so far, but something in my gut told me they were professionals. Professionals for whom, though?
I walked them toward the clinic and the main ammo station. Just as we emerged into the more open and better-lit logistics hub, I felt the barrel of a gauss pistol in my ribs.
“We don’t want to hurt anyone, but don’t try anything funny or we will kill you.”
Zaradavana, the guy I’d made my ammo distribution chief, was sorting magazines under a tarp stretched over his work station. He looked up as I got to him.
“Hello, Sasha, what is up?”
“Have you seen Mr. Greenwald?” I asked.
“Yes, in clinic. You want I get?”
“If you don’t mind,” I said. Zaradavana showed no interest in the four men accompanying me, which was just as well, and now he trotted over to the clinic entrance and disappeared.
“Very good,” the man to my right, who I pegged as the leader, said softly. “We only need to talk to Dr. Naradnyo, then we will go. No one will be hurt, I promise you.”
Yeah, and since I know you so well, I’m sure that’s a promise I can take to the bank.
Moshe emerged after a few minutes, looked around, and then walked over to join us. Before he could say anything I called out to him. “Good evening, Mr. Greenwald. I hope you and your wife are well.”
I was taking a huge chance with that but I didn’t see any alternative. I had no idea how smart Moshe was when it came to stuff like this, but I hoped the odd greeting, especially including his ex-wife who lived about a hundred light years from here, would let him know something was up. He didn’t disappoint. His eyes flickered for a moment but he didn’t break his stride.
“Anya is still sick, all this rain. I should get back to her. What do you want?”
“These men are looking for a friend. I thought you might know where he is staying.” I turned to the man on my right. “What did you say his name was?”
“Dr. Sergei Naradnyo,” he said.
“Yes, that’s it,” I said nodding. “I don’t know him, but I thought to myself, Mr. Greenwald knows everyone. So I brought them here.”
Moshe inhaled and puffed his cheeks out, brow furrowed in thought. “Naradnyo, Naradnyo. It sounds familiar. Where was he? Ah, I know. He’s at the Blue Bird House. The main street is closed, though. They are laying a new minefield tonight. Go up Throat-cutter’s Way to the first turnoff on the left past the flop where the Kranski brothers live, you know the one? Then follow that alley until you get to where we used to have the northwest ammo resupply point, before we moved it. Take the left there, and you know what the Blue Bird House looks like.”
“Thank you, Mr. Greenwald. Please give my regards to your wife and my hope for a speedy recovery.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he
said, waving me away and heading back toward the clinic.
I led along Throat-cutter’s Way, which really was the name of the street which wound past the clinic. Once we left the light of the logistics hub we kept going a dozen paces and then the leader stopped me. He turned and made a hand gesture to one of the men who nodded and slipped silently back to watch the clinic from the shadows. I felt the gauss pistol in my ribs again.
“We’ll see if your friend keeps visiting his wife or comes out to run an errand in a few minutes,” the one in charge said. “You better hope he stays inside.”
Chapter Thirty
I sweated for ten minutes or so, waiting to see if Moshe would hurry out the front door of the clinic, but he didn’t and the leader finally nodded to me to lead on. That was another thing I had Moshe to thank for: he had not only played the part well, he had given directions I could follow but which would mean nothing to the others, so they couldn’t dispose of me until we got there. Moshe was definitely smarter than he looked.
“Now, let’s see,” I said, slowing the pace and looking over the shacks and lean-tos filling the long stretch between the foamstone grocery warehouse and the first of the metal buildings that made up the dormitories. “The Kranskis were flopping somewhere in here. Some of these flops have changed.”
I made a production of examining a couple of the lean-tos, walking slowly, ostensibly so as not to wake anyone up inside, but I didn’t want to stretch it out too much or they’d get suspicious.
“Okay,” I whispered, “through here.”
We made our way carefully through the piled up refuse that covered the ground between a fairly substantial lean-to on one side and the desolate-looking shredded remnants of an abandoned tent smelling of urine on the other. Once we got clear of that I felt the gauss pistol in my ribs again.
“Hurry it up,” he said.
“Sure, sure. We’d be there by now if you weren’t so suspicious.”
I walked faster down the alleyway, which broadened to perhaps three meters wide for a stretch running straight between two metal container buildings, but then narrowing and starting to meander again after that. I deliberately walked past the turnoff but then stopped twenty meters farther down the alley as it constricted to not much more than a footpath.
“What is it?” the leader whispered.
“This ain’t right. We missed the turn.”
“If you are trying to stall us—”
“No, no! It’s just that everything looks so different at night. It’s got to be right back there.”
We reversed course and I “found” the turnoff and led them down the alleyway which would take us to the Blue Bird House, a large faded blue cargo container with an AZ Simki-Traak logo on it, stacked on top of a smaller one, so it overhung it in both directions. After twenty meters I could see it ahead, looming over the surrounding shacks, but they didn’t know and so I made a production of looking at buildings as we passed, “getting my bearings.”
“Multiple thermals up ahead,” one of the men said to the leader. The leader squinted and looked, probably kicking in his own thermals. The others scanned the buildings to either side. None of them were wearing goggles or viewers of any type. If these guys had surgically implanted thermal vision enhancement, they were very serious people—not that I hadn’t already figured that out.
“Individual signatures to the right, no movement. Probably sleeping,” one of them said.
“Same to the left,” another said.
“There are a lot of people up in that large building, some moving. What’s that?” the leader asked me.
“It’s a dormitory. The Blue Bird House is just past it,” I said.
Actually, it was the Blue Bird House, and since that was where Zdravkova parked her reserve force, the Strikers, there was usually some movement even at night. I wish I’d known these creeps were fitted with thermals. Not sure what I could have done to let Moshe know, but this could really screw up everything.
“Is there another way past that large building?”
I thought for a moment. “Probably, but I don’t really know these back alleys all that well.”
“Very well, just tell us how far past that building the Blue Bird House is, and what it looks like, and we will go on alone from here. We appreciate your assistance.”
I heard blood pounding in my ears as my heart rate surged. I licked my lips. “You’ll never find it on your own. I think I know a way. Follow me but be careful.”
He looked at me for a couple seconds and then nodded. We started walking but this time the gauss pistol was right in my back. I got us around a low black metal box, half rusted out, and maybe ten meters past it before I knew I had to get us off the main alleyway. We were getting too close to the Blue Bird House. I saw a side pathway up ahead, angling off to the right, and pointed to it. Halfway there I saw a brief flicker of light and then experienced an intense spasm of agony as every nerve in my body lit up simultaneously, followed by blackness.
* * *
“Sasha, you okay?” I heard Moshe say, and slowly the world came back, although at first I couldn’t remember what I was doing out at night or why Moshe was there.
“Did I fall down?” I asked. I felt bruised all over and my hands and arms shook uncontrollably. “What happened?”
“Dezi took you down with a neuro-pistol.”
“Why? What was I doing?” I looked around. The alleyway seemed full of people, which was strange at night. Then I started remembering the four guys. “Oh, there are four men, they’re—”
“Don’t worry, we got ’em. Dezi stunned you to get you out of the line of fire. She figured putting you down first, they wouldn’t shoot you.”
I sat up with his help and looked around. All four of the men were down, although one of them was moving. I saw Zdravkova a couple meters away, letting one of the Strikers bandage her right upper arm.
“You stun them all?” I asked.
She turned and looked at me. “Just you and one other. The other three are dead. We only had the one neuro-pistol.”
“You should have heard her,” Moshe said and smiled. “‘Halt in the name of the Municipal Police!’” He nodded toward the corpses. “They didn’t halt.”
With Moshe’s help I got unsteadily to my feet. “You did great, pal,” I said. “Saved my life. Thanks.”
“Pretty hard not to know something was up, way you tipped me,” he answered.
“Yeah, well, important thing is you didn’t tip them. Nice acting job.”
I hobbled over to join Zdravkova looking down at the one surviving guy, slowly coming to. He’d hit his head going down and there was a fair amount of blood. Head wounds always bleed a lot. The other three, including the leader, lay in awkward heaps, like marionettes someone had cut the strings on. Zdravkova followed my gaze.
“My four best snipers,” she explained. “Those three never got a shot off.”
“These guys were professionals,” I told here, “and they all have thermal implants.”
She nodded. “I figured they might. We’ve run into some night hunters before, but never Humans, only Varoki.”
“You know who they are?”
“Probably CSJ,” she said and then turned to me with a smile. “Tell me some more about their virtues.”
“Provosts, huh? I’ve never heard of any CSJ operatives with thermal implants, and I’ve tangled with a couple.”
“No offense, Sasha,” she said, “but you spent most of your life on Peezgtaan. It’s not exactly the center of the universe. We’ve run into Human CSJ agents before, and Varoki CSJ night hunters, but Humans with thermal implants…that’s new.”
I’d run into Human CSJ officers as well. After all, CSJ was an all-Cottohazz agency, and Humans were part of that. Varoki dominated the service, but you still saw Humans once in a while.
The surviving agent on the ground groaned and tried to sit up, but found his arms held behind him with quick restraints. The two fighters kneeling next to h
im lifted him up into a sitting position and one of them started spraying bandage on his head.
“How’d you get winged?” I asked Zdravkova. She nodded at the guy sitting up.
“After you went down I switched to this guy, painted his chest with the targeting beam while the pistol recharged. That way everyone else knew not to kill him. He got a shot off before I shocked him. Pretty good shooting, all things considered.”
“They know their stuff,” I agreed, remembering every move they’d made, the minimum of orders, the constant situational awareness. It was starting to sink in how unbelievably lucky I was to be alive, and that started my knees wobbling and my head spinning.
“Gotta sit down for a minute,” I said and sank right down cross-legged in the street. Zdravkova sat down next to me with a bit more grace.
“Why’d you stun one of them?” I asked. “What are you going to do with him?”
“Oh, we have some drugs back at the clinic, or we can fabricate some others,” she said and grinned. “Thought I’d find out why he’s here.”
“You know something I don’t about drugging CSJ agents?” I asked.
She looked at me and frowned. “What do you mean?”
“These guys have nanites in their bloodstream. Hit them with any kind of interrogation drug, or just raise their pain to a defined level for a defined period of time, and the nanites put their lights out, permanently. I don’t know any way to make them talk unless they feel like it.”
“Damn,” Zdravkova said. “We’ve never taken a CSJ prisoner before. Well, one thing’s for sure, any hope we had of the Cottohazz coming to the rescue just went up in smoke. This tells us what they think of us.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “I mean, maybe they won’t help, but it’s not a done deal and these guys have nothing to do with that. The Executive Council will decide whether to get their public hands dirty here. CSJ is playing their own game below the table.”
I looked at her and could tell she wasn’t buying it.
Come the Revolution Page 22
