Psi Hunt

by Kurland, Michael

  “I’ve called the hospitals and the morgue. If she was going far enough away so that she wouldn’t be in a local hospital, she would have left word.”

  Robert stared at the roadcruiser at the curb. It looked like a bulbous bus with protrusions, and only someone acquainted with the modern military mind would have an idea of what it actually was, or what it was capable of. The psychologists call it low profile, or speak softly and keep the big stick hidden behind your back. This model roadcruiser was definitely a big stick.

  “I thought you weren’t taking any help from the Navy,” Robert commented.

  “What I said was: ‘I’m not taking any personnel from the Navy.’ I’ll gladly take as much equipment as I can get.” Friendly turned the key in the concealed lock by the door, and the door swung up and in. “Permission to board?” he asked, saluting the tires and the gas tank before climbing inside.

  “Ha, ha!” Robert said, walking up the rubber-coated entry ramp. He slapped the inside button that closed the hatch and otherwise secured the vehicle. “You want me to drive?”

  “I’ll drive. Climb up into the assault chair and check out the weapons systems.”

  “You’re really expecting the worst, aren’t you?” Robert pulled and squeezed his way onto the assault chair and then hit the raise switch, and the chair pulled itself up toward the top until it was surrounded by the assault console. Robert’s head was in the stresglass bubble, his nose level with the roof.

  “I asked for an amphibious tank, but this was all I could get. You must remember that it’s almost dusk, and Los Angeles gets very nasty after dark. Maybe Leah is being held by two effete pastry cooks, but we’ve got to get her.”

  “We could wait until morning.” Robert paused. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

  They arrived at the airport with an hour to wait. Robert spent the time fidgeting. Addison Friendly stretched out on the floor of the bus, eyes closed, hands crossed on his chest, and concentrated on his problem. The only sign of consciousness was the slow motion of his lower jaw from side to side.

  The plane landed on time, and an airport portalounge brought the passengers over to the bus. Friendly rose and greeted them, shaking hands soberly with each man as he climbed into the bus. Robert, who had been expecting gladiator types, was surprised to find them all conservatively dressed, soft-spoken, polite, and intelligent. They looked healthy, but not muscle-bound; quick, but not violent. The last man was a small, Eurasian gentleman with large, dark eyes that focused somewhere past what they were looking at.

  “Lieutenant Burrows, this is Mr. Ohara. See that he gets what he needs.”

  “Yes, sir,” Robert agreed. He shook hands with Ohara. “What do you need?”

  “Map,” Ohara said. “Table. Photograph of Miss Nova. Silence. Melted cheese sandwich and coffee, milk and sugar.”

  “What sort of map?”

  “Large scale map of this area: Greater Los Angeles. Topographical.”

  “Here, Mr. Ohara, is your photograph,” Friendly said, handing him a pencil holo. “I did think that far ahead.”

  Ohara pressed the clip and stared at—or past—the miniature girl who appeared frozen in the air before him. “As I remember her,” he said. “A beautiful girl. We will find her. I will find her. Where is my map?”

  “Ha!” Robert said, and left the bus in a great hurry. Five minutes later he rushed back, carrying a long cardboard tube. “Map!” he said. “Well, not exactly a map; it’s an aerial photograph of the area. I borrowed it from the airport operations department.” He pulled open the plotboard at the commander’s seat and slid the photograph, i.e. chart, out of the cardboard tube and pegged it to the sides of the board. “What next?”

  Ohara sat down in the commander’s chair and glanced at the chart. “Food,” he said. “When I’m hungry, I can’t give full attention to seeking. I always end up pointing at restaurants. Mexican restaurants.”

  “You want a taco or an enchilada?” Robert asked.

  “No, a melted cheese sandwich. I can’t work with heartburn, either.”

  “Right,” Robert said, and returned to the terminal. His quest took fifteen minutes, and when he returned with the food, Ohara was slapping his palm at the bottom half of the chart.

  “Somewhere down here,” Ohara said. “I’ll tell you better when I’ve eaten.”

  “We’ll head out that way while you eat,” Friendly said. “Lyle, you drive. Harvey, can you man the assault chair?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Harvey said, sliding into the chair and goosing it up into its hole.

  The bus swung onto the long causeway that separated the airport from the city; twenty miles of floating road out to a great concrete island.

  “Out this way,” Ohara said, tapping on the board.

  “Anaheim?” Friendly asked, squinting at the photograph with an intensity that suggested that he was trying to read the street signs.

  “Is that Anaheim? Somewhere past there. Wait till we get close.” Ohara munched his sandwich as the bus sped on.

  Around Santa Ana they got off the freeway and went from automatic to manual, heading east through the deserted streets toward Modjeska. “We’re getting closer,” Ohara said, peering first at the chart and then out at the streetlights flicking by. “Why do they change the name of the area every few blocks when it all looks the same?”

  “Civic pride,” Friendly said.

  A group of orange-clad Shivaites shuffled around the corner in front of the bus and quickly filled the street. Shi-va! Shi-va! they chanted, bobbing their shaven heads like pigeons on a crumb-strewn pavement. Lyle slowed the bus down and looked enquiringly at Friendly, who shrugged. “I don’t know either,” he said. “This is a strange city.”

  “Another few seconds and I’ll hit the first one,” Lyle said. “What sort of insurance does the Navy carry?”

  Mene, mene, Shiva, Shiva. Mene, mene, Shiva, Shiva.

  The chanting figures approached the bus at about the same absolute rate as the bus approached them; five miles an hour and slowing. A new group of chanters fell into place behind the bus as it passed the last corner.

  “What the hell do they think they’re doing?” Robert demanded.

  “Slowing us down,” Friendly said. “They’d better move aside or I’ll go out there and clear the street.”

  Ohara looked up. “I don’t think that we should stop the bus,” he said. “I have a feeling that it wouldn’t be wise.”

  Friendly looked at him. “Well. Either you believe in ESP or you don’t believe in ESP. How do we get by them without stopping and without killing some of them, which would, I believe, be a felony?”

  “You’re the expert,” Robert said.

  “Right. So I am. Is this vehicle equipped for fording?”

  Lyle clicked open a side panel and checked the switches inside. “Would appear to be.”

  “Drop the air collar.”

  “Right.” Lyle flipped a series of switches and a thick plastic ring dropped into place around the outside of the bus and then ballooned out as the air compressors whined into operation.

  “Now just keep moving, slow and steady.”

  Hissing and snorting like an overfed dragon, the bus rolled on to meet the first of the orange knights. Shi-va! Shi-va! The bald heads chanted, circling the bus.

  Three women took the front rank, dancing orgiastically in front of the bus, retreating symbolically as it approached. Then they paused, and each lit a long taper and raced into the crowd, holding it aloft.

  A pair of arms was raised, as in supplication, but the right hand held a bottle. A woman took her burning taper and lit the rags stuffed into the mouth of the bottle. The hand pulled back to throw.

  As the bottle left the woman’s hand it exploded over the crowd, and a rain of fire blanketed the Shivaites. Screams of pain and fear almost drowned out the chanting. A few of the Shivaites, their costumes on fire, rolled about on the ground or raced away to light the darkness. Most were unharmed,
but they were all confused and frightened. The tide broke into aimless eddies as they milled about trying to find out what had happened. This was not in the script.

  The bus met the front of the crowd, and it parted as the Red Sea for Moses. “Excellent,” Friendly said. “A consummation devoutly to be wish’d.”

  “Thank you,” Harvey called down from his chair. “It’s amazing what a laser rifle can do to a bottle of gasoline.”

  “So that’s what it was!” Robert said.

  “What did you think, Lieutenant, magic?”

  “I don’t know. With all these wild talents around—”

  Friendly shook his head. “Magic!”

  Robert shrugged. “I’m sorry I disappoint you,” he said. “Let’s go back to plain old rational science and see if your seeker has located Leah. Or why don’t you just use some of that other branch of plain old rational science and read her mind to find out where she is?”

  “Robert, I apologize. I didn’t mean to pick on you. I am under a strain. You, also; and I didn’t have to read your mind to figure it out.” Friendly stared pensively at the Shiva mob licking its wounds behind the bus. “I am searching for the only thing—the only one—I have ever been able to trust enough to love; and remember I can read minds. You are trying to adjust to a world in which your mind can be read. We are both sensitized.”

  “I am anxious about Leah, too.” Robert said.

  “Yes, of course. I didn’t mean too imply. . . . You see? Sensitive. We are both concerned about Leah. I am concerned about you.”

  The bus passed through the last of the glass-and-plastic developments and reached undeveloped hills, too unstable and shifting to be built on. The headlights picked up nothing but the looming sand shapes around them, as the road twisted and bucked its way into the desert.

  “Anything, Ohara?” Friendly asked. “We seem to be leaving the habitat of Man.”

  Ohara rubbed his hands together and hunched over the board. “I have been wrong,” he said. “I have. Once. Several times. No! She is ahead of us. If you lose faith, you lose the talent. She is ahead of us on this road—we get close now—no, off this road, on a side road that goes into the hill and out. With a pair of hands over it.”

  “Hands?”

  “Don’t ask me. This is how it feels. We will know what it means when we get there. Perhaps symbolic. Perhaps real hands. Who knows? I am getting hungry again.”

  “Hands,” Friendly said. “Of course: Lassama. I should have guessed it was that bastard. No I shouldn’t—what would he want to kidnap Leah for?”

  “Lassama?” Robert asked.

  “Yes. I was wrong, it wasn’t the Navy; it was the Sibhood of Scientific Karma, a nut cult headed by the Prophet Lassama, a nut. They tried to buy Astral Emprise last year. Ha!”

  “Why would they want to kidnap Leah?”

  “I have no idea. Revenge is the only motive I can think of, but I don’t think they’re quite that nutty. Although these days, who knows? Maybe they’re about to make me another offer for Astral Emprise, and want to make it harder for me to refuse. That’s their symbol: a pair of clasped hands. The Prophet Lassama’s hands, of course. No use speculating further until we get there. How close, Ohara?”

  “It approaches. Go slowly now, we turn to the left in the next couple of miles.”

  The bus climbed a mile-long grade and then curved left at the top of a hill. Around them now were mounds of black rock, from pebbles to mountains, which absorbed the light from the headlights and loomed, dark and silent, over the scene.

  The cliff to the left split into a series of giant boulders, and a rough, unpaved car-sized track led around one of the boulders. “That’s it!” Ohara said positively. “She is up that road.”

  “Road?” Lyle said. “That ain’t nary a road. That’s more of a goat obstacle course.”

  “How far up the road?” Friendly asked.

  Ohara stared at the rock. “A couple of miles—maybe more.”

  “Burrows, go take a look at that road and see if we can get the bus on it.”

  Robert dropped through a side hatch and crossed to where the, dirt trail started. The track went in about twenty feet and then curved sharply off to the right, with a steep cliff face to the left and a series of giant boulders to the right cutting off the sides of the road. Robert measured it with his eye and then paced off the distance around the curve to be sure. About twenty yards past the first curve, a second curve twisted off to the left. The straight section of road was short and tight enough to fit the bus like a sausage casing around a bratwurst if it couldn’t maneuver around the second curve. Robert checked this and found it a trifle narrower than the first. He strode back to the bus.

  “If we make it around the first curve but not the second,” he told Friendly, “we probably won’t be able to back out. We’ll be stuck in there like a lobster in a trap.”

  “This lobster has a reverse,” Friendly said, “and independent steering of all three axles. If the road is wide enough, we can get through. Maybe even if it isn’t.”

  They turned the bus onto the road and went gingerly through the first curve. Around the midpoint of the second curve the bus scraped firmly against the left wall of the cliff and stopped. Friendly went out to survey the problem. “Left side distance to the cliff is about minus six inches in the rear. Right side about six inches in front, three feet in the middle, and eighteen inches in the rear. Jammed in, I calls it.” He positioned himself in front of the bus and squinted down the side. “Okay, Lyle, give me a ninety-degree turnout on the two rear axles.”

  To the wheezing sound of hydraulic lifters, the axles were unlocked and twisted ninety degrees, then held in place by pressure brakes while power was applied to the wheels. “Easy now—easy. That’s it. About another inch now. Fine, you’re touching. Lock it and return the rear axles.”

  The rear axles were locked back and the front axle was now swiveled, and the bus moved another six inches to the right. Then the front axle was returned. The bus was now an average of a foot further to the right.

  “There,” Friendly said, looking smug. “A curve that can be negotiated by any bus—that’s able to sidestep.”

  Around the curve the road went steeply downhill, hugging the side of the cliff, and then straightened out. It gradually widened to standard two-way width and then acquired a blacktop covering. “A hidden highway,” Friendly muttered. “These people have infantile minds.”

  They turned the headlights off to avoid attracting attention; the bus’s steam power plant made almost no noise and at under fifteen miles an hour the road noise was minimal; no use waving headlights at the enemy to advertise their arrival. Lyle switched on a pair of infrared spotlights on top of the bus and dropped a screen down behind the windshield. Through that screen the outside now looked intensely bright, even garish; high contrast in pure black and white with no colors and no grays. Through the side windows the jutting cliffs could be made out only as they obscured the stars, which shone brighter and closer and more evenly in the desert night.

  About three miles further on, the road ended in a large, natural canyon parking lot. Dug into the face of the cliff on the far side of the canyon was an archway leading to a pair of great, steel double doors. On the archway, above the doors, was sculpted in bas-relief a pair of hands shaking.

  “That’s the place,” Ohara said, and he leaned back in his chair, putting his chin on his chest, to go to sleep.

  “Good god!” Lyle said. “How the hell do we get it?”

  “I didn’t expect a fortress,” Friendly said. “This will require a few moments’ thought.”

  Robert stared through the infrared screen at the arch. “Why don’t we just go over to the door and knock. Maybe they’ll invite us in for lunch.”

  “It isn’t lunch time. I wonder if they’re aware of our presence.”

  “Let’s find out,” Lyle suggested.

  “Right. We will knock; then kick.” Friendly unclipped a hand spotlight f
rom its bracket and lowered the ramp. Slowly and deliberately he walked over to the massive doors, shining the spotlight at the doors and around the corners of the arch. There was a plaque set in the wall to the left of the door, which he read; and a button below it, which he pushed.

  A light came on in the doorway and a remote camera on a bracket over the door examined him without interest. “What do you want?” a sleepy voice demanded.

  “I wish to see the prophet.”

  “Now? It’s after three o’clock in the morning. You must be crazy. What are you doing out there?”

  “Tell the prophet that I would speak with him. My name is Friendly.”

  “I can’t wake the prophet up at three in the morning,” the speaker said. “You can just wait out there until eight or nine.”

  “My name is Addison Friendly. Tell the prophet now. He will know why I’m here.”

  “I told you, I can’t do that.”

  “I’m coming in,” Friendly stated.

  “Fine. You just do that. Now leave me alone so I can get some sleep.”

  “For the last time, will you open the doors?”

  “No. Certainly not.”

  “You have been warned. Stand well clear of the entrance.” Friendly walked away, and the camera swiveled to follow him as he left.

  “They refused me and I got pompous,” he said, climbing on board the bus. “I have knocked. Is the kick ready?”

  “All ready,” Harvey said. “I’ve got a six-pack of ten cm rockets on the rail. Give the word.”

  “Take them two at a time. Shouldn’t be too hard to blast out; the place was built as a fallout shelter.”

  “Who would put a fallout shelter out here?”

  “A bunch of Los Angeles corporations. There’s a plaque on the door. About seventy-five years ago they decided that even if their personnel didn’t survive an atomic attack, their records should. So they dug a cave in the cliff. Fire!”

  There was a double whap! and a crumpling sound, and the door sagged inward, the twin streaks of fire burned into the retina and stayed as afterimage long after the ionized particles had dispersed in the cool breeze.