Pet Noir

by Katharine Kerr

  “Okay, go on, but just leave this channel open, will you? It’s my command link, so I’ve always got it going in one ear.”

  “Okay, chief, will do.”

  After about forty meters the previously clear ground-plan of the complex disintegrates into a maze—narrow tunnels, round rooms, continual doorways—but only one heat-track shines brightly enough to stand out from all the others. As they trot down it, leaving it twice as bright from their own body-heat, Lacey feels her heart pounding from far more than the simple exertion. Somehow it hadn’t quite registered before that Mulligan’s in the hands of sentients who are totally irrational, who might, for all she knows, kill him on a sudden whim. When Nunks touches her shoulder and hisses under his breath, she whirls around and nearly shoots him.

  “What the hell?”

  Nunks waves his hands in the air, then points down the tunnel ahead of them.

  “Someone coming,” Sam says. “Listen.”

  Distantly she can hear male voices, one lizzie and two human, squabbling in an amiable sort of way. With a wave of her pistol she deploys Sam into a doorway on one side of the tunnel, steps back into a room on the other, and gestures Nunks in behind her. They wait, listening as the voices come nearer, and with them the pungent whiff of unwashed bodies.

  “Rye whiskey, rye whiskey, rye whiskey I cry, I got to have rye whiskey, or I sure going to die.” The three voices are singing in uncertain harmony, and they repeat this chorus over and over because, or so Lacey assumes, they’ve forgotten the rest of the words.

  Some metal thing is rumbling and banging roughly in rhythm with the song, and as the three crazies turn the corner Lacey sees it’s a bright red wheelbarrow, piled high with big plastobubbles of some amber liquid—the whiskey in question, most likely. Lacey signals Sam, then steps out, laser drawn and ready, and blocks their path. Just as Sam joins her the three shriek and come to so fast a stop that the lizzie lets go the handles of the wheelbarrow, which falls back with a clang. A plastobubble bounces out and lies quivering like a live thing.

  “Hold up!” The black human screams. “We getting held up, John!”

  “Shut up, Wild Man.” The red-haired Blanco seems to be the leader. “They got guns, and we got none.”

  “We no want your stinking whiskey,” Lacey says. “What have you done with Mulligan?”

  “Who?”

  “The white dude, the one Del said you were selling to God.”

  “Oh, him. His name’s Mulligan, huh? Well, we sold him to God, yeah, just like Del said. Sent him up to heaven in the elevator, and the manna come down in the other one.”

  Fear and rage, mingled together—the sensation starts at the base of her spine and slices up like the cut of an ice-cold knife. When John Hancock breaks into a sudden sweat of terror, she realizes that she’s automatically raised the laser and aimed. Do no good to kill this poor slob, girl—not his fault. With a deep breath she lowers the gun, and John moans under his breath, sane enough, apparently, to know when he’s close to dying.

  “And just where is this heaven-bound elevator?” Sam says, his voice more a growl.

  “Back there, back there, sir,” John is stammering with fear, and he turns to point down a side tunnel. “Right back there, but God’s gone now. We heard him leaving. He’s gone.”

  Just then Bates’ voice cuts into the comm in Lacey’s helmet, and she lifts the flap so Sam can hear it, too.

  “Lacey, for God’s sake get up here! We’ve spotted our assassin, and he’s got someone with him up in the old control tower. Get up to the surface, but be superdamn careful where you exit. No want you right in the line of fire.”

  “Jeezuz!” Sam waves the laser at John Hancock. “Listen dude, you know these tunnels. You’re going to show a nice quick way up, or I’ll burn some of that filth off you.”

  “Yes sir.” John salutes with an automatic precision that reveals him as a deserter or Section Eight discharge from one fleet or another. “On the double.” He turns to his two confederates. “You get that manna home, and you no drink no more of it till I get back. Hear?”

  They nod agreement, but they’re watching the lasers aimed their way.

  “Go on,” Sam says. “Do what the sergeant says, and do it fast. All right, you. Lead on.”

  John Hancock salutes again and sets off, heading down a side tunnel at a shuffling jog with Sam and Nunks right behind. Lacey lingers a moment, looking back to make sure that the other two are indeed wheeling their loot away rather than creeping up on them from the rear. As soon as they’ve pushed their jouncing wheelbarrow round a corner, she runs after the others. In her heart she’s wishing that she believed in God or Allah or even the Galactic Mind, just so there would be someone to beg for Mulligan’s safety. She catches up with Sam just as John Hancock stops and points left into another tunnel that seems to be a long, spiraling ramp up.

  “Sir, this leads right out to the old runway. Bout a key from the white tower.”

  “Sounds good,” Sam says. “But you’re coming right up to the door with us.”

  John screws up his face in protest, then glances at the drawn laser and sighs his agreement. As it turns out, they don’t have far to go, because the ramp rises for only about two hundred meters before they see a pair of huge double doors, hanging open and skewed, ahead of them. Illusionary red light streams in, the dissipating day’s heat from the Rat Yard beyond. When Lacey flips up her visor the light disappears.

  “Okay, Sarge,” Sam says. “Dismissed.”

  With another precise salute, John Hancock turns and runs, slamming off the tunnel wall at one point in his hurry to be gone. Lacey gives Sam a quizzical look.

  “How’d you savvy that dude was a sergeant once?”

  “He’s the type, that’s all. Look at him, loco as they get, but he had that pair of borrachos right under his thumb.”

  Distantly, faint in the wind and sighing down the tunnel, comes the sound of Bates’ voice, just barely recognizable over a bull-horn.

  “We are prepared to negotiate. I repeat, we are willing to negotiate. I’m Al Bates, Chief of Police in this town, and I am empowered to negotiate. Will you negotiate?”

  The answer never reaches them. Lacey slides down her visor and starts running toward the tunnel mouth.

  “Come on, guys. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  They have plenty of room to duck between the skewed doors. Outside, the cool night sky looks black through the visor, while the yard itself is a sea of pale red light. Ahead of them and a fair bit less than a key away rises the tower, a dark stroke because its white surface has reflected more of the day’s heat away and thus is cooler than the dull-colored garbage nearby. All around it are the fuzzy dots of heat-light that mark the position of Bates’ riot squad, and on the platform near the top of the tower moves another living being, the assassin, Lacey can assume. Her heart seems to twist in her chest when she realizes that there’s no sign of Mulligan.

  “Almost there,” Sam whispers. “Nunks, you follow a little behind. You no got a helmet, remember.”

  Nunks moans briefly and clenches his hands. Crouched low, moving in a random zigzag, the three of them pick their way through the rubble to the sound of Bates’ voice, repeating his willingness to negotiate in a soothing drone over the bull-horn. Not once do they hear any kind of answer, not even when they’re close enough to see the police line clearly, illuminated by its own heat. All the officers have dug improvised foxholes and ditches out of the strew of rubble and garbage. With his bulk, Bates is clearly recognizable, right up front with the shiny little box of the electronic bullhorn cradled in his palm. As they creep closer, up on the tower the fuzzy dot resolves itself into a tall male figure, ducking inside the remains of the control room, then shuffling out with his arms full, over and over as if he’s bringing out some kind of cargo. Just as Lacey crawls into the chief’s ditch to hunker down beside him, the assassin emerges one last time, dragging a human by the ankles.

  “I got your
police psychic up here, cop!” His dark voice drifts down in a shout. “You pull anything funny on me, and he dies.”

  “No going to pull anything.” Bates rises to his knees. “I’m empowered to negotiate. Do you want a priest or a mullah out here? How about some food?”

  At that the assassin tosses back his head and shrieks in a cascade of metallic laughter. Lacey’s heart twists again as she realizes that he’s completely insane.

  oOo

  The concrete platform sticks out like a hat brim, some two meters across and running about a third of the way around the tower itself, which is about nine meters in diameter. Although Mulligan can see the twisted remains of some supports for a guard rail, the rail itself has long since gone. He is unpleasantly aware that they’re a good fifty meters above ground. Once he stops laughing, Tomaso pushes some big metal crates to the edge of the platform and crouches down behind them.

  “Hey there!” Bates’ voice drifts up again, and this time it sounds jolly in a forced sort of way. “We’re listening, pal. How about giving us a list of demands?”

  For an answer Tomaso picks up a laser rifle and begins crawling toward the edge of the platform. Mulligan realizes that when energy beams start whizzing around, he’ll be much more exposed than the assassin is. He waits until Tomaso is concentrating on aiming, then inches his way caterpillar-fashion until his upper third lies behind the imperfect shelter of the broken door that once led into the old control room. At the sound of the soft swush of the laser, he winces and automatically turns his head away. Out of the corner of his eye he catches movement down on the ground among the boulders at the base of the tower. A direct look shows him someone crawling along in what looks like shiny armor. The only thing he can assume is that a member of the riot squad is risking his or her life to come save him, and that this person is horribly, dangerously exposed.

  Never in his life has Mulligan felt more helpless. Since Tomaso has taken the precaution of gagging him, he can’t call out a warning; as a matter of fact, he can barely move—how is he going to do one damn thing to help his would-be rescuer? Then he remembers the obvious, that he doesn’t need spoken words to distract his captor. Although he’s afraid to confront Tomaso directly, he knows he has a perfect way to siphon off his energy if only he has the guts to try. On the bull-horn Bates is droning away in as soothing a voice as he can muster, promising medical care, offering sanctuary from the H’Allevae and a fair trial and a chance at rehab if only Tomaso will surrender immediately. The only answer is the swush, swush of the gun. For a moment Mulligan struggles with his fear; then he closes his eyes and walks into his mind.

  In memory he stands on the street corner near Civic Center, just after sunset, and remembers seeing Chief Bates hurrying through a crowd around what seems to be a dead carli.

  At first the images rise easily; he remembers the med techs weaving through the crowd with a grav platform bobbing behind them, and himself walking over, casually at first, then with some purpose as he realized that he could make a few sorely-needed bucks out of this accident—he still hadn’t understood that it was murder—by offering to do a police reading. In his mind he takes a step and walks into a solid wall of pain.

  Fire is the image his subconscious chooses to represent the pain, a leaping, searing wall of flame that burns worse than any physical fire. Mulligan jumps back, feeling his actual physical body gasp for breath, and opens his eyes. He is still lying on the platform, and of course his flesh is unblistered and uncharred, no matter how stubbornly his nerve endings tell him otherwise. The pain is only in your mind. It no can really kill you. It can only hurt. Shutting his eyes he goes back in and finds himself standing on the corner again, but this time he can see the wall of fire between himself and Chief Bates. Tomaso walks up beside him, but his image is curiously misty and thin.

  Stop it! [murderous rage] Stop now OR: I kill you.

  Can’t kill me. You need me now >need me.> >You no have me >>they toss one good photon grenade up here >>>this whole damn thing over>>> ! >>>>

  Tomaso’s image winks out. For a long time Mulligan stands there and fights with himself. Although he truly wants to walk into the fire, part of his mind simply refuses to move. Cowardice, which is only a matter of possibilities, is no longer an issue; the stubborn slice of his mind registers no fear of something that might possibly happen, merely an animal refusal to march itself forward into certain torture. The rest of his mind can argue, plead, wheedle, and appeal to honor all it wants; his survival instincts simply aren’t listening. Then it occurs to him that if he goes through that wall, if he can stop Tomaso, Lacey will have a real reason not so much to admire him as to be proud of him. He finds himself walking forward without conscious effort until the burning envelops him.

  Distantly he hears a man screaming, registers that it’s himself, and forces himself onward, plunging into the fire while every nerve in his body howls and writhes and begs him to withdraw. It can’t kill you; it can only hurt. All he has is sheer will, sheer blind stubbornness to make himself pick up each foot and put it down again in front of the other. The entire universe shrinks to taking one step, then another, while the flames tear at his skin. Can’t kill you; can only hurt.

  Tomaso is back again, mouthing soundless words, waving his arms wildly like a man chasing a dog out of his garden. Mulligan smiles at him.

  Gotta hand it to you. You real good, dude <>.

  Tomaso only stamps and gyrates in rage, his image growing thinner and thinner as he’s forced to turn his attention back to the riot squad. Mulligan waves good-bye and goes forward, one more step; a pause to scream once again; then another step, and another—and suddenly the pain stops. The fire disappears. For a moment the shock of its going almost loses him the vision; he lies very still, feeling the peculiar sensation that is the absence of remembered pain, then goes back to the street corner. In a misty memory image he sees Chief Bates turning to speak to him while the murdered carli lies in a pool of blood on the Plaza. He’s won, and with his physical ears he hears Tomaso howl in sheer rage.

  oOo

  When Mulligan’s first scream drifts down to them, distant and shrill over the sound of the bull-horn, Lacey is half on her feet before Sam can grab her and pull her back down into cover. The bright wink of the laser misses her by about a centimeter.

  “Asshole!” Sam snarls. “You no going to do Mulligan any damn good if you get killed.”

  “Yeah, sure. Sorry, but jeezus, what’s that bastard doing to him?”

  “Stop thinking about it! You no want to know.”

  Sergeant Nagura’s voice suddenly hisses in her earpiece, and she can see Bates lowering the bull-horn to listen.

  “Sir, someone’s climbing up the backside of the tower.” The sergeant sounds shocked. “Sir, he no is human!”

  Muttering an obscenity Lacey flips down her IR visor and peers out into the night, but she can see nothing.

  “How’d he get through our lines?” Bates’ voice growls in answer. “I no see nada.”

  “He’s round back, sir. I don’t know how he got there. Made himself invisible?”

  “Maybe that’s no joke.” Lacey cuts into the line. “If I’m guessing right, we’re dealing with a star-class psychic, man, and he’s a she, too.”

  “Jeezuz.” Bates sounds very very weary. “Okay, whatever you say. She’s going to die, whoever she is. The assassin’s bound to look round and see her. He’s psychic, too, remember?”

  When Mulligan screams again Lacey’s jaws clench of their own accord. She would give half her life, would promise to never set foot on a starship again, even, if only he were safely off of that platform. All at once Bates rises to his knees, his arm sweeping up, and throws something—a flare grenade, exploding into brilliant white at the base of the tower. For a moment she’s blind, but she can hear Tomaso howling with rage. When her vision clears she can see the assassin, standing up on the edge of the platform, the marksmen below him forgotten, his laser rif
le dangling in one hand.

  “Hold your fire!” Bates’ voice screams into her earpiece. “All personnel, hold fire!”

  Someone else is climbing onto the platform, hauling herself up to full height to face Tomaso down. Three full meters tall, easy, with a fringe of iridescent green arms spiraling round her metal-shiny body from her cloth-wrapped hips to her naked shoulders, her long, curving head enormous, too, and set with a trio of huge, golden, protruding eyes—she arches her back and sweeps her two uppermost arms into the air as if she’s holding something up for the assassin’s inspection. Tomaso looks, screams once, and steps backward into empty air. The last scream follows him down until he hits, bounces hard, then lies still. In the flare light she waves in a curiously human gesture of greeting, her body a glittering green and gold, then turns to kneel down, the pincers busy at some work.

  “Mulligan!” Yelling at the top of her lungs, Lacey’s on her feet and running toward the tower. “Is he okay?”

  On the platform she turns her head in a glitter of green and gold, revealing a fine feathery fringe cascading down her neck. Her mouth, a slender tube of thin lips overlapped like flower-petals, flutters open, then forces out some fairly recognizable sounds.

  “Okay, friend. Am I your friend?”

  “Damn right you are. Just damn right.”

  By the time that Lacey’s puffed her way up the staircase, Mrs. Bug has Mulligan untied. Slumped against the inner wall he’s sitting up, rubbing his ankles. She wants to throw herself down beside him, grab him by the shoulders, and kiss him. Instead she flips up the visor and scowls.

  “You little bastard, we got half the God-damned police force out here looking for you.”

  Mulligan looks up with a wince, then forces out a watery smile.

  “Sorry. No was my idea, getting caught by crazies. No going to let it happen again, tell you.”

  “Good. Don’t.” She turns to Mrs. Bug. “Hey, thanks.”

  The petal mouth flutters again.