Grimmer Than Hell

by David Drake

  His non-human target. Swoboda's eyes had the glassy stare of a fear-drugged martyr. Two women wearing knives were fastening his shackles. They used small padlocks through the holes in lieu of rivets. The physicist was given twice the length of chain that hobbled Lacey; no one was concerned about what the old man could do with a moment's inattention and a sudden leap.

  At Black May's order, her entourage turned back the way they had come—with one exception. Lacey had already noticed Horn and what he was doing. Now Bill Allen noticed also and shouted, "Hey!"

  There was no response. The chief's face hardened. He took two steps and kicked his subordinate in the buttocks. Horn leaped up from the tech's corpse. His eyes for the instant were as blank as Swoboda's had become. "You stupid bastard!" Allen shouted. "Save that for later!"

  "Aw, Bill," the hairy man muttered. He fell into line shamefacedly behind Lacey.

  The returning party's pace was faster than it had been as they entered the uncomfortable caverns. Enthusiasm at leaving made up for the need to carry Swoboda and the wounded gunman. Lacey had learned to throw his own chain forward with short, quick steps. He kept up with the others without being goaded. Rather to his surprise, the Southerner found that his mind was no longer on how best to accomplish his real mission. All the way back to the throne room, he was considering how to kill Horn and Bill Allen.

  Black May sat down on her gold-draped chair and stared at the chained men. Her boy stopped pouting and began to massage the bare side of her scalp. Lacey tried to look nonchalant. If May didn't order his release now, he was in trouble.

  "Bill," she said, "I want them where they're out a' the way." The bald side of her head was faceted by scar tissue. "Keep 'em where you've got prisoners for ransom—or do you have any now?"

  "Naw, two got paid off and the woman's working The Boxcars right now."

  "Good. Keep this pair there and keep a guard on 'em. That one for starters—" she pointed a finger at Horn; she hadn't forgotten either. "I'm going to get 38th Precinct to run Doc here's movements for the last few times he was topside. It'll maybe take a couple of days, 'cause it'll have to go in as routine street-sweeps; but if our fink's right, it'll be hard lines for the Doc."

  Lacey grinned broadly. It made him look cruel and confident, both of them qualities Black May would appreciate. Besides, it genuinely amused the Southerner that he would soon be unmasked by the very data banks he had served for fifteen years.

  As he shuffled toward the steps beside Allen, Lacey suggested, "If you cut these damned chains now, it'll save you having to lug me up these stairs."

  The big chieftain snorted. "Sure. I watch you lay out Mooch and I'm supposed to take your chains off when May says not to. Besides, it ain't my back you'll ride on. Horn, Ledder—get this bastard up the steps. If you drop him, I'll kick your butts all the way to the bottom myself."

  * * *

  The trip back through the tunnels gave Lacey a charleyhorse in each thigh. Since that came on top of the beating he had taken from Mooch, Lacey was dizzy with pain by the time they stopped. According to his reckoning, they were in a branch tunnel near The Boxcars. Allen unlocked what had probably been an equipment closet. The door was sheet metal and not particularly substantial. Some of the customers in nearby booths watched what was going on. The shills and bartenders did not: they knew Bill Allen, and they knew that his business was none of theirs.

  The rock on the other side of the small closet had been cut away recently. Allen shone a hand light within. The new opening gave into what seemed to be a blocked-off elevator well. The area was choked with trash, but in the middle of it stood a massive eyebolt, its base sunk deep into the concrete floor. "Home, simps," Allen said with a chuckle. "Till May gives the word."

  A pair of his subordinates had appeared from the direction of The Boxcars, carrying shackles and a glowing brazier. Wank must have summoned them by phone. Allen nodded to the pair and said, "Lock this pair by the wrists, Becky. You can give 'em three meters to be comfortable; but don't knock the leg irons off, hey?"

  The smith and her helper riveted a manacle to Lacey's right wrist with a few expert blows, using the eyebolt as an anvil. Then they ran the attached length of chain through the eye itself and manacled the other end to Swoboda.

  "Horn," Allen said grimly, "you sit right there at the doorway. Anybody tried to get in or out, you cut 'em apart with your toy there. I'll have a meal sent down in a couple hours. And you do any goddam thing but what you're told to, I make a belt of your hide and give the rest of you to May. Understood?"

  Horn grunted sullenly. As his colleagues strode off toward drinks and ease, he glared at the prisoners. "You pull any goddam thing," he snarled in unconscious mimickry, "and I cut you apart." He fingered the hilt of the fighting knife in his belt. Then, with his back to the doorframe, he began to throw a pair of dice morosely.

  "Why did you lie about me?" Dr. Swoboda asked in a low voice.

  Lacey started, but the words were calm and not the prelude to an attack. He could just make out the physicist's form in the light that filtered through the open door. He did not reply.

  "You can't just be a boaster who thought he'd denounce somebody important," Swoboda went on. "I don't think anyone in Underground but May herself really thinks that what I've done is important." He paused. "Oh," he said, "of course—anyone Underground. But by now the State had probably decided the blackout eight months ago was caused by the load from me starting up a fusion powerplant."

  "You've built a fusion plant?" Lacey said, snorting as if incredulous.

  "Of course," Swoboda repeated, and it was an instant before Lacey realized that the words were in answer to his question. "It would have been the one hope for the world itself, but that was impossible. Still, there's a self-sufficient colony in the, in the Basement now. Perhaps that will be able to continue, whatever happens to me."

  "One hope for this whole island to be blown to slag," Lacey gibed. He brushed a spot cleared of varied garbage and sat down on the floor. "Go on," he said, "you wouldn't have built a fusion plant down here with all those people living over it. Why, I hear it wouldn't even be possible to shut one down safely if it was to blow up."

  "Nonsense!" the physicist snapped with more spirit than he had shown since being taken into custody. "All that it takes to shut down the plant is to open the fuel feed and chill the reaction. Two turns on a petcock! And the rest of you're saying is just as absurd. People have always wanted to live fifty years in the past, and that was all right . . . but it isn't all right any more, it's suicide! Yesterday's fears are going to kill us, kill all human civilization."

  "Such as it is," Lacey chuckled. He felt a sudden added coldness when he realized that he was no longer merely leading his quarry on, that he was actually becoming involved in the discussion.

  "That's the point, you know," Swoboda said, returning to the emotionless delivery with which he had begun the discussion. "I couldn't convince the authorities that what I was offering would be safe. They wouldn't even let me experiment in an unpopulated area. They were afraid the newshawks would watch the scanners. They'd report that the laws were being flouted—and they're stupid laws!—and that a 'bomb of unguessable destructiveness' was being built; and every person who'd had anything to do with approving my project would be voted out or fired. Myself, I'd go under a Psycomp to have my brain cleaned. But whatever the risk—without power for growth, what will this City be in ten years? What will the world itself be like in fifty? What kind of death would be worse?"

  Lacey shrugged. "You're talking to the wrong guy," he said.

  The physicist sighed. "No doubt, no doubt; but there isn't anyone else to talk to, is there?" He glanced toward Horn, who looked up from his dice to glower back. "No human being, at any rate."

  Swoboda started to clear a place on the floor, but he was too nervous to sit. He began walking and turning, a pace in either direction so as not to foul the chain. "I felt like this three years ago," he said, "when I finally rea
lized that I was never going to be allowed to build even a pilot model. The energy source that could save civilization, and it could never be built because the world saw too much and understood too little. That's when Leah Geilblum visited me." The physicist looked at Lacey. The Southerner's eyes had adapted to the dark well enough to catch a sheen of remembered hope in the older man's expression.

  "I knew her by reputation, of course," Swoboda continued, "as she knew me. As an anthropologist, she saw even more clearly than I the horror, the irreversible horror, into which the world was slipping; and she saw the hope that my power source could provide.

  "Black May had already recruited several biologists, planning her 'base'. It wasn't hard for her, you know. The more intelligent someone is, the more clear the need for a, a bolthole, becomes. And word of mouth moves swiftly in the academic community. Leah—she died only last month—she was 83 and it wasn't at all for herself that the concern lay—she convinced me to try to work with Black May, now that Underground had a single, intelligent leader. And Leah was right. It just seems that that wasn't enough."

  There was an interruption from the doorway. Horn scooped up his dice and stood, trying to embrace the lithe woman who carried three meal packets and a canteen. "Rickie, hey, how about a trick, hey?" the guard rasped. "Look, I can pay—"

  The woman dropped her burden without ceremony and elbowed Horn in the stomach. "Think I haven't heard, creep? Keep the hell away from me!"

  "Look, just a feel, then, Rickie," Horn begged, crouching in desire and extending his hands. Rickie reached behind her back, then extended her right fist wrapped in barbed-wire claws.

  "I'll feel the heart right outa your chest, I will!"

  Horn's mouth pursed and his hands dropped to his knife. Booth personnel were beginning to view the disruption blackly, and a few customers seemed to be drifting toward other parts of the tunnels. The woman swiped at Horn's eyes. "You try that," she hissed, "and I'll feed it to your asshole. And if I don't, cutie, what d'ye suppose Bill and May'll do?"

  Horn cursed and turned and slammed his fist into the open door. It boomed thunderously. The woman walked back the way she had come. Horn saw the food containers and kicked all three of them violently into the closet. One of them sailed through the opening to the elevator shaft. Lacey ducked. The ruptured plastic spewed juices. Its integral heating element stank with only the empty container to absorb its energy.

  Lacey smiled. It was as well for Swoboda's peace of mind that the dim light kept him from seeing the hunter's face clearly. Lacey tugged his companion silently toward the eyebolt so that the old man's hand rested on the metal. All the slack in the chain was on Lacey's side of the bolt.

  "Hey Horn," he called to the guard, sitting again in the doorway. "There's rats in here."

  "Hope they chew your eyes out!"

  "No, I mean they're screwing in the corner," Lacey said. "Shine your light so's we can get a better look at 'em, will you?"

  Horn bounced to his feet and raised the flashlight Bill Allen had left with him. Then he paused and shifted the light to his left hand. He drew his knife and gestured with it. "Get smart and I'll spread you all over the room," he said.

  Lacey nodded and stepped back. Out of the bright disk of the flashlight, he thumbed a chunk of potato into the pile of trash in the far corner. The litter rustled.

  Horn stepped through the opening to the shaft. His knife pointed up at Lacey's throat, but his eyes were on the quivering circle of light. "Where—" he began.

  Lacey flipped a loop of chain over the guard's head and jerked him backward. Swoboda squealed. Horn could not shout with the chain crushing his throat, but he slashed out with his knife. Lacey threw himself aside, tugging frenziedly at the chain. His body knocked the physicist down.

  Horn tried to rise. He cut wildly to the side; his wrist struck the eyebolt. A cry wheezed past the chain and the knife sailed loose in the darkness. Horn's hand twisted toward the blackjack in his hip pocket, but his fingers would not close.

  Lacey moved nearer. The manacle on his right wrist gave him an unbreakable grip on the chain. He planted both feet on the other side of the loop, pinning it to the floor. Then he pulled upward with his whole body. Horn thrashed furiously. Blood flecked his chin and the hairs on his chest. The motions became instinctual, like those of a fish on the sand. He gave a final, backing-arching convulsion and lay still.

  Lacey tossed the loop of chain free and collapsed beside the body. His gasping breaths came like sobs. "Get me the knife," he whispered to his companion.

  "But we're still chained," Swoboda protested.

  "Get me the bloody knife!"

  Using the light, the physicist located the weapon. Diffidently, he set it beside Lacey's hand. The Southerner picked it up. The knife was of the finest craftsmanship. Its blade was 7 mm across the flats. Both the edge and the false edge had the yellow sheen which indicated they had been treated to triple density after grinding.

  "Hold your shackle against the bolt and keep the light on the rivet," Lacey directed. He slipped Horn's blackjack from his pocket and stood.

  Swoboda caught at his lower lip with his teeth. Lacey positioned the manacle as he wanted it. He set the knife edge against the peened end of the rivet, then struck the back of the blade sharply with the sap. The 3-mm rivet sheared.

  "Why, that's incredible!" Swoboda blurted.

  "Nothing incredible," Lacey said sourly. "Just a hell of a thing to do to a good knife." He pried at the manacle carefully, using the false edge and trying not to cut the physicist's wrist. There was already bleeding from the damage the shackle had inflicted during the struggle with Horn.

  The iron popped apart. "Now you get mine," Lacey said, handing the tools to Swoboda.

  It took repeated blows by the older man before the second rivet parted, but even so it was only the matter of a minute. Lacey struck off their leg irons. He paused, staring into the physicist's eyes. "Can you get back to your Basement and dog the doors shut?" he asked.

  Swoboda thought calmly, then nodded. "Probably. It isn't necessary to pass through the throne room, and the guards at the entrance door should have changed shift by now. They're used to me entering and leaving, so that shouldn't cause any comment unless I chance upon someone who saw my . . . arrest."

  The older man rubbed his forehead. "As for dogging the inside door, the guards will probably believe me if I say it's necessary for a few days because we're, oh, raising the humidity briefly to enhance growth."

  Lacey nodded. "I'll give you half an hour," he said. "That's all; and if it's not enough, that's too bad. Now get moving."

  "Why?" Swoboda asked unexpectedly.

  "Why the hell do you care?" the hunter blazed. He flung the knife away from him. It clanged and sparked on the concrete. "Mostly I do what I'm told. It doesn't make any difference, you see? I know we're all going down the tubes, I'm not blind. So it's easier." Lacey took a deep breath, fingering his scar. "Only maybe this time it makes a difference. To somebody. Now just get out of here."

  Swoboda touched Lacey's hand, then squeezed it. As he turned, the hunter called after him, "You'll have to handle the guards inside yourself, afterwards. But I can't do it all."

  No one shouted when the physicist slipped out into the tunnels. People Underground minded their own business; and besides, the thin old man was of small interest, even to the whores.

  Lacey waited briefly, then strolled out to a bar. It had more pretensions than the blind pigs around it and there was a twenty-four-hour clock on its back wall. Horn had had some money in his pockets. Lacey used part of it to buy a beer. The liquid was thin and bland—and therefore safe from being loaded with knock-out drops.

  Lacey smiled as the bartender eyed him. Actually, there was nothing unusual about the Southerner's appearance compared to that of many others Underground. It was just unusual that someone as battered as Lacey was would have enough money left for a drink.

  Lacey nursed the beer for the half hour he had promised
Swoboda. He ignored the prostitutes who approached him. If the bartender felt he was not drinking fast enough, he had better sense than to push the matter with the scarred man in red.

  When the time came, Lacey up-ended his glass and strode out of the stew. As he neared The Boxcars, the hunter began to jog and then run. His face grew wild and he shoved people out of his way. The guards at the entrance to the brothel braced to stop him. Lacey thrust the remainder of Horn's money out with both hands. "Bill Allen," he wheezed. "I gotta talk to Bill!"

  The guard chief frowned, then thumbed inside. "He's in his office," she said. "If he sees you or not's his business."

  Lacey pushed through the cordon of naked women who tried to entice him and strip his empty pockets. He flung open the door to Allen's office before a house man could stop him. "Bill, I gotta see you!" he said, slamming the door.

  "What the bleedin' hell!" the black chieftain snarled. He was alone in the room, punching buttons on a computer console with one hand while the other held a sandwich. An open floor safe protruded 200 mm from the rock beside him. He banged the heavy lid closed with his foot. "How did you get loose?"

  "Bill, Black May's going to kill all of us," Lacey whined. The enclosed privacy of the office was disconcerting to him. "She's going to take her buddy-buddies into the Basement and gas us, gas all Underground to keep the topsiders from finding where she's hid!"

  Allen was frowning, but he set down his sandwich. Before the chieftain spoke, Lacey blurted, "Look, Bill, I'm afraid your guards'd grab me 'f I tried to go topside alone. You need to get out too—you can take me! Bill, you ever seen what K2 does to a guy?"

  "Balls," Allen said flatly. "Let's see what May says about this." He began to punch out a phone code, keeping a corner of his eye on Lacey.

  The Southerners' face tightened into intersecting planes of despair. "Bill," he pleaded, "Take me topside and I'll give you a gadget you wouldn't believe."

  Allen paused, his finger above the last digit of the code. "Talk," he said.