Ascent

by Thorby Rudbek

  “I do like this one!” Richard grinned and shook his head as he turned the ignition switch and the engine burst into song once again. He pulled away from the kerb and cruised down to the junction, where the lights went green just as he arrived. “Let’s hope we can find something before the afternoon disappears.”

  Unfortunately it was a full hour before Karen found a likely prospect; it was a cream-coloured Chevrolet pick-up with temporary licence plates, pulling out from a dealership. There was just one occupant inside it, a fresh-faced man with a bunch of flowers propped up on the dashboard in front of him.

  “This sounds good; it’s his first wedding anniversary and he’s taking the rest of the day off to surprise his wife,” Karen explained, urging Richard to follow the truck as it turned at the next junction and disappeared out of sight. She smiled at Richard and then blushed a deep red. “I guess I shouldn’t listen in to certain people’s thoughts. I’ll just encourage him to leave the truck unlocked when he gets home. It won’t take much effort!”

  Richard glanced across; his eyebrows went up as he saw the effect this particular contact was having on Karen.

  “Pull over quickly!” Karen urged him, “I don’t want to chance him being distracted by this car.”

  The truck pulled into a driveway as she spoke and the door flew open, enabling the driver to jump out and run up to the porch of the small but beautifully decorated bungalow, flowers in hand. As Richard stopped and switched off the engine about a hundred yards back, the man ran back and slammed the door of his truck shut, then hopped up the path and disappeared into the house.

  “Let’s just wait a couple of minutes,” Karen suggested quietly, her eyes a misty blue as she leaned back in the seat and stared at the pale fabric over her head.

  “I thought you said you weren’t going to listen in.” Richard turned and watched her expressions as time slipped slowly by. “They are married, you know!”

  Karen blushed again.

  “I had to make sure they wouldn’t notice us driving off with the truck.” She looked behind them and confirmed there were no pedestrians in sight and no vehicles moving on the quiet side street. “Pull up just past the house and let me out. I’ll follow you.”

  Richard squeezed her hand as he complied with her instructions; he felt her emotions but no clear thoughts as she struggled with her self-appointed task, and her feelings for him kept getting involved. He watched as she pushed the door up and climbed nimbly out.

  She turned and smiled brightly as she began to lower the door. “Tutor says he’ll modify the licence plates on this car so we can use them on the truck. He wants to decorate the doors somehow to make us look more convincing, so I won’t have to work so hard.” She leaned on the window and continued through the open space around the frame as she pushed the door down further. “Don’t worry, I’m not listening any more. I couldn’t think straight!”

  The door clicked into place and Richard moved slowly down the street while Karen backed the truck out and accelerated towards him.

  “Quite the ability!” he sighed, strangely relieved that he could only touch one mind, hers, and that his gift amounted to only the smallest fraction of her power.

  Half an hour later, Richard and Karen sat in the cab of their latest acquisition, a new half-ton truck with the logo ‘Beryllium Fabrications Inc.’ freshly lasered on the doors. Between them on the bench seat was a copy of a late edition of that morning’s newspaper. Across the road was the accessway to the industrial park. The warehouse containing the precious fuel for the Star Drive was one of the buildings towards the back of the eighteen-acre site, according to the sign at the side of the road. Richard reached down and nervously fingered the logo through the opened window; he kept expecting the paint to start peeling off, but Tutor had gauged the light intensity perfectly, and the end result was light grey letters burnt into the creamy paint of the vehicle without even a hint of blistering.

  Richard pulled back onto the road and turned the corner into the industrial park. He drove down to the first junction and turned left. There, about a city block ahead, was the security gate for the company to which they were going. Karen concentrated on the occupant of the security hut, and by the time the truck reached the gate, the guard was experiencing the effects of her unique mind powers.

  “We’re here to pick up a shipment for BFI,” Richard announced boldly. The smartly-dressed guard waved them through without bothering to check the schedule on the wall next to the door. He failed to contact the loading dock to inform the foreman of the approaching truck; he simply could not summon the necessary enthusiasm to reach for the intercom button.

  Richard drove across the wide expanse of tarmac towards the huge doors on the warehouse. The guard returned to his newspaper; already their appearance and entry was forgotten.

  “Do you think you can maintain his disinterest as we move further away from the gate?”

  “That doesn’t worry me,” Karen responded. “It’s trying to handle the other people at the loading dock at the same time that’s going to be tricky.”

  He glanced over at her, suddenly aware of the fatigue in her voice and in the very air between them. Her face looked almost grey, and he realized that he could feel the waves of apprehension emanating from her without having any physical contact, as they became more attuned to each other. He regretted the decision to go for the metal the same day as she had first exercised actual control over a human being; she seemed not to have recovered her strength after the experience, even though she had slept the remainder of the trip on the highway to Springfield and a further hour after they arrived. They really had no alternative however; the theft of the sports car would certainly have been reported by now, and it was only a matter of time before it was discovered in the side street where they had left it, informing their pursuers that they were in the area.

  Richard took her left hand in his right and let his energy flow into her. The drain was considerable, and showed no signs of stopping, but he had to help her while he could, so he continued the contact.

  Once they had taken the truck and disposed of the Mercedes, they had considered resting for another hour or so, but the local newspaper they found on the seat of the truck persuaded them to act immediately; an article describing the two fugitives in the words used so effectively by the radio announcer was right on the front page. It even included photographs of them both, which appeared to have been taken during their departure from Citadel, as it showed them in their dark grey jumpsuits. That really had shaken them both up, although Karen had recovered her poise fairly quickly.

  What it did make them admit was that someone was bound to spot them if they waited for later; it seemed that their only hope was to move quickly and return to Citadel before that became impossible. Their latest contact with Tutor indicated that a large military force was now maintaining a secure area around the evacuated town of Redcliff, ostensibly to keep out the public as had been announced on the radio. Around the covering that now cloaked Tutor’s ‘eyes’ there was an even more impressive system of electric fencing being erected in an attempt to make the area impenetrable, and more high-tech, large calibre weaponry was arriving every hour.

  Richard backed the truck up to the loading dock, let go of Karen’s hand reluctantly, and jumped out.

  “Hi. We’ve come to collect the shipment of Beryllium for BFI,” he said to the foreman, a short guy in coveralls with several days’ growth of beard on his chin.

  “Huh?” The man looked at him doubtfully, then relaxed as Karen turned her disinterest broadcast up. “Sure. Help yourself,” he said shortly.

  Richard pulled down the tailgate of the truck, walked up the steps onto the dock and stopped.

  “Ah, where is it?” He asked after a moment’s hesitation.

  “In there.” This was said with great effort.

  Richard approached the stack of ingots inside the small door at the back of the dock. Just as he reached down to pick up one from the top, another
man wearing a baseball cap with a child’s team insignia emblazoned on it walked out of the shadowy interior.

  “Hey, don’t touch those without gloves on!” he shouted.

  Karen turned around in her seat and looked out the flat rear window of the truck to see what was going on. She spread the disinterest effect to include the second man, and struggled to maintain contact with the guard at the gate.

  Richard walked over somewhat hesitantly to the shelf that the man had pointed out and put on a pair of the disposable gloves from the box laying there.

  The second man walked down the steps and looked at the name, literally emblazoned on the door of their fourth ‘requisitioned vehicle’. This seemed to satisfy his heavily influenced mind. Meanwhile, Richard picked up the first ingot and turned back towards Karen with it. He walked with the heavy slab of metal onto the bed of the truck and crouched down to deposit it on the plywood sheeting near the passenger compartment. Richard winked reassuringly at Karen through the glass. He twisted around at the sound of the voice of a third man, another worker in coveralls. This man wore his dark brown hair in a short ponytail, and was watching him suspiciously.

  “You’re not the usual guy; this isn’t even the right day! What happened to …” his voice faded out uncertainly as Karen caught sight of him and included him in her efforts.

  Back at the gate the guard chose this critical moment to flip his newspaper shut. His attention was drawn to the two photographs on the front page. He read the headline and then started on the article below it with increasing interest, struggling against a strange sense of lethargy.

  “There wasn’t a pick-up scheduled for today!” The foreman appeared at the top of the steps with his battered clipboard in his stained hands as Richard was loading the second ingot. “Who the heck’s Beryllium Fabrications Inc., anyway?”

  Karen closed her eyes tightly, desperately trying to concentrate on the increasingly impossible task of influencing the four men now aware and suspicious of their presence. Richard backed up against the rear of the cab, still holding the metal slab. He bent down and tried to slide the small windows open so he could reach through and boost Karen’s power levels by physical contact, but the catch inside was still engaged.

  “Just hold still, I’m calling security.” The foreman pointed warningly at Richard and picked the handset off the wall-mounted telephone by the steps.

  “Tutor - the phone!” Richard whispered hoarsely.

  A flash lit up the gloom of the loading dock and the foreman jumped back from the remains of the phone, reduced now to a blob of smoking, melted plastic.

  “You hold it!” Richard demanded, straightening up. “And you two... get up here!” he gestured to the other workmen and whispered hasty instructions to Tutor to encourage them. A moment later the men hurried up the steps as a series of flashes emanated from the dark box on the roof of the truck and soaked into the cracked grey surface of the ground, seeming to bounce across the tarmac towards them, leaving tiny wisps of steam or smoke floating upwards at each point of contact.

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone, but if you disobey me…” Richard left the sentence unfinished. “Load up the remaining metal.” The men hesitated for a moment, then a further, more powerful bolt of laser energy knocked a half inch hole in the concrete wall beside them. They looked at the damage and moved nervously to do as they were directed.

  Richard jumped down from the truck and opened the driver’s door to risk a quick look into the cab. Karen was slumped against the dashboard, but she sat up as he leaned across, pulled off the flimsy gloves and touched her. Her eyes were a grey-blue mix and seemed a little glassy. It was clear that she was having some problems with focus as she turned to look at him.

  “Are you okay?” he asked urgently, concerned that he could not feel his energy flowing out to her as he had in the past.

  She nodded and then shook her head as if trying to clear it.

  “What about the security guard?” Richard banged his head backing out of the cab as another flash distracted him from his enquiries; it seemed that Tutor was keeping the workmen subdued for him.

  “I can’t find him... he must have left the gate,” she replied weakly.

  Just then, in confirmation of that inference, Richard noticed the sound of a vehicle approaching at speed. He closed the door of the cab and walked to the tailgate. The workmen had loaded what looked to him to be about a hundred pounds of the Beryllium. Maybe less.

  “That will have to be enough. Get back.” He slammed up the tailgate, ran around the truck and jumped in. As he started the engine, the security guard’s truck shot around the end of the building.

  “He’s trying to cut us off!” Karen warned feebly as the truck closed in; the guard was already holding his handgun out of the open window, the muzzle pointed skywards as a warning. The truck leaned as the driver swerved around one of the stacks of pipes located seemingly randomly across the otherwise open space, and the driver brought his weapon to bear as he spotted the movement inside the cream-coloured truck.

  Richard whispered another hasty instruction. A moment later there was another brief flash of light, and the front tire, which was taking the brunt of the turn, burst with a loud bang. The truck rolled over and slid on its roof, coming to a screeching halt about fifty yards away.

  Richard didn’t wait to see the guard emerge; he gunned the engine and accelerated rapidly towards the now unmanned gate. The striped wooden barrier splintered as they drove through, and within moments they were turning onto the public road once more. He was strangely relieved when Karen leaned against him, as he could feel the strength draining out of him once more, and he could sense, despite the waves of exhaustion she radiated, that she was conscious enough to realize that the chase was on.

  ***

  “Come on Judy,” Leroy pleaded in his usual, semi-serious way. “Someone with such an obviously healthy body like you must have a favourite sport.” Fraser was leaning back against his video console, his headset crookedly balanced on his left ear and a point just above his right. His feet were up on a handy chair and his eyes were carefully following Brisson’s expression, trying to gauge her reaction and attempting, as usual, to take her to the limit of her patience with him, without going over the somewhat nebulous line that might damage his opportunities for similar future engagements. Lately his approach was also tempered by the realization that beneath the somewhat crusty exterior was a girl whom he might really like.

  “I told you, I’m not one for team sports, and I don’t enjoy knocking a ball around with something that looks like a snow shoe. Not everybody is like you, you know.”

  “But that’s just it, I’m a runner, or at least I was --” Leroy stopped suddenly and held up his hand for silence, missing the opportunity which had almost developed for Judy to open up and tell him about her great love for swimming and particularly for free and scuba diving. He adjusted the headset to optimize reception and spun around to activate his computer. A moment later he whispered: “Go get the chief,” as he covered his mouthpiece.

  When Judy returned with Ed a few minutes later, Leroy had prepared a summary of the information he had just received.

  “It appears that our fugitives are now in Springfield, or have just passed through it heading south,” Fraser announced. “They stopped a snazzy sports car on the main highway about thirty miles outside of that city, because their latest vehicle (not the one they stole from here, we haven’t traced that yet) had broken down. The interesting part is how they stopped it.” He looked at his audience, making the most of a dramatic pause.

  “Well, go on, man,” Baynes finally urged, impatiently.

  “The driver of the car stated she was on the way to an important modelling appointment in Springfield; she was cutting it close for time, but thought she would make it if the traffic kept moving as it had been. She didn’t disclose this, but she was probably well over the speed limit. Despite this sense of urgency, without any warning, she felt compelled
to pull up on the hard shoulder, just in front of an old Ford that had stopped there. Several other vehicles left some major rubber on the road to avoid a collision with her as she cut across all the lanes. She hadn’t even noticed the car on the shoulder before she started her radical move. She got out of her collector’s dream of a car, a gull-wing Mercedes worth over two hundred ‘K’, although she didn’t know why she was doing so, and stood basically immobilized while an exhausted girl with long platinum blonde hair was helped into the passenger seat by her companion. Then the other person, a tall, somewhat gangly young man with short, wavy hair, started to apologize for ‘borrowing’ her car. The girl called him ‘Richard’, and told him to hurry up, then he got in and drove off. Only when her car was disappearing around the next bend in the road did the victim regain her self-motivation and start jumping up and down, screaming for help.”

  Ed could not help smiling to himself as he visualized the situation. “So she wasn’t your typical ‘good Samaritan’, huh?”

  “No sir,” Leroy grinned back. “It puts a whole new angle on that story.”

  “Leroy, is there any indication of how this mind control works?” Judy inquired, her thoughts now far from the light-hearted conversation on sports and health in which they had recently been engaged.

  “None as yet, though that grey box we saw Richard carrying when they left Redcliff also featured in the story. It was inside the old Ford, and Richard went back for it and transferred it to the roof of the model’s car before he drove off.”

  “So we were probably subjected to this mind control when the two of them escaped, huh?” Baynes surmised. “That’s a big relief; I was beginning to wonder if I had simply dozed off, especially when we couldn’t even find any trace of knock-out gas in our systems.”

  “I find it interesting that they didn’t kill the model to stop her from talking, sir,” Judy commented. “Now we know their direction of travel, it will be a lot easier to track them down. They could have prevented us from finding that out.”