by John Barnes
Hell, my head was still ringing in sympathy with that poor bastard Elvis’s head—
All right, how did I know his name was Elvis? Or that right now he was staggering up the stairs to Lena Logan’s apartment?
I reached for my laptop, started monitoring my bugs, put the signal up on live audio. I heard Lena’s door open. “Elvis! Are you hurt? Come in here, right now.” She seemed really worried about him, like she knew him rather than that they just worked together.
Now, luckily, the most distinctive thing that people remember about me is the combination of black hair and blue eyes, and it was way too dark for Elvis to have seen my eye color. And I had switched rental cars. So I wasn’t too worried about him describing me accurately enough for her to realize that the guy who had attacked Elvis was Evan Gardenaire.
Allowing for lousy light and no training, old Elvis did an okay job of describing, but if he’d been talking to the cops they’d never’ve had enough to look for me seriously. Meanwhile, while I waited for Hale, I pulled out the recordings the bugs had been making in my absence.
Sure enough, I remembered right when I compared—she had said and done exactly the things that Norm the engineer liked, with me, and she had called me Norm. The fact that within an hour he’d taken a beating and been robbed of the white box that sat beside me now had to be more than a coincidence.
Furthermore, while I’d been driving downtown, less than ten minutes after I’d left, Lena had taken a last-minute call about a possible quickie, and it was from Jason the pool cleaner. He wanted to just stop by for a blow job and some goddies. While he was on his way over to her place, she put a blob of dark lipstick onto one lip, and told him it was a cold sore when he arrived; she offered to fuck him for free since she couldn’t do what he wanted without giving him herpes. She called him Norman for a while, and then switched to calling him Evan.
My blood froze. I couldn’t think what to do, knew this was important but didn’t know what to think. I sat there and listened as she finished fucking him, sold him six goddies, threw in two for an extra-special bonus, whisked him out the door, and called Elvis to tell him that Norman Lawton had just ordered a pizza at the facility.
Then she phoned Negon and started dictating the paper that Norman had just finished; the only copy of which at that moment resided on an unnetworked computer on his desk at the lab, and in the printer basket next to it.
And that was the precise, exact, dead—on moment when dawn came up over Marblehead.
The Gaudeamus pill was not just a mildly addictive sex-enhancer. If anything, it was more remarkable than the Gaudeamus machine. It was some kind of induced, not perfect, worked-strange-but-worked, telepathy.
Jason was one of her big dumb studs. Basically a stimulant … so she had called him Calvin, and then Norman, and then Evan … my alias—
I got up and put the dead bolt and chain on the door. You know how a room feels when it’s just your room, and nobody should ever be in it, but you walk in and suddenly you just know someone has been in it? That’s what my mind felt like.
I slipped the Gaudeamus machine into my laptop case (since the laptop was out on the desk in the room), and hung the case on the back of the bathroom door, against the wall. Then I grabbed up the laptop and tucked it onto the shelf in the closet. For a one-minute job of hiding things, not bad, I thought, as I closed the closet door.
My cell phone rang. “Yeah.”
“Bismarck, it’s Hale. The pickup team coming out for you was just run off the road by a big, aggressively driven bread truck. Which the police tell us had just been reported stolen. We’re trying to get cops out to you, and there’s another pickup team on the way, but—”
A sledgehammer blow shattered the upper hinge on the door to my room. The door rocked back into place.
“Tell the police to hurry,” I said, calling them “police” instead of pigs, which tells you how bad the situation was and how much I wanted them. “The other team just got here.”
“Are you—”
“Gotta go,” I said, dropping the phone but leaving it on and moving toward the door, hoping to jump whatever came through.
Whoever was on the other side of the door took a setting-up tap. I took a deep breath and held it.
The next blow broke the middle hinge. Then a very muscular three-hundred-pound Indian, still holding the sledgehammer, kicked the door down. It fell into the room, and the wind from its top edge fanned my face as I jumped back. The broken door shattered the lamp and television in its path.
The big Indian flipped it out of the way with his foot, letting it crash across the little round table by the heater under the window.
He didn’t seem to be in a real good mood.
He was this huge Indian, darkish brown, and maybe a bit more than six-five, big across the shoulders and I mean even for his height. Hell, it’s hard to believe they make people as big as that.
He had just the little stubby start of braids, not seriously reaching for his shoulders yet, like he had only, maybe, started growing his hair out about two years ago. He was in greasy jeans, tucked into scuffed-up old work boots, and he had on that black t-shirt you see on so many kids nowadays, the one with O. B. Joyful holding the dead Merle the Killer Squirrel by the tail, with that famous caption “No town is big enough for the two of some people.”
Actually, John, I didn’t think till now to wonder if he’d put that shirt on special for this occasion.
He set down a big ass old boom box that he was carrying and turned it on as he did. The loudest, nastiest punk rock in the history of the universe filled my room.
I closed the distance with a sidestep and kicked hard at one of his knees. That’s when I found out that besides being big and strong and all that stuff I already had figured out, he was also fast and knew his shit. He whipped an arm around and nearly trapped that foot; I fell back into a T-stance and grabbed the floor lamp beside me—you remember that rule we all learn, John, “The most important thing in unarmed combat is not to stay unarmed.”
I whipped that lamp over my head, using it like you would a boken in a martial-arts class, trying to brain him with the base. He popped a roof block so fast that I felt it whiff by my face, an instant before that flimsy old floor lamp broke in two; that left me with one arm stinging so bad that I couldn’t do much of anything with it, and I was back to unarmed.
He did a tight, quick back flip of his wrist, so that the backs of his fingers slid around my still-numb arm, caught my sleeve, and whipped my arm around. I somersaulted and landed at his feet, definitely not by my choice. He stretched me up by the arm, picking me right up off the floor, pivoted and snap-kicked. The toe of his boot thumped the bridge of my nose. I ragdollied onto the floor. The whole time he was yelling like a nut.
He let go of me and walked back out of the hotel room, maybe seven seconds after he’d knocked the door down. I didn’t seem to be able to move, or even to tense a muscle, though my eyes were open and I could see. He came back in with two milk crates, pulled a bottle out of one, and poured it all over me. Cheap gin. Stunk like hell.
Then he pulled about ten more bottles out of those crates, set some of them out (sloshing booze around as he did), threw a couple against the wall, and threw the last one through the window—between my ringing head and the screaming punk rock, I couldn’t even hear the window break. I still couldn’t do more than drag my hands in little circles on the carpet in front of me, so I watched as he threw a handful of mixed pills onto the floor and bed, then pulled out a little brown paper lunch bag, set that into an ashtray, and lit it; after it blazed up, I smelled rope. No doubt by the time the pigs got here, which was scheduled for any second now, this would all look like a real serious party.
He grabbed the remaining lamp in the place, and threw it into the mirror, and walked into the bathroom. He turned on the light, which darkened for an instant as the door swung closed; he would be grabbing my laptop bag from the back of the door. The door reopened in a spil
l of fluorescent light as he came out with my laptop bag, which contained the Gaudeamus machine. He’d just gone straight to where it was. Hell, I doubted he’d even looked inside the bag, or needed to.
That suck-dog awful punk rock was still shrieking as he went out the door with the key to my employability slung over his shoulder like a big purse. He left the boom box on.
On his way out I heard him pound on the door next to mine and yell, “Wake up, bitch, come out and suck my cock!” A second later he was pounding on a more distant door yelling, “Hey, if you call the cops, I’m gonna come in there and cut your ass dead!”
It’s always nice to know you’re dealing with a professional who knows how to put the finishing touches on a job.
I was not feeling good at all.
Honest to god and Jesus and that whole crowd, John, I think I might’ve just passed out there, and let things get sorted when I woke up in jail or the hospital, except I so purely hated that fucking music. But I dragged myself over to turn that off, couldn’t find the switch, battered it till the batteries flew around and there was a silence like a choir of blessed angels. By the time I did all that, I knew I wasn’t dying or even passing out.
A flashing red glow from the open doorway might be the cops that Xegon had sent, but more likely they’d been called by the hotel. If they were like most pigs, they’d be approaching slowly. I sucked in a deep breath, and my head cleared a little, and I looked around.
Thing I learned early: live packed, and always have extra room in your bag. I always put clothes and toiletries and all that back into my bag as soon as I’m done with them. So I staggered up to the closet, took my laptop, and threw it into the duffel bag. I grabbed that little case with my fake ID materials and my supply of goddies, and tossed that in. I zipped it up, and everything I had was all packed and ready to go. Semper paratus, beep repaired, Mrs. Bismarck’s boy was ready to win the ready camper award.
I lurched for the door; normally there’s nothing heavy in my duffel bag but this time I seemed to have accidentally packed a small Buick in there somewhere.
I got my balance at the railing, pushed back and stood up straight. There were six pigmobiles in the lot, and a confused mob of milling cops. I lurched down the gallery about twenty steps, and no spotlight hit me. They were still getting organized.
I was already on the stairs down when I had a close encounter of the porcine kind—two cops came running up. “I am never staying in one of these motels again,” I said. “Never, never, never. This chain is never getting my business again.”
One pig looked and saw a messed-up man who looked like he’d just grabbed a bag and walked out of a hotel room.
“We might need you for a witness, sir—” he began.
“Right, now you Albuquerque assholes want me to do your work for you. Like I can afford the kind of time to go to court. Your Chamber of Commerce is going to get a serious letter from me,” I said, and staggered on down the stairs.
“Sir, if you’ve been drinking, you shouldn’t drive—”
I turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs and hustled through a breezeway; ducked into the little hotel’s public laundry, down the hallway through their restaurant kitchen, where I startled the dishwasher into dropping a plate, went out the back door, and was on my way.
After I had staggered for about a block and a half, and found a nice dark shadow on the back side of a drive-through bank, I fished around in my duffel bag till I found that gym bag, and messed around in it till I found the cell phone. I hit the last number dialed, and got Hale. “They beat me up and got the Gaudeamus machine,” I said. “And I need pickup.”
“Fuck,” Hale said. “Fuck fuck fuck.” The boy was becoming goddam nearly human, John. I was thinking to myself, next thing you know, he’ll be growing lips and maybe a chin. “We’ve got to get you out of there and right now I don’t have a thing to do it with. My pickup team is still fifteen minutes from you and our communications are penetrated. We’ve got to risk something somewhere—let me think a moment—”
He was managing to sound concerned—might even have been for all I know—so give him credit for being pretty human in a bad spot, which is more than most guys would be when they’re dealing with danger to the hired help in the middle of a national security disaster (and probable bankruptcy) that is all going to be blamed on them.
“Okay,” Hale said, “I don’t really like it, but here’s the plan. I need you to—”
This was the third time in my life I’ve heard a silenced pistol make its weird little splott! over the phone. I told you the other two stories, long ago, eh, John? And you only need to hear it once to recognize it forever. Whoever it was fired once, maybe three feet from Hale’s phone.
Hale coughed hard, made a sick little gurgle, and said, “Don’t come.” The line went dead. I didn’t figure I should call back.
CHAPTER TEN
“And there you got it, John. I don’t know who the other side is but Hale and me, sure as god and Jesus and that whole crowd, we pissed them off bad. And anybody that’s had a god pill, they can read your mind, sometimes, a little, like a very spotty radio with a lot of static and the batteries dying pretty fast, but you never know when they’ll get some clear channel signal like I did when I nailed that bastard Elvis. And they’ve got old Lena and I bet with her practice, she’s the big mama bear of all telepaths, and if she, or someone like her, gets close, I better not be asleep, because that seems to be when they get strong signal most easily. I got telepaths with guns after me, and I don’t know what their range is, but since they obviously got all the way inside Xegon, which is like a fortress, and shot Hale while he was talking to me—what I gotta do is duck and weave for a while till I get myself clear of them, and then head back towards them, since there’s probably nowhere on Earth far enough to run. Better to be closing in and fighting, anyway, than spend the rest of my time hiding from them—whoever the fuck they are, other than ‘Lena Logan’s team.’”
“Was Hale killed?” I asked.
“I don’t know, John, that was the last contact I dared have with Xegon, night before last. They have my number and if it’s safe they’ll call me.” Travis stretched and groaned. “Needed to get myself as clear as I could of every connection, before I make a careful approach. Figure, though, if Hale is dead, and maybe some others—besides Cheryl the pizza driver—then they’ll have a hell of a time sweeping it under the rug, even if the other side can—maybe—wave around a ‘national security’ magic wand. So I need to let about two news cycles go by to see what gets reported.”
“And you came here,” I said, “with people trying to kill you on your trail—” I hate it when I can hear my own voice getting whiny, but I guess by my mid-forties the most likely thing is that I’ll never get it under control.
“I don’t think they’re out to do that,” Travis said, “and, buddy, have a little faith. I shook ’em hard and I’ve been watching my back. They ain’t on my trail anymore.”
“If you were being extra reassuring, you’d make that Texas accent thicker and say ‘they ain’t on my trail no more,’” I said, overcompensating. “I know you’re actually a prep-school trust-funder who just enjoys going slumming—”
“Going trailer-parking,” he corrected me. “Yeah, I know, every so often I slip up and use the subjunctive. I wouldn’t do that if I were a real redneck.” He sighed. “John, I didn’t have much choice. And to know about any connection between us two, they’d have to have busted into my office in Montana and read an email file marked ‘Christmas letters’ and traced your address from the college, since I wrote to you at your college email. They ain’t going to do that. If they were going to go to that much trouble, they’d never have let me slip off their screens like they did down in Alamosa. And so far as we can tell that telepathy comes and goes, and we haven’t seen it work more than ten miles away. Hell, there was no trace of the bad guys in Alamosa; I think they just chased me out of Santa Fe because there were a few
of them there and they spotted me, so they had the chance to look busy. I don’t think I was really any kind of priority, you know what I mean? Just something to do to impress the boss.”
“I wouldn’t know a thing about that,” I said, “being a college professor trying to suck up enough to get tenure.”
“Yeah. Well, it was pretty much your textbook evasion of guys who don’t intend to shoot you. They came up from behind—you know what US 285 is like in that stretch, you can see three miles ahead and four back because you’re climbing a gradual rise that goes for so many miles. Besides the road and an occasional fence, you’d never know there were people on the planet. Just road and empty, with a far-off frame of sky and mountains.
“That time of midafternoon, when everybody’s already where they need to be to work, you can go a solid hour without seeing another car. So I had a car in my rearview for a long time—huge old black Cherokee, took him a long time to close up with me, they should’ve got the V-8 model. I suppose even bad guys worry about fuel economy, nowadays, or more likely it was a renter.
“In the twenty minutes while the black Cherokee was closing up, I got buzzed twice by a helicopter, also black, no markings, probably just shooting pictures. Second time I waved at him, but he didn’t wave back that I could see. Then the Cherokee closed up, and I whipped a J-turn, and the stupid sonofabitch tried to get turned around that fast himself—”
“Hey, how about a note on what a J-turn is for those of us who write adventures for a living?” I asked, fascinated by Travis, as always, despite whatever passes for judgment in me (mostly middle age and physical cowardice).
“Don’t try this one in your SUV, John, for sure, and really not in any car, but if you have a nice little low-to-the-ground Jap roller-skate like I was driving, and a really empty road, that’s about the safest situation you can do it in. You slam on the brakes—you’re aiming for a skid—and tick that old wheel just far enough to do most of a 180 spin, or a little over, as you get down to stopping speed. If you’re not a Hollywood stunt driver or haven’t practiced forever, you’re gonna go all over the fucking road and maybe into the ditch on either side, doing that, so it helps to be on a forgiving stretch of road, but like I said, 285 from Alamosa south is about as empty as they make it, and as it happened I stayed on the road.
