"Let me down," he shouted to Retief, even as the latter opened the hatchway below to allow the hook to be lowered. Hamilton had to shout as the inrushing air drowned out normal sound.
The winch started with a squeal and a shudder. Fortunately, the Boer Republic of South Africa, whatever its other flaws, did maintain its equipment. After that initial shudder, the machine operated smoothly, lowering Hamilton into the blast. Unfortunately, however, the hook was free spinning to allow fixing at any angle on the ground. Hamilton spun and swayed without control. This was bad, very bad, as he needed to see ahead to mark his landing spot. The spin threatened to make him ill. It absolutely made him want to close his eyes but that would never do.
Fuckfuckfuckfuck. How do I control this?
Experimentally, and not without a certain feeling of terror, Hamilton took one hand off the cable—the hand opposite the direction of his spin—and thrust that arm outward. The spin reversed itself.
Oh, oh. Too much.
He pulled the arm partway in, reducing the cross section.
There; that's better. And
there's
the town and . . . ohhh, shit, we're moving faster than I thought.
Hamilton put both hands back on the cable and lifted his feet off of the hook. He began to scuttle his hands down the gable. After three such releases and regraspings, his left hand lost its hold and he fell.
"Ohhh . . . shshshiiittt!"
Petra was slowly freezing solid. She was, in fact, certain she would die of the cold. Yes, she had her burka and, true, she was under a blanket. Yet there are some colds, and Germany's cold in the early autumn morning was one such, that no practical amount of insulation alone would help.
Intellectually she knew that she could start the car and get some heat that way. The keys were, after all, under the driver's seat and she had seen the car started before. It was just a matter of putting in the key and turning it. But an idling automobile was a guaranteed attention gatherer. Too, she could get out of the car and try to exercise to put some warmth back in her limbs. But if an idling automobile in twenty-second-century Germany was an attention gatherer, how much more so would be a woman in a burka doing jumping jacks? It was a formidable problem that she settled by simply remaining in the car and shivering as her limbs slowly went numb. The steel of the bolt cutters clutched in her arms didn't help.
Hamilton felt a wrenching pain in his left knee as he hit the rooftop and rolled to his left side. Almost, he screamed of it. For a brief moment, even, he felt the urge to cry over it.
That urge passed, surpassed by the greater need to find Petra and bring her to safety. He arose to hands and—
oh, my frigging God!—
knees, and then to both feet. His first steps were awkward. Very nearly he stumbled over. Still, by keeping his leg stiff he was able, if barely, to remain upright.
First thing is I've got to get off of the roof. Hmmm . . . no fire escape. There's that shedlike thing though; it may be stairs.
Hamilton walked over stiffly, wincing from pain, and determined that, yes, the shed covered some stairs. He descended one step at a time, careful to keep his left leg stiff. At the bottom, he discovered a latched gate. He opened and left, emerging onto a street he didn't recognize.
He had a fair innate sense of direction.
Hauptstrasse's over there,
he thought.
And from there I can find the car and, I hope, Petra.
"I hope to fuck we can shake them," the pilot said to no one in particular.
"Shake who?" Retief, now returned to the cockpit, asked. He noticed that the pilot's cheeks were wet, but that no tears flowed for the moment.
"Shanghai informs me we've got four fighters inbound in a couple of minutes. There are more after that."
Retief shook his head. "Shaking them isn't going to happen. But they're going to have problems lining up on us without violating Swiss airspace." Sitting in the copilot's seat, he reached for a headset and put it on. Then he adjusted a dial on the control panel, flicked a switch, and began to broadcast.
"Swiss Airspace Control, Swiss Airspace control: This is South African Airship Lines Flight Seven Nine Three. We are inbound to cross your borders bearing about three hundred escaped slaves, mostly children, from the Caliphate. We demand sanctuary under the laws of God and man. We are being pursued by jet fighters from the Caliphate. If you are still true Swiss, help us."
"Think it will work?" the pilot asked.
"Think it will hurt?"
"No, but those will."
As the pilot spoke a dual line of tracers crossed in front of the airship, to be followed by the sharklike image of a fighter.
A voice came over the cabin's loudspeaker. It was a woman's voice, throaty and, for some other man, inherently sexy. "Flight Seven Nine Three this is Swiss Airspace Control. We cannot cross the border to help you. But if you can make it halfway across Lake Constance we will escort. Moreover, if the Caliphate fires across that border we will engage them to defend Swiss sovereignty. Understand, you will be interned once you land . . . if you land."
"Swiss Airspace, Seven Nine Three. Roger. Understood. But we're not going to land; we're going to crash. And"—Lee stole a glance at his altimeter—"there's a good chance we'll crash into the lake."
"Then crash on
our
side, Seven Nine Three. We'll send some boats out. Best we can do. Good luck and Godspeed."
The pilot spoke. "You better do better than your best, Switzerland. Escaped slaves aren't all we're carrying. Call your foreign ministry. Right about now the ambassadors from the American Empire and the Celestial Kingdom are explaining just
why
it would be better for you to declare war on the Caliphate than let us fall back into their hands."
Speechless, Retief looked at the pilot and raised one eyebrow.
"I'll tell you later," Lee/Ling said.
Much later.
He was running late, very late.
Running late, my ass. I'm
staggering
late.
Hamilton cursed at the knee, swelling now and badly, that held his progress down to that of a snail. He wondered at the absence of any policeman on the street.
True, it's just a small town and, true, it's nighttime. But you would expect at least
one
cop. And, between the goggles and the weapon, it's not like I
look
exactly normal. Then again, I expected to be able to sneak into town, or to drive in a janissary truck. For this and other things, O Lord . . . thanks.
Retief heard screaming from the rear, even through the many bulkheads separating the cockpit from the passenger compartment and the lounge holding the mass of children. The airship shuddered with the impact of light cannon fire.
"Christ!" The pilot exclaimed. "Go back and see to the damage. See to the kids, for that matter, the poor little bastards."
"I'm on it," Retief agreed, then pushed himself out of his chair, turned, and ran for the rear. He didn't make it before another burst of cannon fire hit the airship, not far from where he ran. The force of the blasts, coupled with the shuddering of the ship, knocked him from his feet, leaving him temporarily stunned on the deck.
Claude Oliver Meara lay on one side on the deck, taped and trussed to his chair like a Christmas goose. He'd shat himself when the cannon fire struck. This wasn't supposed to happen to
him
. What was wrong with these people? Didn't they understand that if he was unhappy, the world would be unhappy, that if he died the universe would end. Madmen! Devils sent to torment him!
Two children, one boy, one girl, crawled up to him. Meara recognized the boy as one of his favorite new toys. He breathed a sigh of relief; the boy was so grateful for his attentions he was going to free him! The children, their faces very serious, spoke to each other in a language he didn't understand. No doubt they were discussing how best to free him.
The girl produced a small pencil. The boy unlaced a shoe. Meara thought he understood the purpose of the pencil, to weaken the tape that bound him so the children could tear it. But why did the boy tie the shoelace loosely around his neck? Why did the girl put the pencil through the loop and begin to twist it?
* * *
Retief looked down at the buggy-eyed, blue-faced corpse with its tongue swollen and blackened. The corpse, still bound to its chair, was of the one he thought of as the "fat prisoner." There were two children nearby, coloreds, looking down at the grotesque, obscene thing with an odd mix of innocence, hate and pure satisfaction.
No time to worry about that now. Later, maybe. If there's a later and if it matters. Besides, there are enough children hurt here not to worry too much about one renegade.
He reached for an intercom button. "Retief here. It's not as bad as it felt. We've got some kids hurt. Some of them might be dead. And one of the prisoners is
definitely
dead."
"Can you toss them to lighten the load?" the pilot asked. "Every inch might count."
"I
won't
toss the kids. I can toss the dead prisoner," Retief answered. "He's so fucking huge he might give us the lift we need all on his own."
"Do it."
Retief, though no weakling, found it impossible to pick up and carry Meara's obese corpse. After a couple of attempts, he gave up the notion. Instead, he stepped over the corpse and began to roll it, chair and all, towards the back of the airship's lounge, to where the viewing ports had been completely shattered. He had to kick some of the clear material, a kind of double layered glass with a plastic binder between the layers, out of the way. Once that was done, he again went to Meara's corpse and, with a great grunting heave, pushed it over the stern.
It wasn't enough to give the airship much more lift but for some reason Retief's spirit felt a bit uplifted. There had to have been a reason those children had strangled the wretch, after all.
With a gasp of pain, Hamilton half collapsed against the black- painted auto. It was too dark to see if Petra was inside, and she was strong enough not to cry out.
"Petra, please tell me you're in there," Hamilton said, after wrenching the door open.
Still shivering, she tossed the bolt cutters aside and flew out from under the cover of the concealing blanket, scrambled over the backs of the front seats, and wrapped him in a desperate hug.
"I thought you forgot about me," she said. "I thought you and Hans were dead and everything had failed. I was expecting to be found and crucified. I had to kill a man."
"You had to . . . never mind. Honey, I've got some bad news and you ought to sit down for it. And besides, we need to hurry to the lake."
Hamilton had expected a scene. Petra didn't deliver. Instead, she simply asked, "My brother died a free man?"
"Yes."
"Then it is well. It's all he wanted; that, and to fight against our enemy. Ling knows?"
"Yes. She didn't take it well."
Petra nodded as she backed into the front passenger seat. "No . . . no, she wouldn't."
"Was she in love with him?" Hamilton asked.
"I think . . . maybe . . . she
wanted
to be. I think she could have been, in time. And maybe, too, she thinks she was."
Hamilton nodded understanding. He then reached under the seat, his fingers questing for the key. "Where are you, you little . . . ah, here you are." He put the key in the ignition, said a probably hopeless prayer, and turned it. Half to his surprise the car started immediately. He reached up, took the goggles off of his head and set them on the seat between himself and Petra. Only then did he turn on the headlights and put the car's automatic transmission into drive.
Over the sound of the engine, and coming from somewhere above, Hamilton heard the sonic boom of a fast moving aircraft.