Gordon R. Dickson - Childe Cycle 05 (15 page)

"Fair enough," said Kiensie. He smiled down at me. "I hope, though, you don't plan on having your men holding our men's hands all through their evenings in town—"

Just then we passed between the first of the tall office buildings. A shadow from the late morning sun fell across the car, and the high walls around us gave Kensie's last words a flat echo. Right on the heels of those words—in fact, mixed with them—came a faint sound as of multiple whistlings about us; and Kensie fell forward, no longer speaking, until his forehead against the front windscreen stopped him from movement.

The next thing I knew I was flying through the air, literally. Charley ap Morgan had left the police car on the right side, dragging me along with a hand like a steel clamp on my arm, until we ended up against the front of the building on our right. We crouched there, Charley with his dress handgun in his fist and looking up at the windows of the building opposite. Across the narrow way, I could see Chu Van Moy with Pel beside him, a dress gun also in Chu's fist. I reached for my own police beltgun, and remembered I was not wearing it.

About us there was utter silence. The narrow little projectiles from one or more sliver rifles, that had fluted about us, did not come again. For the first time I realized there was no one on the streets and no movement to be seen behind the windows about us.

"We've got to get him to a hospital," said Pel, on the other side of the street. His voice was strained and tight. He was staring fixedly at the still figure of Kensie, still slumped against the windscreen.

"A hospital," he said again. His face was as pale as a sick man's.

Neither Charley or Chu paid any attention. Silently they were continuing to scan the windows of the building opposite them.

"A hospital!" shouted Pel, suddenly.

Abruptly, Charley got to his feet and slid his weapon back into its holster. Across the street, Chu also was rising. Charley looked at the other Dorsai.

"Yes," said Charley, "where is the nearest hospital?"

But Pel was already behind the controls of the police car. The rest of us had to move or be left behind.

He swung the car toward Blauvain's Medical Receiving, West, only three minutes away.

He drove the streets like a madman, switching on the warning lights and siren as he went. Screaming, the vehicle careened through traffic and signals alike, to jerk to a stop behind the ambulance entrance at Medical West. Pel jumped from the car.

"I'll get a life support system—a medician—" he said, and ran inside.

I got out; and then Charley and Chu got out, more slowly. The two Dorsais were on opposite sides of the car.

"Find a room," Charley said. Chu nodded and went after Pel through the ambulance entrance.

Charley turned to the car. Gently, he picked up Kensie in his arms, the way you pick up a sleeping child, gently, holding Kensie to his chest so that Kensie's head fell in to rest on Charley's left shoulder. Carrying his Reid Commander, Charley turned and went into the medical establishment. I followed.

Inside, there was a long corridor with hospital personnel milling about. Chu stood by a doorway a few meters down the hall to the left, half a head taller than the people between us. With Kensie in his arms, Charley went toward the other Commandant.

Chu stood aside as Charley came up. The door swung back automatically, and Charley led the way into a room with surgical equipment in sterile cases along both its sides, and an operating table in its center.

Charley laid Kensie softly on the table, which was almost too short for his tall body. He put the long legs together, picked up the arms and laid their hands on the upper thighs. There was a line of small, red stains across the front of his jacket, high up, but no other marks. Kensie's face, with its eyes closed, looked blindly to the white ceiling overhead.

"All right," said Charley. He led the way back out into the hall. Chu came last and turned to click the lock on the door into place, drawing his handgun.

"What's this?" somebody shouted at my elbow, pushing toward Chu. "That's an emergency room. You can't do that-"

Chu was using his handgun on low aperture to slag the lock of the door. A crude but effective way to make sure that the room would not be opened by anyone with anything short of an industrial, heavy-duty torch. The man who was talking was middle-aged, with a grey mustache and the short green jacket of a senior surgeon. I intercepted him and held him back from Chu.

"Yes, he can," I said, as he turned to stare furiously in my direction. "Do you recognize me? I'm Tomas Velt, the Superintendent of Police."

He hesitated, and then calmed slightly—but only slightly.

"I still say—" he began.

"By the authority of my office," I said, "I do now deputize you as a temporary Police Assistant. —That puts you under my orders. You'll see that no one in this hospital tries to open that door or get into that room until Police authorization is given. I make you responsible. Do you understand?"

He blinked at me. But before he could say anything, there was a new outburst of sound and action; and Pel broke into our group, literally dragging along another man in a senior surgeon's jacket.

"Here!" Pel was shouting. "Right in here. Bring the life support—"

He broke off, catching sight of Chu.

"What?" he said. "What's going on? Is Kensie in there? We don't want the door sealed—"

"Pel," I said. I put my hand on his shoulder. "Pel!"

He finally felt and heard me. He turned a furious face in my direction.

"Pel," I said quietly, but slowly and clearly to him. "He's dead. Kensie. Kensie is dead."

Pel stared at me.

"No," he said irritably, trying to pull away from me. I held him. "
No
!"

"Dead," I said, looking him squarely in the eyes. "Dead, Pel."

His eyes stared back at me, then seemed to loose their focus and stare off at something else. After a little they focused back, on mine again and I let go of him.

"Dead?" he repeated. It was hardly more than a whisper.

He walked over and leaned against one of the white-painted corridor walls. A nurse moved toward him and I signalled her to stop.

"Just leave him alone for a moment," I said. I

turned back to the two Dorsai officers who were now-testing the door to see if it was truly sealed.

"If you'll come to Police Headquarters," I said, "we can get the hunt going for whoever did it."

Charley looked at me briefly. There was no more friendly humor in his face now; but neither did it show any kind of shock, or fury. The expression it showed was only a businesslike one.

"No," he said briefly. "We have to report."

He went out, followed by Chu, moving so rapidly that I had to run to keep up with their long strides.

Outside the door, they climbed back into the police car, Charley taking the controls. I scrambled in behind them and felt someone behind me. It was Pel.

"Pel," I said. "You'd better stay-"

"No. Too late," he said.

And it was too late. Charley already had the police car in motion. He drove no less swiftly than Pel had driven, but without madness. For all that, though, I made most of the trip with my fingers tight on the edge of my seat; for with the faster speed of Dorsai reflexes he went through available spaces and openings in traffic where I would have sworn we could not get through.

We pulled up before the office building attached to the Exotic Embassy as space for Expeditionary Base Headquarters. Charley led the way in past a guard, whose routine challenge broke off in mid-sentence as he recognized the two of them.

"We have to talk to the Base Commander," Charley said to him. "Where's Commander Graeme?"

"With the Blauvain Mayor, and the Outbond." The guard, who was no Dorsai, stammered a little.

Charley turned on his heel. "Wait—sir, I mean the Outbond's with
him
, here in the Commander's office."

Charley turned again.

"We'll go on in. Call ahead," Charley said.

He led the way, without waiting to watch the guard obey, down a corridor and up an escalator ramp to an outer office where a young Force-Leader stood up behind his desk at the sight of us.

"Sir—" The Force-Leader said to Charley, "the Outbond and the Mayor will only be with the Commander another few minutes—"

Charley brushed past him, and the Force-leader spun around to punch at his desk phone. Heels clicking on the polished stone floor, Charley led us toward a further door and opened it, stepping into the office beyond. We followed him there—into a large, square room with windows overlooking the city and our own broad-shouldered Mayor, Moro Spence, standing there with a white-haired, calm-faced, hazel-eyed man in a blue robe both facing a desk at which sat the mirror image of Kensie that was his twin brother, Ian Graeme.

Ian spoke to his desk as we came in.

"It's all right," he said. He punched a button and looked up at Charley, who went forward with Chu beside him, to the very edge of the desk, and then both saluted.

"What is it?" asked Ian.

"Kensie," said Charley. His voice became formal. "Field Commander Kensie Graeme has just been killed, sir, as
we
were on our way into the city."

For perhaps a second—no longer—Ian sat without speaking. But his face—so like Kensie's and yet so different—did not change expression.

"How?" he asked, then.

"By assassins we couldn't see," Charley answered. "Civilians
we
think They got away."

Moro Spence swore.

"The Blue Front!" he said. "Ian… Ian, listen…"

No one paid any attention to him. Charley was briefly recounting what had happened from the time the message about the invitation had reached the encampment—

"But there wasn't any celebration like that planned!" protested Moro Spence, to the deaf ears around him. Ian sat quietly, his harsh, powerful face half in shadow from the sunlight coming in the high window behind him, listening as he might have listened to a thousand other reports. There
was
still no change visible in him; except perhaps that he, who had always been remote from everyone else, seemed even more remote now. His heavy forearms lay on the desktop, and the massive hands that were trained to be deadly weapons in their
own
right lay open and still on the papers beneath them. Almost, he seemed to be more legendary character than ordinary man; and that impression was not mine alone, because behind me I heard Pel hiss on a breath of sick fury indrawn between his teeth; and I remembered
how
he had talked of Ian being only ice and water, Kensie only blood.

The white-haired man in the blue robe, who was the Exotic, Padma, Outbond to St. Marie for the period of the Expedition, was also watching Ian steadily. When Charley was through with his account, Padma spoke.

"Ian," he said; and his calm, light baritone seemed to linger and reecho strangely on the ear, "I think this is something best handled by the local authorities."

Ian glanced at him.

"No," he answered. He looked at Charley. "Who's Duty Officer?"

"NgTsok," said Charley.

Ian punched the phone button on his desk

"Get me Colonel Waru Ng'kok, Encampment HQ," he said to the desk

" 'No?' " echoed Moro. "I don't understand Commander. We can handle it. It's the Blue Front, you see.

They're an outlawed political—"

I came up behind him and put my hand on his shoulder. He broke
off
, turning around.

"Oh, Tom!" he said, on a note of relief "I didn't see you before. I'm glad you're here—"

I put my finger to my lips. He was politician enough to recognize that there are times to shut up. He shut up now, and we both looked back at Ian.

"… Waru? This is Base Commander Ian Graeme," Ian was saying to his phone. "Activate our four best Hunter Teams; and take three Forces from your on-duty troops to surround Blauvain. Seal all entrances to the city. No one allowed in or out without our authority. Tell the involved troops briefing on these actions will be forthcoming."

As professional, free-lance soldiers, under the pattern of the Dorsai contract—which the Exotic employers honored for all their military employees—the mercenaries were entitled to know the aim and purpose of any general orders for military action they were given. By a ninety-six per cent vote among the enlisted men concerned, they could refuse to obey the order. In fact, by a hundred per cent vote, they could force their officers to use them in an action they themselves demanded. But a hundred per cent vote was almost unheard of. The phone grid in lan's desk top said something I could not catch.

"No," replied Ian, "that's all."

He clicked off the phone and reached down to open a drawer in his desk He took out a gunbelt—a working, earth-colored gunbelt unlike the dress one Kensie had put on earlier—with sidearm already in its holster; and, standing up, began to strap it on. On his feet, he dominated the room, towering over us all.

"Tom," he said, looking at me, "put your police to work, finding out what they can. Tell them all to be prepared to obey orders by any one of our soldiers, no matter what his rank."

"I don't know if I've got the authority to tell them that," I said.

"I've just given you the authority," he answered calmly. "As of this moment, Blauvain is under martial law."

Moro cleared his throat; but I jerked a hand at him to keep him quiet. There was no one in this room with the power to deal with lan's authority now, except the gentle-faced man in the blue robe. I looked appealingly at Padma, and he turned from me to Ian.

"Naturally, Ian, measures will have to be taken, for the satisfaction of the soldiers who knew Kensie,"

Padma said softly, "but perhaps finding the guilty men would be better done by the civilian police without military assistance?"

"I'm afraid we can't leave it to them," said Ian briefly. He turned to the other two Dorsai officers.. "Chu, take command of the Forces I've just ordered to cordon the city. Charley, you'll take over as Acting Field Commander. Have all the officers and men in the encampment held there, and gather back any who are off post. You can use the office next to this one. We'll brief the troops in the encampment, this afternoon. Chu can brief his forces as he posts them around the city."