Rules of Conflict (49 page)

“What?” Neumann turned to her, his eyes widening in gratifying
horror as he watched her cut patterns in the air. “That was a joke, Kilian.”

“Strange. I didn’t think it funny.”

“We have to get out of here!”

“Why do you care?” Jani contemplated the blade’s wispy Sìah
tracework. “You’re dead.”

“I’m not armed, Kilian.” Neumann pulled his right arm out of its
sleeve and waved it at her. “I mean, I’m really not.”

“Haven’t you figured out that among all my other sterling
qualities, I’m also a dirty fighter when need be?” Jani slashed the ax through
the rain—the very molecules screamed in agony.

“Kilian!” Neumann backed too quickly, and slipped on the carpet of
water. “We can work this out!” He fell backward with a loud splash, then
scuttled cripple-crablike behind the shelter of a table.

“No. No.” Jani’s voice reverbed inside her head. “I’ve had just
about all I’m going to take from you.”

Neumann shot upright from behind the table like a popup toy. “I’m
ordering you to desist!” He tried to skirt to one side as Jani closed in from
the other. His detached leg shot out from beneath, sending him sprawling across
the tabletop. For a perfect moment, he lay on his stomach, arm spread out to
the side, neck exposed.

Jani sidestepped into position. Swung the ax up. “
Declaration
is made
,” she said as she brought it down.

Neumann’s head bounced off the table and across the alcove floor
like a deflated soccer ball across a soggy field, leaving a red stream in its
wake, finally rolling to rest against the bottom hatch of the beverage cooler.
Jani limped over to it, nudging it with her foot until she could look into the
staring eyes.

“You’re gone. You’re dead. You lose. I got them all out.” She
hesitated. “Except for Yolan.” But then, she hadn’t seen Yolan’s body, so maybe
she got out, too. She grinned in long-delayed satisfaction. “They’re out of
your reach forever. Yours and Acton’s and Evan’s.” She let the ax slip from her
grasp and fall to the floor. From down the hall, voices, confused and angered,
deadened by foam, resonated flatly. They didn’t sound like Laumrau, from what
she could discern amid the slosh and shower of falling water.
Sounds like
English.
How silly. She turned slowly and walked to a chair to sit, and
wait.

“The patients are gone. Borgie and crew are gone. You stay behind.
Think that’s an even trade, Kilian?”

Jani wheeled. Her tietops shot out from beneath her, sending her
careening into the wall. She cracked the back of her head against uncoated
brick. Lights spangled before her eyes as she sagged to the floor.

Neumann’s head rolled away from the wall. It spun to a stop in the
middle of the floor and righted itself with a couple of wobbly loops.

He blinked the water out of his eyes. “You can’t murder the
already-murdered, Kilian.” A gurgle bubbled up from the throat he no longer
had. “I’m going to stay with you forever and ever and ever. Till the day you
die. Which from the looks of you just might be today.”

Jani slumped farther down the wall as augie leached away. Her legs
had numbed. The room had greyed. Breathing seemed too much trouble.

“See you in hell, Kilian.” Neumann winked at her, and smiled.

She fell to one side. Gradually became aware. Of the water.
Soaking her hair. Running down the walls. Like tears. Puddling around her.
Immersing her. Drowning her. Like in her dream. Drowning.

Sinking. Deeper.

Deeper.

Deep—

Sam huddled in the passenger seat of an abandoned scoot
and watched the turmoil unfold around him.

The fireskims arrived first, great scarlet brutes that spat out
HazMat teams and equipment with startling efficiency. The teams entered the SIB
through the ram-blown doors, fighting against the relentless stream of bodies
in foam-covered night fatigues who struggled to get
out
through the same
narrow openings. Startling descriptives in several languages cut through the
still night, following the inevitable soggy collisions.

Sam hid in his seat as the members of a spent HazMat team
clustered beneath a nearby tree.

“Foam.” An older woman’s voice, exhausted and disbelieving. “All
four fuckin’ upper floors. And the basement. And the subs.”

“First floor’s the worst,” said a younger man. “Those jassacks
with the ram punched through a support wall into the relay station behind and
ruptured an air-filter array. Microbial sieve everywhere!” He cracked the tip
of a nicstick and passed it to the woman. “The conference-center auditorium
looks like the world’s largest strawberry sundae.”

“There were no fires,” another team member said with a yawn. “Who
the hell set off the foam?”

“Some nutty captain. Her augie went south—guy from Security said
she broke into desks and cabinets, found a UV stylus someone had rigged to
building frequency.”

“No one outside Facilities is allowed to have a stylus!” The older
woman groaned. “You can reset a whole building with one of those things.”

“Apparently, some people keep them around as personal
environmental adjusters.” The younger man activated a nicstick for himself and
turned to look at the SIB, now ablaze with lights and teeming with activity.
“When was the last execution we had around here?”

“Thirty, thirty-five years ago.”

“Well, there’s going to be one toot sweet when they find whoever
the hell that stylus belonged to.” He pulled off his hood and pushed a hand
through his matted hair. “Never saw a mess like this in all my life.”

Sam watched the group smoke in tired silence, then turned his
attention back to the still figure standing alone atop a low rise. John Shroud
hadn’t moved from his station since the ambulance arrived, a heartbeat behind
the fireskims. He’d made no attempt to approach the lone skimgurney that had
been pulled from the building, its burden obscured by attached monitors and
emergency techs. The sole movement he made had been a clenching of one fist
when a monitor alarm blared, causing the level of commotion around the
ambulance to escalate accordingly.

Val Parini, his shirt pulled from his trousers and his jacket long
since discarded, broke away from the anthill activity and trudged up the small
elevation.

“How can you just stand up here like a goddamned tree?” He planted
himself in Shroud’s path and folded his arms.

“Because I can’t do any good down there.” Shroud’s voice was
level, matter-of-fact. “My years as a trauma man are long behind me. All I’d do
is get in their way.”

Parini hung his head, then dropped his arms and plodded a circle
around the other man, finally coming to rest at his side. “A foam-encased mound
by the name of Pascal informed me that if Jani dies, Nema is going to pick us
off one by one like free range targets.”

“Let me worry about Nema,” Shroud replied quietly.

Parini shrugged. Coughed. Sniffed. “John, what the hell did we
do?”

“The best we could at the time.”

“Did we?” His breathing grew more and more shaky. Then he leaned
against Shroud and pressed his face against his chest.

Shroud placed an arm around his shoulders. He remained quiet, his
face like carved stone, and let Parini cry. Then he jostled him gently, the way
a father would his son. “Val? Val, pull yourself together.”

“Yes, John.” Parini pushed back. Ran a hand over his face. Coughed
again.

“Val?”

“Yes, John.”

“I’ve spoken with Pimentel. If it looks as though—” Shroud
stopped. Closed his eyes. Exhaled with a loud huff. “We stay with her until the
end, and
we
pronounce her. We owe her that much.”

“Yes, John.” Parini’s eyes squinched like a squawling babe’s. Then
he lifted his chin and swallowed hard, his face as masklike as his friend’s.

All during that time, dark-haired Hugh stood at the base of the
rise, watching. Parini beckoned to him as soon as he realized he was there, and
the younger man strode briskly up to them.

“She’s seizing. Your specialist thinks they should perform a
DeVries shunt. Her Hybrid Indicator Indices are skied—he’s worried about
excitotoxic brain damage.” He tugged at his sweat-soaked shirt. “They need to
get her to Cryo.”

“Those shunts have an astoundingly low success rate—he is aware of
that?” Shroud’s voice sounded dull, as if he knew the answer. “Is that the only
problem?”

Hugh hesitated, then shook his head. “Hepatic failure’s imminent.
I’m worried whether the adjunct has the capacity to clean her up. Pimentel says
they haven’t been able to harvest a viable transplant. Cal Montoya’s searching
all Earth facility banks for possibilities, but—” He had already backed halfway
down the hill. “I think we better go.”

“Hugh!” Parini trotted after the man, who didn’t slow or even give
any sign that he heard him.

Shroud remained in place. He watched the crowd disperse and
distribute themselves amongst other vehicles as the crew loaded Kilian’s
stretcher and closed up the ambulance. His eyes followed it as it fast-floated
away, sirens blaring, lights flashing.

Sam struggled out of the tiny scoot and ran to his side. “What
does that mean! What you said?”

Shroud glanced down at him, a cocked eyebrow the only sign of
surprise on his long, monkish face. “Mr. Duong, isn’t it?”

“What’s the matter with Captain Kilian!”

“It’s difficult to explain to a layman.”

Sam dug deep, and came up with his “oral defense committee” voice.
“Do. Your. Best.”

Shroud stared. “My specialist wants to insert devices into Jani’s
neck and brain that will bypass her circulatory system and perfuse the brain
with a solution that can both nourish it and prevent and repair damage from the
seizures she’s having.” He broke eye contact, and focused on the grass at his
feet. “But that’s not her only problem. Some foods she’s eaten and drugs she’s
taken in the past few weeks have poisoned her, and her liver is failing as a
result. The toxic metabolites that have damaged that organ could affect others,
as well. We don’t know whether an artificial liver can do the job, and we can’t
locate a tissue replacement.”

“She will die?”

Shroud stiffened. Then he picked his nails. The steady
click
click
cut the still night like cricket chirps.

“Why did you do it?”

“Is that any of your business?” Shroud glanced at Sam, and offered
a sad smile. The expression erased years, but as with Kilian’s tears, the hint
of exposed psyche rattled. “If you must know, I truly believed I was helping
her. I was . . . very fond of her, and I wanted her to live
forever.” He turned away. Took one unsteady step, then another. Finally, he
thumped his thigh with a cage-wire fist and quickened his stride, reaching the
last remaining skimmer just as it was about to depart.

Sam remained atop the little hill and watched the vehicle float
away. “No one lives forever, Dr. Shroud.” He walked down the hill toward the
SIB. The lawn in front of the building looked like a depot, the fireskims
having been joined by a small fleet of empty tankers that had been bought over
to “hold the foam.” Activity, while still bustling, had slowed from “what the
hell!” to “steady as she goes” as the discovery phase of the cleanup operation
gave way to the actual cleaning-up.

The HazMat crews had disabled the building alarms to allow for the
rapid deployment of hoses, suction pumps, and portable ventilators. Sam walked
up to the staging area with the sure step of someone who had every reason to be
there. He slipped a ventilator helmet over his head, freed a pair of boots and
a coverall from the pile of discarded safety equipment, and dressed. He had to
fold over the coverall sleeves twice, and the amount of material he had to stuff
inside the boots impeded his ability to walk. But even the best-fitting safety
gear made people look like they’d dropped a load in their pants, so Sam decided
he looked just fine.

Most of the cleanup centered around the first-floor conference
facility. Someone had already tacked up a banner over the doorway leading into
the space. Operation Soda Fountain had been crossed out in favor of Operation
Scoop, which had in turn been countered by the less poetic, but more apt,
Operation Suck. Rows of vacuum pumps already filled the huge rooms with their
characteristic spluttery sounds. Sam walked past chest-high dollops of bright
pink foam, and felt for one crazy moment like an explorer in a children’s
adventure story.

The stairwell leading into the basement proved gratifyingly empty.
He limped down, unable to avoid the sticky, whipped-cream mounds that swallowed
his boots to the knee. The hallway itself had avoided a major influx of
microbial sieve, although he could easily trace the pink-outlined trails of
those who had preceded him.

The tech bullpen . . . well, shambles seemed
appropriate. Sam pushed a mountain of white foam from atop his desk—it
flooped
to the floor and continued to advance across the lyno like pyroclastic flow. He
removed one coated glove, touched open his drawer, and removed the box of
shrimp tea Kilian had given him.

He unfastened the front of the coverall, stuffed the canister
inside, closed himself back up. If he stumbled into anyone now, he’d say that
he’d come down to recover his mess card, and gladly accept the three-day
suspension he’d draw for crossing the hazard line.

Sam slooshed into the hall. The foam damped out sound—the vacuum
noises that had filled his ears in the stairwell proved barely detectable here.
So quiet.
Like a hospital. He looked in the direction Kilian had
disappeared, then slipped through the hip-high layer of fluff.

On his way down the hall, an opened fire-alarm station caught his
attention. Someone had painted a large yellow X over the gaping hole, through
which assorted connections could be easily seen. He smiled, thinking of Kilian
popping the cover and inserting the stylus. He relished the thought of her
creating mayhem. He prayed she would remain alive to make more.