Solfleet: The Call of Duty (84 page)

Some of
those not in business attire were barely dressed at all, at least by his
standards. A few were so scantily clad, in fact, that they might even have been
bordering on public indecency.

The two young
females who’d boarded the tram last, both of whom looked to be in their late
teens at most in Terran years, were perfect examples. The first, a moderately
dark-skinned young woman with straightened shoulder-length brown hair—probably
of African or Caribbean descent, he surmised—was dressed in nothing but a
skimpy bright yellow bikini bottom with little gold fasteners on both hips and
a beige fishnet tee shirt that she needn’t have bothered wearing at all,
considering how her chocolate brown nipples peaked out through the meager
fabric. The other, a fair-skinned Asian with long, lustrous black hair was
wearing an extremely short denim skirt—gods only knew if she had any underwear
on underneath it—and a short-sleeved, half-length, sheer light blue blouse with
only a single button between her breasts to hold it closed and quite obviously
nothing underneath.

How could
they possibly get away with dressing in that manner in public, Min’para
wondered as his averted his eyes? What an immoral and barbaric culture these
Terrans had created for themselves.

Yes. There
was a lot of bare skin onboard, some of it glistening with perspiration. But
the same air that had made everyone else so uncomfortably warm had actually
given him a chill. He couldn’t wait to get to Manhattan and go back inside a
building. He only wished he knew right where to go.

Granted, he
was used to the much warmer and more humid climate of Corietta Province. After
all, except for those two years he’d spent on Earth as a student, he’d lived
there his entire life. But generally speaking, there wasn’t really that much
difference between the two worlds as a whole, and he could remember many days
at Harvard, Yale, and Drexel, when he’d perspired right along with his much
younger Terran classmates.

But never in
December.

What in the
names of the gods was wrong with him? Where had his mental discipline gone? His
thoughts were jumping from one subject to the next and back again like those of
an undisciplined child.

Still, he knew
he shouldn’t be feeling so cold on a day that was so uncomfortably warm for
everyone else, Coriettan or not. Was he even more nervous about this real life
drama he’d gotten himself involved in than he’d realized? Or was old age
finally catching up to him?

Once the
tram finally pulled out from the station, he tried to relax again. But before
long he started feeling jittery instead, as though someone were staring right
through the back of his head. As difficult as it was, he resisted the urge to
turn around and look so as not to give away the fact that he’d felt the eyes
upon him. Instead, he closed his eyes and reached out with his mind once more,
stretching his telepathic abilities to their limits and beyond. But it was no
good. No matter how hard he concentrated, what he did manage to pick up
amounted to nothing more than unintelligible background noise. He couldn’t zero
in on any one person’s thoughts, and he was just too weary to keep up the
effort for very long.

He kept
track of the tram’s progress on the small video screen that protruded from the
ceiling. Nearly half of all the passengers in his car got off at the first
stop, a large interchange terminal in the center of downtown Queens. The tram
sat and waited with its doors open for an additional minute after the last
person exited, but no one else stepped aboard. At the end of that minute an
off-key chime sounded four times. Then the doors closed and the tram pulled
away from the terminal.

The two
scantily clad teenage girls, both of whom had demonstrated a severe case of the
whispers and giggles along the way, got off halfway across the New Queensboro
Bridge at the Roosevelt Island stop. They exited through the right side doors—the
left doors hadn’t opened this time—and crossed over to the platform on the left,
then walked past Min’para’s window in the direction the tram had come from
toward the crowded lift that would carry them down to the island. Down to the ‘Roosevelt
Island Clothing-Optional Family Water Park,’ he recalled from his days living
in nearby Connecticut. A clothing-optional
family
water park! He shook
his head as he watched the giggling girls squeeze onto the lift.

Yes, indeed.
A truly immoral and barbaric culture.

The tram
suddenly exploded with screams and shouts of terror. Min’para faced front just
in time to witness a man with a handgun being tackled to the floor by another
man. The weapon discharged with an ear-splitting
CRACK
and a wisp of
blue smoke that smelled of gunpowder, but harmlessly into the ceiling. No one
was hurt, thank the gods.

The hero
rolled the shooter onto his stomach with ease—at least he made it look easy—then
wrenched his arms back and pinned his hands behind his back by kneeling on
them. Neither of them uttered a word as the man on top slapped a set of metal restraints
on the other’s wrists, hauled him to his feet, and then half carried him off the
tram as the passengers applauded.

Min’para’s pulse
was racing as though he’d just run an entire city block at top speed. Had he
been the man’s target? Had the conspirators discovered his trickery and sent
someone after him? Did they intend to kill him?

He’d learned
early during his first visit to Earth that Terran society could be explosively violent
at times. Even the very communities in which he’d lived hadn’t been immune to
that violence. But never had he personally been so close to it before. Even
under Veshtonn rule back home he’d always been sheltered and protected.

He drew a
deep breath and started going through a quick calming ritual as the tram finally
started moving again. But one thought stood firm in his mind. On Earth,
especially in the United States, an assassination could easily be passed off as
a random crime.

When the
tram pulled into his Manhattan stop a few minutes later, Min’para made sure he
was the first one to the door. Once it came to rest at the passenger platform
and the door opened, he made his way quickly to the escalator and down to the
busy street below. Then he stepped aside, just as he’d done at J.F.K., and
waited for the other passengers who’d gotten off behind him to walk by and go on
about their business. That way he could be sure that none of them were following
him. He might still have been acting paranoid, he readily admitted to himself, but
as the Terrans liked to say, it was better to be safe than to be sorry.

Now he
needed to ask someone for directions.

As though on
cue, a rather scruffy looking child with fairly long and wind-blown sandy-blonde
hair stepped out of a store to the professor’s left and slammed the door closed
behind him. Probably in his very early teens, or perhaps
her
very early
teens—Min’para couldn’t decide whether the youth was a boy or a girl—he or she
was dressed in faded and tattered denim jeans and a multicolor striped tee
shirt that looked at least two sizes too large for him/her. Thus Min’para’s
quandary.

“Excuse me,
young...one,” he said, noticing the odd looking pair of hard-shelled boots the
child was wearing. The child stopped and looked up at him. His/her lips were
stained bright red, no doubt from something he/she had just had to eat or
drink. “Can you tell me how to get to the Federation Building from here?”

“The
Federation Building?” the child asked, squinting against the sun. The voice was
that of a boy. At least, it sounded more like a boy’s than a girl’s. A boy
then, Min’para decided.

“Yes, that’s
right. The Federation Building.”

“I’m really sorry,
sir. I’m afraid I don’t know,” the boy answered politely. But then his entire demeanor
suddenly changed and he shouted in a loud and ear-piercing voice, “Try running
for political office, asshole!” He laughed as obnoxiously as he possibly could have,
then kicked his heels together, floated a few inches up off the sidewalk, and
raced away, apparently skating atop a cushion of air.

Min’para
sighed and shook his head. “I should have expected that from the youth of this
city,” he reminded himself as he watched the young...boy...disappear around the
corner. “Why did I even bother to ask? I’ll do better trying to find it myself.”
He looked to his left and then to his right, up the street and down the street,
then picked a direction at random and started walking. A few minutes later he
crossed paths with a local police officer who sent him off in the right
direction. He hoped.

About half an
hour after that his cautious faith in the officers of the New York City Police
Department proved warranted when he found himself closing to within two blocks
of his destination—the site of the original United Nations Headquarters, now
New York City’s Vincent Giovanni Federation Building. But as he drew closer to
it, that uneasy feeling that someone was watching him suddenly struck him
again. But who, and from where? This was New York City, after all. There were a
lot of people around.

He kept
walking but looked around as discreetly as he could, being careful to maintain his
same casual pace. People walked in every direction all around him, but no one was
following very closely behind him that he could tell. In fact, the closest
person to him was actually...

The woman
who’d been walking ahead of him for the last three blocks—the woman on whom he’d
slowly but steadily been gaining ground until he could almost reach out and
touch her—suddenly whirled around and pounced on him and jabbed a syringe into
his chest, but he managed to grab her wrist and bend her arm back at the elbow,
withdrawing the needle before she could depress the plunger and inject the contents.
He twisted her wrist until she dropped it and then forced her arm up behind her
head as he stepped forward, between her legs, and threw his body into hers,
pinning her against the front fender of a parked car. Then, as she continued to
struggle, he got his first good look at her face and recognized her as the
young woman he’d seen welcoming her ‘daddy’ home at the aerospaceport.
Gods!
She hadn’t changed her clothes or tried to alter her appearance in any way!
Why hadn’t he recognized her earlier?

She was
obviously much younger than he was, and given his advanced age chances were she
was physically stronger as well. But the advantages of weight and leverage were
clearly his, so now that he’d pinned her she had no chance of escape. So he
took a moment while she continued to struggle and glanced into her mind, and
saw exactly what he expected to see. She wasn’t alone! She had backup nearby, and
they had orders to stop him at any cost!

Regret
flashed briefly through her mind as she realized she’d blown her chance to take
him down quickly. And then a word... No. Not a word, but rather an idea took
form. An instant passed and a firm decision followed.

She grabbed hold
of the front of her own blouse with her free hand and tore it open, then
screamed at the top of her lungs, “
HEEEEELP! RAAAAAPE!
”

“Hey you!”
someone hollered in response to her cries, much too quickly for it to have been
a mere coincidence. “Stop! Let her go!”

Min’para
looked up. Two men in business suits—the same two men, the
only
two men he’d
seen since leaving J.F.K. who’d actually been wearing their coats—were running
toward him from down the other side of the street.

“Leave her
alone!” one of them yelled. No surprise, it was her ‘daddy.’

That second
of distraction almost proved to be all the reprieve the young woman needed. She
raised a leg and planted her foot firmly against Min’para’s chest, but before
she could even try to push him away he let go of her wrist and knocked her foot
aside with his elbow, then swung his arm down and around her leg and lifted,
dropping her the rest of the way onto the hood of the car.

“Let her go!”
one of the men shouted again.

Min’para
grabbed up her other leg, pushed her away, and slid her off the car’s front
end, dropping her shoulders-first to the pavement. Then he grabbed the syringe and
took off running toward the Federation Building’s front doors.

“Stop!
Police!”

He reached
the building in less than half a minute and pushed his way through both sets of
smoked-transluminum double doors faster than they could open for him on their
own, then stopped suddenly near the center of the lobby when he spotted a pair
of uniformed security officers approaching him with their hands on their
sidearms.

“Hold it
right there, sir!” one of the guards yelled as he drew his sidearm and aimed it
at him. The second guard drew his and took aim as well, and two United States Marines
in dress blues—a sergeant and a corporal if he wasn’t mistaken—stood by not far
behind, no doubt ready to assist should he give them a reason.

“What’s that
in your hand?” the first guard demanded. Still gasping for air, Min’para held
the syringe out for him to see. “Drop it on the floor, now!”

Min’para
complied.

“Who are
you,” the second guard asked, “and where the hell do you think you’re goin’ in
such a hurry?”

Min’para
bent forward and rested his hands on his knees, huffing and puffing, still
barely able to breathe. “My...My name is...” he began between labored breaths, “...is
not important. I’ve got... I’ve got to see...Chairman MacLeod of...of the Earth
Se...the Earth Security Council.”

“You got an
appointment with him?” the first guard asked.

“No, sir,” Min’para
answered, shaking his head. “No I don’t. But it’s...vitally important that...that
I see him.”

“I’m sure it
is, sir, at least for you. But I can’t let you go up there unexpected. If you
ain’t made no appointment, you’re gonna have to leave.”