Starfishers Volume 3: Stars End (25 page)

He purchased a collection of small tools, then a large woman’s wig which he trimmed to a style favored by Angel City thugs. He placed a small bandage on one cheek and a pebble in his shoe.

He no longer looked or moved anything like any of the people the Marines were hunting.

Mobile patrols were everywhere, astounding the citizenry with their busy-ness, but he was not stopped or questioned. They were seeking a Starfisher.

They would get organized soon, he knew. It would be difficult to evade them then.

Whenever he was safely out of sight, he used Mouse’s hand comm to eavesdrop on their radio traffic.

They were confused. They had four people to find, but did not know which was doing what to whom. Their interest of the moment was to make sure no one sneaked out of the city. After the boltholes were sealed they would launch their systematic search.

He wondered if he ought not to let Beckhart stew. The confusion would give him an edge. But no. The Admiral would need time to approach his superiors.

He stole an Out of Order sign off a public comm booth and carried it several blocks to a functional booth. He hung it and began making like a repairman.

The gimmicking took longer than he expected. The comm was of local manufacture. He had to figure out the color-coding of the circuitry. Then it became a classroom exercise. He installed Mouse’s comm and closed the housing in minutes. He noted the terminal number and departed.

Finding groceries required imagination. Home cooking simply was not done. Rich and poor, Angel City’s people ate out or had prepared meals delivered. Most food was artificial and recycled anyway. Only a few Terran tropical plants were adaptable to The Broken Wing’s atmosphere and climate. No local was gourmet enough to have invested in the genetic engineering needed to adapt a wider range of food plants.

He ended up buying field rations from a swamp dredger’s supply house. The saleswoman said he didn’t look the type, but asked no questions. The underworld used the swamp for its own purposes. Curiosity could be harmful to a questioner’s health.

He had no local money left when he returned to the cellar. He had Seiner cash and Conmarks, both of which were negotiable, but did not want to draw attention by spending outside currency. Conmarks were never rare, but still . . . He searched his prisoners and confiscated their limited wealth. Most of that was Confederation’s interworld currency.

They submitted sullenly. No one was talking. He did not try starting a conversation. He gave them another taste of the stunner and returned to the streets.

He found a public comm and called the booth he had jiggered. The handcomm there broadcast what he had to say.

The Admiral was not pleased with him.

Finished, he patrolled around and rented two small apartments and an office, so he would have somewhere to run if the Marines closed in on his cellar. And, finally, he braved Central Park by night to steal an all-bands tactical transceiver/scanner from the inattentive MPs.

He used an old crate for a seat and the cellar wall for a backrest. He closed his eyes and listened as the tactrans scanned the bands. He heard a movement after a while. He opened one eye. Mouse was trying to sit up.

“Tommy, you can’t keep doing that. You’re going to hurt somebody.”

McClennon turned the scanner down. “Sorry, Mouse. But I don’t have a lot of choice.” He leaned toward the transceiver. It was staying busy. His call had stirred Beckhart up good.

How long would he have to stay lost?

Days passed. He lost track. One moment it seemed only a few had gone by, the next it seemed a lot. Every hour was an eon trudging wearily off into eternity.

He thought he was doing well. He had kept three willful, angry prisoners hidden and controlled for days, Beckhart had not caught a trace of him. He had driven his mental problem into a straight jacket . . . 

That jacket was not strong enough.

He was somewhere in Luna Command. A beautiful blonde, not more than seventeen, clung to his left arm. She whispered something into his ear. She called him Commander Perchevski. He was supposed to know her. He did not. He wanted to attack her.

Another woman took hold of his right arm. She insisted his name was Walter Clark. She wanted to take him away from the blonde morsel.

The females released him and assaulted one another. They fought over his name. He kept trying to tell them they were both wrong, that he was really Credence Pardee. Or was it Hamon Clausson? Wasn’t he Hamon Clausson that time on Shakedowns? He forgot the women while he tried to locate his ID badge. It had fallen off his tunic.

There it was, beneath the edge of the carpet. He yanked it out. A kid with a somber, serious face stared off the card. The kid said, “Gundaker Niven,” and grinned viciously.

He screamed.

There were men all around him. Some were a little shorter or a little taller, a little heavier or lighter, but each one had stolen his face. They pummeled one another mercilessly. Whenever one broke free and charged him, the others piled on from behind.

He jumped, closed his hands around the nearest throat. “I’ll kill them,” he gurgled. “I’ll kill them all. Then they’ll leave me alone.”

He fought till he had no strength left. Weary, he fell to the floor. Darkness descended.

He wakened in a dank cellar on The Broken Wings. Three people watched with the cold, hungry eyes of vultures perched over a dying thing.

He glanced at his watch. He had been out ten hours. What? They had not jumped him? They were still here? He staggered to his feet, took a step, fell as vertigo hit him.

He shook his head hard. The cobwebs broke up. They drifted away. He looked around again.

Mouse quietly proffered the stunner.

Their eyes met. McClennon took the weapon. Mouse did not say a word. He crossed his wrists and offered to be tied again.

Thomas said nothing either. Nothing needed saying. He retied his friend and sat down to wait.

The hours groaned on,

He had not expected it to take so long. How long could the Old Man hold out? Why was he being so stubborn? Giving in would not cost him much. Confederation did not control the starfish herds anyway.

He supposed Beckhart was trying to save a political coup that would help overshadow the Homeworld abomination.

McClennon had to move only once to remain ahead of the search. Then the Admiral ran out of stall time.

Von Drachau returned from Homeworld. McClennon caught the news on his scanner. He guessed that it would not be long till the news reached Stars’ End. That confrontation would dissolve. Gruber would rush to defend Three Sky.

That old traitor time had turned its coat again.

He was not surprised when his hand comm crackled and Beckhart came on. “Thomas, are you listening? This is Admiral Beckhart. Thomas, are you listening?”

“I’m here. Talk.” That was all he said, for fear they would triangulate his position.

“Thomas, you’ve got what you want. Personally guaranteed by the Chief of Staff Navy.” He paused for McClermon’s reply. Thomas did not speak. “Thomas, are you there?”

“I’m listening, I said.”

“You’ve got what you want. What’re you going to do about it?”

He had not thought beyond forcing their acquiescence. How could he get it nailed down, on paper, publicly, without them dragging him into some back room and running him through a psychological grist mill?

“I’ll call back.”

He glanced at his prisoners. He had learned that he could not serve two masters and remain loved by the bondsmen of either. Amy’s hatred tortured him mercilessly. And Mouse’s anger . . . But Mouse was helping, if only by not doing anything when he had the chance. He had allowed friendship to obscure duty, had let it make him give the benefit of the doubt.

McClennon would not have made it otherwise.

But Amy . . . . She refused to see what he was trying to do. She called him Judas.

Marya’s sullen displeasure he could bear. He had had plenty of practice. Her sultry Sangaree face became a mild, passive, resigned reflection of everything he saw in his wife.

With Mouse he had no long-run worry. Mouse would get over his anger. He would forgive the treason. They were friends.

So, he thought. Time to face the Old Man. His wolves will be at the door the second I tell him where . . . 

“Admiral? McClennon here.”

“Thomas, I don’t have much time. You’re getting what you want. Can we speed things up?”

“I want someone from the Judge Advocate’s there.”

“What? You’re not being arrested. You’re not even being charged. I went to bat for you, son. Just give me the word. Where the hell are you?”

“I want him to witness, not to represent me.”

“Christ. Thomas, you’ve got my word. That’s all I can give you. It would take a week to get one of those space lawyers here. Now, pretty please, will you get organized?”

Okay, okay. Maybe Beckhart was right. He was wasting time. And the man
was
giving his word . . . 

He told Beckhart where to pick him up.

Twenty: 3050 AD
The Main Sequence

Four Angel City police officers came to the door, to escort McClennon to his commanding officer. He was puzzled, but did not ask why they were doing Corps work. He untied Mouse, Marya, and Amy, and said, “Let’s go, gentlemen.”

He had butterflies the size of owls. They were mating on the wing.

The streets were barren. Angel City had become half a ghost town. “Where is everybody?” he asked. He had heard nothing on monitor that would explain this emptiness.

“Drafted,” one of the cops grumbled.

“What?”

“Almost everybody old enough was in the Reserves. It was a good way to pick up a few extra marks. They got called up.”

“This war thing must be getting grim.”

“Must be,” the policeman admitted. “They called up everybody in the Transverse. Navy, Marines, Planetary Defense, whatever. Not only that, they took all the equipment that wasn’t nailed down.”

The officers were walking their charges to Beckhart’s headquarters. McClennon saw very few vehicles. “What about the gang upstairs?” he asked, jerking a thumb skyward.

“The heavies? Still there. Let’s hope they hold those Sangaree. You and your buddy here, and your Admiral and his crew, are the only military people left here.”

“Guess we do have to take it serious,” Mouse said. “The Old Man plays games, but they’re not this expensive.”

McClennon could not help being startled and disturbed. This general mobilization was a distressing indicator. It suggested that Confederation meant to hurl everything but the proverbial sink into the first passage of arms.

His thoughts strayed to his homeworld. Had Old Earth been stripped of men and equipment too? If so, he had to be glad he was in the Outworlds.

That madhouse planet would descend into an age of barbarism if the policing divisions vanished. Confederation did not interfere much, but did keep the violence level depressed,

A blowup had occurred during the Ulantonid War, and to a lesser degree several other times, when the Confederate presence was weak. After settling with Ulant, Luna Command had had to reconquer Earth.

When the mailed fist vanished, the cults and movements beat swords from plowshares, eager to settle old scores.

“Mouse,” he said, “it’s a strange world I call home.”

Storm read him at a glance. “It won’t be as bad this time, Tommy. I’ve seen some of the standing Mobe plans. They’ll do some creative drafting. Something like the ancient press gangs. They’ll grab anybody loose and ship them out all over Confederation. They’ll scatter them so they don’t cause much trouble.”

“Sounds good. Break the whole mess up if they take enough of them.”

“It would tap a big manpower pool. Old Earth didn’t contribute a thing during the war with Ulant.”

Amy, Marya, and the policemen all watched curiously.

Even Mouse did not understand Old Earth.

Earth was the land of the timid tailor, the world cramped with a people from whom all adventure had been bred. The pioneer genes had departed long ago. The stay-at-homes were, in the opinion of the rest of humanity, the culls of the species. Even McClennon willingly admitted that his fellow Old Earthers were determined to live up to their derelict image.

The average Old Earther would faint at the suggestion of going into space. And yet he could be astonishingly vicious with his fellows . . . 

Savage decadence? That was the way McClennon saw his native culture.

“
Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos, is restored;

Light dies before thy uncreating word . . . 
” he muttered.

“What?” Mouse asked.

“From a poem. By Pope.”

Mouse grinned. “Welcome home, Tommy. You’re acting like my old friend again.”

McClennon grunted, grabbed his stomach.

His ulcer ripped at him with dragon’s claws, like something trying to tear its way out. He nearly doubled over with the pain.

“Tommy?”

“Ulcer.”

“We’ve got to get you to a doctor.”

“A little while yet, A little while. I can hold out.”

“What’re you going to be like afterward?”

“I’ve got to see it through.” Only after he had fulfilled his self-appointed mission would he dare concern himself with tuckpointing the mortar of body and soul.

The weeks of waiting had brought the ulcer back to life. The anticipation had been terrible. He had defied Beckhart before, but never in anything this important.

He was terrified. What would the man do? The Admiral was fair, but would not let fairness interfere with his carrying out his own orders.

McClennon tried to banish worrying by studying his surroundings. The few Angelinos in the street seemed subdued. Their auction excitement had been replaced by trepidation.

McClennon noted one odd, common piece of behavior. Every Angelino occasionally paused to glance upward. He mentioned it to Mouse.

“Maybe they’re worried about the raidfleet.”

He, too, glanced upward at times, but not in search of an alien doom. He told himself he was taking last fond looks at a sun. The Cothen Zeven, the prison for military officers, lay almost a thousand kilometers below the surface of Old Earth’s moon. Psychologically, it was as far removed from mainstream life as any medieval dungeon.