Tony Daniel (55 page)

“Just remember, it has to end up with her being told what’s what.”

“I promise it will, John.”

“Well then,” said Quench. “I wish I had been there for that kiss, after all. She really hooked you, old son.” He signaled Hilly, who was at the other end of the bar. “Get this man another Rusty Nail,” he said. “And keep ’em coming until he has enough to close up his own coffin.”

In ones, twos, and threes, Jill’s animals began to arrive in the transmitter pods. Most of them were bedraggled, but they all perked up when they saw Jill. Soon the hut that the three travelers shared was teeming with rodents and the hunters of rodents—all living in an uneasy peace out of regard for Jill. Despite the extermination grist in the living areas, there were, of course, rats and other animals in the Met.

Leo had never liked them much even though he knew that there must be a place for them in the ecology. He had always had a secret fear of ending up in a rat warren in the Integument and being eaten alive, but whenever he saw them there, they had not been in packs. They lived, he knew, nearer to the occupied areas, so that they could quickly get to garbage before it was eliminated.

Within two weeks, Game had conferred with Jill, and the treatments had began. The idea was to grow the animals into humans. It sounded entirely bizarre to Leo. He’d heard of free converts saving up, purchasing or renting clone bodies—that is, grist-made bodies with a grist matrix instead of a brain. But he’d never even imagined anything like this. The coding that gave the rats and ferrets intelligence at all was of the sort written by programmers, and not enthalpically evolved, as were the free converts. So there was a double process going on with the animals. The computer coding inside them was put through evolutionary processes at the same time as the structure they were inhabiting—a kind of brain-grist continuum that was present only in the Carbuncle, as far as anyone had ever discovered—was enlarged. And the animal bodies began the process of slowly transforming themselves into humans.

The pace was set as quick as Game could make it, but it was going to take at least three months before real effects would be seen. And the animals were going to feel a good deal of pain as the changes came over them. Nevertheless, all of them volunteered to undergo it. It gave them a better chance at survival, and survival was what these scrap codes were all about.

For a while, Leo could see no place for himself in any of these preparations. Leo was seriously tempted to get the hell out of here and take Aubry with him. But where would he go? This was still the safest place for a dissenter and a little girl who was wanted by the law.

And there was Jill.

There had been a couple of steady girlfriends over the years, but once they understood that Leo’s traveling itch would not be going away, that he would not be settling down to a respectable occupation and that he was always going to be more or less poor, they had drifted away. This always surprised him, because he’d thought he was picking out women who would understand these facts. He never made any bones about it, but told them up front. And Becky had been a poet, even, even though, after their breakup, Leo had to admit to himself that he’d never much cared for her verse.

What Leo really wanted was to keep traveling the Met until the day he died, seeing cool stuff and showing people who he thought might like to share the experience with him. But that was all over now. Leo was going to face what had to be faced. Hell, that was what had drawn him to the Integument in the first place. The possibility of surprise in a world that would literally wipe your nose for you if you let it.

Leo was grousing along these lines one day when Otis poked his head into Leo’s hut, and said, calmly, “Uh, Leo, I think we have a problem, man.”

“What?”

“A Department of Immunity ship is hanging nearby in space, broadcasting to us on an electromagnetic band.”

“Yikes!”

“Yeah, well, there’s something else . . .”

“What is it, Otis?”

“They are specifically demanding
your
surrender.”

“Mine?”

“They are inquiring after one Leo Y. Sherman,” said Otis. “Unless your middle name is—”

“It’s Yorrick,” Leo said, a sinking feeling lodging in his stomach.

“Taylor’s got them on a radio in the common hut.” Otis smiled a forced smile. “Taylor would have a radio.”

“Let’s go hear it,” Leo said. “Maybe it’s
Theo
Sherman they want. He’s dead.” Leo immediately wished he hadn’t said that, though of course nobody here knew about his brother except Aubry, and she was off at target practice with Jill.

It was a repeating message. There was no doubt—they were asking for Leo.

“Leo Y. Sherman, author of ‘The Vas After Sunset,’ and other licentious tracts, is wanted for questioning by the Department of Immunity. Prepare for a DI investigative team arriving at Port B on Oregon Bolsa of the Nirvana Mycelium at system time 19:00. If Leo Y. Sherman is known to you, you will provide him for immediate questioning. This is an official Department of Immunity Edict. Disregarding it or its contents or aiding or abetting anyone attempting to disregard this Edict is punishable by up to five e-years rehabilitative therapy or induction into DI Enforcement Division uniformed service under Title Fifty-four Protocols. Leo Y. Sherman, author . . .”

Taylor turned down the volume and looked up from his radio set with a serious face, but Leo could tell he was pleased. He probably never got a chance to show off his ancient equipment which, from the look of it, he kept in top-notch working order.

“Notice anything strange?” Otis said.

“Yeah,” Leo said. “They didn’t just come in here and nab me.”

“Exactly,” Otis said. “What do you suppose it means?”

“What time is it?” Leo asked.

“We’ve got an hour to get you hidden or away.”

Jill came through the door. “What’s going on?” she said. “I suddenly got a bad feeling, so I came back here.”

Franklin turned up his radio and the message repeated itself.

“What is an investigation team?” Jill asked.

“Two sweepers and an aspect,” Taylor immediately answered, apparently up on his DI lore.

“Well then,” said Jill, “that shouldn’t be much of a problem. If someone can handle the aspect, I can take out one sweeper and Aubry can take out the other.”

“Aubry?”

“She needs the practice.”

“Um,” said Taylor, “we’re talking about Department of Immunity Antipersonnel Sweepers here, right?”

“Are they the kind designed for riot work?” said Jill.

Taylor looked at her. “Usually not, on an investigation team,” he said.

“Then it should be even easier,” Jill replied. “I think you should let them dock.”

“What do you think, Leo?” Otis asked. “It’s your ass that’s on the line, too.”

Leo ran his hand through his hair. Almost like I’m preparing for a goddamn holiday visitor of something, he then thought ruefully. “If they think ‘The Vas After Sunset’ is prurient, they ought to read my article on Muslim whorehouses in New Tangiers Bolsa,” he said. “But there’s something odd about this. Let’s do it, but let’s be careful. I want to be there”—he looked at Jill, who frowned, but nodded yes—“in case I can do something to defuse the situation.”

“Or you might get yourself killed,” Otis said.

Leo smoothed his hair down again, as if by reflex. “What did you say back in that meeting in the clearing? ‘Good death to us all?’ Let us go see what’s up.”

They met the DI crack secret-police team with an official delegation of two women under twenty, fifty-two rats, and five ferrets.

It was not much of a fight.

From Leo’s perspective, behind a tree, everything seemed to be over in a matter of seconds. Aubry had been tense, but expectant, anxious to try out the techniques Jill had been teaching her to fight the sweepers. She was armed with two pistols—a projectile semiautomatic and a beam weapon—and a twelve-foot-long pike that Leo knew was charged up with decoding grist and high-voltage electricity of a sufficient amperage to fry the guts of a whale on old Earth.

Thank God those Tromperstompers have rubber soles, Leo thought, looking at Aubry’s incongruous kid’s boots. And then he thought: Mr. Graytor, look what I’ve done to your daughter. That this was a far better way for Aubry to turn out than being dead did not make Leo feel any better. She ought to be in school, wondering what the big deal is with boys, and learning whatever it was smart kids like her studied at eleven. Trigonometry and Camus or something.

The Department of Immunity team debarked, and were headed down the path that led to the huts, when Aubry and Jill simply ambushed it. The two sweepers responded precisely on cue by extending their knockout gas wands, and had gotten it right up the nozzle. Meanwhile, the rats and ferrets swarmed the human, subduing him only. They wanted this one alive.

After the smoke had cleared, Leo came out from hiding to find Jill and Aubry standing over the man—it was a man—with pistols pointed at his head and chest. Even though a rat was menacingly on his shirt collar, he lay prone on the ground and made no move. About a dozen Friends joined Leo in a circle about this tableau.

“Keep your hands in view at all times,” Jill said. “I wouldn’t like to have to kill you, but I will.”

“I believe you,” the man mumbled. He didn’t seem anxious to excite the rat by moving his Adam’s apple too much.

Jill made a funny whistle through her teeth, and the animals that had swarmed the man left him and faded back into the underbrush. But Leo could still hear them there, rustling around. It was the first time the rustling of rats had seemed like a comforting sound to him.

“Stand up,” said Jill. The man promptly did so. He was a medium-built man, at least six inches taller than Leo. He had on gray pants, a white shirt, and a gray traveling coat. He could have been anybody. He was Caucasian, with pale skin. A clean-shaven face, a bit angular. Hair in a current style.

This is the most nondescript man I have ever encountered, Leo thought. He caught the man’s gaze.

“I am Leo Sherman,” he said. “What is it you want with me?”

The man motioned with his head to one of the dead sweeper units. “That was unnecessary,” he said. “I was prepared to disable them.” He looked at Jill and Aubry. “But effective.”

“Please answer my question,” Leo said.

“I would like to speak with you in private,” the man said.

“These are my friends.”

“Yes. That is apparent. Nevertheless, you may either kill me or speak with me in private.”

Leo considered. He pointed to Jill. “She will be present,” he said. “And her,” he continued, pointing to Aubry.

“Of course,” said the man.

“Let’s go to my hut, then.”

They all tromped back through the forest, Aubry and Jill keeping the man covered at every step of the way. They sat cross-legged on mats in the hut, a low table in between them. The man kept his hands on top of it. The man sat down a little creakily in the cross-legged position, but didn’t seem to be in too much pain. There wasn’t much Leo could do about it in any case. The Friends were not big fans of chairs.

“I am a special assistant to Director Amés,” the man said. “My duties chiefly involve intelligence assets and covert operations, though I am not part of the Department of Immunity, but operate in my own personal sphere.”

He took out a pack of cigarettes, almost getting himself shot in the process.

“Do you mind if I smoke? It has been long, and I used to like them so much.”

“Jill will light it for you.”

Jill took the pack, checked it out, then flicked a cigarette, pointing it away from everyone. It was a regular cigarette, and the flicking motion lit it.

“Better not let some of the Friends see you doing that,” Leo said. “They have ancient smoking taboos.”

“That will not matter soon,” the man said.

“What is your name?”

“That does not matter, either. You may call me C. People frequently do.” The man took a long, long drag on his cigarette, let out the smoke, and sighed. “I am here not at Amés’s behest, but for my own reason,” he said.

“And what are those?”

“I should have said ‘reasons,’ actually,” C replied. “May I take something out of my coat pocket?”

“If you do so slowly and in full view.”

C nodded. He reached into his coat and slowly removed what looked for all the world like an oil lamp from the ancient days of Arabia. It was about the size of his hand.

“This,” he said, setting the lamp on the table, “is me.”

“You?”

“This lamp, you will find, is quite heavy. It is made of an extraordinarily dense grist matrix. Inside it is a copy me, complete and entire, in all essential functions.”

“And you’re giving this to me?”

“I am entrusting it to you. I am asking you to serve as an envoy for its delivery.”

“To whom?”

C took another long drag, then breathed out. “To your father,” he said.

“What?” said Leo. “What did you say?”

“Your father—Colonel Roger Sherman of the Federal Army of the Planets Third Sky and Light Brigade.”

The man sucked in on his cigarette, finished it, ground it out between his fingers. Had he just smoked a cigarette in three long pulls? Apparently so, Leo thought.

“Tell me why you want me to do this,” said Leo.

“It is complicated,” said C. “May I have another cigarette?”

Jill lit him one.

“What it comes down to, though,” he continued, “is that because of me, Amés has a huge intelligence advantage over the outer-system forces, and over you.” He looked at Jill. “You are, by the way, the only partisan resistance whom I take seriously.”

“Well, thank you,” said Leo. “I guess. But that does not explain why you are doing this.”

“Let’s just say I want to even the playing field,” said C. Another amazingly long drag on his cigarette. A long breath out. “You see, Amés is holding a woman I love hostage, and using this leverage to demand my services. I am caught in a very effective trap in that regard, and the only possible avenue I see to get out of it is this desperate measure.” He looked at the lamp. “Besides,” he said, “it will be interesting to have a worthy opponent.”