Anthony Wik Horn was very tall and curvy. Her waist was startlingly small, though the enormous breasts and flaring hips may have made her waistline look smaller than it was. Snick decided that Horn could only be described by the cliché “statuesque.” She was also overpowering in looks and personality. Her voice was unusually deep for a woman’s.
Stopping just before the desk and looking down at the diminutive Snick, she steepled her hands on her chest and bowed slightly.
“Detective-General Anthony Wik Horn!” she boomed. “Sit down!”
Snick obeyed, saying, “No need to introduce myself, of course?”
“Of course!”
Horn remained standing though Snick offered her a chair.
“I’m here in person because my superiors think it’s best that we don’t use TV,” she said. “I’ve been given this job because it was decided that a higher official should deal with this. I hope you’ll pardon me, but I’ve made arrangements to turn off all wallscreens, and this office has been swept for bugs.”
Snick looked at the dead gray of the receiving-transmitting strips and shrugged. She did not comment. She waited for Horn to inform her about the reasons for her mission.
Horn smiled, exposing big white teeth. “Your biodata states that you’re not very talkative.”
Snick saw no reason to comment.
“The records of your sessions at the rehab center also revealed that you were keenly disappointed, highly frustrated, because you were barred from the profession of organic officer.”
“Then you also know,” Snick said, “that the frustration comes mostly from the injustice done to me. I was framed. I said it then, and I say it now. The government railroaded me. I was a dedicated gank, and I was betrayed by the very people whom I was loyally working for. What would your reaction be if you’d been treated like that?”
“I’d hate the department’s guts,” Horn said. “No doubt about that. In fact, I was not ordered to bring you the department’s proposal. When I heard about it, I volunteered to be the one to contact you. I sympathize very much with you. You got a really rotten deal. Apparently, the department realizes that now. It wishes to make amends.”
“Amends?” Snick said. “After all this time?”
Horn lifted her big shoulders and said, “It could’ve been never. I’m authorized to offer you a full reinstatement in the department. You’ll also be given a promotion. You’ll be a field colonel. All data re your record as a revolutionary, your illegal gorgonizing, too, will be erased from the biodata on your ID card. We can’t erase that data from the permanent organic data banks, but it’ll be accessed only by the highest officials and then only if a high need is shown.”
Snick held up her hand. “Hold on a moment. Why am I being offered all this?”
“I’ll be frank,” Horn said. “I don’t know everything about this case. I don’t know all the whys. What I was told is that your record shows you were a highly competent officer. More than that. An extraordinary detective. Also, you showed a tremendous amount of ingenuity and aggressiveness while you were a revolutionary, and…”
“I never was a genuine revolutionary,” Snick said. “I became one because I was forced to.”
“We know that. It’s in the rehab psychicist’s reports. And…”
Snick, narrow-eyed, said, “Is my redemption to be public? Or is it something just confined to the department?”
Horn, looking slightly annoyed, said, “I was getting to that. There’ll be no publicity. It’s thought best to keep all this quiet, but you’ll have no trouble in inner-departmental affairs.”
“I want my restoration made public,” Snick said.
Horn sat down and sighed as if she knew she was in for a longer session than she had expected.
Snick continued. “I want the people who were directly responsible for framing me punished. And I want it on the news channels and on callup tapes.”
“My God!” Horn said. “Your biodata indicated you have the nerve of a monkey triple-bound in brass, and it certainly did not exaggerate! You’ve suddenly got what you’ve been lusting for all these years, and you’re making demands!”
“I thought you understood me,” Snick said. “You don’t talk as if you do. I repeat. I want them punished, and I want a public acknowledgement I was framed and an apology from the government.”
“You’re not really in the driver’s seat, you know,” Horn said.
“I think I am. I don’t know why or how I got there, but I am in it.”
“Very stubborn, too,” Horn said. “O.K. I’m authorized to give you certain concessions. If I say yes to them, I’ll be fully backed by my superiors. However, you have to realize…may I call you Thea?…that the man responsible for stoning you was David Ananda, a.k.a. Gilbert Immerman. He’s long dead and so are those who carried out his orders. Dead or stoned.”
“If that’s true…”
“It’s true, Thea.”
“…I still want the frame-up disclosed to the public.”
Horn frowned slightly. Then she said, “Very well.”
“Why this sudden interest in me?” Snick said. “The government doesn’t have a conscience, and it never does anything unless it’s forced to do so or it’s for its benefit.”
“I was once a colleague of Jefferson Caird,” Horn said. “We were both Tuesday, and I was the organic commissioner for Manhattan.”
“What does that have to do with my question?”
Horn said, “We want you to track down Caird.”
That startled Snick, though she did not show it.
“I didn’t know he was missing.”
“As of three years ago,” Horn said. She leaned forward and gazed intently into Snick’s eyes. “He’s not wanted for any crime, not yet anyway. His ID card hasn’t been used for three years. That’s not a crime, but it is a misdemeanor if a citizen moves to another place and doesn’t record the move. He was living in Colorado Springs and studying electronics at Rocky Mountain University. He had gotten his M.S.E. and had registered for the four-year doctorate program. The day before classes began, he disappeared. There was a violent electrical storm that day. He apparently took advantage of it to avoid satellite detection.”
“Jeff,” Snick murmured. “I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was doing. I kept up on his progress for six or seven years. Then I moved. Now and then, well, you know the news media. They made reports on him for a while. But when he ceased to be of much interest, they quit commenting on him. The last I heard, he was doing quite well, though he still had no memory of his life before he was five. And he did not remember anything about his former personae.”
“The department has kept a close watch on him, of course,” Horn said.
“Of course. Just as they have on me.”
Horn leaned back against the chair and said, “We’d like to find him, find out what he’s doing. As I said, he’s not wanted for any crime—as yet. But there have been some troubles, interference, data insertions, satellite malfunctions, that we suspect…”
“That Jeff caused?”
“Yes.”
“But you have no proof?”
“No. But he has to be found anyway. He’s missing.”
Snick’s heart beat faster, and something hot and delicious ran through her. Once again, she was the hunter.
However, Caird was the quarry. What would she do if she did find him?
Horn, as if reading her thoughts, said, “You don’t have to arrest him. We know how personally involved you were with him. Just report to us when and where you found him. If, however, you feel duty-bound to apprehend him, do so.”
“I’m surprised,” Snick said. “It’s my duty to arrest any criminal, no matter what my relations are to him.”
“This is a very special assignment, and it’s to be done very quietly. If he’s just guilty of failing to report his location, he’ll be fined or put in a labor force for six months or possibly both. If he is committing any felonies or
has done so, he’ll be arrested and given his due trial. There won’t be any publicity about either situation. The truth is, the department doesn’t want to stir up old memories or make him a martyr again.”
“What you suggested he might be doing,” Snick said. “That sounds pretty serious.”
Horn shrugged and said, “He’s innocent until proved guilty. Except for the failure to report a move, of course.”
“What if someone killed him and buried his body?”
Horn said, “Oh, we’ve considered all possibilities. That one is not high on the probability list.”
“I’ll do it!” Snick said. “Provided, of course, my terms are met.”
“They will be. You’ll be completely exonerated. Your case’ll be made public, and you’ll be reinstated in the department and given your new rank. You’ll have carte blanche, anything you need to help you. Oh, yes! I forgot to mention that you’ll also receive all the credits you would have had if you had stayed employed. They’ll be based on the pay of a detective-captain, the rank you held when you were stoned. That’ll be quite a large sum.”
They’re bribing me, Snick thought. They didn’t have to do that. There must be another reason why they’ve hired me to do this job. It can’t just be because I’m so good at it. But she did know Caird better than anyone else, far better, and that would be an advantage in the hunt for him. That might be one of their motives for using her.
It was ironic. She had begun this long circuit by trying to catch Caird, had instead run with him, and now she was hunting him again. The ends of the positive and negative wires were about to make contact. Perhaps.
After Horn and Snick had talked about the details of the case for fifteen minutes, Horn stood up. “You call me if you need anything. I’ll be your only liaison. I’ll say goodbye for time being.”
She bowed, turned, halted, and turned back.
“Oh, this is a small point, but it might be of some significance. While Caird was in Colorado Springs, he had a framed photo of you on his wall. He took it with him when he left.”
Snick did not trust herself to speak. She felt choked and, at the same time, a hotness in her breast.
Horn said, “Does that mean anything?”
Snick swallowed and said, “I have no idea. I won’t know until I find him, will I?”
“Will you?” Horn said. She smiled and turned away again.
Panthea Snick went through the required two months of retraining at an organic academy and a month in the field. Then she was given her promised rank of colonel. During this time, she studied the many tapes sent her by Horn. All of these were of Caird’s career as known by the organic department, including the monitorings of him since he had what the psychicists called his “regression to infancy.” His conduct since then was exemplary. In fact, he had been such a model citizen, up to the point of his disappearance, that the ganks considered it to be suspicious.
There were six cases of false data insertion in the data banks of Las Vegas and Colorado Springs while Caird was living in the latter city. Though he was suspected of having committed these crimes, the organics could find no evidence that he was responsible.
The department was very upset, however, because the culprit—whoever he was—had gotten through security measures considered to be absolutely impregnable.
Another event far more serious was the simultaneous shutting down of all the monitoring satellites over the Rocky Mountain area. Since these refused to respond to any signals from the ground stations, they could not self-test themselves. Spaceships carrying engineers had to be sent up to troubleshoot the satellites. Though the engineers were able to start them up again, they could not trace the source of the shutdown. It was obvious that transmissions from the Rocky Mountain area had caused the failure. The ganks swarmed over this territory like ants scenting honey. The hunt was even more intensive than that for Caird after he had fled Colorado Springs. (If, indeed, he had ever left the city, Snick thought.)
The search was still continuing, but it was being conducted by routine and occasional unscheduled foot and airboat patrols.
Since the satellite incident, nothing untoward had happened.
Snick thought that Caird, or whoever was causing trouble, had just been testing his electronic techniques. He had demonstrated that they worked well and that the methods used and their source of origin could not be determined.
Every type of sensor, visual, infrared, ultraviolet, sonic, and olfactory was used in the searches. Also, knowing that the outlaw might be taking refuge in caverns, the magnetometer maps of the entire area were checked. Not one hollow in the earth in the vast area was overlooked. Those caverns without entrances were personally checked to make sure that none had been plugged up by humans or were concealed by camouflage. This search was long and expensive and succeeded only in finding a few outlaws. None of these could have been responsible for the data insertions or the satellite failures.
Snick still thought that it was very probable that Caird was out there in the wilderness. One night she woke up, startled, hearing a man’s voice by her bedside. But it was a dream, and she had heard only the voice, not the words, of the speaker.
Nevertheless, she sat up on the edge of the bed, quivering, a thought as bright as a new ID card shining in her. After some concentrated thinking, she got back under the covers and was asleep in two minutes. The next day, she called up on her apartment wallscreen the latest magnetometer survey of the central Rocky Mountain area. This was ten years old and was the one the ganks used in their search. The previous survey had been made twenty years ago. She summoned that and had the two surveys compared.
The computer instantly found one discrepancy between the two charts. This was a cavern complex halfway up Cloud Peak. It was in the Bighorn Range and was the highest mountain in that area once known as Wyoming.
Snick laughed softly.
Caird had managed to erase that one item of data from the latest survey.
The ganks, relying on this, had not gone to the cavern and probed it.
“Always the trickster!” she said.
38
First, she had to ascertain that a microtransmitter had not been implanted in her. That it was illegal to do that to anyone except convicted felons would not stop them. Even though she had been fully rehabilitated (according to the psychicists), had been restored to the organic department, and her case had been publicized, the department would not fully trust her.
On the other hand, she was a veteran gank, and they would know that she would eventually check on the possibility that a microtransmitter had been placed in her body.
But, knowing that she knew this, the ganks might calculate that she would consider the probability of the illegal action as very low. They could have entered her apartment while she was sleeping, injected a hypnotic, and put the device under her skin. The wound would be covered with artificial epidermis.
She had to make sure that she was not bugged. She went to an organic hospital and was scanned. Not to her surprise, she found that there were two microtransmitters in her. One was halfway up her left forearm; the other under the skin on the back of her neck.
This examination would be reported to General Horn, of course. Horn would steel herself for Snick’s fiery indignation and legal suit against the organic department. She would be wondering if her career were in danger. But Snick did nothing, leaving it to the much-relieved Horn to believe that Snick did not care if she was bugged. After all, if Snick was on the up-and-up, why should she resent the signals? They would assure her that she would be located if she were alone in certain situations and needed help from her colleagues.
Horn might also figure that Snick did not want to cause any trouble. Snick did not give a damn what Horn thought. She just wanted to be certain about being bugged.
Having checked the long-range weather predictions (which were not much better than those of two thousand years ago despite the advances of the science of meteorology), Snick made her plans an
d waited more or less patiently. The rain-and-thunderstorm struck the Rocky Mountain area two days after its scheduled arrival. On the third evening, the boiling clouds sped darkness over Colorado Springs, the wind bent trees, and the lightning turned the clouds into electrical chaos. Snick climbed into the airboat she had requisitioned and had packed with mountain clothes and equipment. The airboat rose into a howling and crackling terror despite the orders from the air control department grounding all craft.
She had smeared a heavy metallic paste over the areas marked with indelible ink on her forearm and the back of her neck. And she disconnected the automatic transmitter placed behind a bulkhead in the stern of the boat.
Riding in a tossing vessel which battled a sidewind and tried to maintain a fifty-foot level above the trees and the now-and-then bare terrain, fitfully dazzled by nearby lightning bolts, her eyes on the instruments and especially on the topographical display, Snick reached Cloud Peak in seven hours. T he programmed automatic navigation brought her to the entrance of the cavern complex, dimly seen in the headlight beams. It entered the rough arch in the steep rocky side of the mountain. The wind caught the stern and swung it so that it scraped against the right side of the entrance. Twelve feet inside past the arch, Snick landed the boat.
The headlights showed a hollow about twenty feet wide and thirty deep. Beyond that was the mouth of a tunnel which ran straight for a few feet, then curved and disappeared. It was not wide enough for the craft. She got out and, carrying a flashlight, walked down the tunnel. The roof varied from two to three feet above her head, and the walls were sometimes almost close enough to brush her shoulders. Then she was faced with two entrances. On her right was a hole large enough for her to crawl through without bumping her head or squeezing her sides. The flashlight showed that it ran straight ahead into darkness. The left hole was narrow but crawlable and seemed to open into a larger space.