“Wayne!” Duncan said loudly. “Why didn’t I think of that before?”
“What?” Snick said. “Oh, I see what you mean! Jesus!”
If the pilot had not yet taken the aircraft through the rooftop hangar door, he was trapped. But if he had left before Duncan had turned off all the power…
He did not have time to complete the thought. A dark bulk cut off the light from the towers coming in through the upper part of the window. Duncan could see the silhouette. It was long and slender, and the pilot and another person were profiled. Then the aircraft began to turn on its vertical axis; the vessel was rotating to point its nose at the window.
Duncan aimed at the pilot’s body. His violet beam cracked at the same time as Snick’s. One of them must have missed the target; a beam shot by Duncan only an inch away. He and Snick returned the fire, and there were five holes in the window, beyond which the canoe-shaped craft continued to turn and turn and turn.
“That was close!” Duncan said. “A good thing I turned the lights off!”
“Two down, three to go,” Snick said.
31
“I didn’t unlock our door before I turned the door power off,” Duncan said. “Maybe they’ll get courage enough to test if it’s unlocked. But I can turn the power on to unlock the door without activating the light if I want to.”
“Why don’t we burn through both walls?” Snick said. “One of us can cut through Cabtab’s wall and burn through the lock of my door. The other can cut through into Immerman’s living room.”
Duncan had already thought of that. They could outflank the flankers, but the three outside the room might have the same idea. However, he and Snick could not hide in the room, afraid to move because of what the enemy might be doing.
“All the doors that were open when the power quit will still be open,” he said. “The others will be locked, including the only door to this complex. If they’re in Cabtab’s or your room or the storage room next to yours or in Immerman’s living room, they had to cut their way in. We’ll assume that they haven’t done that yet or are in the process of doing that. Let’s go through the wall into the living room and then through the wall into his bedroom.”
He took a last look at the slowly pivoting aircraft with its dead passengers before he started work. With their guns on full power, they sliced out a rough square just high enough for them to crawl through. The stench of melting and burning treated cardboard, six inches thick, stung their noses and burned their eyes. After inserting fresh charges into the weapons, they got down on all fours. Duncan whispered the code word that would restore the lights but not the operation of the wall screens. He lunged through the hole, his weapon in his left hand. He had hoped that, if anybody was in that room, he would freeze for a half-second. That paralysis and confusion would give him the advantage.
If there had been anyone in the living room, he had been quick enough to drop behind a large piece of furniture. Duncan and Snick went cautiously, half-crouched, guns extended in both hands. A thorough tour of the living room and the bathroom showed that they were empty. Duncan cut the lights off, and another square was sliced through the wall. Again, the lights were turned on, and the same procedure was followed. They found that all the doors were locked.
After he had cut the lighting again, they used the illumination from the floor-to-ceiling windows to go to the southeast corner of the room.
“You cut the hole,” Duncan said. “I’ll watch the one we just cut. Maybe they’ve gotten into my room now and are trailing us.”
Snick took about thirty seconds to make the new exit.
“I’ve got a half-charge left,” she said.
“Use it till it’s gone. We may need all we have.”
He spoke to the wall screen; the lights flared. He’ had not expected anyone to be in the swimming-pool room nor was there. Nevertheless, he walked slowly toward the nearest edge of the pool. It was just possible, though it was ridiculous to think that anyone would do it, that a man or woman was standing in the water, his head below the edge. It would be an excellent ambush position. But who would do that?
No one, it seemed.
He felt a little foolish. Still, if he had shrugged off the idea and there had been someone there, he might be dead.
Once more, he cut off the illumination.
“They must be wondering what the hell’s going on with the lights,” Snick whispered.
“Good,” Duncan said softly.
They were in complete darkness now and forced to feel their way along the wall. One hand trailed along its surface, the other probed ahead with the gun. After a few steps, Duncan stopped. The bulbous end of the weapon had scraped against something in front of him. By feeling, he determined that it was a bust on a pedestal. He made contact with six of these before the wall ended. When he activated the lights for a second, he saw that they were in a hallway and the archway to the foyer was ahead of him. In darkness again, he walked slowly through it, his shoulder barely touching one side. Once more, he ordered the lights to come on. The main door to the complex was closed. Was it locked? He pushed on it and could not budge it.
Snick following closely, one hand on his shoulder, he found his way back to the hallway, where he halted. It ran straight down the length of the complex to the wall of the next complex. The last room was the aircraft hangar, a rather large area with one door. He went down the hall, feeling with his right hand. No busts or small tables got in his way. When he had felt the third door slide by his fingers, he slowed even more. Then he touched the slight protrusion that marked the jamb of the fourth door. He told Snick to face the other way, gun ready, before he activated the lights again. When they came on, he saw that the door was closed. He quickly said the code that unlocked it, spoke the code that cut the lights off, and pushed. After he and Snick were inside, he evoked the lights again. The door had automatically locked behind him.
As Immerman had said, there was another gank air-patrol two-seater craft parked here. Grinning, Duncan got into the front seat, the pilot’s. Snick, chortling, scrambled into the one behind.
“We’re free!” she cried.
Duncan pressed the POWER ON button. He cursed. No indicator lights flashed, no digital displays glowed. Three more pushes on the button were equally fruitless.
“What’s wrong?” Snick said.
“I don’t know, damn it! I think… Immerman was right when he said there was another craft here. What he didn’t say, because he didn’t know it, was that the pilot removed some vital part before he took off. He must’ve done it just in case we did somehow get here. Or maybe he obeyed a standing order. Immerman wouldn’t tell me about that unless I asked him. I’m not mechanic enough to know what’s missing. If I was, I doubt there’d be a spare part.”
He got out of the vessel and looked at the proton demicannon mounted on the prow. Its stand was welded to the frame, but the weapon could be removed quickly by opening two clamps.
“Weighs about forty pounds,” he said. “I can handle it.”
Sweating in the close, heavy, and unmoving air, they got the cannon down. Duncan removed two extra charges, bullet-shaped cases six inches long, from the supply canister of the craft. He jammed these into his kilt pockets and picked up the weapon in two hands.
“I’ll set the lights so they go off and come on at one-minute intervals,” he said.
Across the hallway was the door to the guards’ recreation room. This, according to Immerman, was a large L-shaped room. Its door fell inward in four seconds, three to cut it out from the wall and one for Snick to kick it inward. The bulbous end of the cannon spitting violet streaks, Duncan walked into the room. The wall opposite the doorway looked like Swiss cheese, but the area was empty. Duncan walked by the swimming pool, not as big as the other. If there was anybody in the two guards’ living quarters or the monitor room, they must know by now that their prisoners were free and behind them. Duncan did not care. He did not think he had much time left to clear out the opp
osition and to question Immerman again. And then do one more thing before getting out of here.
Snick went into the bottom part of the L. She burned out the lock on the door that opened to the hallway outside Duncan’s room. Waiting until the lights had gone off, she pushed the door out, got down on her belly, and looked around the side. He could not see her in the dark, but he had told her what to do and assumed that she was following instructions. Meanwhile, he kept a watch on the hallway doors to the other rooms.
The room was suddenly bright. Snick’s gasp came faintly to him followed by three crackles and a woman’s scream. Then two more crackles, loud enough for him to know that Snick had fired them. He started toward the doorway, but Snick wriggled backward and stood up. Her smile was brighter than the lights; she glowed.
“Got both of them! His shot came close, though!”
Duncan could smell the burned carpet. He said, “Who?”
“Pal, the cook. Took her left temple off. Got Singh, too, right through the belly, but he came close. One inch closer, and my head’d have a hole in it. I drilled both again to make sure.”
“That leaves just one, Wisket,” Duncan said. He paused, then said, “You look happy.”
“I’m killing subversives.”
“For God’s sake! We’re subversives!”
“But they’re the enemy.”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure anymore who is or isn’t the enemy. OK. Did you see Wisket?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean he’s not behind one of those doors.”
He looked quickly around the jamb, then stepped back into the room. Pal lay on her side; Singh, on his face. Apparently, Pal had come halfway out of the kitchen doorway and Singh, preceding her, had come all the way out. They must have been planning to use the darkness to get near the guards’ recreation room. Since Snick had been on the floor, she had been a difficult target. She had also been faster. After she had felled them, she had given them the coup de grace.
He would not want to face her in a duel.
“I saw that the doors of the monitor room and the two guards’ living quarters were shut,” he said. If there’s anybody in there, Wisket, I mean, he’s not going to get out unless he cuts his way out. If he does, he’ll give us plenty of warning. We can smell it.”
The lights went off.
“We’re going into the hallway now. We’ll move sidewise out of here, facing up the hall, south. I’ll be on your right. At the count of three after you leave the doorway, we advance. You feel for the door of the monitor room. Wisket may have been trapped in there when I shut the door locks. The second door to the left.”
“I know,” she said.
“Just checking. I’ll feel for Cabtab’s door, and then I’ll go a few feet further. I should be almost opposite the monitor room door then. When the lights come on, I’ll be able to see from there if the door to the data-bank room is open or not. If it’s closed, I’ll nod at you. If it’s open, I’ll shake my head. We’ll go on up to the data-bank room if the door is open. If it’s closed, you cut out the lock to the monitor room. That’ll be quicker and easier than going through every room again to find out if Wisket somehow got away from here.”
“Got it.”
“Let’s go.”
When the lights sprang on again, he saw that the data-bank room door was closed. He signaled her, and she walked, crouching, to the jamb of the monitor room entrance. Duncan motioned to her to lie down. When she was out of the line of fire, he pressed the trigger of the cannon. A violet beam spat like an angry cat as Duncan circled it around the area of the lock mechanism inside the door. When he was done, Snick reached up with her gun and struck the circle twice with the butt of the weapon. The circle fell inside the room. Then she reached out and rammed the heel of her palm against the door. It swung inward to the wall.
Wisket, if he was in there, had moved out of sight.
“Come out!” Duncan said. “All your buddies are dead, Wisket! You don’t have a chance! Surrender, or we come in after you! I’ve got a demicannon, Wisket! I’ll enfilade the whole room unless you come out, hands up, in four seconds!”
A deep but quavering voice called out. “I’ll surrender if you’ll give me your word you won’t kill me!”
“Come out empty-handed! Toss your gun out first, then show me your hands! High against the jambs! No tricks! I have backup!”
“You promise not to shoot me?”
“I promise,” Duncan said.
“What about your backup? I want her promise, too.”
Evidently, Wisket was a cautious man.
Duncan nodded at Snick to give her word.
“I promise I won’t shoot you!” she said.
“Is there anybody else with you?” Wisket called.
“How the hell could there be?” Duncan said. “You know how many of us there are. Come on, man! I’m in a hurry!”
“You said you won’t shoot me,” Wisket yelled. “I want your promise you won’t harm me in any way. Otherwise, you’ll have to come in and get me!”
His voice sounded as if it was coming from far back in the room. Before Duncan could shout at Snick to stop, she had rolled to a position facing the doorway. Holding the gun in both hands, she fired twice. A violet streak leaped over her and drilled a hole in the wall behind her. She rose and ran into the room. Duncan, cursing, followed her into it. Wisket was lying face down in the middle of the room.
“That was stupid,” Duncan said.
“If I’d failed, yes, it would have been. I didn’t, so it wasn’t stupid. We’d have had to kill him anyway. You know that. We’ll have to kill Immerman and Carebara, too, after we’re through with them.”
“I was going to let them loose, give them a chance to escape.”
“And if they’re caught by the ganks? They’ll reveal everything, and our own chances of escaping will be very very small.”
“You’re a bloodthirsty savage,” Duncan said.
At that second, he began to lose his love for her. Or it seemed to him that he did. He hoped so. He longed to be free of this obsession that no amount of logic had been able to banish.
“Well?” she said.
“You make sense.”
“Good. Now, what do we do?”
“We get Immerman into the data-bank room as fast as possible. Then you stand guard by the door to this complex. They may have called for help. Take the cannon with you.”
32
While Immerman was lying on a sofa in the monitor room, Duncan asked, as rapidly as possible, about the capabilities of the data bank. As he had hoped, it could be used to override all but some top-secret government channels, and it was linked to the world government, national, state, and local channels everywhere. His grandfather had secretly set up all these transmission potentialities a long time ago.
He paused for a moment to look at the wall screen showing the foyer. Snick was sitting in a chair, facing the door, the weapon propped on top of another chair in front of her.
“What is the name you now use?”
“David Jimson Ananda.”
“What is the override access code?”
Immerman said, weakly, “IMAGO. ALWAYS.”
Duncan asked him to spell it out. Then he said, “Are you the only one who can activate that?”
“Yes.”
“What’s required for access confirmation? Recognition of your voice?”
“Yes.”
“Is anything else required for access confirmation?”
“Yes.”
“What else is required for access confirmation?”
“The print of my left thumb. My right retinaprint.”
Duncan asked him how these were registered. After Immerman had given him the data, he hoisted the limp body up and carried it to the chair in front of the main console. He propped Immerman up and punched the POWER ON button. He said, “Now, when I say go, you, Gilbert Ching Immerman, say, as loudly as possible, IMAGO. ALWAYS.”
He place
d the man’s left thumb on a round unmarked plate on the desk and held Immerman’s head up by the hair.
“IMAGO. ALWAYS.”
The screen, which had been displaying READY PER CODE INPUT, dissolved that. ACCESS CODE NOT COMPLETED replaced it.
A thin beam had shot out from the center of the screen. It fell on Immerman’s neck, but Duncan moved his head until it shone exactly on Immerman’s right eye. He pulled the eyelid up, and the screen flashed: ACCESS CODE COMPLETED. READY FOR INPUT.
Duncan was startled when the other wall screens began flashing bright orange and a low wailing issued from them. The first warning for today’s citizens to prepare for stoning.
He ignored the distraction and told Immerman, step by step, what to tell the computer. Before he had gotten halfway through his instructions, a whistle came from the screen monitoring the foyer. Snick said, “They’re burning through the lock!”
“Keep them out,” Duncan said. “Do your best. I can’t quit now. I can’t help you until I’m through. I have to do this no matter what.”
The results of “this” would be worldwide and very complex. Initiation was simple but required some time.
Immerman obeyed his every request as if he were a zombie, which, in effect, he was. What Duncan wanted to launch had been prepared long ago by Immerman. Though Immerman might have had something else in mind, he had set up the system so that it could be quickly done. At Duncan’s command, Immerman repeated the instructions, and these were stored in secret data banks all over the world. At ten after midnight, all the wall screens in every house, apartment, and public building that were not tuned in to the public TV system at that moment would flash Duncan’s message. At the same time, the printout mechanisms in every house, apartment, and public building would issue the message. He had avoided trying to transmit through the government TV. He knew that the screen displays would not last more than a few seconds before the censors cut them off.