I headed in the opposite direction, to the French windows that led onto the terrace. "Simon!" I yelled. "You've got my proxy. Take another vote and transmit the results to the public database immediately!"
"Gotcha!" said Pop.
"Eve—you get on the com to Ranch Central Security. Tell them to expect my orders." Then I was outside and moving.
Water impounded by the parapets, falling too heavily to drain away, made a shallow lake of the flagstones. I splashed across it, hopped over the rail, and bounded through ornamental shrubs and smashed flowers.
A monster bolt of lightning illuminated the grounds around the big house. Even then, visibility in the downpour was less than fifty meters. A planting of slender cottonwood trees was bent almost flat by the wind and sturdier pines tossed and moaned.
The Jeep was where Simon and I had left it, pulled up on the formerly pristine irrigated lawn at the end of two horrendous ruts. I spotted a couple of blurred red taillights going down the front drive. It looked like Dan's Range Rover. For an instant I wondered why Drummond hadn't taken the Garrison-Laguna, which was parked on the house landing pad. Then I realized that a hopper would need security clearance to penetrate the Sky Ranch's scanner net. If it tried to break through, the automated Kagi installations would shoot it down.
Diving into the Jeep, I fired it up, hit the Max Traction control, and roared off the lawn in reverse. Clots of turf and muddy water sprayed roof-high. I reached pavement, shifted, and tore off in pursuit of Alistair Drummond.
The Rover's lights, dim red eyes bouncing and jinking, were still in sight. He was heading south to the T-junction where the blacktop ended, about two kilometers from the house. From there, all the ranch roads were unpaved. The west leg of the T, well-graded gravel, led to the main entrance and the Phoenix Freeway. The east leg, rougher and with fewer bridges over the creeks and arroyos, was the utility road Simon and I had come in on.
Drummond turned east.
I got on the com. "Security Central, come back to Helly Frost."
"Yes, .sir!"
"Get on the global positioner. Nail down Mr. Dan's green Range Rover going along the East Road and feed it to the navigator in"—I checked the ID of Pete's Jeep—"Rampart Patrol Three-two."
"Roger that. Acquiring target. Downloading. You got it, sir."
I switched on the nav display. There we were, two blips half a klick apart. He was pulling away. "Thanks, Central. Can you send aircraft to cover the east gate?"
"That's a negative right now, sir. As soon as this monster storm cell moves through we can go flying. Estimated plus-minus seven minutes. We'll alert the East Gatehouse, but—"
"Do you have any ground units between the house and Copper Mountain Cutoff?"
"Negative. And I gotta tell you that West Fork Copper Creek is running bank-high. Your bogey won't ford it and neither will you."
"I copy that. Standby."
It was taking almost all of my attention to keep the Jeep on the road. I was barreling along at nearly 90 kph on a rough, devilishly slick track in a vehicle that was only about a third as massive as the one I was chasing. The Rover stuck to the ground much better than I did. It had a more powerful engine, too. The Jeep windshield was doing its damnedest to stay clear, but the amount of water flowing over it threatened to overwhelm the ionizer.
I slowed down and shifted part of my vision to the navigator. In just a few more minutes Alistair Drummond was going to butt up against that torrential creek, at which point he faced some uncomfortable options. He could turn left and drive cross-country over the plateau until he foundered, or he could turn right onto an exiguous two-rut trail that headed toward the summit of Copper Mountain, eventually dead-ending near the abandoned gold mine. The opposite side of the mountain was much too steep for vehicular travel. Only horses or hikers could make it down that way.
If he was smart, Drummond would pull off somewhere along the track and ambush me. I wondered if he had any other weapons besides the nasty actinic peashooter he'd shot Dan with. Most of the ranch ground vehicles carried a stunner, at the very least, to cope with rampageous wildlife. I had my trusty Harvey, which would bring down a tyrannosaur.
Provided I got it in my sights.
The rain seemed to be abating and we were back in daylight mode. I was coming up on a rise, so I stopped the Jeep. Since I had no oculars, I grabbed the Harvey blaster and went out to do a fast recon through its powerscope. It was suddenly cold outside. The air temp must have dropped nearly twenty degrees. Lightning still flared occasionally, but the principal fireworks had passed to the north.
I stumbled up the road to the top of the ridge, crouched behind some rabbit brush on the verge, and swept the land below with the scope. There was the creek, bordered by bebb willows and alamos and brimming with a brown, foamy torrent. No sign of the Range Rover.
I strained my ears and heard a laboring turbine engine, the sound intermittent among the rumbles and dull thuds of retreating thunder.
I skidded back to the car and consulted the navigator. There he was, the crazy dude bastard, heading up the mountain— and rather briskly at that. I notified Security Central and told them to send armed hoppers to the area but not to land or fire on the bogey until I gave the order.
I got rolling again and turned onto the cutoff road in pursuit of my prey. Then I switched to Channel 16 and called Alistair Drummond.
It took a few minutes for him to notice the little green telltale blinking on the com console, figure out what it meant, and come back to me.
I said, "You know the track you're on ends up near the mountaintop. You're finished, Drummond. You might as well give up."
A laugh, soft and eerie, came out of my speaker. All he said was, "It's your family that's finished, Asahel Frost. And the day will come when I put an end to you as well."
"Drummond? You want to explain that? Drummond?"
There was no reply.
Jesus... Of course that's what he'd do!
Still driving, I got back to security and told them to patch me through to the house and my sister Eve. Interminable minutes later I heard her voice say, "Asa? What's happening? Did he get away?"
"Never mind that! Did Drummond leave anything behind? Anything at all?"
"Only the case with his holo display. Why?"
"Get out of the house!" I shouted. "Get everybody out of the house now! The bastard's going to kill you all. There's something in that case!"
Silence.
"Eve! Do you understand?"
"Yes," she said. And was gone.
I prayed, and I drove like a fiend, pushing the Jeep to its limits, cracking the undercarriage against rocks, scraping the sides on hairy switchbacks, winding up to the summit of Copper Mountain while the rain diminished and the beauty of the Sky Ranch spread out around me.
Dan and Eve and Beth and I had played on this mountain when we were young children. We'd been forbidden to enter the derelict gold mine, so of course we did. One time, a black-tail rattler hiding just inside the entrance struck at Beth. I crushed it with a rock. Another tune, Dan found a nubbin of quartz with embedded metallic specks that gleamed in the sun. He knew it was real gold. The rest of us sneered, but we thought it was, too. Lucky Dan! He said he'd reopen the mine when he grew up, dig out the gold, and get rich. We all sneered at that as well, while we halfway suspected he might do just that. Wily Dan!
Wile E. Coyote.
Too young yet to know that, in a galactic economy, gold wasn't all that valuable. Even the wily can miscalculate. Sometimes fatally.
The trail was almost too narrow to drive on now, hacked from living rock, incredibly steep and with sheer drops into Copper Creek Canyon far below. It had been built for mule-drawn carts and not modern vehicles, but if the Rover had made it, my Jeep would, too. I kept moving, traveling at less than 7 kph, and finally reached a lookout point close to the summit where most of the Frost spread was visible.
The clouds were beginning to break and a few beams of sunlig
ht appeared. Where were the damned hoppers? Finally I saw them, three specks rising from the big landing field north of the main building—
And an expanding bloom of orange fire.
No.
I screamed, "No!" Did it over and over again.
The fireball turned black and became an umbrella of smoke.
Could they have made it out in time? I reached for the com, saw the green light blinking, touched the pad to open Channel 16.
"Say goodbye to them, Asahel Frost!"
Something large went hurtling overhead, flying off the sheer-sided switchback just above me. At first I didn't realize that it was the Range Rover. Then the car was clearly visible, turning over and over so very slowly until it struck the rocks two hundred meters below and disappeared in a second fireball, much smaller than the first.
I started driving again, out of it. Uncomprehending.
In my shock and grief I had the ludicrous idea that if I reached the old mine where we'd played as kids everything would be different. A proper happy ending. The sun shone on the wet rocks. A bird was singing. The hoppers were coming and a red telltale blinked on the com unit. I ignored it.
The top. The muddy, rock-strewn level area in front of the broken-down shacks and rusted machinery of mysterious function. The precipice where Alistair Drummond had plunged to his death. I opened the car door and got out, taking the Harvey with me.
At the dropoff I used the gunscope to spy out the wreckage. Smoke coiled up from amid some scrub oaks and stunted ponderosas. Two ExSec hoppers were heading down into the canyon to investigate. Another one circled high above Copper Mountain, checking me out.
My hands were shaking a little so I dropped to one knee to get a steadier view—
Chweek!
The beam from the small actinic pistol missed me by centimeters, fired from the direction of the mine-shaft opening.
Oh, you crafty bastard!
He had ambushed me after all.
I ate mud. Rolled sideways, bruising my body on sharp rocks, found a boulder the size of an office wastebasket, puny shelter for someone my size.
Chweek! Chweek! Chweek! Chweek!
Fountains of goop and puffs of chipped rock. 1 was almost out of his range and it was nearly impossible to shoot a gun that tiny with any kind of accuracy. But Alistair Drummond was doing all right, peppering me from the shelter of the mine entrance. He scorched my right thigh. It hurt like hell. Another beam caught me on the shoulder, setting my sodden shirt afire. I slapped the flame out. Then one of his shots sent a chip of rock into my left eye. My vision on that side dissolved in red fog.
Okay. That does it!
Heedless of the deadly white beams, I fired my Harvey into the rock face above the dark opening. Once. Twice. Three times.
Thunder returned, echoing across the crags, making the ground shudder. Tons of ancient rock cascaded down, loosened by my big blaster. Rocks poured into the old mine entrance, collapsed the supporting timbers, refilled the hole, obliterating it.
I stood up, burned and half blinded, a muddy wreck.
But Alistair Drummond was buried. Just like a rabid skunk.
Slowly, I shuffled back to the Jeep. The red light on the com unit was still blinking. Collapsing behind the wheel, I touched the pad.
"Asahel Frost here." My voice was slurred. I'd bruised my lower lip, too.
"Asa—it's Eve! Everyone in the house got out in time, including the staff. And Dan. He's alive. Are you all right?"
"Could be better... You get that board vote into the public record?"
"Oh, yes. Rampart's safe. Galapharma can't hurt the Star-corp now. We've won, Asa, whatever the outcome of our civil suit."
"How's Simon?"
"Subdued. Shocked. Rather pissed off because he'll have to postpone the big barbecue. But never mind that! Tell me— what's happened to Alistair Drummond? We had a report from security that his car had gone off the mountain."
A Rampart hoppercraft was hovering immediately overhead. I could hear someone calling out to me on the annunciator.
"Evie, I'll be down there before you know it, and I'll tell you everything. Gotta go now."
"Goodbye, Asa. Love you."
I shut down the com unit. Outside, an amplified voice was saying: "Exit your car! You are surrounded. Exit your car! Surrender and you will not be harmed!"
I said, "Easy for you to say."
Then I climbed out with my hands raised over my head and waited.
Julian May, Orion Arm
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