05-A Gift From Earth (9 page)

"Now, who got us out of this? Who woke us up? Anyone?"

"Me," said Matt.

A last buzz of noise died. Suddenly everyone was looking at him. Harry said, "How?"

"I'm not sure how I got in here. I'd like to talk to Hood about it."

"Okay, stick with Jay. Keller, isn't it? We're grateful, Keller. What do those buttons do? I saw you fooling with them."

"They turn off whatever it is that makes you go to sleep."

"Is anyone still in his couch? If so, get out of it
now
. Now, somebody push those buttons back in so it'll look like there was a power failure. Was that it, Keller? Did you just accidentally wake up?"

"No."

Harry Kane looked puzzled, but when Matt didn't elaborate, he shrugged. "Watson, Chek, start pushing those buttons in. Jay, make sure you stick with Keller. The rest of you, are you ready to move?"

There was a shout of assent. As it died, a lone voice asked, "Where to?"

"Good point. If you get free, make for the coral houses around the south void and Alpha-Beta cliffs. Anything else?"

Nobody spoke, including Matt. Why ask questions to which nobody knew the answers? Matt was unutterably relieved to let someone else make the decisions for a while. They might be just as wrong, but ninety-eight rebels could be a mighty force, even moving in the wrong direction. And Harry Kane was a born leader.

Laney moved out of his arms-but kept a grip on one hand. Matt became conscious of the handcuffs dangling from his wrists. They might hamper him. Jay Hood moved up beside him, looking rumpled. He shook hands, grinning, but the grin didn't match the fear in his eyes, and he seemed reluctant to let go. Was there one person in this room who wasn't terrified? If there was, it wasn't Matt. He pulled the sonic loose from his pants pocket.

"All out," said Harry Kane, and butted the door open with a wide shoulder. They streamed into the hall.

"I'll take only a minute of your time, Watts." Jesus Pietro relaxed indolently in his chair. He loved mysteries and proposed to enjoy this one. "I want you to describe in detail what happened last night, starting with the call from Hobart."

"But there
aren't
any details, sir." Master Sergeant Watts was tired of repeating himself. His voice was turning querulous. "Five minutes after your call, Hobart called and said he had a prisoner. I told him to bring him to my office. He never came. Finally I called the
gate
. He was
there
, all right,
without
his prisoner, and he couldn't explain what had happened. I had to put him under arrest."

"His behavior has been puzzling in other ways. That is why I ask, Why didn't you call the gate earlier?"

"Sir?"

"Your behavior is as puzzling as Hobart's, Watts. Why did you assume it would take Hobart half an hour to reach your office?"

"Oh." Watts fidgeted. "Well, Hobart said this bird came right up to the gate and started banging on it with a rock. When Hobart didn't show right away, I thought he must have stopped off to question the prisoner, find out why he did it. After all," he explained hastily, "if he brought the bird straight to me, he'd likely never find out what he was doing banging on the gate."

"Very logical. Did it occur to you at any point that the 'bird' might have overpowered Hobart?"

"But Hobart had a sonic!"

"Watts, have you ever been on a raid?"

"No, sir. How could I?"

"A man came back from the raid of night-before-last with the bones of his nose spread all over his face. He, too, had a sonic."

"Yessir, but that was a
raid
, sir."

Jesus Pietro sighed. "Thank you, Master Sergeant. Will you step outside, please? Your bird should be arriving any minute."

Watts left, his relief showing.

He'd made a good point, thought Jesus Pietro, though not the one he'd intended. Probably all the Hospital guards had the same idea: that a gun was
ipso facto
invincible. Why not? The Hospital guards had never been on a raid in the colonist regions. Few had ever seen a colonist who wasn't unconscious. Occasionally Jesus Pietro staged mock raids with guards playing the part of colonists. They didn't mind, particularly; mercy-weapons were not unpleasant. But the men with the guns always won. All the guards' experience told them that the gun was king, that a man who had a gun need fear nothing but a gun.

What to do? Interchange guards and raiders long enough to give the guards some experience? No, the elite raiders would never stand for that.

Why was he worrying about Implementation?

Had the Hospital ever been attacked? Never, on Alpha Plateau. A colonist force had no way to get there.

But Keller had.

He used the phone. "Jansen, find out who was on guard at the Alpha-Beta Bridge last night. Wake them up and send them here."

"It will be at least fifteen minutes, sir."

"Fine."

How had Keller gotten past them? There had been one aircar on Gamma Plateau, but it had been destroyed. With the pilot still in it? Had Keller had a chauffeur? Or would a colonist know how to use the autopilot?

Where the Mist Demons was Keller!

Jesus Pietro began to pace the room. He had no cause for worry, yet he worried. Instinct? He didn't believe he had instincts. The phone spoke in his secretary's voice. "Sir, did you order two guards?"

"Bridge guards?"

"No, sir. Intrahospital guards."

"No."

"Thank you." Click.

Something had set off the grounds alarms last night. Not a rabbit. Keller might have tried the wall first. If the grounds guards had let a prisoner escape, then faked a report--he'd have their hides!

"Sir, these guards insist you sent for them."

"Well, I damn well didn't. Tell them — just a minute. Send them in."

They came, two burly men whose submissive countenances unsuccessfully hid their ire at being made to wait.

"When did I send for you?" asked Jesus Pietro.

The big one said, "Twenty minutes ago," daring Jesus Pietro to call him a liar.

"Were you supposed to pick up a prisoner first?"

"No, sir. We took Hobart to the vivarium, put him to beddybye and came straight back."

"You don't remember being — '

The smaller guard went white. "D-Dave! We supposed to p-pick up someone. Keeler. Something Keeler."

Jesus Pietro regarded them for a full twenty seconds. His face was curiously immobile. Then he opened the intercom. "Major Jansen. Sound 'Prisoners Loose.'"

"Wait a minute," said Matt.

The tail end of the colonist swarm was leaving them behind. Hood brought himself up short. "What are you doing?"

Matt dodged back into the vivarium. One man lay on his face with his headset on. Probably he'd thought he was safe once he was out of the couch. Matt snatched the headset off and slapped him twice, hard; and when his eyelids fluttered, Matt pulled him to his feet and pushed him at the door.

Watson and Chek finished pushing buttons and left, running, shoving around Hood.

"Come on!" Hood yelled from the doorway. Panic was in his voice. But Matt stood rooted by the thing on the floor.

The guard. They'd torn him to pieces!

Matt was back in the organ banks, frozen rigid by horror.

"Keller!"

Matt stooped, picked up something soft and wet. His expression was very strange. He stepped to the door, hesitated a moment, then drew two sweeping arcs and three small closed curves on its gleaming metal surface. He hurled the warm thing backhand, turned, and ran. The two men and Laney charged down the hall, trying to catch the swarm.

The swarm poured down the stairs like a waterfall: a close-packed mass, running and stumbling against each other and brushing against walls and banisters and generally making a hell of a lot of noise. Harry Kane led. A cold certainty was in his heart, the knowledge that he would be first to fall when they met the first armed guard. But by then the swarm should have unstoppable momentum.

The first armed guard was several yards beyond the first corner. He turned and stared as if his eyes beheld a miracle. He hadn't moved when the mob reached him. Someone actually had the sense to take his gun. A tall blond man got it and immediately forced his way to the front, waving it and yelling for room. The swarm flowed around and over the limp Implementation policeman.

This hallway was long, lined with doors on both sides. Every door seemed to be swinging open at once. The man with the gun closed his fist on the trigger and waved it slowly up and down the hall. Heads peered out the doors, paused, and were followed by falling bodies. The colonist swarm slowed to pick their way around the crewish and half-crewish fallen. Nonetheless, the fallen were all badly or mortally injured when the swarm passed. Implementation used mercy-weapons because they needed their prisoners intact. The swarm had no such motive for mercy.

The swarm was stretching now, dividing the fast from the slow, as Kane reached the end of the hall. He rounded the turn in a clump of six ....

Two police were parked indolently against opposite walls, steaming cups in their hands, their heads turned to see where the noise was coming from. For a magic moment they stayed that way .... and then their cups flew wide, trailing spiral nebulae of brown fluid, and their guns came up like flowing light. Harry Kane fell with a buzzing in his ears. But his last glimpse of the corridor showed him that the police were falling too.

He lay like a broken doll, with his head swimming and his eyes blurring and his body, as numb as a frozen plucked chicken. Feet pounded past and over him. Through the blanketing numbness he dimly sensed himself being kicked.

Abruptly four hands gripped his wrists and ankles, and he was off again, swaying and jouncing between his rescuers. Harry Kane was pleased. His opinion of mobs was low. This mob was behaving better than he had expected. Through the buzzing in his ears he heard a siren.

At the bottom of the stairs they reached the tail of the swarm Hobart was scared Hobart was scared — Laney in the lead, Matt and Jay Hood following. Matt panted, "Stay! Got ... gun."

Laney saw the point and slowed. Matt could guard the rear. If they tried to reach the front of the swarm, they'd be stuck in the middle, and the sonic would be useless.

But nobody came at them from the rear. There were noises ahead, and they passed sprawled bodies: one policeman, then a string of men and women in lab smocks. Matt found his stomach trying to turn inside out. The rebels' viciousness was appalling. So was Hood's grin: a tight killer's grin, making a lie of his scholar's face.

Ahead, more commotion. Two men stopped to lift a heavy sprawled figure and continued running. Harry Kane was out of the action. "Hope somebody's leading them!" Hood shouted.

A siren blared in the corridors. It was loud enough to wake the Mist Demons, to send them screaming into the sky for a little peace. It jarred the concrete; it shook the very bones of a man. There was a rattling clang, barely heard above the siren. An iron door bad dropped into the swarm, cutting it in two. One man was emphatically dead beneath it. The tail of the swarm, including perhaps a dozen men and women, washed against the steel door and rebounded.

Trapped. The other end of the corridor was also blocked. But doors lined both sides. One man took off, running down the hallway toward the far end, swiveling his head back and forth to look briefly through the open doors, ignoring the closed ones. "Here!" he shouted, waving an arm. Wordlessly the others followed.

It was a lounge, a relaxation room, furnished with four wide couches, scattered chairs, two card tables, and a huge coffee dispenser. And a picture window. As Matt reached the door, the window already gaped wide, showing sharp glass teeth. The man who'd found the room was using a chair to clean the glass away.

An almost soundless hum ... and Matt felt the numbness of a sonic beamer. From the doorway! He slammed the door and it stopped.

Automatics?

"Benny!" Laney shouted, picking up one end of a couch. The man at the window dropped his chair and ran to take the other end. He'd been one of Laney's escorts the night of the party. Together they dropped the couch across the windowsill, over the broken glass. Colonists began to climb over it.

Hood had found a closet and opened it. It was like opening Pandora's box. Matt saw half-a-dozen men in white smocks swarm over Hood. In seconds they would have torn him to ribbons. Matt used his sonic. They all went down in a lump, including Hood. Matt pulled him out, draped him over a shoulder, and followed the others over the couch. Hood was heavier than he looked.

Matt had to drop him on the grass and follow him down. Far across the lawn was the Hospital wall, leaning outward, the top laced with wires that leaned inward. Very thin wire, just barely visible through the thin fog. Matt picked Hood up, glanced around, saw the others running alongside the building with the tall man named Benny in the lead. He staggered after them.

They reached a corner — the Hospital seemed to have a million corners — stopped sharply, and backed up, milling. Guards coming? Matt put Hood down, hefted his sonic —

A gun and hand emerged questing from the broken picture window. Matt fired and the man slumped. But he knew there must be others in there. Matt ducked beneath the window, rose suddenly, and fired in. Half-a-dozen police fired back. Matt's right side and arm went numb; he dropped the gun, then himself dropped below the sill. In a moment they'd be peering over — The man named Benny was running toward him. Matt threw the first policeman's sonic to him and picked up his own with his left hand.

The men inside hadn't expected Benny. They were trying to fire over the sill at Matt, and to do that they had to lean out. In half a minute it was over.

Benny said, "There's a carport just beyond that corner. Guarded."

"Do they know we're here?"

"I don't think so. The Mist Demons have given us a mist." Benny smiled at his own pun.

"Good. We can use these guns. You'll have to carry Jay; my arm's out."

"Jay's the only one who can fly."

"I can," said Matt.