Armor (32 page)

He began to snore. I wanted to kick him. The idea of his just running away, with the City heating up and the Project finally getting down to workhell, because of those things he ran away.

“You poor dumb drunken jerk,” I said to him and turned away for good.

The funny thing about it, I thought as I walked back up the slope, or rather the unfunny thing about it, was that it sort of fitted. Lewis was, after all, the last piece this mess really needed. He had performed his function. If everything is to foul up, one must have a place for it. And Sanction was just the place.

“Everything all right, Mr. Crow?” asked the contralto as I passed the bridge. “Is Mr. Lewis okay?”

“Fine,” I answered without turning, “if you like the type.”

I kept walking to the ramp and up it and into the dome. I was surprised that I felt, suddenly, better. Not good yet. Not yet, and maybe not for a while to come. But. . . better. Bad as it was, and bad as it was going to get bad as I was gonna get, I was no Lewis.

And even better, maybe I was still Crow.

Karen was in my bed. She flipped on the light as I entered the bedroom, brushed her hair out of her eyes, and smiled.

I started to say something but stopped myself just in time.

Thank God; it was a no speak moment.

I got out of everything and slid under the sheets from the other side. We lay there, parallel but separated, and looked at one another. Her smile had gone. It stayed gone for the several seconds we lay there.

“Good night,” I said at last, scrunching my pillow meaningfully.

She looked at me coolly. Then, with equal cool, nodded.

“Good night,” she said as well and turned off the light.

It was still a couple of seconds, then. . .

She was there and soft and pliant and demanding and everything about the touch of her was what it should have been after the look of it. She broke off and away an inch or two and said: “Well, where else was I going to go, Lewis?”

I laughed and drove my smile across her lips and my hands onto her breasts and my hips onto hers. Hot damn.

In the dream the Suit had somehow gotten loose.

It pursued us, rushed at us across the suddenly vast expanse of the shiny smooth lab floor. Ripped and torn electrical feeds trailed behind it as it swelled toward us. They hadn’t been strong enough to hold it.

“Run, everybody! Run!” screamed Lya at the throng of over a hundred who had for some reason become trapped down there with us. She shooed them like cattle toward the seal and safety but in their panic they were jamming themselves tight.

Holly was at some immense upright panel, the mad scientist, yelling: “Don’t panic! Don’t panic! I’ll think of something!” and working frantically at the keys. I tried to pull him away to safety but he wouldn’t budge. His grip was surprisingly strong with conviction. In disgust I reached down and jerked loose the panel’s power feeds but still Holly wouldn’t run, wouldn’t come. Lya screamed. . .

The Suit was upon us, sweeping horribly at us soundlessly,

reaching its murderous armored hands toward us, black plassteel talons forming. . .

And Lewis was there by my side and he held out a jug of syntho and said: “Here. Just. . . here”” like that was all it was going to take and without thinking, I grabbed him and shoved him across the path of the Suit, to1 don’t know distract it maybe so that I could. . . .

Black arms struck out like serpents’ tongues, snatching Lewis in midslide, grabbing him to its chest in a crumpled heap and the slick black face of it, the evil smooth sheen of it, opened, revealing a wide black mouth of razor-sharp lips and the head tilted back and then darted abruptly forward and down across Lewis’s throat, slicing and ripping out huge chunks of flesh and bone and cartilage and muscle and the blood spurted horribly. . . .

And then we were alone, the three of us. Lewis dead at its feet and it straightened up, blood streaming from its face and those thin razor lips twisting into an evil plassteel smile.

“. . . Jack! Wake up! It’s all right! It’s all right!” Karen said, her arms managing to both shake me awake and comfort me all at once.

I found myself. I started to sit up, then relaxed into her. There was no sound for several moments but our breathing as it slowed, slowed, became steady.

“Well, at least you’re getting better at this,” I offered, for something to say.

She didn’t laugh. But neither did she leave.

It was going to be a big day. I could feel it.

It was barely midmorning and I had already been at the lab for hours. Amazingly, I was filled with a fiercely vibrant energy. It was innervating, exciting, rich. I couldn’t wait to get to it.

Something was going to happen today. Something. . . conclusive. Something definite and explanatory and maybe . . . maybe good, I thought.

I was a fool.

The up-to-date list of Felix’s drops was on the screen in front of me. I had already gone over it a dozen times. I keyed up a summary: elapsed time approximately six months standard, just under two of that under direct medical supervision. Eighteen drops, twelve of them majors. Four trips to
ICU
, nine medicals. We figured around a dozen broken bones, at least that many separations or tearings of tendons and muscles and major joint groups. Three head injuries, none requiring surgery. We couldn’t be sure, of course. We only felt what we thought he felt as a broken bone or whatever.

In addition, Felix had been picked up on the last sweep for survivors on three separate occasions. Twice he had been the only survivor.

“You were really something,” I said, half aloud.

“Talking to ourselves, are we now?” asked Lya brightly as she swept into the room. “It’s come to this, has it?”

I returned her smile. She had the same look as I did, I noted. I rubbed my hands together. It was going to be a big day.

“Look at this. Jack,” said Holly from the doorway to his office. Then, seeing Lya, “look at this. Honey.”

The warmth in his voice was plain. The returning glow of her quick acknowledgment was equally clear. Maybe not as perfect as before, but the Couple was again a fact.

Holly had that look, too. Bright eyes, eager anticipation.

We were all fools.

He held a high security coil up before us and shook it. “You know what this is? A priority beam from the Court of Nobles on are you ready? Golden.”

“You’re kidding,” said Lya.

Holly shook his head. “Not a bit.”

“What do they want?” I asked.

He smiled, shook his head in wonder. “They want to know and this is practically a quote what the reason was for our inquiry at the Biblioterre …”

“How did they find out?” exclaimed Lya.

“When you’re dealing with Golden, you’re dealing Big Time,” I offered.

Holly nodded. “Quite true. I’m not surprised, really. They really are the. . . Oh! I didn’t tell you the rest. They also asked if the reason we are asking is because we have knowledge of. . .” He shook his head. “This is incredible.” “Well, come on, Holly!” snapped Lya impatiently.

He smiled. “They want to know if we know where their Guardian is.”

We stared at him, Lya and 1. We stared at each other. We stared at him again. We stared at the coil in his hand. I rose slowly to my feet. Holly was right; it was incredible.

“You mean …” stuttered Lya, her eyes wide and unbelieving, “you mean to tell me that they’ve. . . lost. . . their sovereign???’

I was staring out the window of the conference room, the one that overlooked the lab and the loungers and the console. And the suit.

“Until now,” I said.

So strapped in and ready to go, the three of us exchanging confident last smiles and pressings of hands, the least of our agreements. For we had decided to Immerse three times today. In one day. For the first time. My arm still tingled from the injection of vitamins and timerelease stimules.

We were all so incredibly, wildly, maddeningly, eager. Something was going to happen. We knew it. We just knew it. Of course we were still apprehensive. Still frightened down in there somewhere. And the feelings of guilt were in there too, alongside the powerful inadequacy hue. But we had been through so much already and come through. We had strained and sweated and ached with this and come out of it. It had wrenched us about, turned us this way and that way and we had done even worse in our tortured acceptance. We had been. . . well, through Hell. What couldn’t we handle now? Fools!

We didn’t know what Hell was.

PART
FOUR

EVERYBODY’S
HERO

I

Felix knew it wasn’t going to work.

He stood up slowly and stepped again to the crest of the ridge and peeked out. A quarter of a kilometer or so below him, the hourglass shape of the Transit Cone faded luminescently in and out of sight with the shifting gusts of Banshee sand. It was an oddly dreamlike scene. He had never seen its like before. Usually the Cone was invisible to the unaided eye. But today the sun had been just right, the texture and composition of the sands just right, so that the outline became intermittently visible. He admired the sweep of lines that narrowed so tightly ten meters above the ground before swelling outward to form the skirt of the Cone. A sudden gust, stronger than any so far and bearing more sand, caused, for just a moment, almost the entire shape to form. It was very pretty.

Felix turned his head to see if any of the others had seen it. But they were busy at the bottom of the dune. Resting or moaning or simply sitting there where they had collapsed, waiting for painers to take effect and staring straight ahead and fearing.

Or dying, Felix amended to himself. At least two of the six are busy with that.

He sighed, turned back around. The gust had receded. Only the lowest part of the skirt was visible. And even that was partially obscured by the semicircle of ants standing protectively around it and waiting.

Waiting for us, he thought.

“How do they know?” said a voice on proximity band from close by.

Felix turned to see Michalk had crawled up beside him. The warrior looked terrible. The sand covered his entire suit save for the small area of the face plate. It was the blood, of course. Felix knew that. The black ant blood. It got on the plassteel and stayed there, cloying, to be covered over by layers of alien soil that would normally have slid off. And it didn’t mean anything. It didn’t affect a suit’s performance in any way. Felix knew that, too. But it was ugly. A particularly gruesome badge of battle. A ghoulish reminder of what had just happened and what was about to happen and. . Felix hated the sight of Michalk because he knew his own black scout suit must look the same.

“How do they know?” Michalk repeated. “How did they learn to stand there and wait for us?”

Felix shrugged. “How do they know we’re here, as far as that goes?”

Michalk nodded, a brutal gesture in his huge warrior suit.

“But they always seem to, don’t they?”

“They have since I’ve been here.”

Michalk regarded him for some seconds. “How long is that, Felix? How long have you been here?”

Felix looked at him. The warrior’s anxious eyes could just be made out behind the faceplate.

“It’s just,” Michalk added uneasily, “that some of us were wondering.”

Felix nodded. “What’s the date?”

“Huh? Oh. Uh, it’s December standard.”

Felix thought a moment. “Six months.”

Michalk stared. “Six. . . six months? But. . . Felix? You’ve been here six months? You mean six months on Active? As a warrior?”

“As a scout.”

Michalk opened his mouth to speak, closed it. He was silent for several beats. Then: “How many drops?” he asked, in a soft whisper.

“Nineteen,” said Felix. “This is nineteen.”

Michalk continued to stare. Maybe he doesn’t believe me, Felix thought. Maybe he shouldn’t. I know I don’t believe it. “How many majors?” Michalk persisted.

Felix sighed. He had no idea. Further, he had no interest whatsoever in dredging back to find out. He shrugged, said:

“Some.”

“Some?” parroted Michalk. “Most?”

Felix nodded. “Most,” he agreed woodenly.

“Shit,” whispered Michalk to himself. “I wonder where that puts you on the stat?”

Felix eyed him uneasily. There had been someone else, a long time ago it seemed, who had talked about stats. “You’re a one, Felix,” he had said. Now who was that? He shook his head. It didn’t matter. He nudged Michalk.

“How’s Gao?”

“Huh? Oh. He died a minute ago.”

Felix nodded. Down to five. “And Li?”

Michalk looked away, into the distance. “She’s going.

Too tough for her own good.”

“Yes,” Felix persisted, trying to keep a patient tone. “But how long?”

Michalk looked at him. “Soon,” he said coldly.

Felix knew he wouldn’t get any more. He slid down the dune to the others. He hesitated when he saw Goermann, the captain, sitting hunched over against the wall of the gulley which had been eroded at the bottom of the dune. Felix was certain the man had been sitting in the exact same position several moments before when they had last spoken. Was he dead? Or just gone.

A harsh scream groan of anguished remorse blared quickly in his earphones and receded. Felix turned toward the other end of the gulley where a medico, his blue warrior suit long covered by the same blood and sand as the rest, knelt over the frozen, spread-eagled form of a warrior whose suit had gone into Traction Mode. Felix remembered the spinal injury that had triggered the Mode. He had dismembered in passing the ant that had been holding Li pinned down against a rock while another ant raked hulking mandibles across her back.

The Medico, Patriche, swayed slightly on his knees. Muffled rumbles of partially controlled grief slowly faded from hearing. With a last fond pat of a huge armored arm on the statuelike chest, the Medico stood and turned away.

So, Felix thought, down to four. Time to do it. He turned again toward the still immobile captain. Time to do it, he thought again. Even though he knew it wasn’t going to work.

He knelt down before him. Goermann lifted his head and regarded him in silence.