Brothers to Dragons (30 page)

At the summit he paused. He could see lights in all directions as a dozen Tandymen were activated and responded to their remote controllers.

One of them stood below the mound right in front of Job, no more than twenty yards away. He was about to run along the top of the ridge when he saw that the Tandyman was not moving. It had not yet been activated.

Job plunged down the side of the mound and straight to the Tandyman's back. He pulled open the spring-loaded door and squeezed through to the interior. It was utterly dark, but as he dropped into the seat the remote control console blinked to life. Job used its light to slam the lever into position for manual override, one second before the remote operator achieved full control.

The front and rear viewing screens turned on automatically. He took one quick look at the scene provided by the cameras. Four Tandymen were converging on his position. Without waiting to find out if they had seen him, Job sent his Tandyman straight up the side of the nearest mountain of trash.

The tracked wheels spun and raced. Six articulated legs thrust and jerked and scrabbled for purchase. Then they were at the top and over, descending the other side in a cascade of falling junk.

Job turned on the headlights, revved up to maximum speed, and roared away along a dark canyon through the debris.

He could see half a dozen pursuing Tandymen in his rear viewer, but they were a long way back. The remotely controlled units lacked the fine coordination of his manually operated Tandyman, and they could not take his desperate route over the top of the trash mountain. But their sensors were as good as his. They could certainly follow his lights and his sound. There would be scores of them after him, and they had all the time in the world.

Job had only one advantage: they could have no idea of his particular destination.

But where
was
that destination? The turns and twists within the drop-off zone had left him with no sense of direction. As his Tandyman roared along another corridor and into the open land beyond Tandy Center, he tried to find his bearings.

Before he had time to scan the land and sky ahead he had reached the line of men and woman guarding Tandy Center. They had been settling down for the night, but as the Tandyman roared towards them they scattered. Job heard the rattle of bullets on the metal around him, then he was plunging through the line. Two men and a woman did not move quickly enough. The rushing Tandyman hit them, and the vehicle lurched as it ground their bodies beneath its metal treads.

Job shuddered and drove on. He was desperately seeking a reference point. There was no moon. The Tandyman's range of upward vision was enough to allow him to see the stars, but he did not know how to use them to determine direction.

Soon it should be eight o'clock. The eastern road out of Xanadu would open, and Job did not know how to get there.

The rear viewer showed the searchlights of half a dozen Tandymen, following his path. They were far behind. He fixed a straight course away from the central dump and bent over the control panel. There was no compass—none had ever been considered necessary—but surely
something
in the controls would serve to tell him direction.

He examined every instrument. There was nothing. But the tiny ruby light showing the Tandyman to be under manual control gave him a last-hope idea. He stopped, turned off the engine, and shifted the lever to remove the robot from manual override. The remote control console began to blink; in the same moment Job was pushing open the door and scrambling outside.

He moved a few steps away from the Tandyman and looked up. The directional antenna on the metal body was moving, homing on the transmitted radio signal. It made a quarter-turn, then steadied around a fixed direction. While it was still locking in, Job was back at the door in the rear of the Tandyman and climbing inside.

The pursuing Tandymen were only a couple of hundred yards away when he took over manual control again, started the engine, and roared off.

The Tandyman were remotely controlled from Headquarters, in the far south of Xanadu. The antenna locking on the signal from that direction told Job that he had been heading the wrong way, towards the southwest of Tandy Center. He began to angle south, then gradually east, shifting his bearing little by little so that he did not run too close to the Tandymen who chased him.

He was at maximum throttle, but he could not increase his lead. The vehicles behind him had fanned out into an arc, always a couple of hundred yards away. They were being systematic in their pursuit. If he made a sudden turn towards any of them, the whole group would not hesitate to ram him. Tandymen were valuable, but tonight any of them was expendable.

Far to the north Job could see the lights of the cordon around Tandy Center. They provided him with a useful reference point as he spiraled steadily around to a northeast heading. He was following a long, curved path that would bring him tangent to the eastern road by which he had first entered Xanadu.

When he felt heavy vibration as the metal treads left the soft earth of Xanadu for the concrete surface of the road, he had a new worry. Was he too
early
? It seemed like hours since he had climbed into the Tandyman, but that was subjective time. Tandymen could run at more than thirty miles an hour, and he had been pushing along at maximum speed. It could be little more than half an hour since he left Tandy Center.

It was too late to change his mind. The fence was less than half a mile away, rushing closer. He was up to it in seconds.

If the ring ofguarding lasers had not been turned off . . .

Job gritted his teeth and wondered if he would have time to realize that he was being vaporized before he died. Then he was through, with the fence behind him.

He was outside Xanadu.

Before he could take pleasure in that thought, he saw that his pursuers were still coming after him. They were at the fence—passing through it —

The night turned blue. Laser beams sprang out across the dark land. Where the Tandymen had been, fountains of sparks and blossoming fireballs illuminated the boundary fence. Watching in his rear viewer, Job saw fragments blown high into the air, to be hit again and again until they were reduced to a fine rain of exploded plastic and liquid metal.

He drove on. In ten minutes all evidence of the Nebraska Tandy was out of sight behind him. Job turned off the engine and leaned back in his seat. He felt in his pocket, took out the two vials, and sat staring at them in the control board light.

In Tandy Center he had been forced to action. But that action had still followed Wilfred Dell's agenda: enter Xanadu, learn what Hanna Kronberg was doing, and escape with proof of it. Job had done just that, and he had with him exactly what Dell needed to persuade others.

And now?

It seemed to Job that every action in his whole life had been forced on him by others. It was fear, death, and Colonel della Porta that first made him quit Cloak House. The drug delivery that led to his capture in the Mall Compound had been pushed on him by Miss Magnolia. Starvation had forced him to leave Cloak House for a second time; after his second capture, Wilfred Dell had made him go to Xanadu. Gormish's words had roused him to escape from Tandy Center. He had
always
been no better than a human Tandyman, driven along by remote control.

It was time to change. For the first—and only—time in his life he was going to make a decision of his own.

He picked up one of the vials. And then he hesitated. Maybe he was about to make a too-hasty action. But wasn't that always true? Was there ever enough time in life to evaluate any major decision completely?

He thought of Father Bonifant's words, from so long ago.
Remember, an easy question can have an easy answer. But a hard question must have a hard answer. And for the hardest questions of all, there may be no answer—except faith.

Job removed the stopper from the vial. He had faith. He was doing the right thing. He poured the contents into the hollow of his hand and rubbed it onto his face and neck and the skin of his forearm.

The yellow liquid penetrated his open sores with agonizing speed. He was still gasping and writhing when a supersonic helicopter screamed out of the eastern night sky and feathered down to land beside the silent Tandyman.

Chapter Twenty

So Job died, being old and full of days.

—The Book of Job, Chapter 42, Verse 17

The journey to Xanadu had been seven days of misery. The return to the Mall Compound took less than two hours.

During the trip Wilfred Dell made an inflight call to Job and asked three questions.

"Did you find out what's going on with Hanna Kronberg?"

"Yes." Job had seen Dell's puzzled look when communication was first established. The bald, mud-caked and suppurating object that Job had become bore little resemblance to the young man whom Dell had sent to the Nebraska Tandy.

"Is what you found out important?"

"Very." If Dell did not comment on his appearance, neither would Job.

"Did you bring proof—I mean
proof
, not hearsay and impressions—of what you found?"

"I brought proof."

"Good. I'm busy now. I'll set up a meeting for when you get here."

Dell was gone. Job lay back on the makeshift bed in the rear of the helicopter. He could feel the changes taking place inside him. They were bad, and about to get worse; he must endure them for at least a few hours more.

The helicopter pilot ignored the airport across the river and flew directly to the Mall Compound. It was still one hour short of midnight when Job found himself again in the glass-sided elevator, ascending the tall, square-sided tower that dominated the Compound. Dell's office when he entered had changed a little. The top of the wooden desk had been cleared, and different oil paintings hung on the walls.

But there had been no visible change to Wilfred Dell. The cherub's face above the massive dwarf's body still carried its half-smile as he greeted Job.

"Welcome back. I thought your return deserved something of a formal reception." He spread his short arms wide to take in the three other people in the room. "The Honorable Reginald Brook. Senator Graydon Walsh, Senator Horatio Waldo Nelson. This young man—a little the worse for wear—is Job Napoleon Salk. He is here to present the report of his trip to the Nebraska Tandy."

The nods to Job were barely visible, but there was curiosity in their eyes. What could this ragged, battered wreck have to offer, of possible interest to
us
? It was clear to Job that Dell was playing for effect, stroking the egos of the other three by pointing out that they were to hear the report as soon as anyone.

"You mean he went right, er,
inside
the Tandy?" said Senator Walsh. He and Reginald Brook were Job's mental image of a powerful political person: tall, lean, aristocratic, and languid. But their eyes lacked Dell's luminous intelligence.

"Right inside, and back out again." Wilfred Dell was beaming. "But only just. Five minutes earlier, and the perimeter defense would have annihilated him. Did you know you were so early, Job?"

"No. I thought I was almost too
late.
Everything a few seconds behind me was wiped out."

"Naturally. At my direction." Dell glanced smugly at the others. "I decided that we were only interested in the
first
vehicle to emerge. The rest could be destroyed; it was not my intent to encourage a mass exodus." He turned again to Job. "The hour is late, and the senators and I have another engagement tonight. Keep it short. Details can wait until morning."

"I'll be brief. But I have to give you a little background." Job sat down uninvited. Flakes of dried mud fell off him onto the chair and into the thick pile of the pink carpet. "I don't know what was originally intended when the Tandies were used to exile criminals and undesirables, but I can tell you what the effect has been. There have always been people in the world who hated government, or were cruel, or were indifferent to the needs of others. Those people used to be mixed in with everyone else. But with the Tandy exile program, the hatred and cruelty and indifference have been
concentrated
, distilled out and sent to a few isolated sites. And now all that hatred is directed
outward
, to the world beyond the Tandies."

"Get on with it," said Dell impatiently. "We know all that, and it's not important." Already Senator Nelson was fidgeting in his seat.

Job took a deep breath. He had rehearsed this mentally for two hours, but he could not say it all in thirty seconds. "It's important now, Mr. Dell. Your intuition was quite correct. The Nebraska Tandy
is
dangerous— to everyone. Its leaders are full of hate. They have been working on a project designed to kill every person in the country, perhaps in the world. Only Tandy residents will be spared."

He had certainly regained their attention.

"Xanadu is different from most Tandies," Job went on. "It not only serves as a concentration camp for ordinary criminals, it is also the main exile point for
scientists.
So far as they can, most of those exiled still pursue their scientific work. There is particular capability in biological research, and some outstanding minds have been sent to Xanadu. A few years ago, the Big Three who control the Tandy decided to take advantage of those talents. They demanded a synthetic plague, one with a hundred percent kill rate, which only those with prior immunization—people inside the Tandy—would survive. I don't know what pressures the leaders of Xanadu applied to the scientists, to make them do what they were told, but it worked. The researchers did almost exactly what was asked of them. They took natural microorganisms and modified them using recombinant DNA techniques; they gave the leaders their artificial plague."

Job reached into his pocket and pulled out a sealed vial with an orange stopper. It was full of cloudy yellow liquid. "Here it is. The killing contagion. It's a lethal variant of an old, extinct disease called smallpox. The only other place in the world where it exists is in the Techville labs of the Nebraska Tandy."