Death Wave (35 page)

They reached the door to her room. Castiglione was smiling toothily beside her.

“Allow me,” he said as he opened the unlocked door and pushed it wide.

Aditi's quarters consisted of a single room. It was very spacious, with two narrow screened windows and a scattering of furniture that looked to her as if the pieces had been picked hurriedly and slapped in place by someone with little sense of style. Still, it was comfortable enough. The king-sized bed off in the far corner, away from the windows, was neatly made up. A human-form robot stood next to the lavatory door, inert until commanded into labor.

There was a comfortable couch just big enough for two across from the bed. Aditi saw that a champagne bucket and two fluted glasses had been placed on the coffee table in front of it.

“Oh,” she gasped.

“Surprised?” Castiglione asked, stepping into the room. “It's only the local wine, but I'm told it's quite good.”

“Rudy, I've already had too much wine,” Aditi said, still hanging back in the doorway. “I'm tired, and—”

He grasped her wrist and tugged her into the room. “And you want to go to bed,” he said. “So do I.”

 

ACTION

Chandra Natarajan was the director of security for habitat
Gandhi.
He was a very large man, in every physical sense: almost two full meters tall, dark of skin, round of face and belly, he outweighed any two of his soft-spoken, submissive assistants. He was given to laughter, and enjoyed his life in the habitat, where his duties were almost entirely pro forma and he could spend plenty of time with his much shorter but equally round wife and their seven children.

So it was something of a rude shock when his assistant phoned him in the middle of dinner and told him that the acting security chief of the World Council was making demands upon him.

Seated at the head of his dinner table, Natarajan bellowed at the holographic image in the wall viewer, “Can't you see I'm having dinner with my family?” His voice could be even larger than his girth, when he chose.

The assistant writhed with a combination of dread and shame. “But she was most insistent, sir. She demands that we—”

“Demands? Of me?”

“Not you personally, of course…”

Natarajan saw that his wife and all seven of his children were staring at him, absolutely silent, awestruck at his justifiable anger.

“She wants us to have the old temple surrounded?”

“Yes, sir. I know it's unusual, but—”

“Surround it, then.”

“Sir?”

His tone moderating a bit, Natarajan said, “We are always happy to cooperate with the World Council. Surround the temple. Nobody in or out.”

“Yessir!”

More ominously, he growled, “And let me get back to my dinner.” Silently, he added, You toad.

*   *   *

The window was within arm's reach, Jordan saw. Steady now, old man, he told himself. Wouldn't do to get this far and then fall like a stupid ass.

As he stretched his arm to the windowsill, he saw his wristwatch. Only six minutes had elapsed since he'd started climbing. Seems like six hours, he thought.

The window was screened, he saw. Why screened, he wondered, in this artificial habitat? Then he remembered the farm fields and pasturelands he had seen. They must have insects, just as we do on Earth. And old-fashioned screens instead of energy barriers. Are they being faithful to the original temple's design or merely behind the times? Is Mitch's company restricting its sales to Earth?

Very well, then. Clambering to the window, Jordan carefully planted both feet on the sill and rose to his full height, gripping the window's edges. He didn't dare look down. Cree and his team are watching, he told himself. They'll give me five minutes to find Aditi and then they'll go around front and start making a rumpus.

Holding on to the sides of the stone frame as firmly as he could, he kicked at the screen. It buckled. Jordan drew in a breath and then kicked again, harder. The screen clattered to the floor of the room inside.

He froze for an instant, then realized that even if the noise attracted someone, it would be better to meet him inside the room rather than balancing perilously on this windowsill.

He stepped down onto the floor of the darkened room and realized he was soaked with sweat. No more climbing for you, old boy, he said to himself.

Aside from the faint nighttime glow coming from the window, the only light in the room was from the crack beneath the door that led out, he presumed, into a corridor. Peering into the shadows, Jordan saw that the room looked like an oversized closet, or perhaps a storeroom. Boxes stacked up along one wall, and a little desk jammed against the other.

He tiptoed to the door and listened. Nothing outside. Wait! He heard voices, muffled by the door's thickness, but discernible as a man's and a woman's. Aditi!

Opening the door a crack, he saw one of the rooms down the hall had its door open. Aditi's voice was coming from there. The other voice was Castiglione's, he felt certain.

Glancing up and down the hallway, he saw that all the other doors were closed. Lord knows how many men are behind those doors, he thought. Well … imitate the action of the tiger.

Jordan tiptoed noiselessly down the hallway.

Aditi was saying, “I don't want any wine. I want you to leave. Now.”

And Castiglione replied, “No more coyness, beautiful one. You are alone here. I have given the security guards strict orders to stay on the ground floor. Now be reasonable. You are attracted to me, aren't you?”

Stepping through the open doorway, too angry to speak a word, Jordan pushed the door shut. Aditi's eyes went wide at the sight of him. Castiglione whirled around when he heard the door click shut.

“That's my wife you're speaking to,” Jordan choked out.

Castiglione quickly recovered from his surprise. “Jordan Kell! So you've come to be with your wife.”

“I've come to take her away from you.”

A sly smile snaking across his face, Castiglione asked, “And how do you propose to do that? There are half a dozen security guards downstairs.”

“They'll be busy,” Jordan said, advancing toward Castiglione. Aditi stood immobile, like a statue, her eyes riveted on Jordan.

“Even so,” Castiglione said, “I can take care of you myself.” And he whipped a slim pistol from beneath his jacket.

Jordan saw that it wasn't a tranquilizer gun: it fired bullets. It could kill. He felt suddenly defenseless. And stupid.

“It wouldn't do for you to kill me,” he heard himself argue. “Halleck wouldn't like being responsible for the death of the star traveler. What kind of protective custody would that be?”

His smile turning disdainful, Castiglione said, “Oh, I won't have to kill you. Just cripple you with a shot in the leg. Kneecapping, I believe it's called.”

Aditi's face radiated smoldering fury. She turned and yanked the wine bottle from its ice bucket. The noise made Castiglione turn his head toward her. Jordan leaped at him as Aditi swung the bottle with both hands at his face.

Castiglione reflexively raised his arm to block Aditi's swing as Jordan hit him with a rugby block and grabbed for the pistol. The gun went off with a
pop, pop, pop
sound as all three of them tumbled to the floor.

Castiglione shoved Aditi off him but Jordan grabbed for the gun and tried to wrestle it out of his hand. Again the pistol fired, up into the air. Castiglione swung his free fist into Jordan's ribs and the air exploded out of Jordan's lungs. But he still kept both his hands on Castiglione's wrist, twisting it as hard as he could.

Aditi got to her knees and swung the bottle again, at Castiglione's face. He screamed as the bottle crunched his nose. Jordan at last yanked the gun free and jammed it into the man's bleeding face.

“My nose,” Castiglione bleated. He lapsed into Italian. Jordan recognized a blistering string of choice profanity.

Staggering to his feet, Jordan held the pistol on Castiglione's supine figure, puffing, “I've never killed a man, but I wouldn't mind starting with you.”

Then he saw that Aditi was bleeding.

 

ESCAPE

Cree pounded on the wooden front door of the temple until an angry-faced man yanked it open. He was obviously one of the World Council security guards, Cree immediately recognized: burly, tightly curled auburn hair cut flat as a drill field, jacket flapping across his taut midsection.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded in international English. “What the hell do you want?”

“We want to see the temple,” Cree said, smiling as though he were drunk. Over the man's shoulder he could see the temple's entryway, with a fancy spiral staircase winding upstairs.

“This isn't a tourist attraction anymore. Go home.”

“Home's a zillion kilometers from here.”

A slight
pop, pop, pop
sound, from somewhere above. The guard looked up over his shoulder. “What was that?” he yelled into the depths of the entryway.

“Sounded like a gun going off,” said another guard, walking into the light, his head craning up the curving staircase.

“Better get up,” said the man at the door.

Pulling his pistol from beneath his jacket, Cree said, “Take it easy, pal.” He reached into the guard's jacket and yanked his gun from its holster. “You too, buddy.”

Cree's two companions disarmed the other World Council agent.

“How many others inside?” he asked.

“You can't get away with this,” the big redhead snarled. “We're with the World Council, you dumb shit!”

With a lazy smile, Cree said, “Yeah, and it's gonna look great on your dossier that you let a private security agent take you.”

*   *   *

“Aditi!” Jordan blurted.

“It's only a scratch,” she said. But her left hand was clamped on her upper right arm. Blood was seeping through her fingers down the arm, dripping onto the carpet.

Turning to Castiglione, still flat on his back, Jordan snarled, “I ought to kill you!”

Aditi stepped toward Jordan. “It was an accident, Jordan. He didn't mean to hurt me.”

No, Jordan thought. He meant to hurt me. To cripple me. With a smile on his face.

“We've got to get out of here,” he said to Aditi. “Can you walk?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Come on, then.” He slid an arm around her shoulder and started for the door.

“What about Rudy?” Aditi asked.

Turning back to Castiglione, who still had both hands pressed to his broken nose and tears streaming down his cheeks, Jordan demanded, “Give me your phone.”

Castiglione fumbled in his trousers pocket and pulled out the slim, oblong device. Jordan bent down and took it from his hand, then straightened and looked around the room. Spotting the phone console on the bedside table, he fired at it. It shattered on his first shot.

“Let's go,” he said to Aditi.

“Where?”

Yes, where, Jordan asked himself. I can't expect her to climb down the outside wall with her arm hurt. She won't even be able to hold on to me if I try to rappel down on the buckyball cable.

Pointing with the pistol, Jordan asked again, “Can you walk?”

“Yes!”

“Down to the ground floor, then,” he said, hoping that Cree and his two partners had neutralized the World Council security team.

The winding stone stairs looked endless, but in less than two minutes they reached their base and the entryway, where Cree and his men were holding six others, including two women, at bay.

“Let's get out of here,” Jordan said to him as he stepped onto the entryway's stone floor, still holding one arm around Aditi's slim waist.

“She's hurt,” Cree said.

“Yes. Come on, we've got to get away.”

“I've already called for a minibus.”

“Good.”

The leader of the World Council team said, “Where do you think you're going? You can't get off this habitat and you can't hide in it for long.”

Jordan almost smiled. “You underestimate the power of the news media.”

An automated minibus was pulling up the driveway as they left the building. Cree's men had taken the security team's guns and phones, but Jordan knew it was only a matter of minutes—perhaps less—before other security guards would come swarming over the area.

They bundled into the minibus, Aditi's arm still bleeding. Cree gave the guidance system the name of the hotel where they were staying and the brightly colored vehicle started smoothly toward the main road.

As they reached the gently curved road they passed another bus heading in the opposite direction, toward the temple. It was gray and marked
SECURITY
.

Cree grinned sternly. “Local cops. Somebody must have called them.”

“Call the hotel,” Jordan told him. “Tell them we need a doctor.”

*   *   *

When Nordquist finally arrived at the temple she found a downcast team of security agents and a badly rattled Castiglione. Pressing an ice-filled towel to his broken nose, Castiglione moaned, “They've ruined my face. Ruined it.”

Nordquist huffed, “Stem cell therapy will repair the damage. Where are Kell and his wife?”

The redheaded leader of the security squad said, “I heard him say something about a hotel.”

“Which hotel?”

The man shrugged. Nordquist glared at him, but thought, There can't be more than a half-dozen hotels in this habitat. As long as I can keep anyone from leaving this artificial world, I've got him trapped.

 

STALEMATE

The Hindu doctor smiled cautiously as he told Jordan, “It was merely a graze. Small caliber. I have administered therapeutic nanomachines and—”

“Nanomachines?” Jordan snapped. “Aren't they illegal?”