Logan Trilogy (12 page)

Jess awoke in panic, leaped from the small crib and began to run.

The nursery defended its children. Doors slammed, gates closed; trams and moveways halted. Crib covers snapped down like turtle shells; barriers sprung up through slotted floors, sealing off each wing.

Invaders!

Repel!

Protect!

Defend!

The door of the Loveroom was wrenched open. Logan was there. "Jess—this way!"

In the alarm din they fled along corridors crowded with curious children. An Autogoverness rolled at them, clucking; Logan disabled it with a savage heel blow. They slid under a descending barrier, whipped through a closing door, avoided a handler machine. They clattered down to the first floor as the building entrance was sliding shut along its lubricated tracks.

"Faster!" Logan yelled.

They cleared the massive slide-door a split second before it locked home. The edge of the door rapped Logan's shoulder, knocking him off stride—but they were out of the building.

They sprinted across the playground for the main gate.

It was closed.

Logan broke into the glass control booth, smashed the panel, and jerked down the release switch.

The gate swung open.

A roboguard tried to stop them, but Logan evaded it, grabbed Jessica by the arm and cut into a field.

They disappeared down a weed-choked bar ditch that angled into the woods.

The Rapid City concourse was jammed with citizens when they arrived on the maze platform. Logan had retrieved his Gun, and it was safely out of sight against his ribs. Jess kept her right hand fisted to conceal her charflower. Still, Logan knew, the scanners would pick them up if they tried to board a

mazecar.

"Stay back here, close to the wall." he told Jess.

He sifted through the crowd. A ruddy-faced man bumped him. The man's arms were full of souvenirs from the western states; a triangular banner extending from his collar proclaimed Cheyenne Frontier Days. LET'ER BUCK! Perched on the top of the heap of packages was a tiny outhouse carved from polished redwood. When the citizen bumped Logan the outhouse fell to the platform. Logan picked it up, put it back on the pile.

"Thanks, citizen! Ya-hoooo!"

"Ya-hooooo!" replied Logan forcing a smile.

He reached the scanner box, opened it casually in the manner of a repairman. Reaching in, he shorted out the unit.

Returning to Jess, he hurried her toward the boarding slots. She stumbled, put out a hand to steady herself. In that brief gesture she revealed her black palmflower, and a woman on the edge of the crowd screamed, "Runner!"

A ripple of excitement; shouting voices, shock.

A man was about to enter a mazecar. Logan thrust him back and they leaped aboard.

The angry crowd dropped away behind them and was lost as the car burrowed into the long tunnel.

The continent rushed under and over and around them.

Logan knew the dangers. Unless DS blundered—and DS never blundered—there would already be operatives at the Rapid City platform checking their departure. Within seconds DS would know exactly which car they were on, which tunnel they were in. Dispatchers would alert units all along the route.

The car suddenly faltered. Slowed. Slotted into a siding.

"They've stopped us," said Logan. "Out!"

"Where are we?" asked Jess.

"No questions. Hurry."

As the hatch opened and they made their exit Logan caught a sub-lim flicker on the mazecar viewscreen. It said what they always said: Duty. Don't run!

Union artillery batteries were destroying Fredericksburg when Logan and Jess reached ground level.

Snipers had fired on the Federal troops preparing to cross the Rappahannock River, and General Burnside had ordered his cannon to level the town. He would then occupy Fredericksburg and advance into the hills to clean out the Confederate stronghold. It was a foolhardy plan, this direct frontal assault on an impregnable position, and Burnside had been warned against it, but he'd refused to alter his decision. His battle plan would be carried out despite the odds. He was determined to wipe out the Rebels on their own ground and give the North a great victory.

Now the pontoon boats were being readied for the river crossing. Bluecoated officers on horseback were directing the operation. Ponderous wagons and heavy brass artillery pieces were being rolled onto the wooden boats.

Burnside studied the south shore through a pair of fieldglasses. A church steeple tottered and fell under the barrage; a tall brick structure folded into rubble. Burnside lowered the glasses, rubbing at his long black whiskers. He looked about twenty. "We'll give those Johnny Rebs a real whuppin' right enough!" he declared. "They'll remember this day."

The general's aide looked concerned. "I hear Lee is on the slope with Longstreet. And Stonewall Jackson commands their right flank. It's going to be extremely difficult, sir."

Burnside snorted. "War is never easy, Major. You do what you must for your country."

The aide saluted and returned to his men.

Ambrose E. Burnside was a robot, an android, built to the exact specifications of the famed Civil War officer. His mass of blue-clad androids would engage gray-clad androids for a day and a night in the Battle of Fredericksburg in a compressed re-creation of the bloody slaughter of 1862, when more than twelve thousand men died on these Virginia slopes. Field pieces would flash from hidden embrasures.

Breakaway buildings would collapse on schedule. Cannon balls would strike into ranks of breakaway

robots, who would lose arms and legs and heads in brutally realistic fashion. The snowpatched ground would be stained with crimson fluids.

Logan and Jess edged into the pack of excited tourists and Virginia citizenry crowding the view areas.

"Duty," a loudspeaker blared above the din. "That's what you'll see here today, citizens. Loyalty.

Courage. The willingness to die for one's country in order to preserve it. The Civil War was fought by seventeen—and eighteen-year-olds, men willing to die for their cause. They did not question their duty or flinch from the face of death. They sacrificed themselves willingly, gloriously. Now—watch them charge, citizens, in this heroic battle, shown to you as it happened 254 years ago. And remember, there were no runners at Fredericksburg!"

Jess looked at the terrain facing them. Artificially created fog cloaked the ground. Cannon added a bass rumble to the sharp snap of musketry. The ground rose up in gouts as shot and ball plowed it.

Silently Logan guided Jess toward the river. A deep drainage ditch led to the tents of Burnside's camp, and they began to crawl along this, away from the view area.

The ditch angled around to the rear of the encampment. Logan knew they didn't have to worry about any of the androids giving out an alarm. Each robot soldier was programmed to play its assigned part in the battle.

They clambered up the drainage bank and ducked under the canvas flap of a Union tent. Two perfectly formed androids were standing motionless inside, ready to step from the tent when their circuits commanded them. Their blank sixteen-year-old faces were frozen.

Logan struck them to the ground and began to strip off their clothing. "Put this on," he said, tossing Jess a Federal uniform.

Logan buttoned the blue tunic, stuffing the Gun into it. He looped a canteen around his shoulder, picked up a long musket. Jess also took a musket. In the soiled uniform, with a Union cap pulled over her hair, she could pass as a soldier so long as they stayed well back from the view areas.

"Now stick close to me," he said, "and do what I do."

A bugle sounded the call to arms.

Logan and Jess joined the Grand Army of the Potomac. They climbed into one of the slab-sided boats, sharing the craft with a dozen other Bluecoats during its passage across the shallow river.

They scrambled up the mud bank into Fredericksburg and moved cautiously through the gutted town. Broken-backed buildings smoked in ruin. The crackle of musketry filled the air. Metal bees hummed. Hill cannon belched bronze thunder. As they walked, the churned mud of the street sucked at their boots.

More bugles. The rattle of drums. Burnside was paring his assault. On the far right, blue ranks were altering under the guns of Stonewall Jackson.

They faced Marye's Heights, rising up in a steepening incline from a wide plain spattered with artificial snow. The Heights were manned by the crack Washington Artillery of New Orleans, pride of the South. Robert E. Lee was up there with the Grays, giving them his strength, and the entrenched Confederates had mounted some 250 field pieces to rake the slopes below.

To the left the holiday concourse was jammed with spectators: bright tunics, flags and the ocean roar of happy people. A darkness there. A black tunic! DS!

Francis! Had he seen them, guessed at their destination? Was he, even now, raising his Gun to homer them? Logan turned back to the hill, pulled his cap lower.

The girl's face was gray. She looked at Logan helplessly. He pointed off to the right. "We have to get across the battlefield, to the other side."

"They'll see us."

"Not if we move up the slope with Burnside's men. Once past the wall over Marye's Heights we'll be all right. There's a maze tunnel I used to play in as a boy. They don't use it much since they built New Fredericksburg and reconverted the area."

"C'mon, lads!" yelled an android officer near Logan. "Let's show the Rebs our steel!"

In a wash of fife and drum and bugle and bright regimental flags, the boys in blue marched out in columns-of-four, muskets forward, a tide of bayonets moving up.

"Keep your head lowered," he told less. "And stay out of the depressions. That's where the cannons are

programmed to hit."

They were a third of the way up, in ordered rank, and the hill guns were quiet. Getting the range.

Letting the sheep march close enough to slaughter. "Burnside's blunder" they called it for two centuries after. Burnside, the fool, the pompous clown with his mutton-chop whiskers, sending his troops to certain death in a vain bid for personal glory. Little wonder that Lincoln replaced him after Fredericksburg.

A pulsing silence.

The cannons emptied their iron throats.

Inferno!

Jess pressed close to Logan, inching up the snowed slope as the withering storm of canister exploded around them. Androids screamed, dropped muskets, pitched forward. Robot horses pawed air, gushed crimson. Bugles ceased in midcry.

Marye's Hill was a tumult of shrieking metal death.

"Don't falter now, lads!" cried a hatless lieutenant behind them. "Forward—for Lincoln and the Union!

Hurrah, hurrah!"

A cannon ball cut him in half.

Just ahead of them, concealed behind a stretch of uneven stone wall fronting Sunken Road, a contingent of sharpshooting Georgians and North Carolinians rose up to pour a hot hail of musket fire into the still-advancing Federals.

The lines were falling back.

As Logan reached the base of the wall at Sunken Road a musket shot dropped him to his knees. He was momentarily breathless, but alive; the canteen across his chest had absorbed the ball.

Artillery crashed through oak woods. Fleeced smoke from hill cannon lazed the sky, mingling with the curtain of ground fog.

Where was Jess? Logan scanned the slope for sign of her.

Near him, a gray-clad figure was shaking a fist and shouting in mock triumph, "Skeedaddle, you Bluebellies! Back to yer holes. EEEEeeee-yow!"

Several Confederates had fallen behind the wall, but other robots had filled in along the barrier. Logan was ignored as he stripped off his uniform, discarding it along with his musket.

The gallop of an advancing horse. A stern-faced man on a white stallion, saber in hand. Bearded, uniformed in splendor. "Fine, boys, fine," boomed Robert E. Lee. "There'll be extra rations for all when this day's done." His voice was considerably amplified in order to reach the crowd in the view areas.

He galloped back down the line.

The attack has been completely broken now, and the Blues were in full rout.

Then, clearly, Logan saw Jess—far down the slope. The girl was struggling against a tide of moving androids. Caught up in the knot of retreating figures, she was swept back down the long hill toward the viewing stands.

Back toward Francis.

Chapter 3

He knows they are both in his grasp.

The crowds block him, frustrate him.

His anticipation is mounting.

He savors this, as the hunting cat savors the kill.

Close.

Very close.

LATE AFTERNOON…

FACES. Thousands of faces. But none of them Jessica's.

Logan was jostled and pushed in the holiday man-sprawl along the concourse. Tourist laughter, shouts.

"Hey, citizen."

Logan looked down at an eight-year-old. Redhead, with freckles and serious blue eyes. The boy was selling souvenirs. He held up a small brass cannon. "Fires a real ball, citizen. Put an eye out with it, if you've a mind to try. Genuine treasured memento of the Annual Civil War Gala, imported from Monte Carlo."

"No…no, I don't want one."

The boy did not argue; he dipped away into the mob flow.

Logan paused at a doorway, letting the throng eddy past. He drew back. A black tunic, coming toward him. Francs!

Logan pressed into the doorway. It proved to be the entrance to a Re-Live parlor. He craned his neck to see over the bobbing heads of the crowd. The black figure was still advancing, appearing and

disappearing in the press. Closer with each step.

A robot touched his arm. "Citizen Wentworth 10," said the robot, looking with steel sympathy at Logan's blinking hand "We've been expecting you. This way, please."

He had no choice. Francis was outside, back to the door, studying the crowd.

The robot slid out a life drawer from the metal wall.

"Just lie down here. This is our latest model. You may switch years as desired."