Armor (26 page)

“What you want them to see?”

There was a murmur of anger through the bunch holding me. A couple of them increased the intensity of their grips. Even the leader was affected. His poise busted at last.

“Wice and his crew are a band of cutthroats and hoodlums who would do anything to take control and hold it. Anything!” He stared angrily at me for several seconds before resuming. “We know that you know Wice, that you have dealings with him. But we had hoped that from what we had heard about you in the past and from. . .” he glanced briefly at Eyes. “. . . And from other sources, that you were not the type of man to be helping such a brigand. Not if we could make you see what he was. If you only knew. . .”

“If I only knew? ‘ I shouted, appalled. “If I only cared, you mean!”

That froze him. He started to speak, stopped. He looked suddenly unsure, uprooted. He stared at me. “But if. . What do you. . .”

“Finish this!” I barked. “One way or the other.”

He continued to stare at me a long time. No one else. ‘ The rest couldn’t look. They looked away. But the leader seemed welded to me.

Dammit, I knew what he was about. It made sense. Borglyn gave me a ship; Wice would hardly throw in for free. But who the hell was I to cut out his piece? I didn’t blame this man. I didn’t blame him on Eyes or his people. I wouldn’t have stood for it either. They were right to oppose this sort of bullying. But, goddammit, that didn’t mean they were Right!

He broke the gaze at last. He looked at his feet. The long fingers intertwined, writhing incestuously. He looked pale and pitiful and. . . damn him!

“Let him go,” he said.

They did. Reluctantly, then warily, then carefully. I made no moves when they set me down. I even gave them a chance to back away before standing. The leader hadn’t moved. I looked at Eyes, saw she had gone. They were just eyes now.

But when she saw me looking at her, They returned. In anger and disgust, her eyes became Eyes once more. And I knew why they had affected me so. I saw the dreams in them then. The Rightness. And, more importantly, the conviction. The willingness about the necessary risks. Her life on the line.

But I had already made all of those decisions, dammit. I wanted my ship.

Gradually I became aware of movement all around me. I turned my head to see that everyone was leaving. The leader bad already gone. Soon there were only the two of us left there, staring at one another. And soon after that, only me. But not soon enough.

For before she left, she said, in a way I refuse to recall, “So you’re Jack Crow.” Then she spat. Then she left. I wanted to kill her. I just stood there.

It took me half an hour to find out that the passage I had chosen to lead me out was a dead end. I kicked the web of Thermoflex blocking my path with a vengeance. I could have killed her then. I sighed, suddenly exhausted by my own anger, by the burdensome weight of it. “A perfect day,” I muttered and turned back around. It took me another half an hour to reach the square once more. Only then could I think about finding Wice’s lair.

His office had been straightened up somewhat, but he was the same old charmer. “What did you tell them?” he asked without preamble as I stepped through the door.

“Fuck off,” I replied evenly.

“Is that a direct quote?” asked an unmistakably powerful voice from behind me. “Or simply more evidence of your sparkling personality. “

I spun on my heel and faced Borglyn, momentarily stunned once more by the sheer enormity of him. A for real giant.

“Both,” I snapped, gathering together quickly, as I always seemed to do in a pinch, my worst side.

Borglyn ignored my response, as he could well afford to. He motioned me to a chair and stood over me and talked strategy. And when the question came about the Dome defense screens. . . I could have lied, said that it couldn’t be done. I could have simply turned the question aside, as I had before with Wice. But I didn’t.

“It’s done,” I replied. “They’re helpless.”

Borglyn didn’t stay much longer after that, just long enough to “thank” me for what I had done so far and to reiterate what Wice had said before about the uncertain timetable. He thought a couple of more weeks but he couldn’t be any more definite than that. Then he left.

And why not? There was no need to stick around. He had what he wanted. He had gotten my assurance about the screens. And I had gotten the point of his being there, which was the knowledge that he could be there any time.

On the way back to the Project, I thought about what it had been like to have been hung in the air by those fat fingers of his. And I bristled, both at the remembered feeling of frustration and at the knowledge that it was just what Borglyn would want me to think about.

XIV

Holly wasted no time getting down to it. When I rang the secured seal to his lab he opened it himself with the manual key and then personally escorted me into his little briefing cubicle. There were several screens attached along the length of the conference table, each glimmering with rhythmically esoteric data. Lya was next door in an adjoining cubicle with a couple of screens of her own. She waved at me through the connecting window and flashed what I’m sure she thought was a cheerful and carefree smile. Her appearance was a considerable improvement over that morning. But the strain could not be hidden.

Idly, I wondered why she should even try to hide it. “First of all,” began Holly after we had sat down, “I want to apologize for being so uncommunicative this morning. I didn’t mean to be so obscure. It’s just that I didn’t know how to express what I was feeling. And I. . . well. I’m sony about it.”

I grinned. “And what about scaring the shit out of me after the picnic? Not that I could care less if you burned out your teams, but the least you could do is try not to spring it on me.”

Jack Crow Crap, but just the kind of compliment that Holly adored. He flushed a little and grinned shyly and glanced down at his hands folded on the table before him.

But all the boyishness was gone in the next instant as he continued.

“Secondly,” he resumed, “I want to assure you that I’m fine. I was not harmed by the experience, however bad it may have seemed at the time. Neither physically nor mentally.” He sat forward, made a steeple out of his fingers, and peered intently into my eyes. “I want to stress this. Jack. Every medico in the Project has been over my numbers and there’s nothing wrong.”

“Nothing that they can find, anyway,” I amended. He looked pained. He nodded reluctantly. “Yes. Technically, yes. However, I can think of no intelligent reason why one should simply assume damage without evidence, do you?”

I shook my head in response, amazed at the stem tone his voice had briefly assumed. A real Director of Project tone, that.

Holly seemed not to notice. “Thirdly, I want to report that the experiment was a success. Not only was it a success, but it worked better than I had hoped.”

I frowned. “Well, that’s one way of looking at it. There is a little matter of the catatonia.”

He looked pained again. He started to speak, stopped, rethought. Then: “I’m getting to that. Jack. But let me take it step-by-step, please.”

“Of course,” I said pleasantly. Inside I was thinking that there is nothing spookier than having someone “stress” to you how sane they are after having had a fit like seizure a few days before.

What Holly did next was go over ground I knew already. Talked about how it was the magnetic drainage of the Record pulses off the coil which had caused the problem in the first place. Reminded me why this prevented a screen from being used to view it. Next he re-outlined how he had hoped that, using his own little helmet and his own mind, a commonality to the two separate brainwave patterns could be artificially and temporarily induced. He had worried that it was either an impossible scenario to attempt the commonality at all, or that too much strain would result from the two different patterns conflicting in unison. But instead, a third thing had happened:

A third field had been created “between” his pattern and the other. It bad been this third field which had provided the channel of reception. And this was a real boon. For not only did it allow him to “see” what was going on, but it had also allowed him to retain perspective over the process.

“That’s what you meant when you said yon could feel him feeling his emotions?” I prompted.

He nodded vigorously. “Exactly. It gave me the immersion I wanted, but it also kept me a step back. Prevented the possibility of psychological conflict. ‘ ‘ “Something conflicted,” I pointed out.

He smiled wanly. “Well, yes. There was a conflict of sorts. But not the kind that youand Lyahad feared. It was not a conflict of psyche.”

“Then of what?”

“Of intensity.” He leaned back in his chair and sighed, spreading his hands on the tabletop. “It was simply too strong. Even with the sense of detachment. Not that I felt I was being. . . sucked in or anything,” he was quick to add. “It’s just that the emanations were simply too powerful. They caused an overload.”

I thought a minute. “Couldn’t you simply turn it down?” He frowned, shook his head. “We’re on the lowest gain now. The trouble is, my helmet requires a certain minimum charge to function.”

I nodded. “I see the problem.”

He nodded in return, but rather unhappily. “There is one more possibility, however. . . .”

“And that is?”

He looked reluctant. “Well, it could be that the intensity of reception is not due to the charge needed to power the suit. It could be that, well. . . .”

“It could be,” finished Lya from the doorway, “the fact that we are dealing with a very unusual man. A very unusual, highly dynamic man.” She walked over and sat down in the seat next to me. In her hand was a coiltape. “Battlefield conditions produce inordinate stress in anyone, but in Felix….”

“You know what his name is?”

“Was, yes. It was Felix,” Holly amended.

“Was?” I asked, surprised. “You mean he died?” Well, no wonder. . . !

“No,” said Holly quickly. “He didn’t die on me.”

“But you think he will,” I persisted.

Holly’s smile was grim. He nodded. “I think so. In fact,” he added, looking sad and very, very far away, “I can’t conceive of any other possibility.”

It was very quiet while we thought about that. Something in how Holly had said it, something about the. . . hopeless finality of it. Eerie. I caught myself staring out the window overlooking the main lab to the black suit propped into a sitting position alongside the main console. A menacing sight, sitting there just so. Menacing and sinister and. . . .

I lore my gaze away, shoving such thoughts roughly back into the shadows where they belonged. I cleared my throat. “Well, I can see why you’re stuck, Hoi …”

“Oh, we’re not stuck!” he jumped to add.

“But if you don’t have any way to turn down the gain ….” “We don’t need to turn it down. There’s another way to reduce the intensity.” He glanced quickly at Lya, who met his gaze briefly, then looked away. “A way to halve it, in fact.”

“What’s that?” I asked, stepping into it.

They exchanged glances again. Holly made a determined effort to sit up straight and look me in the eye. “By adding another helmet and another. . . experimenter.”

My mouth fell open. I closed it. So that was it!

I was too stunned to do much more than nod through the following offer. That and stare back and forth between their two intent faces while they fell all over one another in their efforts to assure me that there was no reason to suspect that there would be any danger involved. Hah!

There was more of the assurances. And then came the part about the great strides that could be made with such an experiment, reminding me that I had expressed interest in helping and how this would certainly be of more help than anything else I could do. Oh, yes: there was a mention of payment from the extensive Fleet funding.

So, could I think about it tonight and then let’s talk again in the morning?

I said I would think about it.

Holly couldn’t let it be. He talked about how he thought he had hit on something terribly important, something he couldn’t explain altogether but something I would certainly understand when, that is. . . if, I decided to take part. And how he would especially like to have me and only me in on this, how he’d like to keep this experiment just among the three of us rather than involve others from the Project. Then more assurances.

I said I would think about it.

Lya insisted on walking me to the seal. Still more assurances, to start. Then honeybull. The tone of voice with its quiet intensity, its brave conviction, and that look of OhlknowlcantrustyouJackyou’resostrongwhereelsecanweturn complete with the soft pressure of her hand on the crook of my arm and, incredibly, batting eyelashes. It was exactly the same crap she had used so effectively on me the day of the picnic, except. . . .

Except then she had believed it. She had known what she was doing was right, had known her concern for Holly was justified, had known my warmth for him was genuine and appropriate to call upon. She had known she was doing the right thing. Further, she had known what she was urging me to do was equally right.

This time she knew no such thing. She was lying with each and every wellchosen word.

Why me? I kept thinking. Maybe it was the Jack Crow Bit. Maybe she thought that I could just dive through the wiring feeds running between us and snatch Holly by the scruff of the cerebellum and haul him out of a tight spot. Or maybe she just didn’t want the other Project people involved on Sanction to know what a Mad Hatter her man had become. I said I would think about it.

And I did, in a way. Once I calmed down a little with a brisk walk through the seals to my suite. Once I had gotten over the urge to slap Lya’s sanctimonious holierthanlesser sacrifice allformyman face. How dare that bitch! Screw up my head?

I had experimented with the hallucinogens yearsdecadesbefore alongside the rest of my once contemporaries. Luckier than most on account of not really ever believing that this mental masturbation was the Way, or the Path or whatever else they were calling it at the time. Seeing it, knowing instinctively that it was a brain teaser and nothing more. A trip for people who couldn’t afford to travel. But even with that to back me up, there had been a time or two. . . .