Engineman (35 page)

A truck crossed the tarmac and drew up beside the blast-barrier. Six militia-men jumped from the back of the truck, pulling after them two civilians - one in peasant's garb, the other wearing radiation silvers. They had their hands bound behind their backs, their heads bowed. The guards bundled them across to the blast-barrier.

"Disciples," Forster informed her. "Caught trying to sabotage the Zambique-Guernica mono-link."

She watched, unable to look away or close her eyes. The Disciples were made to kneel, facing the barrier. As they did so, the men raised their heads in a gesture Ella found at once hopeless and dignified. She heard their chant drift through the warm morning air. "We cast off this cruel illusion..."

The guards placed pistols at the base of the Disciple's skulls and fired, the recoil pushing their arms into the air with a flourish like that of a pianist. The Disciples crumpled, legs tucked beneath their bodies in a tragic recapitulation of the foetal posture. The guards took their arms and legs, staggered with the bodies and swung them like sacks of grain into the back of the truck. Then they turned and stared across at Ella.

She looked at Forster, shaking her head. "You can't intimidate me. I'm ready to die. This is one game you've lost-"

Something cunning in his expression made her stop. "Lost?" He smiled. "I don't know the meaning of the word. What you experienced in the hangar was merely the first round of the contest." He signalled to the guards. "Take her inside."

She wanted to scream; she wanted to beg them to kill her. They escorted her through a door and into the control tower, along a corridor. She was taken to a small room furnished with a bed and a chair. A window overlooked the tarmac and the blast-barrier where the execution squad still waited. The door was locked behind her. She sat on the bed, staring down numbly at her shaking hands, watching them through a film of tears.

She wondered what further horrors Forster had in store for her. Would they resort to physical torture? Would she be able to withstand protracted physical pain any better than the attention of the incapacitator?

At a sound from beyond the door, she wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. Forster entered the room smartly, leaving the door open. He looked Ella up and down. "Hunter, your clothing is a disgrace. Would you like to change?"

She just stared at him, non-plussed by the banality of his question.

He turned to the door. "Corporal."

The guard stepped forward and handed Forster a folded garment. Forster dropped it on the bed beside Ella. "Why not try it on?" he suggested.

Ella stared at it, her pulse accelerating. She picked it up; it hung from her grasp like a sad, discarded epidermis. She would have recognised Eddie's silversuit anywhere. The name-tag was missing.

Oh, Fernandez
... She'd left it at the hillside shack two days ago.

"You do recognise it, don't you?" Forster asked.

"What do you mean?" Ella stammered. "I haven't... I've never seen it before."

"No? Forensic tests revealed that tissue samples found on it belong to you. We found it yesterday, on premises belonging to Conchita Rodriguez."

She looked up at Forster, anguish burning inside her. "What have you done with her?"

Forster smiled, cocked a finger pistol-fashion, indicating through the window. "Rodriguez is in the best of health," he said. "For the time being."

Ella turned, knowing what she would see. Conchita Rodriguez stood before the blast-barrier. Her daughter grasped her legs, face buried in the folds of her skirt. Conchita laid her hands protectively on Maria's head. She seemed to be staring straight at the control tower, through the window, at Ella.

"No..." She shook her head. "No, you wouldn't..."

Forster just looked at her. "No?" he asked.

"But they're innocent. They've done nothing-"

"Rodriguez harboured Disciple terrorists," Forster snapped. "And that's a capital offence."

"But Conchita isn't even a Disciple. She
doesn't believe!
You can't do it-"

"Harbouring terrorists is a capital offence,." He paused, considering. "But... I
might
be able to see my way to commuting the sentence. What do you think?"

Ella looked from Forster to Conchita. There was something noble, almost arrogant, about the way the woman stood, straight-backed, holding her daughter to her skirt, her head high.

"What do you want?" she asked, knowing with a sick inevitability full well what he wanted.

"I want answers - answers to every question I ask. Correct answers, this time. Then Rodriguez and the girl survive. If the answers are not the ones I want, or prove on investigation to be false, then all three of you die." He walked to the window, turned. "What do you say?"

Ella looked past him to the woman. She recalled their conversation. Conchita was not a Disciple - she had no religious beliefs. For her, this life was the only one. Ella could only imagine the woman's terror.

She shook her head wearily. "I'll tell you everything I know, but I know nothing about my father. Please believe me."

Forster was nodding. "We'll begin at the beginning, Shall we? Question number one. Who were your contacts on the Reach?"

Ella hesitated. "Max Klien, Emilio Rodriguez and David Jerassi."

Forster nodded. "The terrorists who sabotaged the interface. Did you accompany them?"

"I left them in the morning, rode to the Falls."

He stared down at her, as if considering her reply. She looked through the window, at Conchita, her heart beating rapidly.

"Very well. Question two. Where is your father, here or on Earth?"

She looked up at him. "I have no idea... I thought he still lived here. I came here to meet him. That's why I went to the Falls-"

"Careful, Hunter. Be very careful. That's a minus point. More than just your survival rests on your answers. You can't play the martyr now."

"It's true. I thought he was still at the Falls."

"When did you last see your father?"

"Ten years ago, a few months before I left for Earth."

"When did you last hear from him, and contact him yourself?"

Ella hesitated. "I contacted him seven years ago. I sent him a photograph. That was the last time. Then he contacted me a month ago. He sent me a disc."

Interest quickened in Forster's jet eyes. "What did he say?"

"Just that he wanted to see me."

"Nothing more - on a thirty minute disc?"

Ella looked up at Forster, tried to hold her tears back. "I wiped the rest of the disc without listening to it. I just heard him say... say that he wanted to see me. Then I wiped it. We never got on... we were never that close."

Forster paced the room, stroking the line of his jaw. "Did he tell you where you were to meet him? Was it here, on the Reach?"

"I don't know. I told you, I wiped the disc."

"Hunter..."

"It's true! I don't know. All he said was... he wanted to see me." She heard then the sound of her father's voice, strong, confident...

Forster considered, tapping his pursed lips. "Did he tell you that he'd converted, joined the Disciples?"

"No - I mean, not in so many words." To hear from Forster's lips that her father had defected, gone over to the other side, made her heart race with joy. "He told me that he'd seen the light. That's all. I thought maybe he'd converted, but I wasn't sure."

More to himself, Forster said, "He's converted, all right." He ceased his pacing and paused before Ella. "Who are your father's contacts on Earth?"

Ella stared, open-mouthed. "I don't know! I haven't seen or spoken to him for ten years!"

"We know he's in contact with Terran Enginemen, Hunter. I want their names!"

"Enginemen? I don't know. I've no idea. Please..."

Forster rushed to the window, hammered on the glass, then signalled. The guards by the blast-barrier motioned for Conchita and Maria to kneel. Ella watched the women lower herself slowly to her knees, her daughter clinging to her.

"Please, no..." Ella wept.

Forster rushed back to her. "Now, answers! Has your father left for Earth?"

"I don't know!"

"Who are his contacts on Earth?"

Ella was shaking her head, her eyes streaming. She swore that if they killed Conchita and the girl, she'd dive at Forster, tear out his eyes...

"I don't know! Please, listen to me..."

"Corporal!" Forster snapped. The guard appeared. "Take her out. Shoot the three of them."

The guard took her arm, almost gently, and brought her to her feet. He escorted her from the room and down the corridor, following Forster.

They passed outside, into the sunlight.

"Please," Ella wept. "Not the girl. Kill me, but not Maria."

Still pacing, Forster turned. "Answers, Hunter!"

"I don't know. I just don't know..." She looked up, then, and saw a line of fliers advancing across the tarmac.

Forster began, "Then the three of you-"

He never finished the sentence.

The explosion knocked them off their feet. Ella hit the tarmac painfully. Dazed, battered by the blast, she rolled over and pushed herself onto her hands and knees. She gazed about her in disbelief. One of the guards was dead, blood trickling from his nose and mouth. The other rolled on the ground, moaning. Forster was groggily picking himself up. Ella screamed and dived across the tarmac to the dead guard. She grabbed the incapacitator from the ground where he'd dropped it, staggered to her feet and ran at Forster. He was drawing his pistol, caught by surprise, when Ella slammed the weapon into his face. He yelled, fell to the ground. She collapsed with him, and brought the incapacitator down again and again on the side of his head. Forster spasmed, his back arching as he convulsed. Sobbing, Ella rolled away from him.

Explosions shattered the air. Across the airbase, the squad of militia beside the blast-barrier lay dead or dying. Ella looked desperately for Conchita and her daughter. She saw them huddling together behind the barrier. As she watched, a flier swooped down and two men bundled the girl and her mother aboard.

Vehicles burned all around the base, and everywhere Danzig militia-men fell. Fliers advanced across the tarmac, hitting anything that moved with shell-fire and grenades.

Ella hugged her legs and curled against the wall of the control tower, watching with terror and disbelief as Forster rolled onto his belly and clawed his way across the tarmac towards her. She looked around desperately for the incapacitator, and saw it - beyond Forster - where she'd dropped it. She tried to move, to summon the energy to pick herself up and run, but she was paralysed by exhaustion and the look on Forster's face as he crawled towards her. Ella screamed.

A battered, turbo-driven flier surged around the corner, came down heavily. At the wheel, a black Engineman casually raised a rifle, one-handed.

He fired, the shot opening a gaping hole in Forster's back. He spasmed, staring at Ella with wide, dead eyes.

"Get in, girl," the Engineman said. "Move it!"

Dazed, she picked herself up and staggered towards the flier. She threw herself over the side and onto the back seat. The flier sped off across the base, swerving erratically to avoid explosions and pockets of Danzig resistance.

A grenade detonated beneath them, bucking the flier. "Hold on tight back there," the Engineman said calmly. "This might be a rough ride."

They accelerated over the perimeter fence, leaving the airbase behind them, and screamed into the jungle. The E-man weaved his way through the trees, trunks flicking by on either side with a sound like rotor-blades.

"You sure don't say much, girl," the Engineman called to her. "You feeling okay?"

Ella wanted to tell him that she'd never felt better.

Instead she passed out.

Chapter Nineteen

Mirren stood with Bobby in the engine-room, an arm around his brother's shoulders. He had showered and changed and felt refreshed, though aware of his bruised and battered body. He was experiencing also a return of the Heine's symptoms: hot sweats, nausea and bone-aching weariness. He had left his medication back at the apartment, though his concern was cancelled out by the thought of the flux. Right now, he told himself, he would gladly die in four years just to be able to mind-push again.

Beyond the triangular viewscreen, the technicians were making final preparations for the phase-out. The irony of the situation was not lost on Mirren. The techs, with their head-mikes and monitors, going about their business in the hallowed chambers of Notre-Dame, were the subjects in a frieze signifying the triumph of science over superstition. He acknowledged another paradox inherent in the situation: that the event towards which the scientists were working would itself be transformed into superstition by credulous believers like his brother and Dan.

Behind them, the engine-room was in the semi-darkness that Enginemen found conducive to their pre-flux preparations. Even a materialist like Mirren had to admit that a darkened room was requisite to proper contemplation of the task at hand. Other Enginemen, believers and Disciples, went in for a long and complex series of rituals, involving prayers, mantras and incense: the engine-rooms on some of the 'ship's he'd pushed were like Eastern shrines and temples. He was pleased to see that this chamber was wholly functional. Alpha-numerics sequenced along the flank of the flux-tank, a tubular silver catafalque on a raised stage against the bulkhead. Beside it was the co-pilot's auxiliary command web, a cat's-cradle slung between a horseshoe console. Black, padded foam-forms and couches gave the engineroom the appearance of an exclusive, hi-tech bar.