Gates of Hell (16 page)

Martin noticed people in the street below as the first large drops of rain began splatting against the thick oval windows. Just a handful of people, no air or surface traffic anywhere within his view of this side of the wide, slow river. It was hard to tell if the people on the street were just wandering aimlessly, or if they had somewhere to go—there were no food shelters, no outbound ships at the port, only the one open hospital in the city. They’re probably just walking, he decided, because it’s better than lying down and dying. He couldn’t make out details through what had become a thick curtain of rain; what he got was an impression of skeletal figures shuffling along.

“Ever heard of Samhain Eve, Glover?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s a time of year on Terra when the dead walk.”

“How inconvenient for Terra,” Glover drawled.

Martin turned from the window. Behind him, the rain was running down the pane in silent gray-green sheets, all noise muffled by the insulating glass. Martin shrugged, and wondered if he’d made the gesture quite so often before he’d taken up residence with a Bucon. “Samhain’s just an old ethnic legend. Not even one of my ethnic legends. No one on Terra’s been frightened by the idea for hundreds of years. It’s a kid’s holiday these days. No need to placate ghosts anymore, I guess.”

“Your world doesn’t seem to need its primitive customs. I’ve always thought Terrans to be quite sensible.”

“Placating ghosts might not be such a bad idea. Not the way they’re walking around here.”

Glover looked briefly puzzled. “You are a Terran with a primitive mind, Viper. It helps you survive. Don’t change. Now, tell me about Sting. Where is she?”

The Bucon obviously didn’t want to hear about Samhain, and Martin didn’t know why thoughts of the Wild Hunt were preying on his mind. He gestured toward the windows. “She’s safe.” He didn’t mention Dee’s involvement in the whole business, and he didn’t want to think about how disoriented and weak his sister-in-law had been after healing Dee’s Rust addiction. He couldn’t let himself be sentimental, not after coming this far.

“The hospital?” Glover did not look pleased. “It would have been so much easier to start from here. The hospital’s probably being watched. Persey’s making sure none of the Systems scientists get their hands on any Rust.”

“We’ll get her from the hospital. We’ll just have to risk Persey knowing about us. He knows you’re here, anyway.”

“You’ll be the one going to the hospital,” Glover told him. “I’m not showing my face in the same place as a koltiri. The idea is to keep this quiet.”

“Right.” Martin looked over the Bucon cynically. “And what does Persey think of your presence here, Mr. Ambassador to the United Systems?”

Glover took a seat in the middle of the living room floor and pulled Martin’s blanket around him. Martin found the abandoned apartment to be hot, the air far too dark, still, and stifling without power. Martin took a seat in front of the ambassador. He felt Glover’s forehead and grabbed a wrist from under the covering. He wished he had a diagnostic scanner on him. “What are you on, Glover?”

Glover’s eyes lit with tired amusement. “A little of this, a little of that. I’ve got to keep functioning,” he reminded Martin.

True. The man was not in very good shape; even a cursory look told Martin that. But whatever the Bucon was taking, it was no casual indulgence. Glover was actually trying to accomplish some good with this risky jaunt they were on. “What’s with Persey?” Martin liked to be kept up on the shifting—connections—around him. Loyalty was too strong a word to use among Bucons just now.

“He found out I’m in town. I think he’s on Bonadem trying out a new brand of Rust, but I don’t know. I’m trying to make him think I’m looking for a piece of his action—as if I’d ever deal in anything like Rust. Well, he’s a border runner and shouldn’t be too up on my reputation. I’ve been buying Rust from him through one of his girlfriends. I don’t know who Persey’s Rust connection is, though I suspect Denvry or Halfor. But who’s supplying it to the suppliers… ?” He shrugged. “All I have are rumors. Some say Plaent. Or Pyr.” He shook his head. “He’s a scary renegade bastard, but…” He shrugged again.

Martin listened carefully, recognizing all but the last name Glover reeled off. He was considered the United Systems’ specialist in the workings of the Bucon’s pirate guild and the shadow empire of the Pirate League. He figured much of what he knew was what the guild and League allowed to be known. “Pyr?” he inquired, on the off-chance he might gain some new, uncensored information while the ambassador was drugged to the gills and off-guard.

Glover looked pained. “Not exactly an honest, tax-paying guild member. Showed up on the border over by the Rose Nebula five, six years ago. They love him out that way, which keeps the guild from coming down hard on him. He’s a slaver and pirate and works the techno market more than he is a dealer, but with a nasty rep, and mysterious friends on several sides of the border. You want to contact the folks on the other side of the Rose, you have to go through Pyr. One rumor is that the Rust is coming from the other side.” Glover shrugged beneath his blanket. “Just another rumor.”

Pyr sounded interesting. Ugly, but interesting. Martin made a mental note of the information.

“We need to talk to Sting. Roxy. The koltiri.”

Physician Merkrates, who I helped raise
, Martin added with an inward wince. He wished he hadn’t agreed to this. Until last night, he’d thought the kid was immortal, if not completely invulnerable. He wasn’t so sure anymore, but that wasn’t going to stop him from going through with this. He got up and helped Glover to his feet.

As they started toward the door, it was flung open. A petite, dark-haired woman stumbled inside and threw herself into Glover’s arms. He hugged her close and let her sob for a few seconds, then held her out at arms’ length. Martin noticed bruises around her big brown eyes and a swollen lip. She looked nervously at Glover.

“Pamla, dear,” he said gently. “You told Persey about us, didn’t you?”

“No,” she retorted quickly. “He wouldn’t beat the shit out of me over
you
. It’s worse.”

Martin stepped forward. “How worse?”

“Hello, Viper,” she greeted him with a smile that lit up her bruised face. Martin recognized her from the Bucon enclave in the Terran asteroid belt where nobody went by their real name.

“Marquise, isn’t?” She nodded. “What happened?”

She gasped and went pale. “Viper, you’re Service, too!” She turned a fierce glare on Glover and demanded, “What are you up to?”

Glover’s knuckles went white from his tight grip on her upper arms. She tried to wriggle away, and he shook her. He said something threatening in a Bucon dialect that Martin’s translator probably wasn’t supposed to recognize. The concepts that were translated to Martin from Glover’s words were, “Family-thieving, sex-for-nothing idiot. Everybody’s action is at stake. What is going on?”

She replied with a few unpleasant words in Bucon, then blurted out in Standard, “I told Persey about Groupie! All I said was that it was odd seeing her in civvies as the last time I’d seen her she’d been in a Service uniform. He beat me up for dealing to her. Then he…” She gulped, then bit her bruised lower lip. Bucons didn’t talk easily to each other.

“What?” Glover prodded with another hard shake.

“Then he told all his dealers to spread the word that Rust is being hoarded at the hospital. He said to tell the junkies that if they want it they have to get it from the hospital. And when they find out that there isn’t any—it’s going to be ugly, Glover. If it isn’t already.” She looked pleadingly at Martin. “I don’t want to see anything happen to the doctors. They were helping the ones too young to use the Rust.”

Martin’s mouth went dry. “The hospital.”

“Riot.” Glover pushed the woman aside. He looked at Martin. “We have to get to the—Sting.”

“Not her,” Martin declared. “Persey doesn’t care about Roxanne. It’s Dee he’s after.” Dee, the very bright Service chemist who now had a supply of Rust to work with. Dee, his friend. Dee, who had just saved his life. Martin suddenly realized the people he’d noticed down in the street had all been moving, drifting as if windblown, in one direction. A strong wind. Desperate people driven by need. The walking dead. Tools for whatever Persey had in mind.

“The bastard is dead,” Martin decided. “Glover, where’s your air-car? We have to get to the hospital right now.”

———

“We’ll walk from here.”

Somebody in Dallis had finally shut down the last power plant, Martin realized as Glover stopped the aircar a cautious half-kilometer away from the dark hospital grounds. The rain still poured down in wind-driven torrents. Martin wiped water out of his eyes and squinted to get a better view of the lifeless gray mass of stone and glass at the end of the wide street. Beyond the dark hospital, the port was a deserted cluster of tower, hangars, and permacrete fields. They walked up a street full of puddles and awash with streaming water. Except for the low moan of the wind, his ears were assaulted by dense, unnerving silence. He was used to the empty streets and unlit shops. He didn’t know what it was that seemed so ominous about the abandoned street. Maybe because a riot should be a noisy affair. He made out a large crowd of people milling around ahead of them, moving in and out of the hospital’s gates. No shouts. No angry screams—but the feeling of danger increased with every step nearer the silent mass of bodies. No one noticed two more people approaching the crowd.

Martin shook his head as he pulled out a hand weapon from a concealed pocket of his jacket. “I hate heroics,” he complained. Then he gave a hard look at the equally well-armed Bucon.

Glover had his collar pulled up against the rain, but his gaze came up to meet Martin’s. “Me, too.” He looked almost bored.

Martin nodded. Of the two of them, Glover was probably the calmer. He was a Rust junkie, but he had everything at stake. He’d do. “Let’s go.”

———

“Bet this was a nice garden a few minutes ago,” Martin commented as he stepped over the body lying across the stone-flagged path.

The body had formed a sort of dam, and rain water mixed with blood pooled where the dead man lay. There were people everywhere in the courtyard, some of them on their feet, their faces full of anger and desperate pain. Many more were on the ground, beds of summer flowers crushed beneath them. Many were dead, many more were injured, the violence totally random. The rain poured down on them all, soaking multiple shades of blood into the ruined garden, diluting and mingling it into black streams.

Martin stunned a few of the crowd when they turned their attention toward him and Glover. They fell with the same weird silence that permeated the place, thicker than the blood. What the hell did Rust do to people? Martin didn’t let himself think about it. He took a deep breath and ran as fast as he could for the main entrance.

There was no blood on the white and purple tiles in the lobby, just trailed-in mud and small puddles of rainwater. They followed the mud trail into the carpeted corridors. Here people were shouting.

Some were screaming in pain, most were shouting for Rust. The first-floor corridor was lit only by skylights, the dark color of the walls absorbing much of the light. Martin found a wall map, but without the voice-activated guide it took him long seconds to make out that the labs he wanted were located on the twentieth floor.

“Damn.”

He grabbed Glover by the arm. It took them a few more seconds of pushing through the crowd to find the emergency stairs and follow the hysterical cries and shouts of the pack of Rust hunters upwards. The stairwell was dark; not totally black, but dark enough to add to the danger and Martin’s sense of foreboding. He almost missed the unconscious woman wedged into the doorway of the tenth floor.

It was the glint of gold that caught his eye. Gold that had a twenty-four-carat quality to it, but also seemed to have a life of its own. It was the kind of living color that could only be associated with one rare variety of humanoid in the Systems. He was used to waking up with hair like that in his face on most mornings.

“Roxy,” he said, kneeling beside the huddled form of his sister-in-law. He had heard that there were several koltiri working at the hospital, but he figured the others would have been sensible enough to blink out at the first sign of trouble. Roxy was a MilService officer—which said a great deal for her common sense right there.

Her skull was smashed in, her lovely face a ruin, the gold hair sticky and matted with clots of blood. The damn fools had decided to kill the one thing that could save them, Martin thought furiously. He battled the fury and felt for a pulse at her throat. He wasn’t surprised to find one, just overwhelmingly happy.

He and Glover exchanged a relieved glance, then dragged Roxy out of the stairwell. There were windows along one wall of the corridor. It was empty of rioters at present. There was plenty of light here to see that Roxy was covered in more blood than even a head wound could account for. Martin spotted a long jagged cut in the bare skin over her heart, but it was already healing. Luckily, her attacker hadn’t known that you couldn’t kill a koltiri by stabbing her in the heart. If you cut off the head of a koltiri healer or blew her up, then you might have a chance of killing her—but a knife in the heart? No. That would hurt a koltiri really badly—and make her angry. He knew from personal experience that the
last
thing you ever wanted to do was to get a gentle, compassionate demi-goddess really pissed off.

“She’ll be okay,” he assured Glover.
I hope
, he prayed silently.

“My head hurts,” she answered for herself. Roxy’s big purple eyes blinked open. “I’m going to throw up.”

“You do that, honey.” Martin helped her to sit up as she began to retch. She did vomit, and it was mostly blood. “Oh, God,” Martin whispered as he watched helplessly. The girl was going to need a lot of time and protein to put herself back together from this one, and he didn’t have either to give her.

She got slowly to her feet and leaned against a window, her forehead pressed to the cool glass. Martin watched carefully, a part of him clinically, as the last traces of injury disappeared from the empath and the ruined face became familiar again. Familiar, but changed. Her large eyes were sunken in hollow sockets, the skin drawn tight over thin bones. She was a big woman, taller than him by several inches, but right now she looked more like a stick-figure drawing of herself than a living person.