Killing Time (4 page)

Leon Tarbell's head reappeared
for an instant. " 'Combat,' Larissa?" he asked with a knowing look.
"Don't you mean
evasive maneuvers?"

Larissa smiled deviously, and
then Tarbell dashed off, looking for all the world like one of Satan's merrier
minions.

As the men moved to attend to
their tasks, each of them began shouting orders and answers, the whole
producing an excited and exciting chorus such as might have accompanied the
launch of an old seafaring ship. I turned when I heard a slight hissing noise
and saw the doorway through which we'd jumped being sealed from above by a
hatch that moved quite smoothly, especially given its considerable speed. Once
it was in place, some gentle lights came up along the base of the corridor,
revealing a surprising sight: rather than the usual plastic and polished metal
that one was accustomed to finding in high-tech environments, the walls of the
passageways were lined with fine wood paneling, and in every third or fourth
panel hung a small painting, elegantly framed and subtly lit.

My mouth fell open.
"Beautiful," I whispered.

"Thank you, Doctor,"
Larissa answered in a charmingly self-involved way, looking down and running
her hands along her hips and thighs. Her face dropped a bit when she glanced up
and saw what I meant. "Oh. The
ship.'"
She took my hand again,
and we started down the corridor. "Yes, that's Malcolm for you—he
adores
the incongruous."

"You're
not exactly
what I would have expected either, Larissa— that is, if I may call you—"

"You may," she
answered, striding purposefully along. "Larissa Tressalian, to be exact.
You may also remark on the lovely sibilance of the name, through I warn you,
it's a pretty stale line." For an instant I attempted to determine why
her name, while indeed pretty, had a familiar ring to it; but then I was
distracted when she touched the collar of her bodysuit with her free hand,
indicating that she was receiving another communication. "Yes, brother
dear? ... Yes, I'm just taking him to his quarters to—freshen up ..." She
looked at me in a way that seemed more than a little suggestive; then she
suddenly turned away, standing still. "Where? ... Land and air units? ...
All right, I'm on my way to the turret." When Larissa looked at me again
her expression had changed: the coy cat had become a gleeful predator.
"Freshening up will have to wait, I'm afraid, Doctor." She gripped my
hand tighter and broke into a trot. "A different sort of amusement's been
lined up!"

We proceeded along the narrow
passageway to an intricately carved and richly carpeted wooden staircase. As we
climbed the stairs, the humming of the ship's propulsion system—driven, as Larissa
had just told me, by superconductive magnetic generators capable of producing
unimaginable (not to mention clean) levitating and propulsive power—began to
soften, and I could feel that we were moving forward. There were occasional
dips and swells in the motion—not unsettling but noticeable—and when we
reached the upper deck, I found myself facing a round transparent panel in the
fuselage or hull. Looking out, I saw that we were traveling about a hundred
feet off the ground, hugging the contours of the suburban landscape like some
enormous cruise missile.

Larissa tugged at my arm.
"No time for astonishment now," she said, pulling me forward along
the passageway. "There's a small task force of local and state law
enforcement on the way, and the federal boys won't be far behind."

"But," I stammered as
we reached a ladder that led up through the ceiling of the passageway,
"you've only got this one ship, can it really—"

Larissa spun around and put a
finger to my lips, her eyes now positively shimmering. "Take a peek up
there." She indicated the ladder, and I ascended.

Above was a circular space about
fifteen feet in diameter, not unlike the turret of some fantastic tank, except
that its shell was transparent. There was an enormous gun fixed in the center,
on which was mounted an empty seat. To one side of the turret was a bank of
tracking equipment, before which sat Eli Kuperman, carefully monitoring the
many readouts. Glancing at the gun again, I noted that it looked somehow
familiar; in fact, it seemed a giant version of Larissa's sidearm.

"They're both rail
guns," she said, again reading my face as she climbed up, squeezed tight
against me on the ladder, and drew out her smaller weapon. "It's a simple
concept, really: the projectiles are propelled by completing a circuit between
two conducting bars, instead of by a gas explosion. The electromagnetic field
behind the projectiles multiplies the acceleration—you've seen the effect. Now,
then—" She reholstered her weapon and gave my face a last touch. "I could
stay here talking killing power with you for hours, but Malcolm really is
anxious to meet you."

"Look, Larissa," I
said, her closeness making me comfortable enough to reveal how uncertain I
felt. "What
is
all this? Why am I here?"

She smiled gently. "Don't
worry. All appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, you're in one of the
last sane places on Earth. And you're here because we need you." She
slipped by me into the turret, settling into the seat on the big rail gun.
"Just keep going forward— you'll know the right door when you see
it."

Eli Kuperman turned, his face all
business. "The first of them are moving in fast, Larissa."

Larissa gripped two hand controls
in front of her seat. "Better get going, Doctor," she called to me
with another smile. "I'd hate to take your head off so early in
our—acquaintance."

She tilted the controls to the
left, and suddenly the entire floor of the turret began to rotate; in seconds
it would close off the hatchway in which I was standing. I scrambled below,
landing on the corridor floor with a jarring bump. Then I pushed on forward,
past more wood paneling, more paintings, and more doorways, until I arrived at
a portal that I took to be the one of which Larissa had spoken, as it was more
elaborate than the rest and bore a legend painted in elegant gold and black:

MUNDUS VULT DECIPI

I ran through the medical Latin
I'd learned years before, but to no avail; and so I was left with nothing to do
but head on in and meet my host, a prospect that I found not a little daunting.
Given the vessel I was in, the sister I had met, and the actions for which I
knew he was responsible, I calculated that this Malcolm Tressalian—and again
there was something very familiar about the name—must be an intimidating,
perhaps overpowering, character, both physically and personally. But the
encounter was now inevitable, and so I resignedly knocked on the door and
stepped inside.

The nose of the vessel was a
conical superstructure sheathed entirely in the same transparent material I'd
seen in Larissa's turret, and the three levels of the space it housed—an observation
dome up top, a helm and guidance center in the middle, and a small conference
area below—were connected by bare metallic staircases. In fact, the fittings
generally were in the high-tech mode I had originally expected to find on
boarding; but coming as it now did on the heels of the rather anachronistic
decor outside, the style was unexpected and even jarring.

The doorway through which I'd
come was to the rear of the nose's control level. Though there was little to
see by, I could tell that there were two men sitting before the guidance panel,
and beyond them the decaying malls and decrepit housing developments of
suburban Florida spread out before us. I began to move forward with
trepidation; and then the man on the left spoke, cheerfully enough but without
facing me:

"Dr. Wolfe! Excellent, you
managed to escape Larissa—which is far more, I suspect, than our pursuers will
do."

And then he turned, or rather the
entire seat he occupied did: for it was in fact a wheelchair, one that even in
the near darkness I could see contained not the formidable physical specimen
I'd anticipated but a frail, somewhat pitiable form that did not seem to match
the vibrant voice it produced.

"I suppose I should offer
you some melodramatic welcome," the voice continued in the same amiable
tone. "But we're neither of us the type, eh? No, I suspect that what you'd
really like is some answers."

"My name's Malcolm
Tressalian—did my sister manage to relay that much to you, or have you endured
uninterrupted flirtation since you came aboard?"

"Yes—I mean no—I mean, she
did—"

Tressalian laughed and rolled
closer to me, his face becoming fully visible for the first time. "You
must understand that she almost never takes any interest in men—but when she
does, my God ..." I smiled at this statement, though I was paying more
attention to his face than to his words. The features were not unlike
Larissa's— handsome in a fine-boned way—and the hair was the same silvery
color. The eyes, however, were quite different, being of a peculiarly light,
rather otherworldly blue. Yet there was something far more important than any
of this in the face, a look I had seen many times in children who'd served
harsh prison terms, as well as in schizophrenic patients who had lived for too
long without treatment:

It was the imponderable depth
brought on by compressed, relentless mental and physical torment, a brand as
unmistakable as any birthmark.

"And I do apologize,"
Tressalian continued amiably, "for the way you were brought aboard."
As he said this he shifted into position to try to stand up, something that he
apparently felt it was important to do at that moment, given the pain that it
evidently caused him. He reached for a pair of aluminum crutches that were
mounted on either side of his chair, clipped them to his upper arms, and then
managed to get to his feet. I didn't know quite what move to make to assist
him, especially since I guessed that he desired none; and indeed, once upright
he looked very pleased that he was able to approach me and shake hands on his
own. "However," he continued, "I'm sure you appreciate that we
couldn't just leave you behind to suffer a fate like Mr. Jenkins's." His
expression grew earnest. "I trust Eli expressed his condolences—let me
add my own. It was a sickening thing to do, even for that unkillable beast we
call Central Intelligence."

"Then it
was
the
government," I said quietly, Max's face flashing across my mind for an
instant.

Tressalian nodded
sympathetically. "The pair of you were getting too close on the matter of
John Price's death."

"The matter of his
death?" I asked carefully. "Or the matter of the images he'd tampered
with?"

Tressalian's smile returned.
"The two are one, Doctor—surely you've guessed that much.
Your
death,
however, would have caused an inconvenient public stir. Still, had you
persisted they would almost certainly have found a way to quietly eliminate
you."

"But why?" I asked
involuntarily. "What the
hell
is going—"

I was cut off by the man seated
at the piloting console, who spoke in a steady yet forbidding tone:
"Larissa's preparing to engage. They're within range, and she's routed
helm control to the turret station."

Tressalian sighed, though his
concern did not appear deep. "Well, Colonel, since that leaves you with
nothing to do for the moment, come and meet Dr. Wolfe."

The man at the now-usurped
guidance panel stood up, and even before he turned I could see that he had an
eminently military bearing, one that was complemented by a high-collared suit
of clothes that was really more of an unembellished uniform. When he did turn
it was in a quick, wheeling motion, and what I saw next caused me to take in a
quick and rather rude gasp of air.

Heavy brows loomed low over
penetrating dark eyes amid the deep brown skin, and the jaw, had it been any
more set, might well have shattered; but what prompted my extreme reaction was
the sight of one of the most horrific scars I'd ever encountered, running the
length of the right side of the head, tugging at one eye and pulling a corner
of the mouth down into a perpetual frown. A streak of snow white followed the
line of the scar up into the otherwise jet black hair.

"Dr. Wolfe," Tressalian
said, "this is Colonel Justus Slayton."

"Retired," the colonel
added in that low, almost ominous voice that made it plain I'd be well advised
to tread carefully during any contact with him.

I did. "The same Colonel
Slayton," I asked, offering a hand, "who almost changed the course of
the Taiwan campaign?" That seemed to take just a bit of the steel out of
the man's demeanor, and he actually accepted my hand, encasing it in his own
with a force that was impressive.

"No one could have changed
the course of that campaign," Slay-ton answered. "My men and I were a
token resistance—sacrificed animals, nothing more."

"Offered on the altar of
expanded trade with the commu-capitalists in Beijing," I agreed with a
nod. "Still, you put up a hell of a fight."

"Excellent again,
Doctor," Tressalian said. "Not many people understand the facts of
that campaign. What you may
not
know about the colonel, however, is that
after being wounded on Taiwan he became one of the Pentagon's top men in
weapons development. That, of course, was before I persuaded him to—"

"Malcolm," Colonel
Slayton interrupted. "Before we go any further, there's the matter of the
doctor's DNA disc."

Tressalian became slightly
embarrassed. "Oh, yes, exactly right, Colonel. I must apologize once
again, Doctor. But recent events have forced us to become a little more
circumspect in our dealings. Do you mind?"

"Oh—no, of course not,"
I said, going for my wallet and removing my DNA identification disc.
"Hell," I went on as I quickly plucked a hair from my head and handed
both items over, "during the last few days
I
wouldn't have been
able to swear that I was me."