Nylon Angel (21 page)

As I scrabbled back up, I wondered abstractly how much it would cost for Doll to edit out my sweat response? Add it to the list. If I was going to keep this kind of stuff up I needed to take a serious look at my profile. A natural, pretty-much-unmodified girl could only do so much!

The drone roared to the junction and stopped, its bearded sensors flickering like long tongues up either chute. I held my breath while it sniffed the fatigues. It shot out an articulated hand to free the obstruction. The snag turned it into a tug of war, which threw the machine into confusion. I hoped it was programmed not to tear things.

Then I wondered if that would include me.

Eventually the drone won but it ripped the clothing in the attempt. It stopped still in its tracks and set off an alarm like a cold-blooded yowl. So much for my plan! My legs began to shake with the strain and I knew in a few seconds I’d slide right down on to those creepy sensors and drop my butt into the clutches of that articulated hand.

I’d already begun to slide, when a black cord slapped me across the cheek. I snaked it around my wrist and began a frantic, scrambling climb.

Muscles screamed.

Daac pulled me out of the chute at the other end.

‘What kept you?’ I snarled.

He didn’t reply.

Then I noticed his eyes. Shot to hell. His back and chest, still naked, were a raw mass of bleeding flesh. He trembled like a tortured animal.

Ibis was flaked on the bed, out cold.

‘Jee-sus! What?’

‘Boys in the command module thought they’d have some fun. Seems they were homophobic,’ he whispered.

I reached out a tentative hand to his chest. They weren’t ordinary whip marks. They were burns.

‘Bastards!’ I cried.

He flinched. His eyes glazed over in pain.

How had he ever pulled me up that chute?

‘There’s a stinger in your case. Wake Ibis.’

I nodded and snapped the case open. ‘What about you. Any opiates?’

He shook his head. ‘Can’t. They gave me a derm of Crear. Can’t combine it with opiates. Anna will have something to help.’ He stumbled over to near the bed and slumped down.

I whacked Ibis with the wake-up derm and he surfaced in a couple of minutes. Apart from having eyes as bloodshot as Daac’s, he seemed OK.

Daac on the other hand was starting to shock.

Ibis helped me lay him on the bed. ‘It’s too dangerous to bring Anna here. We’ll have to get him to her.’

‘How long will that take?’ I asked, worry gnawing in my gut.

‘With a ’pede, only thirty minutes. If nothing stops us.’

‘Get one,’ I said.

But he was already gone.

 

Ibis wasn’t long yet it seemed like a year. Daac tossed restlessly on the bed, complaining of thirst and moaning quietly as his wounds bled on to the sheets.

I tore the top sheet up and tried to wrap it around some of the worst burns, but he wouldn’t keep still. Blood and a watery, yellow fluid stained everything.

Eventually he fell into unconsciousness. My worry blossomed into prickles of pure panic. Did people die from this?

I noticed his fingers had a bluish, bruised look. I crawled next to him and cradled his head in my arms, whispering to him, ‘Come on Loyl, we’re taking you to Anna. You’re the one who said she could fix anyone. Just hang on.’

 

I don’t remember how Ibis, Pat and I managed to get him to the basement ’pede bays. I do remember that strength wasn’t an issue. If it was going to save his carcass, I reckon I could have carried him across a continent - ten continents - over hot lava. Aside from the mixed up feelings I had about him, he was too damn beautiful to waste.

We laid him in the back and Ibis and I stuffed ourselves in around him. Pat leapt into the driver’s seat and set out for Anna’s with all the finesse of an overdosed speed freak.

With the windows opaqued I couldn’t see much outside. We sat tense, breathing each other’s oxygen, waiting for the whine of an intercept ’pede or the slub of a police ’copter.

Either way I was in the mood for a fight.

I broke the silence. ‘Why haven’t they stopped us yet?’

‘I’m using the search pattern coordinates Loyl got from Tolly - and I’m skirting them. Seems most available mobile units are on the search for you, but they can’t cover everything,’ said Pat. ‘Besides, once they start something full-scale like this, they get a lot of distraction. People who think they’ve seen you. And then there’s all the ones they bust accidentally. Slows the whole thing down.’

He pointed to the screen on the dashboard. I strained forward from where I sat, squeezed behind Loyl. The dashboard’s virt map looked like a bunch of pissed-off ants deserting the nest. ‘But what about the rousties?’

‘Could have been bad luck they followed him. Anyway, nothing linked him to you in the end. They were just having fun,’ Ibis finished grimly.

I sank back, sick with confusion and fear. How did I get into this?

For ever later, the ’burbs bled into the green-grey of the farmlets of the Outer Gyro.

Daac’s moans tapered off, and as soon as he quieted I wished he hadn’t. Anything to let me know he was still alive. I fixed my eyes on the quick heaves of his naked, bloodied chest and breathed every breath in time.

As Pat hurled the ’pede the last distance I could hear him on the comm. ‘Anna, track us in and drop the security domain at twenty metres. I’m not braking for pleasantries.’

‘How bad is he?’ Static broke up the distress in her voice.

‘Bad,’ confirmed Pat. ‘See you in the shed.’

I thought of her warehouse and its medical facilities. I hoped she had the right gear to treat him. Scientists weren’t usually paramedics. But then Daac had brought me to her when he thought I was seriously injured.

Ibis must have read my thoughts. He squeezed my hand. ‘Anna knows what she’s doing. She spent ten years in a combat clinic in the Territory.’

I stared at him in surprise. His eyes were ruined, inflamed and heavy lidded, but his smile was comforting and sincere.

‘You’re kidding me?’ Maybe Dr Schaum had some redeeming points. If she could save Daac, I might even cut her some slack.

Ibis turned his head toward me and dropped a kiss lightly on my cheek. I didn’t smile back as I returned to my vigil of counting Daac’s breaths - but ever so gently, I laid my head on his shoulder.

 

It took hours for Daac to stabilise.

The first couple of hours Pat, Ibis and I hovered, while Anna worked on rehydrating his body. Silent tears streamed down her face. My own emotions - raked raw already - were thrown by her distress.

‘He’ll be all right, now, won’t he?’ I begged for her reassurance as we all shared a late-night meal.

She shot me a look of pure hatred. ‘This is your fault. And you didn’t even get what we wanted.’

‘Anna!’ Ibis intervened. ‘You’re upset. Please . . .’

She swallowed hard, like she was trying to catch hold of something, then got up and returned to her patient.

I should have left the compound then, but something stopped me. I had to know Daac would make it before I did.

Early the next morning I went for a run around the compound, to think. Ibis watched me from a peculiar structure he called a ‘gazebo’.

I pulled up near him, sweating and buzzed, mind clear.

‘My God, Parrish,’ he gasped in awe. ‘Why aren’t you doing this for a living?’

I thought of Kat and shrugged. ‘It’s just another type of prison, Ibis.’

‘But you could have been free of all this.’ He waved his hands in the air.

‘Free? That’s one thing I wouldn’t have been. Athletes are paid meat with an expiry date,’ I said bitterly. ‘I should know. My sister is one. Five years tops, I give her, before I get the call to say she’s dead. Performance enhancers get them all in the end. It has to be that way.’

‘And to think, one time they were illegal,’ Ibis said.

We shared a comfortable sort of silence for a while, staring out in the direction of Anna’s ‘shed’. From the outside it looked so ordinary. The sort of place you might store your garden fertiliser.

‘I’m leaving soon,’ I told him.

‘I guessed,’ he sighed.

‘Will you help me?’

His nod was brief.

 

Still, I hung around until the evening, hoping for news, watching the others roam restlessly. I was alone when Anna Schaum stepped outside for a break.

She spoke first. ‘He’s conscious.’

I started eagerly towards the door, then I caught her miserable expression in the moonlight. It stopped me dead.

‘Do you know what he wanted?’ she said.

‘Wanted?’ I was surprised at such an irrelevancy. He was conscious. He was alive. Who cared what he wanted?

‘You,’ she choked out accusingly.

I stifled a nervous laugh. Her misery was so apparent, her hatred of me undeniable.

Usually people disliked me for a
good
reason. Jealousy over a man was hard to swallow and something I wasn’t used to. But I’d be damned if
I
was going to apologise for it.

On the other hand, Schaum had saved his life. I could forgive her a lot for that.

It spurred me to do the closest thing I could to actually being sensitive - I walked away without seeing him.

 

Sometime after midnight I slipped out of the main house and crossed the darkness to Anna’s shed. Daac had been moved across to the house and the facility was deserted. It wasn’t locked; there was no need now.

Kneeling before Anna’s favoured PC, I initiated a search through her work files. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to sit in her chair.

After my practice run at Razz’s PC, Anna’s keyhole was cinch. Even her password was stupidly obvious. ‘Loylmedaac’.

For a scientist she was a real girl!

Once I was in, it took a while to find what I was looking for and when I did most of it was sci-speak and cryptic notes. I flicked through them looking for anything that made sense. When I found it, it didn’t help a bit.

 

The screen dropped out before I finished reading; an inbuilt safeguard against unwelcome snoops. It was probably rigged to an alarm.

My cue to leave!

Within a few minutes Anna and Pat were outside the shed, turning on the lights. I hid near the door as they ran in and began checking the equipment for problems. While they argued over possible causes I treated the floor to my best belly crawl and slipped out and away.

I left the compound as dawn came, waking Ibis to disengage the buffer. Pat was still asleep and for all I knew Anna was warming Daac’s bed. The thought didn’t make me happy.

Ibis pulled me loosely into his soft embrace.

I stood in it awkwardly.

‘Take care, sweetie,’ he said.

‘Yourself,’ I replied, surprised by a tinge of regret.

I couldn’t remember the last time I was sad to say goodbye to someone. Maybe Kat, all those years ago. ‘Ibis, I’ve got no right to ask this, but there’s a kid somewhere in Viva. King Ban’s family has adopted her.’

Ibis’s eyes widened. ‘The one that was all over the news. You know that kid?’

‘Yeah. I need to find out the real story. See if she’s OK.’

I didn’t have to spell it out, Ibis understood me right away. ‘I’ll ask around. You come see me when you’ve sorted out your business. I’ll have word.’

We hugged briefly. This time it was mutual.

‘Soon,’ I said.

‘Soon,’ echoed Ibis. But I saw the doubt in his eyes.