Single Combat (19 page)

But psych people had their knee-jerk reactions too. "Thinking it over, Control," he said. "Do you have anybody online who can tell me how to land this thing? Just in case," he added that tiny bit too quickly, smiling to himself. He was developing an idea, a balls-out crazy one. "Don't kid yourself that I can't do it alone. I'm not afraid," he said. That last word, he judged, would convince them he was scared shitless.

So scared, in fact, that he could never contemplate the action he was about to take as Marbrye Sanger pointed a triumphant finger ahead.

Sanger was mentally exhausted from trying to ignore the demands of Control. They'd asked if she could communicate and she'd ignored them. Then they'd suggested she try removing the garrote wire; bolting toward the rear of the Loring; half a dozen scenarios, all based on two fallacies. The first was that Quantrill's psychomotor responses were anywhere near normal; and the second was that Marbrye Sanger had not committed herself, once and for all, to her lover.

Even while he doubted her fidelity.

"
These little mines East of Carbonville
," she signed, taking too long to spell out the name. "
Catholics, Indys. I had a mission here
. She did not elaborate; why waste time admitting you'd disappeared a woman for pushing media unscramblers to the tough local miners?

Quantrill knew that Sanger expected him to attempt a landing with the sprint chopper. "
Where's our DZ
," he signed.

She paused, vaguely disoriented. The township was further down the valley; the access road twisted below. In the distance was a mine tower, like a scarlet silo protruding from the earth—but Sanger knew that meant big business. They'd have a better chance in one of the small mines operated by men and women who competed against the Fed consortiums. Nearer, she saw two tailings piles, suggesting horizontal shafts typical of small coal mines.

"
There
," she signaled, pointing near a two-story structure of stone and mortar that was too large to be a residence. Sanger did not study it closely; assumed it housed crushers and sorters. She could not have known that her decision of that instant, that momentary gesture, would decide a great many things.

Quantrill eased back on the throttles, scanning the bright heavens for swift birds of prey. "
Take the cable down
," he signed. "I'll
follow
."

Almost, she spoke aloud. "
If you leave it hovering, they'll soon realize we're down
."

But he was already waving her back, speaking aloud. "I'm going to mull it over, Control," he said. "Don't know where the hell I am but I know how to circle. I think," he added. At that moment he slowed the Loring's forward motion. He'd have to program a steady tight bank for himself, but he didn't have to risk Sanger's bod that way. Without looking, he brought his left fist up over his shoulder, thumb jerking downward. Then he pulled the tee-handle for the belly hatch. The aircraft wafted nearly motionless above baked earth.

Stunned, Sanger realized that Quantrill expected her to exit the ship on her cable harness. If he kept it hovering while he followed, the first pursuer on the scene would penetrate his deception. Then she grinned at his back—her first smile in two days—and hurried. She'd concluded incorrectly that he intended to shoot the aircraft down with her chiller.

She snatched up the cable from its overhead stowage, reeled it out, saw it writhe below; fitted a handgrip with its frictioner to the cable, then attached its carabiners to her epaulets. Hers was an easy drop, less than a hundred meters, and she made it in a dozen seconds. The instant she touched the ground, Quantrill banked the Loring and began to climb. She raised both arms in supplication, certain that he had decided to leave her.

Then, three hundred meters up, the craft began to circle, one coleopter shroud angled more than the other, and she saw the stubby wings wavering as Quantrill sought a smooth pattern. He wasn't all that good at it. He steepened his bank, the cable whipping below, and moments later she saw his legs through the belly hatchway. The autopilot was now in charge.

Quantrill hadn't wasted his maintenance experience. He stripped a rubber tiedown cord from stowage, gripped it in his teeth while improvising a sling with harness straps. His work coverall, of course, had no epaulets for a cable drop. With the straps across his back and under his arms he linked them into a loop, fitted the cable frictioner, locked it. The cable drum had its own brake and automatic rewind stud. He set it for auto rewind, sat in the hatchway with his feet against the hatch, pried the downlock trigger from its clasp. Now the wind pressure thrust the hatch against his bootsoles, but he could not be certain it would slap the hatch more than halfway shut. His last jury-rig was the rubber tiedown, hooked to the hatch and stretched to a handhold inside.

He dropped, batted by the hatch door as it snapped against the cable. The sling bit into his arm sockets. He was rotating helplessly, sliding down the cable and, linked as he was, Quantrill could not stabilize himself with a free-fall arch. Strictly speaking, his descent was not even a true rappel. It was a pirouetting slide down a cable that slowly unreeled against a preset drag, and a survivor of this experiment would be one who did not make the same mistake
once
.

Quantrill cocked a leg outward, increasing drag on that side. His rotation slowed and his spiral narrowed slightly. He arched then, legs spread, elbows back, and found himself tracking in a great arc—but a lesser arc than that of the droning sprint chopper. If his pursuers made visual contact now, his ruse would be all for nothing.

Each time he tightened his hand frictioner, more of the cable paid out from its reel in response to the drag of his, body. In fifty-meter increments he descended to treetop height—if there had been any tall cottonwoods near. He had intended to set the Loring's circle low enough that the cable's weighted end would finally drag the ground—though if it caught on a rock outcrop he knew the cable would part. He hoped he could descend swiftly, stabilize his track again, and slip from his harness loop to approximate a chutist's landing. But it did not work out that nicely.

Wind drift caused the aircraft to stray from a perfect circle. He found himself at the end of the cable, still moving at a respectable speed, still ten meters up. But the ground was uneven; by closing his limbs he further narrowed the radius of his circle. Now he was eight meters up, fighting a fresh rotation; now six. And just ahead was a two-meter hillock made by an old road-grader. Beyond that, his drop would be greater.

He reduced the odds another arm's length by releasing his handgrip and slipping from his sling, holding to the end of the loop as he approached the hillock at a sprinter's speed and much too high above it. He released his grip.

Sanger could not know all the variables Quantrill fought and was a hundred meters distant when he caromed off the earth, spilling down the lee side of the hillock into a rutted mining road. She saw him hit on the downslope, bounce, tuck into a ball, hit again, come up on all-fours. He was shaking his head, trying to rise, when she reached him. Then he fell on his back, gasping for breath. And Control could hear involuntary grunts and wheezes.

"Sanger, has your status changed?" She wondered at Control's use of her surname; realized that Quantrill could not speak, whatever Control might be saying to him. Controllers could talk with a dozen rovers at once.

She made two snap decisions, hauling Quantrill's midriff fabric up to ease his discomfort as she panted, "Nailed—the bastard."

"Can you fly a Loring?"

"Neg, Control." She saw Quantrill's eyes blink, hoped he was fully conscious as he fought for breath. Above them the sprint chopper continued its banked circle, slowly drifting downwind. The belly hatch was nearly shut, Quantrill's makeshift harness caught at the hatch lip when the auto rewind reeled it in. It might escape notice from a distance. But the canopy was clear; obviously, no one was minding the store up there. "He got it—circling on auto—and I got in—a neck chop. We're in—personnel bay. If—you value that eye—Quantrill,—let go of—the garrote."

Quantrill could wheeze a bit now; gestured feebly for her to release his coverall. She could not tell whether his toothy rictus was a smile or a grimace until he made a manual "
OK"
. He didn't look okay, he looked like bloody hell with dark stains wetting the frayed coverall at his elbow and right hip.

"Mexican standoff, Sanger," he gasped finally for Control's benefit. "When this bird runs out of fuel,—it's you and me both."

"
All the way
," she signed, and hauled him to his feet. At first he limped but soon was loping with her up the road to the many-windowed stone building. Aloud she said, "Any good ideas, Control?" She had two reasons for being breathless; one bogus, one real.

Wait one, Sanger," from Control. "We have to get closer visual contact." Scanning the heavens, she realized that they had no visual contact at all. Yet. If they had, they'd be wondering why two people were leaving dust spurts as they bounded up an access road.

The masonry building had its own windmill and, she saw with a start, a flowering hedge. It also had stained glass in its front windows and a hand-hewn cross of stone over the double doors.

Sanger had haplessly led Quantrill to a Catholic Church.

Other structures squatted nearly a kilometer distant, but they knew better than to risk any more time in the open than absolutely necessary. They were supposedly locked in mutually deadly embrace, still in the circling sprint chopper that slowly circled downwind across the valley.

"Quantrill, you made a hell of a try; the best," said Control in his head. "If you remand yourself to Sanger's custody now, maybe we can get you both down alive. If you don't you are suiciding. Do you agree?"

"Maybe; maybe not," he panted, hurling the wooden doors open.

"We hold too many cards," Control insisted, and reminded him by setting the squalling infant on the slate again at medium strength. Then, over the cacophony, Control began a seductive spiel with one theme: "Give it up, Quantrill. You've taken too much punishment. Let us help you. You must be exhausted, hurt, afraid. We understand; we don't want you hurt. Relax; let us take the burden…"

The two desperate rovers stormed down a center aisle in the nave, pausing at the sanctuary which, for their immediate needs, was no sanctuary at all. Control's transmissions were still too loud, too clear.

Sanger darted toward one of the hallways that flanked the sanctuary; discovered only a gloomy little bathroom and a gloomier reconciliation room with its confessional screen.

Quantrill took the other hall, now limping again, and was ready to blow the lock off the sacristy door when a lean aged figure appeared at the end of the hall, buttoning the long sleeves of a black shirt. "Is there something—," the man began, and saw the chiller, and crossed himself. Quantrill nearly shot him dead before seeing that the priest was not reaching for a sidearm.

The man of God faced this hellish apparition with its dirt-caked face, its torn bloody coverall, its deadly weapon and half-mad eyes that glowed with more deadly purpose. The rounded shoulders straightening, he stared at the young rover. "I'm Father Klein. You won't need that in my chapel," he said, nodding at the chiller.

In answer, Quantrill pocketed the weapon, waved for the priest to follow, hobbled back to the nave. He had remembered the visitor’s register near the doors. Sanger all but collided with him, saw his silent gesture to his rear, tried a sickly smile as she spied the elderly man hurrying toward them.

"Are you in trouble? Can't you talk?" But she was shaking her head, pointing to her breast and then drawing a finger across her throat. The gestural shorthand of S & R rovers would not take her very far with this man, who could not know that his were the only spoken words to which Control was wholly deaf.

The felt-nibbed pen in Quantrill's hand flew across the register, the few scrawled words high and bold.
NEED BASEMENT OR CAVE. THEN TALK
.

The priest bent to study the scrawl. His response seemed to take an eon. Unheard by him, Control babbled in two heads. "There's nothing like that here," the priest said, blinking. "The nearest mines are some distance away," he gestured, leading them back through the nave and past the sacristy.

When Sanger half-sobbed, "I need time to think. Control," the priest studied her with curiosity and compassion.

Then he led them into a spacious kitchen meant to serve large gatherings. "I haven't a car, and it's a brisk climb up to the mines," he said, pointing through the nearest window.

It was all of that, Sanger judged. Even with help, the battered Quantrill would need a half-hour to get up-slope to the nearest mine shaft. She scanned the kitchen. She did not see the ancient clipboard near the sink, but took in the huge butcher block that squatted near the center of the kitchen with cutlery of many kinds arrayed on its solid flanks. Staring at the gleaming blades she said aloud, "I have a bad cut and I need a doctor right now. Immediately." Her calm was ice-brittle. She knew Quantrill would never agree with her silent decision.

Father Klein frowned; he could see no bloodstains on her clothing. "Let me help," he said, stepping nearer.

From Control: "Some things take time, Sanger. We're on the way."

Sanger juggled her auditors, waved the priest away savagely while staring hard into his face. "A surgeon, as soon as humanly possible. How long?"

Control: "Not long."

Father Klein: "Ten minutes, I suppose. I don't have a link to him but I'll take my bicycle to the village. It's pretty primitive here, I'm afraid." He gazed at Quantrill, fascinated. Sanger saw that Quantrill was staring at nothing, but his hand tore at the hair over his mastoid as though idly plucking fur from a stuffed animal. Then he glanced at the others, half-smiled; dropped his hand, oblivious to the strands of hair caught between his fingers.