Strings (3 page)

Finally the man spoke. “Want some more, smartass?”

Speechless, Cedric shook his head.

“Right. You were credited first-class fare on the super and told to fly to HQ at Manchester on Thursday—that’s today, now. You took peon class and flew to Norristown on Wednesday.”

About to ask how the intruder knew all that, Cedric had an attack of discretion and stayed mute, still breathing through his mouth and fighting a shivering nausea.

“Why, Cedric?”

“I just wanted to see some of the world…” He had planned on adding “sir,” and changed his mind.

The man’s lip curled in a contemptuous snarl. “Anyone who goes touristing in person is nuts. You can put credit in the holo and see it all at home.”

Not the same—Cedric just shook his head.

“So what did you see, Cedric?”

“The White House. Capitol Hill. Independence Hall. Ply-mo—”

The man’s expression stopped him. Cedric had been told that it was Plymouth Rock, but the original rock must be well out to sea now, and of course it would never have been so close to…He had been gulled. “I asked Ben where the best sightseeing was, and he said here-abouts.”

The man raised dermsym where he should have had eyebrows.

“So I got taken?” Cedric muttered. “They’re all fakes?”

“Replicas. Some of the originals got moved inland, but you didn’t see any of those.”

For a moment there was silence. Cedric’s belly still throbbed, but now he was partly faking his panting, while he reviewed combat training. What would Gogarty suggest? That gun was being held much too close to him. Murder did not seem to be the intruder’s intent, but what mattered was whether his outfit was a real bull suit or only armor. Cedric started to lever himself up on an elbow, and the man moved the gun to push him down again. Cedric slammed his free hand against the barrel and spun both legs around to impact the man at knee level and topple him backward.

The gun did not move one millimeter, and Cedric might as well have rammed his shins into a concrete post. Beyond a glare of pain, he heard the man chuckle. Then came the punishment—the gun was callously slammed into his gut again, and for a long while there was only the familiar black fog, and retching, choking agony.

Eventually—bruised, breathless, and half blinded by tears—Cedric was back where he had begun, flat out, staring up impotently at his tormentor with nothing to show for his feeble attempt at heroism except a throbbing monster of pain in his gut. Probably he would not even have a bruise there. The man was an expert.

“Who the hell are you?” Cedric rasped.

“Thought you’d never ask. Name’s Bagshaw. I’m with the Institute.”

That was much too good to be credible. “How’d you find me?”

Bagshaw snorted in derision. “You think it was hard? Still, that’s the best defense you’ve got—if you were up to something, you’d never be so stupid. But I’ve heard it before.”

“Me? Up to what?”

“That’s what we want to find out. You came to meet someone. Who?”

“No one!” Cedric said, and hoped desperately that he had managed to sound convincing. “I’ve got no secrets to spill, nothing to sell. What—”

“Why did you come a day early?”

“I’m a free agent.”

Bagshaw snorted. “You’ve never been a free agent in your life. You were livestock in an organage.”

“Foster home! Not all of us are orphans. Wong Gavin’s father’s president of—”

The man looked so contemptuous that Cedric half expected him to spit. “All right, a maximum-security kindergarten. For rich kids—although by the look of you, fatso, someone hasn’t been paying the food bills. Have you ever been out in the real world before?”

“Sure! Lots of times. I took first in the Pacurb junior skeet lasering two years ago. I didn’t do that in Madge’s kitchen. Cities—”

“Skeet lasering!” Bagshaw chuckled. “Who took you there?”

“Cheaver Ben.”

“Have you ever been outside unsupervised?”

“Yes! I took younger kids on camping trips and—”

“And of course you couldn’t abandon them when they were in your care?”

“Of course not.”

Bagshaw’s hairless head shook gently in massive contempt. “So? Ever been out in the real world by yourself? Ever once?”

“Yes.”

“The times you went over the wall?” He smirked.

“If you know the answers, why ask?”

The gun’s icy muzzle nudged his belly threateningly. “I’ll ask what I like, sonny, and you’ll answer. Why did you try to break out, anyway?”

Pride! “It was illegal incarceration.” Cedric could still feel the old resentment. Keeping kids locked up might be permissible, but he had been eighteen by then. All the guys his age had been called back to their families, yet Gran had kept insisting that he must stay on at Meadowdale.

“Illegal bullshit,” Bagshaw said. “You got picked up for vagrancy?”

Cedric nodded miserably. Three times he had skipped. Three times the cops had brought him back like a strayed puppy.

“And you never thought that you were in Meadowdale for a reason? You never thought about kidnapping and extortion?”

“Well…no.”

The man shook his bull head pityingly. “So now you’re on your way legally. Did the old bag say she had a job for you?”

Cedric hesitated again, and the pressure increased nauseatingly, as though he were about to be impaled. “Yes, sir.”

Bagshaw’s eyes slitted even more, and his face seemed to sink lower inside his suit. He was barely human, a mechanical construct fueled by anger. “So you got hired on by the Institute! Your academic standing must have been remarkable.”

Cedric’s father had been a ranger, his mother a medical doctor. They had died exploring a Class Two world for the Institute, so there was a fallen torch to be picked up. That argument would not likely carry much weight at the moment. Cedric said nothing.

“Most men would peel off their skins to land a job with the Institute, you know? They’d sell it in strips. I worked myself crazy to get mine—eighteen hours a day like a machine for a whole year. They took fifty of us, out of five thousand.” Bagshaw’s plasticized face was turning even redder, little nauseating jabs of the gun barrel emphasizing his words. “I came in forty-eighth—and I’ve had combat experience. I’ve got postdoc degrees in urban survival. But you get hired fresh out of the shell. Hot from the oven. Of course, your grandmother is director. Amazing coincidence, that. But then…Ah, but then do you do what you’re told? No, you don’t. You sneak out of the organage a day early and go to a part of Nauc that you’ve got no right to be in. Why, Cedric, why? This is what we need to know, Cedric.”

Cedric’s throat was very dry, and there was a sordid taste in his mouth. “I’ve told you, sir.”

“No, you haven’t. Just because you’re the old broad’s darling grandson doesn’t mean you haven’t been bought.”

Nothing Cedric could say was going to make any difference. He might as well keep quiet and wait until he found out what this hoodlum really wanted. For a moment there was a staring match. The gun muzzle came up to his face again, and he just squinted past it defiantly. Then it vanished and began slithering icily down the center of his chest like a cold steel snail.

He grabbed it with both hands and totally failed to slow its progress at all—as well try to strongarm a truck. It scraped past his navel, mercifully jumped his shorts, and then poked between his legs and stopped. Clutching it still, Cedric looked up to see Bagshaw leering at him. The man pursed thick lips and scratched an ear with one finger of his free gauntlet. There was no doubt who had control, or whose health and happiness were at risk.

And then Bagshaw began to move the gun in the opposite direction—slowly and irresistibly. “You can talk easy, sonny, or you can talk hard. But now you’re going to talk.”

“I told you.” Cedric was squeaking. Half sitting, straddling that thick metal cylinder, gripping it hard to hold it away from important things, he was being forced inexorably up the bed.

“No, you haven’t. Who did you come to meet?”

“How do I know that you’re from the Institute?”

“You’ll tell me anyway.”

Cedric set his teeth as the knobs on his backbone came into contact with the headboard of the bed. For a moment the pressure was checked—but the barrel was still between his thighs, and he had nowhere left to go.

“You’re sweating, Cedric. You’ll sweat more soon. Lots more.”

Cedric made a discourteous suggestion, long on historical precedent and short on anatomical plausibility.

“Now that is
really
stupid,” Bagshaw said, shaking his polished head sadly. “In the sort of fix you’re in, you do not say things like that. You beg, you plead, you sing loud. You do not say things like that. Well, get up.” He stepped back and pulled. Cedric, reluctant to let go of the gun, was almost hauled off the bed.

“Up, sonny!”

Cedric dropped his feet to the floor and stood up, slowly and painfully. It hurt to straighten, but pride insisted. Swaying, blinking back tears, he gazed down at his tormentor. The ape was far shorter than Cedric but about four times as thick, and just being vertical did not help greatly. Contrary to first impressions, Bagshaw did have a neck; it just happened to be wider than his head. Even on equal terms, unarmed, he could make coleslaw out of Cedric, who was all reach and no weight.

And at the moment he could not quite stand straight and breathe at the same time. Bagshaw looked at him with open mockery in those curiously hooded eyes. “Want to play some more?”

Cedric was an organage boy. He shrugged. “You decide. You must be enjoying it.”

He might have scored there. Bagshaw grunted softly, and when he spoke it was in command mode. “
Com two: Relay message for Hubbard Cedric Dickson
.” He nodded his head to indicate that Cedric should turn around.

It could be a trap—Cedric did not move until a familiar voice at his back made him whirl. Two people were standing behind him, and one of them was Gran. His first reaction was shame at being caught in his briefs, but comprehension came fast thereafter. It was a holo projection, of course, which was how she could be knee deep in his bed. The man beside her was this same Bagshaw character, wearing a standard business suit which amply confirmed his wrestler’s build. He was a human barrel. But he could not be in two places at once, so it was not a live transmission, and in any case the figures had the fixed-eyed look of people dictating. It was certainly Gran—a slim, imperious woman with white hair and enough determination to break rocks. Hubbard Agnes.

“…in every respect.
Com end
,” Gran concluded, and the two images vanished.

“Huh?” Cedric said.

“You heard,” Bagshaw said.

“No, I didn’t.
Com two, repeat that transmission
.”

Nothing happened.

Bagshaw sighed. “Not coded to your voice, sonny. All right, we’ll try again; but I do wish you’d start behaving like a grownup.” He repeated the command, and the two images flashed into existence again in the middle of the bed.

“Cedric, I am informed that you have departed from Meadowdale earlier than instructed. That was extremely foolish of you. I am very concerned for your safety. The man beside me is Dr. Bagshaw Barney, a personal security expert employed by the Institute. I have instructed him to locate you and bring you to HQ as soon as possible. You will obey his orders in every respect.
Com end
.”

Cedric closed his mouth, which for some reason was hanging open. He turned back to face Bagshaw’s contemptuous amusement.

“How do I know that was genuine?”

The contempt faded slightly. “You don’t.”

“You could have faked it.”

“In about fifteen minutes, with the right equipment.”

“Is that why you began by showing me I don’t have any choice?”

For an instant Bagshaw seemed tempted to smile. “Naw, I just like hassling you. Which is it to be—force or cooperation?”

Cedric shrugged. “Cooperation, I guess. But I wish you’d explain…”

“You clean up, then, and I’ll talk. Is this your month for shaving?”

Cedric squeezed between two of the percies and hobbled over to the basin. “I could call HQ and ask for confirmation that you’re genuine.”

Bagshaw made a scornful noise. “It happens to be five in the morning, and you have no priority codes. Security never answers questions, even about the weather. Those guys won’t admit what day it is. You couldn’t get through to Old Mother Hubbard in less than two hours at the best of times, and even then it would only be if you could prove your relationship.”

“I’ve called Gran dozens of—well, often.”

Bagshaw sighed dramatically. “From Meadowdale—priority call.”

“But if she’s really worried about me,” Cedric said with a feeling of triumph, “she’ll have told System to admit my calls!”

“I wouldn’t let her.”

“
You
wouldn’t?”

“Breach of security. If she’d done that, then who knows who might have learned that we had a cannon loose? Pardon me—popgun loose. No, you can’t call in. You can come willingly, or I take you by force. I don’t care. You may, but I won’t.”

Still stroking his face with his shaver, Cedric peered around the percies. Bagshaw had seated himself in midair, as though there were an invisible chair under him. He looked quite relaxed and comfortable, so he must have locked his waldoes into position.

“How did you get into this room?”

“That’s my job. I can get into a bank vault, given time. Hotel rooms? Took me half a minute, all three locks.”

“And you knew I was in here?”

“Like I said, I tested for you with a gas detector—sucked some air from under the door and checked for human pheromones. Another half minute. Your exhalations are on file. They matched. Of course, you might have had a friend in here with you, but I didn’t give a damn about that, really.”

He made it all sound infuriatingly easy. Cedric dropped shaver and shorts and stepped toward the shower pad.

“Water first!” Bagshaw snapped.

“Huh?”

“Turn on the water before you get under it. Always. Elementary precaution.”

Growling, Cedric complied. “And what about my percy?”