Transmaniacon (24 page)

“I see. And then you hid on the premises and they thought you'd gone. Where is he?”

“From what I could gather, they're headed for the Fist.”

Ben groaned. “Well, they forced our hand and now we've forced theirs. So be it.” He was tired, nearly exhausted. Almost disgusted. He slumped against the wall, looking at Gloria. She had just killed a man, but, pale and slight with eyes mocking, she looked like an adolescent girl. “You still angry with me?”

She sighed and shrugged. “No. Because when I got mad, started playing games with Fuller, he almost did me in. He would have killed me, eventually, if I hadn't gotten away. I guess I forgot that, for a while. You're no white knight, but you'd never do what he did. Slug me when I was trying to deal with him and then do me while I was out—”

Ben swallowed. “He raped you?”

She nodded, very slightly, her face was paler then usual. “Didn't hurt me, much.” She turned to Ben violently, and spat out, “And don't give me that manly-sympathy crap! I don't want to hear it. I'll kill him, that's all.”

Ben opened his mouth to retort, then snapped it shut. He nodded.
Don't make things worse.

They were silent for a time. Then Gloria said, “I saw—from the window. Your contest with Regis, the other exciter. You did—”

“Don't,"
said Ben, raising a hand for quiet. “You have something you don't want to talk about. That's something
I
don't want to discuss.” He squeezed his eyes shut. But the suppressed pictures were coming now. No getting rid of them. He saw the crowd, the mobs, saw the scene subjectively this time, no longer watching it from cinematic impartiality, recognizing himself for the catalyst. He saw women clawing the eyes out of young men, and a boy no more than seventeen writhing as three men jumped up and down on his chest. And blood. Blood, flowing and eager like the liquid incarnation of once-repressed hostilities. And Ben Rackey saw Ben Rackey standing there in the midst of it, calmly orchestrating.

He felt he was going to be sick. For the first time, he realized that the exciter took something out of him physically. It gradually drained him, and now he was feeling it.

The door to the left opened. Gloria grabbed for Ben's needler. She fired it wildly at the opening door, and the shot went into a wall. Kibo stepped out, unharmed. He holstered his gun, seeing Ben and Gloria, and shrugged as she apologized.

Kibo turned to Ben. “We're anchored outside. We've got to leave by nulgrav car, the Securities are arresting everyone on the street except each other. Anyone resists, they shoot. We saw the owl-car leave—headed in the general direction of the Fist. You want to follow?”

Ben didn't want to follow. He wanted to go home to bed, take a trank, and sleep for a long time. But he murmured, “Yes.”

Kibo helped him through Chaldin's deserted apartments—stripped nearly clean, and what equipment remained was smashed—and out onto the balcony, into the nulgrav car.

Ben leaned back in his seat.

Without looking at him, Gloria took his hand. “Christ. We're stupid. But you're stuck with this thing and I'm stuck with you. And don't try to tell me I'm not.” She kissed his hand. “Hm. Your hand's all sweaty. You're going to make yourself sick if you keep this nonsense up. Why don't you have that thing pulled out of your chest? It's like a sore tooth, Ben. It spoils everything.”

“I'm already sick. I keep seeing things…down there on the steps.” He shook his head. “This is it. After today, my cover's not operative. It's now or never.” The car clicked, whirred, automatically un-hooked its anchor, and rose, swished north, for the Fist-site.

“Okay then, if this is it, we'd better be ready. Take some of this,” Gloria said. She handed him a small plastic vial filled with white powder. “It's a stimulant. Chaldin provided us with it. My brother was addicted. Takes a long, long time, lots of use, to get addicted. You don't have to worry. It's either that, or give in now.”

Ben stared at the vial doubtfully.

“Uh—you've been taking this stuff all along?”

“Nope! Been saving it. It's hard to get. I don't like to get stoned much, anyway. Makes me paranoid. But the way you're feeling now…”

“Okay. How? Do I swallow it?”

She shook her head. “You sniff it. Better take lots. Good for about six hours if you do enough. It's real pure stuff. Here, open it up, I'll show you . . .”

Twenty minutes later, Ben felt immensely better. “You're a witch, Gloria! With magic potions. Hmm. Sorta like the Snap-ups they. sell in vending machines in New York. And sorta like methcools. But more so. And there's a magical quality. Powdered confidence. Ah-hard to get, you say?”

She laughed. “Yeah. And it's a bad idea to get too attached. But have one more sniff, to nail it down good.”

“Okay.” Yes, he felt considerably better.

He reached for the microphone and punched Bolton's number. The young man's face appeared on the screen set into the console under the windshield. Ben nodded to him shortly and said, “Remm told you to be ready to test the Fist this week?”

“Yes, but now? Have you seen what's been, going
on?
Why, it isn't safe to venture out! The pedestrians are all in an uproar, people killed, and no offense, Ladd, but I understand that you had some—”

“Never mind!” Ben snapped. “Time presses. The opposition is on its way to sabotage the Fist and they've got a lead over us. These are the times that try men's souls! When the going gets tough the tough get going!” He ran out of slogans. “I expect to get to the Fist in time, but I'm not sure. The damn thing is ready and I'm not interested in testing it, I'm interested in using it and right now. Before anything else can happen to stop me. The Barrier falls today. All I need is you and the other two. You are to act as focusing units. Be there in ten minutes and be prepared.”

Ben shut off the screen, blanking out Bolton's protest.

“I hope he shows.” Gloria said.

“I think he will. He's in this too far to desert me now. Ahh—there's the Fist.”

Gloria craned to peer out the window for her first look at the monumental transmitter.

“Looks like one of those terraced Mayan pyramids,” she said. “But bigger and shiny and smooth and with a metal bowl on top. It fires the beam through that bowl thing?”

“Yes. The Fist itself functions almost exactly as does the Barrier. It produces an impenetrable field of densely flowing ions…but, unlike the Barrier, the charged particles travel in an electromagnetic funnel which forces them into a single shaft, a thrusting tractor of sheer force. Like a fist. It drives straight upward and meets the Barrier and penetrates it.” The drug made him feel expansive and he continued, lecturing on one of his favorite topics: “Now, the Barrier could be compared with a balloon. Its shape depends on the equal distribution of pressure over its whole surface. So if it can be penetrated completely, the field disrupted by a large enough shaft at any one point, the rest of it will, uh, unravel. It will pop like a huge balloon, and disintegrate. Of course, the transmitter for the Barrier could rebuild the field again, but if we leave the shaft of force there, at the point of contact, the Barrier will only shatter once more when it comes in contact with—”

“Hey! Slow
down,”
Gloria laughed. “You're stoned, man. You're talking a thousand miles an hour!” Then she stopped laughing and added somberly, “Look, I know you don't like to be pestered about it. But with that exciter inside you, and with you being
stoned,
you got to think
control
all the time, Ben.”

“Yes. Yes. True. Yes.” He blew out his cheeks and composed himself. She was right. He needed absolute control now, especially with the exciter over-eager in his chest.

But he was ebullient. The drug had charged him with singing electricity and sparks jumped between his teeth. His muscles trembled for exercise and he imagined that a light shone from his eyes.

The car landed on the fifteenth terrace from the base of the crenelated pyramid. They stepped out, onto the glossy chromium. Ben groaned. “No guards! No one? Kibo! Where are they? Why haven't we been challenged?”

Kibo frowned. “I don't know. But if Chaldin wore the insignia of the Progressivists and ordered my men away…naturally, since they are sworn Progressivists until—”

“Never mind. Oh, damn, never mind, I don't want to hear about it. Wait in the vehicle and when Bolton and the other two arrive, escort them to me. I'll be in the central cupola.” And, cursing under his breath, Ben strode into the empty tubular corridor leading into the Fist. The corridor was long, lit from overhead by a strip of fluorescence. Ben's needler was in his hand.

“This thing is immense!” Gloria cried. “It must be a hundred storeys high and a half-mile at the base!”

Ben nodded, hoping he remembered the way. He'd only been inside three times, though he'd memorized the operation of the machine from a mock-up of the operating cupola he'd had erected inside the penthouse, in the extra bedroom. And he had memorized the blueprints. Occasionally, corridors led off to the right and left. But the way should be straight ahead. The passage was slowly bending to the right. At last, the sound of voices.

“I didn't see their owl-car outside,” whispered Gloria.

“Probably on the other side,” said Ben. “They came in the other way.”

“But they'll likely know we're here.” From her jacket she withdrew a pistol, a needler, taken from one of Chaldin's guards. The one she had left with his throat cut.

They rounded the corner and came out into a high-ceilinged, circular room. Two men in gray uniforms with the symbols of the Order printed on their backs were working on a panel opposite. They had their backs to him, but Ben glimpsed the plastic explosives in their hands. He smiled. So it was to be that easy. He stepped forward and raised his gun.

Gloria hissed and dragged him back into the corridor.

“Stupid!” she whispered. “They'd be expecting us. Why do you think they have the symbols so conveniently painted on their backs? It's a lure. Fuller must be above, waiting, figuring we'd take care of those two and step into the open.”

Ben looked up. A catwalk ran in a spiral around the walls, thirty feet up, ascending to the cupola. It would naturally extend to the wall above the door from which they were about to emerge. There would be Fuller, waiting, gun cocked, directly overhead,

“Now, what I think we ought to do—” Gloria began.

“Don't bother,” said Chaldin.

They turned. Ben froze. There was a gun aimed at his head. He dropped his needler. Gloria dropped hers—two guns like dead lovers.

Fully visible in the light, Chaldin was enclosed from the waist down in an electronic prosthetic device. Ben was reminded of the dolphins.

Chaldin's eyes were twinkling green and whimsical in the webwork of wrinkles. In person he was considerably less imposing then his holo made him out to be. But he held the needler on them with a steady, if withered, right hand. His voice was high and thin but the authority was there. “Fuller, come here!” Chaldin shouted.

Why didn't he shoot me from behind? Ben wondered. Then he knew
_.
He can still use me. As a drone-cyber. My brain on a platter hooked to an exciter?
Better to be dead.

Ben slowly turned, in time to see Fuller's boot connect with his side. A flare of pain, and Ben went sprawling, as Fuller said:

“Oh
man,
it's good to see you again, Rackey. Oh, it's good.”

Ben assessed the situation and reduced it to its components. To extricate himself from this one he would have to know the position and strength of every piece on the board.

The command cupola was a hemispherical room with a curved roof of glass that looked up into the shaft rising to the transmission-dish at the peak of the pyramid. The curved walls were embossed with the Fist's instrumentation. In the center of the room, on a floor of glass, were four low couches whose heads pointed inward; over their head-cushions dangled metal helmets. Wires passed from the rear of the helmets, up over an L-strut and down through the floor. One couch for the operator, three for the focusing engineers. Chaldin, his white hair seeming to burn in the light that streamed from beneath the glass floor, was encompassed from his feet to his armpits in a shell of brushed metal which widened at a base supported by four wheels and which was steered by his thought impulses. He was at the opposite wall withdrawing a panel of circuitry.

Fuller stood five feet to Ben's right, needler raised, cocked and ready, it was pointed at Ben's right temple. Ben's hands were tied from behind. Gloria was sitting on the floor to his right, her hands bound behind. One passage led off to the right, one off to the left. No doors blocked the way.

Below, light. The energies of the Fist, kept barely in check.

And for now, that was all.

Except for the two guards, Chaldin's hired killers, now waiting outside in the owl-car. Chaldin had decided that Ben might try to use the exciter on them, turn them against him. He sent them out of Ben's reach. Possibly there were others—Kibo would soon know.

Chaldin had explained he was electronically insulated against the exciter and said he'd trained Fuller to resist it, to recognize the sensation accompanying transmania interference. So, should Fuller recognize the influence of the exciter, he was to blow Ben's head off, instantly. Which made Ben understandably nervous.

Because Fuller had reason to hate him. If Fuller decided to kill him, how would Chaldin know that Ben hadn't tried to use the exciter, that Fuller had only imagined or pretended to feel its influence? Fuller could kill him when he chose. Only the sign of the Order, Chaldin's authority emblazoned on his cheek, kept him in check.