Transmaniacon (6 page)

“Loyalty is an odd thing,” Ben remarked and, without thinking, he raised the needler and fired; while out of the corner of his eye he saw the other man pulling his gun, and the woman, a shadow, struggling with him.

The charging biker slowed, clutched where the needler had bit into his skull, whimpered, slid to his knees. Ben raised the gun to finish him, then saw the charge indicator was in the red. Empty. But the biker fell forward, shuddered, then stilled. Ben looked up. Ranger stood two feet away, pointing a .45 automatic at Ben's eyes. The woman was just getting up, one knee on the ground.

“Why doesn't
she
carry a gun?” Ben asked haphazardly.

“She can't be trusted with 'em,” the biker replied, grinning. “She likes 'em too well. Trigger happy, fires at anything that moves.” He licked his lips. His mirror sunglasses were askew, his hair mussed. He reached up, removed the shades, folded them with one hand and slid them into a pocket, all the while keeping the pistol pointed steadily. “She ain't safe
without
a gun, neither. Tried to knock me flat. I think she likes you. Sometimes she gets stupid like that.” A pale glow came from the massive fly's eyes, and the penlight wedged in the ground at their feet.

“Go ahead, pick up the light,” the biker said.

Ben complied, holding the light pointed respectfully down. His throat was dry, there was a pounding in his ears.

The biker held the gun at arm's length, both hands wrapped around it, tensed but steady. “What you want to say to me? Before we got all steamed up you had a deal...”

“You're not feeling sentimental like your friend was?”

“I could give a shit for Fuller. Better he's dead. I worked for him because I was next in line to him. Now I replace him as the new Priest. As for that dumb shit on the ground, he was a pain in the ass any time. But don't mess with Gloria, Rackey. She's my sister. I take care of her.” He smiled, his gold tooth glittered.

“Didn't catch your name,” Ben inquired politely as he stared into the mouth of the gun.

“Name's Ranger. Now…what was this about an…understanding?

“You love your boss, Ranger?” Ben asked with a measured mockery.

“Don't try to get under my skin, Rackey. I know how you work. That stuff doesn't work unless the jerk you're working on doesn't know what you're up to. I know. I can feel that...vibe you put out, that goes with the words. We were warned. And the safety is off on this thing. Hair trigger. All it takes is a nervous twitch...”

“Okay, okay. Listen. I don't like being used. I don't know anyone who does. I have reason to believe we've been duped in several respects, especially if our employer is who I think he is, and that leads me to suspect he's going to play games with us all the way down the line. Anyway, Fuller's dead and he was important to our employer. He's going to be as unhappy with you for letting it happen as with me for doing it. Also, I don't like working for someone whose face I can't see. Do you? Now, my record is not exactly clean but I can't see there was a need to squash a thousand people on the canyon floor just to make a clean escape. No. It's stupid and it stinks all the way through. Something else—”

Ranger raised a hand for silence. He lowered the .45, tucked it into his jacket, chuckling and shaking his head, “Man, you talk
fast.
Well, fuck it. Let's go back to that nasty funny-car and get moving. To hell with the boss. I was going to ditch him anyway. I don't like to get waked up early in the morning.”

Ben shrugged and followed Ranger back to the fly-car. The woman had dragged Fuller's body clear and covered it with sand. So she said.

In the fly-car's forward cabin Ben replaced the part he'd taken from the steering mechanism, switched the nulgrav awake, and took her up. They ascended to an elevation they could be sure would be well above any nearby peaks, and Ben headed west.

“Where to?” Ranger asked, yawning.

“Las Vegas. It's an open republic--especially if you know people there. I do. Somebody who can analyze the exciter for me. Las Vegas should be far enough away from Denver for the time being. Even if what's-his-name tells Denver Security to look for me, I don't think he'll do it for a while. And the cops between the cities rarely cooperate. They'd shoot one another soon as shoot a sniper.”

“Las Vegas?” Gloria asked. “It's still around?”

“Avarice is a durable trait,” Ben replied.

Ranger went into the back to go to sleep. Gloria lowered herself into the co-pilot's seat with a sigh.

Ben waited what seemed a proper time before asking, casually, “You must feel strange, waking up in this place. You've been here a little more than a month and you've seen things that would—”

“No big deal,” she interrupted, flatly. “'S all an illusion. I just kinda watch it go by. Isn't real.”

“No? Don't blame you for taking that attitude. Did you ever get a good look at our former employer?”

“No,” she said, without hesitation or guile. “None of us did. We only talked to him like you did, in that star-room. Without being able to see his face. I'll bet he's an ugly mother. His servants took care of us the rest of the time and taught us what he wanted us to know. Not much.”

The dispassion, the monotony in her voice seemed to come from her dreamy disbelief rather than any callousness. Nothing of it was real to her. Ben felt a stab of pity. Then he remembered her history. But something didn't fit—she didn't function as one of the Transmaniacon members.

“How long were you with Transmaniacon before they froze you?” he asked softly.

“The club? Just a few weeks. I wasn't really in the club. I just came out to the coast to stay with my brother...with Ranger. He was hard in with those people. I wasn't in on it, not in with the Order or the Manson thing, except to drive one of the cars when they went to get him...”

Ben remembered. He'd once researched the case. Her attorney had claimed that she hadn't been involved with the cult's sacrificial slayings, and the gunplay during the attempted rescue of Manson had come as a complete surprise to her; Fuller had told her only that she was to drive a car for them. She thought it was an ordinary stick-up. She'd pulled stick-ups before, but never killed. He hadn't believed her story when he'd read the ancient newspapers on microfilm, but he believed her now. She had no reason to lie anymore.

But her brother Ranger had participated in the Transmaniacon rites of the Order. He was a killer--and he was sleeping, probably lightly, in the belly of their monstrous metal fly, just a few yards away.

He glanced at Gloria. She was dark, tall, and so slender she was nearly gaunt. There were violet rings under her eyes.

“Where'sa drinks?” she asked.

“Little panel down to your right. It's set on straight gin and if that'll do just press the touch disk.”

“Gin's fine.” She removed the wax paper bulb and sucked.

It was getting close to dawn, he guessed, judging from the wan edging of the sawtooth mountains ahead. Bosses and sudden steep declivities competed across the landscape. Against the fading field of stars at the horizon Ben could almost see the silhouette of the faceless man behind the mahogany desk.

Ben wondered if he could trace the serial number of the fly-car to find out whose it was…

“You said something about how you got a use for that thing you stole,” Gloria ventured, uncrossing her thin legs and stretching. “Man, I'm feeling wasted all of a sudden.”

Ben was suddenly overwhelmed with an impulse to unburden himself. Maybe he was simply tired. It had been a long night, and though the adrenalin was still firing up his veins, his eyes ached and his forehead throbbed. “I want to leave.”

“Leave where?”

“The continent. I want to get outside the Barrier. I hate it. Worse than anything. I've studied it for years, trying to work up a feasible plan to get past it. No luck 'til now. Now, I think we can use the exciter to...” He shrugged. “Maybe it'll set forces into motion that will tear it down. I want…”

He hesitated. He'd feel silly, admitting it.

“You want what? What's out there that's so important? This is a big country, plenty to look at inside the Barrier.”

He took a deep breath. “I want the sea itself. I want to sail. I want to build a ship and sail her over the sea. I've built them before, sailed up and down the Great Lakes. But it's not the same. I've sailed along the coasts, close in before you get to the Barrier. But I want to get out in the sea, far from land. It's been my dream, ever since I can remember. I simply resent the fact of the Barrier, and I love the sea.”

He realized she was staring at him blankly. She said, “Are you putting me on or what? You want to be a fucking
sailor
?”

“I…well...” he stammered.
I've never stammered before,
he thought. “I guess I've read every known book about the sea.”

“Hey, you ever read
Youth
by Joseph Conrad?” she asked, stifling a yawn.

“Yes!” He turned to her, eyes shining; she drew back slightly, alarmed at his sudden eagerness.

He felt sheepish.

She shrugged, drew on her gin, tossed the bulb aside, and went to the rear of the cabin to sleep.

Ben leaned back in his seat, wishing the nulgrav car had to deal with wind resistance so he could at least get the feel of the elements around them. But there was no sense of strain on the vehicle, hardly a sound of wind; it was as if the air pressure unzipped before them and sealed up after them. He stared into the sea of darkness below, and, squinting, could almost imagine the land-swells to be tossing waves…

“I thought you said Las Vegas was around here,” Ranger complained.

“It's there, underground. But first we make a stop at the outskirts. A little ranch owned by a friend of mine. See it? Down there.”

They were circling a hundred feet over a canyon abruptly slashed in the flat, gray-brown desert. In the early morning light they could pick out a horseshoe arrangement of single-storey buildings with tin roofs. The glare off the roofs hid most of the detail, but there was a corral containing horses, which were running from the fly-car's grotesque shadow. Beyond, a half-acre of solar power panels, and about the entire affair stretched three barbed wire fences. Within the outer two fences loped several haggard coyotes.

The monstrous shadow of the fly-car crawled over the fences as a voice from the radio crackled; “Identify yourself or immediately depart. If you attempt to land without permission you will be shot down. Notice the outbuildings—”

“You don't have to tell me about the hidden cannons, Lenny. I know about them, I used to load them for you, remember?” Ben said into the microphone.

“That Rackey up there?”

“It's Ben.”

“Just Rackey to me. At best.” Ben felt a chill. “But come on down if that's what you got in mind. Land in the courtyard and come out of that thing slowly, hands where I can see them.”As Ben took the fly-car down Lenny asked, “Where'd you get that thing? I almost blew it out of the sky! I thought it was a real fly or a mutation or something, I didn't—”

“You were always paranoid, Lenny. It's a nulgrav car. I got it...on loan, from a former employer. The fly-shape is fashion.”

“Cute. And appropriate. You ride it like a true bacterium, Rackey.”

Ben turned off the radio. He didn't like Lenny's tone.

The fly-car settled, the nulgrav cut, the car rocked for a moment on springy legs. “Leave your guns here, Ranger.” Ben said, standing up and rubbing his eyes.

He needed either sleep or lots of coffee.

“No way am I going to leave my piece behind, Rackey. What's that guy so paranoid about, with his cannons and fences and warnings?”

“You have to be paranoid in between the cities. It isn't safe out here. No laws. Brigands and frags and everything else unpleasant, more numerous than jackrabbits.”

“I'm not ditching my piece.” Ranger declared, nervously adjusting his dark glasses.

Ben was tired and irritable, in no mood to argue.

He considered tackling Ranger. He had to get rid of him sooner or later. But…he looked at Gloria…there would be unpleasant ramifications.

“Look, we don't have any food and I'm hungry. I've known this guy for years and he's trustworthy. He lives alone. He makes a living bartering the metal he mines, and he'll feed us if we don't cross him. I need his good will. He's an electronics genius and ...aren't you hungry? His dispenser fixes a fine breakfast.”

The mention of food weakened Ranger's resolve.

Without another word he handed over the gun which Ben tucked into the glove compartment. They climbed down the ladder after Gloria.

Blinking, hands in the air, they emerged into the sunlight. Gloria gazed at the immaculately-kept cactus garden bordering the adobe ranch house. Metal bars covered the building's deeply inset windows. Lenny opened the metal-studded wooden front door, pushed his needler out ahead of him. The conical snout caught the light in a tinny starburst. He stepped into view. In his left hand he held a small oval instrument he directed at the group, glancing down at the readings.

“No weapons,” Ben said.

“No energy weapons, anyway,” Lenny said, tucking the gun-detector and needler into his leather belt. He wore leather chaps over his dungarees; no shirt on his portly, sunburned torso. Jet black hair, red-rimmed black eyes, wide froglike face, burnt red and seamed. “Come on in and sit down. Just about to have breakfast.”

Inside, all that was visible of Lenny's cybernetic cook was a teflon chute standing from the stone-tile floor in the center of the kitchen by the rough wooden table. Three trays rose one after another from the chute. They ate in silence—bacon, eggs, and tortillas, and drank hot coffee.