Part 33 (2/2)

CHAPTER 19.

I CAME TO slowly, drifting back toward consciousness in gradual and tortured stages. There was a vague sensation of discomfort, which first coalesced into an overall chill and stiffness before zeroing in on a throbbing somewhere in the back of my head. There was something wrong with my arms, though I couldn't figure out exactly what. There was light somewhere, too, though as vague and undefined as the discomfort had originally been, and the distant thought occurred to me that if I turned my head maybe I could figure out where it was coming from. It took some time and effort to remember how that could be done, but finally I had it doped out. Feeling rather pleased with my accomplishment, I.

turned my head a little to the side.

And instantly came fully awake as a flare of pain burned through the back of my skull. Someone, apparently, was doing his best to rip my head off my spine with his bare hands. Clenching my teeth, I waited until the pain had mostly subsided;then, keeping my head as motionless as possible, I eased open my eyes.

I was sitting in a plain wooden armchair, unpadded, my head lolled forward with my chin resting on my chest. What was wrong with my arms was quickly apparent: both wrists were handcuffed to the chair arms on which they were resting.

Experimentally, I s.h.i.+fted my right foot a bit and found that they hadn't bothered to lock my feet in place as they had my arms. In the background I could hear the faint sounds of distant music; closer at hand, somewhere just in front of me, I could also hear the sounds of quiet alien conversation. Slowly, mindful of the trip-hammer waiting to resume work on the back of my skull, I carefully raised my head to look.

And immediately wished I hadn't. I was in a medium-sized room, plain and largely unfurnished, with a single light in the ceiling and a single closed door maybe four meters directly ahead of me. Seated behind a low wooden table midway between the door and me, my partially disa.s.sembled phone on the tabletop in front of them, were two more members of the lumpy Iykami Clan.

At the moment, though, they weren't paying any attention to the phone, nor to any of the rest of my pocket equipment that had been unceremoniously dumped out onto the table. My efforts at stealthy wakefulness to the contrary, they were looking straight at me.

And not, as near as I could tell from those alien faces, with particularly friendly expressions. They were more the sort of expressions worn by people who have orders to keep a prisoner alive and mostly well, but who are at the same time secretly longing for said prisoner to make trouble and thus provide them with an excuse to beat the living daylights out of him.

Cooperative type that I was, it seemed a shame to disappoint them. I came up on my feet, hunched forward for balance as I gripped the arms to hold the chair more or less in place against my back and rear. Their secret hopes notwithstanding, a sudden and clearly suicidal attack on my part was probably the last thing they were actually expecting; and the shock had just enough time to register on their faces as I took two quick steps forward and swung 180 degrees around, taking care not to let my chair get hung up on the edge of their table. With all the strength I could muster, I heaved myself and the chair as hard as I could squarely on top of them.

They saw it coming, of course. But seated with their legs under the table, there wasn't a single thing they could do about it. We all went down together in a confused and thunderous crash of splintering wood and alien curses. Still handcuffed to the chair, my movements were severely limited, but even so I was in a far better fighting position than my opponents. Flailing back and forth, hammering them with the chair and keeping them pinned beneath me, I lashed out with my feet, throwing kick after kick to head and torso and anything else I could reach. After what seemed like forever through the haze of pain from my head, they stopped moving. I gave them each another couple of kicks, just in case they were faking, then collapsed in a panting heap amid the carnage.

I didn't stay collapsed long, though. It had been a serious gamble on my part, taking them on just after waking up, but I hadn't had much choice in the matter.Two-to-one odds were as good as I was likely to get; and if I'd waited for them to call whoever was in charge with the news that the sacrificial Voodoo doll was awake and ready to have pins stuck in him, I'd never have left the room alive.

An unhappy ending that could still very easily happen. The brief fight had been anything but quiet, and the music I could hear in the distance meant that there was at least someone else in the immediate vicinity. My chair had suffered some damage in the fight, but enough of it had survived to keep me pinioned.

Rolling around awkwardly, keeping an ear c.o.c.ked for the inevitable reaction, I started checking my unconscious jailers for the keys to my handcuffs.

They were wearing the same sort of neo-Greek tunics as the two who'd jumped me on Xathru, and it didn't take long to find out that the limited pocket s.p.a.ce that came with the outfits included no handcuff keys. One had a belt pouch, similarly bereft of keys. Neither was carrying a weapon.

But a couple of meters away on the floor where it had fallen at the table's collapse was my phone.

My imprisoning chair had gotten itself caught in a slight hollow formed by the bodies of the two Iykams, but a little rocking broke me free. I rolled up onto my knees, got to my feet, and picked my way through the debris to the phone.

At this range I could see the Iykams hadn't gotten any further in their disa.s.sembly of the device than merely pulling the back off, though why they'd even done that I didn't know. Perhaps they were hoping to tease a latent phone number or two out of the memory that they could use.

If so, they were out of luck. That was the phone I'd taken from James Fulbright on Dorscind's World, and there were no incriminating numbers connected with me anywhere in there, latent or otherwise.

Still, I was glad they'd kept the phone around long enough to try, since it had now put communication with the outside world in my hands. Easing onto my side on the floor within reach of the phone, I rolled the device onto its back. I was still in big trouble, but a quick call to Ixil would at least alert the others that the Patth were here and on the hunt. With one final glance at the door, I keyed it on and reached an outstretched finger toward the keypad. And paused.

There was something too easy about this. Something far too easy. Where were the alert reinforcements rus.h.i.+ng in to save the day? Why were these two Iykams fiddling with my phone instead of someone in a properly equipped workroom? For that matter, why only two guards in the first place?

I keyed off the phone and turned it over again, angling it so that I could get a really good look at the exposed circuitry. And this time, knowing what to look for, it wasn't hard to spot.

My clever little playmates had wired a repeater chip into the transmitter line, on the upstream side of the encryption sticker. I couldn't read the fine print on the chip, but it almost didn't matter. With the simpler Mark VI chip they would be able to eavesdrop on any conversation I might have. With the moreadvanced Mark IX version and a properly equipped phone elsewhere in the city they'd not only be able to listen in but could also triangulate through the local phone system to get the location of the other end of the conversation.

I'd been wrong about the Voodoo pins; they intended to get hold of the Icarus the easy way.

I was willing to help out guards who wanted me to make trouble, but my cooperation with the enemy only went so far. Rolling back up to my knees, I left the phone where it was and headed toward where my plasmic lay next to my ID folder.

I was just leaning down to pick it up when the door slammed open.

I dropped the rest of the way to the floor, my outstretched hand s.n.a.t.c.hing up the weapon as I hit the ground hard enough to reignite the blazing pain in my head. Ignoring the red haze that had suddenly dropped in front of my eyes, I swiveled both my body and the plasmic to face the door.

It was, I had to admit, an impressive sight. Four Iykams stood in a semicircle just inside the doorway, each holding one of those nasty coronal-discharge weapons, their alert motionlessness giving them the appearance of transplanted gargoyles. Behind them, I could see a couple more of the ugly beasts outside the door, undoubtedly waiting eagerly for their chance at me.

And standing right in the middle of the doorway between the two groups was a gray-robed Patth.

”Don't bother with the weapon, Mr. McKell,” he said. His voice was typical Patth, managing to mix sincere, contemptuous, and smarmy into a sound that was as distinctive in its own way as Chort's Craean whistling. ”You don't seriously believe we would leave you a functional weapon, do you?”

”After that rather heavy-handed trick you tried with my phone, not really,” I agreed. It was hard to aim properly with my gun hand cuffed to a chair arm, but insofar as I was able I pointed the plasmic squarely at the center of his torso.

”At least, not on purpose. You ever hear of a three-pop?”

There was a slight but noticeable rustling among the gargoyles. ”I don't think so,” the Patth said, adding a bit more amus.e.m.e.nt into the smarmy part of his vocal mix. ”But I'm sure you're dying to tell me.”

”An appropriate choice of words,” I said approvingly. ”A three-pop is a high-power capacitor wired internally into a plasmic's fire circuit, kept charged by the main power pack but otherwise independent of it. It holds enough juice for two to four shots.” I squinted consideringly. ”That means you and up to three of your toadies will die if any of you comes any closer. If you'd like to point out your least favorites among them, I'll see what I can do to oblige you.”

The four front Iykams had stopped looking like friendly little gargoyles. All four corona guns were up and aimed, held in taut-looking grips at the full extension of taut-looking arms. But for once I had the advantage, and they all knew it. Lying there four meters away from them, I was right on the edge of their kill zones, while they were well inside mine. Add to that the point that they couldn't afford to kill me-and the equally important point that none of them was especially eager to get killed, either-and we had the makings here of a good old-fas.h.i.+oned standoff.

And for a minute it looked as if I might actually get away with it. Verylittle of the Patth's face was visible in the shadow of that hood, but what I could see seemed to be in the throes of serious indecision as he weighed the merits of risking his personal skin against the reality that the Icarus still had a long way to go before we were home free. This was no professional bounty hunter, or even a standard flunky used to obeying orders without the luxury of being able to factor personal preference into the equation. Odds were this was a reasonably senior Patth citizen, pressed by necessity and desperation into this hunt for us.

But even as he hesitated a new voice from the outer room joined the discussion.

Another Patth voice, just as smarmy as the first, but carrying with it the unmistakable weight of authority. ”Nonsense,” he said. ”He's bluffing. Enig, tell your fools to go get the weapon. We don't have time for this.”

The Patth in the doorway grunted something and two of the Iykams stepped reluctantly forward, their corona guns rigidly pointed at me. I let them get within two steps, just in case someone decided to have second thoughts, then let my plasmic settle harmlessly to the floor. ”You're right,” I acknowledged.

”I'm bluffing.”

”Bring him in here,” the second voice ordered. There was no gloating in the tone that I could detect, nor any relief either. He'd made a decision, had issued an order and had it obeyed, and was not surprised by either the obedience or the fact that his decision had turned out to be right. Clearly, we had suddenly jumped a whole bunch of rungs upward on the Patth social ladder.

The Iykams hauled me to my feet and half pulled, half dragged me into the other room. This one was much nicer, nearly three times the size of my original cell and furnished better, with a couple of chairs and lamps scattered around. Near the wall to my left was a desk with a handful of monitors arranged along its front edge, and the other Patth seated behind it. The room was also swarming with Iykams, but you couldn't have everything.

”Not bad,” I said, looking around as they led me to another plain wooden armchair that had been placed in front of the desk. Again, there seemed to be only one door leading out of the place, directly across the room from the door to my cell. Framed in the ceiling overhead was what at first glance looked like a skylight, but which on second glance proved to be only a standard light fixture designed to look that way. There were a couple of ventilation vents at ceiling and floor level, with decorative crosshatched gratings that looked flimsy enough to tear right off the wall. But through the holes in those same gratings I could see that the ductwork beyond was far too narrow for even someone as thin as Chort to fit through. A quick count of the Iykams came up with a total of eight. ”Not bad at all,” I added as my guards unfastened my handcuffs from the broken chair, shoved me down into the new one, and secured my wrists to the arms again. This time, I took particular note of which of them pocketed the keys. ”If you kept your prisoners in a place like this instead of that converted stockroom back there you'd probably get better cooperation.”

There was no comment from the other side of the desk. I finished my survey of the room in a leisurely fas.h.i.+on, then finally turned my full attention to the other Patth.If anything, my earlier hunch about his status had fallen short of the mark.

Instead of the usual unadorned gray worn in public by most Patth, his robe was instead gray with dark burnt-orange slash marks set into the sleeves and edge of the hood. This was one of the Patth elite diplomatic corps, possibly even the Palmary amba.s.sador himself. ”I'm impressed,” I said. ”May I ask whom I have the honor of addressing?”

He regarded me another moment before answering. ”You may call me Nask, Mr.

McKell. You have been a most troubling person, indeed.”

”Thank you,” I said, inclining my head slightly, ignoring the fresh swell of pain the motion induced. ”You seem to think the game is over.”

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