Part 16 (1/2)
Perhaps the Device was calling subtly to its inheritor, perhaps he honestly wanted a confrontation. Certainly, as he slipped out onto the bitter streets of die The Centauri Device 151.
port, black and ragged in his cloak like a wounded crow, he wanted revenge; by the time he'd pa.s.sed the high wire fence of the landing field, he had convinced himself that his anger was more than personal; and he believed as he strode between the rocket pits under the white arc lights that the time for pa.s.sive misery and acceptance was over.
It wasn't When he located the Ella Speed (he'd somehow forgotten the paint job and the new name), he found her loading ramp extended tike the tongue of an immense mechanical mouth.
Fix the bosun was lying huddled up on it He was dead.
His lips peeled back from those sawmill teeth, he was curled fetally round a ma.s.sive abdominal wound, as if his final horrified act had been- an attempt to contain the several pints of fluid congealing on the diamond tread of the ramp beneath him. His eyes were narrowed, his fingers were all in a knot; under the port arcs, his features were composed of precise white planes ”and cold shadows, a brutal, quite alien morphology of emotion, memoir of a hard death.
Truck (down on his knees again, with his hands in tiie bosun's blood and his mind on the corpse boats of Cor Caroli, where, under the same clinical illumination, there was at least a little peace, an order to the serried rows) heaved and retched. He wiped himself on Fix's yellow jerkin, coughing dismally. (”A pumpkin,” he explained, ”is what your head is. Don't forget, novegetable seeds.”) Since their government is semifeudal, Chromians acquire early a deep familiarity with death, but: Oh, you poor sod, he thought, you poor little sod. This was nothing like the loss of Pater, whom he'd hardly known; or of Angina Seng, who hadn't died alone under bleak lights.
Images of Fix: mafficking across the Galaxy in search of freedom and dope and Ing Denebian wh.o.r.es, 152.
The Centauri Device his grinning mouth hungry to eat it all down; s.h.i.+vering and blinking on the steps of courthouses in the morning, wondering where to go next after being busted and spending the night telling weird Chromian jokes (”- and were they t.i.ts? Not on your life. Intellectual melons!,” with n.o.body among the soreheaded jailed losers knowing quite how to laugh at this hick who found everything new they thought was old); Fix horrible hi trashcan alley fights, the morals of a goat, vital, alive-dead.
”What can I do?w whispered Truck, cupping the back of the great round head in his hands. He couldn't even bring himself to close the eyelids. He got up.
Someone was going to be killed. He gazed speculatively along the length of the boat toward the command bridge, then went inside.
My Ella Speed, a light haulage vehicle of the ”Transit” cla.s.s, registered out of Carter's Snort, Earth, and licensed to transfer up to one thousand tons of freight over distances less than a thousand light years-she mounted three Dynaflow converters (each outputting about fifty gigaton hours per every half ton of fuel consumed) and a ”Powerslide” rocket pile for sub-Dyne maneuvers such as planetfall; her cramped little hold had carried everything from neat nitrome-thane for the curious engines of Anywhere to five thousand live ferrets genetically modified to survive the curious atmosphere of t.i.tus-Bode.
Now, except for a few string-tied bundles of ”Some Words of Plain Good Sense hi a Time of Trouble,” it was empty and hollow, amplifying the sc.r.a.pe of John Truck's bootsoles as he rifled Fix the bosun's belongings in search of a gun.
He padded forward through that sweet and dirty s.h.i.+p. In- the engine room, where instrumentation flickered and clicked and the display board said power down in arrays of colored lights, Fix had left himself a final note: CLENE HTE RUNIN GEER. Truck screwed it up and chucked it on the floor without so much as a smile. He put his shoulder against the corn- The Centaur; Device 153.
mand-cabin hatch and shoved. It was locked. Temper gone, he tried to kick it hi and was rewarded by Tiny Skeffern's voice from the other side.
”Truck, there's some mad sod in here with a gun.” He sounded m.u.f.fled and distant Truck said nothing. d.a.m.n him for being in the way. A scuffling sound.
”He says h.e.l.l shoot if you don't come in quietly. I think he means it.M ”Oh, HeW” Poor old Tiny. ”All right then.” The electronic lock hummed and chimed, the hatch slid open. Truck dropped Fix's chopper, and the sound clattered back along the subframe of the boat like a laugh. ”I'll get you, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d,” he said, holding out his hands to demonstrate their emptiness.
Tiny had got himself backed up into a comer, his hands well above his head, small beads of sweat on his bald patch. A shallow laceration with bruised edges ran down his left cheek. He looked accusingly at Truck and complained, ”I don't think much of your friends.” Track moved a bit further into the cabin, to discover Colonel Gadaffi ben Barka lounging against the approach-radar board with an arid smile on his thin lips.
”Don't think that'll help you when the time comes,” Truck told nun, nodding at the military issue Chambers gun that had lately blown such a large hole hi Fix the bosun's insides. ”I owe you for all this, ben Barka. n.o.body threatens me on my own boat”
The Arab shrugged elegantly. He had crossed one leg over the other, his whole body unconsciously mimicking the feral repose of his own death commandos. His uniform was as neat as a pin. But he looked tired, and the desert, never very far away, was etching at his brain.”You shot my bosun,** Truck insisted.
Ben Barka's soft brown eyes hooded themselves for a heartbeat. He seemed to be studying his pistol. ”You can't think I'm unaware of that, Captain. Neither are you aware of how much is at stake. You did plenty of killing last night.”
Another oasis choked to death in the 154.
The Centauri Device long, empty night. ”He attacked me after fair warning. He was very brave. Do you think I did it lightly? I'm sorry if you do.”
John Truck had found Fix the dwarf washed up in the port hinterland of Gloam-disoriented and illiterate among the hustlers and prost.i.tutes, having no real understanding of the twilight subculture that had swallowed him after his escape from the rural manors and squirearchies of Chrome. The two-thousand light-year brawl that had followed was Truck's responsibility; so was its end, down there under the arc lamps of Aver-nus. Like Annie Truck, Fix was a dependent.
”Are you apologizing to me? I didn't own him. Apologize to him!”
”Come, Captain-**
*Tm going to kick you to death some day, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d.**
The desert s.h.i.+fted, rustled, extended its perimeters; it had made vast inroads since the meeting in the ganger's shed: from being a means, a sympathetic terrain for imaginary revenges, it had mutated into an end. The olive groves had withered, the aqueducts fallen to rubble. Cairo and Alexandria was bleached sh.e.l.ls hi the ancient sunlight. High up in mountains ben Barka had never seen, exfoliation was cracking rock enough to make a Galactic sand-sea; sand was already spilling from his skufl to submerge everything; in peace, he would slip along the wadies of die mind, stalking Reality's pitiful little punitive expeditions- He made a small gesture with the pistol. ”If you'll take your place at the controls, Captain Truck. Your vessel has been commandeered.” His teeth were like bones exposed by the dry winds. ”Mr. Skeffern, you'll note, is still alive and well.**
”Get your backside of! the switchgear if you want the boat to go anywhere, ben Barka.”
The command-cabin of a Transit cla.s.s hauler is laid out with dual controls and duplicated navigational aids; two acceleration chairs provide access to these, and a 155 third can be brought up on runners from the rear of the bridge and locked abreast of the other two. It is a habit of transport pilots to leave this one permanently in place; ben Barka sat himself down in it and indicated that Truck and Tiny should strap-in either side of him. He put his pistol close to Tiny's ear.
”I think you were going my way anyway, Captain. We might as well travel together.”
”Oh yes?” Truck powered up his controls. ”Where's that?”
Ben Barka sighed and shook his head. ”Captain, Captain. The pistol's pointing hi the wrong direction for obliquity.” He smiled down at Tiny, who hunched his shoulders like a nomad in a sandstorm. ”GrishMn, that impatient priest, had it from normally reliable sources that today had been chosen for an Arab attempt on the IWG blockade of Centauri VII (there is in fact an action in progress there; it's significant enough to keep IWG fully occupied, but hardly planned to be an actual military success).
**He realized almost immediately that he could never wish for a better diversion-with the result that you, Captain, received an en clair message from him early this morning. (It was couched, I felt, hi rather fulsome tones even for a priest.) He expects your landing to go quite un.o.bserved by either myself or the good General Gaw. He may even be down there already, waiting for you-one of our s.h.i.+ps reported a boat hi Opener livery sneaking a shade ineptly past the perimeters of the engagement some two hours ago.”It was me who leaked the information to his pathetic intelligence machine; they'd never have got it without help, I don't wonder he didn't bother to code the message. Half his people are working for me or the General anyway. There you have it: we're going to the same place, Captain, We always were.”
Truck engaged a bank of rocker switches below the engine-room repeaters and wanned up the Powerslide pile for take-off, wondering just how much allowance 156 ben Barka had made for Grishkin's fanaticism and the GeneraTs not inconsiderable cunning.
”Be it on your own head, Colonel.**
My Etta Speed rumbled and shook. The cargo ramp pulled itself hi slowly, tipping Fix the bosun into the hold like a bale of fresh animal skins. Truck got a go-ahead from the Port Authority, giving his destination as Sad al Bari and his cargo as ”mining machinery.” Two ma.s.sive, caterpillar-tracked LTOA vehicles moved in across the dock and stood the boat gently on her tail. He checked that Tmy's controls were shut down, worked the rocket engines through the prelift part of their power-curve a coupte of times.
”I can go any tune you want, Colonel.**
”Do it.”
My Ella Speed, well into the spirit of the thing, wiggled along her length like a b.i.t.c.h in heat, and threw herself upward.
While the colossal cruisers- of UASR(N) have so-called ”autonomic gravity”
environments which protect their crews against the devastating G effects of a battle maneuver, thud-hand Transit cla.s.s haulers do not They are safe from inertia only during dyne-field s.h.i.+fts; and My Ella Speed, l.u.s.tily fighting the attractions of Avernus, made it from relative rest to escape speed in a very short time indeed.
The multi-G blast is a concomitant of the s.p.a.cer's way of life; Truck and Tiny, who had been lifting like that since birth-and before-took it stoically, with G standing on their faces and stumping all over their ribs.
But ben Barka was used to a more generous kind of travel. Perhaps he simply forgot Certainly, it was too late when he remembered.
He dropped his Chambers gun when they were about a mfle up. He tried comically to move his arms from his sides, sweat breaking out all over his face. His eyes rolled and protruded as Truck poured it relentlessly on. He gasped for breath; his skull snapped back against the head-restraint When he tried to s.h.i.+ft
157.
jt, Truck-feeling somewhat wilted himself-made a vast effort, steered his hand the full two inches from armrest to controls^ and let it fall against the emergency thrust b.u.t.ton.
My Ella Speed howled and quaked. Ben Barka made a choked, surprised sort of sound. His eyes opened wide; suddenly, a dark thin trickle of blood issued sluggishly from his left nostril. His tongue poked out from under his mustache like a misshapen fig. He pa.s.sed out.