Part 57 (1/2)

”Whatareyou doing now, Harry?” Bea asked, speaking from behind him.

He turned to face her. ”Waiting.”

”Waiting for what?”

He was silent for a moment. ”For three things,” he said then.

”And they are?”

”The first two are reports from my machines.”

”Your machines,” said Gabrielle contemptuously. Now it was her turn to tackle him from behind. The Prince ignored her, and continued speaking to Beatrix. ”Primarily,” he said, ”a report from the machine that I sent after Chen s.h.i.+zuoka.”

”The supposed a.s.sa.s.sin,” said Bea, still sounding brightly interested.

”No-” He had been about to say,no more than I am.”Chen's not an a.s.sa.s.sin.”

”Well. Whether he is or not, I'd like you to fill me in on what importance he has to us now. Why are we waiting for a report about him?”

”Do something!” This was Gabrielle again. She was now starting to scream hoa.r.s.ely at Harivarman from above. ”You just stand there like . . . do something, do something, do something!” It was as if she were emboldened by the inertness of the splashed berserker. She turned and ran back up the stairs as if she were going to her newly adopted room.

The Prince faced Beatrix again. ”There's a second report I'm expecting at any time,” he said. ”It will have to do with more arrivals, landings on the outer surface of the Fortress.”

Bea swallowed. ”Human landings?”

”Yes, of course, that's what I had in mind. If you ask me who's going to land-that's what I'm interested in finding out. Bea, I'm trying to work out a way to get away from here in one piece. With my friends, with you, now that you're committed to me. And without any more fighting, if it can be done that way.”

”And the third thing?”

”Some equipment I'm having them gather for me. I want to do some serious research on berserker communications.”

”Can't that wait?”

”I don't think so.”

Bea's control was suddenly slipping. She was shrinking down, huddling in her chair involuntarily. Her head turned, as if she could no longer keep from staring at the controller. She said: ”Harry, I don't want to walk out on you again. But if you're doing this now in any sense for me . . . I don't know if I can stay here any longer . . . Harry, whatever it is you're doing with the d.a.m.ned machines, for G.o.d's sake stop it!”

”Bea. I-”

”Quit! Just give up, let Lergov arrest you! Whatever happens would be better than this!”

But then, having heard herself say that, she couldn't stand by it. ”Harry, I don't know what I'm saying.

The problem is I don't know what's going on, and you won't tell me! I can't believe, I can't believe, that you're just-just-”

He found himself crossing the patio, pulling Bea out of her chair, and taking her in his arms. He said, close to her ear, knowing that the machines would hear him anyway: ”If only I could just quit and give up, at this moment. If only I could.”

She gripped his arms, ready again to persist. ”You don't have to be arrested, Harry. You could make a deal. Let Roquelaure and his people have the d.a.m.ned control code, or whatever they want from you.

Just so they'll let us get away together. Harry, I found I couldn't live without you: I thought I could come back and live with you, this time. I could have, too, but . . .” Bea's voice died away. Once more her eyes were staring upward past his shoulder.

Gabrielle was coming down the stair again, and this time she had a gun in her slender, pale, entertainer's hand, a tiny weight that still made her thin fingers shake. It was a little pistol, jeweled and almost ladylike.

She must, the Prince thought numbly, irrelevantly, have had the gun with her since she arrived, brought it with her from her apartment. Unless she had just found it here in her adopted room, which seemed unlikely. Somehow it seemed to suit her, though he had never thought of her as bearing arms.

”d.a.m.n you,” Gabrielle said to him, her eyes crazed. ”I'm going to kill you, Harry.” And she waved the gun. And then she started to level it at him with intent.

Most of the shock of fear felt by the Prince was not directly for himself. ”Gabby, no! Put it-”

He had no time to get any farther than that, no time to do more than raise one hand in a useless gesture.

Gabby was not listening anyway. She might or might not have actually fired on him. But what she might or might not have done did not matter. A tenth of a second before the pistol's muzzle came actually to bear on Harivarman, his life was saved.

The controller had been ordered to protect him. In this case it had probably no need to move its body or its limbs to do the job. He wasn't looking at it and he couldn't tell for sure; perhaps it turned its head.

Harivarman knew that somewhere on its upper body a small weapons port had opened. A bolt of energy, instantaneous and almost invisible, stabbed past him, directed upward toward the woman on the stair. A bright flash filled the patio, accompanied by a dull throb of a sound. Gabrielle virtually disappeared. The Prince's only clear visual impression was of red hair bursting into flame. He heard the small bejeweled gun clatter on the stair, bouncing endlessly toward the bottom. A smell of singed flesh spread out to mingle with that of pungent, splattered wine.

Now Beatrix, combat veteran that she was, huddled deeper in her chair, hands covering her face.

Lescar, no longer catatonic, came running into the patio where a moment later he veered to a helpless halt.

”We'll move again,” was all the Prince could think of to say, when he could speak again.

Grand Marshall Beraton had now installed himself as a more or less permanent fixture in Commander Blenheim's bunker. She had never invited him to do so, but neither had she thrown him out as yet. The commander found the old man continually underfoot there, but she kept expecting that at any moment some real use for him was likely to come up, some problem or decision in which his experience might be invaluable. With this in mind she kept putting off the all-out effort it would doubtless take to shunt the grand marshall off permanently to an adjoining chamber.

Right now Beraton was pus.h.i.+ng his luck, though. Now he was starting to argue that she ought to try to take out Sabel's old lab with some kind of missile, now that they were certain that the Prince-the general-was holed up there.

”I'm not really sure he's still there in the lab, Grand Marshall. Are you?”

”I'd say he's d.a.m.ned sure to be. Fellow with that kind of arrogance.” The grand marshall paused, then added with sudden bitterness: ”Should have clapped him in irons as soon as I laid eyes on him.Youshould have, if I may say so, Commander, long before that. Well, can't be helped now.”

Still, Anne Blenheim refused to use a small missile on the old laboratory, giving as her reason that any such try would quite likely unleash a full berserker attack, or at least another punis.h.i.+ng bombardment.

And anyway, she told the grand marshall, she thought there might be antimissile weapons emplaced around the laboratory.

She could see that she was getting some strange looks from those of her subordinates who were present. Quite likely they were wondering, not only at her refusal, but at the odd way she talked around the subject. Well, there was no help for getting odd looks just now.

Beraton, balked in his effort to take over her command more or less completely, his advice about a missile attack rejected, now came up with a new idea. He had to do that, she supposed, because it must gripe him that a mere young woman had gone out to meet the enemy face to face while he sat here in a shelter.

Now he wanted to at least duplicate the commander's bravery. He didn't put it that way, of course.

Beraton's proposal was that he go and talk to Harivarman face to face. ”We fought together once, he and I, you know. Or at least in the same theater. We met . . . I can't really believe that a fellow who fought so well once could-I'm going to go and face him with it. Do what I can to talk him into a surrender. I lecture you about your duty-hm? And here I'm not really doing my own.”

The old man looked visibly older than he had only a few hours ago, she thought. ”No, Grand Marshall. I . . .” Anne Blenheim paused momentarily, struck by a new idea. ”Why not? Very well. Go and talk to him, if you like.” She would at least get the old man out of her own hair, at least for a time. What would Harivarman think? Well, he could always send his visitor back.