L. Neil Smith - North American Confederacy 02 (20 page)

“Anything!” Kent bleated. “Just don’t.. .please!”

Will clumped over, took his senior spouse gently by the hand; put a finger to his lips. “Yes, dear, but what good is a bluff if you’re going to spoil it before it pays off? Okay, Denny, nobody’s going to hurt you. Where are you hiding Bemie’s ship? What have you people been up to all this time?”

Kent moaned painfully. “I was never really cut out for.. .I’ll tell.. .drink, may I?” I hustled him a glass of water, not wantin’ t’cut what I hoped was his dyin’ confession short. “I’m glad—at least for me—it’s over. At last I’m free of
her!”

He weren’t exactly the articulate type, our Denny. But then, he never had been. Cooperatin’ hard as he could, it took all of us a couple hours altogether just t’get a story outa him you coulda told in fifteen minutes. Don’t think he managed t’string together a single whole coherent sentence the entire time.

Breedin’ will tell.

“It’s immaterial to me
how
long the boy goes on malingering.” Ab Cromney scowled. “It was largely his incompetence which brought us to this lamentable condition. Now he’ll pay for it by sleeping on the floor of the lounge with young Heplar!”

The leader of the would-be hijackers paced back an’ forth, furious. Sourin’ blood an’ vomit-gas—not to mention a paira stiffs he couldn’t get rid of—had made the passenger deck below mostly unusable by now. Too much for
Geor-gie's
systems to absorb, ’least right away.

Edna didn’t answer. She coulda pointed out that Denny’d taken a slug which rightfully belonged t’Cromney; that Denny’s bein’ fortuitously in the way when the bulkheads’d slammed shut—an’ receivin’ thereby a busted wing-—had given them access to the weldin’ equipment which’d eventually yielded control of the ship.

Credit where credit was due wasn’t little Edna’s department.

“Naturally, my dear,
you
may share the pilot’s sleeping compartment with me, if you...well, it was merely a thought.”

She put away her manicure scissors an’ smiled a smile that woulda shriveled the nads offa the Marquis de Sade.

“I’m going below to see if there’s
something
we can make another weapon out of.”

She glanced significantly at the bandages on Cromney’s shredded hand as if t’say that Denny hadn’t any monopoly on incompetence. “Watch him—I think that arm’s beginning to infect, and we may still need him. Too bad a liberal arts degree doesn’t include first aid.”

Cromney nodded absent agreement. They needed Denny Kent for exactly the same reason Arab women got t’walk four paces
aheada
their husbands in wartime—mine fields.

“I’ll have young Helpar look after him in his copious free time. You’re absolutely certain that the drugs—” “Will burn him out
completely
if we use them any more!” She had to exert a conscious effort not to scream at the old fool. “I’m going below.”

Without a further glance at the partially-conscious Kent, Cromney wandered into the control room where Rand Heplar fiddled ineffectually with the panels, as he’d been doing for some hours.

“Any success, my boy?”

Heplar turned toward his new-found leader, wondering somewhere deep inside if he hadn’t made a mistake, loy-alties-wise. “Without the field-density equalizer, there is nothing I
can
do. So many fail-safe circuits..His heavy eyebrows knitted together an’ merged into his hairline. “Why I’d have to dismantle the entire ship to reroute around half of them. Bad engineering, sir, typical. Another fundamental failure of technology. You were right.”

Well, that felt a little better, both of them thought.

To Cromney, the bridge was an indecipherable montage of dials an’ gauges. “Perhaps if you were to tell me what
does
work?”

“There’s the AutoDestruct,” Heplar said, incapable of the irony those words mighta conveyed cornin’ from somebody else. “Various viewscreens and proximity alarms. And the Emergency Escape Drive. I—”

“Well, why can’t we use
that?"

“Because it really
is
for last-ditch emergencies. One brief burst—only a microsecond or so, not long enough for field-integration to become a problem. Spatiotemporal displacement in a totally random direction. And you can only use it once.”

There was a momentary silence. Belatedly, Heplar snapped the safety-covers back over a dozen arming switches. “I don’t know what to do! I don’t even know where we are!”

He explained t’Cromney the anomalies involvin’
Georgie'
s digital calendar an’ the deserted wilderness which now surrounded them, adding that the astronomical evidence— computer-observed positions of the stars an’ planets—agreed that the ship was right about what time it was.

“At least,” Cromney observed in a manner he mighta termed “philosophically,” “we’re rid of Gruenblum and those disgusting little—”

“Don’t count on it, sir. You don’t know how he feels about this collection of nuts and bolts we’re sitting in. A real machine-fetishist, if there ever—sonofabitch!”

“What is it?” asked Cromney.

“Look at this screen! Here, I’ll step up the magnification!”

Outside, high above, a silvery thrummin’ object hovered in the fog an’ rain. It banked steeply; the pair on the control deck below could make out a fur-covered rider, wearin’ a ten-gallon hat an,’ gunbelt.

“Where in God’s name
are
we?” Heplar stifled a whimper—an’ the secret wish that his Captain were here t’tell him what t’do.

“What’re you caterwauling about now, Rand?” Edna stood in the bulkhead doorframe, a rapidly-modified laser-welder clutched in her long-nailed fingers. The edges of her shoes were stained an ugly brownish-red.

“It would appear we have company,” Cromney answered for the stunned copilot, trying to sound unalarmed. “Take a look at this screen right—”

“Uh-oh!” interrupted Heplar, borderin’ on hysteria. “The ground, too! We’re surrounded!” Hands unsteady, he played nervously with the switch-cover on the Emergency Escape Drive. He pointed to a dial: “The magnetometers say they’re heavily armed! What should I do?”

Edna sneered. “Doesn’t this bucket have any firepower of its own?” She held her welding torch more closely, stole a glance back at Denny lying half-conscious by the upstairs airlock door.

What a shame, she thought, that men were such unreliable tools. Heplar seemed utterly beyond the reach of her usually-dependable sexual allure. This made him uncontrollable, and it frightened her a little.

Perhaps he was a eunuch.

Cromney, of course, possessed no such disability, nor immunity, but he was a feeble old man. Worse, he actually seemed to have ideas of his own.

She’d just have to hold on to poor Denny a while longer. She sighed, remembering with what served her for sentiment how he’d originally been a dominating figure, accustomed to liking it rough, even reputed to have seriously injured a fragile coed or two-—and covered it up afterward with plenty of his family’s money. Edna liked it
rougher
—he’d been so appealingly perplexed! Well, he wasn’t much, but he was all she had to work with.

There was a muted
clink
as Heplar flipped the switch-cover back. “We have force-fieids and meteor-defenses”— he answered a question Edna had forgotten asking—“but I’m afraid to use them on the ground, because—
sweet Jesus, those are gorillas out there, and they’ve got guns!”

Perhaps it was a lifetime of unconscious slave-holder’s guilt which filled Heplar with mindless terror at the thought of simians without electronic controls-—and armed. The flying-machine made another pass, and then a grim-faced Bemie Gruenblum rose outa the fog like Hamlet's daddy, right in fronta the main video pickups.

“That’s all!” Heplar screamed three octaves above his normal voice. “I’m going to—”

"No, Rand!"
Edna shouted.

“Heplar, no!"

BRRRAAAAMMM-SSSLLLAAAMMM!
roared
Georgie, an’ when Heplar, Janof, Cromney, an’ the already badly-battered Denny Kent returned to consciousness, the strange wild mountains’d been replaced by an even stranger prairie, rollin’ from horizon to horizon.

They picked themselves up. They dusted themselves off. Only one casualty this time: Denny had a broken nose.

Some small amount of time’d passed while Cromney’s crew was enjoyin’ a well-deserved oblivion. Outside, a nasty crowd was gatherin’—half a hundred chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, an’ humans, dressed in a wildly-colored variety of dungarees, armed not only with pistols but with pitchforks, rakes, an’ hoes, an’ buzzin’ like a swarma angry bumblebees.

Incongruously, the open field
Georgie
'd landed in was crowded, fence-to-fence, with thousands, mebbe tens of thousands, of antique Early American hardwood rockin’ chairs.

Rockin’ chairs?

CLONG! A chimp thumped
Georgie
with an oddly-shaped cultivator. Through the outside pickups, mention could be heard of lynchin’. An’ not in a nice way.

Edna looked down at her semiconscious partner.

“Denny,” she said, starin’ through the airlock bull’s-eye, “Somehow I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

A large white bulbous hovercraft with red markin’s’d pulled up on Win Bear’s rubber-covered driveway. Its several an’ divers doors were open, empty spaces gapin’ on the racks inside where the driver’d grabbed the tools of his trade.

Inside the house, an orangutan in medical greens, the circled cross on his shoulder matchin’ the enameled ones on his car, had spread instruments an’ supplies all over the livin’-room carpet.

He scratched his auburn head. “Some pardy youse guys’re t’rowin’. All dis blood an’ gore, an’ not one funny hat, noise-maker, or balloon! Well, it’s a Free System, iddn’t it?”

The detective wasn’t amused. “Cut the standup routine, will you, Chiang, and get on with the malpractice. I’m in the middle of a case, and I’ve got suspects on the loose.” Weary, he shook his head an’ settled heavily on a sofa while the orang looked t’Denny Kent.

"Well, Winnie, I’da been here sooner,” the pumpkin-colored simian said, “iffen I hadn’t hadda stop at the comer of Spencer an’ Confederation—some kinda shoot-em-up inna Unnerground. But dem guys from Acme Ambulance beat me to it.”

So Edna’d carved another notch on her pistol-grip. Probably somebody careless enough to’ve gotten in her line of escape. Despite his diction, the orangutan seemed preter-naturally skillful, his big clumsy-lookin’ fingers flyin’ as they tucked an’ patched an’ stitched.

It was decided not t’move the would-be hijacker, hospitals bein’ few an’ far between in the Confederacy, owin’ to the advanced state of technology that allowed folks t’get well at home. By mornin’, Kent would be removed t’gaol. Probably the same cell I’d had.

Win heard the verdict an’ waved a tired hand in assent. Will an’ I got checked out, too. The medico hadn’t the faintest idea what t’do for Spin, but the little guy, backed up by his buddies, insisted he was feelin’ better already. I dunno—when I was a kid in Pecos, I’d had a big pet turtle’d gotten squished that way. Never seemed quite the same after.

Tool kits an’ medicine bags were folded up. “Well, I’ll ender my bill inna network. Winnie,” the orang Healer said. “I oughda pay you—imagine me, Chiang Mung Schwar-llosz, practicin’ in Clarissa MacDougall Olson’s house! Dey’ll never believe me back—”

“Fine,” Win said. “Come see us socially when she’s out of electrosleep, will you, Chiang? We’ve got a bad—” Suddenly, the detective sank to his knees, collapsing on his face at the paramedic’s feet. He rolled onto his back without a sound, revealing a spreading bloodstain underneath his cloak from neckline to navel.

The Healer knelt beside his friend
—my
friend—every body’s friend, stethoscope on the investigator’s crimson soaked chest. He looked up at us.

“He’s dead!”

16 A Stool-Pigeon in a Chair Tree

“
H
E WAS A DECENT SORT, ALL THINGS CONSID
ered.” I set m’glass on the coffee table, scratchin’ th Band-Aid on m’ear. Fran looked up from the rummy game she was losin’ to the Freenies on the floor over near the big Com screen.

She sighed, shakin’ her head reflectively. “And damned good at what he did.”

“Well, I sure won’t miss him!” Sanders sat by the front window, made t’pass me a reefer he was sharin’ with Mary-Beth. “It gave me a headache, just listening—”

“He always affected me the same way!” Win Bear turned over where he lay on the other couch, propped himself on an elbow, an’ laughed, wincing at the pain in his chest. “He’s a damned good Healer, our Chiang Mung Schwarz-losz, but he should have his adenoids looked at. Say, don’t bogart that joint, Bernie.”

Sanders watched Win grab a toke an’ chuckled. “I’ll bet you used to arrest people for that.”

The detective exhaled violently. “I
beg
your pardon, I was a
homicide
dick! The narc squad’s for those who can’t make the grade as
real
policemen!” He took another drag, held it out for Howell. The coyote’s yellow eyes went big, a ripple of relaxation spread through his fur.

“Now
that's
real coffee!” said Nahuatl.

“Back where I come from,” I observed, “I’d guess it was growin’ up in the Bronx made Chiang talk like that. Only I checked it out on the ’com, an’—there
ain’t
no Bronx in the Confederacy! Whaddya thinka that?”

Bear grinned, cannabis smoke slowly seepin’ between his teeth, visibly restrainin’ himself from a potentially painful chuckle.

Finally, he exhaled. “There isn’t any New York City— to this country’s everlasting credit—probably because there isn’t any Chase Manhattan—!”

He started coughin’, tears of agony wellin’ in his eyes. He reached to the table beside him, got himself a cigar, an’ lit up. The attack subsided.

“That’s better. Got a little too much THC in my nicotine system—hard to teach old lungs new tricks. Now what were we talking about?”

“Geography,” I answered, stokin’ up a stogie of my own. “Way I heard it, AI Hamilton got into the bankin’ racket well
before
the Whiskey Rebellion—with Aaron Burr, of all people.”