I flew through the air and crashed hard as I hit my boat. I barely grappled the railing in time and hauled myself onboard. The speedboat slewed away, the front caved in. The motorboat immediately took on seawater. It had done its duty, however. It could go to a clean and watery grave.
I laughed. It sounded savage to my ears.
Eric the Viking-like biker appeared. He had his revolver, and he got off a shot, but I wasn’t there. I moved up beside him, and I hit him in the gut as hard as I could. He crumpled and his gun fell to the deck. I grabbed it, and Harris appeared with his sword.
It was my turn to shoot, and I missed as the
Alamo
shifted under me. Before I could take a second shot, the sword sliced through metal and across the outer side of my fingers, scraping against my hardened bones. Blood spurted from them.
“Now,” Harris said. “Now we shall see.”
The Englishman lunged, the boat shifted and I fell back. The sword nicked me, parting skin, and Harris stumbled. I crawled for the stern as he bumped against the cabin.
“No!” he shouted. “Face me!”
I tore the flashgun from the dead biker’s grip. I screwed my eyes shut, aimed the parabolic dish at him and pulled the trigger. Harris howled.
I released the trigger, stood and swung the flashgun. It connected with Harris’s lunging sword-hand. He sliced part of the gun, but lost his grip of the sword. It fell onto the deck.
With a roar, he attacked. He flailed in his clumsy manner but with incredible strength. He kicked and used his elbows. His blows hurt, but so did mine. I saw him wince each time I landed a punch.
“Why, Harris? Why kill Kay in the Mercedes Benz?”
We stood on the main deck. Our faces were battered, our clothes torn.
“Dave’s stinking whore told me no!” he shouted. “She told
me
no. We’d worked together. We had profited. Why couldn’t she see I had needs? Rita watched. She’d told me Kay was too good for me. I was going to prove her wrong. But your bitch told me I disgusted her. It was unimaginable. There was nothing left for it. She had to die. So I throttled her like an unwanted kitten, or I did before she broke free.”
I heard the truth there. It was ugly, as death always was. I stared into his face, as the sweat ran down his cheeks.
“She must have begged for mercy,” I said.
“Mercy is for the deserving,” he sneered. “She had shown herself unworthy of me.”
I nodded, and I didn’t ask anything more. I had been in the Green Berets once. I had fought in Afghanistan. I had found friends killed by the Taliban in foul ways. Every time, we had hunted the killers and butchered them like mad dogs.
That night, on my boat, I killed Harris. Despite his strength, I did it with my hands. It was an ugly death. He fought hard and he hurt me. In the end, however, my agility, my training and Shop-taught skills proved superior.
When I took my hands from his corpse, I was straddling him and panting hard. His tongue protruded. He had made some wretched noises. But it was over now.
I crawled off him and sat staring at the sea for a long time. I wasn’t proud of myself. I was more than a little disgusted to find I was so primitive in my feelings.
Fortunately, I had the wit to check his clothes before I said a short prayer for his soul and pitched him and his accomplices into the cold sea. Harris sank fast with the weight of his sins.
I’d found a detonator on Harris with the chip set in it. I was pretty sure it was for the box at the bottom of the ocean. I activated it, found the switch and hesitated. Was Dave a danger to the world? I didn’t believe it, at least not as much a danger as this cube. I stabbed my thumb on the switch. A red light winked, winked, and then it went out.
I didn’t know for sure, but I believed I’d just exploded the first neuron mind bomb.
-24-
San Francisco didn’t care about no stinking bomb, neuron or otherwise. It went on as it had before. Maybe a few fishermen noticed too many floating fish a mile or so from shore. Seagulls and sharks quickly disposed of the evidence of any unnatural occurrence.
I’d docked back in the East Harbor. I bought lumber, paint and some special metal fittings. Then Blake and I sawed, hammered and painted, fixing the damage I’d done to my boat.
The Chief never came by to thank me for letting him live. The Shop seldom paid with hard currency like that. Like the I.R.S., their payment was in leaving you alone for another year.
“I have a new idea for an article,” Blake told me a week later. We sat in deck chairs on a beach in Santa Cruz, sipping Coronas, and watching bikini-clad tourists of exquisite shape oil their skin. He’d talked me into coming out here, despite my having to wear an absurd sunhat and my heavily polarized sunglasses.
The bruises were still healing on Blake’s face. He didn’t talk about Harris’s method of questioning. I’d told him enough about the battle on the ocean that a cold smile had twitched across Blake’s face.
I sipped beer and wiped my lips, listening to Blake’s idea.
“The germ of it came from Polarity Magnetics,” he said.
“Are you sure you want to make yourself a target talking about them?” I asked. “I know you know there are people who desperately want such things kept very quiet.”
A brief scowl flickered across his face. “I’m not going to mention Polarity Magnetics or the Shop.”
“Good,” I said.
“Give me a little credit. Besides, I said the germ of the idea came from them—the idea of modifying the human body. I’m not talking about cyborgs or military supermen, but a way to alleviate overpopulation.”
I sipped my beer, hardly listening. A coed wearing two pieces of bright orange string cast her beach towel on the sand nearby. Then she lay down. There was a purple butterfly tattoo on her right hip. Like the rest of her, it was exquisite, in no need of modification.
“Are you listening?” Blake asked.
“Sure.”
“You seem distracted.”
“You’re not?” I asked.
“This beach is a good example about what I’m talking about,” he said. “It’s teeming with people. Now just think what it’s like on a beach in China or in India. There’s massive overcrowding over there.”
“Sure,” I said.
“We need more room,” Blake said. “But who wants to live in Antarctica or in Greenland?”
I took another sip of beer.
“The oceans cover seventy percent of the Earth’s surface,” Blake said, gesturing with his hands. It was a sure sign he was excited. “Here’s my idea, my modification. Actually, it’s not really my idea. I read it once in a science fiction novel.”
“Would that make it plagiarism then?”
“No!” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve read several sci-fi novels with the particular idea,” Blake said. “That doesn’t mean they plagiarized each other. Each used the premise in a different way and their themes were each quite different.”
I don’t know how, but the coed with the butterfly tattoo reached back and untied her top string, tugging it away. What a lovely back, and now it would build an even tan. I silently applauded her decision.
“Polarity Magnetics wanted super-soldiers,” Blake said. “I’m taking about making aqua-people. Think about it. What if we could modify humans to live underwater?”
“Give them gills?” I asked.
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be gills,” Blake said. “The point is they could live underwater, and that would open up fantastically large areas of more livable space for us.”
“What about their babies?” I asked.
“Genetic manipulation would be the best,” Blake said thoughtfully. “If we changed their basic DNA it would allow their children to live underwater, too.”
I would have liked to pull my sunglasses down and stare at him. The idea of such genetic manipulation was horrifying. Instead, I took another sip of my beer and went back to studying the beauty laid before me.
I was still sad about Kay. She had tried so hard to find a way to bring Dave back. She had freed me years ago, and she had tried to free Dave. She had been a good person.
As I stared at the tattoo and the tanned skin, I decided that I didn’t want to reenter high-level intrigue, and I wanted to stay far away from the Shop. For that matter, I didn’t care to meet any more accelerated individuals. I wanted to live my quiet life here in the Bay Area.
Maybe a part of me knew I would eventually have to go back and find out about Dave. But for now, I was going to chill until they found me again, which I expected they probably would. Who exactly “they” were I wasn’t sure that moment.
Until that time, however, I was home. I was as content as I could be these days, and I was going to enjoy the peace while I could.
The End