by Julian May
Her male partner asked a question that I only understood part of. “Blah blah him now with blah blah?”
Avilik said, “Yes. Be careful and slow. He blah blah but we must blah and make a new demiclone.”
Miruviak carried a small case, which he snapped open, revealing a shiny little instrument with a pistol grip, a cylindrical metal body, and a short barrel tipped with a glass knob. Bea Mangan had used one of those on me, the night she’d picked me up in the snowstorm. The thing was a hypodermic injector, the kind without a needle that squirts powerful little jets of liquid right through unbroken skin and clothing. It was probably full of a gentler sort of knockout juice.
“Human?” Miruviak said to me gently. “One will not hurt you. Only blah blah sleep.”
He started toward me. In order to inject the drug he had to touch me with the glass knob. The guards still had me targeted. They held their Ivanovs two-handed, in the approved human combat style. I suppose Haluk demiclones had bought the stun-guns on the thriving Toronto black market. No aliens were permitted to carry arms on Earth.
Miruviak was coming at me from the right. Haluk faces are hard to read because of the ridged patterns, but it seemed to me that he was distinctly nervous at the prospect of putting down a brute my size.
The big guard must have thought so, too. “Blah Vumilak and this one blah put our guns to his head blah blah. He is too large and strong blah blah blah.”
“Be silent,” Avilik told Big Guy. She acted like the boss of the outfit. “The human is frightened and blah. He is also feeble from blah blah in dystasis and blah blah. You shoot blah blah blah.”
Yeah. Only as a last resort. Okay, let’s boogie …
I touched my bloody nape, let out a groan, and did a little stagger dance that took me back against the windowsill. Cringed away and whimpered in broken Halukese, “No! Do not do it. No dystasis!”
Clutched the sopping scarlet towel tightly at one end.
Miruviak was closing in, making soothing sounds. I turned toward him and whip-snapped the towel sharply in his face, then flung the gory thing at the guards.
Eeeuw! They couldn’t help flinching. By the time they’d recovered, I’d grabbed the startled medic by both skinny wrists and pulled him against me as a shield. The guards fired their stun-guns. Miruviak took two bolts in the back and sagged, dropping the injector.
I picked up his slight form and threw it at the guards. Avilik was screaming unheeded orders. The unconscious medic’s body hit both Haluk and sent them sprawling. Scooping up the injector, I took a headlong dive and skidded across the slick parquet floor toward the floundering pile of aliens. Found a uniformed leg. Pressed the injector ball against a thigh and shot the high-velocity jet right through the cloth. The smaller guard let out a squawk and dropped his Ivanov. I grabbed it.
Big Guy was on his back, still entangled in the cold-cocked medic, waving his weapon and cursing. He fired a dart at the ceiling and another at the wall. A third barely missed my head. Then I shot him in the ribs and he subsided.
Avilik gave a wail and ran for the door. Firing from the floor, I popped her in the shoulder. She folded into a crumpled heap.
Intense! I stayed down for a while, drained of the raging hormones that had let me override my tank-induced debility. Avilik had been correct when she opined I was feeble from dystasis and scared stiff. I’d also suffered considerable blood loss. But I was a husky human male, not a Haluk, and under certain dire circumstances we can do great and wondrous deeds. I breathed deeply, psyched myself up, and got to my feet. Washed-up Supercop pulls his fraying shit together once again, spurred by the realization that time’s a-wasting.
Get out of this goddamn place, Helly. And do it pronto.
I made my rubber-leggedy way to the door and tried it. It was locked. Somebody had to have a key-card. I knelt beside Avilik. If she was the boss … yes! An encoded red-striped plastic slip was in an outer pocket of her smock. I turned off all the room lights from the switch plate beside the door, unlocked it, and cracked it open the merest nanoskosh. Then I did my patented reconnoiter from knee height. Nobody ever expects to see a person peeking from down there.
The recovery room door was one of three opening into a small foyer at the end of a long corridor. The other two doors nearby bore Haluk ideographs that I couldn’t decipher. There were more doors down the hall, all closed, and an alcove midway along that I hoped might contain an elevator. No one was in sight.
I closed the door again and locked it, turned the lights back on. Then I started undressing Big Guy. He had a nice Breitling wrist chronometer that I strapped on. His spiffy gray uniform with black accents would be a tad snug for my human physique, but at least my wrists wouldn’t stick out of the tunic arms like a scarecrow’s, and the boots looked like they’d fit my funny feet. He wore grubby alien underwear, which I eschewed.
Big Guy’s family jewels made a modest bulge in his drawers and seemed more meager than my own newly acquired exotic equipment. Maybe that explained Avilik’s appreciative remarks earlier …
Before I put the clothes on I took a fast shower. My damned neck gouge was still leaking—I found out later that dystasis puts anticoagulants into the blood that take a few hours to wear off—so I ripped a pillow cover into narrow strips and bound up the wound as well as I could. You try tying a pressure bandage around your neck …
All dressed up, wearing Big Guy’s holstered Ivanov and with the second stun-gun tucked inside my tunic, I looked like one dangerous Haluk. I felt on the verge of keeling over, but that was not an option. Searching the other three bodies, I found an assortment of colored key-cards and tucked one of each kind into my gun-belt pouch. All of the aliens carried phones, and for a few moments I thought I’d hit the jackpot. But when I tried to call Karl Nazarian’s personal code—one of the few I could remember offhand—I reached a Halukese-speaker and hastily hit End. A check of the instrument’s dex showed that only a list of preprogrammed codes were accessible—and they all had to be Haluk. I might have known there’d be no easy access to the general telecom net.
Rats. Without a pocket phone, and the personalized dex and datalink facilities that went with it, you were almost nonexistent on twenty-third-century Earth.
Well, if I couldn’t call for help, I’d have to walk out. Or ride.
Unfortunately, the aliens weren’t carrying human money or credit cards, which might have been useful. The only other items I appropriated were the sedative injector—returned to its case; a flashlight, wrist restraints, and magazine pouch that were clipped to Big Guy’s belt; an alien switchblade knife I was surprised to find on Miruviak; and a steel flask from Small Guy’s inside tunic pocket that contained a facsimile of high-proof vodka.
Science tells us that alcohol is not a stimulant. I beg to differ. A quick snort perked me up considerably.
After momentary hesitation I also stole Big Guy’s platinum ring inset with a fire-opal cabochon, slipping it on my own elongated alien finger. If I didn’t have money or credit, maybe I could barter.
Before I left the room I returned to the window and tried to orient myself. The Haluk embassy occupied the top 210 floors of a huge structure called Macpherson Tower, on Edward Street near Yonge, right across from Sheltok’s headquarters. My window looked south, toward Sheltok Tower, and by comparing the two buildings I figured I was on the 180th floor, or thereabouts. Most towers in this vicinity had automobile access ramps to the downtown skyways on the fiftieth, 100th, and 200th floors. Maybe I could commandeer a car at one of the upper ramp portals.
That would be my preferred plan of action. If it didn’t work I’d try to descend to the Path—provided I could pass through the security system that sequestered the Haluk section of the tower from the human-occupied suites below. The only other way out I could think of was via the hopper skyport at the tower’s summit, which was used exclusively by the alien tenants. But high-floor suites inevitably belong to high-ranking persons. Security up there and at the skyport was p
robably extra-tight. The 100th-floor auto ramp was my best hope.
I left the recovery room, found the elevators, drew the Ivanov from my tunic, and pressed the Down pad. The wait seemed endless.
Except for a few signs and door designations in Halukese and a nice piece of alien sculpture by the window at the end of the lift alcove, everything I’d seen in the corridor looked undistinguished and completely human—the carpeting, the light fixtures, card locks on the doors, even the occasional potted terrestrial plant. But it was a human-owned building, of course. The Macpherson management would not have allowed major xenoforming.
The elevator arrival chime sounded and I felt my muscles tense. I had tucked my right hand into the front of my tunic, Napoleon style, gripping the unholstered Ivanov. If the door opened on a squad of armed Haluk coming to reinforce the two I’d chopped—worst-case scenario—I was ready to fill the car with stun-bolts. But disposing of the snoozers would be risky, maybe impossible.
If I got lucky and the car held unarmed Haluk or demiclones, I’d play it by ear. Act the aloof cop and keep my mouth shut if anyone spoke to me. I could only guess which pad designated the 100th floor unless the Haluk had left the original numbering intact. However, most commercial tower elevators had a hopper or auto icon next to the pads for the appropriate floors.
The door slid open. Only one person was inside, a tall, thin human male.
My older brother Daniel.
For a moment I was sandbagged with shock. But his glazed eyes slid over me, hardly seeing me. I was just another alien.
I stepped into the elevator beside him and glanced briefly at the panel. There were no icons designating the skyway portals, and the floors were designated only with alien symbols. I touched the pad for the lowest floor. A red light immediately began blinking beside a card slot that bore a little Halukese sign. The car door remained open and the chime pinged annoyingly.
Oops. I wasn’t ready to try out my card collection just yet. I hastily hit a button a couple of floors above the interdicted one. The elevator door slid shut and we descended. My brother didn’t even notice that I’d goofed. He seemed dazed.
Dan wasn’t going nearly so far as the lower floor I’d randomly chosen. The car stopped, and when he got off I was right behind him. He slouched along like a sleepwalker. He was dressed in black slacks, an argyle sweater-vest, and a yellow shirt. He’d lost a lot of weight and there were dark circles under his eyes. I wondered if he was still drugged.
We were in a residential part of the building. A few other people passed us in the maze of corridors, evidently coming from other banks of elevators. They looked human and probably weren’t. Some carried attaché cases and wore expensive outerwear. They appeared to be homeward bound executives and I wondered which Concerns they’d infiltrated. Domestic robots trundled along, carrying clean towels and other supplies. A servitron unit popped out of a little door in the wall, bringing room-service dinner to someone. Humanized Haluk have to eat human food. Their exotic edibles are slightly poisonous to the human metabolism. I caught a whiff of some savory entrée that made my empty stomach clench like a fist.
My brother Dan still didn’t realize he was being followed. He slipped a key-card into his lock and opened the door to his apartment. I spoke in an imitation of mechanically translated Haluk speech. “Daniel Frost! One wishes to speak with you.”
He whirled around, threw me a look compounded of fright and fury, then quick as a jackrabbit whipped inside and slammed the door in my face.
Well, shit.
I sorted through the access cards. The red one didn’t work. Neither did blue, green, or gold. I tried an important-looking jobbie with silvery stripes: bingo.
When I came in and closed the door behind me, Dan was standing there vibrating with rage. “Ah, for chrissake! I just finished a six-hour session with the damned tutors. Not even a fuckin’ potty break! Can’t you xeno bastards give me a minute’s peace?”
“One must question you,” I repeated.
“I’m taking a leak before you start,” he said. “You don’t like it, stun me.” He disappeared into the bathroom.
I did a quick prowl of the apartment. There were no obvious surveillance devices, but that didn’t mean the place wasn’t bugged. Most likely the aliens had only installed antisuicide sensors that monitored the occupant’s breathing.
The comfortably furnished living room had an infomedia center and a well-stocked library of slates and e-books. Tranquil pictures on the walls, nice gas-log fireplace, even a musical keyboard. Dan liked to noodle on the piano and faked jazz tunes rather well. The bedroom/office contained a queen-sized bed—made with military precision—and a computer desk. I sat down at the unit and tried to call up a general telecom link. No luck, but no surprise, either.
The closet held a fair selection of clothes and shoes, arranged meticulously. Good old anal-retentive Dan. There were a couple of track suits that might fit me. I took the roomiest one, which was navy-blue, and found athletic shoes and a gym bag to go with it. A dresser yielded socks, underwear, and even a baseball cap with a Toronto Blue Jays logo. I stuffed everything into the bag.
Dan came out of the john and did a disbelieving double take. “What the fuck! You’re stealing my clothes?”
I said, “Give me your phone. Now.” The instrument was no doubt as useless to me as the ones carried by the Haluk; but I couldn’t trust Dan not to call on the aliens for help.
He dug in his pocket and handed the phone over. Trained to instant obedience. Good. If I kept a close eye on him, he wouldn’t be able to raise the alarm.
I checked the phone dex and found only the same kind of preprogrammed codes the Haluk phones had contained. When I asked the instrument if it had any extensions, it replied in the negative.
“You got anything to eat, Dan?” I’d dropped the Haluk diction, having decided how I was going to handle him, but he seemed not to notice.
“In the kitchen,” he said sullenly. “But it’s all human chow. We can order in if you like.”
“No need,” I said.
I herded him ahead of me and made him open the refrigerator. Saw sliced ham, Jarlsberg cheese, tomatoes, Grey Poupon mustard. Perfecto! I ordered him to build me two sandwiches and nuke them in the microwave.
“You’re joking!” he exclaimed. His eyes were red and swollen and his pupils tiny. He was on something, but if he’d been working with Haluk tutors, his intellect was probably operational.
The little dining table was maple, with matching captain’s chairs. I sat down, drew the Ivanov from inside my tunic, and put it on the table in front of me. “I’ll also have some strong coffee with sugar. A big glass of water, too.”
He moved about following orders and finally set my repast before me. I told him to sit down and wait, then fell on the food and drink like a famished coyote. The last time I’d been in dystasis, in K-L’s little hospital, they’d fed me baby slop when I came out. Maybe solid food in my empty stomach would sicken me. I didn’t care.
Dan watched, frowning and biting his lower lip, which was already raw. I’d almost finished eating when his eyes narrowed and he figured it out. He gave a terrified gurgle and bounded to his feet, nearly knocking over his chair.
“You!” he gasped. “Asa … my God, it’s you, isn’t it!” Sweat had burst out on his forehead and his eyes were bulging. He looked like he was about to have a coronary.
“Sit down.” I picked up the stun-pistol and waved it casually. “Yes, it’s me. Take it easy, Dan. It’s all right. We have to talk. They’ll be looking for me soon, but I figure I’ve got a little time yet.”
“How did you get away? Jesus! We were supposed to begin the tutoring sessions for your second demiclone tomorrow. That’s what—”
“Be quiet. I need answers to some questions. Tell me: Which floor is the skyway portal on?”
He paused for only a moment before answering. “The two hundredth is the only one the Haluk use. The one at the hundredth floor is closed for
security reasons. It’s at the boundary between Haluk and human occupancy. But you’ll never escape through the two hundredth. It’s used by Haluk top brass. There are at least three checkpoints, and the guards up there carry Kagi blasters.”
“What kind of security do they have at the lowest Haluk level? The hundredth floor?”
“Double card-locks, gold and blue, guards armed with stunners. It’s the main egress. Haluk are going in and out twenty-four hours a day.”
Okay. So would I.
“Dan, I’m busting out of here. D’you want to come with me?”
“Yes,” he said dully. “But I can’t. And you probably can’t get away, either. They’ve put control implants into us.”
“In the neck. Right. I cut mine out and I can do the same for you.”
He gave a hollow laugh and tapped his breastbone. “There’s another one, Asa. In the thoracic cavity. You cross a blue checkpoint without your attendant entering the proper code, a tiny charge detonates and vaporizes your heart and lungs.”
Rats! … But had the meditechs gotten around to installing the lethal gizmo in me? Didn’t I recall one of them saying they’d wait on it? Or was I mistaken? Had they put it in before I regained consciousness?
I said, “I’ll get you out of this place. Trust me. If you give me truthful answers to some questions, I swear I’ll come back and help you. And when you’re out, and this Haluk mess is resolved, I’ll let you live with your family again … if they want you.”
Another dismal laugh. “I’m fucked, Asa. And so are you.”
“Dan, I’m getting out, and I’m going to raise such a media stink that the Haluk will be begging us to rewrite their treaties and let us send inspection teams to their colonies.”
“In your dreams.”
“Who is the first demiclone?” I asked.
He stared at me stupidly. “I don’t—”
“Fake Asahel Frost, Mark One,” I prompted him. “Who’s the human male the Haluk transformed the first time around? The one out there pretending to be me, right this very minute? The aliens didn’t trust this mutt, but they had to use him until their own boy came out of the tank. I had half a notion the Haluk might have used you to impersonate me, but that didn’t make sense. So it’s somebody else. Who?”