The four of them placed their grapples and switched them on. Wrist movement alone was sufficient to raise the coffin and its attached atmosphere unit several centimeters off the table. Carefully they turned its head toward the stairs.
“Remember, you’re handling extremely fragile and valuable equipment,” Vandervort told them. Somewhere behind her, Clarity made a disparaging noise. Vandervort almost frowned but resolutely kept her expression neutral.
On the other hand, the tall blond woman smiled.
Why should she smile? Come to think of it, why would she react to such a bland statement at all? The smile was already gone. No need to say anything. No reason to comment.
But something made Vandervort stride forward and confront the much taller woman. “Something funny about that?”
The blonde’s beautiful face was blank. “No, ms.” She hesitated. “It’s just that we’re proud of our work. I was amused that anyone would think we’d take less than the best care of anything we were moving.”
“I see.” Vandervort stepped aside. A perfectly plausible explanation for an innocent little grin. Too plausible? Or too pat. “One more thing.” The four movers paused, each with a hand holding the trigger of a grapple. “Could I see your identification one more time, please?”
The young man in charge hesitated for just an instant, then reached for his chest patch. It was the very old man who made the fatal mistake. Perhaps he thought he was speaking in a lower voice than he actually was. Maybe he was just slightly hard of hearing. Whatever the reason, Vandervort heard him hiss quite distinctly.
“Don’t show it to her.”
The blond amazon’s eyes flicked in his direction. Ignoring the advice, the young man removed his chest patch and passed it to Vandervort, who made a show of inspecting it closely. Whispers, eye movement, inexplicable smiles.
“No problem, ms,” the young man was saying cheerfully. “Something the matter?”
“Just a routine check.” Holding the ident patch, Vandervort turned so they couldn’t see her face. Her lips moved silently when she caught Dabis’s eye. His widened, he nodded slightly, and that was when she dived for the cover of some hastily packed crates.
Dabis crouched and pulled his needler. Not having been warned, Monconqui was slower on the uptake, but he, too, made a dash for cover as soon as he saw his partner in motion.
The movers reacted swiftly, but they were not fast enough. Despite their recent experiences they still did not possess the fighting skills of professionals. The trailing member of the quartet took the blast from Dabis’s needler square in the chest. It penetrated his sternum to fry nerves, blood vessels, and his spine as it emerged from the back of his shirt to spend itself against the wall.
Screams and shouts filled the room. Clarity was an easy mark for the movers, but they had no time to concentrate on her, and she was able to find shelter. Dabis and Monconqui were the problem. Both had taken good cover behind heavy packing crates filled with electronics and monitoring instrumentation. They were outnumbered three to two but were better shots. While they commanded the only exit, the fanatics had to expose themselves on the stairway in order to take aim into the room.
Firing continued steadily. A burst from a neuronic pistol just missed Clarity, momentarily paralyzing her left side. Feeling returned rapidly following the near miss, leaving behind a tingling sensation.
Vandervort lay nearby, watching the battle. “Keep your head down, child! You and I have nothing to do with the outcome of this.” She was peering between two huge crates, her observation made easier by the fact that the fanatics were concentrating their firepower on the two bodyguards.
The mover who had been shot lay crumpled at the foot of the stairs, eyes staring blankly upward, the hole in his chest still smoking. Having been released by the movers, the plasteel coffin had drifted to a halt against the wall nearby, still suspended in its four softly humming grapples.
“Your friends from Alaspin and Longtunnel,” Vandervort murmured as she struggled to get a better view without exposing herself. She raised her voice. “Give it up! These two men here will pick you off sooner or later. They’re professionals, and you are not. There is nothing more for you here, whatever you intended. You cannot have Clarity.”
“We’ll have her.” Clarity thought she recognized the voice of the young man. He was keeping out of sight near the top of the stairs. “And we’ll have you, and we’ll have the mutant as well.”
“How could they know about that?” Vandervort was shaking her head in disbelief. “How could they have found out?” Abruptly she looked at the younger woman crouched nearby. Clarity’s eyes widened, and she shook her head violently. The administrator considered thoughtfully before speaking again.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The tall blonde responded this time with a harsh, femmine laugh. “We broke the Coldstripe communications code a long time ago, so forget about lying to us. We know everything. We knew about the mutant before Scarpania did.”
“God damn,” Vandervort muttered. “I told our people they had to change keys at least every other day. Lazy sons of bitches!”
The blonde was not through. “How do you think we knew where to find you on Longtunnel, knew where your records were stored and the labs were located? When she was our guest on Alaspin, your life meddler told us some of what we needed to know, but not all. The rest we obtained from monitoring your local transmissions and from our operative within your own organization.” She laughed humorlessly. “Didn’t it ever occur to you that your friend Jase seemed to have nine lives?”
The color drained from Vandervort’s expression. Clarity delighted in the older woman’s distress. “Thought of everything, did you?” The administrator did not reply. The blonde was still talking.
“The life meddler comes with us, to ensure she won’t tamper with nature any further.”
“What do you want with our young man? He’s being well looked after. His name is Flinx, and you have no right to—”
This time it was the young man who interrupted her. “You’d lecture us on the rights of the individual? Do you think we’re fools, like your former employers? You’re spitting air, Vandervort.”
Despite her superior’s warning, Clarity raised her head so that she could be heard clearly over the packages shielding her. “Let nobody have him, then! Why not just let him go?” She ignored Vandervort’s frantic gestures. “He’s done nothing to you.”
“It is what has been done to him that matters in this.” It was the voice of another man, speaking for the first time. His tone was commanding. “We will treat him kindly while we attempt to return him to normal, try to correct the damage done by the Meliorares. There are expert gengineers who are sympathetic to our aims.”
“The Meliorares worked with prenatal cells,” Clarity argued. “That was different. You can’t tamper with the genetic code of a mature person. You’ll end up ruining his mind or his personality or both.”
“We intend neither,” the man replied. “Regardless of the result, it will be an improvement on what now exists because the individual in question will once again be truly human when we have finished with him.”
A burst of neuronic fire passed just over her head, and she was forced to duck back down, her scalp tingling. Dabis and Monconqui were quick to return the shots.
“You want him? Come and get him!” Dabis’s tone was deliberately taunting. “He’s floating right there at the bottom of the stairs, where he bumped into the wall. Why don’t you just stroll on down and pick up your grapples?”
“We’ll do that soon enough,” the blonde shouted. “We may not have your training, but we’ve practiced long and hard for moments like these. We aren’t ignorant of tactics. Maybe we can’t take you out or recover the mutant, but you’re trapped down here. We’ve cut all communications to the outside and secure-blanketed the entire building. A stray electron couldn’t find a way out. You can’t talk to anyone on the outside,
nor are you expected anywhere for some time, so nobody’s going to come looking for you. Your obsession with privacy, Vandervort, works to our advantage as well. We cannot get in, and you can’t get out. So we’ll have to find another way to resolve our little impasse.”
“We’ll resolve it, all right,” Vandervort snapped back. “The three of you will join your friend on the floor.”
“I think not. What we’ll do is sit here and relax while one of us goes for help. That’s our advantage. One person could guard this exit.”
“You can bring a hundred cephalos back with you, but you’ll never get them down those stairs!” Dabis was earning his money.
“No need to. The morphogas you use to keep the mutant inert can just as easily be introduced into this room. You’ll all quietly go to sleep.” Dabis had no ready answer for that.
Monconqui tried. “We have filter masks. Gas won’t bother us.”
“Maybe you do and maybe you don’t. Let’s find out. We’ve nothing to lose by trying. Unless you’d consider bargaining with us.”
The young man took over. “You two with the guns—this is only a job for you. Why risk getting shot for a credit boost?”
“Because it is our job,” Dabis replied simply.
“Whatever Vandervort’s people are paying you, we’ll double it. Triple it.”
“Sorry,” and Monconqui sounded genuinely so, “but if we break a contract we’ll never get another job. Also, there are bonuses waiting when we deliver our people to their destination.”
“Admirable ethics in the service of a lost cause,” the second man declared.
“Maybe we can strike some sort of bargain,” Vandervort suggested.
“What kind of bargain?” Suspicion tainted the young man’s reply.
“You want the gengineer. The mutant’s more important to us.”
Clarity stared at the older woman, and began backing away until she was pressed up against the wall. Vandervort smiled apologetically. “I am sorry, my dear, but the situation is grave. Extreme measures are called for to resolve it.”
Clarity’s response was a horrified whisper. “I never should have listened to you. I should have listened to Flinx. He’s not the dangerous one here. He’s not responsible for the way he is. You’re the one who’s evil and dangerous.”
“Since you feel that way, I consider myself under no obligation to apologize.” Vandervort turned away and raised her voice anew. “What do you say? You’ve already destroyed the Longtunnel installation. I’m only an administrator who’s about to enter a different line of work. You can have the gengineer.”
The amazon replied, “We must have the mutant also. The way I see it, we have the upper hand strategically. You can try to cross an open floor and fight your way up these stairs if you like. I don’t see any reason why we have to bargain with you for anything.”
“We might not make it, but some of you will die,” said Dabis. “Be better if all of us could get out of this without any more deaths.”
A long pause ensued before the blonde responded. “We’ll think about it,” she said finally.
“Don’t think too long,” Vandervort warned her. “We might decide to leave without your permission.” Having said that, she slumped back down behind her protective crates, suddenly looking her age. Still favoring her injured arm, she brushed hair from her face and caught sight of Clarity glaring at her as if frozen.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, my dear,” she muttered irritably. “It is quite boorish and unbecoming to you and does not affect me in the slightest.”
“You know,” Clarity said evenly, “I used to want to be just like you. I admired you for the easy way you mixed business with science. Someone who’d done it all and on her own.”
“Indeed, I have done everything on my own. I intend keeping it that way. This would have been easier with you assisting me, but even though you’re the best, I will manage by replacing you with the next best. It is our young man who is irreplaceable, not you.”
The lake blurred. Suddenly the water was not quite so clear, his floating not as peaceful. He sensed rather than saw Pip and Scrap drifting alongside and knew their tranquility had also been disturbed.
Shapes continued to float above the lake’s surface, but they were no longer placid and dreamy. Now they were angry and demonic of expression, full of tension and hatred. For the first time he sensed he was not alone in the lake. Things were moving in the depths, far below his range of vision, down where the water grew cold and dark. There was one immense green shapelessness that kept straining to reach him, impinging on his consciousness like a flint striking sparks from another rock. Forms in the void at once familiar and unrecognizable.
Though he concentrated hard, the green shape and the strangeness faded as the demonic faces hardened like glass. He felt as if he were starting to rise toward the lake’s surface, acquiring a sort of mental as well as physical buoyancy. Even so, he was not prepared when he broke through.
Nothing made any sense. When he had been drifting underwater, his breathing had been relaxed and easy. Now that he was back in atmosphere once more, he found himself choking and gasping for air. His eyes bulged, and his lungs pumped wildly. Next to him Pip and Scrap were two bundles of contorting coils.
When the coffin had been abandoned, it had drifted on its levitating grapples until it banged against the subterranean wall. The beige plasteel adjunct containing the morphogas cylinders and flowmix valves had been very slightly jarred. The result was a crack in one of the feeder lines. Monconqui would have noticed it during one of his routine inspections, but that individual had been otherwise occupied for some time.
Room air was leaking into the line while gas was leaking out. The atmosphere inside the coffin was very slowly returning to normal. While the container was airtight, it was not soundproof. The noise of arguing voices and unleashed weapons was audible within.
It was, however, black as Longtunnel’s caverns inside with the observation window shield shut.
Flinx tried to make his brain work. The last thing he could remember was sitting on the bed in his hotel room, watching the tridee with Pip curled up on a chair nearby and Scrap racing his tail around the overhead lighting. Now he found himself lying on his back in a restricting container of some kind with Pip and Scrap next to him. The ghosts of gunshots and voices penetrated the material. They sounded human; therefore, it was likely if not guaranteed that a breathable atmosphere existed outside his prison.
He explored the interior as best he could, but found nothing in the way of a release button or latch. That meant that it was designed to be opened only from the outside. That much made sense. Three thick hinges yielded their identity to his questing fingers.
He recalled his restful sojourn in the lake of his thoughts. Whether by injection or by some other means, he had been tranquilized, and judging from his aching muscles he had been unconscious for some time. Despite that, he felt healthy and alert. The long sleep had swept cobwebs from his mind. He let his Talent loose and found he could perceive proximate emotions clearly. Perhaps the combination of extended enforced rest and whatever narcotizing agent had been used on him had resulted in a heightening of his perception. Perhaps something had happened to him while he had been locked in his prison, unable to use anything except his mind. He had vague memories of powerful unseen forms, and in particular a vast greenness. Echoes of an exhilarating dreamscape.
He touched a number of hostile minds and moved on like a butterfly sampling flower upon flower. Sounds and emotions told him people were shooting at each other. Adrift amid the ocean of unfamiliar feelings were two he knew well. One was Alynasmolia Vandervort, a remarkable combination of greed, lust, ambition, hope, and hatred.
Clarity was filled with disgust, worry, fear, and something he could not lock down. That was when he whispered to Pip. Not all their communication was empathic. The flying snake was intelligent enough to learn and respond to a few basic verbal commands.
Ed
ging as far to his right as possible, he tapped the lowest hinge of his prison with a finger while uttering the word. Pip noted the placement of his finger from the sound it made striking the hinge, waiting until her master had withdrawn his hand, and spit.
The acrid stink of dissolving metal and plasteel filled the container and threatened to choke Flinx anew. Fighting for breath, he tapped two more times, uttered the command twice more, and waited while Pip’s response ate into the hinges. No one came to see what was happening. Either the dissolving hinges were not noticeable from outside or, more likely, the combatants he sensed were busy trying to kill one another.
Choking out the fumes, trapped in the confining darkness, he began to get angry. Everything that had happened to him had come about because he had tried to help someone. His own emotions had been toyed with, and the more he tried to help, the more people seemed to want to do him harm. He was more than a little fed up and more than a little furious.
Lying contentedly in his private lake, he had learned a lot about himself. Enforced meditation had revealed things he had never acknowledged before. One was that in all the universe there seemed only two intelligences that truly understood him. The Sumacrea were one. The other was a gigantic weapon constructed by a long-dead race. The Sumacrea’s main purpose in life was to understand. The weapon’s was to destroy. So be it.
Except he was not a weapon. He was Philip Lynx, né Flinx: a nineteen-year-old orphan with an unusual history, an enigmatic lineage, and an erratic Talent of unknown promise.
Whatever he was, it was quite a shock to everyone else in the room when he shoved the ruined lid of his container off its rim and sat up. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light. In that instant everyone else had a chance to react.
Vandervort rose halfway above her protective wall of crates and screamed, “Get them!” Dabis and Monconqui started to move. The older man squatting at the top of the stairway stared at Flinx as if he were regarding a reptilian carnivore instead of a slim young man.
Flinx in Flux Page 28