by Tom Clancy
The world ahead turned pitch-black as the bulk of the keep blotted out the stars. Then they hit the door, the weight of the car and the ram and the passengers combined, all at full speed. Iron-strapped wood shattered, and they were through the door and into the keep. The first floor of the tower had been turned into an impromptu dining hall. A pair of trestle tables had been set up, and some of the guards were still carousing by the light of flickering torches. Megan steered their improvised tank right into one of the tables. Some seated drinkers went flying, while other revelers dove for their weapons.
P. J. rose up behind the windshield, his twin Colts blazing away. Megan pulled out her pocket automatic and added to the fire. So did the others. Von Esbach and Sergei both used their big horse pistols. Vojak had a rifle and bayonet-“More used to it,” he’d said.
By the time the cavalry came thundering in, many of the guards were down, and the rest were retreating for the stairs that led to the upper levels.
“Don’t let them make a stand!” Vojak roared, leading his dismounted soldiers in a charge.
Megan tucked away her now-empty pistol and drew her saber. It was a hand-to-hand fight now, her side trying to drive back Gray Piotr’s people before they could block the stairs.
Von Esbach held her back from plunging into the fray. “We still can’t risk you,” he said. So she was pushed toward the end of the column as Vojak and his troopers stabbed and hacked their way up the stairs. The second-floor landing became a massacre-ground for both sides. Gray Piotr’s people were, after all, great swordsmen, and now they were recovering from the shock of the sneak attack.
Then a lone figure came down the stairs from the top floor of the tower-Gray Piotr himself.
“Surrender, traitor!” Vojak shouted. Rifle held high, he lunged with the bayonet.
“No!” Megan shouted, realizing Alan was unarmed.
All Alan did was raise a hand. Megan heard a muted crackle, then the boom of thunder as a bolt like lightning struck the colonel!
“We’ve got to call Captain Winters,” David insisted as he and Leif sat in the back seat of the autocab. ‘This is a job for Net Force.”
“It’s the middle of the night. We’d get some automatic answering program. Besides, we don’t have the time to tell him, much less convince him, before it’s too late,” Leif argued. “He’ll want proof-and what can we offer him?”
“We have all those archives-” David began.
“All theory, unless you personally know Alan Slaney,” Leif snapped. “And how are we going to explain where we got all this perfectly legal theoretical literature that’s making us panic? ‘Well, you see, Captain, we just happened to be inside the guy’s computer. How did we get in? Was it a legal search? Er, ah… not exactly.’ Right now we’re the only real lawbreakers in this mess, even though we were careful not to leave any traces of evidence leading to us behind.”
Leif shook his head. “Assuming we did manage to convince Winters to help us, he couldn’t get a search warrant based on what we’ve got Any court would toss the request out, which means Net Force would have its hands tied.”
“Until Slaney actually uses his computer to kill someone, and the body’s discovered,” David said heavily.
“Exactly. I won’t wait that long.” The image of Megan lying helpless on a computer-link couch while Slaney did whatever he had planned to her just froze Leif’s heart. “If we get into the salle and see something that’s not right, then we can call in the cavalry. But first we’ve got to get there and see what gives. And, maybe, just maybe, we’re wrong. I don’t know about you, but that’s what I’m praying we’ll discover.”
He glared out the cab window. What was all this traffic doing out at ten o’clock, blocking the roads?
Actually, he knew the traffic was only moderate for D. C. The cab was moving along at the speed limit. It was only Leif’s sense of impending disaster urging him to go ever faster that made it seem like the cab was moving at a snail’s pace.
They reached the salle; David dashed for the door while Leif ran a card down the credit slot to pay for the ride. He joined his friend to find David tugging fruitlessly at the door handle.
“Locked,” David announced. Further inspection revealed that the locks were mechanical rather than electronic, and wouldn’t respond to any tweaking they could try via the Net.
“There’s got to be a back way in, a window-somethingr Leif said.
The building was a leftover from the dangerous old days of Washington, when this neighborhood had been crime-ridden. The front windows had been bricked up. Leif ran around the block. An alleyway gave access to the rear of the building, where deliveries would be made. The door was solid metal, without even an exterior doorknob.
“If the whole place is sealed up, how do they breathe while they’re working out?” Leif asked.
“There.” David pointed to a ventilation system outlet far above their heads. “Metal grill, and then we’d have to get past the fan.”
“Great,” Leif muttered. They went back to the door, but it was sturdily built and stoutly locked.
“I don’t suppose you have any lock-picking experience we could apply to the front door?” David said.
Leif shook his head.
“But what have we here?” David exclaimed, going farther along the rear of the building. The light back here was dim. Although there was a lamp fixture over the back door, it lacked a bulb. But Leif’s eyes managed to pierce the dimness to see what David was looking at. A glint of light on glass somewhere on the second floor, located next to one of those old-fashioned metal exterior fire escapes.
“Give me a boost up,” David said.
Leif helped his friend stand on his shoulders, then watched as he clambered up onto the balcony of the fire escape. David lowered the ladder strapped to the balcony, and Leif climbed up and stood beside him.
“It’s a window-maybe for an office,” David said, carefully feeling along the dirty glass. “And it seems to be slightly open. Let’s see if we can improve upon that situation.”
Gently pushing the window up, David began climbing through it into the darkness beyond. He was only halfway in when he knocked into something that fell with a clatter.
A second later Leif heard a muffled whumppppfff!- and a scream from David!
Chapter 19
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” von Esbach demanded, shaken out of his usual suavity. Or rather, Joe Brodsky had been shaken out of his usual character. “This is supposed to be a historical simulation, even if it’s a little romanticized. We’re supposed to be doing Anthony Hope, not H. P. Lovecraft. When AHSO hears about this-”
“You’re in my world now,” Alan Slaney replied. “And you should be honored that I chose you.”
“You’ve gone off the deep end, Slaney.” That was definitely Joe Brodsky speaking, not the polished Graf von Esbach. “I’m out of here.”
He concentrated for a moment, obviously giving computer orders. Then his eyes went wide. “You-” Slaney raised his hand again, but von Esbach/Brodsky proved remarkably spry, dropping to hug the ground as the lightning bolt crackled over him.
“There will be no leave-takings,” Alan’s voice took on a deeper, more oracular tone. “You entered this world through my portal. And you will embark on a new existence here.”
Megan was scarcely listening. She was busy trying to bail out of this sim-and the program kept coming back “permission denied.”
“We’re not on the Net!” P. J.‘s voice was a hoarse whisper in her ear.
Those couches in the salle-they must have been hooked up to a stand-alone system, Megan thought. “It really is Alan’s world. We’re stuck in here-”
She looked down at the blackened form of Colonel Vojak.
And Walt Jaeckel might really be dead!
Megan wanted to recoil in horror as Alan stretched out a pleading hand to her. “Why do you shrink back from me? Don’t you realize the boon I offer you? You’ll be my quee
n.”
“But you’ll be our god, is that it?” She had to force the first words past a dry throat. But the more she spoke, the angrier she became.
“I’ve created a place where you’ll never age. Remember what Burton-who was a fencer as well as a poet- wrote in the Kasidah. ‘Hardly we learn to wield the blade before the wrist grows stiff and cold.’ That will never happen with us.”
“As long as no one pulls the plug on the computers where you’re playing out this fantasy,” she shot back.
The expression on Slaney’s face didn’t change, but the air seemed to get about ten degrees colder. No, there was a change. Faintly, then stronger and stronger, radiance began streaming from Alan’s face, from his hands-it even seemed to seep through his clothes from the skin beneath, turning the heavy gray garments to a glowing white.
“You called me a god, foolish woman,” Slaney said in a rolling voice. “In the bounds of this universe, that’s true enough. Let all kneel to me!”
All around them the surviving nonrole-playing characters fell to their knees. The players with free will glanced at each other-and then the silence was shattered by the crash of a pair of matched Colts.
The heavy slugs from P. J.‘s pistols didn’t even seem to disturb the folds of Alan’s clothing. Megan wasn’t sure if they were disintegrated on contact, or if they just passed through.
“Damn,” P. J. said as his guns ran empty, “I knew I should have sprung for some silver bullets.”
The rage on Slaney’s glowing face was a fearsome thing to see. He turned on P. J., both arms raised.
“Those sweat stains don’t help the godlike image,” Megan called, edging back toward the stairs.
Slaney halted in mid-gesture, peering under his arms.
“Made ya look!” Megan called over her shoulder.
She’d already grabbed P. J. by the arm as she plunged down the stairs.
From the way he was sagging, David should have fallen from the windowsill. But he seemed to be caught somehow. He was gasping in pain, scratching fruitlessly at something in the darkness. “My leg!” he said hoarsely. “Caught my leg!”
Leif dashed over, intent on helping his friend. But when he tried to reach through the window, his hand encountered a rough, splintery barrier. He pushed against it gently, and David almost toppled over on top of him.
The other boy cried out again in pain when Leif reached out with both hands to grab him. “It hit me again.”
“Hang on to my shoulder,” Leif ordered. More carefully this time, he pushed at the invisible barrier.
No, not invisible. Just well camouflaged. It was a huge sheet of plywood, larger than the window opening and painted black. The bottom gave when he pushed against it, but there was more resistance the higher Leif reached.
“Nasty,” he muttered. Then he said to David. “You want to get in or out?”
“Out-unless you know what just slammed into me,” David replied.
“It’s a deadfall-a simple but very effective mantrap,” Leif said. “Just a big-ass sheet of three-quarter-inch ply- board with a couple of hinges along the top end. Pull the free end up until it’s parallel with the floor, prop it up with a piece of black-painted two by four, and the trap is set. The whole thing is invisible in the dark. When you started coming through the window, you banged into the prop, which fell. Then the sheet swung down, to smash into you.”
” ‘Smash’ is right,” David groaned. “Now I know how the fly feels when the swatter comes swooping down.”
“So?” Leif repeated. “Out or in?”
David leaned heavily on his shoulder for a moment, silent in thought. “In,” he Anally said. “Can’t get any worse. And it’s not as though I’ll be able to run for it if things do get worse.”
“Brace yourself against me,” Leif warned. He pushed against the hinged sheet of plywood, loosening it from David’s leg. “If I keep holding this out of your way, can you swing your other leg up and around?”
“I can try,” David said.
It was a slow, painful business, but David managed to turn round on the window ledge and slide down inside. Leif could hear the hiss of pain as his friend shook up his injured leg on landing.
Some of the pressure against Leif’s hands suddenly lessened. “I’ve got it from down here.” David said. “Do you have enough space to get in?”
Leif succeeded in squeezing through-at the cost of a couple of splinter-scratches. Once inside he and David let the deadfall swing flat against the wall. As Leif knelt over him, David leaned back against the wall. “Go on,” he whispered. “I’ll be no help-except for calling in the backup.”
“Backup?” Leif echoed stupidly.
“Trying to get into this building may not be the most legal thing I’ve ever done,” David said grimly. “But death traps aren’t legal either, dammit. This is a case for the cops-and Net Force. I think Captain Winters will listen when I tell him where I am and what just happened to me.”
Leif could hear his friend fumbling in the darkness. “I’ve got my wallet-phone,” David reported. “And the captain’s number is programmed in. Leif-go! Right now you’re the only one who can keep Slaney from doing something stupid!”
That thought hit Leif almost as hard as the deadfall had hit David. He scrambled up in desperate haste, then forced himself to move slowly, deliberately. He pulled out a small pocket flashlight, checking for trip wires or other unpleasant surprises Slaney might have set up along the way.
He was lucky, or maybe the deadfall hadn’t been Slaney’s brainstorm. Anyway, Leif made it into the hallway without further incident. He walked down a hall and a flight of stairs. To his left, shadows deepened into the large open space that was the salle. Across the way was a closed door-but he could see a strip of light underneath.
Leif crept across the corridor and tested the knob. Unlocked. Taking a deep breath, he grabbed the knob and threw the door open. He almost recoiled at the sheer bizarreness of the sight inside. Nine of the computer- link training couches were occupied. Eight of the occupants seemed to be under some sort of terrible tension-they twitched and jerked as if they were fighting to regain consciousness-but failing.
The tenth couch had just about been gutted. Circuitry and wiring had been pulled out from under the upholstery-and attached to Alan Slaney.
The handsome young man had taken off his shirt. Electrical leads had been taped to various points around his torso, to his neck, and to his head. The spots he’d shaved in his hair gave him a particularly unnerving appearance. He looked like the villain of a low-budget horror-holo, just escaped from electroshock therapy.
“It’s over, Slaney,” Leif told him, coming forward. “I know what’s going on. Net Force is on its way-”
Slaney seemed only half-aware of him. Alan flung out his empty hand as if he were hurling something at Leif. When nothing happened, then Alan began to pay more attention.
“Keep back,” he slurred. “Can’t stop me.” Lurching to the wall, he yanked one of a pair of crossed swords from its place.
That was not a fencing blade, but the real thing. Leif recognized an Austrian dueling saber when he saw one. He stopped his advance, casting a quick glance to the wall at his right. A pair of straight-bladed sabers hung there as decoration. Leif darted over, pulling one free.
The sword made a solid weight in his hand. Wilkinson steel, an old cavalry blade.
Alan brought up his saber in the en garde position. “Allezr he called, mocking Leif with the starting command from his disastrous duel against the French master.
But Alan didn’t take the prissy position of the French saber school. He took the in-your-face stance of a Spanish sabreur, hand on hip-and point aimed right at Leif’s eyes.
Leif stayed with the more modern Hungarian guard- offensive-defensive-but his fist, too, rested on his hip. His point kept moving, evading any attempt Alan made to establish contact between their blades.
Sneering, Alan put his own point out. Leif smashed his bl
ade against his opponent’s, trying to beat Alan’s blade out of line and get a cut at his wrist. Twice, and then a third time, Leif pressed this attack, forcing Alan to take a couple of steps away to put his point back in position.
Finally Slaney got annoyed. He parried, throwing a cut to Leif’s face.
Now Leif had to shift quickly to the defensive.
This isn’t like that virtual duel I had back in Latvinia. Alan isn’t going for a wounding cut to show me who is boss, Leif thought. He’s going for a slice to the face or throat that will end this little duel-permanently.
But Leif had learned a few new tricks, thanks to his Latvinian adventures. He parried Alan’s blade and threw the attack back at him.
Alan made a circular parry on the right side of his body and lashed back with a cut to the top of the head. Leif brought his point up, to deflect the head cut, then slashed backward, managing to land a slice on Alan’s sword arm.
Not enough to stop him, Leif quickly realized. But maybe I can goad him into a mistake.
“First blood,” he said with a smile.
Alan surged forward furiously, only to be brought up like a dog pulling against a leash. The wires attached to his body kept him tethered to the computer-link couch.
“Damn you!” Alan shouted. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you all!”
Megan nearly broke her virtual neck tumbling down the stone stairs with P. J. in tow. But their painful-if unorthodox-exit threw off Alan’s aim with the thunderbolt. Still, as she sprawled on the floor below, Megan knew she had little chance of dodging the next blast.
But Alan didn’t throw one. Instead, he flung himself to the side, nearly scaring the fertilizer out of poor Sergei, who stumbled back as Alan pawed at the empty air. Slaney paid no attention to the Russian boy. Instead, he swung away, assuming the en garde position-except he had no sword.
He perfectly pantomimed a series of feints, followed by a retreat and a ferocious attack. Megan and P. J. rose warily to their feet as the macabre exhibition went on.
Then Alan flinched, and a splotch of red appeared against the radiance of his garments, as if…