The Lion was not convinced. He knew Nick all too well. “That's a half-assed rationalization and you know it."
"Fine,” said the midget, shrugging. “So I'll give you a better rationalization, the same one that was broached in the parking garage. Send Empedocles in first and maybe these two Paratwa will waste each other. We kill two birds with one stone."
Huromonus shook his head. “I will not order a conventional attack just so that two killers can have at each other."
The midget regarded them wryly.
"Why don't you give us your real reason?” suggested the Lion.
"I think you already know my real reason."
"I want to hear you say it."
"All right,” said Nick grimly. “Gillian was my friend and he was your friend and he deserves a goddamn chance. I don't give a shit whether Empedocles lives or dies. But we owe it to Gillian. We owe him a shot at coming back."
"You don't know if he can come back,” Huromonus argued.
"You're right, I don't know. But I do know that when there is tremendous stress—tremendous tension—the Ash Ock's inner gates are forced open. Combat presents the proper conditions for change to occur, for thresholds to be crossed."
Huromonus said, “Suppose we go along with you? Exactly how do we carry out this assault? Remember, that chalet has a full sensor field along with antisurveillance systems. How do we attack and still retain some element of surprise?"
"Trust me,” suggested Nick, smiling tightly. “I have a plan."
The Lion returned his attention to the troops. Xornakoff was giving orders. “All right, they're almost ready at the top. Mount up, everyone. And good luck."
The assault team sprang into action. Four at a time, they leaped over the railing, landed on the waiting saddles of high-powered skysticks docked in a neat row beneath the overhang of the porch. Vertical jets roared to life. The two dozen tiny vehicles spiraled lazily upward into Pocono's slate gray skies.
Almost in tandem, the twenty-four riders leaned forward, compressed their accelerators. Rocket tubes ignited, belched trails of white smoke. The skystick troopers streaked off into the brooding skies, disappearing into a patch of low-level clouds.
Their target was nearly eleven miles south of the hotel. The team would fly their sticks in a great arc: heading toward center-sky, leveling off, then completing their parabola by diving toward the chalet at speeds approaching two hundred miles per hour. If the timing worked out as planned, the twenty-four riders would arrive at the house only seconds after Empedocles's Gillian/tway made the initial assault.
"I hope we don't lose too many,” murmured Huromonus.
Empedocles chuckled.
A fresh roar reverberated across the porch as a small E-Tech Security craft sank from the clouds and banked for a landing. Seconds later, its vertical landing jets, expelling yellow flame, melted the ice and snow covering the Ballistic Mystic Hotel's seldom-used helipad. Great clouds of steam blossomed around the craft.
Vilakoz, straining under the weight of the massive geo cannon, lumbered from the porch and ran toward the jet. Somehow, he managed to cover the forty yards in less than ten seconds. A ramp was lowered and the Costeau quickly squeezed inside. Shrieking rockets came to life. The jet ascended, momentarily hovered over the field, then blasted off in the direction of the skystick riders.
"What's the total strength of the second wave?” asked the Lion.
"Eleven more jets like that one,” replied Huromonus, “plus twenty-eight armored snowrovers and a force of twelve hundred and fifty ground troops."
"But will it be enough?” asked Empedocles, laughing wickedly. With blinding speed, the Susan/tway catapulted over the railing and landed on her own skystick. The saddled tube levitated until the rider was even with the Lion, Huromonus, and Xornakoff.
"There is an old saying,” uttered the monarch. “I learned it from the Czar.” Empedocles pasted bright smiles across both his faces and uttered his final words in stereo. “If things don't work out ... I'll see you in hell."
The skystick rose, disappeared into the clouds.
* * *
"See you in hell!"
"I think you learned that one from me,” said Nick.
"Not likely,” replied Empedocles through his Gillian/tway.
The midget grunted and turned to the last E-Tech technician who remained in the shack. “Is the seeker set?"
"Yes, sir. Programmed, armed, and in the tube."
"Then leave us,” ordered the monarch.
The technician glanced uneasily at Nick, then half-walked, half-floated out the door of Speed Slope Fourteen's launch hut. The metal seal slid shut.
They were in center-sky, at the weightless starting gate of the nine-mile-long cable-suspended ice trough, which spiraled gradually outward from Pocono's central core, winding its way toward the inner living surface of the colony, assuming greater and greater mass as the cylinder's spin-induced gravitation relentlessly increased.
Empedocles's Gillian/tway hung three feet off the floor, perched on his polished silver uniski, which was attached to the roof of the launch hut via six foldaway slipbars, making him look and feel like some weird and inverted spider. His feet were fastened to the ski via rigid interlock boots and his body was arched severely forward, in the traditional downhill pose. His head was encased in a long tapering Giger helmet, with the back of it spring-buckled to the heels of his boots. Fastened over the top of the helmet was the jetpack, its twin thrusters oozing faint whiffs of evaporating coolant. Beneath him, the four-foot ski swam in a fog of low-tension polyfreeze, which the just-departed technician had sprayed across its underside.
"You're as ready as you're gonna be,” said Nick. “Just remember: the seeker will be heading down the slope about a thousand feet in front of you—your ski is programmed to follow its course. When the seeker reaches the chalet—"
"We're wasting time."
The midget grimaced. “Yeah, well, tough shit. Maybe I like wasting time."
The monarch laughed. “You still think he's coming back, don't you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Gillian's gone for good. End of story."
"Watch that first step,” warned Nick. “It's a doozie."
Another tech's voice flooded the hut. “We're ready in control. Launch countdown will commence upon your signal."
Empedocles gripped the ski's stubby sway bars. “Do it."
"Seeker is out of its hole,” announced the tech. “Seeker is on the pike ... telemetry green ... autos engaging ... You'll be going in about four seconds...
” ... three ... two ... one..."
Empedocles winked at the Czar. And then the sextet of slipbars ripped away and the floor beneath him disappeared. A maglev field came to life, yanked him straight down through the opening.
With a sharp bang, his ski landed on the twenty-foot-wide sloping ice trough. Jetpaks ignited. The ski leaped forward, accelerating rapidly, and then his Gillian/tway was heading down the linear section of the course—a full half-mile without curves—where the slope was still fully contained within its thirty-foot-diameter illuminated tube.
Sensors calculated his speed. Inner helmet gauges translated into miles per hour.
Thirty ... forty-five ... sixty-five ... ninety...
He closed the eyes of his male tway, allowed himself to view the world discreetly through his female half. His Susan/tway's skystick had arrived at the top of its precalculated arc, was preparing to begin its final descent toward the chalet. All around her, white comet tails pierced the overcast skies as the rest of the skystick assault team fell into flanking positions.
When he reopened the Gillian/tway's eyes, the speed in his helmet gauge had climbed to one hundred and twenty miles per hour. A thousand feet in front of him, the low streamlined form of the seeker raced high up onto the banking of Speed Slope Fourteen's first curve. Target lights pulsed red on the back of the small robot: its lastrak measurement systems were con
tinuously analyzing track conditions, scanning down the course for potentially deadly ice cracks, automatically readjusting its own position on the banks to compensate for such flaws, and then transmitting the latest trajectory data back into Empedocles's onboard computers.
His Gillian/tway was under full remote control. He was flying blind. He was traveling at one hundred and thirty miles per hour.
Entering the first curve, his ski soared high up onto the banking precisely duplicating the seeker's path. Overhead, gray clouds abruptly burst into view; he had reached the end of the linear tube. From here on down, he would be racing in an open-top trough.
The banking tapered to nearly ninety degrees; he was literally on the side of a wall, so close to the top that the energized repellent fence—designed to prevent crashing skiers from leaving the course—hung a scant two feet away from the right edge of his ski. His speed indicator climbed to one hundred and forty.
He felt his body beginning to take on overall weight again as Speed Slope Fourteen spiraled farther and farther outward from Pocono's gravity-free core. Up ahead, he glimpsed the seeker sailing into the first of a triple set of S-curves.
And then he was into the esses, high up on the bank ... down again ... crossing centerline ... roaring up the opposite wall...
Out of the esses ... a short straightaway ... and then into this slope's most severe curve: a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree arc that put his ski precariously close to the fence, mere inches from the shimmering repellent screens...
And his Susan/tway slammed the skystick accelerators forward, felt the invigorating wind whip across her face as she dive-bombed toward their target...
The exhilaration of pure speed. It soared through both his bodies, and he felt wildly alive, lashed by rhythms of binary transcendence, knowing at long last that his neuromuscular system had reached the arena of its true potential.
And the world slowed down. And he arrived at a state of consciousness which he knew was as close to perfection as any Paratwa could ever hope to come; the ultimate harmony of interlaced tension, halves converging, racing into violence.
He screamed through both mouths—a deep-body expulsion of uncontrollable ecstasy—and he knew that he would hit the target at the crest of this feeling, a rapture of mind/body unity that nothing could withstand.
More curves ... more withered skies ... and both of his bodies were traveling at speeds in excess of one hundred and sixty miles per hour and still accelerating...
And it was time.
The countdown rang out in his Gillian/tway's helmet. He performed slight readjustments to Susan/tway's skystick, realigned his aerial approach velocity so that his tways would arrive at the chalet only seconds apart.
"Eight...” said the mech voice, “seven..."
Speed Slope Fourteen had now spiraled far from its origins within center-sky. He was nearing ground level. The smooth curvature of the cylinder became visible at the top of the trough, and he caught glimpses of houses and fields—speckles of nonorganic creation littering Pocono's endless white landscape.
"Five seconds..."
And then the target came into view—a splotch on the side of a steep hill—three stories of teak-covered elegance, blessed with a huge picture window on its top floor, a mere sixty feet away from the rim of the ice trough.
” ...Three..."
The Czar and the technicians had calculated precisely; the seeker's guidance system had been modified, fully armed. Up until the very last moments, everything would happen automatically.
” ... two..."
But no human could have attempted this stunt; only a creature endowed with escalated reaction times possessed the power to operate within the parameters of such blinding speed.
” ... one..."
A thousand feet in front of him, the seeker went crazy.
Brake spikes trailing plasticore bungis erupted from its stern, embedded themselves in the ice, high up on the trough. A brutal screeching noise filled Empedocles's helmet as the tiny robot, its linear motion retarded, lurched sideways, vaulted up the wall opposite the chalet, and then—as the bungis grabbed—flashed back down across the banking.
The seeker exploded.
It blew a massive hole in the chalet-side of the speed slope. Shards of debris—those few bits that had not been blown outward by the force of the blast—came flying across Empedocles's glide path.
And then his own brake spikes were firing and there came a dizzying—but anticipated—moment of tremendous forward pressure as the bungis slowed him from one seventy-five to seventy-five in under a second.
His uniski pivoted to the right and raced up the side of the trough in a violently tight arc, missing the edge of the overhanging fence by less that a foot. Back down the banking he roared, heading straight toward the opposite wall, straight toward the gaping hole that the exploded seeker had created in the ice trough.
The bungis released. He bit down hard, felt the invisible front and rear protective crescents shape themselves to his compressed form. Airborne, he sailed through the jagged opening in Speed Slope Fourteen, heading straight toward the chalet's massive third-floor picture window...
* * *
Ghandi sat on the zephyr chair—perched on the invisible fountain of bridled air—on the chalet's upper veranda. Through the glass wall, Pocono's omnipresent overcast sky peered in at him, its gray perfection marred only by the snaking form of Speed Slope Fourteen, sixty feet away.
His hands rested serenely in his lap. His shoes lay on the floor beside him. The zephyr's body-hugging streams of coagulated air produced a curious tickling sensation between his bare toes.
He wiggled his feet and tried to empty his mind of all thoughts, all feelings, all concerns.
But success in that regard continued to elude him.
Ghandi did not know how many hours he had been sitting here. It did not really matter. There was no reason why he should remain a prisoner of the zephyr's cradling security, yet there also was no reason why he should get up. He supposed that meant he had achieved a state of proper equilibrium, trapped between opposing forces, intricately balanced. The crushing apotheosis of gravity held him down—the leading edge of disciplined air held him up. Neither force could be seen, yet together they produced the appropriate neutralizing effect. The symmetry of his prison pleased him.
He wiggled his toes and wondered what it would be like to not remember.
Twenty-five years. And now she's dead.
From somewhere downstairs, another scream erupted. For most of the day, the maniac's tways had been taking turns releasing gut-rending shrieks. Calvin had his own way of dealing with grief.
A faint odor of urine still filled the air. Earlier, during one of the Ash Nar's nastier explosions of rage, the twins, Ky and Jy, had run naked through the house, pissing on walls and floors. Ky had even managed to soak a few ceilings.
At one point, tway Calvin, his face bloated into a vicious smile, had leaped at Ghandi from behind and rammed the needle of the Cohe up under his chin.
"Go ahead,” Ghandi had urged, and that had been that. The maniac lost interest, withdrew the weapon, and retreated to another room.
Later, during a brief period of sanity, when all three tways at least appeared serene, Ghandi had suggested that they should consider vacating the chalet. “Sooner or later,” he urged, “E-Tech's going to find us here."
Ky, wearing a skintight rubberized suit splotched with twistik—the polarized adhesive paste that enabled him to adhere to walls and ceilings—whipped out his flash daggers and leaped over the railing of the second-floor balcony that overlooked the gym. His upward trajectory carried him back-first into the ceiling. The twistik grabbed and he stuck. Hanging upside down, the tway began to sing—a pre-Apocalyptic ballad about “cruising the seas for American gold.” On the second stanza, tways Jy and Calvin had joined in. For the next half hour, the chalet had echoed to the endless refrains of this ancient song as the Ash Nar assassin sang three-part harmony w
ith himself.
Ghandi came to the conclusion that they would not be leaving.
After the musical interlude had ended, Ghandi had retreated to the sanctity of the zephyr. He told himself that he would remain there and wait for whatever was going to happen.
The growing wail of a jetpak skier suddenly grabbed his attention. He craned his neck and peered out at the suspended ice trough.
As the daredevil approached, the high-pitched whine grew more intense. But when the skier came into view, high up on the opposite bank of the trough, a sudden uneasiness gripped Ghandi. He had the feeling that something was terribly wrong.
A dull thud. A muffled explosion. And then there was a hole in the side of the trough and an object was coming straight toward the picture window, straight toward Ghandi.
In that final instant, he realized that it was now in his best interests to overcome his lethargy and get the hell out of the zephyr chair. But he also realized that it was too late.
* * *
The gun on the front of Empedocles's uniski barked once—the reinforced picture window fractured into a spiderweb of tiny cracks. An instant before the Gillian/tway hit, the monarch fired his retros. When he slammed the window, the ski had decelerated to under thirty miles per hour.
Glass disintegrated, shattered across the enclosed veranda. The man that Empedocles recognized as the husband of Sappho's human tway sat inside, his body suspended on some sort of air chair, his mouth open wide, eyes frantic with disbelief. Corelli-Paul Ghandi threw his hands over his face as the glass rained across the room. The uniski passed right over his head, its underside missing him by less than a foot.
Ghandi screamed and rolled from the zephyr. With a tremendous crash, the crazed skier touched down, slid the length of the room on the right edge of his ski, then smashed into the far wall, beside the doorway leading to the stairs. Even before the uniski slammed to a halt, the madman was tearing off his helmet and jetpak, disengaging his legs from the interlock boots.
The Paratwa (#3 in the Parawta Saga) Page 40