With an oath he struggled up the escalator, pushing through crowds of late-night revelers.
Inside the gate there was no sign of her. He checked the departures monitor.
At Gate Three an indicator was blinking, that for the Nostramedes shuttle. He cursed again and ran for the gate.
A trio of security goons in black uniforms and helmets were shutting the gate on a cargo of convicted felons. The other shuttle doors were already closed. Jon waved his ID in the face of the squad leader, a squat young woman with red hair. She waved him away at first but then she caught sight of those initials, saw the Mass Murder Squad emblem, and swallowed heavily. For a moment he thought she was going to bolt. He could feel her terror—a Kill Kult outrage on her beat was her worst nightmare.
"Open a gate for me!" he yelled, breaking her out of the trance. She whacked a stud on her box. One of the passenger doors opened and the trio of guards ran away as quickly as they could manage.
Jon boarded without delay. The door hissed shut behind him and he found himself in a small compartment with a dozen old people, their suitcases strapped to their seats. There were a few empty seats to choose from. He picked one by the aisle.
The gray-and-blue wallpanels were grimy and cracked. The old people bore an air of forlorn resignation. They were service workers for the most part, without corporate rent plans. The retirement bus was taking them out to Nostramedes habitat. Their faces were gray, taut with apprehension.
The shuttle lifted clear of the blast shields and cut in its motors on a primary burn that immediately made the worn seating exceedingly uncomfortable.
Somebody's luggage broke loose, a bag burst, and tapes and underwear skittered around the compartment. A woman sobbed piteously.
The trip took hours, and there was no way of checking to see if the woman in the gray tunic was aboard. The shuttle's internal phototronics were all broken except for the main screen in the cabin ceiling.
Since Nostramedes trailed Hyperion Grandee by a million kilometers and the bus was no luxury liner, the engines boosted for a long, long time. Everyone was aching from acceleration effects when the engines finally cut out. A long period of weightlessness went by as videos flickered on the main screen. Jon probed around him with his psi sense but could detect no trace of the terrified blond woman. He prayed she hadn't somehow given him the slip and stayed behind on Hyperion Grandee while he went off on a million-klom goose chase. This job was becoming a source of nothing but exasperation: One minute those 5,000 credits were virtually in his hands and the next they were snatched away again! Besides which, he now had a roundtrip to Nostramedes at 640 credits to add to the tab for the nine-year Domaine Larose!
Hours later, as the shuttle approached Nostramedes, they were shaken by the long period of deceleration. On screen the gigahabitat slowly swelled into an enormous torus circling a boxy hub with immense openings above and below.
The shuttle floated down the vast central well of Nostramedes' docking bay, which had been built to accommodate NAFAL colony ships. They connected with a slight shudder then they were kedged inside, into a medium-gravity section. The steel bulkheads opened one by one to disgorge the passengers in small, easily handled groups.
There was a cursory ID and customs check, then passengers filed to the elevators. Most were destined to ride to retirement levels and small one-room apartments with reasonable air quality; others, like the convicts, were heading to the Unders and stinking oblivion.
Aboard Nostramedes there were few rules, but chief among them was that you received only that which you paid for. In advance.
A row of elevator doors opened, closed, but Jon glimpsed a dome of blond hair atop a slim figure in gray. He struggled over to the elevator and slammed his security override card into the function box to halt the car, but the box spit his card out and flashed a "Credit Only" sign on the antique monitor. With a tiny snarl he inserted his credit card and was then allowed to use the security card, having paid four credits for the privilege.
It was too late to halt the elevator, the car was already on its way back. People behind him were getting impatient. He punched up the computer memory and got a display menu. Visual quality was poor and the display shuddered a lot, but the credit software had tracked the recent transactions.
Seconds later he had the data. She was using an expensive All System Card, drawn on the William and Oxygen Bank on Hyperion Grandee. No address, no Nostramedes background. And she had gone all the way to the Unders.
Angrily he banged his credit in again and paid for a ride. The doors opened on an interior daubed with bizarre graffiti.
The ride was a gut-wrencher, zipping through hundreds of retirement levels. Jon couldn't help thinking of the place as a gigantic sausage of human beings.
The doors banged open and the cloying reek was quite staggering, like the stench of rotten teeth bubbling through excrement. Jon tried not to breathe too much. The Unders of Nostramedes hadn't changed since the last time he'd been there, on an active contract pursuit five years previously. It was still the closest thing to the medieval concept of hell.
Scattered glow lamps provided a somber twilight that tinted the moist air brown. Dimly visible were huge concrete ribs arching over spaces originally intended to accommodate the assembly of huge sections of colony spacecraft.
The air was bitter, it made the lungs ache and the eyes water. It was an atmosphere for ghosts. The glow lamps were lost in nimbus.
Around the elevators stood small groups of black-suited guards, with goggles, breathing apparatus, and air tanks. They waved shock rods at the new arrivals, urging them away from the cleared space in front of the elevators.
To one side was a line of rectangular cabins where air tanks could be rented. Beyond those the grids began. Crouched on the grids, hunched into the distance, were the millions of the most wretched of all, the "breathers" of the Unders. From this vast crowd of the destitute came a low murmuring noise. A faint groan from an economic grave. No one wasted much energy on the Unders, it was simply too precious.
The air-tank supply firms were guarded by a clump of ragged Undersmen wearing only airmasks, tanks, and genital pouches. In their hands they bore short billies. They parted magically in front of a credit card, though.
It was the matter of a few moments to obtain a pair of tanks, a breathing mask, and some goggles. In addition Iehard rented a small headlamp, since there was no public illumination on the outer corridors.
He headed into the Unders.
The crowds in the vast chambers stupefied the imagination. Stark naked, they squatted on the grids, breathing the air before it was sucked at last down into the sludge tanks and renewed.
In theory at least, all those people were maintained on a single, daily seven-ounce serving of nutritional paste donated by the Nocanicus Charity Authority. However, on the grids, the weak had to give up something to the strong if they wished to spend an hour or two up on the inner vent, by the roof, breathing air a little less putrid than that nearer the floor. Most breathers gave up enough of their ration to look semistarved. The grid bosses and their platoons of goons herded them up and down rickety staircases that rose to the ceilings, where platforms hung from the upper vents and people could sit for a suck of fresher air.
Jon moved along the edge of the grid chamber. At the walls the ranks of breathers were jammed back by the pathway bosses who kept the routes open with shock rods and portable function boxes, which walkers were forced to feed credit if they wished to progress anywhere.
At last he came to the end of the first great chamber. A series of dark holes showed in the murk, corridors leading to the next.
There was so much woe in this place that the psi sense was hard to use. When he did it brought on strange emotional reactions. He felt moved to tears, his hair rose on the nape of his neck. Several times he felt a strange choking sensation.
He stumbled into one long dark tunnel after another, with stinking wretches sleeping the length of the floor
, and finally emerged, exhausted, one air tank gone, and gloom settling over his hopes. The 10,000 credit units had floated away again. He had to call in, tell Petrie what had happened, and hope for the best. Let the MI people rip the Unders apart. It was probably time they got their hands dirty anyway.
He climbed some worn stairs into the Unders high-rent sector. Along the higher walls were jerry-rigged platforms with buildings of puff wall erected like so many human bat nests. Outside one or two little phototron signs identified bars.
Burly guards with clubs stopped him and extended a function box. Wearily he paid another credit to continue.
Outside the first bar he paused to tuck the Taw Taw into his boot top then rolled up his holster and stuffed that into his other boot. Then he headed in. It was a Chinese-style place, the Shai Chee Woop, and it served the aristocracy of the Unders, the grid bosses, the air magnates, and their flunkies. At the door he was frisked, carelessly, and after another credit deduction he gained access. The guards were fat and lax and never considered his boot tops. He decided to keep his air tanks, and just pulled the mask away and let it hang from the chin strap.
He bought a soft drink and headed back into the darkened interior looking for a booth with a phone plate that was unoccupied. He found one at the back. He sat down and ruminated for a few sips. There was no help for it, he had to call in and admit defeat. He started dialing out of Nostramedes. It took time and cost credits at several steps along the way.
Because he was concentrating on the forty-digit code for a call to Military Intelligence, he failed to react instantaneously when two figures slipped into the booth.
They held knives to his throat and kidney. "Don't move a muscle, friend. You've got some questions to answer," a voice whispered harshly in his ear.
"There must be some mistake," Iehard said.
"You better stop thinking about resisting and concentrate on staying alive, sunboy!" a second voice growled.
The first man was searching him for weapons but he, too, failed to think about boots. He did pull out Jon's wallet, though.
They were no professionals, that was clear.
They urged him out of the booth. "Walk between us and walk real carefully, or you get shivved. Understand, sunboy."
"Look, if it's credit you want just point me to a function box. There's no need to give me a blood test to see if my credit's any good." He winced as the knives dug into his skin.
"Shut your face. We're not trying to rob you."
He got fleeting glimpses of the men. Both were pale, blond, tall, and thin. They wore gray one-piece spacecrew issue.
Then they'd pushed out of a maintenance door into the alley. Without his mask on, the stink returned full force. They hurried through a littered back alley and then a door opened to their knock and he was forced into a pool of light in a storage chamber of some kind. Rows of pallets stacked with containers occupied one end. A foldup table and chairs were set up beneath a naked lightbar to one side.
More of the blond people in gray space tunics stood around. And the woman he'd been pursuing. They all had air tanks, goggles, and breathing masks, dangling from the chin straps.
The woman was older than he'd first believed. In her middle years, he decided, and obviously under a great deal of strain. She was staring at him with a mix of fright and rage.
Jon noticed that nobody was wearing obvious handweapons. Then a man, a little taller than the others, and older, with a slight stoop to his shoulders and a gaunt face, came closer. On the lapels of his tunic was a spaceline device. He had several black enamel badges beside it. He, too, exhibited signs of extreme anxiety. "This is the one?"
"That is him. I sensed him when I was waiting for Porox. Who never came."
"Be quiet! Stop talking or we will have to kill him—do you want blood on your hands?" To Jon he said, "Why do you follow us? Are you an agent for Superior Buro?"
Jon didn't reply. These people were on edge. He needed to choose his words carefully. The pair that had brought him in were younger, with very short haircuts, and had expressions of furious intensity on their pallid faces. They looked capable of using the knives.
"I work for the Nocanican Export Import Police. You're suspected of illegal entry with a false credit ID."
The tall man held up Jon's own ID. "This says 'Mass Murder Squad.' What does that mean?"
"He's a senser, a filthy senser," the woman said in a harsh voice. "He must work for Superior Buro!"
"Officer Dahn has Superior Buro on the brain," said one of the intense young men. They had relaxed their hold slightly.
"Shut up, M'Nee, you little bastard," the woman spat back.
"Silence, both of you. In the authority vested in me—" the tall one began.
"Will you space that stuff?" M'Nee snapped. "If I hear about the damned taxpayers one more time I'll scream. Let's kill this creep and get out of here—we're in danger, we must get on!"
The tall one reacted with a vigorous shake of the head. "There'll be no killing. I gave my oath to the board and that's final, do you understand?"
M'Nee rolled his eyes in disgust but refrained from a further retort. The tall man swung back to Jon.
"You probably are a spy for the laowon, but we don't have time to make a proper investigation. You will live and I will even give you a message for your master: Tell them that they missed the Bey; he has already flown to the stars. Tell them they will never find us now, that we are too far ahead."
"We must kill him, Captain," the woman said desperately.
"No. We will incapacitate him and leave him here. But we will not kill him. He has not harmed us and I promised no bloodshed."
"What if he has already called in his masters?"
"We will be gone. They have missed us."
"If I might be allowed to say something," Jon began.
"Do not speak, servant of the laowon. We allow you to live because we are merciful men. We know what you are."
The door opened, another blond woman came in. "Everything is ready, Captain."
The others started to leave. The captain nodded to the young minders with the knives. They shifted position a little more.
"Break his ankles, tie him up, and leave him here. Lock the door."
He turned to go and Iehard felt his guards move again as they prepared to do him violence. Jon acted as taught in the squad combat school.
Summoning energy into his arms and shoulders, he abruptly slammed both elbows out, pushing both men away. Their knives missed him and he somersaulted forward. But his landing was poor and he fell sideways. The men were on him, a boot caught him in the side, but then he had the Taw Taw in his hands.
The sound was deafening in the small room. The first slug took the kicker in his leg. Blood sprayed from the ruined limb. The second man tried to grab the gun but he was too slow and too far away. The Taw Taw boomed again and the unfortunate M'Nee's forearm shattered as he was spun away by the impact.
Iehard sprang out into the dark corridor after the leader. He saw running figures and called out an order to halt. The gun came up. A hiss sounded in his ear and something slammed between his shoulders very hard. He was flung forward, went down in an untidy roll, but came up with his gun in both hands, pointing back toward his assailant.
But he saw nothing to shoot at except something like a dark-green billiard ball with two red dots glowing like malevolent eyes. Then a hammer blow in the chest knocked the air out of his body.
Before he could get his breath back, a man had straddled him and was punching him in the face while screaming, "You filthy bastard!" over and over. Jon managed to get an arm up to ward off the blows, and then struck back, wielding the Taw Taw like a club. On the second try he made contact and the man was gone, but before Jon could climb back to his feet, something hard struck the back of his head. The whole scene turned off with a click.
CHAPTER TEN
Padzn Birthamb was the last to arrive. The Buro men stiffened to attention at the sight of the lao
won chief. The room was a shambles, the computer equipment had been torn loose and pushed against one wall. File modules were scattered over the floor.
"Everything of interest has already been entered on the files aboard Illustrious, my lord." The speaker was the section leader, Benks, tall, overbearing, brutal.
"There was nothing in my orders about destroying the suspect's equipment and files."
The section leader's jaw dropped. Wasn't this just another smash-and-liquidate operation? Pull another of these rebels out and deliver her to the Brutality Room. Anyone traced inside laowon military computer files was a legitimate target for liquidation.
"I thought, my lord."
"I know you did, Benks. A bad mistake. Someone in your position should know better. Did you never ask yourself, 'Well, what if we release the suspect?' Did you not imagine the kind of legal trouble she could present us? Did you not even pause to think that the woman might have colleagues who would be extremely upset, who might initiate legal problems for us in Nocanicus courts?"
Of course, Benks had never concerned himself with such thoughts.
"My apologies, Lord," the man stammered. "I will make amends."
"Indeed you will, Benks. You will begin by restoring this disgusting little human pit to exactly the condition it was in when we removed the woman. Do you understand? And you will do it quickly. The deity alone knows what trouble you may have caused us already."
"The woman, Lord?"
Padzn Birthamb turned a freezing glare on the man. "What is it, Benks?"
"Is she coming back here?"
"I don't know, Benks. At the moment I'd say that was rather up to her, if you see what I mean?"
—|—
When Jon Iehard returned to wakefulness it was with more than just a splitting headache, and also with a lot less.
He was sore just about everywhere and he was stark naked. He'd been picked clean by the scavengers—everything was gone, air tanks, clothes, boots, the lot.
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