He coughed, his throat and lungs were sore from breathing the stinking atmosphere of the Unders. The back of his head sported a goose egg and there were painful bruises on his chest.
He'd been hauled into a narrow side alley by the scavengers, and it was almost pitch black.
From far below, beneath the grids, there came a titanic suction sound. The sludge tanks were being refreshed. A few seconds later a stench of stunning strength rose through the Unders adding fresh excremental odors to the reek.
As he contemplated the loss of his credit card, his ID, his gun, and everything else, he realized how serious his problems had suddenly become. Getting out of the Unders might prove pretty damn difficult.
And after he did that, he'd have to explain this mess. The case was blown now. No doubt about that, and the blame was all his. He should've called in the MI right at the start.
Then he remembered! He had a clue. It was pretty slim, but it was all he had to go on. He'd have to hope that if he moved quickly enough he could catch up. It was time to move.
The air at the top of the corridor was unbreathable, it burned the lungs, so he progressed in a crouch. The stink was overpowering. The roaring in the sludge tanks echoed like the cries of some gigantic animal through hot damp air.
The walk through the corridors was a nightmare. He kept stumbling over people, who would rise and assault him furiously for the trespass. Without a light or clothes or shock rod, he was just a breather like the rest.
When he finally found his way back to the main elevator banks it was feedtime in the ventilation chamber. The naked multitudes were lined up in an endless chain to receive their seven-ounce helping of a squishy, yellow-green feed, served in an edible paper cone that contained essential minerals and bran.
The feed was pumped from long nozzles that depended from the ceiling and were controlled by a squad of black-suited guards. The shock rods sparked again and again off the backs of the greediest, keeping them in line, although every time there was a spill a dozen or so wretches would hurl themselves at the precious goop on the floor.
Jon decided to try the guards at the elevators, although he dreaded their likely reaction.
As expected, they looked up with truculence writ large on their faces. They were intent on an erovideo and did not care to be interrupted.
He tried to hold himself upright, to accentuate the difference between himself and the wretched breathers all round. His explanations fell on deaf ears.
"Get off with you, you scrawny breather, go get your feed," said one fellow, lazily waving a shock rod.
There was one young officer, however, who did respond. Not as hardbitten as the others perhaps.
"You say you have an active credit number. Do you know the number? I can check that quite easily."
"Yes, of course I can remember. It's—" But he was not allowed to finish.
"Oh, give it up, Tunx. Can't you see it's just some old gibberer from the grates. Give him a couple of strokes with the rod and send him back to the feed. You're missing the really hot bits."
Another man rose and laid about Iehard with his shock rod, which imparted hefty stings each time it came in contact with his skin.
Smarting and burning, he was driven toward the vents.
In gloomy despair he watched the elevators coming and going every half hour as they brought new arrivals and, much less frequently, took someone away.
He had to get to those elevators, he had to get off Nostramedes.
The guards watched the erotic video for a while longer, laughing uproariously from time to time. Then, with much cheerful banter, the group broke up, and Jon pressed forward again, catching up with the officer named Tunx.
The shock rod came up. Iehard stood his ground.
"You're making a mistake. If you don't believe me, just let me punch in my alarm code. I have gray code for emergency contact with my superior. I assure you, you'll be remembered."
Tunx seemed dubious behind his face mask. "You scutbellies are all the same, always trying stuff out on us. I tell you I'm tired of it."
"Look, I work for the Hyperion Grandee police. For the sake of your own career, let me get to a function box. I'm not asking that much of you, am I?"
The guard swung his shock rod menacingly. "All right, but if this is a game of some kind then I'm going to give you a few licks of the rod to remember me by."
They approached the elevator banks. A battered switchboard and multifunction box module was controlled by a bored Nostramedes Communication Company woman, who looked up from the novella she was watching with considerable annoyance.
She would have sent them away if she could but Officer Tunx was a rising star in the Guard and she didn't want to upset him. "All right, use line seven. But be quick, I haven't all day to be pandering to foolish breathers."
Jon's fingers were fairly shaking as he stabbed out his code. He got it wrong once, and the unit flashed a terminate sign, but he recovered swiftly enough to get the call reaccepted. Of course it took the communications company's computer a full minute to get around to accepting an emergency call from the Unders. Finally it beamed it to Hyperion Grandee.
Tunx was getting impatient. "Look, breather, I told you you were going to get it." The shock rod crackled with energy as he turned it up to the maximum.
The NocanCo woman was grinning. "I hope you're going to give it to him good and solid, Officer Tunx."
"Thanks, you're a big help," Jon told her. She scowled.
The guard started to order him away from the phone, when at long last the little monitor lit up and Coptor Brine's great ugly face filled the screen. "Jon. What the hell are you doing on Nostramedes? And if this call isn't from Jon Iehard, then what the hell are you doing using his code signal?"
"Coptor! It is me, and I am on Nostramedes and I'm in the shit all right, but I'll explain all that later. Just get me out of here, man. I need a credit line. I'm trapped on the Unders."
Officer Tunx pressed forward and yelled into the microphone, "Does this character really have a credit line?"
"Who is that?" snapped Coptor.
"That's one of the elevator guards here on the Unders, Coptor," Iehard said quickly. "It's all right, he just wants to be sure he hasn't made a mistake in letting me make this call."
Coptor took a moment to digest this. "Well, listen to me, Guard Whoever-you-are. Standing next to you you have the best damned operative the Hyperion Grandee Mass Murder Squad has ever had, so you better be damn careful with his behind and get him back to me in perfect shape just as soon as you damn well can, or I will personally see to it that your career will be short and unpleasant. You got that?"
A few minutes later Iehard had a credit line, a new card from Nostramedes Centrobanc, and a one-piece suit he bought with the card at the elevator side stall.
The elevator opened to his card. Inside it smelled fresh and tasted cool. He spent the whole ride just breathing, noticing how wonderful it could be.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Before he could even take a shower, the laowon had him arrested and brought before them. They began a merciless debriefing, with frequent threats of Hypnogen should he not cooperate fully. From the beginning the Lady Blasilab screamed invective.
Iehard did his best to reply calmly, to keep his voice even and polite. His success enraged Blasilab and she was soon purpling at his "impertinence."
Jon also kept back a single name, a crucial name, that for some reason he felt compelled to retain. He wondered at this behavior, felt both guilt and a weird sense of triumph.
"Imbecile! Incompetent!"
The Morgooze behaved as if in laowon "frozen rage." Any movement might become a lethal stroke aimed at an incompetent underling. "Fool, you have let the monster go free!"
They raged on at him and finally left, bodyguards all around them and storm clouds above. The Morgooze threatened most dreadful dooms.
At last Jon was allowed to limp into a shower, get clean, and visit the medical section
.
He had black bruises on one side of his face and massive, circular bruises between the shoulder blades and on the left side of the chest. He was pronounced fortunate not to have fractured ribs or skull. When they'd finished he wore medipacks on his biggest bruises and bandages on the rest. Slowly he limped home in an MI exercise suit. It was early evening. He found it hard to believe that less than thirty-six hours before he had started out on his fool's errand.
The 10,000 credits had evaporated, and he had a battle ahead with MI over the Domaine Larose, the flight to Nostramedes, and sundry other expenses. Someone had written LAOMAN OUT! in large blue letters across his door. He looked across to Onliki's place. The corridor was silent, but he had the feeling that attentive ears listened for his reaction.
He let himself in, made some instacaf and lay down on the bed. He was utterly weary. He tried to call Meg but received no reply except the answering file on Daisy. He left a message then put his head down with a great sigh and prepared to sleep.
He was just sinking into a pleasant oblivion when a brutally loud knock sounded on the door. It was repeated, along with a megaphone voice calling his name. Groggily he got up and went to the door. He looked at the screen. A pair of men in yellow-and-silver uniforms were outside, along with a woman in the red and blue of the Police Commission Political Section. He opened the door.
"Jon Iehard?" He nodded.
"Apparently you failed to make a court appearance this morning. The Baltitude Gas Company presented a suit against you and won judgment for two million credits. Immediate payment was demanded and all your accounts, credit, and possessions are to be impounded at once. These gentlemen are from Baltitude and they have come to seize any possessions that may be deemed valuable enough to sell. Please stand aside, do not hinder them in their work."
She attached a long pink-and-blue docket to his door, just above the word "Laoman" that already decorated it.
He stared as the movers entered his apartment and took away his antique rug, his ornately carved side table from the watermoons of Ingrid, his pair of pleasant watercolors by M'Aicey of Camleopard Al Kuds. At the last moment he went to the side table and grabbed up his clothes and plucked the silver cube from Fabulous Fara out of a little antique Earthbowl, just before it, too, went out in their arms and was loaded onto a hand cart.
When they'd finished, he was stripped of everything but one suit of clothes, his boots, and the little cube. The last thing taken had been the TV, which had wowed plaintively as it vanished out the door.
They left and he sat down on his bare mattress. All the materials of nine years of life had been taken away. He would appeal the suit, he might even win it and eventually he'd get it all back, but for now it was gone and it made him feel frighteningly hollow. Everything hurt. Life seemed to have reached an astonishing low point.
He slept for eight hours, then he pulled himself out of bed with enormous effort. He was a mess, it even hurt to open his mouth. His face was swollen and puffy.
Under the medipads his ribs were purple and yellow. He whistled to himself. This kind of treatment was almost enough to turn Jon Iehard, reasonable human being, into a religious fanatic, a Panhumanist Elchite even.
He showered, put on his remaining clothes, and looked forlornly around his stripped apartment. He now owed that wealthy oaf Baltitude. He wondered how he was ever going to get even.
He went down to the Mass Murder Squad. The place was alive with activity; a "bad one" was in progress. Coptor and both wing squads were out hunting around Octagon Six for a frag bomber who'd terrorized the early-morning office rush.
The computer operatives were hard at it. Monitor screens flickered throughout the warren. No one paid Jon much notice. He limped into his own desk and removed his spare Taw Taw .22 and a box of ammo clips from their hiding place under the desk top. Next he took an ankle holster and strapped it on inside his boot. He knew better than even to try on a shoulder holster.
As he left the office, a Buro tail fell into place behind him. The security litany ran through his mind—"Number One, he's the obvious one. Number Two will be somewhere behind him, he or she will not be obvious." But that day he didn't mind if they saw where he went.
He rode transit to Octagon Seven and went straight to Meg's. The door opened to his card, as normal, but once inside all his worst suspicions were confirmed.
The computer pit had been rearranged. The office was too clean, it even looked as if it had been dusted. Most unusual of all, the DAex Ram 44000 was doing nothing but answering telephone calls. Normally it would have been working on Masque routines, building up character programming.
Nor did the computer know where Meg was. "No data" was all it would put on the screen in response to his questions. That spoke volumes.
He examined other pieces of equipment. The data transfer printer had worn its inkers down to nubs. When he scanned the piles of data storage modules, he noticed they were not in Meg's precise patterns.
Superior Buro had taken Meg and they had dumped and printed out everything they could use. Unless—
He called Ingrid Kopelin.
Her anxiety was immediately obvious. "She's been gone for twenty-four hours at least. It must have been the Buro. Oh, Jon, I'm so afraid for her."
"If Meg was hiding, where might she go?"
Ingrid shrugged. "Where indeed? I don't think Meg thought much about hiding. If she was in trouble with the Buro she'd have stayed by the computer, in communication with a lawyer to the very last minute. But I checked and she never called. They must have come very suddenly."
Then he looked at his own desk. Everything had been put back more neatly than before. He presumed it had all been filmed.
On his notepad he found a small scrawled note. Meg's handwriting. Dated the day before.
"Jon—Roq left a message for you."
What did that mean? He looked at Daisy dubiously. The Buro would have loaded the computer with bugs. Meg meant him to check this on another system. He went to the stack of file modules and took down the one marked "Louis Quatorze" and pocketed it.
His jaw set grimly, Iehard headed back to Octagon Five and Petrie's section. Everything hurt like hell, but he persisted in moving his arms and gradually his muscles loosened up somewhat. His left side was finally the only place he really had to favor.
The reception officer returned after a moment with word that the commander was in a meeting. Perhaps an appointment could be made for another time, or day? Iehard said he'd wait, and wait he did, until, after a little more than an hour, Petrie suddenly emerged from his office and escorted Jon inside. A guard frisked him, removing the Taw Taw.
"Jon, I have bad news for you."
Iehard sat down heavily. So they had given Petrie the unpleasant little task of telling him.
"Where is she?" he breathed. He could smell Petrie's discomfort despite the little suppressor band.
"You know how they are, Jon. They wanted to teach her a lesson, a short sharp shock. After all, they caught her inside military files aboard Illustrious."
"What do you mean, 'short sharp shock'?"
"You were raised on a laowon world, Jon—you know their methods. Your friend has gone to the Brutality Room."
"They did that! Just for trying to find me some information on this filthy fugitive of theirs! And you let them!"
Petrie flinched.
"Who rules in this system?" Jon screamed. "And tell me, why is this case such a goddamn secret anyway? They either want me to find the man or they don't, which is it? I mean, I'm sorry, Commander, please accept my apologies, since we are being awfully nice about all this, but what are they trying to do? Yesterday I almost got killed tracking someone who I'm sure is related to the case, and now they've put my computer op in the Brutality Room!"
Petrie spread his hands wide, summoned his best empathic tone. "Jon, I'm sorry. But why do you think the Buro would tell me? Believe me, between MI and the Buro there exists an, aah, 'adversarial' relationship, onl
y we have to be the gracious loser most of the time. You can imagine what that means to all of us, to our morale. But I want you also to understand that I win a few, here and there, and those wins sometimes involve getting someone back. If she keeps her tongue in check, your Meg may be back with us tomorrow, chastened but alive."
"If they kill her I swear I'll—"
Petrie waved his hands anxiously. His voice hardened. "Don't say it, Jon. No threats. Now calm down, quickly now."
Jon saw fear in old Petrie's face and he realized he was going too far. They would have to take him out of service after this; the laowon wouldn't want him running around armed, making threats against blueskins.
And that would ruin everything. Suddenly an enormous realization sank home. He had his own agenda now. All the rules had changed without his even realizing it.
Without paying attention, he listened to Petrie's smoothing of the roiled waters. As soon as possible he retrieved his gun and headed out again. He chose to walk through the park, thinking things through. They'd given him back his gun! He imagined that Petrie had already given someone hell for that.
By the time he'd reached the Hyades Monument he'd made up his mind. He turned on his heel and sprinted suddenly through the crowds, down into the Brambles, a wild section of woodland with many paths. He knew it well from his regular jogging run. He left the path precisely where he could vanish most easily in dense shrubbery. He watched from concealment.
A woman panted down the path. He could sense her disquiet; she'd lost him and she knew her masters would be upset. She was running hard, a handbag flying out behind her.
He waited until she was gone and then doubled back, cutting diagonally across the park to Octagon Nine where he caught a red-line car all the way to Octagon One. There he headed for the Gas Exchange. Inside that enormous tower he took the elevator to the reference library. Once in a computer booth it was a matter of moments to log on and find the entry he sought.
POROX, NATHAN: Independent Gas Dealer. Address for communications: Indian Trend, Sooner. Comm. No. 7234588-9P.
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