by Pam Uphoff
She nearly missed him; the knife handle hit his left arm. He flinched and pulled the trigger.
The brilliant red streak snapped through the smoke of the cooking and struck the opposite wall. Vee transformed instantly from salesman to Guard. His return fire was blindingly quick, and right on target. Someone bulled through the crowd, shoved the last lizard in the way directly into Vee, and snatched the flamethrower wand from Herri. Vee dropped and rolled as he brought his pistol up . . . and hesitated. Xaero realized that his roll had put some of the crowd into the background behind . . . L'azlod. As he turned the flamethrower to follow Vee, another figure leaped out of the crowd and wrapped itself around L'azlod. The flame rose in the air as they wrestled.
Xaero leaped for the contraption and twisted the gas valves off. The flame died, leaving spots in her vision, as Herri joined the fray and jerked the wand from L'azlod's grip with a growl. Vee rolled to his feet as Trev stepped in with a stunner which he applied to L'azlod's head as the lights came up.
D'remel carefully removed his arms from around L'azlod, he'd been well impaled by the back spines.
"Thank you Major," W'ufda said. "Haven't seen you for a while. Keeping your hand in during retirement, eh?"
D'remel gawped a bit at the old lizard who had appeared at his side, then glanced around seeing several more lizards entering suddenly and heading straight for the stairs sighed. "I see." He looked around regretfully. "Sand, I thought this was a great idea."
D'remel looked thoughtful, watching carefully as Trev waved over yet another group from outside.
He shook his head and sighed. "W'ufda, I wasn't expecting an reunion, how nice of you to drop in to celebrate my first sale. I recognized Metini L'azlod. Dare I ask who else they're bagging upstairs?"
"Blozolli C'dasl." W'ufda said.
"Great Sand." He whistled. "Well, that clears out the top of the list doesn't it?"
"Are you two implying what I'm afraid you're implying?" Orto snapped from behind them. "If this is all a sham, I'm going to be so sandy furious . . . "
"Nonsense." Xaero said. "Just think how exciting it will be, never knowing what will happen next at your staid old publisher's establishment."
W'ufda snorted. "Miss L'svages, thank you so much for throwing that knife at Blozolli. I think he was actually going after L'azlod, but L'azlod's appearance may have been the sign for him to shoot someone else." His glance flicked to Trev. "However, to say this little operation has been blown is an understatement." He beamed at D'remel. "Jevi, you ever think about running a publishing house? We've got one that'll be going cheap." A young uniformed lizard murmured something in his ear. "Well, it seems Blozolli's going to survive that disrupter. Trev, Xaero? Go circulate and drop rumors that you were assisting the DMS in a sting operation, sorry about the excitement, eh?" He looked around in satisfaction. "Nothing but peace and quiet from now on, right?"
Chapter Ten
"Uncle Trev? I need your help. Those lizards studying the time machine won't listen to me!"
Xaero grinned as the miniature W'ufda slapped a calculator down on the table. Prince Fereny was on school break and his mother had decided he needed to spend some time away from Imperial City and Palace politics.
"Look, it connects places in different times and places. And you have to match velocities or splat." He paused at Trev's frown, and swiveled to look at Xaero. "Didn't you tell him everything M'kabon said?"
"It's all in the report, which apparently you've read." She leaned over to read his pad. "The third planet? You're kidding?"
"Nope. We'll have to go backwards in time over sixteen million years, and come out in space in a reentry capsule, because of the velocity differences. But we could land, collect samples, build a new time machine around the capsule and come back and reenter here."
"I shudder to think of the potential time changes involved." Trev said.
"But there won't be any." Fereny insisted. "The only connection between Mars and Blue is the probe five years ago. Which," he pointed out, "found a very highly mineralized surface, as we'd expected from the orbiting satellites. Grandmother says we've got a crisis, because the uranium ores veins are all mined out. But the orbiters indicated there's probably plenty on Blue."
"Perhaps it would be better to go forward sixteen million years," Xaero said. "No possible messing with our history."
"You mean this could work?" Trev said.
"Sure. It's getting off a planet that is the problem. Getting down is just a matter of slowing down enough, and if you can take fuel with you, you can slow down and do controlled reentries, rather than risky high speed ones."
"Sand. Not forward though, there's no telling what could happen in that much time, there could even be intelligent life there."
"Oh, that would be so cool!" Fereny brightened up even more. "And there could have been civilization sixteen million years ago, too! Now extinct! With huge Alien warriors. And gorgeous fems, too!" he assured Xaero.
"Well, given the two and a half G's of gravity, they're more likely to be small and wiry. With really thick, strong, bones and heavily braced skeletons." She told him.
"If only the probe had transmitted longer." Fereny sighed. "We know there are plants, bugs and liquid water, though, and the temperature is hot, but livable."
"We'd have to have environmental suits, because of the thick air." Xaero pointed out.
"Stop. Halt! Go no further." Trev frowned at them. "School boys and lawyers will not be going."
Xaero traded frowns with Fereny. "It will take a lot of time to set up." She assured him. "And, I happen to be an expert on surface exploration. It's police that won't be going." She told Trev, smugly.
"But just in case there's a civilization, a diplomat and government representative would be a useful addition." He retorted. "Who better than an Imperial Prince? Now, Fereny, who is it that isn't listening to this proposal of yours?"
Chapter Eleven
She wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't been holding very still. A silly head game, "Can I hold so still the surface of the spa will reflect . . . whatever." Trev had been dragged away to answer the comm before he'd gotten more than a single foot wet. And now the steaming surface quieted down. That quivery green smear was the pet plant, those were the windows . . .
The water sloshed back and forth, a vigorous metronome. She glared at it. "Hey, I didn't move!" she said indignantly as the water sloshed over the side. Then it clicked, a sudden empty pit in her stomach. She erupted out of the spa and grabbed a towel on her way down the stairs to the vid in the main room.
Trev was irritably punching numbers on the comm, and glanced over at her. "I just got cut off." Even with him standing there buck naked, she wasn't tempted to make any jokes.
"I think there was a quake." The vid gave her static on all the Imperial City channels. She switched around, what was that High Brow station out of Pocahaut . . . hmm, it was off the air too.
Trev suddenly slapped his wrist. "Damn, check in signal." He abandoned the comm and brought out another contraption, and flicked it on.
She switched to a multiscreen, and picked one that seemed to have a news cast on.
" . . . reports of a collapsed building on the east side, and broken windows everywhere. We repeat, beware of glass falling from tall buildings." The picture showed streets littered with glass and stone, traffic creeping around obstacles on one street and stopped completely on the crossing street by a collapsed sign of some sort.
"Sand storm!" Trev muttered, "That looks bad."
"Stay inside if your building is sound, if not, you need to find a large open space where glass or other objects falling from buildings cannot hit you. For those just tuning in, Daeda has experienced a strong quake and has extensive damage. We don't yet have any idea of the numbers of casualties . . . "
Trev leaped to his new machine as it beeped. The speaker crackled to life. "Identify, please." An unknown voice snapped.
"Fatreve, Icefire, safe." He was equally brie
f. "Quake, I take it?"
"Yes. Very heavy damage here, main power out, emergency power is fully engaged pumping air. Stay where you are and switch to five and record."
Trev flipped switches and chewed his claws. Removing them briefly, he said. "This is a direct wireless comm to the Imperial Guards."
"What did he mean, pumping air?" Xaero wondered if she really wanted to know. "The cavern can't be . . . leaking, can it?" Not collapsed. Not a major cavern. Please not a city cavern.
"Get everyone up here." He asked, switching between his comm and the vid.
She tossed him the towel and grabbed her skirt and vest, dressing on her way out the door. Daeda was 400 kstrides from Imperial City. Such widespread damage could only have been caused by a huge quake.
"Everyone" was already on the way, Fereny poking at his own chronometer, W'ufda and the two Imperial Guards bringing up the rear.
"Quake in Imperial City," she explained
Vee was tight lipped and pale. "It's bad, if the Guards are counting heads."
"They said something about the emergency power all going for pumping air."
That stopped the adults dead in their tracks for a c-split. Fereny popped into Trev's suite, and by the time they'd joined him, was speaking on Trev's comm. "Fereny, Icefire, safe."
"Can you remain with Fatreve, K'derat and H'nkle?"
Trev nodded, and Fereny verbalized that to the comm operator.
"Instruct the Guards to acquire accommodations for approximately three hundred people being evacuated from the Palace."
"Fatreve, here," Trev took over, "Will manage accommodations. Any estimates of fatalities?"
"Early, and very uncertain estimates are around a hundred thousand. A lot of rock was shed from the cavern roof, and it's leaking air as fast as we can pump it in. A general evacuation is underway. Monorail traffic has been halted due to track damage, and cart traffic will be using both tunnels, which appear to be open. We are contacting Icefire officials to warn them to expect refugees."
"How's the head count?" Trev asked.
"We're still two short, Folanthe and Fitro were in town and haven't checked in yet."
Fereny's eyes went wide. Suddenly the earthquake was serious, personally serious, rather than an exciting show at a distance. If Xaero remembered the large and alliterative royal family correctly, Fitro was his closest sister, and Folanthe would be one of his uncles, an older brother of Trev's.
Xaero pulled her mini comp out of her briefcase, and pulled up real estate, large scale. "What about that Imperial Properties Division or whatever it was? Do they have much here that's in good enough shape for refugees?"
"Good thought," Trev nudged her over and tapped in a site and signed in. "Look for something that can handle three hundred people, living quarters and offices, if they have any such thing."
"That would be bigger than this place, but not by much." Xaero pointed out. "Don't they have that . . . yeah, here it is, that twelve story in South Cavern, just outside the passage to Main. Looks like they're taking sealed bids on it, so it must be all fixed up. Wow! Check the minimum."
Trev read over her shoulder and nodded, as he pulled out his comm. "Pricey! And, now I get to break the Bad News to them."
"I'll get a list of everything they've got. There are going to be a whole lot of refugees." Xaero started tapping more instructions into her comp. "Maybe some of those properties can be used, perhaps managed by local charities at first."
Trev nodded, "The DMS alone will need more space than that. We'd better grab as many as we can, as close to here as possible." He punched in numbers and started working his way through the hierarchy of the local office of the properties division.
So an evening with Trev turned quickly into a massive e-shopping episode, as Trev requisitioned repossessed residential buildings and tapped Imperial funds to marginally furnish them. He coordinated a bit with the Mayor and his bureaucracy, but they were so busy trying to track down school officials and planning how to turn the Metro Pavilion into a refugee center, that he mostly left them alone.
Xaero was surprised by how many Imperial offices were located in Icefire. "I had no idea so many of the departments were located here."
Trev frowned suddenly. "They've been moving out of Imperial City, department by department, over the last sixty years. I wonder if Dr. M'kabon's history books had anything to do with that?"
Xaero hissed. "Didn't someone say something about 'the Great Quake' when they were talking about M'kabon's past?"
W'ufda looked stunned. "I always wondered why it was so impossible to get building permits in the City. And they put in high speed rail to all those self contained satellite caverns way to the north."
"And the new power plants have all been to the north and east." Vee pulled up a map on his comp; they had all brought in their equipment and turned Trev's living room into a communications center splits before. "There are two geothermal plants and the first nuclear plant fairly close to the City. If they're all down, the Imperium has lost, umm, nearly a quarter of its electrical power. Hopefully not permanently."
***
Without high speed transport, it was going to take the evacuated population days to arrive. So as midnight passed and the basic arrangements were made, Xaero headed home to see what L'svages, L'svages, L'svages, L'svages, L'svages, L'svages and L'svages was or was not doing about it.
Having hysterics, apparently.
"Xaery! We couldn't find you!" her father raged and her mother wept.
"Why on Mars were you worried about me?" she asked.
"I was afraid that fat publisher might have lured you off to Imperial City." Her mother sobbed. "You said you were going to take a quarter tenth vacation! You could have been anywhere."
Xaero growled. "I had lunch with you, how far could I have gotten? Have you made any arrangements for the firm members who'll be coming back here?" she asked, trying to divert the remainder of the emotional scene.
"We can't reach any of them." Her father snapped, "We can't make plans until they get here. Stop trying to change the subject. There was an emergency and you didn't call us."
"The emergency is three million strides away. If you two would quit trying to run my life I wouldn't have had to block your calls." She gritted her teeth, trying to not yell back. "Why don't you plan on inviting Vatha, Gilli and Tichy to stay here? Aunt Vatha and Uncle Gilli can have my room and Tichy and I can camp out in the living room."
"That would be horribly crowded, Xaery!" her mother looked a bit wistful, though. She and Vatha, who was actually a second cousin of Kessi's, had been best friends growing up.
"Well, have you checked the Builtdown for vacant apartments? Perhaps the Firm should snap up everything available?" She thought for a moment, "The Imperial City office has two Senior Partners, a half dozen Juniors, plus the associates and all their staff will probably be coming with them, with little or no furniture, but lots of family."
With the ease of recent practice, she pulled out her mini comp and checked on the Builtdown site for vacancies. Eighteen apartments, mostly efficiencies. "It's going to be crowded!" she quickly filled forms and grabbed the lot. "Mother, perhaps you and your buddies could look into furniture tomorrow?"
That diversion worked like a charm. Her mother quickly started a list of what was going to be needed. Even her father got pulled in, grumbling, "I suppose they'll need office space as well."
"We're good for extra offices," Xaero pointed out. "I can give up my large one for Great Uncle Boffumi, since he's a Senior Partner, and take one of the smaller empty ones around the corner. Raelphe can double up with Elissy, if we run out of room."
"Hrmph!" Her father visibly wavered between outrage that his daughter would give up prestigious cubic, a desire to please old Boffumi, who'd handled all their government dealings so well for so long, and finally settled on indignant with the realization that she was doing it to put more space between herself and her father.
As her parents woun
d down, exhaustion hit, and she bid them a good night and headed for bed.
***
The next day the news was more exact and much worse.
Imperial City was located under the southern rim of the vast volcanic plateau that led up to the four huge volcanoes that had formed the plateau with thousands of years of lava flows. The rim was partially collapsed, the southern offshoot caverns were just gone, and the main cavern was leaking air. Huge sheets of rock had fallen from the cavern ceiling and the whole cavern was at risk of collapse. Estimates of fatalities had doubled, and were still tentative. Families with missing members were refusing to evacuate, search and rescue teams were working frantically, the air pressure was being maintained at eighty percent of normal. When the reports started repeating, she turned away and got to work.
Xaero picked up the keys to the eighteen apartments, printed out subleases, and turned it all over to her mother, who was already calling Danca with a multipaged list.
At the office, she poked around a bit, then sent Raelphi and Elisse out to make notes of the empty rooms and plan out where the Imperial City staff could be put, however many of them there were, while Miss C'ank oversaw Facilities and Maintenance moving all of "her" group to a nice compact three office corner with an alcove for herself.
While the lower staff kept the big vid in the main conference room running all day, the Senior partners were too busy to take time for even occasional updates. When she made the rounds of their offices to inform them that she was preparing for the sudden arrival of the Imperial City staff she got a few relieved nods that someone else was dealing with it so they didn't have to, but more suggestions that she find something billable to do.