"861, this station is under GWE Security control. Why did you land near the lake?"
"For Chrissake I had to take a whiz," Cal said. "What in hell's so important they need grayskins—excuse me, GWE Security Department officers in Starswarm Station?"
"None of your business. 861, you're cleared to land in your regular area."
"Roger." Cal turned to Mike. "So what do I do now?"
"Set us down near the warehouse door. I've got a key."
"What about my money?"
"You'll get it."
Cal thought for a moment. "I can use it, but hell, I've got as much off you as they'd have let me keep out of that reward what with taxes and all the payola the grayskins want. You can pay me the rest when you get a chance." He held out his hand. "Good luck, Mike. Holy crap!" He pointed down at the warehouse lot. "There must be a dozen of those guys! Got their guns out too!"
"Copter 861, this is Starswarm Security. Land in the designated area."
"Take her up!" Mike ordered. "Move over, I'll drive."
"Mike—"
"I wasn't asking, Cal. Now move it."
"COPTER 861, this is Security. Land immediately or you will be shot down."
Mike pushed Cal out of the right-hand seat and took the controls. "If they get us, tell them I threatened you. But you better hide that money."
"Damn right I will," Cal said. He looked back, then shouted. "Mike, they're revving up a gunship back there!"
"Figures."
"So what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to set down and get the hell out into the bush," Mike said. He headed toward the centaur grove. Gwen had said they might be friendly, but she hadn't said why. And he had nowhere else to go. Maybe that was Kip's backpack. One of them, there were four all identical. "And you're going to surrender like the good law-abiding lad you are."
"You don't have to be nasty about it. Here they come. They're up. Holy crap! Rocket launch!"
Mike banked hard and dove until he was skimming a few feet above the lake. He turned off his previous course and headed directly into Strumbleberry Hill. "We'll just confuse them a little," he said.
"Missed. The rocket may not have been locked on—"
"Warning shot, probably didn't mean to hit us."
"Copter 861, that was your final warning. Land and surrender or be shot down. We now have a lock on your engines. Land or be shot down. This is your final warning."
"Mike, they got us, for God's sake."
"Yeah. Nothing to do but give up and bluff it out." He flipped the headset switch. "Security, this is 861. Cease firing. I am setting down at lakeside. Cease firing, I give up."
Chapter Thirty-Six
Boy, Are They Stupid. . .
MARTY Robbins and Diamond Lil lay in the scrub brush on a low hill near Starswarm Station and listened to Marty's stomach growl. Marty examined the compound with his binoculars. There didn't seem to be any way to get inside without being caught. Two gray-uniformed guards stood at the gate, and he could see more of them inside.
Both Kip and Marty wanted Lara to take the stupid plates to her father, but she wouldn't do it. Marty wasn't quite sure how she'd talked him into volunteering for the job, but she had. She and Kip went off downslope with all the food, and Marty started back up to the station. He'd managed to avoid the helicopters searching for him, but he couldn't figure out how to get into the station. The grayskins were everywhere. That didn't matter.
They'd catch him eventually. The important thing was to give the plates to Dr. Henderson before the grayskins took them away from him.
He fingered his pocket phone, looked at his watch, then reached over to scratch the dog's ears. "Three more hours," he told Diamond Lil. Her tail thumped against the ground. "I give it three hours, then I call Dad and let them come get me. Wonder what they'll do to me?"
It couldn't be much. He hadn't done anything. But the grayskins thought he had, and the way they operated that was good enough. There were places on Earth where the cops weren't always right, and his books said there were colonies set up that way, but Paradise wasn't one of them. He turned his binoculars toward the ruined bulldozer camp. Something had blown it up all right. The bulldozer was lying on its side and the prefab shelter was in ruins, one wall blown away. Marty grinned. They thought he'd done that, that he and Kip were smart enough to make that big a bomb and carry it, get outside the gate and plant it, get back in with nobody seeing them. "Boy, are they stupid," he said aloud.
There was the buzz of a helicopter in the distance. Marty wriggled farther under the scrub brush and carefully shielded the binoculars so the afternoon sun wouldn't flash off them. The chopper was coming in from the west and rapidly losing altitude. It looked like the regular supply chopper from Cisco.
Then it turned off course. For a moment Marty thought they'd seen him and were headed toward him, but it veered off, went low across the lake, and landed on the other side, between the lake and the centaur grove.
Two men got out. Marty's binoculars were just good enough to make him pretty sure one of them was Kip's Uncle Mike. If that was him, he was doing something odd—
"Lil, he's got one of those gourd things," Marty said. The dog snuggled next to him. "He sure as hell does," Marty said. One of the large gourds and several smaller ones. The big one looked a lot like an off-color version of the ones the centaurs brought up from the sea, but the small ones weren't like anything Marty had ever seen before.
"And here come the centaurs," he said. "That's Blaze—"
The centaurs trotted up to watch as Mike and the other man did whatever they were up to at the lake. They seemed both curious and watchful. "It's OK, Blaze," Marty mumbled to himself. "I can't make any more sense out of it than you do." Eventually the men got back into the helicopter, and the centaurs trotted away. Marty thought of running out where Mike could see him. That would be a way to get into the station. But before he could do that, the chopper lifted and was gone.
It wasn't gone long. As far as Marty could see, the chopper didn't land at all, just circled in and went low, then shot back up higher and came screaming back across the lake with another chopper chasing it.
Marty recognized the gray security gunship. A puff of smoke flared from the gunship, and a rocket shot out past the supply chopper. "Holy catfish, they're shooting at them." Now he really was scared.
Then it happened. The supply ship flew low across the lake, pulled up sharp, and landed not too far from Marty on his side of the lake, well away from where it had landed before. The gunship came down low over the lake, heading for the supply ship—
Something dark shot up out of the water and struck the gun-ship's rotor blades. The gunship tilted violently, and one of the blades broke. The chopper faltered, then fell twenty feet into the water. There was a violent thrashing in the water, then the chopper sank so quickly it almost seemed to be pulled under. The water roiled furiously and there were millions of bubbles.
Three gray-uniformed security men popped up to the surface. Their flak jackets hindered their swimming, but they didn't seem to be in any danger of drowning. "Doyle!" one of them shouted.
Marty got up and ran toward the supply helicopter. "Mr. Flynn!" he shouted. "Come on, Lil!"
One of the men in the water was screaming for help. "I can't dive with this goddam jacket on and Doyle's still in there! He's strapped in!"
"Mike, don't be stupid, it's a grayskin trick," the supply copter pilot said.
As Marty got to the supply chopper, a fourth man appeared on the surface of the lake. He was floating face up, and he wasn't moving. The other security men tried to swim toward him but they were hampered by their thick jackets. Marty pointed at the man. "Lil!" Marty shouted. "Bring him here, Lil!"
Diamond Lil dove into the lake and swam to the fourth man. She pulled him to shore as the other three security men swam in to wading distance.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Empty Holsters
MIKE Gallegher set the helicopte
r down well away from where he'd left the electronics box. They'd probably search the area eventually, but there was no point in making it easier for them. He and Cal climbed out of the supply chopper and held their hands up in surrender.
Mike didn't really see what happened next. One moment the gunship was sweeping in low over the lake, then about twenty meters offshore it seemed to run into something invisible. A rotor snapped off, and the gunship banked sharply, so that it was nearly on its side when it fell into the water. It sank like a stone. "Jesus," Cal said. "Did you see that?"
"See what?"
"I don't bloody know," Cal said. "Like—like something came out of the water at the chopper. Mike, there are four guys in there—"
"I know," Mike said.
"Shouldn't we do something?"
"Yeah—whoops, here's one up."
First one, then two more heads popped up out of the lake. One of the security troops was thrashing around trying to dive in his heavy buoyant jacket. "Doyle's down there," he shouted.
And what the hell should I do about that? Mike wondered. There was a voice behind him. "Mr. Flynn!" He turned to see Marty Robbins with one of Kip's dogs following him. That made no more sense than the mess with the helicopter, and to add to the confusion, there was a stir over near the centaur grove, and a line of centaurs was running out toward them.
The man in the water was shouting something else about Doyle, Cal said something about a trick, and Mike Gallegher wanted the world to stop while he had time to think, but that wasn't going to happen. He had just decided to give Cal his pistol while he went diving for the missing man when Doyle popped up to the surface, rising as if something pushed him up. Then the Robbins kid sent Diamond Lil out to pull Doyle in.
"Far enough," Mike shouted when the first security trooper got to wading depth. He showed his pistol. "Take off the flak jackets, and keep your hands where I can see them."
"I got no gun," the trooper said. "Lost it in the water—"
"Me too," another said.
"Yeah, sure," Mike said. "Take off the jackets and let's see."
It was true. Each man had an empty holster.
"How the hell did three trained security troops manage to every one of you lose his weapon?" Captain Gallegher demanded. He grinned to himself, remembering when asking such questions would have been part of his job. "Not that I'm complaining under the circumstances, but just what did happen? You. What's your name?"
"Stepper. Peter Stepper."
"You the pilot?"
"Yeah."
"OK, what happened?"
Stepper shook his head. "I don't know. Something hit us. Like a rocket—"
"I don't have any rockets in the supply ship," Cal said. Diamond Lil had pulled Doyle to the shallows, and Cal was hauling him the rest of the way out onshore.
"I know that," Stepper said. "Hell, I'd have seen it coming if you guys had done anything. All I know is something clobbered the rotor, and next thing I know we're down, and while I was down there it was like something held me under until it took my gun out of the holster, then it pushed me up out of the water."
"Same here," one of the others said.
"How's Doyle?" Stepper asked.
"Bad cut on the leg, and he's out cold," Cal said. "He's breathing and there's a pulse, but it don't look too good. I can deal with the bleeding, but the rest—"
"We got to get him to the Doc," Stepper said.
"Yeah, when I know what's happening. What held you under and took your pistol?"
"Damned if I know. But something did."
Mike turned to Marty Robbins. "And what's your story?"
"I ran off with Kip after the big explosion," Marty said. "And Lara. We were sure the grayskins would think we did it, so we ran. We've been hiding in a cave, and running all over the place to get away from these goons and now I'm supposed to bring some stuff to Dr. Henderson."
"Kip all right?"
"No," Marty said. "I mean, he's not hurt, but—Did you know he has a radio voice in his head?"
"What?" Cal demanded.
"I sort of knew it," Mike said. "I can guess the rest."
"Well, it's not there anymore," Marty said. "And Kip's all broke up about it. Gwen, he called it. His fairy godmother, and she's been with him all his life, and she's not there anymore, and he's really depressed. And Gwen said it was important that I get this stuff to Dr. Henderson. Important to everyone on the planet." He looked at the security men. "Gwen also told Kip it was important that this stuff gets to Henderson, but not the grayskins. That's what I was doing, hiding up on the hill there trying to figure out how to do that."
"And where's Kip now?"
"I don't know. He and Lara are still hiding out."
"Any way to call them?"
"No, they have their phone turned off."
Mike nodded. Knowing Kip, he would have arranged with Marty to turn the phone on at some preset time. Or would have when he was normal, and if Kip didn't think of it, Lara was smart enough to do it. No point in talking about that in front of the grayskins. "What is this stuff you're supposed to deliver?"
Marty looked dubious. "I was told to get it to Doc Henderson—"
"It's all right," Mike said. "You don't have to tell me. You have any ideas how to do it?"
"I have a phone," Marty said. "I thought I might call my father. Or Dr. Henderson. Only I thought the grayskins might be listening in."
"They probably are," Mike said. "But it's a good idea all the same. Come to that—" He took out his phone. "God knows they know where we are." He punched in the lab number.
"Henderson."
"Doc, this is Mike."
"Mike. Was that you in the helicopter that crashed? Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, Doc. Wasn't my chopper that went down, it was the gunship. Look, is Big Chief Grayskin listening in on this?"
"I suppose so," Dr. Henderson said.
"This is Lieutenant Fuller, Special Agent in Charge," a voice said.
"Good. Fuller, you listen. You too, Doc. Fuller, your chopper crashed. Your own troops will tell you I had nothing to do with it. I've got four of them here, and Doyle needs a doctor."
"What's wrong with him?" Fuller demanded.
"Banged up in the crash. Out cold, and breathing funny."
"So what are you going to do about it?"
"Parade your men over by the gate where I can see them, all of them, and I'll land at the lab. I'll go in the lab. You get Doyle and your other troops."
"No deal."
"What the hell's wrong with you, Fuller? I'm not going anywhere. There's a lot happening you don't understand, and it's time we got some of it straightened out."
"Lieutenant, as he says, what harm can it do?" Dr. Henderson asked. "Or have you persuaded yourself that you are in control of this situation?"
"I have my orders—"
"Yeah you do," Mike said. "But you're up to your neck in something a hell of a lot bigger than you think. We all are. Meanwhile your troop's breathing funny, you don't know what's going on, and we're all wasting time. Get your men the hell away from the lab."
"One condition," Fuller said. "You go in to see Henderson, I come in with you."
"OK by me," Mike said. "If Doc will have you."
"I suppose I have no choice," Dr. Henderson said.
"Good. We're on the way," Mike said. "I'll land when I see where your troops are."
PART SEVEN: Allegiances
Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
—Sir John Harington, Epigrams. Of Treason
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Entity Known as Gwen is no Longer Operative
LARA stumbled on a root and nearly fell. The trail down to the sea was steep, and the eastward-facing bluff was already in shadow. She caught herself and looked back at Kip. He was well behind her. "Kip, come on—"
"I'm coming."
"Kip, I know it's awful—"
"You can't k
now," Kip said. "She was my mother's—friend. And the only friend I had until I met you."
"Who was she?" Lara asked.
"I—you'll laugh."
"Kip, why in the world would I laugh about something this important?"
"She was a computer program," Kip said. "She seemed like a real person, but she said she was a program my mother—she said my mother created her. To watch out for me. And she did, and now she's dead, and, Lara, I know she was a computer program, but she was my friend, and I miss her."
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