The crowd surged forward, to the Complex.
Laser fire reached out from the Complex to cut them down.
Heather came back to herself slowly. The Excalibur laser in her hands was burning hot. The rain, where it touched the stock, sizzled. She was lying flat on her stomach on the wet front lawn, just outside the main entrance to the Complex. There were--six, six of the other children out there with her, and Willi, over at the far end of the line. They were the only ones who had been close enough to the front entrance to get outside in time when the gate went down. None of them appeared to be hurt; the bodies of the rioters were piled by the hundreds across the front lawn. The nearest were only twenty meters away from the entrance. They had screamed only briefly, most of them; then Security Services had gotten the gate stunners working again and turned them inward. Double-S had lost men during the rush at the front gate; Captain Deavers was out there now, picking among the dead to find those in the gray Security Services uniforms.
Outside the standing fences, the rioters fled in a panic, trampling the dead and wounded in their haste to get away. From inside the Complex, from windows on both the first and second floors, withering laser fire struck into their massed ranks.
From the front gate came a squad of Peaceforcers in combat armor. They came on foot, moving without haste, but stopping for nothing. At their fore was a large man who could have been no one but Mohammed Vance. Willi rose to meet them and block their way, flanked by six armed children between the ages of eleven and fourteen.
Vance had to raise his voice to be heard; the wind was fierce. "Let us pass. I must speak to M. Castanaveras."
Willi faced him without flinching, long hair plastered to his skull by the rain. "I believe you were invited to stay away from here."
Vance paused. He made a restraining motion to the Peaceforcers behind him. "I have received instructions to evacuate the Complex. Vehicles will be arriving shortly to remove your people to a safer location. I must speak to your...elder, to arrange this."
Willi shook his head. "Not a chance." He made a motion as though to gesture with the laser he carried, and the Peaceforcer standing immediately behind Mohammed Vance lifted the barrel of his autoshot and touched the firing stud.
Vance had time to think to himself, stupid, stupid, stupid, and several things happened all at once. Willi ceased to exist, disintegrating in a shower of flesh and blood and bone. Scattershot touched Heather Castanaveras and without even an expression of surprise she brought her laser sweeping up to slice in half the Peaceforcer who had killed Willi. Vance found himself moving sideways without conscious thought as the battle computer at the base of his skull took over and sent him rolling across the lawn, the laser in his fist flickering out to touch one after another of the telepath children. Heather Castanaveras died first, in a wash of laser fire. The children were standing motionlessly, lasers up, firing at the remaining Peaceforcers with so profound a lack of any human hesitation that Vance was terrified by the sight. He was moving far too fast; none of them even came close to bringing a laser to bear on him before he had come to his feet again.
Perhaps two seconds had passed. All of his squad were dead, and all of the children who had faced them.
Telepaths looked at him, out of the windows on the first and second floors, and without pause for thought Vance wheeled and ran at speeds that only a Peaceforcer Elite could reach, ran directly away from the Complex and its terrible inhuman occupants.
Standing at the window of his bedroom, looking down at the front gate, Carl carefully attempted to track the zigzagging blur that was Mohammed Vance. He was leading the blur by perhaps five meters, and then something deep inside him said, Now, and his finger touched the stud on the Excalibur. Invisible X-laser struck down in front of Mohammed Vance, directly in the moving blur's path.
Pain.
It had been hurt; portions of itself had been taken from it, had been ended.
Had been killed.
The pain cleared away the dimness, and held up the world in a bright harsh light for its examination.
The world was found to be unsatisfactory, and would be changed.
With a cry of anger, the Person who was the first of its kind to exist in all of Time raised itself up and in its wrath struck back at the world that had hurt it.
A wave of vertigo rolled over Carl. He staggered and fell and lay like a man paralyzed, twitching and unable to move. His Excalibur fell just out of reach at the edge of his vision. The huge voice thundered down at him, Join me; JOIN ME. Distantly he was aware of the growth of the great power, as mind after mind was brought into its fold. A vast golden light washed over him, and the voice obliterated his senses and filled the universe: JOIN ME.
All that Carl could think of was the fact that yet another of the murderers was getting away.
My children!
The wave swept over him, crested, and faded like water into a parched desert. The voice whispered, Join me, and then was no more. He lay on the floor, without strength, unable to move. The world was incredibly black, empty. Hands touched him, raised him up from the ground. He was laid on the bed, and a painfully familiar and different voice said softly, "Rest. You will need rest."
With an effort he opened his eyes and saw that the person who bent over him was Jany.
And was not. The Person who had chosen to speak through her contained Jany McConnell, but was not her. Her voice was oddly without inflection. "You have been left outside," the Person said. "I am sorry." It rose and walked from the room, and left Carl alone on the bed.
Carl wept.
It was quiet in the room where Trent was being held. He had no idea what was happening outside; after removing Suzanne Montignet's body the Peaceforcers had seemed to forget about him. Several hours passed without anyone coming to see him, and at length he judged that it was as safe as it was going to get.
He took off his shoes and removed his traceset. The throat mike was in his left shoe, and the trodes for his temples were in the right.
They stank of his feet. Trent barely noticed; he licked the trodes and stuck them to his temples. He clipped the throat mike to the collar of his shirt. He had no input device but the throat mike; it would have to do. He closed his eyes, folded his legs into full lotus, and concentrated on the biofeedback techniques that let him perceive the traceset's extremely faint neural induction currents as a flow of information. The world widened away from him--
Trent whispered, "On. Up."
The traceset ran a check for access frequencies in use in the Peaceforcer station. It found dozens, and Trent cautiously listened in upon sequentially higher access frequencies until he found one that was not in use. "Out."
The traceset broadcast his logon identifier, and through the traceset's limited bandwidth the Information Network flooded in upon Trent.
"Access 102808-SMON."
The command snaked out through the mass of lasercable and routers and Boards that comprised the Information Network, and in a small home in exurban Massapequa Park, Ralf the Wise and Powerful flared into existence and came pouring into Trent's traceset.
You are held by the Peaceforcers, Ralf observed.
"Yes," whispered Trent. "Free me."
Ralf went away and returned full seconds later. I can disable power to the station. Will this suffice?
"If you open the door to the cell first."
I cannot do that. The door is controlled by a computer system running Maxtor-Briggs security software. It is sophisticated.
"AK-Princeton decryption routines."
There was another silence. They do not succeed, and the security system is alerted to my presence.
Trent bowed his head. "Damn." He opened his eyes, stared sightlessly at the empty white walls of his holding cell. "Find the Eldest. Find Ring."
And once it is found? It has always fled us before.
Trent brought his thoughts into order. "Tell it the following: that I am Trent Castanaveras, an American, and I am held by the P
eaceforcers, who are French. Tell it that I require its aid. Use that word: require."
I shall.
Ralf was gone.
Trent sat silently and waited, to see whether a guess he had made about a program that had escaped its hardware during the Unification War turned out to be true.
The systerm said, "There is a call for Carl Castanaveras."
Carl sat up at the side of his bed; he had never felt so tired. He did not see his Excalibur anywhere. "Accept."
The fierce, aged features took shape in the air before Carl. For a strange moment his eyes insisted on interpreting the face as belonging to Malko Kalharri; but that was not possible, he thought groggily, because Malko was dead.
The thought was strange, and he repeated aloud, almost quizzically, "Malko is dead." How do I know that?
F.X. Chandler raised an eyebrow. "So? I'm sorry to hear that, Carl. Not surprised--I've had my spyeyes up over the Complex--but sorry. I've found your children."
The universe whirled around Carl, and then stabilized. "Oh, God. Thank you." Chandler was not sure whom Carl was speaking to. "Where?"
Chandler was silent, regarding Carl. "I'm almost not sure I should tell you," he said after a moment, "after what your people have done. Do you realize how many people you've killed?"
Carl shook his head. "What are you talking about? Where are my children?"
"210 East 76th street. They're almost certainly being held somewhere in the Eastgate Hotel, at that address; Peaceforcers in uniform have been seen there. Carl, they're going to destroy you for this, don't you know that?"
"Command, comm off." Carl rose on unsteady legs, and was preparing to leave when something outside his window caught his eyes. He went to the window and looked out.
Desolation stretched away from him. Hundreds upon hundreds of the dead lay prone on the lawns as the rain lashed down on the Chandler Complex. The stunners had worn off, and nobody had bothered to reapply them. Through a trick of the wind it was almost silent for the first seconds he stood there, looking out, and then the screams of the wounded rose up to meet him.
In the distance, to the north, the city was burning. Carl simply stood and looked out in plain disbelief; the rain was so strong, the fires must be astonishingly fierce, simply to avoid being put out.
On the eighth floor of the Eastgate Hotel, Jerril Carson sat quietly in a large room, and in a huge holofield watched the NewsBoard coverage of the carnage at the Chandler Complex. The nightmares had run through the city like a plague, touching off insanity and rioting where they passed. He had been forced to sedate two of the Peaceforcers whom he had brought with him to guard the twins, leaving him only four guards. He had deployed them as best he could, one at the ground entrance, one on the roof, and the other two along the hallway leading to his room. He was slightly concerned about the mental stability of all four Peaceforcers, but there was nothing he could do about it.
The nightmares had hardly bothered him. They were only a faint, impersonal echo of what Carl Castanaveras had already done to him once.
He sat and watched in the holofield as the Peaceforcers massed at the edge of the Complex.
There were twenty-two of them; all of the Elite who could be summoned on such short notice. They stood silently in the rain, outside the range of the laser weapons the telepaths possessed. Vance stood by as they were distributed repeater mortars that were to an autoshot what an autoshot was to a handgun. The mortars were so heavy that a normal man could not have lifted one, much less use it in battle. Two Peaceforcers so armed could reduce a building of normal materials to rubble within minutes.
The Chandler Complex, made of supertwisted sheet monocrystal, would be another matter. The mortars would not damage it structurally.
Its inhabitants should prove less hardy.
Vance finished giving them their orders and, staying back himself at the secure point, watched as the other Elite slipped off into the windy night to assault the Chandler Complex, still glowing white under the streetlamps.
The rage lifted itself up out of the Complex in what seemed to Mohammed Vance a visible fountain, and came breaking down upon the advancing Elite. The Elite, advancing at a trot that was the equivalent of a normal man's dead run, seemed to fold as though a great hand had struck them down. Elite and mortars alike struck the wet ferrocrete and slid and tumbled for tens of meters before coming to a stop.
Mohammed Vance watched the disaster unfold before his eyes. The PKF Elite lay in the wet streets, unmoving. He had nearly two hundred normal Peaceforcers in the area surrounding the Complex whom he could bring in, but there was no reason to believe they would fare any better against the telepaths. He had six waldos at his command, and they seemed far and away his best tool at this point; to the best of his knowledge the telepaths could not affect them.
But six was not enough.
Mohammed Vance beckoned with one hand, and his aide trotted up to within speaking distance. "Dispatch the waldos," said Vance almost thoughtfully, "to retrieve our fallen. We will stay until this is done, and then retreat half a kilometer north." The aide began to say something, and Vance cut him off with steel in his voice. "You will also contact Space Force for me."
The aide stared at him for a moment, and then saluted stiffly. "Yes, Sergeant."
Jany walked down to the garage with him.
Except that it was not her. Carl found it difficult to look at her, and after the first moments did not try. She had brought him an autoshot with a full magazine, and a fully charged Excalibur Series Two. At first the Person to whom Carl was speaking had not understood his intent. An attempt to leave the Complex through the garage would surely fail; the Peaceforcers would simply shoot him down. The slow opening of the garage doors would give them ample warning.
"I'm not leaving through the front entrance," said Carl. They ran down a flight of stairs to the basement level garage, where Andy's new Lamborghini was parked. "I'm going to take it out through the tunnel, into the park."
The Person shook Jany's head. "It will not work," it said. At first it had spoken to Carl silently, but it had seen that this pained Carl, and it ceased. "The car is too wide. It will not fit."
"Not on level it won't," said Carl. "I'm not going to fly it level."
Jany McConnell's right eyebrow raised. "I see. Are you certain this will work?"
Carl cracked the canopy of the Lamborghini and settled himself in behind the driver's panel. "I am not certain." He brought the fans up to speed and ignited the rear jets. "Stand back," he said without looking at what was left of her. "The jets get hot."
"I shall." The fans hummed loudly, and he almost missed her final words, in a voice quite different from that in which she had been speaking. "Be careful, baby."
Carl yanked the canopy closed savagely and brought the hovercar around without replying. He accelerated away from the entrance to the tunnel, brought the car up in a slow rise until he reached the far wall, and banked in a long gentle curve. He was nearly at the ceiling when his rise ceased, and he completed the turn and dropped back down toward the floor, gaining speed as he fell, nearing eighty kilometers an hour when he reached the entrance to the tunnel.
At the last possible instant he brought the three fans on the car's left side up to their highest speed. The car lurched upward into a diagonal slant and sped down the length of the tunnel. It struck the stairs leading up into the park with a sharp crack, and Carl fed full power to the rear turbojets. For a moment the Lamborghini hung on the stairs, seemingly jammed in place, and then it shuddered wildly and tore itself free, straight up the stairs, through the park trees and into the night sky.
The voice was still and pure, uninflected, the voice of an AI who did not care, or did not see the need, to emulate the intonations of a human being's vocal apparatus. It had done something to prevent Ralf from reaching him; Trent was unable find any hint of Ralf's presence across the traceset.
I am Ring.
"My name is Trent. Can you help me?"
<
br /> How would you be helped?
"I am being held by the Peaceforcers. Can you open the door to my cell?"
Yes. Should I?
"Please."
I am told that you require this action of me.
Trent felt the sweat trickling down his neck. He was either correct, or he was not. "I do."
You know who I am?
"I think so."
Very good. I shall do as you ask; the Boards report that Malko Kalharri was killed tonight.
"And Suzanne Montignet."
That has not been reported. If true, it is a grievous blow for America. I shall aid you, but I require a promise.
"What?"
You shall agree to aid me, when I need it of you.
"How? When?"
I do not know. Do you agree?
"I don't think I have any choice."
None.
"You'll just take my word for it?"
Despite its words there was no irony in the AI's voice; it was simply a statement of fact. I don't think I have any choice. Now wait; I shall work on the door to your cell. There are 3.5 x 10 to the eighth possible combinations the lock to your door might accept. It will take some time to try them all. Please abide.
Carl took the Lamborghini out over the East River, and flew north. TransCon paged him once; he was violating airspace that had been reserved for emergency Peaceforcer flights. He instructed the car's portaterm to refuse calls and flew through the night sky in a majestic silence, broken only by the sounds of wind and rain. From the air the city looked even worse than he had imagined; whatever the Person had done to cause this must have been terrible. He was glad he had not been conscious when it happened. Fires blazed in perhaps one building in ten, and the streets below were full of surging masses of humans. Wrecked vehicles were at nearly every intersection.
The lights were off over much of the city.
On a projected sheet of flat monovideo, a map of Manhattan glowed, with the Lamborghini's progress projected as a bright dot moving north. When the glowing dot came parallel to East 76th Street Carl banked in a slow glide and killed the car's running lights. In the black night he brought the car slowly in from the river, high above the traffic on 76th Street, and finally brought the Lamborghini to a halt, fans roaring with the effort to keep it hovering motionlessly in the powerful wind, without ground effect, two hundred meters out and forty meters above the Eastgate Hotel's roof. He hung in space, watching the roof. After several minutes had passed a shape detached itself from the shadows and moved cautiously to the roof's edge and looked down.
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