Strings

by Dave Duncan

  He wanted to say his name, but his mouth was not moving very well. Everything else about him was moving—he was starting to shake. Hands and feet and elbows and chin—he was quivering all over, in all directions, and that was shameful. Cold, cold…

  “Zomb this one, too?” someone asked.

  “Maybe a little…Naw, don’t. It’d kill him, state he’s in.”

  “Jeez, he looks dangerous, sir!”

  They all laughed, and the noise hurt.

  Why blue? Not U.N. blue. His grandfather’s troops wore pale blue, sky blue, and this was darker, sort of royal blue, or navy blue. They wore a silver logo, but he couldn’t see it properly. He couldn’t see much…Someone had asked him a question, and he wasn’t sure of the words, so he just drooled.

  Then the man—he was a very short, tubby man—slapped Cedric’s face. The red sun exploded, the waves of nausea broke, and instantly Cedric puked, even more violently than before. The little man jumped back, screaming oaths, and there was some stifled laughter. Cold; the world was ice. Hands and feet were all ice. He shivered.

  “What’ve you got here?” The voice was new. Another man had arrived, a big brusque one, leading a large platoon.

  “It’s the old bag’s grandson, sir. The one who did the killing.”

  “Doesn’t look capable of stomping beetles, does he? Bring him along. One more hostage to put on trial later.”

  Dimly, while Cedric was trying to understand all those words, he saw Bagshaw being ordered to stand up and then told to go where a dark blue arm was pointing; and Bagshaw obediently slouched off in that direction without a murmur—and without his gun. That was not in character. That was scary enough to seep in around the blazing red pain. That meant zombie. Bagshaw would be a mindless husk for days—or forever, depending on the dose they had given him.

  The shoulder patches looked like a number: O1.

  Then Cedric was being hustled toward a massed plantation of golfies. Every step hurt. He wanted to die. He kept on remembering that crack noise. He was a killer! Maybe these people would take him away and hang him for murder. He thought he would rather be hanged than shut up somewhere for the rest of his life. Why O1?

  He would never see Alya again. But he would not be able to face her, anyway. What would a princess want with a murderer?

  Then he was being ordered into a golfie. It was good to sit down. He felt a cold click at his wrist. He peered, trying to make his eyes focus. His good hand had been cuffed to the rail. A man in dark blue climbed in on his left and said, “Whew! You stink!”

  “I barfed,” Cedric mumbled carefully.

  “I know that!”

  “And I think I peed my pants, too.”

  “At least.” The man did not sound very old. Cedric scrunched up his eyes, although they hurt, and somehow he squeezed out a less blurred picture. His companion was young and slight—but sitting next to someone in Cedric’s condition would be a job assigned to a junior. The golfie lurched forward, and the red pain burned again as Cedric’s head jerked, threatening to blow up and splatter burning brains everywhere. Crack?

  No, his neck had not broken. He rather wished it had. In fast convoy the golfie shot out the big door and raced along the dim corridor. It cornered, and Cedric’s two-ton head swayed again, with more of the terrible internal consequences. He swallowed horribly.

  “System?” Cedric mumbled. “It’s helping you?”

  The skinny guy chuckled. “Sure is.”

  Why would System be running all these golfies, working for the enemy? Who were the enemy? Again Cedric squinted down at the shoulder beside him. Not O1, he saw, but a round globe symbol and a big numeral 1.

  Oh, hell.

  The mist lifted a little. The kid was wearing jeans and a blue sweater, both patched, and a shiny helmet with the visor up.

  “Who are you guys?” Cedric asked.

  “We’re the Earth First Society,” the guard said, with a curiously juvenile pride.

  Another agony-filled corner, and then the convoy was racing along a brighter tunnel, a big one with loading docks along both sides.

  “What’re you doing?” Cedric muttered. He tried to hold himself as still as possible, but the golfie was swaying, and of course he was too tall to lean his head back against the headrest. Also, his knees were cramped and his left wrist was chained, which restricted his choices. He could not even raise that arm to speak into his wrist mike; but then he remembered that the bulls had taken that away. He reached around carefully with his free hand—which was a pain center all its own. Probably he had cracked a bone or two in there, but he managed to rip off the tape they had stuck over his earpatch. It made no difference—no one was trying to call him.

  “We’re going to stop you bastards before you pollute the world!”

  “Pollute? Stellar power doesn’t pollute.”

  “Infect, then. None of this planet stuff. We’ll keep the power, but no more exploring other worlds. That’s out!” He was almost shouting—a fanatic. Bagshaw, Cedric recalled, had not thought much of Earthfirsters.

  Cedric was going to ask how they had gotten in, but the answer was obvious, even to his bursting, aching head. There had been a traitor, probably Devlin. Grundy must have wormed or blackmailed some of System’s overrides out of Devlin, and he had brought the Earthfirsters along as a private backup in case Gran pulled some trick to outsmart him at the meeting, which of course she had done, and so Grundy’s last card had been played posthumously, or had played itself, and things were in one hell of a mess. Cedric had killed Grundy, and Bagshaw was a zombie, and where was Gran, anyway?

  Another sharp corner; another choked-back scream. But maybe the pain was not quite so bad, or maybe a guy could get used to anything, or maybe he had just remembered Alya and Tiber.

  “What’re you going to do?” Cedric asked.

  The youth crowed. “Take over completely. Blow up all the domes except Prometheus. Put the criminals on trial and then hang them. Shut down 4-I before it looses something worse on the world than it has already.” He was wild-eyed, flying high on something.

  “Such as?”

  “Such as Mexican Sweats, or Blue Rash.”

  That was bunk! Those diseases had nothing to do with the Institute. They were a result of too many unhealthy, undernourished people crammed into unsanitary camps, which meant too many bugs, and then some bug tried a new mutation and there was a worthwhile stock of people to spread it and support it until it got itself perfected. To blame that on Cainsville was crazy. Cedric had seen a special where Eccles—

  Oh, no! Think about Alya instead.

  Alya! Cedric felt panic. Had she gone yet? If she hadn’t, then he must warn her about these lunatics loose in Cainsville. Witless, childish jelly, sitting here whimpering because he had a headache! Bagshaw had been right—he would not have made much of a ranger.

  Control! He set his teeth.

  His left wrist was chained. The guard was on that side.

  A wrist mike was not necessary in a golfie, for it had its own comset.

  Cedric took a deep breath. “Code Arabian,” he said.

  System’s familiar twang sounded in his ear. “Acknowledged.”

  But absolutely nothing happened except that the guard yelled and twisted around to slap his hand over Cedric’s mouth. “You young bastard!” he shrilled, although he could not possibly be any older. “What’re you doing? What did that mean?”

  “Mmmph!” Cedric said, meaning that he could not breathe through his nose.

  “Institute shithead!” The kid was frightened. “I’ll shut you up!” He grabbed Cedric’s hair in his right hand, removed his left hand from Cedric’s mouth, and used it to punch him in the gut.

  It was a slow and clumsy move, and Cedric had time to knot up his muscles. The blow hurt, but it probably hurt him less than it hurt his assailant’s hand, for he yelped and fell back on the bench again. But the effect on Cedric’s headache was diabolic, which made him lose his temper.

&
nbsp; The guard has not thought to lower his visor. He was bent over, sucking his knuckles. Cedric rammed his left arm back. Had the chain not interfered, he might have broken his own elbow. As it was, the guard recoiled with a scream, and there were two bleeding noses on that cart.

  At that moment the golfie entered a wider corridor. Suddenly it had room to overtake, so it made a dramatic swing out of line and began racing toward the head of the column—hurtling past cart after cart of the enemy, who yelled in surprise at being passed, and then in anger when they saw the fight in progress. They began unslinging guns.

  Cedric had never fought no-hands-against-two before, but he was fairly sure that his best strategy would be to deliver everything he had as soon as he could. He jumped up and twisted around to lean on the front rail, held by his left hand underneath him, his broken right hand waving uselessly. He brought up his right foot and stamped the kid’s face just as he was straightening up from the last blow. Cedric swayed, steadied himself by planting that foot on his victim’s belly, and raised the other for another face shot. He found the guy’s chin and heaved. The golfie swayed. Cedric thought he would tip out. His left arm was taking all the strain. The guard was being bent backward over the headrest, scrabbling uselessly at Cedric’s legs, unable to reach high enough to do significant damage.

  Then he remembered his gun and reached for it. Oh, hell! Cedric closed his eyes and straightened his knee. Crack! He did not hear it—not really—but he knew he had done it again.

  With his right wrist and what was left of the strength of his left arm, Cedric hauled himself back into the golfie beside the slumped body. He thought he was going to pass out—his head, his hand, and blood all over him from his inevitable nose.

  He had done it again! And this time he had not been forced into it by hypnotic compulsion. He had just been trying to save himself from a beating.

  He was a killer.

  It was habit-forming.

  The golfie flashed by the head of the line with its motor screaming. When he had set up his emergency codes, he had thrown in everything he could think of, including maximum overrides. Code Arabian meant, “Take me to Princess Alya as fast as you can.” He had picked the word because the stud stallion at Meadowdale had been a Arabian. At the time, he had thought that funny.

  So Alya could not have left yet!

  The cart came to a corner and went around it in a hair-raising four-wheel drift. The dead body began to slip; Cedric grabbed at it instinctively, but he was too late, tangled by his manacle. It vanished over the side, and he hooked a foot just in time to stop the torchgun from sliding out, also.

  He caught a blurred glimpse of the wall hurtling by, flashing and smoking, and then it was gone also, before he had realized what it meant—the Earthfirsters had been firing at him. He ducked quickly, then raised his head to see. None of the following carts had reached the corner yet, but there was a long straight stretch ahead.

  The back of the golfie was smoking already. If they fired the tires, then almost certainly System’s emergency routines would override the override, and the cart would stop. The Earthfirsters would have seen the body. In a few seconds they would be coming round that corner, howling for blood.

  The 2048 Pacurb Firearm Association Junior Skeet Lasering Champion would have to show his stuff.

  Full combat gear was reflective, almost completely torchproof, but nobody was wearing full combat gear, not that he had seen. Grunting and cursing, he managed to pick up the gun with a right hand that was swelling like a balloon on a water tap.

  The trouble was that lasering needed steady hands. It was all steady hands, Ben had said often enough. No wind correction to make, no recoil, but a laser was never powerful enough to do serious damage in less than a second or two—except in an eye shot, of course—and that meant it had to be held on target when the target reacted. Cedric knew which way a gopher jumped when it felt itself go on fire, or a magpie, and once he had even drilled a coyote, mostly by luck. Standard practice skeets had to be held in the sights for a second and half before they detonated.

  Of course, he could not hope to do much one-handed, twisted around almost inside out, and firing backward from a leaping, careering, screaming golfie. He was not even sure his right hand was capable of squeezing the trigger.

  The torch was a Winchester Thor Four, and he had never seen one before, let alone fired one. Still…

  He twisted around, almost inside out, keeping down as much as he could, his chained left arm stretched out uselessly behind him, right arm resting on the headrest, aiming back along the corridor. He flicked off the safety, wincing at the pain in his hand. He took a long, deep breath and held it.

  The first golfie hurtled into view, canted on two wheels and looking as though it, also, had been booted up to some highest override velocity. As it came out of the curve, both men jumped to their feet and aimed.

  They had left their visors up! He saw their eyes in the scope, and the chance was irresistible—a single fast pass, burning the right eye of the one on the right and looping over to catch the left eye of the other. A couple of milliseconds was enough on an eye shot. He had done it before he knew he had started. Both men screamed and reeled and fell out. Their golfie jammed on its brakes.

  Then the second cart appeared also, with one man already on his feet and aiming. He had his visor down, but Cedric saw a tiny spot of bare flesh below it and fired. That was tricky—the visor could have reflected his own beam back at him, but his aim held true, and he kept the crosshairs dead on target as the man obligingly toppled straight back, his gullet starting to blacken and smoke. That would give him another hole to whistle through. Then his cart swerved to avoid the bodies, and he also fell free.

  Not bad at all, champ!

  The third cart gave him a tricky eye shot, and after that the range was too great; but the corridor was jammed with stalled golfies and writhing bodies; the air full of shouts and the screech of tires. No wonder Bagshaw had not thought much of Earthfirsters.

  Cedric’s cart cornered again, and he lost sight of the pursuit. He would draw ahead anyway, probably, because there was only one of him in the golfie, and the enemy would have to clear the road. Having a good day, aren’t we? Two dead, three blinded, one wounded…His insides heaved, and he told them sternly to behave.

  Of course, the chase was far from over, for now there was blood on the scoreboard. At least some of the intruders would certainly tell System to take them to Cedric, just as he had ordered that he be taken to Alya. Or they might just follow his trail, for the back of his golfie was still smoking, and there was much worse smoke streaming out from the motor vents, also. The engine was screaming like a maniac. Maybe he should not be leading the danger to Alya like this.

  Or maybe he could interfere? “By what authority are you obeying the visitors’ orders?”

  The golfie skittered around another corner, almost tipping him out and reminding him that he had a historically significant headache. “Data confidential,” it said smugly.

  “Override.”

  “Data confidential.”

  So much for that idea—the real deputy directors had higher authority than Cedric’s Grade One. But obviously the traitor had been of high grade, and therefore Devlin.

  Then Cedric yelped as the cart dived through a still-opening door and went clattering down a flight of stairs. He whimpered as his headache came thundering back, blindingly. Then, mercifully, he was on the flat again, and his wits began to seep back.

  He wondered how literally his instructions would be obeyed. Suppose Alya were in a bathtub?

  “Call to Dr. Fish.”

  “Dr. Fish is not presently accepting calls.”

  “Does he know about the Earthfirster invasion?”

  “Data confidential.”

  “I must report an emergency!”

  “Emergency calls are not being accepted at this time.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of an emergency.”

&n
bsp; “Arrrggh!”

  “Message not understood.”

  Then he yelped again and hung on tight as the cart made a series of fast bends, zipping through circular openings where great armored doors stood open. Cedric peered back incredulously. Surely that had been a decon chamber? He had not recognized it, but there must be dozens of them, several for each dome.

  Then the golfie balked like a spooked pony, almost throwing him. Another of the massive armored ports was swinging open. He had no bubble suit on! He could not believe that his authority would overrule standard quarantine regulations—he would be surprised if even Gran could do that.

  With smoke still streaming from its motor, the golfie lurched forward again, into the gloomy vastness of a transmensor dome. It snapped on headlights—for others’ benefit, surely—and purred decorously down the slope, angling around to the right. Cedric heard the door thump shut behind him. Of course the transmensor was not in use. There were no cranes or gantries in evidence, so most likely he was in Bering Dome. He knew all the others, either firsthand or on holo.

  Then he registered the people, lots of people, hundreds of them. The center was packed with bedding and canvas fences.

  His lights had attracted attention. People were scrambling to their feet in dozens and scores, many of them leaping and jumping like kids. In fact, many of them were kids. A group ran forward to meet him; the golfie slowed and beeped angrily at them. That attracted more attention. Voices were shouting. Some of them seemed to be pointing out that his cart was on fire. Alya must be somewhere in the crowd.

  “Mister, you’re on fire!” The cry echoed back and forth as he rolled on through a gathering crowd of spectators. The golfie slowed even more and made angrier noises at them. Then it shuddered, gasped, and jerked to a stop. It hissed and crackled for a moment, turned out its lights and died. Smoke continued to curl upward.

  “System, acknowledge!”

  Silence.

  A wizened old man in a white bed sheet and a turban stepped forward and said something urgent, pointing at the smoke.

  “Yes, I know,” Cedric said. “Do you have a bucket of water handy?” He held up his left wrist and rattled his chain, to show why he was not dismounting. The spectators muttered among themselves, rubbing sleep-blurred eyes. They were crowded tightly in a dense wall, staying warily back from the burning cart. Its power supply would be flywheels running in hydrogen, and if those got loose, they could create mayhem all across the dome. He coughed as the smoke billowed back at him. Alya? He needed Alya.