Strings

by Dave Duncan

  “Cedric!” A youngster squeezed through the throng of adults and ran forward. He was chubby and oriental, and his grin was as wide as a sunrise. “You’re on fire, you know? Phew! What did you fall into?”

  “Gavin! Wong Gavin!” Cedric gaped at the boy. That certainly was Gavin’s grin. Gavin! Cheung’s clone! Cedric looked around at the crowd and then back to Gavin. “How’d you get here?”

  “You’re on fire, Cedric—did you know that?”

  “Yes. I’m also tethered.”

  Gavin frowned, then stepped closer. “I can fix that!” he said, and began unscrewing one of the knurled knobs that held the ends of the handrail.

  “Oh!” Cedric said, feeling extremely foolish. “Tell me how you got here. Are the others here?” His head still hurt.

  Gavin tried to reply, but he was drowned out as more voices began shouting “Cedric!”

  Lew and Jackie and Tim and Bev—they all came popping out of the crowd like gophers out of burrows, some even wriggling through between adult legs. They shouted and laughed at seeing him, they jumped up and down, and they all wanted to hug him until they got close, and then they all told him he didn’t smell good; but by then Gavin had unfastened the rail and Cedric was free. He left the smoking golfie, taking the Winchester with him. He shouted at everyone to stand farther back; he reached out to ruffle hair on small heads, touch hands with adolescents. The crowd of brown-faced adults in bed sheets was being pushed back, muttering, by the influx of children. Cedric had a lump in his throat, and the smoke had made his eyes prickle. Meadowdale—looted! The kids were not going to be butchered after all.

  “Is Ben here? Or Madge?” he demanded.

  A chorus of voices said no, they weren’t—all the kids and none of the adults. He was glad. Apparently the older ones were in charge—Sheila and Sue and Roger—and then Sue herself appeared with a howling baby on each arm, and she was obviously very, very relieved to see Cedric.

  “The day after you left!” she shouted over the racket. “We were raided—rounded up!”

  “Who by?” It hurt to shout.

  “Men in red. 4-I men.”

  Gran! That must be what Cheung had meant when…

  Crowds were no obstacle for Cedric. Over heads he saw a swirl approaching and recognized high-piled black hair. He plunged forward to greet her, spectators retreating rapidly out of his way.

  “Alya!”

  “Darling!”

  “Hold it!” he said, raising a warning hand. “I’m not very sanitary.”

  “So what!” She looked just as happy to see him as he was to see her. “I stink of baby!” She leaned over the particular baby she was clutching and they kissed briefly; but he noticed that she wrinkled her nose and backed away a couple of steps afterward. “There are dozens of these little tykes here…” She stared up at Cedric blankly. “You look awful! You’re white as death. What’s wrong?”

  “Lots,” he said, knowing suddenly how beat he was. He was reeling. “But all the Meadowdale kids are here!”

  Obviously Alya felt as he did—her smile would have melted granite. “And not only Meadowdale! At least a dozen others. Two lots at least are from Neururb, and a lot of brown faces—I haven’t placed them all yet. We should have guessed—your grandmother couldn’t just threaten exposure, or all the—” She stopped, conscious of the large audience of big-eared children. “Or she might have provoked what she wanted to prevent?”

  He nodded—early harvest, kill the evidence.

  “So she just sent her army and picked them up!” Alya added triumphantly.

  Maybe Gran was not quite so bad, then. He would have to think about that when he got his head glued together. Meanwhile he desperately wanted to take Alya in his arms, but the open space around him was evidence of how little he inspired intimacy. He would have liked to lie down, too; even more, sleep for a month…

  “So by the time she was lampooning you at the press conference,” Alya said, “her troops were already moving in—all over the place. She must have been planning this for years!”

  “And—the others?” He gestured at the characters in white.

  “Refugees. From Banzarak, and Zaire, I think. And Bangladesh.”

  But Cedric was staring at the two kids who had pushed in beside her. One was adolescent, maybe sixteen, the other a couple of years younger. They both had shaggy ochre hair and freckles, and they were skinny—and both obviously tall for their ages. They were glaring back at him with very resentful expressions.

  Alya noticed his gaze and bit her lip. “This is Oswald,” she said. “And this is Alfred. The one strangling the guitar over there somewhere is Harold—he’s about seventeen.” She smiled again, much less certainly, and indicated the baby. “And this one is Bert. I think that’s short for Egbert, but I’ll stick to Bert. He looks like he’s another of you, darling. Guys—this one’s Cedric.”

  It was too much. For moments that seemed like hours, Cedric’s brain could do nothing except register overload. Clones! How many clones had Hastings wanted? But as he stared at them—at his own younger selves—he saw that they didn’t really look like Hastings Willoughby at all. The old man had great flappy ears, and neither he nor these youngsters had. He remembered Bagshaw saying something about ears.

  “There may be others,” Alya said. “I haven’t had time to—”

  A skinny blond boy of around eight had emerged from somewhere to stare up at Alfred with a very puzzled expression.

  “Why?” Cedric whispered. “What’s been going on? Who am I?”

  Suddenly the whole dome began to brighten. Then he saw heads turning, and he swung around to see what they had seen. The door he had entered by had opened again, and golfie head-lights were pouring through it, but it was overhead spots coming on that were making the place lighter. The Earthfirsters had taken control of the dome.

  Between Gavin and Alya and all his own clones, he had forgotten the pursuit. He wailed. “Quick! Your mike! Give me your mike!”

  “I haven’t got one,” Alya said, frowning. “I’ve been trapped in here for over an hour.”

  He wanted to ball his fists in fury, but the right one hurt too much. “I need a com! Any com!”

  “Cedric, dear? Who are all these men? Bulls? Blue?”

  Golfies were still streaming into the dome, the whole line heading straight for Cedric—but that might have been accidental. The ceiling spots were up to full, merciless brilliance.

  “They’re Earthfirsters. They’ve invaded—killed off the Institute’s bulls and a lot of others. And at the moment they’re after me!”

  “What? Why?”

  “I killed one of them. And wounded four others. And I also killed the president of BEST. And I want a mike!”

  Alya gave him a strange look. “Do you think anyone would refuse you after that?” she asked. “Nobody here has a wrist mike. There are coms by most of the doors, but they aren’t working. No response. I was expecting Baker to come for me, but he hasn’t.”

  Cedric sank to his knees to be less conspicuous. He did not want to die yet.

  “Use the mike on your golfie?” Alya said, puzzled.

  “I can’t. It’s dead.”

  “Oh.” She adjusted the baby and gazed over toward the army of golfies. “Lots of mikes there.”

  “They’ll shoot me on sight!” Cedric yelled. “How come you’re not worried?”

  Alya gasped. “I hadn’t—oh, Cedric! You’re in danger?”

  “Danger? All those hundreds of men after me, wanting my blood, and you ask if I’m in danger?”

  She shook her head, puzzled. “I was worried sick until a few minutes before you arrived—then I felt better. Oh, darling! I thought you were important!”

  Glaring up from his knees, smelling so bad that he sickened himself, and hurting in numerous places, Cedric did not feel very dignified. “I’m important to me!”

  “I didn’t mean that! I mean, why aren’t I worried about you?” She looked idiotically happy.
>
  “Are you worried about anything right now?”

  She shook her head, astounded at the realization. “No! I should be, shouldn’t I?”

  Nothing but her damned intuition would ever worry Alya, and it obviously was not bothering her at the moment.

  The crowd had begun to move, shimmying around him, people backing up. With a stupendous effort, Cedric rose to a crouch, feeling the dome sway around him. He looked cautiously between heads. The golfies had spread out abreast in line to herd the crowd before them. The occupants were standing up, peering around, and they had their guns ready. If shooting started, then all sorts of kids and women were going to get hurt. He ought to give himself up and prevent further bloodshed.

  “Alya!” The voice was familiar. “What’s going on?”

  Cedric looked around and it was like seeing a mirror—himself in a blue poncho with a guitar round his neck. The newcomer gaped back at him.

  “This is Cedric,” Alya said. “Dear, this is Harold.”

  “Get your head down!” Cedric shouted.

  Eyes still wide, Harold drooped into a crouch to match his.

  Cedric turned back to study the Earthfirsters. They were still coming slowly, herding the crowd back against the central railing. There was no doubt he was trapped. And all he needed was a mike, and the only mikes around were on those golfies. But before he could get within shouting distance, he would be burned down…

  The crowd was backing faster, knocking over fences and trampling bedding. Children were weeping, women wailing, men yelling in nervous anger.

  “Darling?” Alya said, sounding worried at last. “What can we do?”

  “If I only had a mike! I’ve got codes set up!”

  “Tell me!” she shouted, adjusting her grip on Bert, who was starting to squirm. “I can get close enough!”

  “No good! Wouldn’t work for you.” Why had he been so stupid as to make the codes voice specific? And what code would save him now? He had prepared one to turn off lights—but the Earthfirsters could make light with their torches, and people would get trampled in the panic. He had a code to call Frazer Franklin—God knows why he had thought he might need that one. He had one to call Fish, but Fish wasn’t accepting calls. And one to—

  He grabbed Alya’s arm, almost causing her to drop Egbert. “Tiber!” he shouted. “Is the window still open?”

  “I think so.”

  “Is it Class One?”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  But that didn’t solve the problem.

  “If I had a mike, I could get us there!” Maybe—it was a hell of a long shot.

  “Tell me, then!” she repeated angrily.

  “No good—it has to be my voice!”

  “Your voice?” Alya swung around to the about-sixteen-year-old version of Cedric. “Oswald! You’ll do it, won’t you?”

  “Do what, Alya?” the kid asked nervously.

  “That’s it!” Cedric shouted, so loud he made his own head rattle.

  The crowd had stopped moving, and the Earthfirster leader was bellowing, trying to make himself heard over the racket.

  “Go forward, close as you can to a golfie. Then just yell, ‘Code jumper!’ Got it? System’ll think you’re me!”

  The kid nodded and grinned Cedric’s grin back at him. “‘Code jumper’?” He squeezed off into the crowd. He was younger and shorter and dressed differently—he would be safe enough.

  “Me, too?” Harold demanded nervously. “Should I try?”

  “No, you’re too tall!” Cedric realized that he had almost straightened up. He stopped again apprehensively.

  “How about me?” Alfred squeaked, in treble.

  Cedric and Alya said “No!” together.

  A firearm cracked loudly, and a nasty sound of ricochet whined off into sudden silence. The crowd seemed to hold its breath.

  “Hubbard!” the Earthfirster leader roared. “Come out, Hubbard!”

  Silence. Cedric glanced guiltily around him. He was a pied piper, surrounded by youngsters. What sort of a coward would hide among children?

  “Hubbard! We know you’re in there. Come out or we start firing.”

  And somewhere a voice exactly like Cedric’s yelled, “Code jumper!”

  Nothing happened. System did not acknowledge. Cedric sank to his knees. It was all over, then—he had played his last card. Code jumper meant, “Get me to Tiber as fast as possible.” But he had never seriously believed that his authority was high enough to mess with the transmensor. Maybe the window had closed by then anyway. Maybe it was open at another dome and people were using it.

  Which would mean a small delay while System closed the window at that dome and opened it here, in Bering…

  And then System did just that. Air pressure equalized with a clap of thunder that battered every eardrum in the dome. Daylight blazed up from the pit and a shower of golden leaves and butterflies swirled high in the blast. The tops of trees swayed within the central railing.

  For a moment there was panic. The whole crowd spun around to see, and Hubbard Cedric lurched to his feet and ran, crouching to disguise his height, shoving and elbowing his way through, throwing people aside in his haste. He fell against the rail, and right below him was a placid forest stream. The water looked deep, and it was only two or three meters down.

  Cedric vaulted over—and landed in Tiber with a resounding splash.

  26

  Tiber, Day 8

  THEY HAD NAMED the city Rome. It would be the capital of the world for at least as long as the string lasted, and the string was showing no signs of ending—each window was longer than the one before. Unless some evil-minded star came blundering by, the string might well survive long enough to make Tiber the Institute’s greatest success.

  Meanwhile Rome was a hopeless sprawl of Quonset huts and tents along the bare floor of the valley, stripped of the virgin woods that had once adorned it. Streets were either dust, or mud, or both, many still full of tree roots. A ditcher was laying water-lines and sewers. Away from the river, the shacks soon dwindled to animal sheds and lumber piles, until on its outskirts the town faded off into barns and airplane runways, barbed-wire fences and supply dumps. Already, with only three windows gone by, the supply dumps were huge. One flat patch of churned mud had been set aside for the window, whenever it was open. Someday, Abel thought, there would be a monument on that spot.

  Meanwhile the sun was setting, an exhausted peace settling over Rome. The last wraiths of dust drifted away on a rumor of a breeze, and the smoke of cooking fires rose in sleepy coils amid the tents. Twenty-eight-hour days were just like twenty-four-hour days with four more hours’ labor added. The overworked inhabitants had already developed a tradition of going to bed at dusk.

  Noticing the fading light, Abel had pushed himself away from his desk and gone outside to watch the sunset and catch some fresh air. His home and office were located in a solitary outlying Quonset hut, close to the window site. Some irreverent wag had painted the words “Presidental Palace” on one side and “El Supremolar” on the other. Everyone thought that it had been done by Abel himself, and of course they were right.

  He was pooped. His eyeballs were raw, his throat worse. He made a thousand decisions a day, spoke to a hundred people, ate on the run. Emily kept telling him that he had never been happier in his life, but he had not yet had time to consider the matter. His bad leg ached, which usually meant dry weather ahead.

  Near the front door a clump of three and a half trees had survived humanity’s onslaught. They had, in turn, preserved a minute triangle of pseudograss. The National Forest…He sat down there and leaned back against a glossy gray trunk. He wondered where he could squeeze some patio furniture into the priority schedule.

  He watched a crimson and lavender butterfly float by, returning to its hive. The shadows were long, the sky a medley of colors beyond reproach. Tiber was a glorious planet, which had so far sprung no worse surprise than humanity’s normal reaction to unfamiliar surround
ings, a universal attack of the trots.

  Twenty-three years old and king of the world? No, he had never been happier. Absolute power was certainly fun. It would not last long enough to spoil him…unfortunately.

  The peace was too good to last, too—a long finger of shadow needled across the presidential lawn.

  “Hi,” Hubbard Cedric said.

  “Hi, yourself,” Abel said. “Take a chair.”

  Cedric dropped to his knees and offered a large and horny hand. He was wearing shorts and boots and a gun. He also wore a splendid tan and a patchy stubble of definitely reddish hue. He was not wearing much of a smile, Abel noticed, but his nose was almost back to normal, and he no longer had a bone-mender on his hand.

  Abel had seen Cedric around, but they had not really had a chance to chat since the trip to Nile. “How’s the world treating you?” he asked. “This world, that is.”

  “Fine.”

  Abel would have liked more enthusiasm. “The princess okay?”

  “Oh! Oh, yes, she’s fine.” A very stupid grin slid over Cedric’s face. Abel had seen much the same look on Emily sometimes, when her eye caught his, and maybe he wore it himself also, at those times. He had seen something similar on Alya when she talked of Cedric. Or Gill Adele when Bagshaw Barnwell K. came in sight. Strange creatures, humans.

  “No one’s taken any more potshots at you?”

  Cedric pouted and shook his head. He had a burn on his cheek where someone had drawn a beam on him, the second day. The assailant had not been caught, but it must have been one of the Earthfirsters. Beyond doubt, the attack would have succeeded had Alya not rammed bodily into Cedric and knocked him down, about a thousandth of a second before the fire.