The Wind After Time

by Chris Bunch

  Wolfe half smiled.

  “You find something funny?”

  “I was just remembering something I told Sutro a few hours ago.”

  “We know a great deal about you, Joshua Wolfe. About your war record, about your time with the Al’ar, even your activities here in the Outlaw Worlds, although you’ve done an excellent job of remaining nearly invisible.”

  “Since you know everything, then what’s the point of our… chatting?”

  “Tyrma!”

  The squat man slashed a knife hand sideways into Wolfe’s upper arm. Joshua winced and bit his lip to keep from crying out.

  “We have little time or appreciation for humor,” Bori said. “Now, you will please answer our questions. First, the most immediate matters: Are there other bombs set in the casino, as the police believe?”

  “No.”

  “The reason we asked was because if there was going to be further upset to the order of things, it might be well to immediately go offworld before continuing our interrogation. I suspect you are telling the truth and that first bomb was merely to create a diversion.”

  “Do you have other associates beyond the ones we secured?”

  “No.”

  “Where is your ship?”

  “Offworld. In a parking orbit.”

  “Then you lied. There are others in your team.”

  Tyrma struck again, this time with a side kick to Wolfe’s ankle. Joshua almost fell, recovered.

  “How many are there in your crew?”

  “Two,” Wolfe said.

  “How will you summon them?” Bori held up the bonemike from Wolfe’s gear, and he experienced a faint moment of hope. “This device appears of too limited a range to reach beyond the planetary surface.”

  “I use a conventional com,” he said. “I place a call through the offworld connection to a certain party on a certain world on a certain link. My ship’s computer monitors any com that’s broadcast of that nature, and the crew’ll land at whatever point I told them to.”

  “If the pickup point has changed, then I can use any microwave transmitter to tell them where to get me once they’re in-atmosphere.”

  “Complicated,” Bori said. “But careful, so I am not surprised. We shall require you at a certain time to summon them.”

  “But not at the moment.”

  “Who are you working for?”

  Joshua said nothing, stiffening for the blow.

  “No, Tyrma. Not now. We shall outline our needs to Joshua Wolfe before we apply further stress.”

  “Are you working for the Federation? Specifically, are you working for Federation Intelligence? If so, we shall need to know all the details of your mission, including controlling agents and when and how you report.”

  “Are you working for the Outlaw Worlds’ own law enforcement?”

  “Are you working on a matter of personal concern?”

  “I’m following my own trail.”

  “Which is?”

  “When the Al’ar trained me, they used a Lumina stone,” Wolfe said. “When I served the warrant on Innokenty Khodyan, I discovered the stone.”

  “I wanted to know where it came from and where I could find others. That is why I went to Penruddock.”

  Bori stared at him, reached under the table, took out the Lumina, and set it in front of her. “We shall return to that line of questioning again. I am not sure I accept your story.”

  Joshua waited.

  “There are stories that not all the Al’ar departed… or did whatever they did at the end of the war. Have you heard such tales?”

  “I have.”

  “Do you believe them?”

  “No. I checked on a few of them, found they were gas.”

  “We are fairly sure you are wrong,” Bori said. “Next question: Have you ever heard of the Mother Lumina? Perhaps you would have known it as the Overlord Stone. It would have been some sort of controlling or recording device for all Luminas, perhaps.”

  “No.”

  Bori considered. “I am not sure I accept that answer, either. We shall ask it again… under different circumstances.”

  “What do you know of the Secrets of the Al’ar?”

  Wolfe lifted an eyebrow. “Bori, are the Chitet going mad? Secrets of the Al’ar? Like what? Like where they went?”

  “Tyrma!”

  Again the squat man struck Joshua.

  “I was referring to the curiosity show called The Secrets of the Al’ar. It is scheduled to perform, or do whatever it does, in a few weeks here on Trinite. It also appeared on Mandodari III not long before we learned, through some of our friends who have not yet joined us openly, of Judge Penruddock’s acquisition of the Lumina.”

  “We are wondering if this is a coincidence or not. We have, as a matter of course, close-sieved all matters dealing with the Al’ar.”

  “The first I heard of it was seeing something on my com after I landed,” Joshua said. “I don’t know anything about it other than it sounds like a freak show.”

  “Let me ask you something,” he continued. “If your pet goon won’t flatten me for it. What do the Chitet want with Luminas?”

  “We do not particularly care about this stone or the others that have surfaced. However, there are matters far bigger and more sensitive behind them that we must deal with. We believe our duty is to all humanity, and we know, and you need not ask how, that the matter of the Al’ar is not over and settled.”

  “I will not explain further, except that the questions I have must and shall be answered and answered truthfully.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “To you? We shall give you a quick and painless death. It is necessary. At one time, perhaps even after the war, you had ties with Federation Intelligence. They must not learn of the Chitet’s activities.”

  “As for your companions… we haven’t decided what logic dictates must happen.”

  “You sure give me a lot of encouragement.”

  “Oh, but we do, Joshua Wolfe. It has been a long time since the war, and perhaps you forget just how wonderful the thought of death ending agony can be.

  “Return him to his room. Deal with him as I ordered.”

  Tyrma jerked Wolfe toward the door.

  In the cell he and one other guard coldly beat Wolfe into unconsciousness while the third man kept his gun ready.

  It was hot, hot like a fever dream, when Joshua came back to awareness. The light glared down at him.

  He tried to clear his muzzy head, looked about for water.

  There was none.

  A man’s agonized screams sounded, and Joshua thought that might have been what had brought him back to awareness.

  He thought the screams came from Sutro.

  After a moment, his head lolled and he heard no more.

  Again he woke, with no idea of how long he had been senseless.

  Again he heard screams.

  A woman’s voice.

  “No. Please. Don’t do that to me. Not again. Please. Oh, gods, it hurts too much!”

  The words faded into agonized cries for mercy that would not be granted.

  The voice was Candia’s. Then came a man’s guttural laughter.

  Wolfe staggered to his feet, stumbled to the door, was about to pull at it, then caught himself.

  Breathe… breathe… the earth reaches out, holds you… slowly…

  His hands moved in patterns through the air for a time. Then he went back to the far wall and sat down. His expression was calm.

  * * * *

  “It is not working,” the technician said. “The sensors in his clothing show complete normalcy, tranquility.”

  “Shut it off,” Bori said.

  The technician touched a sensor, and the screams ended as the voice synthesizer shut off.

  “We shall try another method,” she said. She seemed undisturbed.

  * * * *

  Wolfe’s body contorted against the straps, his face writhing in pain. There were t
iny receivers hooked to his nipples and his lower legs.

  “It is a simple matter for the pain to stop,” Bori said, her voice sympathetic, friendly. “All I need is what you know, and then all of this shall go away, and you will be given water, food, be allowed to sleep.

  “Or I can increase the level of pain. Or move the receptors. Men have far more sensitive areas than the ones I am currently having stimulated.”

  Breathe… breathe…

  She motioned, and the tech moved a slidepot.

  Again Wolfe shuddered, then his body went limp, his expression still.

  “Shut it down!” For the first time urgency entered Bori’s voice.

  The technician obeyed.

  “Does he have a suicide block?”

  The tech looked at another machine.

  “I don’t know,” the man said. “I can’t tell. But he’s under some sort of control. Look, here on the screen. All synapses were responding as a normal human male should under the applied stimuli, then suddenly it stopped… before you ordered me to!”

  Bori thought for a time.

  “Disconnect him. We cannot take the chance of finding out what kind of mind/body power he is using.

  “Would drugs be an option?”

  “I’m not sure,” the technician said. “We couldn’t just hit him with a hard dose. I’ll bet the same thing would happen. Maybe if we started with a small dose, then worked our way up… maybe.”

  Bori turned to Tyrma, who stood behind her. “You saw what happened. Physical stress techniques, whether like this or of the sort you are trained to practice, will be of no benefit. I’ll devise another approach.”

  The squat man looked disappointed.

  * * * *

  Tyrma and the two guards woke Joshua Wolfe from his stupor and dragged him out of his room and through the ruins of the mansion’s living area.

  Wolfe wondered what they’d been looking for, decided anything, and concentrated on what would happen next. Breathe…

  Waiting on the dock were Candia, Thetis, her grandfather, Sutro, Bori, the goateed man, and two other Chitet. All the Chitet wore holstered guns.

  Wolfe noted that a starship lay in the shallows about fifty yards away and that the hatch was open.

  The guards marched Wolfe out onto the pier. He could feel the hot boards under his feet, feel them creak as he walked, and he could smell the sunlight.

  “Joshua Wolfe,” Bori began. “You appear to be impervious to most conventional questioning methods, and we do not have the time for further delays. Nor can we chance taking you offworld with us. Therefore, I am giving you one final option:

  “Tell us what you know, now, or else your companions will die one by one.”

  “Not my granddaughter,” Libanos bellowed, lowering his head, hands stretching for Bori. A guard had his pistol out and snapped its barrel against the back of his neck. Libanos’s knees caved, and he slumped to the dock.

  Melting…

  “Will you talk?” Bori drew her gun.

  Wolfe did not answer or move.

  “We shall start with the least important, to prove our… sincerity, if you will.”

  Sutro had time to bring up his hands, shielding his face, before Bori shot him neatly in midchest. The blaster made a half-inch hole in his chest and blew most of his back in a bloody spray across the water. Sutro fell back, splashed into the crystalline ocean, lay motionless. The water around him turned brown, then red.

  “Will you talk?”

  Again Wolfe made no reply.

  The air takes me …

  The gun swung to Thetis. She flinched, waiting for the blow she’d never feel.

  Tyrma shouted a warning in an unknown language.

  For an instant Joshua Wolfe was not there but was a shimmer in the soft tropical air.

  Bori’s fingers touched the trigger stud far too late. The bolt crashed out into the ocean.

  Tyrma was the first to die. Wolfe temple struck him, then tapped his chest with the heel of his hand; he felt the squat man’s heart stop and shoved the falling corpse into Bori, who stumbled back, dropping her gun, almost going into the water.

  The guards behind Wolfe fumbled for their pistols. Joshua moved easily, without hurry, a blur, around the first one’s side, blocking the second’s aim; he drove a knife hand into the first guard’s carotid and never heard him gurgle death as Libanos, still lying on the boards, swept the second guard’s feet from under him, roaring, grabbing the Chitet in his great old, strangling bear hands.

  Bori was scrabbling for her gun, and Thetis kicked her, sending her sprawling onto her back. The woman rolled as she hit, had Thetis’s foot, twisted it, and sent the girl spinning, crying out in pain.

  The goateed man’s gun was lifting as Wolfe came in on him; a fist smash into his biceps paralyzed his arm, sending the pistol clattering to the decking. Wolfe’s hand curled oddly, cobra touch, and darted into the base of the goateed man’s throat. He tried to scream and sprayed blood through his shattered larynx for an instant before Wolfe’s forearm jolted up, snapping his neck.

  A blaster went off, blowing a hole into the deck as Candia kicked out, a dancer’s kick, and knocked the gunman into the water.

  The last guard’s fingers opened nervelessly, his eyes cavernous as the world changed about him, and his mouth opened, perhaps to cry for help, as Libanos shot him in the face.

  Bori was the only Chitet left alive on the dock. Wolfe could hear shouts of alarm from the ship’s open hatchway but paid them no mind.

  The woman rolled to her feet in an attack stance, facing him. Her face was as it always had been, calm, controlled, and then most of her head vanished as Thetis shot her once, then again in the body with her own pistol.

  “The house,” Wolfe shouted. He scooped up two of the pistols and shot the guard in the water who was floundering toward the ship, and they went running down the dock as a bolt impacted in the water beside them, steam boiling, curling in the clear air.

  Wolfe knelt, aimed, weak hand curled around his gun butt, touched the stud, and blasted a smoking hole inside the Chitet ship’s lock. Then he ran after the others.

  Libanos was overturning couches, pulling tables up for barricades. Joshua paid no mind, running into the mansion’s dining room.

  The Lumina was still sitting on the middle of the table. Wolfe went around the table, saw his bonemike on the floor behind the chair, grabbed it.

  “Ship!”

  “I hear.”

  “All systems full alert! Lift! Weapons station, full readiness.”

  “Understood.”

  “I will correct. Fire when you clear the water.”

  “Understood.”

  He pocketed the Lumina, ran back to the mansion’s living room, and peered through one of the windows. He saw a pod on the starship opening, speedboat on davits, Chitet with rifles getting into it.

  A blaster bolt shattered a column outside, and Wolfe ducked back.

  Then the ocean boiled, and his ship lifted off the sea floor and broke the surface, water streaming from it. A concealed bay slid open, and the chaingun emerged.

  “Target… starship. Two-second burst, directly into the air lock.”

  “Understood.”

  The dragon roared, and fire spit from the multiple muzzles of the gun, searing like a cutting torch through the unarmored Chitet ship, then shifting aim, and a thousand more three-quarter-inch-diameter collapsed-uranium rounds ripped through the lock door.

  The starship rolled on its side, and flames spurted.

  “Pickup!”

  “Understood.”

  The ship moved over the water and across the sand, crushing the gazebo as it hovered closer.

  “Open the lock.”

  The lock door opened, and a ramp shot out.

  Wolfe had Candia by the arm, pulling her toward the ship. Libanos scooped up his granddaughter and, puffing heavily, followed.

  They clattered up the ramp, and it slid closed behind them.

/>   “Straight up,” Wolfe snapped. “Get us out-atmosphere.”

  “Understood.”

  The Grayle stood on its tail, and its drive tubes hummed.

  Flames mushroomed from the Chitet ship’s lock. A moment later the ship exploded. A ball of black and gray, red-streaked, climbed toward the Grayle, but not fast enough as it soared toward space.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Thetis stared, fascinated, at her index finger. She crooked it.

  “I never thought,” she said slowly, “I’d ever kill anyone. Or how easy it is.” She moved her finger once more.

  Wolfe looked at Libanos. The four of them stood on the Grayle’s loading platform. Tied up to it was a double-hulled boat older than Joshua, its purpose obvious to anyone half a mile downwind.

  Libanos touched his mustache. “I don’t know,” he said. “I got over it.” He sighed. “But I think I left something behind.”

  “We all did,” Wolfe said quietly.

  Thetis looked up. “I’ll be all right, Grandfather. It’s just… maybe I’ve led too sheltered a life.”

  “Go back to it,” Candia said. “Sometimes the wild side isn’t the best.”

  Thetis reached out and took her hand. “Thanks. I’m sorry about the things… the things maybe I thought.” She blushed and jumped down into the fishing boat.

  Joshua handed Libanos a thick plas envelope. The old man opened it, saw the credits, and stuffed the envelope inside his shirt.

  “What are you going to do next?” Wolfe asked.

  “First thing is to have Marf, here, run us back to Morne-des-Esses and find out, real loud, that while we were off helpin’ him pull his nets, some cheap pricks stole Thetis’s boat.

  “After that… well, I guess I’ll close down the house for a while, maybe go sail around the islands in an old hooker I’ve got moored outside Diamant, and start lookin’ for wood to put up and season for the new boat.”

  “Read some, think some.”

  “There’s a fishin’ village on one of the out islands I may port out of for a while. There was a little boy Thetis was sweet on six, seven years ago. Maybe she’d like to see what he grew up like.”

  “Then I’ll put in for victims’ relief and start thinking about rebuilding the Dolphin. There’s a few things I didn’t do quite right the first time around.”

  “I’ll stay out of the line of fire for a while, until this settles.”