PKF Elite Commissionaire Mohammed Vance debarked in a scalesuit and walked west.
The rolligon had not been moved; there were no salvage vehicles large enough to tow it in its current condition. Mohammed Vance walked around the site of the attack. The first PKF on the scene had sprayed a transparent plastic cover over the tracks left by the ideologs; Vance presumed that the balance of the tracks had been made by the investigating officers.
The explosion had lifted the rolligon, the investigating officers had estimated, at least two meters off the ground; the rolligon had come back down on its side. The front end of the rolligon had all but disintegrated under the force of the explosion; the frame had warped sufficiently that the vehicle's airlock, which was now on top of the rolligon, would not open. Vance entered through the destroyed front; the wall separating the driver's cabin and the passenger's cabin had protected the rear of the rolligon well enough that the investigating officers from the DataWatch base had recovered more-or-less intact corpses.
Vance stepped up into the front cabin, made his way through what had once been the doorway separating the partitions. The rear cabin was dim, lit only by reflected sunlight. His cyborg eyes adjusted instantly, the irises expanding until the whites disappeared. The interior of the cabin leaped into clarity.
The bulkhead on Vance's right, what had once been the floor, had separated under the force of the explosion; Vance could see the Lunar desert through the gap. Vance moved restlessly through the cabin, uncertain what it was he was looking for, knowing he would recognize it if he found it.
There was so much damage. Trying to find something that might have been caused before the rolligon's destruction would be impossible.
So much damage ... it started a chain of thought.
Vance went back outside, walked around to the back of the rolligon. Scarlet markers on the plastic covering the ground showed where the rolligon had been when the explosion took place. Vance squatted in the spot where Benny Gutierrez must have been squatting to look at the rolligon's rear axle, trying to envision the scene. In his mind he heard the recording of Gutierrez's report. "There was something wrong with the way it was broken, I'm not sure what. I was standing up and then...."
And then, supposedly, the attack by the ideologs. Vance stood, took two long bouncing strides to the spot where Gutierrez's scalesuit-protected body had been found. About twenty-five meters. The shock wave had picked the man up and thrown him twenty-five meters, where, several hours later, he and his heat-blackened scalesuit had been found by the PKF.
The glassite in his helmet had not been damaged significantly and his only injury was a slight concussion.
Vance did not believe it for an instant.
He turned and bounded off to where the semiballistic awaited him.
It was 6:12 a.m.
Trent had not slept in over forty-eight hours. He lay in bed with his eyes closed. His inskin had been instructed to awaken him at 8:30, but despite sincere attempts for several hours he had been unable to get to sleep.
He opened his eyes at the sound of the voices, one angry and loud, the other so deep and completely in control that even before identifying it Trent felt a quiver of uneasiness. He closed his eyes again, quickly, as the door to the infirmary curled open.
"Officer Gutierrez."
Trent lay motionless, breathing slowly, evenly. A hard cyborg hand touched his shoulder, and Trent blinked several times, sat up slowly and looked back and forth between Doctor Grissom and PKF Elite Commissionaire Mohammed Vance as though groggy with sleep. He took care to keep the covers around his knees, over the collection of tools. "Hello?" He made his voice thick. "What is it?"
Mohammed Vance seated himself at the side of Trent's infirmary bed. He smiled politely at Trent, and the smile sent a shock of adrenaline through Trent like the touch of a knife. It required every bit of control Trent possessed to do nothing but return Vance's appraising look.
Vance said nothing for several moments, simply studying Trent. Trent glanced at Doctor Grissom; the older man shrugged helplessly, glaring at the back of Vance's head. With a growing sick feeling in the pit of his stomach Trent turned back to Vance, said questioningly, "Sir?"
Still Vance did not reply. Trent found himself simply looking at the man, small details leaping out to strike him with unnatural vividness. Vance wore the gray PKF combat fatigues that were holdovers from the days of the Unification War, when the PKF had been a true army rather than a paramilitary police organization. He had never been so close to Vance before, had never appreciated before the sheer huge size of the man, the impact of his physical presence. He was the largest PKF Elite Trent had ever seen, Reverend Andy's size with no human softness to him, but so perfectly proportioned that it was only in close quarters that his size became obvious. Expensive black leather gloves covered his cyborg hands; the false eyes shone with reflected light, glittered in a fashion that Trent's subconscious insisted on interpreting as deadly cold anger.
There was nothing of anger or anything else in his expression; Vance sat composed and machine-stiff studying Trent, and then said abruptly, "Do you know who I am?"
With a distant shock of realization Trent knew that he was afraid. He could not remember having ever been afraid before, not of a person, not in such a way that the fear stole strength from his muscles, made him feel that he might not be able to run if he needed to. The gross physical senses of his body had grown amazingly clear and sharp; he felt the link between the Trent of the flesh and the Trent of the inskin wavering. He had to force himself to answer.
"You're Commissioner Vance."
Mohammed Vance nodded pleasantly. "Indeed I am." He crossed his legs European style, stripped off his gloves and laid them in his lap. Without looking at Doctor Grissom Vance said, "Doctor, please bring Officer Gutierrez and myself a cup of coffee. Make mine black, please." Vance glanced at Trent. "And yourself, Officer Gutierrez? Cream? Sugar?"
"Sir ... black is fine."
"Doctor." The dismissal was done with such authority that Grissom did not even argue it, though it was clear to Trent that he did not wish to leave. Vance continued, once Grissom was gone, "Forgive me, Officer, for awakening you, but I've rather urgent questions to which I need answers. Are you awake enough to answer them?"
Trent said instantly, "Yes, sir."
"We can wait until you've had your coffee," Vance assured him.
"That's not necessary, sir."
"Very good." The harsh cyborg features softened ever so slightly, as though Vance were considering smiling. "I'm told you were not badly injured in the attack on your rolligon."
"No, sir."
"Good. I suppose you're looking forward to assuming your duties here?"
"Yes, sir."
"And those are?"
"I'm a webdancer, sir. I'll be involved in monitoring and perhaps, eventually--in a few years--debugging the LINK control program."
"You're going to be debugging Watchdog?"
"Sir?"
"Watchdog, Officer Gutierrez. It's the name of the LINK control program."
"Oh."
"You didn't know that?"
"I don't think it was included in my debriefing, sir."
Vance nodded thoughtfully. He seemed about to speak, and then stopped as a young Peaceforcer entered carrying a pair of sealed bulbs. The officer stood irresolutely before Vance. Vance did not ask where Grissom had gone, but simply gestured impatiently, took the bulbs and waved the man back out of the infirmary. He handed one to Trent, opened the other and raised it in silent toast to Trent before drinking from it. "Do you like coffee, Officer?"
"Yes, sir." Trent opened the ring of his bulb, smelled the aroma rising from the neck of the bulb. "Well enough. You wanted to ask me about the attack?"
Vance said mildly, "No. What gave you that idea?"
He knows.
Trent stared at Vance, suddenly and completely certain. Oddly, it calmed him, centered his attention. The act could slip now, and it wou
ld not matter; Vance knew who he was speaking to. "Well--" Trent shrugged, spoke cautiously. "You said you had important questions to ask me."
"Indeed I do," said Vance. "You've answered one already. Your commanding officer in the Chino DataWatch told me you were that rarest of Americans, a man who dislikes coffee."
Trent tasted the coffee. "I can't imagine where he got that idea, sir. Lunar coffee now, well, I doubt anybody actually likes it--occasionally it approaches being drinkable." He sealed the ring of the bulb, placed it at the side of the bed. "This is not one of those occasions, however."
Vance did smile then, though it was clearly difficult for him. The black eyes did not move, not in the slightest. "Amusing comment, Officer."
"Thank you. I have a taste for comedy."
"My tastes lean more toward tragedy," said Vance politely. He leaned forward in his seat slightly. "Did you know," he said conversationally, "that in the last hours before the destruction of the Chandler Complex, I attempted to help the telepaths while they could be helped; that after the riots began I attempted to evacuate them to safety? And they refused my aid." He sighed, and seemed for an instant to be elsewhere. "They could read my mind; they knew the offer was sincere. The years that have passed since that time, Officer Gutierrez, I've wondered many nights why they would not allow themselves to be aided, why they pushed, and pushed, until there could be no peaceful settlement." He looked at Trent and said very simply, "Might you have any guess?"
"No." Trent chuckled, found room somewhere deep inside himself to be amazed at how easily the chuckle came. "I guess they were just crazy."
Vance shook his massive head, slowly, and spoke thoughtfully. "No. Proud, perhaps. Perhaps it was simply pride. Pride can make a man--or a genie--do many foolish things."
Trent said, "Yes, sir."
"Well, I must be leaving." Vance picked up the untouched bulb from the side of Trent's bed. "Perhaps we can talk again this afternoon, if we both have time." Rising, Vance smiled at Trent again, the difficult smile of a man with skin that would turn most knives. "I've enjoyed it. You're pleasant company, young man."
"Gee, thanks. Sir."
Vance nodded. He stood at the doorway, one huge hand holding both of the coffee bulbs. "Your commanding officer said you had a tendency to stutter in the presence of your superior officers. You seem to have mastered it. I'm impressed."
Trent said, "Thank you." The question came to him so urgently that he had no time to even think about it; his right hand clenched into a fist, clenched so tightly it was painful. He relaxed the hand with an act of will, let it uncurl and rest on the surface of the bed. "Commissioner?"
Vance said patiently, "Yes?"
Trent said quickly, "Forgive me for asking, sir, but you brought this up yourself--"
"Ask your question, Officer." Vance actually sounded interested. "Please."
"When I was in school, sir, we were taught that you had ordered the Castanaveras telepaths destroyed. That you placed the order for Space Force to drop the tactical nukes on them. But then I read later that there was some question, that nobody knew for sure who had done it."
Standing in the doorway, Vance was motionless, cyborg eyes fixed on Trent. "What is your question, Officer?"
"Did you?"
The calm black eyes did not waver. His voice was positively gentle. "Yes. I did." Vance stood quietly in the doorway for a moment longer and then said, "You should get your sleep, Officer. You're going to need it."
"Thank you, sir. I will."
Vance nodded at Trent, and was gone.
It was 8:05 a.m.
In the corridor outside, as the door slid shut, Vance said aloud, "Command, lock on my voice print. This is Commissionaire Mohammed Vance of the PKF Elite. Verify and implement."
The door bolts snapped shut, and a pleasant neutral voice said, "Command accepted and implemented."
"Evil vicious lying murdering goddamn brass balls bastard." Trent threw back the bed covers the instant the door closed behind Vance, dressed swiftly. The door bolts slammed shut. He found himself almost chattering in the silence, trying not to think of how badly Mohammed Vance frightened him. "And Gutierrez is worse, my God but he's a boring son of a bitch," Trent muttered. He tucked all of the tools except the emblade and spraytube of glue into the pockets of his uniform pants, pulled on the dress shirt and boots. "I never liked him, not ever, not even for a little while." From the shell of the handheld he had brought with him into the base he removed the ten terabyte infochip that held the record of what he had once looked and sounded like. He stood looking at the chip for just a moment, then shook himself slightly, tucked it into the breast pocket of his shirt and sealed the pocket.
And crawled under the bed furthest away from the infirmary door.
Vance walked without hurry down the corridor from the infirmary, returned to the small office Melissa du Bois had been given. Melissa, sitting in the chair before the terminal, looked at Vance inquiringly as he entered. He ignored her; to her terminal he said, "Command, access Colonel Brissois."
Brissois features took form within the field immediately. "Yes, Commissionaire?"
Vance smiled at the woman as pleasantly as his features allowed. "Please send a squad of armed Elite to the infirmary. We have Trent the Uncatchable in custody."
* * *
29.
With the certain exception of Denice Ripper, with the possible exception of Mohammed Vance, I knew Trent, I think, as well as anyone; and yet at an important level I did not know him at all. He was a reticent man, and now that he is gone from us we have little left of him. His writings are few; some letters, two interviews that took place in 2078.
The primary question that you have asked me, I cannot answer.
Perhaps it is true, as some would have it, that God chose to incarnate Himself in the person of Trent the Uncatchable.
Perhaps not.
He was, as the historians have written and I can verify, a liar and a thief and a fraud.
But there was, at the core of the man, something amazing; something very real.
It happened as you have heard it.
I was there.
--Melissa du Bois, as quoted in The Exodus Bible
Lying on his stomach beneath the bed, Trent turned the emblade on and shoved it into the infirmary's floor, all the way up to its handle. The emblade was twenty-two centimeters long; if the floor was thicker than that he was blown. The architectural plans he had stolen had shown the thickness of the walls, but not the floors. Trent dragged the emblade slowly through a circle nearly a meter in diameter, removed the emblade and turned it off. The circle stayed in place and Trent struck it once in the center, and a section of floor some fifteen centimeters thick popped free, began to drop into a lighted area immediately below. Trent lunged forward and down, got his shoulders through the hole, grabbing for the slab of falling floor.
And catching it.
Trent hung halfway through the hole, clutching the manhole-shaped piece of floor in one hand, staring upside down at the backs of a pair of Peaceforcers who were walking away from him. He twisted, looked the other direction; nothing. Trent let himself slide further through the hole, bending at the waist, holding himself up in the low gravity with only the pressure of his feet against the sides of the hole. His hands were less than a meter from the floor beneath him when he dropped the chunk of floor he was holding; it landed almost quietly and Trent followed it, dropping onto his hands and rolling to his feet in one smooth motion.
"You think that's Trent?"
Vance stood in the corridor outside Melissa du Bois' office, stood motionless, with folded arms, watching the door to the infirmary.
Melissa said, "You're not serious. You can't be."
Vance did not even glance at Melissa, did not reply.
"But it can't ..." Melissa found her mouth growing very dry. "Oh, God." She was a devout Catholic, as were many PKF; she crossed herself without thinking twice, found herself reaching for the holstered h
and maser. Thank you ... Remember I said that. I mean it. "It is."
Trent poked his head inside the door. He directed a rather manic grin at the young Peaceforcer inside. "Is there a chair around here anywhere?"
The door Trent had opened was marked on the maps he had stolen as being the private quarters of Commander Brissois. A handsome young Peaceforcer wearing only a pair of shorts sat at a small desk, reading from a handheld. He looked up at Trent. "There's the one I'm sitting on. Why didn't you knock?"
"A hole just fell out of the ceiling down the hall," Trent told the man. He smiled again. "It's the most amazing thing," he said sincerely. He took a step into the room, gestured at the chair. "Can I borrow that for a moment? Please?"
The Peaceforcer looked undecided for a moment, then shrugged. "Sure." He stood, pulled on a green robe from a clothes tree next to the wide double bed, and came forward, taking the chair with him; he had to lift it over the desk to bring it to the door. "Let's go see this hole in the ceiling."
Trent took the chair from him, walked a short distance down the corridor to where he had cut through the ceiling. "Look at this. Have you ever seen anything like this before?" He propped the chair up underneath the hole, picked up the chunk of floor/ceiling that had come out of it, and stepped up on the chair. With the spraytube of glue he blasted the edges of the hole in the ceiling and lifted the round chunk back up to seal the hole. He held it in place a moment, then sprayed the almost invisibly thin line where the join took place. Holding the ceiling up with one hand, Trent gave the spraytube to the Peaceforcer. "Hold this, please."
"Sure." The man looked puzzled. "What the hell happened here?"
"You got me. It actually looks like somebody cut a hole in the ceiling--" Trent let go of the ceiling, waited a beat to see if it would hold, and stepped down from the chair. "--but that's silly, isn't it?" From his right-hand pants pocket he took the needler and shot the Peaceforcer in the stomach. The man folded with a look that managed to mix betrayal and incomprehension all at once. Trent caught him, palmed open the nearest door and pushed the Peaceforcer inside, into inky darkness, tossed the chair in as well, and then moved off at a trot down the corridor, pulse racing, adrenaline pumping through his body, feeling very good indeed.
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