Paradigm

by Helen Stringer

  “Perfect timing.”

  He stood up, glancing around the room to see if there were any muthascreens or ports, and was relieved to see that there was nothing. Bast walked over to him and examined his face closely. He pushed the hair out of his eyes and stared back, exuding what he hoped was just the right amount of confidence and insolence.

  “Why did you catch him?” she asked.

  “Why wouldn’t I? It was a good shell.”

  She stared hard, then turned on her heel and flung open the door.

  “Haggar! Dryden! Let’s get the partygoers back in here.” She turned and looked at Sam. “Why don’t we play a game?”

  Sam shrugged and slouched over to the desk.

  “Is there anything to drink?”

  “Cupboard on the right. Under the desk.”

  Sam helped himself to a bottle of whiskey and a single glass and tried to think. If she was going to ask him to torture the mayor, there was a problem. He needed something that would be totally out of character for the Sam she knew, but still within the bounds of how far he was prepared to go.

  He looked at the bottle and guessed this was probably some of that special sipping whiskey Bast made such a big deal of, so he poured himself a big glass, sat on the desk and gulped some down. She glared at him, and got herself a glass. He raised the bottle to pour but she snatched it from his hand.

  “No thanks,” she said. “I’ve had enough of your bartending skills.”

  She sipped slowly as the terrified great and good of Bakersfield City were herded back into the room. Haggar dumped the mayor into the chair.

  “Sorry, Commander,” he said. “I think he’s dead.”

  Bast put down her glass and examined the mayor.

  “Must’ve been a heart attack,” she muttered. “There’s no telling with some people. They can look as strong as an ox, but fold at the first hurdle. Alright, boys, you can go.”

  “It wasn’t really the first, though, was it?” said Sam, trying to conceal his relief.

  “No, and I did get the information I wanted about five hours ago, so I shouldn’t really complain. It’s just so hard to stop when you’re having fun.”

  Sam wanted to be sick, but he smiled, picked up his glass and took another swig, then stood up and wandered over to the cluster of people, strolling between them, looking each up and down.

  “What are we going to do with these?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I need to find out if I can work with any of them.”

  Sam coiled his arms around the necks of two of the women, kissing one and sniffing at the other in what he really hoped was a truly obnoxious manner. Both women were trembling with fear, one was actually whimpering and the other tried to respond to him, apparently in some desperate belief that it might save her life. Sam had never felt worse.

  “I say we kill the men and have some fun.”

  “Typical,” snarled Bast. “And where’s the fun for me?”

  “Is it typical?” asked Sam, feigning surprise. “It’s new, you see. A healthy body. With everything in full working order. I really want to take it for a test drive. Please? You can play with the ones I don’t like. Or that get…you know…used up.”

  One of the elderly women shrieked and fainted. Sam glanced at her and grimaced.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I don’t think I would’ve wanted that one.”

  Carolyn Bast walked across the room to him and smiled, caressing his face.

  “You are absolutely appalling,” she cooed. “But let me show you what real fun looks like.”

  Sam tensed. The woman he’d been kissing looked up at him, her eyes wide as she realized he was faking. He kissed her again. He couldn’t let her speak.

  Bast turned away.

  “Setzen! Would you come in here, please?”

  Setzen stepped into the room, closing the door behind him.

  “Yes, Commander?”

  “Did you give the girl her cake?”

  “Yes…Commander.” His tone was low and resentful.

  “Setzen, I’d like you to meet Mutha.”

  “What? It worked?”

  “Yes. As you can see, the great plex is a little…overexcited at the moment.”

  Sam looked up and grinned at the old fighter.

  “Congratulations, Commander, that’s really—”

  “Yes, well, that’s not why I called you in. Sam…I think I’ll still have to call you Sam, unless you’d prefer something else?”

  “Sam is fine.”

  “Sam wants to have some fun. As you can see, the mayor has expired, so that rather limits his options at the moment. I wanted to show him what real fun is like.”

  Setzen didn’t say anything, but Sam noticed that he glanced at the door, just for a second. Bast didn’t seem to have noticed, but Sam was sure she had.

  “Setzen’s been with me for years, Sam. He knows all my little peccadilloes, don’t you, dear?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “I arranged for most of his upgrades. The eye, the hand, the…other things. I did that because I believe in rewarding loyalty. It’s very important to me.”

  She had been walking toward Setzen as she spoke and was now standing right behind him. Sam had a very bad feeling.

  “I won’t tolerate mistakes, will I, Setzen?”

  “No, Commander.” His voice had changed. Where there had been resentment there was now resignation.

  “And I certainly won’t brook betrayal. It was a shame about Dustin. You pointed me in that direction. You should have known better. And did you really think this little tin-pot tyrant of a mayor wouldn’t talk?”

  Setzen opened his mouth to speak, but Bast had already moved. Her hand was like quicksilver, smooth and fast. Sam didn’t even see the knife, just the spreading ribbon of red as she slit her right-hand man’s throat from ear to ear. She stepped back as the gash spewed red and he fell forward, the blood pumping out of his body as he sputtered and seized on the floor and then was suddenly still.

  She had managed the whole thing without getting a single drop of blood on herself.

  This time it was one of the men who fainted.

  “Oh, god,” muttered Sam.

  The woman he had kissed pushed her cheek against his.

  “Hold on,” she whispered.

  Sam looked at her, then turned his face to Carolyn Bast, trying the same leer he’d seen on Setzen’s face when he’d put his arm around Alma. He let go of the women, then strode across the room, stepping over Setzen’s corpse as if it was a wrinkle in the carpet, and gently took the knife from her hand. He looked first at the still-dripping blade, then at the frightened people on the other side of the room.

  “My turn, I think.”

  Carolyn Bast smiled, then grabbed him, pushed him back toward the desk and kissed him hard. Sam tried to stop the bile rising—it was like locking lips with a wet haddock.

  And then someone kicked the door in and threw Haggard and Dryden after it for good measure. Sam smiled, a real smile this time. Carolyn Bast looked at him, confused, then grimaced with pain as Alma’s boot blasted into her side, kicking her to the floor.

  “Get your filthy mouth off him, you bitch!”

  Sam dropped the knife and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Oh, hell-on-wheels, Alma! How long can it take to find the biggest room in the place?”

  She didn’t seem pleased to see him, though. She just pinned him to the desk with her knee and pressed the barrel of her gun against his head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes dark with sorrow. “I promised I’d make it quick.”

  Chapter 36

  “NO!”

  The woman who had whispered to Sam lunged across the room, pulling Alma’s gun arm away and getting knocked backward for her trouble.

  “You don’t understand,” snarled Alma.

  “Yes, I do!” pleaded the woman.

  “Alma, honestly, it’s me,” said Sam, quietly.

  She l
eaned over and stared into his eyes, looking for some clue.

  “Ask him something!” said the woman. “Something only he would know!”

  Alma glanced back at the woman, then leaned in toward Sam, her voice low.

  “What was the first thing I ever said to you?”

  “Thanks for the help.”

  She hesitated, but the gun was not pressed quite so hard into his head.

  “Would you like to know the second thing? Or the third? Or the twenty-third? I can tell you every single thing you have ever said to me. Every word.”

  “How did you know we were coming?”

  “I saw you. I saw you pull up behind the GTO.” He reached up and touched her face. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Yeah, well,” said Alma, removing her knee from his chest and holstering the gun. “Some asshole stole my bike. We tried to catch up, but the Vega wasn’t even close to the job. We had to stop twice crossing the Grapevine.”

  “I did warn you.”

  “Then we passed the GTO going in the wrong direction, with Nathan at the wheel and reckoned something bad had happened.”

  “It wasn’t Nathan,” said Sam. “It was Mutha.”

  Alma looked at Nathan’s body, crumpled on the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Loving old home week,” said Carolyn Bast, jumping to her feet and backing toward the window. “But you do realize you’ll never get out of here alive?”

  “You’re our ticket, ” said Sam.

  “Right,” snorted Bast. “A couple of kids. I don’t think so.”

  “You!” barked Alma to the still-petrified cluster of people. “Go. Now. Go!”

  They still didn’t move, some glancing at Bast, as if incapable of believing that it was really over. Then four or five ran out, followed by the rest of them, rushing out of the door and charging noisily down the stairs and out to freedom.

  “Pointless,” said Bast. “We’ll just round them up again later.”

  “Where’s Colby?” asked Sam.

  “Downstairs,” said Alma. “Cleaning house.”

  There were a few scattered gunshots, then the sound of booted feet running up the stairs. Colby pounded into the room.

  “They’re here! We gotta go! They’re here!”

  Sam looked at him, confused…and then he heard it. It must have been there, throbbing in the background for some time. But now there was no mistaking it: a heavy thrumming accompanied by a deafening whine and then a roar.

  “What the hell is—”

  The expression on Alma’s face stopped him cold. For the first time since he had met her, she looked afraid. The color had drained from her face, and her eyes were wide. The eyes of a girl, not a soldier or a killer. A frightened girl.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  “Suits,” she said. “It’s a company gunship.”

  Carolyn Bast whirled around and looked out of the window where a great, grey behemoth of a ship was hovering just ten feet above the ground, the name “HIS Free Enterprise” emblazoned along its side.

  “Shit,” she muttered. “Why are they here?”

  “You met with Matheson,” said Sam. “Gave him an ultimatum.”

  “How do you know—”

  “We were there. He was scared of you, but much more frightened of head office.”

  “He told them? The idiot!”

  “Not really.” Sam nodded toward the ship. “Gunship trumps chopper every time.”

  “Well,” she said. “It almost worked.”

  “Almost.”

  There was the sound of booted feet marching up the stairs. Carolyn Bast smiled slightly, then stepped onto the balcony and fired something upwards.

  “Such is life,” she said. “Vagaries of war and all that. I’d like to say I’ll see you all again, but I probably won’t. Oh, and you were wrong about one thing—chopper trumps gunship when what you need is speed. Say hello to the afterlife for me.”

  And with that she was gone, zipping up to the roof, and into a waiting chopper. Colby shook his head.

  “Told you,” he said. “It’s like Mazatlan all over again.”

  “Everybody! Stay where you are!”

  Three men marched into the room. Sam could see why Alma called them suits. They were definitely military and armed to the teeth, but there was still something of the corporate suit and tie about their appearance.

  “Drop your weapons!”

  Alma and Colby did as they were told. Sam knew that Alma would have more on her, but she seemed paralyzed by the demons of her childhood.

  “Get in here!” yelled the one who seemed to be in charge.

  Another man walked into the room. It was Matheson. He looked weary and defeated, his confidence and swagger gone forever.

  “Which one is the locule?”

  Matheson pointed at Sam.

  “That’s him.”

  “You!” barked the soldier. “Come here!”

  Sam stood his ground and glowered. He could see how this was going to play out and there wasn’t any advantage in cooperating.

  The man stomped across the room, grabbed Sam’s jaw and turned his face to the light. As soon as he saw the blue and green eyes he nodded and stepped back.

  “Yep. That’s him. Kill him.”

  Silence. He turned around.

  “I said—”

  But there was no one to obey his order. Both suits were dead and Alma was wiping her knife on the shirt of the second. She was back.

  “Oh, sorry!” she said. “When you said weapons, did you mean knives too?”

  He raised his gun, but the knife was in his chest before his finger had even begun to curl around the trigger. He dropped to his knees, a look of surprise on his face.

  “But…you’re just…a girl.”

  Alma stepped over the bodies of his comrades and retrieved her knife.

  “I’m not just anything. I am Alma Kaahu of the Makahua and I am Maori.”

  A last long breath escaped from his lungs like a sigh, and then he was dead, falling sideways onto the floor.

  “We have to get out of here,” said Alma.

  “You won’t make it,” said Matheson.

  “I have to get Bethany,” said Sam, ignoring him.

  “Bethany? She’s here?”

  Sam nodded and ran out of the door, taking the stairs up to the next floor three at a time. He ran along the landing, flinging open each door in turn until, finally, there she was, sitting in a desk chair and twirling around.

  “Sam!”

  “Come on, Bethany, we’re going.”

  She flung herself into his arms and he carried her downstairs. Alma and Colby were standing near the main entrance with Matheson, but their faces were grim.

  “What is it?”

  “Tell him,” said Alma.

  “Orders are to destroy the locule at all costs,” said Matheson. “And if they fail to find it, to raze Bakersfield City to its foundations and kill every man, woman and child within a ten mile radius.”

  Sam handed Bethany to Colby and opened one of the great double doors a crack. The gunship was there, hovering about twenty feet above the ground, and standing beneath its hull was troop upon troop of men with just a single mission.

  He closed the door again and looked at Matheson.

  “What happened to them? To the others…the boys?”

  “They killed them. They destroyed all records of the research. Then they torched HIR.”

  “But what about—”

  “Dead. Except for the shareholders. It’s against company policy to execute shareholders.”

  “And you’re a shareholder?”

  “Of course.”

  “So what powers the gunship?”

  “I don’t know. Company secret.”

  “Huh,” said Colby. “Mutha?”

  “No,” said Matheson. “We never use it.”

  “But they have to,” insisted Colby. “You can’t run a thing that size with
out some kind of central system.”

  He was right. Sam opened the door again, only this time, he flung it wide.

  “What are you doing?” Alma grabbed at him, to pull him back but Sam shrugged her off.

  “No,” he said. “I can do this. At least…I think I can.”

  “Do what? No. No, Sam, look at it! It’s not some poxy little video poker game!”

  “Yes, it is. That’s all any of them are. A sequence of yes and no, on and off. Mutha’s different because it’s hyperspatial and molecular, but I think they’re using something older. Something from before. Something binary.”

  “So what?” said Matheson. “It could be running on orange juice. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  Alma stared at him.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Well…no. But binary’s a pretty good guess and worth a punt given the options.”

  Alma looked at the gunship and the men beneath it.

  “Okay, porangi,” she said, finally. “Just promise me one thing. If it doesn’t work, we rush them.”

  “Rush them?”

  “Yes. I want to die on my feet. And I’d really like to take a few with me. That okay with you?”

  Sam nodded. He looked at Colby and Bethany and smiled.

  “Thanks for all the help,” he said. “For a bad guy you turned out pretty cool.”

  “Never thought of myself as a bad guy,” said Colby, grinning. “Just a soldier. It’s been a slice, kid. See you on the other side.”

  “What are you people talking about?” Matheson peered at Sam. “Are you post-download?”

  “No,” said Sam, smiling. “I don’t have to be. I’m just me.”

  He turned back and looked at the ship. He’d have to open his mind, which meant that Mutha would probably find him again, but he’d just have to try and ignore it. Of course, there was no guarantee that it would work at all without touching it, but he’d opened the box from a distance. That was smaller, though. He closed his eyes and concentrated, feeling his way across the square to the hulking machine.

  And it was a machine. Deliberately old-tech: turbines, fuel cells, cogs, wheels, power trains. All untouchable. But somewhere…somewhere inside there was something. A small beating core. Doing the jobs that gears and chains alone had never been able to do.