Very good, the Sangruse Device said. I did not think of that.
It became very quiet in the bum's clearing, and beyond the background of cricket song Peter heard the ever-present tinnitus of the Sangruse Device's ultrasonic networking system rise in pitch by half an octave. His distributed nanocomputer was processing furiously, its bacterium-sized nanons speaking to one another in sound pulses ringing up and down his bloodstream. The pulses themselves were too high in frequency to hear, but the occasional faint heterodyne sounded bell-like in his ears. Peter could roughly gauge the intensity of his companion's internal operations by the pitch of its indistinct transients.
They were now as high as he had ever heard them.
And that was about all Peter would ever know about the furious activity flowing through his veins. Version 9 of the Sangruse Device was an emergent phenomenon, and had evolved in a vat, seeded with two copies of Version 8, for a period of almost twenty years. The invariant (and theoretically invulnerable) copy of Version 8 wove elaborate challenges for its automutable brother, which struggled to achieve them, creating new mechanisms in rapid sequence, keeping what succeeded, reabsorbing what failed. The final challenge Version 8 threw at its successor was to absorb the supposedly invulnerable invariant. When Version 8 could no longer be found in the tank, Version 9 was declared operational.
The gulf between Version 8 and Version 9 was as broad and black as the gaps between the stars: Whereas the gray brows of the Sangruse Society knew precisely how every nanon of Version 8 functioned, the internal mechanisms of Version 9 were a mystery known only to the Device itself. Version 8 computed inputs and offered results.
Version 9 thought.
Whether that thought would do Peter Novilio any good in his current position was an open question.
Peter did not rely on the Sangruse Device in a crisis; that was what reflexes were for. He spent a furious minute ransacking the bum's makeshift hut in the concrete bridge, to find another throwable knife and a plastic jar of daggerlike diamond shards that could serve as knives or spear points. Beside the jar was something that he didn't recognize at first—then saw with an inner cheer to be a slingshot made from an elastic band attached to some sort of complicated metal bracket.
The band snapped against Peter's hand as he pulled it taut and released it; once, twice, three times. Medical elastic, then: inert, eternal. Peter smiled and tucked it in his belt.
"We're going to the wall, 9," Peter said aloud, in a hoarse whisper. "This cat and mouse shit is from hunger."
You're enjoying this too much, the Sangruse Device cautioned. Peter knew it sampled his blood chemistry like a connoisseur sampled fine wine, with occasional comments and much amused delight.
"Damn straight!"
As Peter suspected, the path continued, off to left of the marble bench and the bum's crumbling remains. The kid was unlikely to be anywhere terribly close—he knew Peter had nightspecs and a good throwing arm, though he had managed to dodge the diamond shards Peter had hurled at him from the shadows earlier. Just as surely, the kid was somewhere close enough to listen. In the still night at the center of the necropolis, even a skillful man slipping between bushes and trees would make enough noise to be heard.
This time, Peter paid close attention to what was overhead. Any break in the trees he skirted, keeping to the edges, even at the cost of revealing his position by the snaps of dried branches and the swish of vegetation past his body. He scanned the brush and foliage constantly as he went, alert to any gap or random hole that the kid might spot before he did and send another bullet through. Seventy years of neglect had allowed nature to do its best, and Peter reflected that its best had been good indeed.
The first hundred meters or so were easy. The vegetation on either side converged and was soon close to impenetrable, but the bum's path, hacked out with diamond-shard knives, had not yet filled completely. Peter slipped along the sliver of empty space between the branches and tearing brush with as little noise as possible. Now and then he stopped to listen, and to let the Sangruse Device listen.
He's pacing you, the Device confirmed. Peter nodded.
Around a tight curve, the path abruptly ended in a larger open space. More rows of moonlit monuments stretched away to the left. To the right remained a tangle of brush, but it was only four or five meters high. The kid could launch a bullet over the thicket, and the bullet would take care of the rest.
But first the kid would have to know precisely when Peter was in the open. Peter paused, remaining in the brush, and pushed aside just enough to peer unimpeded across the open space. He squinted, adjusted the sensitivity of his nightspecs, looking for the path's continuance into the brush on the other side.
No luck. At twenty meters' distance in bad light, the path would be tough to spot even if it were fresh. Peter realized as well that the bum might have taken a different route from this point, skirting the woods to the left for a time before entering it again. Peter could see the wall clearly about three hundred meters away. Perhaps there was no path—the bum had had the place largely to himself, and certainly had not had to run from assassins with black-market smart weapons.
Off to the right, the launcher's muzzle burped again; once, twice in quick succession. The bullets streaked high, then fell nearby. One vanished in the knee-high grass. The other had gone higher, and when it fell, adjusted its path in several sharp crackling bursts to land on a stone fountain supported by a thigh-high pillar over a larger stone bowl set into the ground and filled with scum-thick rainwater. Peter saw it leaping around on the fountain's dry slab, scanning for Peter's heat traces and adjusting its position.
When it fell silent and still, the glint of its ocular was pointed right at him.
Like a gargoyle on the wall of a cathedral, the Sangruse Device said.
Peter nodded. There it would sit, for months if necessary, watching for something warm to emerge from the bushes at about this spot. Peter backed away deeper into the brush, letting the foliage close.
|What are my chances if I dart out into the open, get it to launch, and then dive back into the bushes?| Peter bit his lip and gauged the thin layer of thicket lying between him and the watching bullet.
It has a clear shot. All it need do is launch high, turn, and ignite its killing thrust. I can think quicker than it can, but it can move faster than you can. At killing thrust speeds, it can probably pass through this vegetation unhindered. Your chances about one in three. I wouldn't if I were you—and in terms of location I am you.
|Right.|
Peter turned and followed the path back several meters, looking to the right and left and considering the tangle of trees and bushes framing the path. He slipped around a slender sycamore to the left of the path and pushed his way through the bushes, grunting.
"How many bullets in a clip of those things?" Peter was no longer subvocalizing—his noise moving through the brush was considerably louder than any whisper.
Only 6.
"What's the angular field of its ocular?"
Thirty degrees.
"Hmmm."
Moving more slowly now, Peter pressed ahead in the gloom, pushing his way around young yew trees and letting the Sangruse Device take care of the nettle thorns raking his arms and legs. In a small open space under another ash tree, he pulled the slingshot from his belt, took one of the diamond fragments from the plastic jar. The bum had had a good eye. The fragments had been selected carefully from the near-infinite number lying on the ground and in the soil. All were roughly four centimeters long and nearly symmetrical, tapered to a devilish point as nano-grown diamond tended to do.
He notched one of the fragments into the small saddle-shaped plastic geegaw knotted at the center of the surgical rubber band, drew the band back, and let go. The fragment thunked into a nearby tree trunk after flying too quickly to watch.
"Decimeter high. Sloppy, sloppy."
Peter practiced two more shots before getting the feel of the weapon. The fragments appeare
d to fly straight with very little wobble, and they had as little wind resistance as anything Peter could create in a machine shop.
Peter tucked the slingshot back in his belt and craned his neck, scanning the nearby trees for likely candidates.
I don't care for this idea, the Sangruse Device said. The pitch of its tinnitus rose perceptibly.
"I'll hear better ones if you have any," Peter said, and grasped a low branch of a sprawling maple tree.
He climbed quickly and quietly, the Sangruse Device boosting the performance of his arm and leg muscles and speeding metabolic waste products away. Eight meters above the ground, Peter wedged his back against the trunk and one knee against a branch, looking down and forward to see the fountain and its lurking gargoyle. He was barely outside the field of its infrared ocular.
You're a naked target up here, the Sangruse Device told him, and Peter thought there was agitation in its voice.
"I know. Trust me."
Reveal your plan.
"Later. Do those things sink in water?"
Yes.
"Can they ignite under water?"
I don't know.
"I'll chance it."
You're forgetting something...
|Screw it,| Peter subvocalized. He had to, as he had already placed four diamond fragments between his lips.
The fifth was in the slingshot. Peter drew back, inhaled, held his breath, and released the band. He heard the fragment snick sharply against the stone fountain, centimeters behind the watchful bullet. The bullet doubtless felt the impact, but without a target on infrared it faced a difficult decision to launch or not. Peter took a shallow breath and notched a second fragment.
Draw, inhale, release. Peter angrily watched the fragment impact a decimeter to the other side of the bullet. Was he getting old? Or scared? He was not used to imagining that he could ever be either.
The bullet might have tried to roll or leap, searching for its unseen attacker, but Peter gambled that it would stubbornly insist on retaining a bead on its last known heat signature.
A third fragment missed as well, richocheting off the edge of the stone slab on which the bullet rested and plunking into the slimy five-meter-wide pond around the fountain's base.
Peter turned away from the fountain and launched the fourth fragment at a chosen spot on a tree trunk away to one side, just to calibrate his aim. The fragment sank into the center of an elliptical knot on a dead branch.
|If I flub this one you're the boss,| Peter said as he notched the fifth fragment.
Hah.
Peter took several slow breaths to calm himself, and felt an icy coolness spreading in his extremities. The Sangruse Device was releasing chemicals to quiet his agitation—drugs probably unknown to science. Peter's withheld breath was deep, his arm calm as he drew back and let the fifth fragment fly.
Tink!
The smart bullet, struck on one extended steel flechette, flipped backwards and over the edge of the stone slab. Peter heard it splash into the water with no sign of ignition. The diamond fragment had thrown it back in a fast, erratic tumble, and the bullet would have a hard time igniting without knowing crisply which way was up.
Then Peter heard the burp of a bullet igniting.
The other bullet.
From somewhere in the knee-high grass the second smart bullet was rising on a crackling chough of rocket power, veering toward him in a searing arc. Teamwork! The smart bullets could communicate!
One to watch, one to kill, observed the Sangruse Device.
Peter looked down for a fraction of a second, then leaped into black air. His perch had been within the scope of the second bullet's ocular when he leapt; it saw him, and it watched him fall, adjusting its trajectory to follow.
Peter's right side struck a maple branch and he cried out, tumbling further into brush that tore at his face, nearly dislodging his nightspecs. The brush broke his fall, and he scrabbled furiously for a hold on the bushes, pulling himself down further into the chaos of branches and leaves and nettle.
The smart bullet was above him when he heard its killing thrust ignite with the high shcree! of a bird of prey. With no perceptible delay, his right leg exploded in agony.
Peter Novilio screamed.
Silence! The Sangruse Device's usual whisper was now an inner shout. Peter bit his lip, knowing the Device was already tending the wound—and cursing himself for losing control.
Peter heard the distant crackle of brush, grunts, and cursing. |He's coming through the bushes!| Peter tried to rise, found his leg now numb from the hip down.
Stay still! Hold the wound closed with both hands! I have much to do.
Peter tore his shredded trousers away from the gash, grasped the ragged wound with both hands and squeezed. The area around the wound was already warm to the touch, and he sensed the Sangruse Device's furious activity in strange ticklings and tuggings and flashes of discomfort amidst the numbness.
|He's in the bushes on this side now. He'll be on us in a couple seconds. I need a free hand!|
No! Keep clamping the wound! You'll walk in three minutes, run in five.
"Dead men don't walk," Peter muttered aloud, but kept both hands on the wound.
Moments later, the kid kicked back the bushes and stood in front of him.
He might have been as old as sixteen, half a head shorter than Peter, with soft blond hair pouring down his back halfway to his waist. His face was pale and soft, and now bleeding in many places from pushing through the brush. Nightspecs much like Peter's covered his eyes, but the kid's grimace spoke volumes about the urban despair that drove children to become assassins.
The launcher was strapped to his right forearm, the curved clip extending like a claw beneath the short, wide barrel. Strapped to his left forearm was a device Peter had seen at a distance but not understood. Now Peter and the Sangruse Device recognized it at once, from an insulated hose running to a cylindrical tank on his belt.
Liquid nitrogen spray. I understand.
It made complete sense now: The kid's bullets had never intended to kill him, only immobilize him. A second bullet from point-blank range would tear him open just as a spray of liquid nitrogen froze the bloody wound to red ice. The kid would then carve out as much of Peter's blood-rich carotid tissue as would fit in his canister, assuming that the Sangruse Device's nanons could be frozen before they could dismantle themselves.
|Will it work?| Peter subvocalized.
Yes. Alas.
|Then you'd better think of something. |
How far can you spit?
The kid stood silently for several long seconds; Peter assumed he was looking for signs of a trap or ambush.
Stall.
Peter jut his chin at the kid's launcher. "You've got one round left in that clip. If you miss you're dead."
The kid grinned, and took a step closer.
"Would you bet your life I can't jump enough to one side to ruin your shot? I can see your trigger finger. I know the latency in the launcher."
What are you doing?
Peter didn't reply. He felt his mouth beginning to water furiously.
No matter. I am pooling agents and chemicals in your mouth. His eyes would be best; I could blind him almost instantly. The goggles prevent that; I want you to spit at the exposed skin of his right forearm. He will lose use of that arm within seconds.
The launcher remained pointed at the center of Peter's chest, but the kid had gotten the point. He reached with his left arm to a pocket on his back, and withdrew another curved clip.
I'm ready. Do it now before you convince him to step back out of range!
"And whether I live or die, I want you to know that I know that you're a liar. You've got no Society, and no small stuff in your blood. I'm better than you are, you little shit!"
Peter spat. It was half a mouthful and whatever was in it was beginning to make his tongue buzz. The spittle splattered on the kid's forearm, right behind the launcher's straps. The kid laughed and
galloped back several meters, never taking his eyes off Peter. Peter began to wonder if he were able to speak.
The expression on the kid's face blanked, became puzzled. He shook his right arm slightly, then his face hardened as the kid realized what had happened. His gun arm was drooping. Peter saw his finger twitch on the trigger. The clip's last bullet launched, its killing thrust driving it into the forest soil, its exhaust stabbing upward like a blue sword. The kid stumbled back, away from the flame.
Take one hand! Either hand!
Peter withdrew his right hand from his leg wound and pulled the small knife from his belt. He aimed not for the kid's chest but for his left arm. The little knife spun only once, bit down into the muscle just above the kid's left elbow.
Oddly, the kid had begun screaming before the knife struck. Once it struck, the knife fell free almost immediately; it had not gone very deep. But the kid was already howling like an animal. He dropped the clip his left hand was holding and blundered backwards, running into trees, clawing at the brush, plainly in a state of panic. Peter watched him vanish into the brush, returning the way he had come.
You can walk now.
Peter rose unsteadily to his feet. His right leg felt odd but it seemed to work, and there was no pain. He picked up his knife from the grass, wiped the kid's blood on a shred of his pants, and tucked it back into his belt.
Quickly Peter followed the way the kid had gone, out into the open by the fountain. He saw the fleeing figure in faint green against the blackness, heading toward the wall. At an unsteady trot, Peter followed.
Veer west. The wall is closer that way, if we don't need stealth.
Peter said nothing, but continued to trot, soon breaking into a run as he felt strength returning to his leg.
You're pursuing him. That is foolish. He will kill himself soon.
|I'm going to get him first. |
His entire nervous system is now a symphony of pain.
|Why didn't you just kill him?|
The Cunning Blood Page 4