"You all right?" the man asked her.
"Dehydrated. I got dizzy. No big deal." Geyl's voice was a hoarse whisper. The man who had uncuffed her stepped through the vehicle door. The sicarius with the rifle waved toward the door with the muzzle of his weapon. Geyl nodded, took a wobbling step, and collapsed on her face on the floor.
Filer watched her go down. Too graceless. Women fall better than that…unless she didn't exactly fall.
The sicarius bent down to hoist Geyl to her feet again. Filer saw Geyl struggle to her knees, grasp his proffered hand, grip tightly—
—then hurl the man over her shoulder and out the door, in a perfect Jiujitsu throw. Geyl leapt up and hauled down on a lever to one side of the vehicle door frame. The door slammed shut once more. Geyl vaulted two seats in one leap and reached the vehicle's forward control console, beneath the transparent bullet nose. She pulled forward hard on the manual throttle.
With a rising hum, the vehicle began to move back down the tunnel the way it had come. A burst of automatic rifle fire struck the vehicle's exterior; several rounds glanced off the tough plastic of the transparent nose. Filer flattened himself on the seat as best he could with one ankle still wired to a stanchion.
The vehicle was not made for jackrabbit starts. It took a little time to get to speed, and after a few seconds Filer heard something he half expected: The sound of someone vaulting onto the rear structure. He had more than half a suspicion who.
"Nice job. I spotted the fake, though."
Geyl was hammering in keystrokes to the console as though she had been doing it all her life. She nodded, lips pursed. "Hey, it worked. Those guys are so used to being gallant toward women that I gambled they'd just try and help me up. He even let me get a good grip on his wrist."
"You look like you know this ship pretty well."
Geyl hammered in another string of commands and left the nose to return and sit across from Filer. "I spent three months memorizing it. I could drive one of these in the dark. Hell, I could field strip it in the dark. I know where all the tunnels go. I know where the weapons are. I know all the secret places."
Filer nodded. "So now you're going to hide out in the tunnels and pick them off one by one."
Geyl laughed, and it had a bitter edge. "No thanks. I'm going to make a run for it."
"In your underwear."
"Actually, not even that. This Ralpha Dog stuff makes me itch." Geyl stood, and in one quick motion peeled off her briefs. Filer averted his eyes. Geyl put one hand under his chin and turned his face back toward her. "Am I that ugly, that you won't touch me or even look at me?"
The wrong time, the wrong place, certainly the wrong woman. So why was his heart pounding? "There's a certain boundary I'm in danger of crossing, Ma'am," Filer said. "Against my better judgement I took up fighting again. I hate to say it, but something in me wants to take up babes again too. Fighting and babes. The two things that almost got me slabbed more times than I can count."
"The two go together, don't they? So maybe I should help you." She grasped the lower seam of her elastic bra and drew it up over her head. "We have a couple of minutes. You could make love to me before we leave." She gave him an exaggerated leer. "I can think of a couple of ways we could do it with your ankle still wired to that bar."
She stood in front of him, hands outstretched to him. Once free of the bra that had compressed them against her ribs, Geyl's breasts were large and unnaturally perfect; pointed cones that bore no hint of gravity's damage, and this a woman in her late thirties.
Geyl, impatient, reached down and began unbuttoning his rumpled gray shirt. A sharp scraping sound from behind them made her stop.
Filer looked toward the nose of the vehicle. "Ma'am, we have company."
Geyl looked toward where Filer had nodded. Nutmeg was peering through the plastic nose of the vehicle at them, upside down and grinning. She waved with one hand, and pointed to her other, which held some small glinting implement. There was a long, ragged scratch on the plastic. While they watched, she dragged the implement across the first scratch at a right angle.
"I'd guess she's creating a stress flaw in that plastic," Filer said. "If she weakens it enough, a point-blank round will shatter it."
Geyl's face paled slightly. She turned back to Filer. "Then I guess I'm not going to become your babe anytime soon." There was sadness in her voice, to which something of her earlier desperation was returning.
"Not meant to be, though not for lack of wanting on my part. And not for lack of beauty on yours." Filer reached out his index finger, to touch the tip of one wide, plum-brown nipple. "As I'm sure my father would have said, them's durn near purfeckshun, missy dear."
Geyl sighed, and there was bitterness in it. "Yeah, they’re purty as can be…but they’re just not me."
She stepped backward, away from Filer, until her naked back touched the sliding steel door. She leaned against the door, her face tilted upward toward the ceiling. She brought her right hand to her left breast, her fingers scanning the skin there until they rested on four small birthmarks. Simultaneously, her left hand found three birthmarks on the skin of her right breast. Geyl took a breath, closed her eyes, and pressed inward against her breasts with the tips of seven fingers.
All seven fingers broke through her skin. In one swift motion she wrenched her hand downward, tearing the skin and the nipple completely free of her left breast. In a second motion she tore away the skin and nipple of her right breast. Bright blood appeared at the smooth edges of where her skin had ripped free, as at a perforation.
Filer stumbled back a step. He wanted to speak, but could find no words. Geyl leaned back against the steel, eyes closed, panting, her fingers splayed against the cold metal. Behind her nipples and the skin of her breasts lay two pale white conical sacks, which had begun to pulse and move as though from internal pressures.
Holes appeared in both sacks, roughly where Geyl’s fingers had punctured her skin. A viscous, pale yellow fluid was flowing purposefully from the holes, pumping outward in slow contractions. The fluid broke into rivulets that flowed way in every direction, in defiance of gravity. The rivulets flowing from both breasts met, and divided, and sent out branches in many directions. A network of veinlike tubules spread over her torso and up to her neck, and downward along both legs. The tubules were tightening and relaxing, pumping some fluid through the network they were building. Geyl stepped away from the door and raised her hands upward, allowing the tubules to divide and spread around every part of her body.
The tubules on her torso were now extending membranes across the gaps that separated them. Centimeter by centimeter, the yellow material extended to cover her skin completely, moving in waves outward toward her extremities. A cowl was building itself up beneath her chin and behind her head, leaving only her face exposed.
She raised one foot for several seconds, and then the other, to allow the expanding yellow skin to spread over the bottoms of her feet, completely and individually enclosing every toe. Similarly, the flowing yellow veins and skin wrapped around each finger, conforming to and enclosing each completely.
Less than two minutes later, Geyl's body was completely enclosed in a pale yellow sheath, as tight upon her as though a second layer of skin. The cowl covering her head was growing a transparent faceplate that could hinge down and meet the flange of material beneath her chin. Swellings with vents appeared on her sides and upper back. The material covering her torso was thickening and hardening over her chest, where two small breasts and bare hints of nipples could be discerned.
“That’s the real me. The rest was grown in a tank and grafted in place, complete with a dotted line to tear on.” Geyl raised one hand into better light and inspected it. Filer noticed several small protrusions forming on the back of Geyl's hands and fingers. Her third finger had grown a short curved claw. While he watched, she leaned over one of the seats and sliced it open, scooping out plastic foam and cutting free sheets of leather, which she then stuff
ed quickly into a pouch opening over her abdomen.
Filer finally forced himself to look away from Geyl, and saw Nutmeg doggedly dragging her blade or scribe again and again in a star-shaped pattern across the plastic of the vehicle's transparent bullet nose. "I think you have less than a minute," he said.
Geyl bent down by Filer's ankle, and touched her index finger to the wire-cuff binding him to the steel stanchion. Something like a drop of gray fluid touched its thick steel cable, which parted almost instantly. Geyl grasped the wirecuff and tucked it into her pouch, followed by her underclothes and the blood-smeared tissue she had torn away from her body.
"Raw materials," Geyl said. "The suit breaks down whatever you put in the pouch and uses the molecules to build up its own substance."
"Nanotechnology," Filer finally said, relieved that it was only a clever machine, and not some weird parasitic living thing that had hidden inside Geyl's body. "I heard that's illegal on Earth."
"The SIS has some legal exemptions. We do whatever we must to protect 1Earth citizens," she said, "and we still don't allow the stuff that lives in people's bloodstreams." She reached into the seat she had emptied of stuffing and touched the spring frame at many points, finally pulling out handfuls of sine wave-shaped steel springs, which vanished into her pouch in seconds. "Steel is good. More steel would be better." She drew a bead of the gray fluid around a nearby stanchion close to where it met the ceiling. In moments it parted. A second bead near the floor, and the full length of two-centimeter tubing came free in her hands. Ten seconds later, it too had vanished into the pouch.
"That should do it." Geyl backed up toward the door, eyes on the bullet nose. "Let her come." Nutmeg had pulled herself back up onto the top of the vehicle. Filer ran the length of the car and crouched behind an equipment cabinet near the opposite end.
Moments later, a chatter of rifle fire made the vehicle's transparent bullet nose explode into fragments. A slim form swung down from above and vaulted through the remains of the transparent nose into the car. Nutmeg took cover behind a seat and fired at Geyl.
Geyl, struck, screeched and fell backwards from the impact of the rounds. Filer watched Nutmeg dart out from behind the seat. Geyl, lying on the floor of the car, raised one hand and pointed at Nutmeg. He heard a quiet plurp! from the tip of her finger. Nutmeg exhaled explosively, and began to choke. She twitched and stiffened, dropping the assault rifle and falling to the floor, writhing.
Geyl got up and limped back down the central aisle toward Filer, holding her side with one hand. "The suit torso doesn't puncture that easily," she said, "but physics is physics. Those rounds hurt. I may have a broken rib."
Filer stood. "Nutmeg..."
"Dead. Hollow quarter-millimeter steel needle full of a synthetic toxin. Takes about five seconds."
The vehicle had begun to slow. Filer realized that he was much lighter now, and felt his weight falling away from him even as the thought crossed his mind. "We must be getting near the hub."
Geyl nodded. "We're about there."
"There?"
"SIS had a small escape capsule built onto the flat face of the Moravec. It's got room for half a dozen people, tops, and contains its own Hilbert drive, hard-coded to a trajectory coming up toward Earth from a safe distance under the south pole. It'll fold out of here without even cutting free of the Moravec. SIS has a tug in polar orbit listening for its beacon, and as soon as we fold they'll come running. "
The vehicle halted. The door slid back, revealing a short corridor in poor light. "Let's go."
She reached out a yellow-sheathed hand to Filer. Various geegaws were still flowing and forming on the back of her hand even as he watched. Filer hesitated, looking at his hand and then hers.
Finally, he looked up, and their eyes met. "I don't think so."
Geyl's initial look was incredulous, then impatient. "But we're a team! Here's your chance to get free of the Ralpha Dogs forever. You could even win the war with the help we'll get on Earth!"
"I've already surrendered, Ma'am. It was my father's war, not mine. I'm sure too many of my people have died already."
"Your people." There was an undeniable sneer in her voice. "A bunch of drunken idiots with guns."
Filer felt his own anger rising. "Maybe. But you look in their eyes and you know who they are and what they stand for. They're empty land—flat and fertile. I could grow a system of ethics on ground like that, and I intend to try. All I hear about Earth is one faction triple-crossing another, breaking their own laws and getting ready to wipe out whole cities for sheer cussedness. I don't even play cards with that kind of people."
"You promised to help get me to Earth!"
Filer pointed at the door. His smile was grim. "I got you past the smilodons, and the trail's clear, Ma'am. Like my people say, better skee-daddle 'fore the Dogs show up."
"I offered you my love..."
"Love? You have no least concept of love. You offered me nothing better than lust. And about all I can offer in return is this!" Filer struck her cheek hard with the heel of his hand. "Jow, Geyl."
Geyl's head spun with the blow, and when her eyes came up again Filer saw new fury in them. She raised her right hand and made a fist. Inches from his face Filer saw an array of tubes and barrels over her knuckles, any of which could end his life in moments. For most of a minute she glared at him, her arm shaking with tension.
At last she lowered her hand. Geyl stepped around Filer to the control console and hammered in a sequence of commands. "I'll wait ten minutes before I fold. By then the car will have you all the way forward. You'll need as much iron between you and the capsule as you can get, or the fold will kill you."
"Thanks, Ma'am, " Filer said.
"Jow, Filer," Geyl replied, and leapt out the door, which closed silently behind her.
Filer sat on the floor, holding Nutmeg in his arms, as the vehicle hummed forward through the tunnels. A harsh breeze entered the car through its shattered nose, and Filer could clearly hear the sound of its wheels turning against the iron tunnel walls.
Nutmeg was still alive. She was taking shallow breaths, her limbs extended and stiff. Her eyes were rolled back in her head. "Come back, little girl," he whispered in her right ear. "Who'm I gonna bust ass with if you leave me?"
She squirmed, and groaned. Her eyes closed tight, and half-opened again. "Filer," she whispered. "Bad stuff. Woulda slabbed me, but…"
"But what?"
She paused, eyes distant. "But…I'm full of surprises."
He clapped her arms and rubbed them. "So Peter said after he grew a new leg. Is there anything you Dogs can't do?"
"Yeah." She squirmed again, turned and put her arms around him. "Lose." Nutmeg pulled herself up a little higher, shook her head, and scanned the aisle down the center of the car.
"What did you do with the body?"
"Body?"
"Geyl's body. You slabbed her while I was out, right?"
Filer shook his head. "I was chained to the wall until she had her magic cat suit on, remember? She made it pretty plain that I was outclassed at that point. She decided not to slab me, and then she left. She's taking some sort of escape capsule back to Earth."
The tiny woman stiffened in his arms. She seemed to be listening to some distant voice, and her own lips followed. "A Hilbert capsule. Bolted to the flat face." Nutmeg sat bolt upright, her eyes wide, her entire face a shout. "The Rotons!"
17. A Bucket of Fear
Jamie Eigen strode the dirt track toward the center of Lincolntown, carrying a bucket of onions. "How much longer?" he spoke to the air, feeling his free hand tremble. Weeks of thought and preparation and gnawing doubt would now be resolved, and proven either effective or, in some frighteningly unpredictable way, catastrophic.
"Seventy-one seconds," replied the bucket of onions.
Jamie stopped, and turned to look back down the road, toward the little barracks where the Interstellar American Republic warehoused those unwilling to be warriors. Ahea
d were the buildings and tents where Columbia's twelve thousand unkempt pirates prepared to topple Earth's ruling government, slaughtering several hundred million people in the process.
"Remember my orders. You're to avoid killing anyone."
The voice from the bucket was sullen. "I remember everything. And if you feel the need to be repetitive, then so do I: This whole exercise is absurd. I could kill them all painlessly in less than an hour. They would collapse in their tracks and never even realize that they were dying."
Jamie shook his head, aware that hidden eyes were on him. "If I kill them, I'm no better than they are. We have a bargain, and my threat holds until your part is fulfilled. You may frighten them as much as you like. In fact, fear is something they should all learn."
"I see. Death would be more sensible, but if you want fear—fear they will have."
Jamie shivered. When Sahan-Grusa said things like that, Jamie flashed on the sullen "yes, master" a djinn might speak before unleashing pandemonium that could engulf the master as well as his enemies. He had let the djinn out of its bottle—his own bloodstream—on the force of a bargain that seemed weak indeed to bind a thing that could eat stone and set fire to iron. Lincolntown would have fear. Jamie wondered if it could ever be as withering as the fear he himself felt for the monster he now carried under a dinner's worth of onions.
For several heartbeats, Jamie heard only the wind, and the distant sounds of men and their tools busily at work. His boots felt it a hair-thin moment before his ears heard it: A sharp explosion followed by a welling rumble. Jamie spun around, and saw a stout column of inky black rising from the privy clearing east of the CO barracks, meters from the crude wooden privy where the monster had left his body in a spasm of wracking diarrhea.
The column wasn't smoke. It rose not in the passive grip of heat and pressure, but purposefully in the manner of a swarm of insects, groping toward the sky like the unfolding tentacle of some strange undersea creature. For perhaps two hundred meters it remained a bulging, writhing pillar. Then it flattened into a hovering cloud, rolling and expanding outward, and especially eastward and northward.
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