05 - Changeling

by Chris Kubasik - (ebook by Undead)

  “Did you see the combination when we came in?”

  “What?”

  “Did you see the combination when we came in? Did you see the combination?”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “Try it.”

  “What?”

  “Try it. It might be the same.”

  He felt her shove her Uzi into his right hand. The hand was still numb, but he could control his muscles again. He turned and fired the gun down the hall, pinning the remaining guards in doorways.

  “Nothing,” said Liaison.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, Prof. What the frag is the point of having two locks with the same combo?”

  “Never mind.” He dropped his pistol and raked the face plate off the wall with his left hand. “Fry it. We don’t have to worry about setting off any alarms.”

  Some guards grabbed the opportunity created by Peter’s cease-fire. Bullets flew down the hall and slammed around the doorway. Liaison gave out a scream, and a splash of blood spattered the wall.

  “Damn,” Peter said under his breath. “You all right?”

  “Not for much longer.”

  Peter turned his back to the guards and raised his duster to block Liaison from the shots of the guards. He twisted his body to shoot the Uzi down the corridor.

  He glanced at the lock, where he could see the wires moving around as if alive. “Frag, that hurt,” she gasped.

  “Almost home. Almost home.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” Liaison shouted into the talkie. “Kathryn! Now, Kathryn! Let’s go!”

  The guards had maneuvered into better positions, and were firing one shot after another into Peter’s back. He felt himself dangerously close to passing out.

  He looked down again and saw Liaison appear. She placed one wire against another. The door opened. “YES!”

  They ran out through the door toward the closed gate, bullets from the guard tower ripping up the ground around them. A few rounds caught Liaison in the thigh, and she stumbled to the ground.

  Peter stopped and ran back for her. She was clutching her wound, and saying, “Oh, Breena. Please, please, don’t let me die.” He dropped the Uzi, picked her up in his massive arms, and continued to run for the gate.

  Getting closer, he eyeballed his chances. The gate was solid metal and set on wheels. The car wouldn’t be able to break through it. He’d have to get over it on his own.

  He began to pick up speed, running madly for the gate. Desperately ignoring the pain that racked his body, he forced himself to mink only of getting over the gate, getting into the car, driving away, seeing Kathryn…. Thinking of anything but the present moment. He shifted Liaison’s limp body to his left arm. Though he hurt bad, his massive troll muscles supported her slight frame.

  He got to the wall and leaped as high as he could. As he jumped he heard the squeal of the car stopping outside the wall.

  His chest slammed against the metal of the gate. His right hand grabbed instinctively for the wire just above his head, and the barbs dug deep into his palm. He bit his lip against the pain and, with one arm, dragged himself up onto the gate. He wasn’t sure he was going to make it.

  “What the frag is happening?” Liaison said in a daze.

  From the other side he heard Kathryn shout, “I don’t know how,” and Breena screamed, “Just do it!”

  Machine gun fire cut through the night air from the street side of the wall. A fireball rose from the base of the wall and shot through the night straight into the guard tower. The searchlight exploded and the guards were thrown to the ground far below.

  Peter got himself to the top of the gate and ripped the wire out of his way. He pulled Liaison onto his lap. The Americar was just under him now, Kathryn firing an Uzi at another guard tower while Breena stood leaning against the hood.

  Just as he was balancing himself to jump to the ground, a thick spray of bullets caught him in the back and knocked him off his feet. As he fell, all Peter could think of was keeping Liaison safe. He held her out in his arm to keep from crushing her when he hit the ground.

  The sidewalk arrived sooner than he expected it to. At first he thought his spine had snapped in two, then realized it was no more than immense pain. With one final effort of will, he got up from the ground and onto his feet.

  “What happened to her?” Breena demanded, as Peter put Liaison in the car.

  “Not now,” he shouted. “Let’s go!”

  Kathryn ran around to the front passenger seat. Peter pushed Liaison further over along the passenger side and climbed in behind her.

  When he looked back, Breena was standing motionless, red and orange sparks glowing all around her hands.

  “If you blow yourself on a spell, we’re not going anywhere.”

  “If they can catch us, it doesn’t matter how soon we leave.”

  She opened her eyes and stared up into the sky. Peter followed her gaze and saw the chopper rising up from behind the wall. Breena raised her hands and flung a fireball at it. The ball sped through the air, then slammed into the craft’s cabin.

  A terrible explosion tore through the chopper. The blast threw the guards out into the air, their uniforms in flames. A second explosion cut through the engine, sending shards of metal flying in all directions.

  Breena got into the car and slammed the door shut. “That felt fragging good,” she said to no one in particular, then kicked the car into drive.

  As they rushed away Peter saw the gate open and a Westwind, a SAAB Dynamit, and a Leyland-Rover van come out after them.

  “We’ve got company.”

  “Put Liaison on the floor and pull down the seat.”

  Peter obeyed, though doing so was difficult because of his size. When he got the seat down, he saw that it opened into the trunk. His jaw dropped when he saw the mobile arsenal stored within it; grenades, launchers, light machine guns.

  “I don’t know how to use half this stuff,” he called up to Breena.

  She pushed me gas pedal down hard to gain distance.

  “I think the Vindicator minigun is your speed, buckeroo. Pass a box of grenades up to Red, here.”

  Peter fished out the box and passed it to Kathryn. “What are you doing with a Vindicator in the car?” be said. “Can you even use this thing?”

  “Zoze said we might need it, so I took it.”

  He handed the box to Kathryn, who took it carefully “All right. What do I do?” she asked.

  “First, relax. Thirty years ago you didn’t know how to use a credstick to buy a business suit. You learn as you go.”

  “I’m only twenty-eight,” she mumbled.

  Bullets from the cars behind them slammed into the rear window. Some bounced off. Others exploded.

  “Oh, frag!” exclaimed Breena.

  Peter pulled up the Vindicator and saw that the belt snaked its way into a full box sitting in the trunk. Other cables led to a heavy battery belt with a red rocker switch on one of the battery packs. He thumbed it. The mass of metal in his arms began to vibrate and hum as the six heavy barrels at its front started turning. The dull hum quickly grew in pitch as the barrels picked up speed. He barely heard Breena instructing Kathryn as he tried to get a bead on the guards behind them. “Just pull the pins and drop them. They’ll race up and go off. We don’t need to be accurate, we just want to give them a very, very good scare. Hang on, though. I’m going to have to go pretty fast to get the timing to work out.”

  She drove the car down the entrance ramp to I-94. The instant she completed the turn, Breena slammed down on the gas, steadily pushing the speed from 130, to 140, to 150 kilometers per hour. The guards pursued. More explosive shells hit the rear window, creating a web of running fissures.

  “Now you fragging pikers! NOW!”

  Peter maneuvered the weapon out the left window, hooked his fingernail on the trigger, and fired the machine gun at the Leyland-Rover van, which led the pack behind them. The minigun roared, spitting bullets as fast as the barrels
could rotate. Peter quickly lost control of the weapon and let up on the trigger. Some of the bullets hit their target, but most sprayed harmlessly away as the gun jumped in his grip. The van swerved a bit, but stayed hard on their tail.

  Explosions suddenly blossomed behind their car, one after another. Turning to look at Kathryn, Peter saw her pulling pins and dropping grenades with the speed of an old-fashioned corn-shucker looking for a bonus.

  He turned back and opened fire on the van again, leaning further out and bracing the butt of the weapon against his shoulder. Again, the minigun roared, and again he quickly lost control of it. This time, though, what little accuracy he had must have inspired some fear in the drivers behind them. The pursuing West-wind and Dynamit began maneuvering to use the van as a shield.

  Suddenly one of Kathryn’s grenades exploded beneath the Leyland-Rover. It began to swerve wildly, first one way, then the other, before it careened over the guard rail and smashed onto the highway.

  The vibration of the minigun tearing into his shoulder, Peter managed to rake the gun’s spray over the armored grill of the Dynamit. He crisscrossed the fire back and forth. On the sixth pass his bullets dug through the vehicle’s armor, penetrating the engine block. The car came to an abrupt stop, down from 150 in an instant, just as the Westwind hit the base of the ramp behind it.

  The Westwind tried to swerve, but smashed into the back of the Dynamit, sending them both off the shoulder into a shallow sewage ditch.

  “Yes!” Peter cried. “YES! YES! YES!”

  Kathryn laughed and cried, her head rocking up and down.

  Peter slid back into the car. He turned Liaison over on the floor and reached down to check her pulse.

  She had one. That was good enough for now.

  And then he passed out.

  25

  The first thing Peter saw when he woke up on his back was a huge painting of people in a park. It filled the wall before him. It was a strange painting, but before he could figure out what made it so, his attention was drawn to Breena, who knelt on the floor beside him. A light green something sparkled over her entire body. Her hands rested on his shoulder. She seemed to be in a trance.

  He noticed immediately that he felt much better than he had…

  When…?

  When he was in the car.

  It all came back to him. He turned his head and saw Kathryn asleep on a couch. He had never seen her look so gentle before. Until now she always seemed to have a kind of war mask on, beautiful, but defensive—even when frightened. Now… Not more attractive—just another part of her.

  He glanced around the room. It seemed like a living room, but he drought it might once have been an office. Paintings hung everywhere. Near the baseboards. Near the ceiling. Some on the ceiling. Pictures of colored squares. Pictures of minotaurs done in a cyber-ware motif. Wild colors in broad strokes covered the walls beneath the paintings. Colors everywhere. Undoubtedly it was Liaison’s handiwork. It had the same untamed palette as her clothes.

  His gaze was drawn back first to Breena, who remained still and peaceful, and then to the painting in front of him.

  He’d never seen it before, but he liked it. But he also didn’t like it.

  What was it?

  A couple walking together, dressed in old-fashioned clothing. A man sat on the grass smoking a pipe. A monkey on a leash. Many people, all enjoying a day in a park. Kind of. Their bodies were too stiff.

  He realized that the painting wasn’t made with strokes. Something else. Dots.

  “Like it?”

  Liaison stood in the doorway. She wore an oversized blue shirt that hung down to her knees. Smears of red and green paint covered it.

  “Where are we?”

  “Our place. Breena’s and mine. In the Noose.”

  “How’d you get me here?”

  “Well, I didn’t do it. I was out. But apparently you were just conscious enough for them to guide you up the stairs.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You were nearly dead.”

  “Oh.” He glanced at Breena. “Is she…?”

  “She’s fine. She’ll be at it a few more minutes. But she’ll be out of it all day tomorrow. You were really hurting.”

  “Did you get an address?”

  “You bet.” She crossed the room and knelt down on his other side. He found her very cute. “A place called ABTech on the Westside. We checked the listing, didn’t find it anywhere. I went into the Matrix for a cursory check. Nothing. I’ll go in-depth tomorrow.”

  She smiled down at him. “So. What do you think of the place?”

  “It’s colorful.”

  “You think so? I was thinking about trying to make it a bit brighter.”

  He stared at her. He decided she wasn’t kidding.

  “You like the picture?” she said and gestured to the painting in front of him.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s an original. I got it from the Art Institute.”

  “You what?”

  “Well, I didn’t get it. It’s from the Art Institute. A slag I knew, he got it from a friend, who stole it from an accountant, who stole it from a partner, who grabbed it out of the Institute when they shut it down after the IBM Tower collapsed. It’s my favorite painting.”

  Peter looked at it again. “There’s something about it…”

  “The dots. It’s the dots.” She got up and walked over to it. “Soorat, Georges Soorat, the guy who painted it, he made up this technique called pointillism. Breena looked that up for me. It’s all these dots, and they make up the picture. No lines. Nothing’s whole. Except the whole thing. He’s like a science-fiction painter. Or, I think he is, anyway, because he made paintings like computer graphics before there were computers. Which is wiz, if you think about it.”

  He gave her a blank look.

  “You know. Pixels of light, making up the whole picture. See, he used only the pure colors, red, blue, green. You can see purple back there, but there’s no purple in it. From a distance the red and the blue dots mix to look like another color. Really clever. It’s like old, flat televisions. And once I saw a thing called a comic book. Same idea. Dots mixing up to look like a whole.”

  The more Peter looked at the painting, the more stiff and lifeless the people in it seemed to be. But he decided not to mention that to Liaison.

  “What’s it called?”

  “Sunday Afternoon on the Grand Jetty. Or something like that. Anyway, it’s the pictures that matter. At least, that’s what matters to me. See, he painted this at the end of the nineteenth century, when tech was just getting cut. And he wanted to make up a kind of painting that, you know, had that idea. Like guns with interchangeable parts. A painting made up of dots of pure color.” She beamed at it.

  “Like DNA.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” She sounded doubtful at first, and then jumped. “Yes. Like DNA. Right. We’re these small dots of chromosotes, or whatever, and we’re a whole thing also.”

  “Chromosomes.”

  “Right.”

  She looked at him with a sly smile. “Are you really a professor?”

  “No.” They both turned back to the painting. “Liaison,” he said after a pause, “what do you think of the whole painting?”

  “The whole painting?”

  “Yes. Not how it’s made, or the little dots. But that woman there, with the umbrella… What do you think of her.”

  “I never…”

  “I mean… what do you think of how she seems as a person?”

  “I don’t know. I always thought of her as dots. She doesn’t seem like a real person.”

  Breena lifted her hands and the glow subsided. Liaison hopped over to her and gave her a big hug.

  “How are you?” she asked. “Very tired.”

  “Bed?” Liaison suggested with a mischievous grin. “Sleep,” Breena answered flatly. “Help me up.”

  When she was on her feet, Breena’s stance was like a tired old woman’s. “Thank
you for healing me,” Peter said.

  “Part of the job.”

  “Right.” Did she ever let her guard down?

  “We don’t have any more beds, so you have to sleep on the floor,” Liaison told him. “All right?”

  “Sure.”

  “There are some blankets over there.”

  “Great.”

  “All right. Good night.”

  “Good night, Liaison. Good night, Breena.”

  “Good night.”

  The two women passed through a doorway, and then the lights in the room went out. Peter reached into his pocket and found the three My Cure chips. He crawled across the floor and tucked them behind a potted plant, then moved back to the center of the room.

  Even though he could no longer see the painting in the dark, his eyes sought out the spot where it hung. At first he imagined the little dots floating off the canvas and smothering him in his sleep, but then finally his exhaustion took him off to blessed oblivion.

  It was Kathryn’s voice that woke him while it was still dark. “Hello,” she said, more like a question than a statement. He was too groggy to answer immediately, and so she said it again. She sounded fearful.

  “Kathryn?”

  “Who is that?”

  “Peter.”

  “Oh, Peter.” She said his name again, this time with a strong note of relief. “Where are we?”

  “Breena and Liaison’s place. In the Noose. An old office building, I think.”

  “Right. Right. I remember now.” She sighed. “I’m not used to this. This moving around so much.” He heard her shift on the couch. “Do you do this a lot? Living like this?”

  He thought about it. His life was actually more frenetic now than it had ever been. He said so. “But, to tell you the truth,” he added, “ever since I became a troll, at fifteen, my life has been consistently hectic.”

  “Not mine. The only move I made was when I was three and my grandfather took Cell Works from Amsterdam to Chicago. I was practically raised in Cell Works. The entire organization was like an extended family. I traveled, for business, but it wasn’t like this. Everything was tied to my family, to Cell Works. I knew my place in the corporation, how I fit into the world. Not like today at all. Today is a whole new system. The whole plan was to live out my life within Cell Works. Safe. Good. I mean, a few hours ago I might have died. I was terrified.”