“But… but…”
He was going too fast, and he knew it. He stopped, guided her hand to the worrystone, patted it, laid her head down again, and said, “We’ll get you something to wake you up. And then home, right?” She nodded weakly.
To make room, Freddy’s handcart went into Tige’s cargo compartment. Within minutes, then, they had moved Muffy Bowen and two of the strange women into Tige’s cab and the others into Blackie’s. All the ex-captives were still dopey, and there was no argument when Julia said, “That diner’s not far off. See you there,” and headed her Mack out of the courtyard.
Noticing Tom’s puzzled look, Jim said, “Last night, after they stole Tige, I had to call the Farm. That diner. Come on. We’ll keep the trailer for the cops.”
They climbed aboard, Jim said, “Follow Blackie,” and Tige moved so smoothly into motion that they barely staggered as they found their seats. Then Jim kicked at a loose cable on the floor. “Litterheads plugged that in. Tige isn’t used to that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Way back,” Jim Brane explained. “When I was new at the Farm. I wanted to impress Julia, so I taught Tige to do a few tricks. He was just a pup then, but now he does almost anything I tell him to. I don’t need to touch a thing, though I do.” He set his hands on the wheel as if he were steering.
“Then why…? Tom gestured at the cable, the console of the control computer, and the wheel.
“For show,” said Jim. “Pretense. The computer just works the headlights, and the radio, but I never plug him in. We’re training Blackie too.”
Neither mentioned what they both knew, that voice control of a bioform vehicle was illegal. The Bioform Regulatory Administration insisted on electronic chains in order to prevent any possibility of genimals running amok in the streets.
* * * *
By the time they reached the diner, Muffy Bowen and her companions had returned close enough to full consciousness to hold and drink from their own cups. While the coffee then percolated through their systems, Jim said, “Maybe your mother’s really psychic after all.”
The Macks were parked along the side of the street, and everyone had moved into Tige’s cab. No one had thought it a good idea to take the ex-captives into the diner. Now Freddy snorted. “Nuts, maybe. Weird. Bizarre. Not psychic.”
They ignored him. Julia Templeton said, “The pots? Were there enough?”
“I didn’t count,” said Jim Brane.
“Enough for what?” said Tom Cross. “To plant seven women? There would be no point, for they’d never grow roots.”
“And pigs don’t talk,” said Freddy. “Don’t count on it.”
“Sheer coincidence,” said Tom. “They were part of your truck’s cargo before.”
“Uh-uh.” Jim shook his head. “Empty. Though maybe they stole the trailer, and they were in that.”
“No.” The voice, still slow and wavering with residual daze, was Muffy’s. “They loaded them on with us. They didn’t say why.”
“So maybe your mother’s psychic after all, Tommy,” Freddy said. “Your Daddy’s behind it all, and he wanted to turn your bride into a plant. A potted plant.”
Muffy shuddered. Another of the ex-captives laughed out loud. “Come on, now!” She was short and slender, with yellow hair cut short, the sort of young woman who, if she were indeed to be turned into a flower, might be a daffodil. When Tom turned toward her, she added, “I’m Kimberley—Kimmer. They caught me when… I was shopping, and I wanted to try something on, and when I went to the back of the store, for the changing room, they just grabbed me and pulled me out the back door.”
“I was with her,” said another, taller, heavier, ruddier, perhaps a dahlia. Kimmer nodded her confirmation, and then the others told their stories. Most had been kidnapped in similar circumstances, in public, when isolated for just a moment. Only for Muffy had the kidnappers broken into a home. Only Muffy had apparently been a specifically chosen target. The others had been chosen for their kidnapping solely by accident or fate.
Three of the six lived in the suburbs. The rest lived in town, and when Kimmer said, “Just drop us off at my place. I’ll see they all get home,” the other two both said, “Or mine.”
But Julia shook her head. “No,” she said. “We’ll have to drop you off at a police station.”
Despite the protests that erupted around them, Jim and Tom had to agree with her. They would have to report that Muffy and Tige had been recovered and turn over the trailer and its remaining contents. And Muffy and the other young women would have to be interviewed while their memories were fresh, for the police would want the best possible descriptions of the kidnappers.
Chapter 6
“I’m beat,” said Freddy as the apartment building came into view ahead. “I’m not used to running around looking for kidnappers. Hey, I’m not even used to staying up this late. It’s way past my bedtime. I like to cuddle up next to my little bagpipe around nine, unless we have a late show, and…”
The street was quiet, free of traffic and pedestrians, the streetlights dimmed for the hours of little need, the entry lights of buildings sparks that remembered the comings and goings of life. The curbs were largely free of parked bioforms, for most people put their vehicles in stables, their own or public, at night. Mechanical vehicles, because they were valuable antiques, were even more likely to be kept under shelter. Yet there were a few vehicles in sight—a Roachster, an Armadon, a Tortoise.
“We all are,” said Jim Brane. He was wearing a grin of immense satisfaction now that he had his Tige back. As if to prove his point, he stretched that grin into a deliberate, colossal yawn. Tom Cross, grinning just as happily, yawned back at him. Jim was sure that Julia Templeton in the other Mack was just as tired. Muffy Bowen, still under the influence of the honey she had consumed while a captive, was sound asleep on the floor in the back of Tige’s cab. Freddy sat propped against her side, while Randy rested on her belly.
“Slow, Tige,” said Jim. He held the wheel in his habitual concealment of the Mack’s independence, but his fingers danced with little pats and strokes. “Right, now. There’s plenty of room for both of us.”
Tige obeyed the verbal commands. His control computer was not plugged into his nervous system, though it still had functions. One was to feed appropriate signals to the control panel’s LEDs, among whose tasks it fell to inform whoever looked that it was now well after midnight. They had, as planned, stopped at the nearest police station, and the cops had taken charge of the trailer and agreed to get Kimmer and the other young women to their homes. But they had asked only the simplest of questions, saying that the details could wait for daylight, when the detectives who were working on Tige’s theft and the disappearances of the women came on duty. “Go home,” they had said. “We’ll call you.”
“Do you think,” said Jim. “That they will ever catch the kidnappers?”
Tom Cross shook his head. Then, as if realizing that his old friend, who was staring out the windshield, could not see the gesture, he said, “No. They ran away, and I don’t think the girls’ descriptions will help them very much.”
Freddy yawned again. “We know why they stole the Mack,” he said. “They needed something to haul the women. But why’d they steal the women?”
“Not white slavery,” said Tom. “They don’t do that anymore.”
“Wanta bet?”
“Then what?”
“Murphy knows,” said Jim Brane. Tige was parked, with Julia’s Blackie right behind him. Jim turned off the headlights and added, “Wait just a bit, Tige. And then the Farm.”
At the slam of a door behind them, Tom opened his door and peered toward Julia’s Mack. Its parking lights were still on, and Julia was striding toward him. When she was beside the cab, looking up at him, and past him to her mate, she sa
id, “Is she awake?”
“Uh-uh. Here.” They passed her Freddy and shooed Randy out of Tige’s cab. Then they tried to wake up Muffy, who stirred and muttered but stubbornly refused to open her eyes or stiffen her muscles enough to support her weight.
“Come on,” said Tom. “We’re almost home. Almost into our own bed. Just across the walk and up the stairs and…” He pulled her into a sitting position, and she responded, clumsily folding her legs beneath her, straightening them as he and Jim lifted, bracing a hand against the side of the door frame, letting them guide her feet onto the steps that led down to the sidewalk.
Julia and Freddy were watching intently. The men were concentrating on keeping Muffy from falling. Muffy herself barely had her eyes open.
No one was watching their surroundings, the buildings that overlooked their struggle against minor catastrophe like box seats in a theater, the expanse of roadway and sidewalk that stretched away from them to fore and back like some infinite stage, the few vehicles parked along the curb like critics. No one noticed that the Armadon parked near the mouth of the alley across the street was not empty, nor that its door had opened and several slender figures were slipping from shadow to shadow in their direction.
* * * *
Jim locked the doors to Tige’s cab. He was sure that no one was wandering around this neighborhood at this late hour and that he could quite safely leave the doors wide open. But he had thought the same the evening before, and the back of his head was still tender from the thump it had taken. He would never take that chance again. Nor, he guessed, would any of the Farm’s other truckers, at least until the memory wore thin.
Together, he and Tom supported Muffy Bowen as she stumbled along the sidewalk toward the front door of the apartment building. With every step, her efforts grew stronger, her head rose from its drug-dazed slump, and she needed their help less. She looked at Julia Templeton and seemed puzzled. She noticed Freddy in Julia’s arms and smiled. Randy clambered up Tom’s leg and side and stepped from his shoulder to hers, and she produced a lopsided, drunken grin.
They swung from the roadside sidewalk into the short walk that led to the apartment building’s entrance. Tom and Jim felt their legs brush against the shrubs to either side. Then Muffy braced herself against the step the men’s hands were urging her into, stopped just feet away from the building’s door, shook them off, and raised a hand to pet her spider.
“Come on, honey,” said Tom Cross. “Just a few steps more.”
“Yeah,” said Freddy in his nasal bass. “Let’s get to bed.”
A low, rumbling growl made them all turn right to look at the Macks. Tige was staring toward the building, and his neck hair, where the weight of the pod did not mash it down, was bristling erect.
“What…?” said Julia.
Jim had the ominous feeling that he knew just what it was that was upsetting the Mack, but before he could speak, Tom said, “There’s something…,” and a stranger stepped into the light that spilled from the building’s entrance.
Dressed in a black coverall unadorned by patches or embroidery, his skin darkened by nature or by artifice, he had been invisible in the shadows. Now Jim was aware of just how many shadows there were and that they might shelter an army in the night. He looked, his eyes flicking from right to left, but he could see no others.
The stranger laughed quietly and said, “Let’s have her back. The boss insists.”
“You too,” said a voice behind them. Hands seized Tom and pulled him away from Muffy Bowen, drawing him toward the street. Others seized Muffy herself, and though Tom struggled, whoever held him was too strong. Jim tried to grab Muffy from her abductor, but another figure blocked his move, butting him into the shrubbery beside the walk. In a moment, Julia fell beside him. Freddy spilled from her arms and cried, “Ouch! These mechin’ bushes…!”
The strangers, each of them clad in black, were clearing all possible interference from their path. Jim watched, stunned, as Tom tried to scream. As soon as his friend opened his mouth, his attacker crammed into it a dripping sponge. The reek of honeysuckle wine was strong.
Tom Cross struggled visibly not to swallow, but the wine was too much. Jim imagined it pooling in his mouth and running down his throat. If he wished to breathe without strangling on the alcoholic, drug-laden liquid… Very soon, Jim could see the wine’s euphoric striking into his friend’s brain, bringing placidity, passivity, nonresistance. Tom blinked and wrenched his arms, fighting both the drug and his captor.
Jim shifted his gaze to watch Randy leap from Muffy’s shoulder to the man who held her. He heard a scream, “Goddam spider!” and a cry of pain. He saw the man go to his knees, one hand against the side of his neck, and fall to his side on the walk. Released, Muffy tried to run, but another of the black-clad strangers seized her before she had stumbled more than three steps.
“Got ’em.”
“Then let’s get out of here.”
“Wait. Hold them.” The man who had greeted them by the door stepped down the walk, knelt beside the one Randy had bitten, and said, “Got him this time.” Vaguely, his mind fogged by the honeysuckle wine, Jim noticed that Randy was now nowhere in sight and recalled her broken leg. Had she attacked her victim before—in the apartment? when Muffy was kidnapped?—but failed to get close enough to bite? Had he struck her and broken the leg before she reached him? The apparent chief of the kidnappers laid a hand on the victim’s throat, waited briefly, and shook his head. “Leave him. He’s gone.”
They were clumped then, one down, two holding Tom and Muffy, two more standing free. Jim noticed that Muffy too had a sponge in her mouth and her head was dropping as if the drug were having an easier time with her. He shook his head. Of course, he thought. She already had plenty of the stuff in her. As would Tom before long. He swallowed despite the empathy that tried to lock his throat and shuddered at the thought. What did they want Tom for? What did they want Muffy for?
Tom was staring back toward the building. Jim Brane was getting to his feet, Julia beside him. Tom’s captor took a firmer grip on his shoulders. Another bent to seize his ankles, and he was being carried like a sack of grain across the street, Muffy beside him. At least, Jim thought, they were together this time.
They were nearing the Armadon across the street. Someone opened the vehicle’s door, and as his friends were lifted into captivity, Jim opened his mouth and yelled, “Tige!”
A howl of rage erupted from the Mack. Tom’s head spun toward the giant canine, as did those of his abductors, and he gaped at the sight of the wide-open jaws, streetlights reflecting from the fangs and drops of spittle, all getting nearer very quickly as ponderous legs propeled the genimal’s charge across the road. The kidnappers dropped their victims—Jim winced when he heard Muffy’s head strike the pavement—and leaped for the safety of their Armadon. The door slammed, and the smaller vehicle began to flail its limbs against the tops of its wheels.
Tige loomed over Tom and Muffy, his feet avoiding their bodies as if by miraculous chance, and his jaws closed around the Armadon’s rear. Crunching sounds marked the damage his teeth were doing to the Armadon’s surface armor, to the root of the genimal’s tail, and to its left hind limb and wheel. The Armadon’s scream was incongruously shrill. On the other side of the street, Blackie’s throaty snarl played counterpoint and threatened that, if Tige were not enough, she would be all too pleased to join the fray.
“Tige! Enough. Let go.” The Mack obeyed, and the Armadon spurted down the road away from them all. It now had only three useful wheels and propulsive limbs, and its left rear quarter dragged on the ground, but the adrenaline of fear gave it almost as much speed as it could have mustered when intact. It barely needed what must surely have been its masters’ panicky hands upon its throttle.
Jim could not help but pity the genimal. A Roachster, like the one the Engineers
had mutilated earlier, could be restored when it molted and replaced its shell. This Armadon, however, would have to be destroyed. It was not an exoskeletal animal, despite its appearance. It was a mammal, and its armor was bony plates embedded in its skin and covered by horn or scale, delicate and slow to heal. The wheels, great hollow bubbles of scale and bone, their rims covered with rubber treads, were irreplaceable.
Jim and Julia helped Tom to his feet. Then, while Tom’s own adrenaline began to clear his head of the honeysuckle wine’s euphoric haze, he and Jim carried Muffy into the building and up the stairs. Julia handled the genimals, directing Tige back to his parking place and patting the side of Blackie’s snout to calm her down.
* * * *
Once in the apartment, Muffy collapsed onto the bed and began to snore. Tom managed to sit down on the couch before the residue of the wine forced him to close his eyes. Julia was the one who called the police and asked them to come pick up the body on the sidewalk. She did not tell them to look for a damaged Armadon. Macks were not supposed to have the freedom to do such things. Nor did she identify herself.
After hanging up the phone, she told Jim how she had scooched over the body of the kidnapper Randy had bitten. While she had checked the fading pulse, Randy had emerged from the shrubbery and positioned herself as if proudly beside her victim’s head. Julia had stared and shaken her head respectfully. “Too bad,” she had said. “Too bad there’s only one of you.” Yet she had moved her hands slowly, warily, when they came near the spider. She was still, she told her mate, unsure of the genimal’s ability to discriminate between friend and foe.
There was a cross on a chain around the kidnapper’s neck. She had checked his pupils and found them as constricted as if he had received a massive dose of heroin. He was comatose, unwakeable, and she had left him to pick up Freddy. The pig was undamaged but not speechless. When she leaned over him, he said, “I knew it! I can’t go anywhere with Tommy without something happening! I’m scratched. I have a headache. And my butt is even sorer than the last time.”
Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK® Page 47