THE FEAR PRINCIPLE

by B. A. Chepaitis

  She walked over to the telecom and grinned into it. "Don't you know it's bad policy to negotiate with terrorists, Hira?" she said.

  Hira's eyes widened, and then grew angry. "It's—Dr. Addams, what's the explanation of this?"

  "Get Dinardo," she said.

  "I asked you a question and—"

  "And I told you the answer. Get Dinardo. I'll talk with him."

  Hira's face disappeared, and was replaced in a matter of minutes by Paul's puffy and exhausted visage.

  "Addams," he said, "what the hell are you playing at?"

  "Doctor Addams," she said mildly as she took a seat, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and lit one.

  "That's illegal on a shuttle," Paul said automatically, as she knew he would.

  "Not in a hijacking," she said. "It's in the codebook, under the etiquette of duress, smoking, and other bureaucratic nightmares."

  "Right," Paul said. "Subheading Addams. Dr. Addams, whose ass is in an inordinate amount of trouble right now. What the hell makes you think you can go around just blowing things up?"

  "I? I haven't blown up a thing recently. Not that I can think of, anyway. And my ass isn't in nearly as much trouble as yours is about to be. Certainly not as much as Alex's." She blew smoke at the screen. "Know where he is?"

  "Home planet. Five-day personal leave."

  "Wrong. Hostage. DIE."

  Paul began to sputter, and she cut him off.

  "I'm going to retrieve him. Couldn't wait to do the paperwork first, but I'll take care of it when we get back. In the meantime, could you clear airspace for a landing at the following coordinates?"

  She gave them, repeated them, and then smiled.

  "Gotta run, Paul. Alex and I hope to see you soon. If not, you have copies of our wills."

  She flipped the off lever and walked out of the lounge. Then she stopped.

  Something Paul said gave her the beginnings of an idea about how to handle this.

  She made her way back to the cabin, where Adrian was keeping up an amiable patter to two silent people. He stopped when she came in, and she shook her head at him. "Nothing," she said. "I just need to ask Ross—does this craft have an autofunction?"

  The pilot turned to her and blinked.

  "Autofunction?" he repeated.

  "Whatever you call it these days. Can you start it and set it for coordinates and have it get there without a pilot?"

  "Well, sort of. I mean, as environmental conditions shift, you need someone on hand to shift the controls, so in fact a pilot is absolutely necessary for maintenance—"

  "Don't get in a sweat," she said. "Your retirement is secure. I just wanted to know."

  She took Clare by the elbow and led her through the sleeping cabins to the lounge, where she sat her down and took her hand, feeling it cold in her own. She was still in shock. From loss of blood and loss of illusions.

  "How are you holding up?" Jaguar asked, massaging Clare's hands.

  "I'm ... afraid," she said, surprised at the idea.

  "Appropriate." Jaguar grinned. "You're doing fine. Listen, I need you to do something for me."

  Her eyes said anything you ask. Jaguar continued. "You have to contact whoever's at the Leadville house, and get Alex out of there. Have them meet us—somewhere we can still see the house. Would the Francis Duffey Park work? The house should be visible, but distant."

  "It borders the cemetery. There's some woods in it that are fairly secluded, but close by."

  "All right. Can you get through on the computer?"

  "I should be able to. I'll... try."

  They turned to the screen, and Clare started the code sequence for contact.

  A standby command appeared. They waited.

  "Come on," Jaguar said. "What the hell are they waiting for?"

  "Probably for someone to tell them what to do. Without the Looker, I'm not sure who's in charge. I would think—oh. Here's something."

  Jaguar couldn't read the code, and Clare had to take a moment to translate. Then she frowned, turned to Jaguar.

  "It's Terence Manning."

  "Terence Manning?" Jaguar repeated. "But... he's..."

  "Your record keeper. He's been working for DIE for years. Apparently he's at the Research Center."

  "Jesus," Jaguar said. "I should've cooked him when his bones were still soft. What does he say?"

  "He says he's receiving messages."

  "Okay. Tell him who you are, and that he's to meet you with Alex in the park. Give him the right location."

  Clare did so, and they waited. Then, a response.

  A click of motion on the screen. The code. "He wants to know why," Clare said.

  Jaguar knit her brow and tapped a finger against her lips. "Tell him something cryptic. Something that sounds typical of Clare, the assassin."

  "I know," Clare said, and sent back the message, "because it's prettier."

  On the return, the message read, "I want the Looker. Give me the Looker."

  "He suspects something," Jaguar said.

  "He always does," Clare commented. "Don't worry."

  "No. I have to worry. This has to be done right. I need Alex out of there before we move." She put a hand on Clare's. "How do we handle this? Does the Looker have a code?"

  "Of course," Clare said, "but I know it. He stupidly shared it one night after a particularly interesting game of poker."

  Jaguar shuddered at the thought of playing poker, or any other game, with the Looker. "All right. Put it in." She thought hard. How would the Looker respond? What would he say? "Okay. Try this—you know how to word it. Say there's psi-capacity interference. Get the empath out. Explanation to follow. Does that sound like it'll fly?"

  "It'll probably do. Everyone listens to the Looker."

  She transmitted the message, and they waited. Soon enough, the response came.

  "Clear," it read. And that was all.

  Jaguar felt the knot at the back of her neck unwind. "Okay," she said. "Okay." She spent a few more minutes going over the exact location of the Research Center building, then stood and turned to leave, but Clare's hand on her arm stopped her.

  "Do you have a minute? I know you're working, and I know you're worried—"

  Jaguar tried out a smile. It almost worked. "Actually, I have no plans between here and Colorado. What were you thinking of—a manicure?"

  Clare's return smile looked as worn-out as she imagined her own did. "Just something I wanted to tell you about what happened tonight."

  Jaguar patted her hand lightly. "Go ahead."

  "First, you were right. I did want to get caught. I didn't know it at the time, but I couldn't—go on. Maybe it was the experiments. The pseudogenics. All those dead men. I don't know."

  The dead men. Where Alex was. Rows of men, dead and not dead, their bodies being used, and their spirits trapped in that use. Jaguar shuddered.

  "Yes," Clare said. "They reminded me of—of what happened to me. My ... father." She brushed the palm of her hand in the air in front of her, keeping it out, away. "At any rate, I wanted to get caught. Wanted out. You were right."

  "Thank you," Jaguar said. "It's nice to know."

  "I thought you'd appreciate it. You're someone who believes in her work."

  "I do," Jaguar agreed.

  "And," Clare said, "there's something else. Tonight. When you knew Alex wasn't dead, and you smiled."

  Jaguar nodded, waiting for Clare to continue, curious to know why she'd brought that up.

  "Your face was so alive," Clare said, her hands soaring up and out, like the wings of a bird to express what she couldn't say in words.

  "Alive," she repeated. "I'd never seen anyone so alive before. I wanted you to know, that made the rest possible."

  Jaguar moved her hands over her face, brushed them through her hair, and let them rest at the back of her neck. Tired. She was tired. "I'm not sure what you mean."

  "Knowing you could care that much," Clare explained. "Knowing you could feel that, even a
fter... the Serials. The Killing Time. I began to think there was hope for me, after all."

  Jaguar let out breath, let her hands drop to her side.

  "As I said," Clare told her again, "it might not be important, but I wanted you to know."

  "No," Jaguar said. "It's important. One of the most important things I've heard. Ever."

  She left Clare then, and went to find a porthole to stare out of. Somewhere she could sit and consider the stars and the vagaries of the human factor, for the remainder of the flight.

  The pilot set the small shuttle down in a grazing meadow, much to the consternation of the sheep who had been quietly poking at the stubbly grass.

  Jaguar patted him on the back as he turned to look at her questioningly. "Good work," she said. "Now, explain the automatic settings to me."

  "The—what?"

  "Tell me how to set the autopilot for a landing about three miles from here, due east," she said patiently.

  "But the landing gear isn't equipped for that kind of quick start and stop. It'll—"

  "I know what it'll do. Just set it."

  He gulped once, and did as he was told, his nervous hands playing over the computer face clumsily. "Set," he said.

  "Great. You can go now."

  "I can ... go? Where?"

  "Anywhere you like," she said. "Disneyland. Only, do it quickly, please."

  He scuttled out of his seat and was gone, looking behind him only twice.

  Jaguar called to Adrian and Clare, and they appeared in the pilot's cabin. Adrian looked nervous, but Clare was cool as always.

  "You know what to do from here?" she asked.

  "I'm to go and meet Alex and whoever's with him. I'm to say the Looker sent me ahead, and have him turn Alex over to me. From there ... I'm not sure."

  "Events will occur," Jaguar said. "At least, I hope they will. Adrian?"

  "I stay behind Clare, out of sight. Jump in only if there's trouble. But what about you?"

  "I should be right behind you. If I'm not—the idea is to get Alex the hell away from here in one piece. Take care of any guards, and get him home. So whatever you have to do to accomplish that, whether I'm there or not, just do it. Okay?"

  "But—" Adrian began to protest.

  "Just," she said, "do it. Get out of here. They'll be waiting for you."

  Adrian cast one last glance of concern at her, shrugged, and led Clare out of the shuttle.

  They stood in a clearing. Alex, Terence, and a guard.

  Clare approached them slowly, keeping her bandaged face held high.

  "Is this pretty enough for you, Clare?" Terence asked, raising a weapon and holding it to Alex's head.

  "Beautiful, Terence. I'll take him now," she replied.

  "I don't think so, Clare. I'll need clearance first."

  He nodded at the guard, who raised a weapon on the other side of Alex's head. Terence walked forward and turned his weapon toward Clare.

  "Terence, the Looker sent me to take over. He's had to go on ahead to report to his people, and I'm to dispose of ... the problem." She smiled through her bandages, adding, "You weren't hired on for that kind of work, were you?"

  "Clare," he said, "I wasn't, and I'm not giving him up until I get the all clear from the guy I work for."

  Clare sighed and spoke gently, patiently. "What's the trouble, Terence?"

  "First, I don't trust you. I'm not even gonna ask what happened to your face, but it doesn't look good to me. Second, I don't trust the Looker. Third, holding on to Dzarny's the only protection I got right now. So what I'm gonna do is just walk away from here with him. Now. The guard can finish him off, and the Looker can catch up with me at his own convenience."

  Clare shook her head sadly, and was about to speak again, when the shadow of an airborne vehicle passed over her, then him, then Alex. It was a large shadow, and Alex looked up at it.

  Too large. Too low.

  Terence paused. Peered at the sky, then twisted his head back toward the Research Center.

  The flash of light and noise that followed almost drowned out his voice as he shouted at the guard.

  "Kill him," Terence shouted. "Now."

  "I don't think so," Clare said, and raised a gun from the folds of her dress, fired at Terence.

  A tremor ran through the ground under them in the wake of the blast, and the guard struggled to maintain his balance.

  Alex dove for the guard's legs and, as he did so, was aware that someone had joined him rather precipitously.

  He felt the breath of wind as legs leaped over him, and heard a gasp. Looked up to see that Jaguar had the guard by the throat and was holding her knife against it.

  "It would be wise," she said, "if you held very still while my colleague and I make arrangements to ensure our safety."

  Alex took a moment to catch his breath, then scrambled over to her, grabbing the guard's arms and holding them behind his back.

  "Hello, Jaguar," he said. "Didn't know if you'd make it"

  "That makes two of us," she agreed, and stopped in her manipulation of the guard's arms to run her gaze over him. "You're okay?" she asked.

  "Better now," he said. He looked over in the direction she'd come from and saw Clare Rilasco, sitting hunched over Terence's body.

  "Clare," he said. "She's—"

  Jaguar looked up and over at her prisoner, then nodded in satisfaction.

  "Crying, I think," she said.

  "Should I—"

  "No," Jaguar said. "Let her be. She deserves her grief. She's earned it, God knows." She nodded at her belt. "Cuffs in there."

  Alex removed them and secured the guard's arms. "Jaguar," he said. "I'm not sure what you did, but I thank you for it."

  She stood and gazed back past the woods. Flames were rising in the distance. "You may be the only one to do that," she said, then turned a rueful grin toward him. "I blew up a shuttle."

  "You—I beg your pardon?"

  "Shuttle. Big. Go kaboom on Research Center. Get it, white man?"

  Alex pulled the cuffed guard to his feet and bit back on a smile.

  "A little overkill, wasn't it?" he asked.

  "Maybe. But I needed a distraction, and I wasn't in the mood for taking chances."

  She turned and gestured toward the center. "Your message came through loud and clear," she said, "though I don't doubt it cost you something in pain to deliver it."

  Alex closed his eyes and thought about this. "So you saw ... all of it?"

  She walked around the guard and stood in front of Alex.

  Her eyes said something to him that he couldn't quite read. Something about what she saw. How she felt about it. It would be a long and complex process, getting to know her. She had too many moving parts, and all of them spoke in whispers or screams, with not much in between.

  "Yes," she said. "I saw everything. I know everything. I'm hoping that nobody else does."

  The dead. They needed to be dead. It was wrong to keep the dead alive, like maggots under the skin. And no matter what official body found them, they'd just want to continue the torture, for scientific purposes, of course. She had seen, and chosen to end it. He approved her choice.

  She turned away from the flames and saw Adrian walking across the field toward them. She held a hand out in greeting and flashed him a smile.

  "Hey," she said. "Know anyplace I can pick up a shuttle fast? I want to go home."

  15

  Dr. Addams's official report on the completion of her assignment was a concise written document that she transferred to Alex via computer. It included a commendation for the action Adrian had taken on her behalf, mentioned that Clare Rilasco had entered the rehabilitation phase of her program, and requested permission for a three-week rest leave. Alex had helped her find the right words to explain the untimely demise of the Lear, and apparently they'd said something right, because neither of them were being reprimanded.

  An official apology and reimbursement had been sent to the corporate owners of the
shuttlecraft. It was accepted after much grumbling. But the Governors' Board had done a good job of throwing their weight around, insisting that the move was a necessary part of a complex operation, and weren't they the ones who kept all the good people on the home planet from having to deal with things like prisons and recidivism and so on? And would the good people who liked to keep their suits clean and their businesses running prefer a return to the old days, the pre-Serial days, or even the Killing Times?

  Grumbles had subsided. Brows had been mopped. Drinks had been ordered. Hands had been shaken.

  All was well.

  Clare agreed to testify at a grand-jury hearing into the operations of the Division of Intelligence Enforcement. Or, what was left of their operations.

  By the time official warrants were sworn for various DIE employees, most of the homes and offices they occupied had been vacated. The rats had scurried off the ship, dispersing into a variety of countries across the home planet, choosing towns that barely had names, Alex was sure. He was also sure they'd reorganize. Find a new name to play the same game under. But this would certainly slow them down quite a bit. He thought it would be some time before experiments in living death were taken up again.

  Clare couldn't testify about DIE's connection to NICA, because she knew nothing about it. Alex figured NICA would cover its assets and cut its losses on this one. Too bad.

  Only some parts of the Looker had been found. An arm, chewed off at the elbow, and a broken pair of glasses. He hoped Hecate and Chaos had enjoyed a good meal. He sincerely hoped they had licked their plates clean.

  In her report, Jaguar had said that she'd "instigated a therapeutic conversation" with Clare during the heat of the crisis in order to bring her program to a successful conclusion.

  Alex knew what that meant.

  She'd made empathic contact, and hit the mark. Whatever she'd done, it worked.

  But she hadn't spoken to him about that, outside the official language of reports. In fact, outside of the necessary professional interactions, she hadn't spoken with him at all. Stole a shuttle and blew it up to save his life, and she wouldn't talk to him about it.