Warrington shook his head with slow astonishment.
"This very day you have killed people over the matter and can yet speak so flippantly? Such abuse of entrusted power is unpardonable!"
The director's eyes narrowed critically.
"If I've abused mine, Eugene, then you surely have neglected the proper issuance of your own. Be honest with yourself, my friend. You've lost your objectivity. You've crossed a line of professional restraint, which no leader can ever afford to. Admit it. Admit it and do the smart thing.
"Step down, Eugene. Let me convene the regional board of governors and find a proper replacement to wear your mantle of responsibility. Someone clinical enough to help get this country reunited and back on its feet once Skylock breaks. If you like, I'll disqualify myself from voting or even having any participation in its mechanics at all."
Corealis' face softened in Warrington's new silence. His voice turned personal and imploring.
"There'd be no shame, Eugene. Probably true admiration for a wise man's recognition of his own limits. Make the whole thing easier. Do it. Please. Or let me alone to finish handling this matter my way."
Warrington's eyes rekindled.
"No!" he bellowed. "No! Your Nazism is through. Do you hear me? I swear I'll see you convicted of every felony against humanity I can find!"
The director nodded remorsefully. Shuffling forward in his heavy gum boots, he stopped face to face with the president.
"Yes, Eugene. I hear you."
Corealis inhaled and raised melancholy eyes to the distant banks of grow lights. Unexpectedly, he drove the man back with a furious shove.
"You pragmatic oaf!" he screamed in Warrington's face. "You simple-minded fraud! Your kind and their ivory tower fantasies make me sick! You go through life with your heads in the sand or up your ass, dreaming your two-bit grand notions and distancing yourselves from the dirty work that constantly needs to be done, but always ready to accept the practical windfalls gained by the few of us willing to get bloody in the back alleys."
Corealis shook his head mournfully. "With enough time for proper grooming, you'd've done the same here, too."
"No!" Warrington defended. "I would never—"
His words were severed by another backward shove.
"I piecemealed that research station together brick by unallocated brick!" snapped Royce. "Sweated out three years' diversion of funds, equipment, and personnel. For my country. For our country, damn you! And now, a sudden fit of rookie utopianism is going to take it all away?"
Corealis stopped his pursuit of Warrington at the muddy vestibule entrance. Searching the man's face, his anger was suddenly replaced by frustrated resignation. He dropped his gaze, speaking to the thick mud between them.
"Your kind make for impoverished politicians, Eugene . . . and worse leaders. You're indecisive, weak-kneed in matters that count, and entirely too predictable.
"Before you ever arrived here I knew exactly what you'd say and that you'd come nobly alone to say it. Looking at you now I understand fully that your breed has only one redeeming fact at all, Mister President. And that is the sorry, ironic truth that you always do make such damn fine martyrs."
Warrington's mortified glow flashed to surprise as Corealis launched him with a harder, final shove. Muddy water splashed high on the man's pressed pants as he vainly tried to regain his balance. But there was no stopping his backward tumble into the live circuitry of the open electrical panel.
The lights in the agri-plot blinked only once. The 49th President of the United States went rigid, then crumpled away as the high voltage circuitry reset itself. In a few minutes Corealis stepped over the dead man and sloshed to the nearest phone. Clearing his throat, he dialed 911.
CHAPTER 11
Trennt and Baker yanked open the passpod's escape hatch and kicked it away. Churning flood waters rushed directly below, thrashing, deadly waves of cocoa brown, bobbed heavy with silt and lethal refuse. Menacing whitecaps pulsed stop-action-like in stark throbs of the pod's belly strobes.
Stunned, Baker rocked to his haunches.
"The hell?"
"Probably a flash flood from up country," reasoned Trennt.
"Whatever," replied the shooter glancing about. "I don't reckon this here is no lifeboat."
Trennt gazed further out the hatch. Some distance off, a broad dune of loose gravel swung into view as their sole alternative to a watery landing.
Descending gently, the passpod rocked in broad weighty swings between lethal rushing waves and hostile indifferent land. Undecided on which medium it should settle, the cabin swayed teasingly. One moment hard left to deep and treacherous seas; the next, toward the steep, uninviting hillside.
Trennt sided with Baker's logic.
"If this crate has life preservers, we'd better be finding them."
A quick search of the wind-trashed cabin produced inflatable optic-orange vests. Strapping them on and, in turn, about their catatonic remaining passenger, the two agents slung their guns crosswise over their backs and, with the woman sandwiched between, hovered in the doorway.
The vacillating landing zone rose up to meet them. Land, then water. Land. Then water.
Three hundred feet; land.
Two hundred; water.
Seventy-five; land.
Fifty; water.
Twenty; land.
"Jump!"
The trio exited the pod, crashing painfully in the loose, shin-deep stones of the steep hill. Short seconds later the pod mashed into the graveled shallows behind.
Safe.
They clutched the harsh incline, sucking raw, thankful breaths. But soon after, Trennt shoved himself erect. Stretching over the limp woman between, he called weakly to his partner.
"Were you able to save anything off the plane?"
Baker pulled at a corner of his ordnance sack then patted a coarse yellow notebook and limp clutch of random papers crushed inside his shirt.
"You?"
Trennt shook his head miserably. "All the juice stayed aboard."
Baker slumped back to the heaped gravel. "Damn."
Behind, filthy waves broke violently against the crashed passpod and into its open hatch. Stormy chocolate water swirled angrily about it in rough, tugging eddies, trying to dislodge and swamp the arrogant nuisance.
Trennt raised his face to the sky. High up, a friendly perimeter of calm blue was briskly shifting west. A gray arc of returning storm clouds was eagerly filling the horizon.
But between earth and sky was a more immediate concern—the still settling chute pack. Its garish orange and white striped blooms kited down like circus tents in the still, thick air. Shortly they'd splash out in the main current. Submerged, their brilliance would become a huge sea anchor, dragging the pod away from shore—and with it anything in the way of survival gear.
Without a word, Trennt was off, scrambling crablike over the slick, cascading gravel, back for the pod. Behind him Baker thundered in warning.
"No, Jimbo! Don't! There's no time! Let it be!"
But a second later the shooter himself was chasing after.
Trennt splashed through the already filling compartment, snatching up anything useable. In his wake, Baker did likewise. Between them a first aid kit, collapsible shovel, and ration water pack were salvaged. Self-heating coffees and loose courtesy snacks were being plucked up as the first chute touched down and was immediately sucked downstream.
Its shroud lines tightened briskly, telegraphing a hard jolt to the pod. Seconds later the next chute landed. A secondary jolt rattled in, sending the men sprawling in the frigid brown slush and their harvested goods flying about. The pod began a crunching backslide, sluicing ever deeper with the filthy, cold water. Only moments remained before the final chute landed.
Baker righted himself and stabbed quick, pecking hands at the precious flotsam.
"Jimbo, we'd better get a move on, pronto!"
Trennt underhanded him the folded shovel and drinking wate
r pack.
"Go on!" he ordered, still grabbing up loose articles. "I'm right behind you."
A jerk of the last parachute was powerful enough to break the pod free of its anchorage. Slogging through the fast-rising slush, Trennt was pitched free of its sinking hatch. He scrambled away as a final moan of complaining metal vibrated behind.
The pod began a quick retreat from shore. Bobbing lower and lower in the main current, the brilliant roof strobes flashed dimmer with each new pulse. In seconds they were smothered entirely beneath the foaming, dingy waves.
There was no time for the survivors to mourn their loss. A sudden warning chill was in the air. The first tiny bits of light sleet drifted lazily downward, heralding a return of real punishing hail.
Trennt scrambled uphill. Trembling uncontrollably in his drenched clothes, he motioned to Baker.
"Take the shovel. Get her and you dug in as best you can. Use the survival blankets for cover!"
"What about you?"
Trennt spied a leeward undercut some yards off.
"There!"
He charged ahead, fell to his knees at the hollow pocket and began clawing away clumped gravel with bare, freezing hands. His fingers were quickly skinned and bleeding. But he dug harder, managing a tiny den that he barely fit into. Trennt stretched his own survival blanket across its downwind opening and braced the flimsy barrier with forearms and knees.
In minutes a thundering gray colossus broke over the landscape. Fueled with billions of frenzied horsepower, gale winds carved a deadly path across the open plain. Boulders were flung about like dried peas, gravel launched skyward as a trillion hunks of supersonic buckshot.
Scalding rain and shrapnel hail drilled the earth. Roiling sheets of lightning convulsed through the amalgam in searing flames of phosphorescent green and pink.
A deluge of boiling kettle water burst from the pregnant clouds. It clashed with the poisoned sleet and birthed tons of hard, black ice that slithered across the open desert floor, filling in hollows and pockets like quick-set cement.
His strength failing and wracked with chills, Trennt shuddered wretchedly in his den. Straining to hold up the thin fabric barrier, his muscles flamed, then went icy and numb. Somewhere in the struggle he heard himself scream.
* * *
Silence.
As quick as it had come, the cataclysm was gone. In its place settled a vacuum of abrupt, graveyard silence. The ravaged air sifted back. Coalescing pockets of damp heat and dry cold played out their last bits of dying energy in sodden, swirling eddies.
Trennt awoke to a stuffy darkness. The cold was gone, replaced by a curious steambath heat. Aside from the leaden numbness in his extremities, he was unharmed.
Shifting his arms for circulation, his knuckles rapped hard against his blanket. Trennt then realized the material was staying glued in place. Bewildered fingers touched it and felt a wall of ice, cast hard as the toughest iron.
Trennt fumbled about the obstruction. There were no seams. No combination of hands or shoulders could lever the formfitting plug away. He managed to draw up a cramped foot and pump out some anemic kicks. But they had no effect.
The other foot joined, together ramming the bizarre cold glass. Ten, fifteen, twenty times gave no result. Trennt sucked more of the thin, heavy air, capped his breath and fired out twenty more. Still nothing.
Another rest.
Another twenty.
Again and again, until he could do no more.
His leg muscles gone to potter's clay, Trennt leaned back. Little oxygen remained in his pit and no more strength to draw from. But he also felt an odd womblike tranquility in the smothering den. Here, no decisions were required of him, no need for plans or worrying about others.
A gentle, timeless sleep beckoned. He glanced drunkenly about the darkness. Not such a bad way to go. Just doze off and fade to black. Only thing remaining was permission.
"Is it okay, Dena?" he asked of the gloom. "Have I paid enough to be forgiven?"
Trennt surrendered, ever to remain lost in this forsaken and unmarked tomb.
But once again, it wasn't to be. Through the fog of his clouding mind he heard a distant snap. Dense and brittle, it collected another. Then another. Again, and once more. Slow and irritating, a series of faster pops gathered in a random, grating chorus. The moan of something heavy giving way filled his tarlike hearing.
No, he thought. Go away. Leave me be.
But the racket grew even more determined. A staccato of pops and snaps rose up, pelting Trennt with icy, biting chips.
A final, brittle shudder vibrated about him and the ice wall tumbled away in shattered foot-thick chunks. Freezing, bothersome air invaded the tiny den. It swirled painfully around Trennt, stealing his hard earned solace and driving him out.
He understood. It wasn't okay after all, was it, Dena? No, more payment was required.
Trennt staggered out like a slug rousted from hibernation. His body sweated steam with the lazy resolve of a fresh-skinned carcass. What awaited staggered him fully erect, for all around was a landscape devoid of color or life.
A metallic, monochrome wash of gray stretched earth to sky, as far as eye could see. Still dangling about his neck, the limp blaze-orange life vest stood out in absurd contrast to the overpowering desolation.
Trennt cast dumbfounded eyes above. There, a zinc-colored vault hung speckled in the tattered woolly mantle of post-storm clouds. Low on the horizon, the sun existed as a hazy white orb; dim and distant, offering no warmth or comfort. The universe vibrated with quiet.
Trennt absently touched his fingers to the smattering of scalds and freeze burns dotting his neck and face. He shook out the cobwebs, filled his lungs with the iron cold air and stooped to retrieve his metalized survival blanket. Snapping it free of clumped ice, he draped it about his shoulders in a shawl-like fashion. Then it hit him.
"Baker!"
No answer.
"Baker!"
Trennt ran to the area he remembered the gunman digging at. But any identifying tailings were lost to the gale. And more black ice set plastered over the ground like nothing had ever taken place there.
Trennt dropped to a crouch. He swept spread fingers back and forth over the hard, frigid earth. But his hands found nothing and were soon numb with cold, stiff enough to miss a slight depression in the ice. Only a skidding knee betrayed the tiniest fret in the glassy, adamantine surface.
Trennt dropped to all fours and blew. His breath revealed a solitary crack. It led a tracing finger to other tributaries and to the web of a circular fracture. At dead center was a flattened spring of familiar silver blanket. Yet another plug of the impossible black ice opposed him.
He grabbed the sparse lever and pulled. Beneath, wedged tight as a shotgun wad, the bunched fabric began tearing away. He gathered the scanty outcropping as careful as he could, gingerly rocking its metalized fabric as a kind of handle while jabbing his boot heel into the flinty area around.
Slowly, a ragged, milky white seam leavened in the crust. He kicked harder and maneuvered bleeding, numb fingers between it and the anchoring surface rock. A thick black slab yielded, rising slow as an obstinate manhole cover.
One hand got through. Then a forearm. Scalding every inch of open skin, the frozen, heavy obstruction might have been embers hoisted from a raging fire.
Razored ice slashed Trennt's flesh ever deeper. But he dismissed the pain, forcing both arms downward. Then, at bicep depth his fingers finally rounded the ice block. He clamped its underside and his weary back struggled it free. Beneath were two motionless forms.
Trennt dragged the woman out first. Dazed and gasping, she blinked in owllike confusion as he wrapped her in the ice-speckled bedroll. Then, equally stunned, came Baker. Lifting him from the hole, Trennt never remembered seeing the gunman look so oddly vulnerable.
He quickly set to work, alternately rubbing the chilled, stiff hands and gray face of one, then the other. Switching back and forth many times, Trennt
quickly warmed his own chill away. But the asphyxiated people were slow in responding. So he broadened his efforts to include their shoulders and legs, working harder and more determinedly.
Ironically, something long absent stirred uneasy and deep inside the man as he tended the limp female. From the outset he'd suspected what service she offered in the new social order. But she wasn't at all like the thin-lipped, hard-eyed whores he'd seen prowling the world's late-night streets. Nothing like the shot-carded and licensed bubble brains laying tech village high rollers these days.
Neither cheap, nor simple. Instead, a notion of certain grace flooded his senses. High and starkly undercut cheekbones blended with a delicate jaw line. Tiny ears merged with an elegant, sculpted neck. And her reddish brown hair carried a texture and hue much like his own Dena's.
Trennt tore free of the disquieting notion. He didn't know her name, nor did he want to. She was just another hunk of cargo placed in his care for proper disposal. Regrouping, he continued her massage, but with less force and direction.
After many hard minutes the pair regained their rudimentary senses. Trennt got them seated upright and dug the few cups of self-heating coffee from their pit. He popped the tab of one. Its bracing aroma conjured a much needed sense of hope as he guided sips between them and himself. The brew made a half dozen rounds, until its few ounces of precious warming liquid were gone. A second cup was opened and worked about likewise.
While the pair regained their strength, Trennt set to work enlarging their foxhole for nighttime accommodations. They'd spend the evening inside, their combined space blankets and shared body heat sealing out the cold. Tomorrow he'd consider their long-term options.
* * *
Baker sat wrapped in his foil blanket, watching the customary emerald and sapphire hues born on each Skylock dawn.
"That pod's emergency transmitter musta got a lick or two out on the way down," he declared. "It musta. Think any friendlies heard it?"
Trennt stood nearby, searching the far horizon.
"If the air was still clean enough, maybe the competition. At the moment, though, I'd say the odds of us winding up in anyone's hands aren't the best."
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