Oath of Fealty

by Larry Niven

  O Pres! I never really realized what you went through. He looked up at the screens. The bandits had found the jog where he'd fiddled with a wall. Now they were moving on. On the next screen over, the second bandit to collapse had moved out of view. Damn! Two parties to keep track of now!

  "Hamilton, send a squad through Tunnel 8. South of the turbines in 8, and keep them south of there."

  "Yes, sir."

  This time. Tony heard Hamilton murmuring orders. "Delta team to Tunnel 8. Automatic weapons. Full body armor as long as they can stand the heat."

  "What happens in 8?" Art Bonner's voice asked from the speaker.

  "I have another surprise for them," Tony said. He tried to sound confident. This time. This time.

  The corridor had angled slightly left. Everything down here looked like new construction, but that jog wasn't on the map. But what could they do if they left the map? They went on, pacing off their distances, until Gavin said, "Here."

  Reese and Lovin kept going, staggering with the bomb box. Gavin shrieked, "Here!" He could barely hear himself. Too many concussions.

  They stopped, set the box down. A moment for heavy breathing, then they were setting up the plastique. Lovin inserted the wire, and they staggered back down the corridor.

  The explosion slammed their eardrums. Gavin decided he was deaf. It wouldn't matter; none of them had really expected to live through this. They went back to where they had set off the blast. There was a shallow crater in the wall, but it still stood.

  Reese screamed something inaudible. Gavin shook his head. They began to set another charge, bigger this time. Reese suddenly stopped, then pulled his zipper down to his groin in one convulsive motion. Gavin tried to shake him. Reese pulled away and ran, flinging his mask away, then the top of his wet suit.

  "That wall surprised them." Tony's grin showed sick fear behind it. "I didn't just beef up the wall, I put frangible disks in it and water behind to absorb the shock. And the other walls reflected the shock wave back at them."

  The bandits were running back down the corridor. "I keep hoping they'll run out of explosives. Did you find the second bandit yet?"

  "First one must have reached medical by now. Second one tried to go back the way they came. Found himself blocked. No camera, but he doesn't seem to be moving. We'll have him in a minute."

  The camera view was suddenly opaque with smoke and dust. It cleared gradually. Light from Corridor 8 glowed through a thigh-sized hole in four feet of wall.

  "One more blast and they're through," Tony said. "Why are they doing this? Hamilton, I only see two of them."

  "Do you have another camera back there, maybe?"

  "If I can remember-" Tony tapped at keys, and a screen lit. The third bandit showed clear, curled up with his back to a wall, stripped naked, with face set in anguish and his hands over his ears. A gun lay a good distance away.

  The remaining bandits ran into view, and one seemed shocked at his companion's condition. The other clicked something with his thumb while he tried to cover both ears with his other hand and arm. Dust blew toward them.

  On the other screen, the hole in the wall was comfortably larger. "That's Tunnel 8," Tony said. No one commented. Everyone in the room knew 8 was the crucial area. "Have you got your squad in 8?"

  "They're there," Hamilton said. "Dunhill, you ready? They're in place."

  "Get them clear for a moment. I've got one last trick, but it's dangerous. Anesthetic darts." This time ... stoppit!"

  He typed rapidly.

  FILE NOT FOUND. FILE NOT FOUND.

  "Goddamn it!" he shouted. "Never mind, I can rewrite the program." Tony typed rapidly, watching two screens at once, thankful for the touch-typing course his father had made him take in high school.

  One of the bandits eased through the hole in the wall. The two wrestled their box through, then the second followed.

  "They're after the turbines," Lieutenant Blake said. "If they get those-"

  "Blake," Hamilton said.

  The guard lieutenant fell silent.

  So what happens if they do get the turbines? Tony asked himself. Nobody gets killed. But the cost ... And it would be a message to the saints. Too many people hate you too fervently. You can't run Todos Santos economically because we'll keep ruining your expensive equipment. You'll go broke. You have to quit sooner or later. Why not now?

  Well? Would the money men in Zurich actually shut down Todos Santos if it became that expensive to run? They'd certainly not build any more arcologies. Nor would anyone else, not when it was clear the arcologies couldn't defend themselves. And, dammit, if Todos Santos goes broke then it can't run any longer, expenses, expenses, expenses, it's property rights against human rights, money against lives, Tony thought bleakly, and I'm defending the money.

  I'm defending my city!

  "Did Alice know about your darts?" Bonner's voice asked.

  "I've been trying to remember." He recalled boasting about the darts. But to whom? Never mind. Nothing else to do anyway. He waited until they were both in Corridor 8, then hit the RETURN key on his console.

  Lovin and Gavin straightened up with the mass of the explosives box pulling them down ... and a dozen explosions burst from the walls.

  Gavin found himself in fetal position, his cheek on hot concrete. It would be so easy to lie there, to wait, soon they'd come and take him where it was cool ... No! He stood up, patting himself ... and found himself .bristling with harts. He sat up, laughing, entirely buzzed on fatigue poisons, adrenalin, and dehydration.

  Lovin looked like a porcupine as he rolled over and stood up. They spent a minute pulling darts off each other in handfuls. The points might work through the metal mesh imbedded between the thick layers of their wet suits.

  There wasn't a chance of their hearing each other. Explosives had rendered them deaf, but even through the deafness they could hear the roar of the Todos Santos turbines. They picked up the box and staggered toward the sound.

  "Armor," Hamilton said. "I wonder just how good that armor is?"

  Tony leaned back in his chair. "I'm out of tricks," he said. "Damn Alice!" He turned to Hamilton. "Stop them." But that wasn't enough, and he knew it. This time ... But Tony was never happy with euphemisms or imprecise language. "Don't let them reach the turbines. Stop them even if you have to kill them."

  XVII. (AFTERMATH)

  To us, heaven switches on daylight, or turns on the showerbath. We little gods are gods of the machine only. It is our highest. Our cosmos is a great engine. And we die of ennui. A subtle dragon stings us in the midst of plenty.

  -D. H. Lawrence

  "There's another one," Sergeant Gomez said. He pointed to the Day-Glo sticker. "THINK OF IT AS EVOLUTION IN ACTION," Gomez read aloud. "I think I counted a dozen on the way here."

  "Yeah," Hal Donovan said. "I'm getting a little tired of them myself." He looked around the tunnel complex. "Find anything?"

  Gomez shrugged. It looked jerky. "Nothing the TS cops didn't tell us we'd find."

  "What's got you so nervous? You think it's a setup?"

  "Naw, that's not it. How are we going to find anything if we keep getting lost? If the guards just turned us loose in here I don't think we'd ever get out. The Saints keep having to lead us around by the hand."

  Lieutenant Donovan nodded again. "I get a touch of it myself. Well, tough it out. Keep stirring things around. I'll go get their official story."

  There were only two men in the interview room. Donovan frowned. One was wearing the uniform of a captain of the Todos Santos guards. The other-Donovan had no trouble at all recognizing the youngish man in the thousand-dollar three-piece suit. He'd seen him often enough in court.

  The man stood and extended his hand. "I'm John Shapiro," he said. "General Counsel for Todos Santos."

  Of course they had their lawyer in the interview room. Donovan felt that he ought to resent that, but he couldn't really blame the Saints.

  "I asked to see all the Todos Santos police in
volved in the shootout," Donovan said.

  "Yes," the uniformed captain said. "But I was in charge, and I'd like to go over the story with you before letting you have at my men."

  Donovan grimaced slightly. These goddam sensitive Saints! "Hell, Captain, we're all cops."

  "I wish it were that simple," Shapiro said. "In any event, we are ready to cooperate with you as fully as possible." He sat down and opened a steno notebook.

  Donovan chuckled and looked around the room. If Shapiro needed to take notes, Donovan was next in line to be Pope. He saw no point in saying so. "You're Captain Hamilton, then. You were in charge?"

  "I was the senior officer of Todos Santos Security," Hamilton said.

  "Which is not quite the same thing," Hal Donovan said. "Who was really running the show?"

  "The police took my orders," Hamilton said. "No one else's."

  No point in pushing that just now, Donovan decided. "All right, Captain. Suppose you tell me in your own words what happened."

  "I'll do better than that," Hamilton said. He pointed to a TV screen imbedded in the far wall of the room. "I'll show you a lot of it."

  The story went as Donovan expected. Intruders got into TS by blowing their way through a wall. The Saints used a variety of non-lethal weapons to try to stop them. Nothing worked, and finally the gadgets failed as they always did, and some cops had to put their arses on the line, and that always happened too.

  The screen showed two policemen with rifles and a third with a bullhorn, crouched behind some kind of portable barricade (not a bad thing, Donovan thought; we ought to have something like that). They were in tunnels, and the sound track conveyed the rumble of machinery. The picture stopped, freezing that instant of time.

  "They were approaching the turbines," Hamilton said. "We'd already tried the darts. They had armor. There was nothing to stop them from doing a hundred million dollars worth of damage - and after what we'd seen we knew damned well that's what they wanted to do. And we knew they had explosives."

  "You sure did," Donovan agreed.

  The TV drama came back to life. "YOU ARE UNDER ARREST," the bullhorn blared. "THROW DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND FOR GOD'S SAKE LET'S GO WHERE IT'S COOL!"

  The intruders came doggedly toward the camera.

  "Dunhill gave them another chance," Hamilton said.

  The TS cop with the bullhorn stood. "SURRENDER," he shouted.

  The leading intruder held out a revolver and fired. The two TS cops with rifles returned the fire at full automatic, a loud stutter of small-caliber high-velocity weaponry. The leading bandit began to fall, then there was an explosion.

  "Dead man switch on his explosives, we think," Hamilton said.

  "I see." The scene went on, showing messy details. Donovan sat down hard.

  "There's a little more," Hamilton said.

  The TV picture dissolved, then came up to show a burly woman, naked except for panties. She was holding a big Webley revolver in both hands, almost in a parody of the official police grip. The pistol waved back and forth.

  "She was too tired to hold it steady," Hamilton said.

  The woman fired, several times. The picture didn't show what she was shooting at.

  "I had four guards in good body armor about thirty meters away from her," Hamilton said. "They didn't think she could hurt them, so they didn't shoot back."

  Eventually the woman in the picture sat heavily on the ground. A half-dozen Saints in bulgy SWAT uniforms appeared. They grabbed her and handcuffs flashed.

  "That's it," Hamilton said.

  Donovan nodded. "The difference being that she didn't have any explosives."

  "I suppose," Hamilton said.

  "All right. I've seen it. Now can I talk to your men?"

  Hamilton and Shapiro looked at each other. "Certainly," Shapiro said. "Of course you won't mind if Captain Hamilton and I stay here ... "

  I should mind, Donovan thought. But what would be the point? "Fine. Let's get this done."

  After the interviews, Donovan went back to the tunnels and let Gomez lead him through the route the intruders had taken. They'd cleaned up some in the final tunnel, which was just as well. Even so, Donovan didn't think he'd want any lunch. After an hour he had seen enough.

  He left the Todos Santos underground complex, whistling again at the sight of the large holes blasted in one of the concrete walls. There were guards at every fire door in the tunnels, and the elevator door was opened for him by two more uniformed Todos Santos guards. They looked blankly at Donovan, but they didn't say anything. "Hell, it's not my fault," Donovan said. "It's homicide, and we have to investigate."

  "Sure. Last time you jailed Mr. Sanders," the younger guard said. "Who this time? Officer Dunhill? Lieutenant Blake? Captain Hamilton? Or maybe somebody higher up-"

  "Can it, Prentice," the older guard said. "The lieutenant's just doing a job. He can't help it if they put him in charge."

  The younger guard's lips tightened. Donovan was glad when they reached the executive floor and he could get away from them.

  In charge, he thought as he paced down the thickly carpeted corridor. It is to laugh, ho ho! The Mayor sends MacLean Stevens. Councilman Planchet has two field deputies here. The D.A. and the Coroner both come in person, and then they've got the goddam nerve to tell me I'm in charge. Hoo ha.

  Donovan smiled at the receptionist and got an answering look that made him feel really welcome. Delores, Anthony Rand had called her. A nice name. Too bad I'll never get to meet her off duty.

  She waved him into Arthur Bonner's office, and Donovan wondered about that for a moment before he realized that with the setup they had here, she'd known he was coming long before he got to her anteroom. She could have told Bonner while he was in the corridor. A good setup. Didn't have to keep people waiting.

  Bonner was at his desk, and MacLean Stevens was pacing in front of it.

  "Keep 'em at home, Mac," Bonner was saying. "Before we have to kill a lot more of them."

  "Yeah. Great image. See Todos Santos and die. You don't have a city, you've got the anteroom to the morgue."

  "That's about enough-"

  "I surely agree," Stevens said. "If you mean enough dead kids-"

  "Goddamn it, with all their gear, and a spy in my headquarters-"

  "Dammit, Art, am I supposed to restrict the sale of wet suits?"

  Donovan cleared his throat. Stevens turned, stared at him for a moment, and said, "Find anything new?"

  "No, sir," Donovan said. "And we won't."

  "That seems a strange attitude for a homicide investigation."

  Donovan laughed. "Investigation. With all respect, Mr. Stevens, what's to investigate? We can look at the bodies, we can stick our fingers in the bullet holes, and we can talk to people. Then what? The Saints' Rent-a-cops say this bunch broke in. They shoota the guns, they banga the bombs. So the Saints shoot back, which God knows they're entitled to do, and the kids get hurt, and some get dead."

  "You can make certain it really happened that way," Stevens said.

  "Yes, sir."

  "You doubt us, Mac?" Bonner asked. "It's really come to that?"

  "Whether I doubt you or not, a lot of people will," Stevens said. "And they'll want proof one way or another."

  "Which we can't get," Donovan said. "Mr. Stevens, we'll go over all the evidence. We'll interview all the witnesses. But no matter what we do, Mr. Bonner's people are as smart as we are, and they've had plenty of time to set the stage if that's what they wanted. So when it's all done it's going to come out the thing went down the way they said. They tried everything they could, and eventually they sent in their SWAT people. The bandits shot it out and lost."

  "You have any reason to doubt that it happened that way, Lieutenant?" Art Bonner asked.

  Donovan shook his head. "If I did, I wouldn't be talking like this. No, sir, I'm sure it all went as your people say it did."

  "Good," Bonner said. "So why are your detectives poking into every corner of our defenses
?"

  Donovan shrugged. "You're charging the survivors, right? We have to gather evidence."

  "Yeah," Bonner said. He gave Stevens a sour look. "Of course your cops have their normal share of curiosity. Speaking of prisoners, are you ready to take custody of them?"