by Simon Hawke
Some men and women were gathered around several arcade games in the corner, one of which featured a realistic-looking robot cowboy that urged you to "Slap leather, hombre." If it beat you to the draw, you caught a sonic pulse from its gun that was like being struck hard in the chest with someone's fist, whereupon the robot grinned, spat a stream of ersatz tobacco juice into a brass spitoon, and said, "Eat dirt, greenhorn." If you beat the robot, it went flying backward, struck against a wall, slid down to the floor, and said, "You got me, Doc." Then it picked itself back up again to urge the next player to "Slap leather, hombre."
"Yup," said Breck. "Character."
"Help you, gentlemen?" said the pretty blonde behind the bar.
"Irish whiskey," I said.
"Your best dark ale," said Breck.
"Comin' right up." She brought the drinks. "You fellas aren't new, are you?"
"Actually, we're only visiting," I said.
"Visiting? You're kidding. Who visits Purgatory? I've been here six months now and it feels like six years."
"I know the feeling," I said.
I felt like telling her that if she thought it was bad now, she should have seen it before the construction of the tubeways and the malls, before there was anything like the Red Zone or a "planned living community," when there was only a small military base with a despondent drunk for a commander, a couple of isolated industrial plants, and a cluster of modular workers' housing tacked onto the soldiers' barracks. And beyond that, miles and miles of nothing. There were still miles and miles of nothing; only now the steel islands of human industry were much larger and the air around them was much dirtier, though the inhabitants were well protected within their closed environments.
She glanced from Breck to me with a slight frown. "I swear you guys look sort of familiar. Wait a minute ... I know you!"
Here it comes, I thought, Breck's swashbuckling charm strikes again.
"Aren't you Arkady O'Toole, the psycho star?"
Breck grinned and raised his glass to me.
"Yes, I am," I said, astonished at being singled out over Breck.
"And you're Rudy Breck, aren't you?" she said, glancing from me to him and back again. "I can't believe it!" She grabbed my hand in both of hers. "Can I have your autograph? What are you doing here?"
"Well, we-"
"Wait a minute! You're staging one of your adventure games, aren't you? Of course, why else would you be here? I can't believe it! Are we on right now?"
"Well, actually, we are-"
"Oh, my God! Hey, people, listen up! You'll never believe this! We're on Psychodrome!"
We immediately became the center of attention. People crowded around us, shaking our hands, asking for our autographs, wanting to buy us drinks. It took a while to get the whole thing sorted out. We wound up sitting on the bar so everyone could see us, surrounded by the patrons and answering their questions. A lot of them were familiar with the alien invasion "game" that the company had been promoting. Coles, never one to waste an opportunity, had broadcast some of my hallucinact training sessions as "coming attractions." They wanted to know if we were going to stage an invasion scenario on Purgatory.
"Here to hunt some shapechangers?" one big guy said, with a wink.
"Hey, Rudy," said another bruiser, as if he'd known Breck all his life, "what do these ambimorphs look like?"
"They could look like anyone ... or anything," said Breck. "We heard there may have been some sightings among the native tribes. We're leaving in the morning to check out those reports."
"Hell, they start with those screwy ceremonies of theirs, they're liable to see anything," someone else said, to accompanying laughter.
We could have sat there, like a couple of boys who had cried wolf, insisting that it wasn't just a game, that it was real, that the shapechangers of Draconis had actually broken the quarantine and could even be standing among us at that very moment, and they would have laughed and played along with it in the spirit of the game, figuring we had to play it as if it were for real.
The fact that it was for real didn't seem to matter. If a squad of ambimorphs had walked into that bar, shapechanged in front of everyone, and slaughtered half the people there, the surviving witnesses would probably never have been believed, so strong was the momentum of the alternate reality Coles had created. Common sense seemed to indicate that it had to break down somewhere. The lie would have to become too cumbersome and the truth would have to come out eventually; only I didn't think Coles cared about that very much. Like most bureaucrats, he'd deal with the truth only if and when he had to. Meanwhile, he would manufacture lies and stall. Power brokers always played for time, because time could purchase power, which could buy more time and so on. The trouble was, time was not an unlimited commodity. Sooner or later, it ran out.
The crowd kept getting bigger as word of our arrival spread and Cody, himself, appeared to take charge of the situation. The owner of Cody's Place was a dark, wiry, sharp-featured man named Cody Jarrett, a five-foot-five bundle of cocky energy who spoke in sharp staccato bursts and easily dominated the roomful of roughnecks, despite being fully half their size.
"We missed you guys at the hotel," said Jarrett. "When we heard you'd arrived, a bunch of us went out to give you a proper welcome, but you never showed."
"Sorry, we had dinner with a friend," I said.
"Oh, you mean some inconsiderate shit wined and dined you while we all cooled our heels waiting? Whom do we have to thank for this?"
"A gentleman named Grover Higgins," Breck said.
Our audience stopped smiling.
"You should be more careful about who you call your friends," said a huge barrel-chested man with a shaved head. "Out here, a man's judged by the company he keeps."
"That's enough, Strang," said Jarrett. He turned to us with an apologetic shrug. "Your friend, Higgins, hasn't exactly gone out of his way to get along with people here."
"He mentioned something about that," Breck said. "The way he tells it, it seems as if he's only doing his job."
"There're different ways to get a job done," said Strang.
"I only know two," Higgins said. "A right way and a wrong way."
He stood outside the circle with Tyla by his side. People made way for them, some staring at Tyla with more than just surprise at seeing a Nomad female in their midst. She stared back at them with equal frankness, imperious challenge in her golden eyes.
"If you're going to mouth off about me, Strang," Higgins said, coming to within about a foot of him, "why don't you do it to my face?"
"Come on now, that's enough, boys." Jarrett tried to intervene by standing between them. The gesture lacked something. He only came up to Higgins's chin and Strang looked over him without any trouble whatsoever. I wasn't even sure he saw him.
"What're you gonna do, write me up in one of your reports?" Strang said with a sneer.
"My job is to make sure the operations here are in compliance," Higgins said evenly. "If they're not, I have to report it. You've got your job, Strang, and I've got mine."
"Bull," said Strang. "You just want to shut us down so you and your scientist friends can have this piece of rock all to yourselves."
"Come on, boys, simmer down," said Jarrett. "Sit down and have a drink."
"Why don't you tell the truth?" said Strang, ignoring Jarrett. "You don't really give a damn about compliance. You're glad that cracking tower blew! I wouldn't be surprised if you even had a hand in it. You've been out to shut us down ever since the day you got here."
'That isn't true," Higgins protested. "You know I-"
"Guys, look-" said Jarrett, vainly trying to get their attention.
"The hell it isn't. It's because of guys like you that workin' men like us have to bring our families out to some miserable piece of rock like Purgatory just to make a living. You shut us down on Earth and now you even want to close us down out here. And for what? For a bunch of stinkin', savage, subhuman-"
Higgins reached
right over Jarrett and punched Strang in the face. Strang reeled back, recovered quickly, shoved Jarrett aside, and delivered a roundhouse blow to Higgins's jaw. As Higgins went down, Tyla lunged at Strang with a snarl and laid his face open with her claws. Strang howled with pain and rage, seized her, and threw her clear across the room.
She flipped in midair and landed crouched on the balls of her feet in the middle of the stage. She looked as if she would have come right back at Strang, only landing in the middle of a holographic projection confused her. The singer strutted across the stage and passed right through her. Tyla leaped backward, glanced down at herself in shock, and then reached out to touch one of the projections, jerking her hand back when she found that it was insubstantial. By the time she had recovered from her shock, Higgins had plucked a beer bottle off the bar and broken it over Strang's head.
One of Strang's buddies took exception to this cavalier christening of his friend and punched Higgins. Jarrett tried to intervene and got his nose bloodied for his trouble. Some friends came to his rescue and the donnybrook erupted in a cacophony of yells, grunts, smashing glass, and breaking furniture. For a moment, I had a ringside seat atop the bar, but then I felt myself being pulled over backward and the next thing I knew, I was flat on my back on the floor behind the bar, with the pretty blonde bartender crouching over me.
"These things can get a little noisy sometimes," she said, her eyes bright, her voice sultry. "It's much quieter down here."
Her face was inches from mine. She moistened her lips. Suddenly her features swam and seemed to melt. Her nose became a snout, her teeth lengthened into feline fangs, her smooth skin became tawny fur. A deep growl rumbled from her throat as the hands holding down my shoulders turned into huge paws . . .
There was a sudden jarring impact on the creature's back and the blood-chilling growl became an agonized, high-pitched yelp as five razor-sharp nysteel blades ripped through its chest, spattering me with blood.
The creature wrenched itself off Breck's blades and collapsed beside me, its transformation to feline predator not yet complete. With its last breaths, it changed back to the form of the pretty blonde bartender, her chest and back a bloody ruin, her lips flecked with red foam. She stared at me with utter loathing, then coughed twice, blood bubbling up from her throat, and died.
"Don't just lie there, O'Toole," said Breck, leaning over the bar and extending his left hand to me. "Come on!"
He pulled me to my feet and, with only one hand, lifted me effortlessly over the bar. The riot was still in progress and I couldn't even tell which side was which, much less who was winning. Breck pulled me toward the exit, shoving people out of his way as he plowed through the crowd like a juggernaut. I didn't see Higgins or Tyla anywhere.
"Where's Higgins?" I shouted as we burst through the door.
A number of people passing by recoiled from Breck as he stood there, looking around wildly, blood dripping from the slender blades on his artificial hand.
"There!" He pointed with his knives and I saw Higgins in the distance, racing along the mall. We took off after him.
I didn't have the slightest idea of what was going on. I kept thinking about how close I'd come to being killed again. Breck had saved my life once more. He easily outdistanced me, running with astonishing speed. He caught up to Higgins and passed him. I sobbed for breath, pumping my arms and legs for all I was worth, dodging around people or knocking them over. I heard the high-pitched, whining sound of Breck's semiauto firing the stunner darts.
As I turned the corner into a wide circular atrium, I saw people running in the opposite direction, screaming and shouting. Breck stood against the railing of the promenade to my left. Three stories down, on the ground level, a fountain spouted up from the center of a wide pool, shooting long plumes of water toward the skylight. Across from Breck and to my right, Higgins was running around the promenade toward the far side, where Tyla lay sprawled at Strang's feet.
' 'Stay back, Higgins!'' shouted Breck, leveling his weapon.
He fired again just as Strang leaped over the railing. His body became dark and blurry as it fell, as if it had been atomized into thousands of particles, and then it burst apart into a black, buzzing cloud of insects that circled the fountain, heading straight toward Higgins.
I drew my plasma pistol and fired.
The white-hot charges sizzled through the fountain, sending out clouds of steam, incinerating most of the insects as they flew toward Higgins. The rest, all that remained of the whole that had been Strang, rained down like gravel into the pool below.
I came up beside Higgins. He was bending over Tyla.
"Is she all right?"
Higgins nodded as she stirred slightly. "She was just knocked unconscious. She saw Strang run and she went after him. Only it wasn't Strang, was it?" He looked over the railing, down at the fountain, and he shook his head. "How the hell do you fight creatures like that?"
"For the moment, fighting them is the least of our concerns," said Breck as he came up to us. "Fighting them is not impossible. What I'd like to know is how we're going to capture one."
"Capture one?" said Higgins. "Are you crazy?"
"No, merely a psycho, Mr. Higgins." Breck grimaced wryly. "Capturing an ambimorph is what we came here to do, though no one bothered telling us exactly how we are supposed to do it. In any case, we'd best pick up our bags at the hotel and be on our way about it now, instead of waiting for the morning. If we remain here, I may be charged with murder."
"Murder?"
"I had to kill that pretty young bartender," Breck said. "She wasn't human, you see, but I'm afraid that only O'Toole and I could testify to that, since the creature managed to change back to human form before it died."
"Jesus, that's unbelievable," said Higgins.
"Precisely," said Breck.
"But if both you and O’Toole testify that she was an am-bimorph, and if I testify to what just happened here-"
"Don't be absurd," said Breck. "I have no intention of standing trial. Who would listen seriously to our testimony? We psychos don't even know what's real and what isn't. Besides, everyone knows that this is just a game."
FIVE
The desert sled skimmed several yards above the ground, its jet engines kicking up thick clouds of dust behind us. The brightly lit steel islands receded in the distance, plumes of flame shooting up above the roiling black clouds over the cracking towers. It was like leaving one world and entering another. The sky was streaked with indigo, orange, and red-violet as we hurtled toward the sunset at over 200 miles per hour, Higgins watching the softly glowing instrument panel, following a course plotted into the sled's navigational computer.
The screen before him showed the forward scanner's guidance display. Objects in our path appeared as blips on the green grid. Higgins moved the joystick with a supple wrist, effortlessly skirting the blips, which became briefly visible through the cockpit canopy as we passed them-large, dark, shadowy projections sticking straight up out of the ground. The "bleeding cacti" of Purgatory. We passed several of them very closely and I glanced uneasily at Higgins. If we hit one at our speed, the collision itself might not damage the sled, but it would send it slewing out of control, almost certainly resulting in a fatal crash. However, Higgins seemed to know what he was doing.
I sat beside him in the front; Breck was with Tyla in the back. Except for the glow from the instrument panel, the interior of the cockpit was dark. Outside, it was getting darker still.
The red-golden, violet-orange streaks in the night sky were fading rapidly.
"You fellas mind a little fresh air?" Higgins said. "I sure could use some."
"It's all right with me," said Breck.
"Sure, why not?" I said, figuring that he was going to open a few vents. Instead, he flipped a switch and the entire cockpit canopy retracted. The aerodynamically shaped windshield kept our faces from blowing off, but I was unprepared for the sudden howling blast of wind.
Higgins inhale
d deeply. Tyla sat up, raising her chin and sniffing at the airstream. "God, I love it out here," Higgins shouted over the blast. "A man can feel like a man, instead of like some rat in a maze!"
I suddenly noticed dozens of blips appearing on the screen and my stomach tightened as Higgins banked the sled sharply, heading directly toward the blips instead of maneuvering to go around them.
"What the hell are you doing!" I yelled.
"Ever do any skiing back on Earth?" Higgins yelled back.
"What?"
"Watch this!"
He hit a switch and four powerful floodlight beams stabbed out into the darkness, illuminating the desert dead ahead. We were headed straight for a veritable forest of bleeding cactus. They were huge, standing like garish, twisted specters in the desert, spidery arms flung wide as if to snatch at us as we passed. The smaller, younger plants were without "arms" and no thicker than my wrist, but the largest cacti grew as tall as fifty and sixty feet, and were as big around as the body of our sled.
"Higgins, are you crazy?" I shouted over the wind blast. "We can't go through there!"
He laughed.
"Higgins!"
We plunged into the cactus forest, Higgins working the joystick quickly with sharp, deft movements of his wrist as the sled slalomed through the clumps of giant plants, the headlight beams sweeping crazily back and forth like laser turrets as we banked sharply first one way, then the other. Dozens of times, it looked as if disaster was imminent, but Higgins always pulled out just in time, maneuvering the sled expertly, turning at the last second, standing it on its side, and zooming through the narrow gaps between the plants, once scraping by so close that we abraded the meaty pulp off one of the large black cacti and the thick red sap that gave the plants their name splattered the body of the sled. After what seemed like a heart-stopping eternity, we were out of the dense forest and back on the open desert, heading toward the foothills.
Higgins threw back his head and gave a Texas cheer. "Eeeee-hah!"