Less than a minute later they had reached the far end of Centerville. They paused a moment to get their breath back, saw no pursuit behind them. Before them stood the outer wall. To their right was the inner wall that separated Centerville from Westville. Both appeared unscalable, but as Mike had prayed, Annie had another trick up her sleeve—just up her sleeve. She tapped her Command Band, and a doorway appeared in the inner wall.
Then she cursed as he pulled her backward by the collar and beat her through the door into Westville.
She tried to follow on his heels, but he stayed in the doorway, blocking her. “Wait,” he said, and looked over the situation. He could feel her impatience, but she said nothing and waited, still trying to get control of her breath back.
Conway was not yet in sight, but this was where he was going to end up, sooner or later; not far from where Mike stood, a section of outer wall had been breached by a new hole large enough for an adult. You could only tell that from Mike’s position, too: a strategically placed Dumpster obscured the opening from people in Westville. Mike measured angles, rechecked them, and turned to face Annie. Just as he did so, he heard the first sounds of approaching commotion in the far distance and knew he had no time to explain. “Stay there,” he hissed urgently, and closed the door in her outraged face.
He made it to a crouch behind the Dumpster in plenty of time, at the cost of a badly scraped knee, and spent his remaining seconds in the careful positioning of his right foot. If his calculations were right, the first few centimeters of its tip were now visible to anyone approaching the Dumpster. Happily, his shoe was a dark color that would stand out well against the default soft blue of Dreamworld plasteel. He glanced over and saw that the door he’d come through wasn’t there anymore: Annie had figured out his plan and improved it with her Command Band.
He heard a shout, a thud, a grunt, and then Conway’s approaching running footsteps. He began planning what he would do after Annie popped out behind Conway and slugged him. Go for the ankles, that was it: chop the big son of a bitch down to where they could work on him conveniently.
The footsteps slowed and stopped, two or three meters away. Conway chuckled. “Nice try. Come out of there, both of you. You’re the only people in this park I can afford to kill right now.”
Mike stepped into view, his empty hands prominently displayed. “There’s just me,” he said.
Conway’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. Instantly he dropped to the ground, lay prone with his handgun extended, sighting underneath the Dumpster in search of another pair of feet. He failed to find any, and he could see that the three visible sides of the Dumpster offered no ledge or handgrip or other means of holding one’s feet off the ground. A quick glance to either side showed no other potential hiding place nearby. He stood back up and sneered at Mike. “What happened? Mom have a heart attack?”
Splendid idea. “Yes, you creep,” Mike blurted, and started to cry. To his surprise, real tears flowed. “You crummy rat-bastard! Somebody oughta…oughta do to you what you were gonna do to me back at Haines’s place.”
Conway grinned. “They don’t make a blade that sharp. Good-bye, you little shit.” He raised the gun, and just behind him the door reappeared and opened silently, and Mike waited for Annie to charge straight through and whack Conway on the back of the head with some utensil. And instead she came charging through at an angle, at the wrong angle and empty-handed; instead of passing behind Conway she passed in front of him—
—so quickly that Conway’s peripheral vision failed to warn him until she was already going by at high speed, snatching the gun from his hand with an overhand sweep, then spinning and twisting and skidding to a halt and bringing up the gun before he could gather himself.
Conway blinked at her, too astonished to curse. “That was nice,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said, and shot him through the heart. As he fell she stepped closer and put a make-sure shot through his brain. Then she spun on her heel, flung the gun into the Dumpster, and burst into tears.
Mike, who had stopped his own fake tears in shock when the gun went off, resumed crying too, this time for real.
STILL SOBBING, ANNIE came and yanked him away from the Dumpster, spun him, pushed him toward the door, muscled him through it, and closed it behind them. She tapped her wrist, and it went away. Then she rummaged in her pockets until she found a wad of Kleenex, peeled off two tissues, and handed one to Mike. “Blow your nose,” she said, for all the world like a maiden auntie. “And wipe your eyes.”
Numbly Mike obeyed. “We shoulda gone out that hole behind the Dumpster,” he said.
“First place they’ll look. Hurry, we’ve got to go!”
“Where?” Mike asked. “Why?”
“Right now we’ve got to get Under and hole up somewhere nobody’s looking for us.”
“What’s the point? We’re blown. Security’s probably in your house right now.”
She took him by the front of his coverall and shook him twice. “I trusted you twice in the last five minutes, when you had no time to explain. Your turn. Come on!” She let him go, turned, and ran away.
He followed automatically.
He did almost no thinking at all in the next few minutes, didn’t even note the route Annie took, didn’t try to guess where they were going or what she had in mind so he could be ready. He had been thinking too hard and too fast for too long, the past day or two, had been filing away so much trauma to deal with later that the hopper was full. In his immediate past was violent death, in his immediate future was—at the very least—the end of his life in Dreamworld. His mind went on strike; most of what little consciousness he retained was fully occupied in forcing his exhausted body to keep moving. His calves ached, his chest burned, his feet hurt, his lacerated knee stung; his damaged pinky throbbed; that was more than enough to deal with for now.
An eternity later—perhaps three minutes—Annie found a spot remote enough to suit her, a supply depot in a seldom-used corridor, hustled them inside it, and sealed the door. Mike collapsed gratefully onto some piece of gear he didn’t recognize, and concentrated on not throwing up. He quickly found that keeping his eyes open helped a lot.
She waited until she had enough breath back for speech, then panted, “We’ll be safe for a few minutes here.”
Mike nodded dully. So what?
She raised her Command Band to her mouth. “Annie calling Hormat. Can you hear me? Annie calling H—”
“Are you all right, Annie?” Hormat’s voice said. He sounded extremely worried.
“Out of breath,” she said, “but triumphant.”
There was a pause. “You got him?” Hormat said excitedly then. “Where is he now?”
“Hell. No question in my mind.”
A longer pause. “I see. I’m sorry I—”
“Shut up, please, I’m in a hurry. Just outside the entrance to the Administration Area there’s a maintenance closet, marked: meet us there as quickly as you can without being seen.”
The longest pause yet, and Annie had no time for it. “Damn it, Hormat—”
“Annie,” he said, “I thank you for what you are trying to—”
“Shut up again, I’m trying to save your life—”
“That is not poss—”
“Yes, it is—I’m telling you it is.”
“But how—”
“No time. Trust me and live. Mistrust me and die. Out.” She switched off. “Come on,” she said to Mike. She opened the door, peered cautiously out in both directions, and then ran from the room.
Mike stared after her for a moment with his mouth open. Then it sank in. Hormy might not have to die. He lurched to his feet and raced after her.
HORMAT WAS WAITING for them in the closet when they arrived. “Annie, my leaders will not change their minds,” was his greeting.
“They won’t have to. Now please be quiet: we were interrupted in the middle of this conversation when Conway dropped in, and there’s no time for any mor
e delays. Now: do not tell me where you’re supposed to be right now. Don’t even tell me how far away it is. But tell me this: is it in this state?”
Hormat nodded. “Yes. It is—”
“Shhh. I don’t need to know. I can get you home in time. Probably plenty of time.”
He looked dubious. “How? To meet my deadline now I would need—”
“I can get you a brand-new car,” she said. “Not only that: one with unquestioned maximum privilege.”
Mike’s eyes went round. A new car would let Hormat use the automated lanes—up to 50 percent faster than the maximum speed manual drivers were permitted—and maximum privilege would let him use the 175-kph lane reserved for emergency vehicles, cops, and VIPs. Annie was right: Hormat could still make it home before roll call!
“You have the codes?” Hormat asked.
“Memorized long ago,” she said. “You’ll have to dump it as far from your destination as you dare and hoof it in the rest of the way, then tell your people your own car must have been stolen in the night.”
He nodded. “That could work. But…what about you?”
“What about me?”
“What will you do? You and Mike?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t the foggiest. I haven’t had time to think about it yet. And I don’t now—come along. Mike, take rearguard.”
He and Hormat did as they were told, lining up behind her. She slipped the closet door open, peered out, then flung it wide and stepped boldly out into the hallway. They followed, trying to look as if whatever they were doing, they were supposed to be doing it. She led them away from the door to the Administration Area and nearly at once ducked through an unmarked door into a stairwell. One flight down they left it and emerged into a long wide corridor. Halfway along its length she held up a hand to warn them and stopped. She fiddled with her wrist, and a door appeared in the wall. An elevator door. She frowned in concentration, tapped the Band again, and there was a distant hum. The elevator arrived, the door opened, they all piled in.
Mike looked for a control panel as the door slid closed, saw none, wondered briefly if they’d walked into a trap. But Annie tapped another code and the car descended. “Once this stops, we have to be very quiet,” she said.
The car stopped, the door opened, and they stepped out into a garage. It was large enough to accommodate perhaps twenty vehicles and currently held only five. The one Annie led them to was clearly the finest of the lot, and they were all luxury machines.
As she neared it, she tapped her Band and held it out toward the car. Mike was too groggy to catch the significance of the fact that it failed to chirp in response; when Annie and Hormat stopped short, he cannoned into them from behind.
Annie reentered the code with great care, tried again. No result. “Shit,” she said forcefully. “He must have changed the code, and for some reason not told his diary. Now why in the hell would he—”
“No, he didn’t,” said a voice behind them.
Mike whirled and looked. Fifty meters away, a tall gray-haired man stepped out from behind a pillar. Mike knew him at once.
“He just overrode you,” Phillip Avery explained.
MIKE SAW THAT he was right. Avery was holding up his own left wrist. His Command Band outranked Annie’s. “I have sealed off the room,” he went on, “and Security will be here in minutes. If any of you do anything that I interpret as threatening I will—”
“Phillip Avery, do you know me?” Annie said loudly, interrupting him. Her voice echoed harshly in the enclosed garage.
He looked closer, squinting. Slowly his face changed, smoothed. “Why yes,” he said in a softer voice than before, “I believe I do.” Unconsciously he straightened his collar. “You are the Mother Elf. Aren’t you?”
“That’s right,” she said.
He frowned and smiled at the same time. “You’re real. My God.” He shook his head, and both the smile and frown intensified. “That does put a different complexion on things.”
“Listen to me,” she said, with the kind of emphasis used to convey life-and-death information. “It’s important.”
He nodded. “I will.”
She pointed to Hormat. “I don’t have time to explain now, but this man saved Dreamworld today. At immense risk, and without committing any crime. You can do as you will with me and Mike. But this man has to walk. Now. And he has to have your car.”
Avery was clearly startled. “Do I get to find out who he is and what he did?”
Annie didn’t duck. “No. You never get anything but my word that he deserved to walk.”
Avery was expressionless for a long moment, and then he burst out laughing. “Do I get my car back, at least?”
“Undamaged, within a day,” she said, without smiling back.
He finished chuckling, and sobered. The decision took him less than five seconds. “All right: for the sake of what I owe you I’ll go this far. I will let him go if you will tell me why a man died here today.”
She spoke rapidly. “His name was Conway; Haines sent him here today to destroy Dreamworld; I killed him for it; this man was a kilometer away at the time.”
With each clause, Avery’s eyes had widened a little further. “And the boy?”
Same machine-gun delivery. “My son Michael; he helped me stop Conway; the bastard was about to shoot Mike when I took his gun away and used it on him.”
Avery’s eyes must have started to hurt; he closed them for a moment. An electric shock had gone through Mike when she called him her son; he turned and stared at her, but she ignored him.
“Mr. Avery, Mike and I will tell you the whole story in detail, but this man needs to go now,” she said urgently.
He opened his eyes again and slowly shook his head from side to side.
“I’m telling you the truth!” she insisted.
He held up a hand as if to interrupt her. “I believe every word you say,” he told her. He tapped at his wrist, and behind them the car chirped and opened its doors and started up. Beyond it, the garage door begin to hum upward. “He can leave. But I think you and your son had better go with him.”
Now it was Annie’s turn to stare with wide eyes. All the urgency drained out of her slowly; her shoulders slumped and her mouth went slack. “Oh my God,” she murmured.
“Mother, you know you can’t stay here anymore,” Avery said gently. “I don’t know where else you belong…but I’m sure it isn’t in jail, or on the Six O’Clock News. Thank you with all my heart for everything you’ve done these last thirteen years. I wish Tom could have lived to meet you. I love you, and he did, too. Now get the hell out of here and don’t ever come back—without a good disguise. I’ll take care of Haines.” He turned on his heel and left the room.
Mike was halfway into the car when he realized Annie was still standing there, looking at the spot where Avery had stood. He went back and took her by the hand and led her to the car. When they were seated together in back he had to adjust her seat belt and opaque her window for her, too. Then he had to lean forward and help Hormat program the unfamiliar autopilot. By the time he sat back and turned to opaque his own window, they had already emerged from the garage into sunlight.
He had already left Dreamworld. His life there was over.
HORMAT STAYED AS alert as if it were necessary—as if he could have reached the pedals—until the car stabilized in the privilege lane. Then he stopped craning his neck to see over the dashboard and turned in his seat to face Mike and Annie.
“He was right,” he said to Annie, his gruff voice as soft as he could make it. “You could not have stayed there.”
She blew up. “Of course he was right! I killed in Dreamworld.”
He shook his head. “That is not why. Even if you had not killed Conway, you could not have stayed.”
“Oh yeah?”
Hormat nodded. “As you said, he interrupted our conversation. You were about to tell me you could get me a fast car. I was about to tell you what my friend
s have decided to do.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Oh.”
Mike sat up straighter. Wasn’t this ever going to end? “About us, you mean.”
Hormat nodded. “And Haines and Conway, too. As of last night, all of you knew things you should not know. You two now know everything, but even then you all knew too much. Enough to let any of you figure out all the rest, if you kept thinking about it. There was a council.” He hesitated and looked embarrassed. “And it was decided—”
Mike’s weary brain made one more intuitive connection. “—that later today sometime you guys would hunt us all down and scrub our memories.”
Hormat flinched and stared at him.
Mike shrugged. “You slipped up on our way in this morning,” he said. “You let me know you guys can erase memories. If you can do it to a guard for half an hour, I guess you could do it to me for a week. Take away a week from each of us, rewind us back to just before we all spotted you, and…well, we’d all be confused as hell, I guess, but I don’t see how we could ever have figured out just what had happened to us. Not enough clues.”
Annie was looking back and forth from one to the other like a spectator at a tennis match. She settled on Hormat and studied him closely. “That’s why you told us everything, isn’t it?” she said. “So at least we’d get to know the whole story before we were made to forget it.”
Hormat sighed. “I knew you would not be permitted to keep the information,” he said, “but it seemed to me you deserved to have it. However temporarily. I suppose it makes no sense, but—”
“No,” she said, “it makes sense to me. Thank you, Hormat.”
Mike was also grateful—but paranoid, too. Memory erasure was one of his favorite sci-fi nightmares. “So what now?” he said. “What happens now?”
Hormat turned to him and shrugged. “Conway is gone. Haines knows no more than he did last night; my friends will deal with him and he will forget even that. You and Annie…are gone, they know not where.”
Mike didn’t want to ask, he knew he was disrespecting Hormat by asking, but he couldn’t help it. “Are you gonna tell them?”
The Free Lunch Page 23