by Unknown
Suddenly an old memory clicked into place for him: Playroom…Delivery-room…Cribroom…
Medroom. That was the way Autogoverness had taken him whenever he got sick, rolling along the hall with him, clucking at him in her soulless metal voice, telling him he'd soon feel fine, just fine.
Logan found the Playroom, entered—and instantly fell into a defensive crouch. Something was alive inside the room, flickering at him, away from him, at him again.
Logan smiled. In entering, he'd simply dislodged one of the vibroballs, and it was dancing its selfenergized puzzle pattern from ceiling to floor. He reached out, caught and boxed it, moved quickly on.
The Deliveryroom. Logan stared with fresh awe at the large Hourglass dominating the chamber; it had always fascinated him. Inside: the glittering time crystals ready for implant in the palm of each new infant brought to Nursery. Logan closed his right fist around his own dead crystal, remembering the sick shock which had run through his body when his timeflower had begun to blink red-black… red-black…red-black…telling him he had just twenty-four hours before Last-day.
Damn the Thinker and the horrors it had inflicted!
He turned to enter the Cribroom.
Logan was used to death; he'd dispatched it to others, had seen his friends die in Sleepshops, had faced massed death on Argos—but what he found here, in this dank, silent room, stunned him. In each of the small, bullet-shaped cribs lining the four walls lay a tiny skeleton. Here were the delicate bones of a hundred babies who had died when the Thinker died, oxygen cut off, vital fluids denied them. Their small white skulls mocked Logan with dark, eyeless sockets as he moved past them toward the med supplies.
He found another corpse in the Medroom. An Autogoverness lay on her side, her dozen jointed arms frozen, rust already gathering in thin, red lines along her seams. In her metal fingers she grasped vials and bottles. Apparently she'd gone for the medicine in a vain effort to revive the dying infants, unaware of the fact that nothing she could do would save them. Logan stepped over her, tense and nervous.
Would he find Sterozine here?
Hurriedly, he ripped open panels, pored over shelved items, discarding, sifting, searching…At least the Medroom had not been stripped. If a secondary nursery carried Sterozine a supply should be here.
Teromitcone…Hydrafane…Ritlan-C…Eztem-F…
But no Sterozine.
Only a primary nursery carried the drug Jaq needed.
Logan knew he had no choice now.
He would face the Scavengers.
THIRTEEN
"Kill him."
"But why?'
"He's unlucky for us."
"Luck has no foundation as a realistic belief concept."
Lucrezia didn't argue. They were thirteen and the new rider made them thirteen, which was unlucky. She would do it herself if Prince would not.
It was newly-dark—the night prior to Logan's death dream—and they had camped in the dry bed of a ravine, ringing a fire that painted their rouged faces in flickering shades of red and orange.
Lucrezia reached into the saddle of her jetcycle, took out a soft leather scabbard lined in blue velvet, removed a needle-thin jeweled dagger from the scabbard, and returned to the circle of outlanders.
The thirteenth rider, thin and shag-haired, sat cross-legged at the fire. He was tearing at the leg of the hyena they'd cooked for supper, tossing aside bones as he cleared them of flesh. Totally engrossed in filling his lean stomach after a long fast, he ignored Lucrezia as she moved up behind him.
"You're unlucky for us," she said quietly, and drove the thin silver blade into the back of his neck, at the upper tip of the spinal column.
He died instantly, spilling loosely sideways into the dirt. His eyes remained open, staring at the fire he could no longer see. The others looked at his sprawled body, then at Lucrezia.
"I should have poisoned him," she said to them, a white-toothed smile making her face radiant in the firelight. "That would have been more appropriate. And far more romantic."
Now they were twelve again, outlanders from the New York Complex, nine males and two other females, dressed the way Lucrezia had taught them, to dress in plumed hats, in velvets, with lace at their throats, heavy gold chains strung at their necks—with jeweled swords and Florentine daggers on the saddles of their jetcycs. When the New York Complex fell they'd raided an ancient museum, finding these clothes and the Borgia history that went with them. As their leader, Anan 9 dubbed herself Lucrezia, and named her pairmate Prince, in honor of Cesare, most notorious of the Borgia males.
Now Prince said, "I'm bored. We need to claim again." Playfully he swung his burnweapon toward a dark stand of thick brush fronting the bank, thumbed the charge. The brush ignited in a gout of flame, charred away to dead ash.
"Tomorrow," said Lucrezia, "we'll ride the Potomac."
DAKK
It was late afternoon when Logan reached the city. He brought the paravane down a half-mile short of the ruins. No use alerting anyone this early; they'd know about him soon enough. He used loose branches to screen the craft; if he got out he'd need it again.
If he got out.
What are your chances? Maybe fifty-fifty. Wrong! Ninety-ten against. You're unarmed, alone, invading their territory. All right, ninety-ten. But unless I get the Sterozine, Jaq has no chance.
Logan entered the heart of the Complex through one of the abandoned maze tunnels, moving with Sandman's stealth, making certain his feet did not trample the dead brush littering the alum flooring.
A snapped twig would echo like a nitro shot in here.
The tunnel's arching mirror-surface was dulled by dust; afternoon sun bled through finger-thin cracks in the overhead metal. A shadowy bulk loomed ahead of Logan, half filling the tunnel: a dead mazecar, overturned like a giant metal insect in the silent gloom, its yellowed tonneau split and shattered, controls red with six years' rust. It was occupied. By two skeletons.
Logan stepped around them. After the infants in Nursery, he experienced no shock reaction whatever to the remains of these two dead citizens. He knew he would see many more inside the city—and if the Scavengers had their way, his own skeleton would join the others.
He came out of the tunnel onto a maze platform: Level Six, Quadrant K, Platform J-211. Industrial Sector. Which meant he could cut through Sandman Headquarters and take a slidechute to Arcade.
The nearest primary nursery was just beyond that point. He'd have to risk the chute; if he tried to walk it they'd spot him for sure.
Now Logan entered the city proper, vast and deserted in the fading rays of the late-afternoon sun. No, not deserted. The Scavengers were here, and would instantly reveal their presence if he miscalculated.
But if he moved shadow-quiet to his destination, senses attuned to the slightest danger, he might just make it.
Logan was amazed at how quickly wilderness was claiming the city. Already, in just half a dozen years, vines and creepers were choking the beltways, and rank grass thrust up in profusion between cracked pavements. The city would soon be jungle, like Old Washington itself.
The towering gray monolith of DS Headquarters disturbed Logan, symbolizing all too forcefully what he had been and done in the service of the Thinker. He'd been one of the DS elite, with a truly impressive record of kills. No runner escaped his Gun. How many human beings had he proudly
Gunned in his years of city service—brave, rational citizens who desperately wanted to live beyond their twenty-first birthdays?
Logan shut down the memories; it was useless to feel guilt for his past. Just be glad that it's over, that the killing is done and that you're back in the city on a mission to save a life, not to take one.
He passed through the dead brain-center of the report room, once alive with flashing computer readouts and humming alert boards. Runners had no chance against a system such as this, yet the instinct for survival kept them going—and some, a scattered few, actually made it to Sanctuary.
/> Thanks to Ballard—and Jessica—Logan had been one of those few.
He stopped now at the Gunroom, impulsively reached out to pick up a small silver cylinder. He weighed it in his hand. Ammopac. Notched into its six chambers: tangler, ripper, needler, nitro, vapor — and homer. Logan slipped the cylinder into his tunic. Not that he'd ever use these deadly charges again, but this would satisfy the consuming curiosity of Jaq. On Argos, the boy had often questioned him about the Gunpac. Now he could see one for himself. A token of the city. The slidechute would be tricky. It was safe enough, with its antigrav force unaffected by computer breakdown; the chute would still carry him to the Arcade area quickly and efficiently, but he must be very careful not to bump the narrow sides with foot or elbow. As in a maze tunnel, the smallest sound would be greatly amplified.
Logan was careful. The sensation of gently floating downward was akin to freefall in the ships: pleasant but somewhat unsettling.
On the lower Arcade Level he checked the outer terrain before stepping free of the chute. Clear. Silent.
No movement.
Maybe Jonath had exaggerated the number of Scavengers in the city, or perhaps they'd abandoned this one entirely, gone on to richer pickings. Certainly he could detect no sign of them.
But Logan kept his senses at hyper-alert status; he could not afford to relax.
A shadow within shadows, he moved through Arcade.
The outlanders rode the Potomac. They'd enjoyed themselves earlier in the day with a Wilderness group near the Library of Congress, forcing the men to watch while the nine Borgia males stripped and assaulted the Wilderness females. It had just been high-spirited fun until one of the males broke free to a jetcycle, jump-started the machine, and tried to run down three of the Borgias. The jetcycle belonged to Prince, and Lucrezia could sympathize with her pairmate's anger over the theft—and had helped garrote the rogue with a silken belt taken from a Wilderness girl.
The fellow had kicked like a fish, and it had all been most amusing once he'd been caught and dealt with. But Prince's machine had been badly damaged when it had struck a banyan root and overturned. That meant they were short a cycle, and Prince had to double-ride behind Ariosto.
Which explained his foul mood on the Potomac run.
The riverbed was treacherous with boulders and silt-hidden logs, but the Borgia riders enjoyed the risk, weaving their machines around each obstacle with obvious delight, challenging one another in brief, brutal contests of speed and agility.
Prince took no pleasure in any of this; he was saddlesore, anxious to dismount.
"Camptime!" he yelled. And, one by one, the riders cut power, the whine of their jets keening down to silence. Prince eased himself stiffly to the ground as Lucrezia, her face tight with fury, roared up to him. She'd been leading the riders and was the last to note that the others had stopped. "You pisswhelp!" she screamed, and struck Prince across the face with a short leather riding crop, splitting his skin. "Nobody calls camptime but the leader, and I lead here!"
Prince whined, nursing his wound. "I'm hungry. My bones ache from riding backsaddle. There's no reason not to camp."
"No reason except I say we don't," said Lucrezia. She raised an imperial hand to the others. "Riders up!"
The outlanders remounted their machines, jump-fired them to life again.
"You coming—or staying?" the leader asked Prince. He looked defeated as he moved toward Ariosto's machine.
Jaq had slept all afternoon and was awake when his mother came to bring him water. His throat was dry all the time now, and the water didn't help much—but Jess told him he'd be feeling a lot better just as soon as Logan got back with the medicine.
"Do Earth people still die?" he asked her.
Jess smiled. "Of course. Everyone dies sometime. It's just that there are no Sandmen any more to force you to die before your normal time."
"What's my normal time?"
"I don't know that, Jaq." She smiled again, but there was a shade of concern behind her eyes. "Maybe you'll live to be a hundred. In old, old times some people lived that long."
"On Argos everyone died quickly."
"That's because they were sick with the plague and had no medicine to cure them. You'll be cured when your father brings you the proper medicine." She looked at him intently, stroked his hair with tentative fingers. "Are you worried about dying?"
"No," said Jaq. "Just about living and being sick. I hate being sick."
"Drink your water and try to sleep some more. Until Logan gets back."
"I'll try," said Jaq. "But I don't think I can sleep until he does. I hope he hurries."
Jessica looked out the window, at the dry Potomac, "I hope so, too," she said softly.
She didn't say what she was thinking—that she felt totally vulnerable without Logan, totally alone. For no reason at all, a sense of dread was building within her.
Logan had never seen Arcade like this: empty, silent, colorless. Always the Arcade sector of each city pulsed with crowds—citizens eager for sensual delights, pouring through these vast pleasure centers in a ceaseless stream, seeking bizarre sensations, new thrills ("Come in, citizen, and bathe in living flame!")…But now the fire galleries, the Re-Live parlors, glass-houses and hallucimills were stark and lifeless.
Logan moved quickly past a gutted firegallery, striped in shadow and smelling of dead charcoal. He angled through a Re-Live parlor, passing tiers of dead-metal lifedrawers, moved across a stilled beltway fronting a dust-glazed New You and a shattered glasshouse (Pleasure…Satisfaction…Rare Delights…) to his goal.
Nursery.
Logan drew in a long, cautious breath, expelled the air slowly from his lungs. He was here at last.
He checked the interior. No one inside.
Slipping past the long lines of coffin-cribs, each holding its tiny white skeleton, he moved swiftly for the medshelves.
They'd been stripped.
In frustration, Logan slammed his fist against the wall. And realized, in the same instant, that he had advertised his presence in the city.
If they were still here.
If they had heard the sound.
Then Logan felt a surge of hope. Despite the fact that the med supplies had been stripped, the drug he wanted could have been left behind, since it had no value to Scavengers. He began searching—prying open panels, sifting through rusting tubes, boxes, hexagonal containers.
Until he found it. An entire case of it: Sterozine X-cc 6466, ranked in red metaloid tubes. Untouched.
He didn't need much; one canister would be more than enough to cure Jaq. Logan selected one, made sure there were no splits in the metaloid casing, then slipped it into his tunic next to the Gun cylinder.
A faint, scraping sound behind him. Logan was motionless. An animal? Cat, maybe. Or…
He turned.
The Scavengers were there.
The sun was almost down when Lucrezia saw the mansion. She raised a hand to alert the other riders, swinging her jetcycle around in a spume of gravel to face the hill. At its tip, riding the waves of high grass, the mansion rose up dark against the sky, imposing and grand to behold.
Lucrezia smiled. A smile of possession.
The Potomac had produced a prize.
CAPTURE
Dakk studied the invader.
Tall. Well-muscled. A hardness in the eyes. Strong arms. He could be dangerous. There was something about his face, something familiar…
The others were watching Dakk, waiting for the signal. Killing an invader was a rare treat. You didn't get many in the cities anymore. At first, a lot of them had come in, looking for things they needed, but when they didn't ever come out again the word spread fast: keep clear of the Scavengers.
But now they had a fresh one, and they'd have a fine time with him once Dakk gave the signal. A really fine time.
"How did you get here?" Dakk asked the invader. "We didn't see you, didn't hear you?"
"Does it matter?" said Logan.
> "You better answer all my questions…We run the city now."
"You don't run it you feed off its corpse?"
Dakk smiled thinly. "Look, I'm very interested. You're the first one who's gotten this far in without us seeing him. I'd like to know how you did it."
"I have a son," said Logan. "He's eight, and dying. He needs Sterozine. The drug's no good to you. No one uses it. No one trades for it. But, right now, it can save my son's life. I don't want anything else from you or from the city. You can keep it all. Just let me go."
As he talked, Logan knew it was useless, that his words were empty and meaningless to a group of amoral savages—but, for Jaq's sake, he had to try.
"Aren't you afraid of us?" asked Dakk quietly. "Tell us you're afraid."
"I'm afraid of you," said Logan.
"That's good to know." Dakk turned to the: others and smiled broadly. "Shall we let him go?"
They smiled back at him, a wolf pack numbering more than twenty, all young, all lean and feral and dressed to fit their name—in scavenged clothing plucked at random from the cities. Dakk was typical: he wore the boots of a Sandman, the gleaming, scaled bodysuit of a glassdancer; the sash around his head, keeping long, blond, uncut hair from his eyes, had belonged to a Wilderness girl he'd trapped and killed in Arcade. She'd been looking for her brother, who'd been trapped and killed by another pack.
Now Dakk regarded Logan with mounting interest. This invader was strong and healthy; he should provide good sport for them.
"All right, you can go," said Dakk with a shrug. "But only if you tell me how you got this far. It's something I'd really like to know."
"I came in through a maze tunnel at Level Six," Logan told him. "Used a slidechute from DS to Arcade, kept to shadows, walked soft. Satisfied?"
"You're good—very, good," nodded Dakk. "The others who came in, they knocked over things, made a lot of noise. You deserve to go." He smiled again, spreading his hands in an open gesture. "So go."