by Unknown
Something's wrong.
Logan reached the veranda, stopped. The door was open.
He mounted the steps quickly, entered the hall.
And stumbled over Jaq.
Agony twisted Logan's features as he examined the body. Chest charred and ripped. Skin like cool wax. No pulse. No heartbeat.
An odor of cooked flesh in the air.
Logan let the fact sink into his mind like a heavy stone: Someone had murdered his son!
And where was Jessica?
He raged through the dark house, calling her name, smashing furniture in his frenzy, hurling himself from room to room, a man demented.
She was gone.
Logan threw the canister of Sterozine furiously against the steps, stumbled into the yard, fell to his knees in the wet grass, sobbing brokenly. He should never have left them alone. Damn him! He should have been there to defend them against—
Against who?
Logan raised his head. His eyes burned with a cold, killing fire. He'd find out who. Use his Sandman's training. Analyze the area. Maybe Jess was still alive.
He stood, moved to the veranda and carefully examined the gravel fronting the steps. In the marble wash of moonlight he could make out tracks, footprints…
"We saw them," a soft voice behind him said.
Logan pivoted to face a girl no older than seven. She wore a sunfrock trimmed in real flowers and carried a battered talkdoll. She giggled. "This is Judee 3," she said, holding up the doll. "And I'm Bet."
"Who did you see?" asked Logan, fighting to keep his voice level.
"The beautiful people," said Bet.
And the doll said, in a matter-of-fact voice, "They were lovely."
"Tell me everything about them," said Logan, crouching beside Bet, his eyes intense on hers.
"They wore pretty things. Lace and velvet. And hats with long feathers." Her voice was slow and dreamy.
And her doll said, "She's lifted. On C. That's why she's this way."
"Want one?" asked Bet, giggling sleepily. She withdrew a small capsule from her sunpocket. "Give you a prime lift. I use them all the—"
Logan knocked the drugcap from the little girl's hand, gripped her thin shoulders. "Tell me, now, everything you saw!"
"Judee can tell you," said the girl "Ask her."
And she giggled.
Logan slapped her. "I'm asking you!"
The little girl whimpered as tears brimmed her eyes. "Didn't see much…were leaving when we came here…"
"How many?"
"Don't know."
"A dozen," said the talkdoll firmly. "I counted. They rode jetcycs."
"Outlanders!" breathed Logan.
"With swords," said the doll. "And daggers."
"I feel sick," said Bet. "I'm going home now."
Logan grabbed her, spun her around to face him. "You're not going anywhere until I know all you know…Did they have Jess?"
The little girl looked blank.
"My pairmate! Did you see them take her?"
"Yes," whimpered Bet. "They hit her and she fell and they put her on one of their cycles and rode off with her."
"Describe them!"
"I did already."
"I told you she's lifted," said the doll. "Ask me if you want accurate information."
Logan stared at the small creature. "Then…you tell me."
"There were nine males. Three were females, including their leader. I didn't hear her name, or anything they said. They were dressed in ancient costumes, all lace and velvety. Lovely, as I said." The doll gave him a tiny smile. "Now you know what we know."
And Bet ran off down the road with Judee.
Inside the shadowed house Logan walked into the master bedroom, to a tall oak dresser. He slid open the top drawer, removed a leather case, took a holster from the case.
Logan unsnapped the holster, slowly drew out the Gun. Silver barrel. Pearl handle. Six chambers. He held it tightly in his hand.
He removed the ammopac from his tunic, snapping it into place. Immediately the Gun glowed, spilling a wash of pale gold across Logan's face and chest.
I swore I'd never use this again, he reminded himself, but now I'll use it. On them. On the ones who killed my son and took Jess. And I'll enjoy using it.
I'll find them.
And I'll use the Gun.
BORGIAS
"We call them the Borgia Riders," said Jonath. He towered over Logan, a full foot taller, but without Logan's strength of body. The Wilderness leader was gaunt; his flesh hung loose on a bony frame, but his eyes were very alive, dark and penetrating.
They were walking together in warm morning sunlight outside the main camp, fronting the Lincoln Memorial. Jonath, in a gray workrobe, sashed at the waist; Logan, for the first time since Argos, wearing his Sandman's black tunic, boots and belt, the Gun holstered at his right side. He was a hunter once again, and he would wear the garb of a hunter.
"You know them?" Logan asked.
"I've never encountered them personally," said Jonath. "But some of the People have been attacked by them. They killed one of our men, and raped several of our women."
"Their leader's name…do you have it?"
"She calls herself Lucrezia."
"Know anything about her?"
"Only that she seems to possess a cruelty beyond that of most outlanders. Human life apparently means very little to her."
Logan said nothing to this, but his eyes took on a hard shine.
"Still…Jessica may be alive."
"There's no reason to hope for that," said Logan flatly.
"But there is."
Logan suddenly stopped walking, stared at the Wilderness leader. "What are you saying? They'll use her sexually and they'll kill her."
"Perhaps," nodded Jonath. "But my point is—outlanders often trade the females they abduct. A beautiful woman can be quite valuable to them."
"And you think Jessica might—"
"—be traded off to a rich man, or to a Market group. Since the breakdown of the cities an extensive trade-sale Market has sprung up. Among the most salable items, next to certain drugs, are beautiful women."
"And outlanders have access to these markets?"
"They're prime suppliers."
Logan picked up a dry branch, snapped it in frustration. "But I don't know where to look. They could be halfway across country by now. I don't even know which direction they headed."
Jonath sat down on the squared base of a broken column which had once formed part of an ancient government building, ran his thumb slowly along the veined marble. "Logan, do you believe in the magic of the mind?"
Logan sat down next to Jonath, looked at him. "In what sense?"
"I believe that the human brain has infinite possibilities—that we've barely touched on our potential as fully developed creatures. Before the Little War, experiments were being conducted in telekinesis, telepathy, and a dozen other inter-related aspects of sensory phenomena. Brain expansion…And one of these aspects was clairvoyance."
"I don't think I—"
"The ability to summon up visions involving a particular person, place or thing."
"I don't see what any of this has to do with me."
"There's an old man I've heard of…His name is Andar. He escaped the Sandmen. He lives at the tip of a bridge on the western coastline."
"So?"
"They call him 'The Gifted One' He's physically blind, yet he sees. He's a visionary. He can 'read' objects."
"Read them?"
"Do you have something of Jessica's…a ring she wore…a throat jewel…anything of that nature?"
Logan nodded.
"Bring it to Andar. Ask him to read its vibrations. If what I've heard is true, he might be able to tell you where she is, physically, from his reading of the object."
"That's impossible!"
"I told you, he's a visionary. His mind is tapped into what he calls the 'cosmic energy source.' All objects in space are part of this cosm
ic chain. One object gives him a direct link to another."
Logan stood up. "This sounds insane."
"But you'll do it…You'll go to him?"
"Yes," said Logan. "I'll go."
VISION
On the morning of April 16, 1988, twelve years before the Little War, the animals of San Francisco went mad. They howled, circled, twitched in fear…
Something was happening in the earth.
It began as a subterranean rumble, a stirring deep below the streets of San Francisco. God was clearing his throat. The rumble increased; earthplanes shifted; tall buildings swayed. Bay waters danced and rippled.
Then the people felt it—a movement beneath their feet, a rocking shimmer of motion which intensified by the second.
Earthquake!
The big one. The one all the seismologists had been predicting for decades. The San Andreas was loosing its century-stored pressures, and San Francisco was doomed.
Mass panic. Water mains erupted. Dams split. Boats were lifted and smashed against dock pilings. Automobiles were tossed like marbles from bridges and freeways.
And the sounds…The metal thunder of dying buildings; collapsing, tipping into the streets in slicing downfalls of stone and glass. The cry of tortured earth mixed with the agonized shriek of thousands as the land split wide to swallow them, their cars, their houses, their streets and their skyscrapers.
It lasted all of five minutes (although the after-shocks lingered for weeks). Atlantis-like, the city vanished beneath the iceblue waters of the Pacific, leaving only scattered island peaks as testimony that a great metropolis had once existed here.
The Golden Gate Bridge was one of these islands.
Most of the bridge was gone; under the assault of the quake, it had snapped its massive cables and whiplashed wildly, splitting its metal seams and plunging in to the Bay. But the tip of the fabled structure remained above water, an immense tombstone of twisted metal, marking the death of a city.
Logan looked down at the ragged coastline. White-frothed waves beating at black rocks, cliffs of sunwashed stone rising up from the ocean's surge. And, just ahead, the ruins of the San Fran Complex…
As a Sandman, Logan had been taught that the only reality was the reality of the system, that the power of the Gun, was paramount over the power of the mind. Mysticism was the work of demented misfits; it had no basis in fact. Yet, now, when he should have been using this precious time to search for Jessica, he was following a fool's dream, hoping that a blind old mystic could set him on the trail of the Borgias.
The trip from Washington had been frustrating. A mazecar would have whisked him here in minutes — but the overland flight took several days to complete. Still, the craft had performed beautifully on its long run, and for that Logan was grateful. Gyroparts were hard to come by, and any major repair would be difficult to effect.
He angled the paravane, bringing the ship closer to the water—until he was able to make out the rusted-orange South Tower of the bridge thrusting up, arm-like, two miles out to sea.
Dia saw him coming. She moved close to her father, as close as she dared. "You told me a man would come, my father, and he is here. From the sky. He comes in black, like the night. He was once a Sandman. He wears their uniform."
"They pursued me," said the old man. "But I escaped them. I lived beyond their Guns. Now, it will be strange, helping one of them."
"This one is different. There are tales…He ran, fought the others, and killed many of them to save runners. He is called Logan."
"I help whoever comes to me," said the old man softly. "I make no exceptions. We are all one."
"I see him!" whispered Dia, exaltation in her voice.
And she raised her blind eyes to the sky.
Descent required precision. The sharply-slanted fifty-foot segment of pitted steel offered no level terrain on which to land, and the shifting wind from the ocean struck the paravane like a heavy fist, tipping the craft at dangerous angles. If one of the blades clipped the bridge…
Logan set down, finally, cut power. The blades idled and died as he exited the control pod. He stood, chilled by the gusting ocean breeze, staring at the hut. It was metaloid, squarish, much smaller than a city-unit. Crude, in fact. Andar and his people must have built it from bridge fragments. But why out here, in the middle of nowhere?
No one came to greet him. Not that Logan expected a formal welcome, but he had been told that Andar had two daughters, one of whom was with him. And that the old mystic stayed here always.
Yet the hut—lashed to the remains of a ruptured support cable—was totally silent. It seemed deserted. He moved closer, bracing his body against the wind tides. A wrong step on the slimed steel surface could take him over the side into the iced Pacific.
The hut's squat metal door stood open. Logan hesitated, then ducked his head and entered.
Darkness. After the glare of sky and water the dim interior seemed impenetrable—yet something glowed like fiery coals at the far end of the windowless structure.
A figure.
"Come forward, Logan," said the glowing figure.
Logan obeyed—until Andar's voice halted him.
"Not too close…Stop now! And do not attempt to touch me. There is no danger if proper distance is maintained. Have you been informed of my condition?"
"No," said Logan.
"I am blind, a victim of atomic fallout. My entire body surface has been affected. My skin is
radioactive. I no longer feel heat nor cold. My flesh is insensitive to pain…Yet I must remain isolated to avoid contaminating others. Only my daughters can stay in my presence for long periods. They care for me."
"I understand," said Logan.
"Sit down, please. Dia, prepare a cushion."
A shadow-figure moved toward Logan; he squinted, trying to make out details, but his eyes had not yet fully adjusted to the dimness.
A bodycushion was placed near him. He sat down, sinking into it. "Thanks…" said Logan. "I—can't quite see you."
Musical laughter. "You have eyes, and I am without them yet I see you!"
"My daughter, Dia," said Andar. "Both of my daughters have been blind from birth. They see, however, with the inner eye, and are thus graced."
"My sister, Liath, is on the shore," said Andar's daughter. "Yet she, too, sees you, Logan."
"Then you share your father's talents."
"Only to a degree," said the girl. "Even our sight is limited. We cannot deep-read vibrational auras as Father can. His gifts differ from ours."
Logan was now able to make out the girl, seated a few feet away from her father. A fall of long golden hair. A lean, curved body. Ivory skin. A delicate, piquant face. She wore a long robe of deep crimson, belted under the soft swell of her bosom.
"Now, tell me how I may help you," said the old man. He squatted on the bare cold flooring of the hut, totally nude, thin stick legs crossed beneath him, hands resting, palms-up, in his lap. His eyes, deepcaved, burned white in a narrow, hairless skull, and his glowing skin, stretched loosely over his bony frame like parchment illumined from within, was grooved and ravaged by time.
He was the oldest human Logan had ever seen.
"My young son was murdered by a group of outlanders called the Borgia Riders," said Logan. "They took my pairmate, Jessica." He hesitated. "I want to know if she lives, and where she is."
"And what have you brought me of Jessica?"
Logan took a small throatclasp from his tunic, started to hand it to Andar.
"No…place it at my feet."
Logan did this. He studied the mystic intently, wondering…
The old man picked up the clasp, spidered his long fingers over it, then enclosed the throat jewel in his right fist. He placed that fist against the center of his glowing skull, held it there, motionless. You have strong doubts that my father can help you…Please, Logan, don't doubt him. Allow yourself to trust. He will help you.
Logan heard Dia's words, yet her lips
had remained closed; no sound had issued from them. A telepath. The only explanation. But, if she is, then is he also?
No, Logan, my father reads vibrations but he does not read or send thoughts as Liath and I do. That is not his gift. You must speak aloud to him, as he to you.
Logan was confused. But I read your mind as you read mine, yet I am not telepathic.
Her answer reached him instantly. You are a parotelepath, which means you can mentally converse with one who is fully gifted, such as I am. I saw this talent in you the moment you entered my aura.
Your mind is rich and strong. It could be raised to very high levels.
These thought messages flickered between Logan and the girl in the space of a second, and human speech seemed suddenly cumbersome and unnecessary.
The old man said, "The vibrations have instructed me. I see your woman clearly."
Logan leaped to his feet. "Jessica's alive?"
"Sit down…listen to my words. Let me give you my sight."
Logan obeyed, heart pounding.
Andar spoke slowly. "She is with those you call the Borgia Riders. They…treat her unkindly, yet she lives."
"Where are they?" said Logan tightly. "Where do they have her?"
"That I cannot say," Andar told him. "My mind does not show me their location in exact terms."
"What terms then?" Logan's tone was demanding. "Tell me what you see!"
Anger will not help you, Logan. Trust him. Allow him to guide you. Anger and impatience will only block the reception of my father's vision. Logan knew she was right. But it was almost impossible for him to be calm at this moment.
"I…receive many impressions…I see…" Andar's head fell forward on the thin stalk of his neck; he placed the tips of his fingers against his skull. His voice became high and lilting, as if in song, the words spaced and rhythmic:
"Where…the rockets die…
and gantrys tilt…
against the sky…
where the plain is wide…
you will hear their cry…