by Unknown
as the Borgias ride."
Logan drew in a long breath. "The Cape!" he said. "Cape Steinbeck in the Florida Keys. They must have a base there."
But Andar said nothing more. His head remained down, chin resting against his bony chest. His long hands were once again folded and motionless in his lap.
My father sleeps. The use of his gift has tired him. You must go, Logan. He has told you all he can.
"It's enough," said Logan. "I can find them now!"
STEINBECK
A bleak plain of broken tarmac.
Rusting rocket gantrys.
Deserted bunkers.
Raw concrete blockhouses.
The Cape.
With the paravane out of sight beyond the open area, Logan moved steadily, at twilight, across the flat, weed-dotted plain of lifeless gray concrete.
He'd been here before when the Cape was alive and the Sanctuary rockets had flamed up for Darkside. Ballard had saved his life here—and, a decade later, had given his own to save others. A great man. A legend. Logan recalled the folkchant they used to sing about him…
He's lived a double lifetime,
And Ballard is his name.
He's lived a double lifetime.
Why can't we do the same?
Ballard's lived a double lifetime,
And never felt no shame.
Think of Ballard.
Think of Ballard.
Think of Ballard's name…
When the Sandmen had hit the Cape they'd destroyed all of Ballard's rockets in order to smash the Sanctuary Line. Logan passed them, the charred lifeships rusting in the Florida heat, their hulls ruptured by nitro blasts. These were the ships bound for Argos, ships which would have provided the vital supplies the space station needed to sustain life. In destroying them, the Sandmen had destroyed Argos as well.
But it was difficult for him to think of Argos, of the ships, even of Ballard…Logan's mind was focused on the job he had to do here—and one question hammered at him, obsessed him: is she still alive?
He knew the outlanders were here; he'd seen the glint of their jetcycs, rayed by dying sun, as he swung the paravane over the Cape. Now, he had a goal: the metal corpse of a giant freight rocket. She'd been designed for the Earth-to-Luna run, and they'd named her Pequod, after Ahab's fabled ship. Her ocean was space, her Whale the great white bulk of the Moon. She'd been the main link between Earth and the Darkside Colony before the station had been closed down and space travel aborted after the Little War.
And how does this proud star mammoth end her days? thought Logan. As headquarters for a depraved gang of psychopaths. Well, I'll flush the vermin from her metal cells. When I'm done today she'll be clean again.
Logan approached the Pequod at a defensive angle, staying close to the line of concrete bunkers, keeping inside the deeply cast twilight shadows. He could not afford being seen by any of the outlanders until he was actually inside the ship. From the air, Logan had counted more than ten cycles ranged outside the rocket, which meant he'd face up to a dozen riders. And beyond that, he didn't want to risk endangering Jessica if she was still their prisoner; they'd use her to stop him if they got the chance.
Logan had the Gun in his hand, feeling the power of the weapon. The hunter, again closing on prey… Now, for the first time in many days, he allowed his mind to linger on the image of Jaq, stretched lifeless in the dark hallway of the Potomac house, victim of a rider's gun. He wanted to think of Jaq now, wanted to prime himself with fury, with vengeance fire…Build the hate! Build the fury!
They'd posted one of the riders as an outside guard. The fellow was big, rough-featured, dressed in a slash-velvet bodyshirt and laced Italian leggings; a heavy gold chain around his waist supported a holstered Fuser.
Logan ducked into a shadowed doorway, crouching there, wondering if he'd been seen. He had the advantage, since the guard was obviously not expecting attack, lounging against one of the parked cycles, drinking from a chased-silver wine, flask, sleepy-eyed and half drunk.
Logan dropped him with a single blow, delivered from behind, just at the base of the rider's neck. The kill was soundless and brutally efficient.
Logan looked coldly down at the body, thinking: did you kill my son? He plucked the Fuser from the guard's chainbelt. A weapon like this did it. Maybe you were the one. Maybe. Sound from within the rocket. Laughter. Wild, drunken voices. Good. They were having a party, meaning their reaction time would be sharply reduced by the intake of wine. He'd burn through them like god's lightning.
But where was Jess?
Locked away in another part of the ship? Sold or traded? Dead?
Logan would soon know.
Gun in hand, he moved into the rocket, toward the sound of Borgia laughter.
The Pequod was immense. Tier upon tier of storage compartments, a welter of cabins and intersecting walkways. Her hull was buttressed with great, curved-steel ribs, supporting a metal hide tough enough to deflect a direct hit by meteor. Built to last ten thousand years…and looking almost as new inside as the day they built her.
As Logan penetrated deeper into the great skyship he checked all of the compartments en route. No sign of Jessica.
But Andar had seen her here…
Closer now to the riders and their drunken revels.
Logan faded behind a bulkhead, flattened himself against the durosteel wall; someone was coming toward him. He waited.
It was one of the outlanders, probably sent to relieve the outside guard.
As he passed the bulkhead Logan snaked an arm around the man's neck, pulled him into an adjoining crew compartment. The rider's eyes bugged under Logan's killing pressure; he could not breathe.
"Talk to me or I'll kill you." Logan eased the pressure slightly.
"Wha'—what do you want?"
"The woman you took by the Potomac, in Old Washington…is she here?"
"No…not here."
"Where then?"
The rider twisted loose, going for the Fuser at his waist. Logan broke his back. He should have talked to me. But I would have killed him anyway. He stepped over the rider's sprawled corpse. Logan had two burnweapons, plus the Gun. The odds against him no longer mattered.
More laughter. He was almost on top of them. Another fifty feet, then an open hatchway. They were inside the main galley, at a long cooktable, eating, drinking wine—oblivious to the stalking hunter in black.
When Logan appeared in the hatchway all sound and movement ceased. He had holstered the Gun, and held a Fuser in each hand. "All weapons—on the table," he said.
There were nine riders facing him, two of them female. The men were armed with Fusers, the women daggers. They put these carefully on the cooktable, moving slowly, watching Logan. His face told them he was walking death.
"Which one of you leads?"
"I do," said Prince. There was a note of defiance in his voice. No one at the table challenged his statement.
Logan burned him down. Both barrels.
"Now," he said to the other eight riders. "I want to know about the female you took from the house on the Potomac. Who wants to tell me about her?"
The outlanders were stunned. They looked from Logan's eyes to the dead, blackened body of Prince.
"She wanted to come with us," said Ariosto.
"Begged us to take her along, so we—"
A double blaze of burnfire. Ariosto crumpled forward across the table.
There was a smell of charred meat in the room.
"Someone else," said Logan in a dead level tone. "Talk. But only the truth."
The others were pale, slack-lipped, knowing that death was a heartbeat away for all of them.
"Prince wanted her…for himself," one of the females said, her voice unsteady. She kept wetting dry lips with her small, pink tongue.
"Prince?"
She nodded toward the first body.
"Go on."
"So we took her along. She was valuable. When…when Prince was…finished with her we…we kn
ew we could get a good price for her on the Market."
"Who killed the boy?"
"Prince. With a Fuser."
"Where is the woman now?"
"After Prince took her here, Lucrezia decided to—"
"Lucrezia?" Logan looked at the other female, Ris. "That you?"
Ris shook her head, staring at him.
"Then who are you?"
Before an answer could be given one of the males hinged for a tabled Fuser, brought up the weapon in a short arc, triggered a laserburst. Logan was hit in the right shoulder. The charge singed his flesh, and pain lanced his upper body. He dropped the weapon in his right hand as the arm went numb with shock. One of the females grabbed a dagger. Two other males had weapons now, and were firing at Logan.
They missed.
It was over very quickly. In a pain-blurred rage, Logan killed them all, staggered out into a passageway, collapsed against a metaloid strut. The second Fuser clattered to the ship's deck. He put back his head; a tight groan escaped his lips. The pain in his right shoulder was incredible. Fire lived in his flesh.
He knew he was vulnerable. He knew that the rider named Lucrezia was somewhere in the ship. But, at this second in time, he was incapable of active movement. The shock to his system was profound.
Logan slumped sideways to the deck. He raised his left fist, bit hard into the round of muscle below the thumb. To provide a new pain center, to counteract the blaze of agony from his shoulder.
He heard Lucrezia.
A scraping of feet, coming swiftly down a crew ladder from an upper ship-level. She'd be armed. And, if he stayed like this, she'd kill him.
Get up! His mind shouted at frozen muscles. Unholster the Gun! Can't. You can!
Only seconds now and she'd be here. He fumbled his left hand awkwardly over his belt, raised the holster flap, began dragging the Gun free.
He had it pointed at her when she rounded a final bend in the corridor. And he'd been right; she was armed—with a silver dagger of tempered Florentine steel.
"Drop it," said Logan tightly, looking up at her. He still could not stand.
"You're Logan, aren't you?" asked Lucrezia. She dropped the dagger—and smiled.
A beautiful woman. Deadly and beautiful. Her long court gown, cut low at the bodice, flowed with lace, stitched gold and silver.
"I'm Logan," he admitted.
"The others didn't think you'd follow us. I did. I thought you'd be here eventually."
"I'm here."
"Are they all—" She nodded toward the galley.
"All of them," he said.
She smiled again. "Just as well. They were a stupid lot. You can let me go. You have nothing to gain by killing me now."
"Why should I let you go?"
"In trade for information. About your Jessica."
Logan stirred, jaw tightening. "Tell me."
"Not unless you promise I can leave this ship alive."
"I make no promises to a Borgia!"
She shrugged, adjusted the hem of her gown. "Then kill me. And never learn the truth about your woman. I'm the only one who can tell you that truth."
"How do you know I won't kill you anyway?"
"You are a man of honor. I've heard about you, Logan. If you make a bargain, you keep it. Say you'll let me live and you'll have your truth."
"All right. You live."
She nodded. "Jessica is dead."
Dead.
The word almost blinded Logan with pain. His shoulder was nothing. Only the word was pain. And pain. And pain.
"How?"
"Prince killed her and burned the body. We came here with Jessica, intending to put her on the Market. But she was…stubborn. She caused trouble. Prince grew very angry with her. I couldn't do anything about it. I tried to save her—call it greed if you will but unfortunately I did not succeed. I thought it a waste."
She turned away, began moving toward the outer hatch.
Logan watched her go.
Die, you inhuman bitch!
He triggered the Gun.
And the homer sang out.
INTERIM
Logan did not remember flying the paravane back to Old Washington. The trip was blank and meaningless to him.
If he had found Jessica they could have shared the shock of their son's death together. Each would ease the other's loss, make it bearable. But Jess, too, was dead. And Logan withdrew into himself as a sea creature withdraws into its shell. He talked to no one at the Wilderness camp. He was mute and removed from the rhythms of their life.
Even Jonath could do nothing to bring Logan out of this self-imposed isolation.
The colony was struggling for bare survival. Food was hard-won from the earth; the carefullynurtured crops gave meager reward for intense, protracted labor. Yet they were surviving, and that counted for something. With Jonath to guide them, the colony maintained a fragile wilderness stability.
Under his direction, the People had hollowed out a series of shallow caves below the Lincoln Memorial, and it was here, when cold and rain assaulted them, that they held out against the elements. Logan's shoulder wound healed, but he never left the caves. He existed as an exile in the camp, sharing no labors, taking no part in the brief celebrations marking the birth of a new colony infant. He ate very little, and drank only when his tissues demanded water.
For Logan, the level of despair had reached maximum intensity; reality, without Jessica, was intolerable. He had to totally withdraw—but he needed help to do it.
One night, very late, with the camp asleep, he went to Jonath. The leader was sitting alone in his quarters under the Memorial, arranging seed pods for planting.
"I want them now," Logan said.
"No," the leader told him. "I can't, Logan."
"I can find Jess with them. It's the only way I'll ever have of finding her again. You know that."
"But in the dosage you propose the drugs are very dangerous. You'll be drawn completely into the past. Your body will be here, with us, but your mind…" He shook his head.
Logan said nothing.
"If you go back," said Jonath, "you may never emerge again, never regain present reality."
"I reject that reality," said Logan.
"And we don't know what the side effects will produce. No one has ever attempted to—"
"I want them," said Logan flatly.
"Even if I said yes, that you could have them, our supply here at the camp is limited. We use R-11 for medical aid, to ease mental pain, but in very small dosages. We couldn't spare anything like the amount you're asking for."
"Then I'll get it elsewhere," said Logan. "On the Market."
"That's your decision," nodded Jonath. "And I'd call it a very unwise one." His eyes held sadness. "I hate to see you do this, Logan."
"What difference does it make what I do?" Logan snapped. "I'm dead already without Jess. She's lost to me now, but she's still alive in my mind. With Jaq. All the years we had together are there. I want them back. I must find my wife and son again—and this is the only way."
"I still don't agree with what you're doing, but I understand it." Jonath sighed. "Do you know anything about the Market, how to contact it?"
"No, but it should be simple."
"Getting R-11 won't be. I know. I've tried to get it for the camp."
Logan was amazed. "You…on the Market?"
"The People are my responsibility," said Jonath. "I'll deal with anyone to help them."
"All right, so it won't be simple. How do I get R-11?"
Jonath hesitated. "I shouldn't be helping you do this to yourself."
"You'll help me."
"Only because there's no stopping you—whether I help or not."
"I'm glad you realize that," said Logan. His face was set.
"You'll have to go to the New York Complex… You'll never be able to get the amount you want locally."
"Who do I see there?"
"I don't know. But I can direct you to someone who does
."
Jonath gave Logan the information.
By morning, the paravane was airborne.
RAWLS
Summer heat in the Carolinas. Insect weather. Humid. Intense. A draining of the spirit. A punishment. Worse now, since the cities died. No way to escape the scalding air. No coolvents, no frostflow piped into snug lifeunits. Just the heat, lying heavy on Carolina earth, sapping energy and the will to move.
Rawls 7 hated it, cursed it. But without legs, you don't do much traveling. People came to him; he didn't go to them. And Darlington, South Carolina, was where they came.
Rawls hated more than the weather. Most of all, he hated being a cripple. When the Complex died he'd been trapped in a slideway; two of the knife-edged friction belts had snapped, lashing at him like thick steeloid snakes. The main belt caught him just below the waist, slicing off both legs with the precision of a Mark J Surgeon. Miracle he didn't bleed to death. Another citizen had used medseal on him, and that stopped the bleeding in time. But the legs were gone.
Females wouldn't touch him now. Called him a freak. What irony! Rawls, the glasshouse king, whose sexual exploits had been the talk of Arcade—reduced to a loveless cripple.
But, as a prime touchman on the Market, Rawls still had power. He was shrewd. He knew how to finger things people wanted, knew the wheres and the hows and the whos. If you wanted a hard-tofind item in the Market you came to Rawls. To the small shack squatting in humid heathaze on the Daytona Turnpike.
As Logan did.
"Jonath sent me," he said to the legless man. "I need R-11, a lot of it, and he said you'd know where to get it."
Logan stood just inside the doorway. The place smelled foul—and the stubble-bearded little man on the dented groundcart exhaled the same fetid odor.
"How much do you need, citizen?"
"A quantampac. Full dex."
Rawls rubbed the stump of his right leg with grimed fingers. "You know, I can still feel the whole damn thing. Clear to the toes. Knee, muscles, tendons…Left one, I can't feel. Just the right one. But they're both gone. How do you figure a thing like that?"
"I don't," said Logan. He waited, looking steadily down at Rawls. "Well?"