by Unknown
Room K formed part of Gant's personal living quarters, and was lavish. Cut from the natural rock of the mountain, it was walled in leathertrim and lit by moonglobes, which cast their soft radiance on Jessica's pale skin. When Gant entered she rushed to him, eyes pleading. "Have you brought Logan? Where is he?"
Gant ran a dark hand along the shine of her hair. "They're bringing him. He'll be here soon, I assure you."
She turned away, slipped nervously into a bodychair. The green silk gown she wore, cut low at the breasts, pressed in against the curves of her body.
"I'm sure he'll find you as desirable as ever," Gant said, moving to a winetable. Seating himself, he sampled a French vintage, inhaling its subtle bouquet. "The Borgias treated you well, all things considered. They could have disfigured you, ruined your beauty."
"They were foul to me," she said.
"Come now, Jessica. Put yourself in their place. You belonged to them. You were a woman of strong sexual attraction. Naturally they used you. But Lucrezia knew enough not to allow abuse. That was the key. She kept your Market value intact." He chuckled. "Had she known just how much I wanted you, and for what ultimate purpose, she could have realized a much greater profit."
"I'm glad Logan killed her," said Jessica darkly. "She didn't deserve to live—not after what she did to Jaq."
"Your Logan is a strong-willed, violent man." He hesitated, for effect. "Or should I say…was."
Jessica looked startled, suddenly frightened. Her eyes sought Gant's. "Then, he's not coming! You've lied to me…Logan is dead!"
Gant smiled, and the moonglobes flashed crimson from his rubied teeth. "No, not dead. Merely… gentled…eased from his violence. I have given him the gift of bodily peace."
"Why should I believe anything you say?"
"I went to a great deal of trouble to have him brought here to you. In justice, you should be grateful to me, not suspicious."
Jessica's eyes burned with heat; her hands were fisted. "You hate us both for daring to do what you lacked the courage to do—for seeking Sanctuary."
"I stood by my duty," said Gant, his voice gone hard. "Logan ran from his."
The door chimed softly.
"Ah, the moment of your reconciliation is at hand," said Gant. "It should be touching." He palmed the door and it whispered open.
Logan was there, his sagging body held erect between two Sandmen. He blinked rapidly as Jessica ran forward to embrace him.
"Logan…oh, Logan!" She put her arms around him, frantically kissed his lips, held his face between her cupped hands. He showed no sign of recognition. His face was totally expressionless.
"He doesn't know me!" She swung toward Gant, stunned. "What have you done to him?"
Gant smiled, a red gash of pleasure.
Logan stared at nothing.
FRIEND
They were stripped naked and thrown into a cell of raw rock, dirt-floored, exposed to constant drafts of cold air slicing through the interior of Crazy Horse. Gant's instructions were concise: No clothing. No food. Water at two-day intervals.
He wanted to see them rot.
Logan was helpless. He whimpered, lacked control of his body functions, was incapable of speech. As Jessica held him, his muscles jerked spastically. His, eyes rolled white. Saliva dribbled from the corners of his slack mouth.
The stormroom had broken him.
Through the long hours, Jessica crooned to him, stroked his trembling skin with gentle fingers—but he did not know her. She was a warm presence, nothing more, in the dim gray web of his mental world.
Her voice was a litany: "Logan, my darling…my dearest…Logan…Logan…Logan, my love… But they had a friend at Crazy Horse—a silent figure weaving in shadowed stealth through the twisting rock caverns surrounding the Thinker—a friend who knew Gant's ways and awaited the chance to move against him.
Watching.
Waiting.
Until a plan was evolved.
And acted upon.
Gant entered their cell with Steratt, his chief guard. Steratt was lean and sharp-featured, with the muscles of a hunting dog; he was dressed in slash-chest ivory leathers, wore thighboots and carried a small black handcase.
Jessica looked up at them, blinking, nestling Logan close to her shoulder.
Gant opened the handcase, took out a looped object.
Bodywhip.
He handed the whip to Jessica. "Use it on him," he said in a flat, emotionless tone.
"No!" She threw it aside.
Gant nodded to Steratt. He pulled Jessica up by her hair, swinging her toward Gant. Who slapped her.
Hard.
Logan blinked at them, his face devoid of expression. Blood flecked Jessica's mouth. "I…won't," she gasped.
"If you don't," said Gant, taking a Fuser from his belt, aiming it at Logan, "I'll burn him where he lies!"
Logan blinked stupidly.
"Pick it up," said Gant, "and use it now." His eyes blazed black.
Jessica picked up the whip.
Behind the Medsupply Unit, in caverned rock darkness, a shape moved.
The Sandman in charge of guarding the unit was bored. He was thinking how much better the workers' guard had it—with females to use whenever he felt the urge. Just go into the cells, drag one out, use her and toss her back inside. The workers didn't complain. Who would they complain to? Oh, they didn't like it. One of them tried to club a guard once, while he was busy with a female, but they burned him. As an example. It didn't pay to attack a guard. They all realized that.
Well, Steratt owed him a shift change. He'd been on Med now for a month. Maybe he could get switched to Workers next. End up with some nice young meat.
The shape detached itself from the rocks, moved closer.
The Sandman yawned, sat down, arms folded across his chest. He closed his eyes and thought about women…
While the shadow-figure darted into the unit, unseen.
Hypokit. Fresh needles. Healpacs. Wraps and cotton.
Careful! Arrange the other supplies to cover what's taken. No breakage. No noise. Quickly…quickly!
And a shadow drifted back into the caverns.
Imprisoned inside the mountain, Jessica had lost all sense of time. As she held her man, this brave human who had given his selfhood to save her, she felt they'd been like this, together in Gant's cell, for many months…Sometimes, her mind, disoriented by lack of food, held the conviction that they would be here forever, immortal in agony, abandoned, unfed, their bodies racked by cold, thinned by hunger…
Then Gant would come. To gloat. To enjoy the spectacle. Sometimes she would be given to Evans or Steratt, who would take her brutally in the cell, for Gant's amusement. But, mostly, it was darkness, cold, hard dirt against aching muscles, night-crawling insects…
Logan never spoke. He lay in her arms, unable to relate to her, to his bleak surroundings, to hunger or pain.
Yet Jessica loved him more fiercely than ever.
And, until Gant killed them, her love for Logan would remain—a hard, unwavering flame that
warmed the deepest part of her. She would endure.
They would endure.
Assigned to Logan's cell unit, in six-hour shifts: eight Sandmen, two of them always on guard. Top men. Personally selected by Gant. On this shift: Lister 4 and Brim 11. Humorless, hard-faced, alert as cats. They paced outside the unit, carrying (at Gant's direct order) Guns in their hands.
"Had a runner once," Lister was saying, in a tight, controlled voice, "who got into a Nursery. Got past the robots. I had to go in after him."
"And?" said Brun.
"Had him backed to the wall in a Cribroom. I was ready to homer him, when this Autogoverness comes rolling in. Upset. Won't let me fire. All worried about the infants. She knocks the Gun out of my hand. Runner makes a dive for it. Gets his hand around it. Zip! Blows his arm off to the shoulder!"
"Runners know better," said Brun.
"Guess this one forgot," said Lister, a fain
t smile tracing his lips. "Anyway, when I—"
Lister stopped, the smile vanishing. He sat down very slowly, then toppled sideways, laying his face into the dirt.
A small, glinting hyponeedle projected from his neck.
Brun wheeled in a covering arc, Gun up, peering into the cave—darkness around him.
No sound.
No movement.
He was about to press the alarmstud just inside the unit's arched doorway when a second needle sang from blackness, deeply imbedding itself in his carotid artery.
The Gun slipped from Brun's nerveless fingers as he sank to his knees. His eyes lost focus. He collapsed backward, head striking the edge of the rock doorway—but he did not feel the impact.
Silence.
Then—a soft scratch of loose pebbles.
A shape, moving.
Jessica saw the figure coming swiftly down the gloomed corridor toward their cell. Not Gant. Or
Evans. Or Steratt. Or the guards.
Who then?
An assassin sent to kill them?
No, Gant had vowed he'd be there personally to watch them die, and Jessica knew that was one promise he would keep.
"I'm Mary-Mary 2," the figure said. "You met me once, long ago."
Jessica looked at the girl. Slim. Intense. Dressed in a ripped green tunicdress. And didn't know her. Mary-Mary smiled. "In the Angeles Complex. Under Cathedral. I was only five then. I'd escaped Nursery."
"Yes," said Jessica. "Now I remember. But how did you ever—"
"No questions," said Mary-Mary. "I got rid of both guards, but there's very little time." She produced a ridged silver key, hurriedly opened their cell door with it.
The chamber smelled of damp earth and rock mold, a fungoid odor of decay.
"He can't walk," said Jessica, looking down at Logan who was curled into a ball in the center of the dirt floor, arms clasping his updrawn legs. His eyes were open. He was staring at the wall.
"Together we can manage him," said Mary-Mary. "I'm stronger than I look."
The women half-lifted, half-dragged Logan to a standing position. His head rolled on his neck; a bubble of saliva formed and broke on his paste-white lips.
A clang of distant metal. Door being opened, closed.
"Hurry!" urged Mary-Mary. "Someone's coming."
SEARCH
Gant. Evans. Steratt. Joking about what they would find in the cell ahead of them. Laughing, as they moved down the corridor.
Suddenly; an oath from Gant. "Gone!" he thundered. "Their cell's empty!"
"Someone used a key," said Evans. "The door wasn't forced."
Gant was wearing a large ruby ring with a chased-silver facing on the index finger on his right hand. The ring opened the side of Steratt's face under Gant's blow. "You! You're in charge of the cells! You're responsible!"
"They can't be far away," said Evans. He was kneeling in the cell, one hand to the floor. "Still warm from their bodies."
Gant turned from Steratt, who was groaning, half-conscious. "Maximum alert. Have the outside of the mountain completely sealed off. They're still inside here somewhere."
Evans nodded, picked up a vidphone.
"We'll find them," gasped Steratt, a hand to his bloodied face. "I swear we'll find them!"
Gant looked at him, saying nothing, holding the bodywhip loosely in his hand.
"Here…lower him," said Mary-Mary. "Ease him down."
Jessica and the girl slid Logan's body onto a yielding bed of sand, draped with throwcovers, then slipped down beside him, exhausted. Their journey into the mountain's interior had totally sapped their strength. Logan had tried to walk, but his body refused to cooperate; he was a dragging weight between them, an object to be moved through the dark skein of labyrinthine passages, guided only by Mary-Mary's knowledge of the intricate caverns.
They'd reached the cave which was home to the girl. Sunlight shafting down from a high crack in the outer rockface of Crazy Horse provided illumination. It was now mid-afternoon.
Jessica lay in the patch of gold, soaking up the rays, face raised to the welcome yellow warmth. Tears formed in her eyes, rolled down the slope of her cheeks, but she was smiling. "So long…since…I've felt the sun."
"I've been preparing things," said Mary-Mary. "Taking what I knew we'd be needing from Gant's supplies. A little here, a little there." She nodded toward the rear of the cave. "We have food, water, medicine for Logan…Even these!" And she folded back a throwcover, revealing two Fusers.
Jessica looked at her. "Gant was going to kill us."
"I know," said the girl. "I've been watching everything. He enjoys inflicting pain. He always did. As a Sandman, he never worried about who got hurt on a hunt. He'd Gun anyone in his way. Homered a seven-year-old once."
"How did you get here—to Crazy Horse?"
"I came with Ballard as part of his Sanctuary Line. When he died I hid in the caverns, stealing the food I needed. They never missed it. I was careful about that."
"Then Gant doesn't know you're alive?"
"No one knows I'm here in the mountain. That's why I've been able to watch, find out what Gant's planning. And it's monstrous."
"I know he's reactivated the Central Core," said Jessica. "But, beyond that—"
"Gant plans to revive the Thinker—use it to bring the cities back to life. If that happens, he'll control the world."
"But Ballard killed the Thinker."
"Not really," said Mary-Mary. "He didn't have enough time. Gant's men were on the way to Crazy Horse when he got there just ahead of them. Ballard did what he could—shorted out the Central Core, destroyed all of the main relays…enough to knock out the cities. But Gant homered him before he could effectively destroy the main computer body. The Thinker isn't dead, it's just sleeping. And Gant intends to awaken it."
"Can't find them! And why not?" Steratt raged at his men. "They're here in the mountain, aren't they? Every exit is sealed. Why haven't you found them?"
"You've got ten thousand caves in there," said the leader of the main-thrust search group. "It would take years to probe all of them. There's just no way to do it. We searched the nearest caverns, but they've gone in deep. Too deep for us to follow."
"What about footprints?"
"Much of the ground is hard rock and shale," said the leader. "We didn't find any footprints."
"Then we'll starve them out," said Steratt. "Time is on our side. Have a double guard assigned to all food and water supply areas. They can't escape the mountain. And when they finally come out we'll be waiting for them."
Logan slept. Mary-Mary had provided clothing for him, had tended the wounds on his body, had fed him. The injections she gave him allowed his body to relax, and begin to restore itself. His natural strength came into play; his muscle tone improved, his skin took on color again.
Sometimes he would awaken, groggy and blinking, on the sandy floor of the cave, crying out Jessica's name. She was always there to hold him, gentle him back to sleep, telling him that they were safe… safe…safe.
Periodically, Mary-Mary would reconnoiter, then return to the cave with news of Gant's operation.
Jessica had many questions for her: "How does he get people to work for him? Surely he doesn't reward them?"
"Reward them!" Mary-Mary laughed. "Gant buys them on the Market as slave workers. Has them brought here. They work in twenty-four-hour shifts. He has well over a hundred men and women now, keeps them locked in cell units between shifts. Here…"
And she sketched a rough map of Gant's headquarters on the floor of the cave. "This building is for the technicians."
"How many of those?"
"Dozens. Computer experts, most of them. They supervise the workers. The key scientist is named Fennister. A real genius. He can restore the Thinker to full performance."
"But why would a man of such brilliance work for Gant?"
"You saw what Gant did to Logan. He uses torture to gain his ends. Fennister knows he'll be tortured to death
, slowly, if he fails to do what Gant asks. All of them know that."
"And they all…accept this?"
"At first three of the techs rebelled, refused to be a part of Gant's plan. So he used them as examples for the others. What he did to them was…terrible to see. Now no one defies Gant. No one."
"Then how can he be stopped?"
Mary-Mary sighed; her eyes darkened. "I don't think he can be stopped," she said.
FENNISTER
Sparks showered and burst blue against the terminal. Fennister 2 thinned the blade of cutting fire from the nozzle of the Flamer and finished the separation, then fused the tri-relay segment. He tested the cable. Perfect.
"Gant's here," said a voice at his elbow. Fennister acknowledged with a nod, wearily putting aside the Flamer and peeling his workgoggles. He was a man ready for sleep when the cities died, which made him twenty-seven now. He would never have become a runner. It was not in Fennister's nature to duck and dodge and hide and outwit. His world was computer science, and if the Thinker had told him to die he would have quietly obeyed its command and gone willingly to a Sleepshop.
But with the death of the cities he quickly came to realize that life beyond the dictates of a machine was precious. Freed from the duties of computer maintenance, he had met a woman, Lisa 18, and had come to care greatly for her. They'd agreed to have children, planned for the future as pair-bound lovers.
Then outlanders hit them. Lisa had been sold on the Market, and he'd been shipped to Crazy Horse as a worker for Gant. "Supervise the rebirth of the Thinker and I'll see that Lisa is yours," Gant had promised him. "Fail to get this job done and you'll never see her again." Thus, despite strong personal misgivings about the project, he had agreed to head it for Gant.
The Central Core was first—and now it was almost totally restored. The main computer-body would follow, each operation done in the thorough, meticulous fashion that characterized Fennister's work.