“That’s different,” Estresor Fil said quickly. “That’s a cultural study, not simply an empty aesthetic enterprise. If you were studying the view to scout for dangers, perhaps, or landmarks, then I could understand you. But just admiring it because you can see a long way? I’m sorry, I just can’t comprehend.”
“Are you sure you’re not part Vulcan?” he asked with a grin.
“Absolutely certain,” she replied, as stone-faced as ever. Her expression—eyes wide, narrow lips pressed firmly together in a straight line, tiny nub of a nose barely more than a pinch of flesh—rarely seemed to change, even though Will knew he had seen her happy and sad and worried. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel strong emotions, but her face didn’t seem to be up to the job of showing them. “Why do you ask?”
He decided to drop it. Vulcans believed in logic, but that didn’t mean that humor was completely alien to them. “No reason. Have you seen any of the others since you’ve been skulking in the doorway?”
“I have not. We’re the first.”
“I wish we could use combadges,” Will sighed.
“That would contradict the point of the project,” Estresor Fil argued. “We’re supposed to be in a hostile city, relying on just our wits and what we’ve learned of urban survival, not our technology.”
“But if we really were infiltrating a hostile city we’d still have our combadges, our padds, and our phasers,” Will insisted. “Right?”
“We might,” Estresor Fil relented. “But there might be some technology that jammed our combadges, or would allow the enemy to locate us when we used them. By the same token, our weapons might have been removed from us during capture, and we’ve just broken free. We need to follow the admiral’s rules.”
Will gave up and nodded. Admiral Paris had already been over all this, of course, and Will had expected nothing different. But he could complain about it nonetheless. Admiral Paris was a nut for the Prime Directive, as well, and Will knew that it was his philosophy that if an away team had landed in a primitive city of some kind, the use of any technology beyond the level of which the locals had attained would be forbidden. So really, there was no way combadges would be allowed on this project. They’d just have to wait until the others showed up, no matter how long that might be.
But with only Estresor Fil for company, he hoped it was soon.
Dennis Haynes made his way around the cold, abandoned island, sticking to the rugged coastline as well as he could. The old prison still dominated the interior, its thick walls crumbling now with age but still somehow sinister in appearance. Struts sticking up like grasping fingers indicated a tower of some kind, long since fallen. He couldn’t help being made a little nervous by the idea of so many desperate and dangerous people being kept behind those walls, even though it had happened a long time ago. And he couldn’t shake the disturbing knowledge that the prison had been built here because getting back to the city from this spot was no simple matter. He couldn’t remember if Alcatraz was a prison from which there had been no escapes, or just not many.
Either way, it didn’t bode well for him.
He had made nearly a complete circuit when he spotted the boat. It was an ancient contraption, made of real wood, it seemed, and it had been dragged onto a gravelly stretch of beach, leaving a furrowed path to the waterline behind it. No footprints led away from it, though, so there was no way of knowing how long it had been sitting in that spot. A day, a year, a decade? On closer examination he saw that its oar-locks were rusted. He touched one, to see if it would still swivel, but as he turned it the wood around it broke away, rotten and soft. Even if the thing would still float, then, he couldn’t control it and it would be unlikely to support his weight. He’d sink before he even got started. He felt even more dejected than before. The sun was rising high into the sky and he couldn’t get to his friends.
Trying to shrug off despair, he continued his journey. Around the bend from where he’d found the boat, his spirits lifted when he saw a dock, modern and in good repair. Of course, you idiot, he berated himself. You can still take a tour to Alcatraz, so there must be some way of getting to the island. He didn’t know how often the tours came, though he seemed to remember that they were at least daily, if not several in a day. All he needed to do, then, was to join the next one that came when it returned to the city.
Of course, how was he to explain how he’d wound up here, without breaking the rules of the assignment?
The only answer was, he couldn’t. He’d have to do what so many prisoners in times past had failed to do—he’d have to break out of Alcatraz.
But to do that, he’d first have to get inside. Casting an eye toward the city, he saw the familiar profile of a tourist skimmer heading toward the island. Not much time, then, he thought. Swallowing his anxiety, he started up the hill toward those forbidding walls.
The path from the dock into the prison was clear and unbarred, since it was traveled only by tour groups on organized outings. That made getting inside the facility easy enough. The outer wall, topped by a tall fence corroded and torn by wind and weather, stood open for him. Chunks of stone were piled against the wall where they had fallen under the relentless pressure of the elements on this exposed outcrop, but the wall itself was still impressively thick. Beyond this wall, which encircled the facility—he had passed another building, closer to the shore, which had seemed to be administrative rather than confining—the prison itself reared up, solid and grim, with narrow windows set into the aged concrete.
He continued into the prison itself. Here, too, the doors were open, and he passed through into a semi-contained space. Sky showed through holes in the ceiling and walls, but he could still get a sense of how imposing the place must have been in its heyday. Or either of its heydays, he mentally corrected himself. He knew the prison had been closed sometime in the mid-twentieth century, but then reopened again for a time late in the twenty-first, in the hard times after the war.
As he explored, the quiet outside was broken by the buzzing sound of the skimmer approaching the island. He had to hurry, had to find a place where he could hide. The first section of the prison seemed to be a processing area, where prisoners were booked into the system. The cells were farther back, beyond more sets of doors and bars. But a quick look around the cells proved to Dennis that there was no hiding there—anyone walking down the hallways between cells could see every inch of them, bunks and sinks and toilets, mold-encrusted walls still showing graffiti from ages gone by.
Which only made sense, he realized. Surely the guards would have needed clear sightlines throughout the cells. He turned back, his anxiety building. From outside he could hear voices already, as the tour guide led the group toward the prison. Once at the processing area, he passed through an open door and ducked down behind a chest-high counter, pressing himself up against the far side. As long as no one came through the door into this area, he would be safe, but there was no place to hide if the group decided to check out the office. The floor here was filthy, caked with years of refuse, bird droppings, and neglect, and it stank. But he could take it if he didn’t have to wait too long, he figured. And really, how long could a tour of this place take? There wasn’t really so much to see inside.
He could barely make out the guide’s words, so hard was his heart pounding in his ears as the tour came through. He worked to still his breathing, willing himself to become as invisible as he possibly could. The guide’s voice turned into a pleasant drone as she led her group through this section and into the cell block, and when they were gone, Dennis allowed himself to relax a bit.
But the hard part, he knew, was still ahead.
After thirty minutes or so, he heard voices approaching again, and he resumed his hiding position. Now was when he most risked discovery, he feared. They’d been through the cells, they were more casual about being here, and the chance that someone might decide to step away from the tour and come behind the counter was increased. Once again, when they came near he
slowed his breathing. He trembled from fear of discovery, and clenched his fists between his knees to keep his limbs from rapping against the floor or the side of the counter.
This time, the guide’s voice was quiet, as she’d already explained the function of this part of the prison. But the tourists were talking loudly, certainly drowning out any noises Dennis might have made. He stayed where he was until their voices began to fade, as the group made its way back outside, and then he cautiously raised his head above the protective counter. He saw people—humans and aliens, as well—walking from the inside’s dimness into bright light, blinking and shading their eyes. But no one turned back to look behind them, so he slipped from his hiding spot and hurried to the door, taking up the back of the line as they headed down the slope to the waiting skimmer. As they approached the dock, he moved up, nodding casually to those who caught his eye, pretending he had been with them all along. If anyone thought different, no one mentioned it.
On the skimmer, he took a seat on a long plastisteel bench. His worst moment came when the guide looked out at the group and asked, “Are we all here? We wouldn’t want to leave anyone behind.” He was afraid she might count heads, in which case he’d be found out. But she accepted the murmurs of affirmation that came from the crowd, and the skimmer pulled out, skipping across the choppy surf like a cast stone, the city growing ever larger in the front viewscreen.
Dennis started to calm down, finally, as the craft neared the port on the San Francisco side of the bay. The beginning of this project had been inauspicious, he thought, but it was getting better all the time.
He had escaped from Alcatraz.
Waiting for the others in their chosen alcove, Will began to get into the spirit of the mission. No one went in or out the doorway—Estresor Fil had chosen well; the corner storefront had windows chemically opaqued and appeared to be an empty space—but some of the passersby glared at him and Estresor Fil with suspicion. He couldn’t blame them—anyone who had been past more than once would realize that they’d been hanging around for a long time, without leaving or apparently having any real reason to be there. After an hour of it he was starting to feel as if they really were in a hostile city where his life could be in genuine danger.
But the meeting place they’d agreed on was this intersection. They could cross the street to a different corner, but the other corners were even busier, with open businesses where they would be in the way. Here, at least, they were out of the sun and shielded from casual view to some degree.
Just a few minutes past the hour, he saw Felicia Mendoza, strolling languidly up the other side of Jones Street wearing a loose royal blue top with black pants and boots, looking as if she didn’t have a care in the world. He started to say something to Estresor Fil about it, but then realized that she fit right in with those around her, whereas if she’d been moving with definite purpose she would have stood out among the crowd. He had realized that at first glance he’d thought she was a strikingly attractive woman, but it hadn’t sunk in that she was Felicia until he looked more closely.
She hadn’t seen them, and was crossing Sacramento. She knew this was the meeting point, so she would surely come back this way, he hoped. But when he stepped out of the alcove to look for her, she was out of sight, already over the crest of the hill. He caught Estresor Fil’s wide-eyed, unchanging but somehow accusatory gaze, and went after Felicia.
When he caught up with her, she had crossed Jones and was heading back up Sacramento, toward him. “Felicia,” he said. “I’m glad I caught you.”
She smiled, her big brown eyes seeming to twinkle at him. “ ‘Caught’ me?” she echoed. “I was coming to you.”
“So you saw us?” he asked.
“In your oh-so-secret doorway hideout? Of course. Did you think I was going to dash across the street straight to you? We’re supposed to be exercising some discretion, right?”
He turned around so they were both walking the right direction, back toward Estresor Fil. “Well, yes,” he said. “Which you did, very nicely.”
She looked sideways at him, her rich black hair falling across her cheek. Seeing her like this, in civilian clothes, acting the part of a casual San Franciscan instead of the frequently harried cadet she really was, Will decided he had never quite realized just how lovely she was. “Thank you,” she said, and her voice was as clear and pure as a ringing bell.
By the time they got back to Estresor Fil’s alcove, Boon had arrived and was lounging against the wall as if he didn’t have the strength to stand up. This was just Boon’s typical posture, though, except when he was in uniform and required to stand straight and tall. After a while, most cadets learned to hold their correct posture all the time, but for Boon it was only an obligation of service and would apparently never be a habit.
“I didn’t see you when I passed by,” Felicia said to him.
“Just got here.”
“Where did you beam in?” Will asked him.
“Up to my ankles in the Pacific Ocean,” Boon complained. “Anyone else get wet?”
“I didn’t,” Estresor Fil said.
“I wasn’t too far away at all, as it turned out,” Felicia said. “So I took a walk around the neighborhood, familiarizing myself with the local landmarks.”
“So it’s just me. It’s always me,” Boon said morosely.
“Your life is so hard,” Felicia sighed.
“But we don’t know where Dennis is,” Will pointed out. “For all we know, he has it worse than you.”
“Fat chance,” Boon opined.
They waited another hour, and then some. Finally, Estresor Fil spotted Dennis on his way, and eight minutes later he reached them. After an overly long explanation of his plight and his solution to it, he produced what they’d all been waiting for—the first clue of their project.
They all looked at the document blankly. “Twins?” Boon asked. “What twins?”
Chapter 8
“That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?” Felicia responded. “We’re supposed to figure the clues out. If it was easy, it wouldn’t really be a challenge, now would it?”
Boon looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “I don’t know about you, but I’m already tired of this,” he said. “It’s nonsense. Running all over the place when it’d be so much easier to use transporters. Figuring out clues. I think my feet are still pruney from the water, and they hurt.”
“I would suggest you quit, Boon,” Estresor Fil told him. “Except that we’re a squadron, and your failure would affect all of us. So perhaps you should just take it in stride and shut up.”
The Coridanian looked stricken then. Will, always curious about Estresor Fil’s ways and motivations, wondered if she was really just being blunt, or if she had intentionally tried to wound him, hoping, perhaps, that it would inspire him to greater effort. And less whining, he thought, that would be good too. Boon fancied himself a great leader and a starship captain in the making, but Will figured that any captain who bitched and moaned as much as Boon did would be begging for mutiny, probably within the first few days of his command.
He had to admit that while the complaining was annoying, Boon really did have a lot of good qualities—he was smart, made decisions fast and well, could think on his feet, and could inspire the loyalty of those around him. Until the sour attitude took over, and then all that loyalty was gone. Perhaps if Boon had been chosen as the leader of this final project, he’d have stowed the negativity and would already be leading them toward their objective. Dennis, obviously worn out from his ordeal so far, wasn’t exactly taking the helm and inspiring confidence, so maybe Boon would have been the better choice. But Will didn’t want to let Dennis’s chance at leadership vanish. He decided to spur his friend on. “Do you have any ideas, Dennis? You’ve had the clue the longest.”
Dennis, sitting on the ground in the doorway headquarters, shook his head sadly. “I tried to come up with something, but at the same time I was trying to figure out how to ge
t off the island. I thought that should take precedence, since if I couldn’t do that none of you would get a shot at the clue either. So I didn’t really make much progress, I’m afraid.”
“Are you sure there’s not more to it?” Boon asked. “How do we find the right pair of twins in a city this size? Must be crawling with twins.”
Felicia flashed her smile again, the one that Will was finding more intriguing all the time. “Maybe it’s not human twins,” she suggested. “There are maps every few blocks. If the twins are a natural feature, or one of the main city attractions, they’ll be on there.”
“Worth a look, anyway,” Dennis agreed. He forced himself wearily to his feet. “You guys have been waiting around here for long enough as it is. Let’s find us one of those maps and see if we can locate some twins.”
A kiosk three blocks down Jones Street had city maps and transport schedules for the whole region. When Dennis entered “twins” on the keypad, nothing came up. But when Estresor Fil called up a city overview, the twins were suddenly apparent to all. Twin Peaks were two round-topped, still undeveloped hills—two of the tallest points in the city, it turned out, even higher than Nob Hill. Will requested a history of them, in case it would help identify where at the feet of the twins they might expect to find the checkpoint, and learned that one of the hills—there were actually more than two, all in the same vicinity, though the two called Twin Peaks were the tallest—had once held a broadcasting tower from which signals could be sent through the air to homes all over the San Francisco Bay Area, and that on clear days the view from the Peaks was considered one of the best in the region. None of which helped a bit when it came to locating their checkpoint.
They had all done enough walking, except for Estresor Fil, who had been standing more or less in one place for hours now. But majority ruled and they hopped an underground transport to the Twin Peaks area. They would have, Will suspected, plenty of walking ahead of them yet, especially if they had to circumnavigate the base of the hills in order to find the spot they needed.
Deny Thy Father Page 7