The Fifth Quadrant

by C. J. Ryan

  Gloria picked up the plasma pistol and raised her left wrist near her mouth. “You hear all that, Arkady?”

  “Every bit of it,” Volkonski said over the wristcom. “Is everything secure there?”

  “No sweat,” Gloria assured him. “I’ve got the pistol, and Doug and Marty are in dreamland.”

  “Nice work, Gloria.”

  “Thank you, thank you. There’s a freight skimmer, and I think I can use that. Just give me a few minutes to tie up the affinity group here.”

  “Roger. Nothing new happening here.”

  Gloria bent over and checked the anarchists’ pulses, relieved to find that she hadn’t killed either one. She looked around, and after a brief search found some bungee cords wrapped around the cartons of grenades. At summer camp, when she was eight, she had learned how to tie a variety of knots, and she used that knowledge now to secure Doug’s and Marty’s arms behind their backs and tie their feet together. Then, one at a time, she dragged them over the concrete floor to the front of the building next to the freight skimmer. Maneuvering them into the cab of the lorry took some doing, and she had to pause and catch her breath after the job was done.

  She inspected the cab of the skimmer and found that she could operate it. Then she checked out the mechanism controlling the big pressure door and found that it involved no insoluble mysteries.

  “Arkady? I’m all set here, but we need to coordinate.”

  “What are you planning?” Volkonski asked.

  “I thought I could just barrel on out of here in the skimmer and down to the dock. If you can give me some covering fire…”

  “It won’t work, Gloria,” Volkonski said. “Even if you got past the two guys on the rise, they’d still have plenty of time to put a hole through our hull. What’s your range from the building to the rise?”

  “Maybe five hundred meters,” Gloria said. “Why?”

  “Too long for accuracy with a flèchette. You’ll have to use a plasma rifle.”

  “To do what?”

  “To pick off the last two from behind.”

  “But wouldn’t that start a fire?”

  “Not if you’re careful.”

  “Hey, Arkady, I’ve never even fired a plasma rifle. Anyway, I really don’t want to have to kill anyone.”

  “Gloria,” Volkonski said patiently, “this is no time to get softhearted.”

  “Give me a couple of minutes, Arkady. Let me think.”

  Gloria wandered around the vast shed, almost at random, pondering the possibilities. She came to an opened crate of plasma grenades, reached into it, and lifted one out to inspect it. It felt heavy in her hand, not the kind of thing you could throw very far. She knew there were slinglike launchers that were used to fling them a fair distance, but didn’t see one. On the underside of the grenade, there was what appeared to be a timing mechanism. She studied it for a few moments, then went back to the skimmer.

  She contacted Volkonski and told him what she had in mind. He didn’t sound very enthusiastic about it, but didn’t have a better idea. Reluctantly, he gave her the go-ahead.

  Gloria got into the cab of the freight skimmer and fired up the engine. The skimmer rose a couple of feet off the concrete and hovered patiently. After checking to see that Doug and Marty were still unconscious, she got out of the cab and walked to the controls of the pressure door. She hit a couple of buttons and the inner door rose. Two more buttons, a harsh warning blat! from a Klaxon, and, with a loud sigh, the outer pressure door lifted. Cool, putrid air rushed into the warehouse. Gloria dashed back to the cab of the skimmer and started it moving.

  She paused just outside the building. After setting the timer on the grenade, she opened the door and tossed it out into the vast mat of algae. Then she shut the door and floated forward along the path. Ahead, she could see Alex and Rick, in apparent confusion, watching as the freight skimmer closed the distance between them. A hundred meters short of them, she paused and spoke into her wristcom. Volkonski had linked it to the external speakers on the Cruiser.

  “Alex! Rick! Listen to me! This is Gloria, and I’ve got Marty and Doug here with me in the cab. They’re still alive, and you guys can stay alive, too, but only if you do exactly what I tell you.”

  Gloria waited. The two men had pointed their weapons at the skimmer, but they looked back and forth at each other for a few moments before one of them shouted, “You’ll never make it to the dock, lady!”

  “Neither will you, if you don’t shut up and listen,” Gloria responded. “In about thirty seconds, a plasma grenade I left back there is going to explode. The door is open, and the fire will spread inside. The munitions in there will start cooking off, and pretty soon something’s going to put a hole through the containment of one of those plasma bombs. You know what that would mean.”

  She paused for a few seconds to let them think about it. “All seventeen of them will go off, but one will be more than enough. In the meantime, that fire will be spreading in this direction. There’s only one way off this planet, so if you want to live, drop your weapons and get down to the dock as fast as you can.”

  Before either man could reply, the grenade detonated. Gloria saw a green flash in her rearview mirror, then twisted around in her seat to get a direct view. She was amazed by what she saw.

  In the oxygen-rich atmosphere, the plasma released by the grenade had touched off an instant inferno. Flames fifty feet high engulfed the warehouse. The mat of algae flared into brilliance and, as Gloria watched, the blaze moved rapidly in her direction. Too rapidly.

  Gloria wasted no more time watching. She gunned the skimmer and dashed forward. Ahead, Rick and Alex had flung their weapons aside and were running toward the dock. A quick glance in the mirror told her that they would never make it, so as the skimmer reached the top of the rise, she slowed just enough for the two men to leap onto the flatbed. Gloria charged down the slope, turned sharply, and glided onto the dock. Before she could get out of the door on her side, two of the Bugs had opened the other door and were extracting Marty and Doug from the vehicle. As she darted around the front of the skimmer and headed for the hatch of the Cruiser, she took a last look over her shoulder and saw the blazing algae at the top of the rise. She dived into the Cruiser, the hatch closed, and Erskine maneuvered them away from the dock.

  Gloria looked up and saw Volkonski standing above her, a half smile of admiration and amazement on his features.

  “Whew!” she said.

  “We’re not out of the woods yet,” he told her. He extended a hand, pulled her to her feet, then turned and went forward into the cockpit. Gloria followed.

  “Erskine?” Volkonski asked.

  “Workin’ on it, sir!” Erskine replied breathlessly.

  “Forget about rocks,” Volkonski commanded. “Just get us up!”

  “Yessir!” Erskine worked the controls so rapidly that even the sensitive mass-repulsion units that softened acceleration and provided ersatz gravity inside the Cruiser couldn’t react fast enough. Gloria felt a lurch and almost lost her feet as the Cruiser clawed its way into the sky.

  On the image screen, she saw the dock far below, quickly receding into invisibility. Beyond it, a flaming landscape and the warehouse, smoking and blazing. Then, even the warehouse was gone, and there was nothing left to see but the curving shoreline of the big bay—

  And a flash that overloaded the imaging system for a moment. When vision was restored, she saw a billow of green fire rising from the receding landscape, and a concentric shock wave racing outward in every direction. She felt a slight bump as it caught up with the Cruiser.

  Erskine looked around with a wan, weary grin on his face. “Made it!” he said.

  “With six or seven seconds to spare,” Volkonski said. “That was cutting it a little fine, Gloria.”

  Gloria put her fists on her hips and glared at Volkonski. “You’re just never satisfied, are you?”

  PETRA DOUBLE-CHECKED THE FINAL RESULT. Not because she wasn’t sure�
��she had been sure ever since her moment of enlightenment back in the hotel—but because she needed to steel herself to do what had to be done next. She stared at the console for a long moment, then slid her chair back and got to her feet.

  She walked out of her small office and down a corridor to the office of Elizabeth Irons, chief of Internal Security for Quadrant 4. Petra gave a nod to the assistant at the outer desk, but didn’t pause, and barged straight into Iron’s office.

  Irons’s mouth fell open slightly when she saw Petra in her scandalously revealing night-on-the town garb. “Ms. Nash,” she said, “I don’t know what they wear to work back in Manhattan, but here on New Cambridge—”

  Petra interrupted her. “Ms. Irons,” she said, “you have to arrest Whitney Bartholemew, Junior—immediately!”

  PETRA STOOD ON THE SIDEWALK WITH Elizabeth Irons, a block from the Bartholemew Building in downtown Central, as Dexta, Imperial, and local security forces swarmed around the area. The immediate neighborhood had been evacuated, not that it would make any difference if a quadrijoule plasma bomb detonated. Somewhere high in the building, Whit Bartholemew was surrounded, with no way out, and Spirit knew what he might do.

  She wondered how long she had known the truth and refused to recognize it. That moment of enlightenment in the hotel had not come out of nowhere. No one else had seen the truth, either, but no one else had been as close to the investigation or as close to Whit. She could hardly have been closer; just hours ago, he had been inside her, a welcome presence in her body and her life. Even now, she regretted that there would be no trip to Belairus, no more nights of angry lovemaking.

  People stared at her, as if they knew what she had been doing; she felt their eyes on her all-but-naked body. She wished that she had taken the time to change her clothes in the suite, but her internal mood somehow matched her external appearance. She was emotionally naked, too, with no fig leaves of rationalization left to hide the truth: She had been passionately involved with a man who was a mass murderer. Something to put on her résumé.

  “He wants to see you.”

  Petra noticed that Irons was staring at her. “What?” she asked.

  “I just got word on the comm that Bartholemew wants to see you,” Irons said. “He’s holed up in his office, and apparently has a detonator switch that he says will set off the plasma bomb. You need to go up there.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Petra said. “I guess I do.”

  “A hundred million people could die if he sets off that bomb. We can’t evacuate the city—it would be foolish to try. I’d give you a weapon of some kind, except that you have nowhere to hide it, and he’d probably insist on a strip search anyway. But if you get the chance to disarm or disable him…”

  “I know a little Qatsima,” Petra said. Very little, she silently added.

  Irons nodded. “Don’t take any unnecessary risks. Keep him talking as long as you can. We have teams searching his properties around the city, and every other likely location. With luck, we’ll find the bomb before he can detonate it.”

  “Yes, ma’am. And if I could suggest something, maybe you should try to find his mother.”

  “Already in the works, Ms. Nash. But you’re the one he wants to see. Good luck.” Irons offered her hand, and Petra shook it.

  All was silent, except for the click of her high heels on the pavement, as she walked the block to the Bartholemew Building. The light breeze felt cold on her exposed flesh, and she fought off a shudder. Uniformed Bugs and cops stared at her as she passed, and the high gravity of this world had never seemed higher. The entire planet pulled at her.

  She entered the building and was shepherded to the elevator. A Bug she didn’t know joined her on the ascent. “He has a little switch in his right hand,” he said. “If he puts it down for any reason, just hit your wristcom’s transmit button, and we’ll be in the office a second later. But whatever you do, don’t try to take the switch away from him.”

  They reached the floor of Bartholemew’s office, and the Bug guided her out of the elevator, past dozens of tense security people. He pointed toward the door to the inner office and said, “We’re all counting on you, Ms. Nash.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

  Bartholemew was waiting for her, seated behind his big desk. In his neat, dark business suit, he didn’t look much like an anarchist. He smiled at her, and Petra couldn’t help returning it. She stopped a few feet in front of his desk and waited.

  “So, you figured it out, did you, Petra Nash?”

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?” Petra asked him.

  Bartholemew made a little head motion. “Perhaps,” he said.

  “I should have realized sooner. All that radical rhetoric. And dragging me out of the Old Annex just before you blew it up. And then insisting that we leave on the trip Sunday morning, just before the Emperor’s speech. You couldn’t have been more obvious if you’d left a trail of bread crumbs, but I was too dumb to see it.”

  “Not so dumb. I mean, here we are, aren’t we? The fate of millions riding on our every word, perhaps the very future of the Empire itself hanging in the balance.”

  “I think the Empire will survive, no matter what happens.”

  “Your precious Empire will collapse of its own weight,” Bartholemew said, letting his familiar anger show. “If not now, then later. I’m merely giving it a timely shove. Even if I don’t get the Emperor himself—thanks to you—I’ll still get my saintly old grandfather and half the bureaucratic offal in the Quadrant. People will see that there is nothing inevitable about Imperial rule.”

  “And they’ll rise up and spontaneously overthrow their oppressors?” Petra asked.

  “With a little help and guidance,” Bartholemew replied. “Operatives from PAIN are on half the planets in the Quadrant, ready and fully capable of providing a revolutionary vanguard to lead the uprising.”

  “Maybe,” Petra said, “but they’ll have to do it without all those weapons you’ve got on GAC 4367. I found them, Whit. That’s where Gloria is right now.”

  Bartholemew frowned. He seemed genuinely and unpleasantly surprised. Then he nodded and said, “That B & Q data?”

  “That’s right. It took some work, but eventually I figured out where that Savoy shipment had to have gone. And then I used the same process to track that freighter you leased in November. That’s when you brought the bomb and the other weapons to New Cambridge.”

  “Right again,” Bartholemew acknowledged. “That idiot Quincannon gave you everything you needed.”

  “And that’s why you killed him?”

  “One of the reasons,” Bartholemew said.

  Petra closed her eyes for a moment and saw, again, the battered corpse in the dark, old office. “You did it yourself?” she asked him.

  “With my own two hands,” he said, a note of satisfaction in his voice. “What’s more, I personally set the grenades in the Old Annex building. I had some help for the others, of course, but I’m not one of those delegate-everything leaders. I wasn’t afraid to get blood on my hands—literally, in the case of Quincannon. I did my share of the killing. A necessary overture to the symphony of destruction to follow. Anticipation is an essential element of terror, you see. Spreading fear and a sense of helplessness, underlining the authorities’ impotence—it all contributes to the final result.”

  “More than two hundred people died that night, Whit,” Petra said.

  “And a hundred million more will die if—when—I flick this switch,” he said, holding up the tiny device between his right thumb and forefinger.

  “And you’ll be one of them. So will I. So will your mother.”

  “An unfortunate but necessary sacrifice. We might have avoided that if you hadn’t been such a dedicated little bureaucrat.”

  “Do you really want to kill them, Whit? Do you want to kill your mother? Do you want to kill me?”

  “No,” he said, “truthfully, I don’t. Not you, not Mother, nor any of those faceles
s millions. Quincannon’s another story. But I honestly have no desire to kill all those people.”

  “Then why do it?”

  “Historical necessity. We anarchists understand that destruction is really the most profound act of creation. Did you know that a hundred million sperm cells die in order to fertilize a single egg? Today, a hundred million people will die to fertilize the egg of revolution.”

  “Bullshit!”

  Bartholemew tilted his head to one side. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose that one was a bit of a reach, wasn’t it? They can’t all be gems. But the point remains, and it is not merely bullshit. From the collision of opposing forces, new worlds are born. Better worlds. That is the inevitable result of the historical dialectic.”

  “If it’s inevitable,” Petra said, “then why do this? Why not let history work things out for itself?”

  “Fabian heresy!” Bartholemew cried out in mock horror. “Like the benighted masses themselves, you lack the ideological underpinnings necessary to appreciate the beauty and necessity of revolutionary acts. History requires human agents to work its will. A few people among trillions understand that and have the courage and selflessness to make themselves into such agents. We offer ourselves as necessary sacrifices upon the altar of history.”

  “Oh, brother.” Petra sighed. “Courage! Self-sacrifice! My goodness, I never knew you were such a great man, Whit. Here I thought you were just a bitter, resentful, angry, and confused guy who was pissed off at his father.”

  “Well…that, too,” Bartholemew conceded, offering Petra a crooked smile. “Individuals have histories, no less than empires. I admit, if I’d had a happy home life, I probably wouldn’t have spent twenty years working to build up PAIN, diverting funds, providing safe houses, and so on. It was the dialectic applied to the Bartholemew family, I suppose. The father works to build an empire, of sorts, and the son devotes himself to destroying it. Tell me, is that Hegelian, or merely Oedipal?”

  “It’s just sick, if you ask me. All this bullshit about historical forces—Spirit, Whit, do you really believe any of that stuff? Or is it just something you tell yourself to justify your fantasies?”