Single Combat

by Dean Ing

  He reduced the odds another arm's length by releasing his handgrip and slipping from his sling, holding to the end of the loop as he approached the hillock at a sprinter's speed and much too high above it. He released his grip.

  Sanger could not know all the variables Quantrill fought and was a hundred meters distant when he caromed off the earth, spilling down the lee side of the hillock into a rutted mining road. She saw him hit on the downslope, bounce, tuck into a ball, hit again, come up on all-fours. He was shaking his head, trying to rise, when she reached him. Then he fell on his back, gasping for breath. And Control could hear involuntary grunts and wheezes.

  "Sanger, has your status changed?" She wondered at Control's use of her surname; realized that Quantrill could not speak, whatever Control might be saying to him. Controllers could talk with a dozen rovers at once.

  She made two snap decisions, hauling Quantrill's midriff fabric up to ease his discomfort as she panted, "Nailed—the bastard."

  "Can you fly a Loring?"

  "Neg, Control." She saw Quantrill's eyes blink, hoped he was fully conscious as he fought for breath. Above them the sprint chopper continued its banked circle, slowly drifting downwind. The belly hatch was nearly shut, Quantrill's makeshift harness caught at the hatch lip when the auto rewind reeled it in. It might escape notice from a distance. But the canopy was clear; obviously, no one was minding the store up there. "He got it—circling on auto—and I got in—a neck chop. We're in—personnel bay. If—you value that eye—Quantrill,—let go of—the garrote."

  Quantrill could wheeze a bit now; gestured feebly for her to release his coverall. She could not tell whether his toothy rictus was a smile or a grimace until he made a manual "OK". He didn't look okay, he looked like bloody hell with dark stains wetting the frayed coverall at his elbow and right hip.

  "Mexican standoff, Sanger," he gasped finally for Control's benefit. "When this bird runs out of fuel,—it's you and me both."

  "All the way," she signed, and hauled him to his feet. At first he limped but soon was loping with her up the road to the many-windowed stone building. Aloud she said, "Any good ideas, Control?" She had two reasons for being breathless; one bogus, one real.

  Wait one, Sanger," from Control. "We have to get closer visual contact." Scanning the heavens, she realized that they had no visual contact at all. Yet. If they had, they'd be wondering why two people were leaving dust spurts as they bounded up an access road.

  The masonry building had its own windmill and, she saw with a start, a flowering hedge. It also had stained glass in its front windows and a hand-hewn cross of stone over the double doors.

  Sanger had haplessly led Quantrill to a Catholic Church.

  Chapter 35

  Other structures squatted nearly a kilometer distant, but they knew better than to risk any more time in the open than absolutely necessary. They were supposedly locked in mutually deadly embrace, still in the circling sprint chopper that slowly circled downwind across the valley.

  "Quantrill, you made a hell of a try; the best," said Control in his head. "If you remand yourself to Sanger's custody now, maybe we can get you both down alive. If you don't you are suiciding. Do you agree?"

  "Maybe; maybe not," he panted, hurling the wooden doors open.

  "We hold too many cards," Control insisted, and reminded him by setting the squalling infant on the slate again at medium strength. Then, over the cacophony, Control began a seductive spiel with one theme: "Give it up, Quantrill. You've taken too much punishment. Let us help you. You must be exhausted, hurt, afraid. We understand; we don't want you hurt. Relax; let us take the burden…"

  The two desperate rovers stormed down a center aisle in the nave, pausing at the sanctuary which, for their immediate needs, was no sanctuary at all. Control's transmissions were still too loud, too clear.

  Sanger darted toward one of the hallways that flanked the sanctuary; discovered only a gloomy little bathroom and a gloomier reconciliation room with its confessional screen.

  Quantrill took the other hall, now limping again, and was ready to blow the lock off the sacristy door when a lean aged figure appeared at the end of the hall, buttoning the long sleeves of a black shirt. "Is there something—," the man began, and saw the chiller, and crossed himself. Quantrill nearly shot him dead before seeing that the priest was not reaching for a sidearm.

  The man of God faced this hellish apparition with its dirt-caked face, its torn bloody coverall, its deadly weapon and half-mad eyes that glowed with more deadly purpose. The rounded shoulders straightening, he stared at the young rover. "I'm Father Klein. You won't need that in my chapel," he said, nodding at the chiller.

  In answer, Quantrill pocketed the weapon, waved for the priest to follow, hobbled back to the nave. He had remembered the visitor’s register near the doors. Sanger all but collided with him, saw his silent gesture to his rear, tried a sickly smile as she spied the elderly man hurrying toward them.

  "Are you in trouble? Can't you talk?" But she was shaking her head, pointing to her breast and then drawing a finger across her throat. The gestural shorthand of S & R rovers would not take her very far with this man, who could not know that his were the only spoken words to which Control was wholly deaf.

  The felt-nibbed pen in Quantrill's hand flew across the register, the few scrawled words high and bold. NEED BASEMENT OR CAVE. THEN TALK.

  The priest bent to study the scrawl. His response seemed to take an eon. Unheard by him, Control babbled in two heads. "There's nothing like that here," the priest said, blinking. "The nearest mines are some distance away," he gestured, leading them back through the nave and past the sacristy.

  When Sanger half-sobbed, "I need time to think. Control," the priest studied her with curiosity and compassion.

  Then he led them into a spacious kitchen meant to serve large gatherings. "I haven't a car, and it's a brisk climb up to the mines," he said, pointing through the nearest window.

  It was all of that, Sanger judged. Even with help, the battered Quantrill would need a half-hour to get up-slope to the nearest mine shaft. She scanned the kitchen. She did not see the ancient clipboard near the sink, but took in the huge butcher block that squatted near the center of the kitchen with cutlery of many kinds arrayed on its solid flanks. Staring at the gleaming blades she said aloud, "I have a bad cut and I need a doctor right now. Immediately." Her calm was ice-brittle. She knew Quantrill would never agree with her silent decision.

  Father Klein frowned; he could see no bloodstains on her clothing. "Let me help," he said, stepping nearer.

  From Control: "Some things take time, Sanger. We're on the way."

  Sanger juggled her auditors, waved the priest away savagely while staring hard into his face. "A surgeon, as soon as humanly possible. How long?"

  Control: "Not long."

  Father Klein: "Ten minutes, I suppose. I don't have a link to him but I'll take my bicycle to the village. It's pretty primitive here, I'm afraid." He gazed at Quantrill, fascinated. Sanger saw that Quantrill was staring at nothing, but his hand tore at the hair over his mastoid as though idly plucking fur from a stuffed animal. Then he glanced at the others, half-smiled; dropped his hand, oblivious to the strands of hair caught between his fingers.

  "Make it five minutes, will you?" So far, she had given Control no hint that she might be speaking directly to a fourth party. She gestured the priest on his way, looking about her for equipment she could use. In a thigh pocket she had the first item, the hypospray canister.

  "Is that as loud as you can do it, Control?" Quantrill's forehead glistened with sweat, his eyelids flickering in tune with some maddening noise that Sanger could not hear.

  Using muted gutterals that Control alone could decipher clearly, Sanger lied, "I think he's fainting. Control." If the bastards thought him unconscious they might not pull his plug. Oh, but they wanted him bad, she thought, so they could dissect him at their leisure. Well, they might just get some dissection—but not on their te
rms.

  She noted the prewar dishtowels folded near the sink, the small hardwood cutting board that hung at the side of the chopping block. They would have to serve. She faced Quantrill, hurrying on with it, certain that if she faltered only once she would not be able to continue. She addressed him twice, once aloud and then in sign talk. "Quantrill, you're about to get your moment of truth." Pause, then, "I love you," said her hands.

  He was plucking at his hair again, but stopped as he read a phrase he had never seen her use. Evidently the sounds in his head took a lot of cognitive jamming because his silent reply was jerky: "Sorry I doubted you. Even if you took me out, I'd go loving you, Marbrye." Aloud he managed to say, "We may just go out this way together, Sanger."

  Lips and hands moving: "Don't try to scare me, little man." "That's the way I'd want it, my love."

  She moved to him, raised a hand to his cheek, saw his eyes close as he kissed her open palm to seal a pact; one that might accept, if not mutual suicide, then double murder. It was then that she brought up her other hand with the tiny canister of hypo-spray.

  Sanger's weapon was not as gentle as most drugs, but only curare was quicker. At least the stuff would put him out instead of leaving him paralyzed and fully conscious. She placed her mouth on his for one heart-rending instant before triggering the canister against the side of his head and then, as she pulled back, spraying it into his mouth.

  Stumbling, wiping furiously, he backed against the chopping block. "Sanger! Oh Sanger, what the hell have you done?"

  "Outlasted you," she said. She dared not approach him as he faltered; his dismay was tinged with fury. Yet her hands said, "I love you, Ted. Trust me. Love you. Trust me," as she watched him register betrayal and, mercifully, loss of awareness.

  Control was braying for a report. "Hypospray," she gasped. "Got the little fucker but—inhaled a little." She pulled him onto the butcher block, face down, and snatched up a handful of clean towels. Two of them, folded thick, went under his chin. Her belt medikit provided sterile pressure patches which she lay face-up on the wooden surface. Her utility knife with its retractable blade guard was as sharp as a filleting knife. If Sanger could shave her legs with it, perhaps it would shave a patch of skull. She did, nicking him only once over the swell of mastoid behind his ear; and saw the thin scar appear, a neat job by men of great expertise and no vestige of human compassion.

  The cleaver was her first choice but she feared it was too dull. The largest of the carving knives was almost as heavy, and wickedly sharp. She sterilized its blade with an ampoule from her kit, grabbed the small cutting board by its handle, laid it down again and gripped her hands tightly to quell their trembles. She might be killing him anyway, but if either hand shook she would surely fail.

  Several long breaths, murmuring to assuage Control, and then she gazed again at that neat livid scar. Somewhere beneath it lay the small horror that had driven them both past cold-blooded murder and on to self-hatred. She wiped the shaved area to sterilize it, placed the heavy knife squarely on the scar, lifted the cutting board again, and with steady hands she readied for the blow. "I think Q is out, Control; but I intend to make sure." With that, she struck with her makeshift mallet against the back of the heavy blade.

  Quantrill grunted with the impact; made no other sound. She saw that she had struck too lightly, peeled back a flap of skin and struck again, harder, from another angle. A rough trapezoid of tough spongy bone popped away. Sanger had watched training films of appendectomies and had spilled a lot of blood on her own account, but none of that had been Quantrill's blood. She bit her lip and continued, perspiration rivuleting her face.

  Marbrye Sanger clung to the tatters of reason as she peered into the cleft she had forced into the spongy bone mass behind her lover's ear. Now she knew why surgeons rarely elected to work on a loved one. For the first few seconds, surprisingly little blood welled into the cavity she had driven nearly two centimeters deep and twice as long. In the deepest part of her brutal incision the hollow irregular mastoid cells were larger, and Sanger perceived a larger cavity the size of her fingertip before upwelling gore from surrounding tissue blocked her view.

  She wondered if she were insane. She did not know what the damnable critic looked like, nor exactly where to look, and rumor claimed that it would explode at her touch. Yet she knew it must include a rechargeable energy cell and a gram or so of explosive. Surely, she insisted to herself, she would recognize such a foreign body when she saw it.

  That little cavity at the deepest limit of her cut: was it larger than it seemed? The edge made a curve that seemed too regular to be part of the surrounding bone. Blinking against tears, her lower lip bleeding between her teeth, she swept the synthoderm face of a pressure patch through the scarlet mess; saw the tiny cavity; eased the tip of the knife in and felt nearby bony cells carved away like half-rotted wood under her careful assault. She flicked the knifetip out to dispose of bone fragments, swallowed against a bitter taste rising in her throat,—and then she saw it.

  She nearly sobbed aloud, facing the hellborn thing. Gleaming unnaturally white in the pinkish gray of human tissue, wedged into the mastoid antrum cavity, lay Ted Quantrill's loathsome critic. Inside its firm flexible surface Sanger could see striations as of dissimilar materials stacked inside an oblong capsule. She carved away more bone, infinitely tender, willing her arms not to shake.

  "Sanger!" Control's voice was strident in her head. "What is he doing? We're getting anomalous readings; how hard did you hit him?"

  "He's flopping on—on the deck," she stammered. "Can't stop him. Need time. Woozy as hell." She did not know how her savage surgery was registering to Control, but they obviously did not like what they were monitoring. The God-damned critic was still intact, untouched; but now fully exposed.

  She tasted salt when she swallowed, grasped the knife again.

  When Sanger's sweaty grip caused the knife to slip, the blood-smeared blade carved neatly through the translucent plastic and some dark cheesy substance as well. No explosion.

  There was no explosion!. Now the monstrous, repulsive thing lay in two pieces, connected only by filament-slender wire which had resisted the knife. Whimpering almost silently, Sanger wiped away blood and tried to shave more of the bony material side. She flicked the blade, prying, and saw a half-dozen hunks of bloody debris spatter onto the butcher block and floor. Sanger laid down her knife, sobbing noiselessly as she stared.

  Ted Quantrill might die now, or in a day, but he would not die from a detonator in his skull. Among the crimson debris were both wire-linked pieces of the mastoid critic.

  From Control: "Ease up, Sanger! Are you beating his head in? Brief us; we get anomalous signals from Q."

  She remained silent, controlling her gasping sobs, both hands held to her face in mingled revulsion and relief. With a featherlight touch, she pressed two sterile pressure patches into Quantrill's gaping wound; shuddered at the trickle of his blood that soaked the towels under his chin. Her hands were sticky with his blood. She could feel it drying on her cheeks, and this added sensation galvanized her once more.

  Rushing to the sink, Sanger scrubbed viciously at her face and hands, willing her sobs to abate. She commanded herself to stand fast against emotional collapse, for her job had scarcely begun.

  Rubbing hard with a dishtowel, she scanned the room for a terminal or chalkboard—anything to write with. At last the old clipboard with its pencil on a frayed cord arrested her gaze. She tore away a shopping list, began to scribble; slowed as she saw that her trembling scrawl was nearly illegible.

  Escaped S & R rovers, she wrote. Mastoid-implant radios can be exploded by S & R leaders. I cut Quantrill's out. Must remove mine NOW! She jumped toward the voices and hurrying footsteps; saw the priest from the window, and with him a swarthy man in shirtsleeves.

  As Sanger darted to the doorway, Control spoke again. She wrote another passage as Control said, "We've made a command decision. Howell advises us of a disturbing possib
ility and we can't chance it. If near Q's head, move away or cover his head with something. Terminating Q's programs in ten seconds, mark."

  Sanger did not answer but stood swaying before the two men who now entered the kitchen. "This the injured woman?" The doctor, gripping a scarred little bag, gaped beyond her. He saw the body of Ted Quantrill, and the thin drool of his blood from sodden towels, running down the flank of the chopping block. As he stepped around Sanger, she slapped his arm hard with the clipboard and held it before him.

  She pointed at Quantrill, then at the debris on the floor. The doctor was reading, frowning, shaking his head. "Incred—," he said, as a high-pitched report echoed through the room. The sound was as thin and sharp as a scalpel.

  The physician stepped back quickly from the small object that skittered across the floor to rest near his feet. The priest was now reading the note. "Father in heaven," he breathed, and crossed himself.

  The physician pocketed the tiny device at his feet, hurried to Quantrill's side, felt for a pulse with one hand while carefully peeling back the gore-soaked patches with the other. "You've probably killed him," he said, then remembered Sanger's last scrawl. "And what makes you think we'd be likely to give anyone political asylum, young lady?"

  Control was clamoring for a report but Sanger knew her best tactic was to feign unconsciousness. She snatched up the clipboard. NOT sure, she wrote; S & R querying me now. She circled a previous passage—Must remove mine NOW—then dropped the clipboard and, in what seemed one choreographed motion, swept her utility knife up with bared blade to shave away the hair from her own skull.

  Priest and doctor froze, unsure whether this violent young woman was attempting suicide; but the doctor was quick to infer her real goal. "A hell of a choice you give me," he snarled at her, and motioned for her to sit on the rough bench near the window. "Guess I'll have to tend to you first."

  He gestured for the knife, studied it expertly for a second, tossed a quick bitter glance toward the priest who was administering last rites to the unconscious Quantrill. "Save the hereafter for later, Klein, he needs help here and now. Apply finger pressure over those patches to lessen the bleeding—and tell me if he stops breathing!"