Fool’s Run

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Who else has access to your computer?”

  “No one. Sir.”

  “No one? Where is it? In a vault?”

  “No, it’s—” His voice stopped then. He looked at Jase silently a moment, and Jase thought wearily, There’s something. Aaron glanced down at his hands. When he lifted his head again, the lines at the sides of his mouth had deepened.

  “It’s in an old nuclear shelter,” he said. “On the coast.”

  “Is that where you live?”

  “No. I mean, I have a smaller system where I live, but it’s tied into this one.” He stopped again. Jase eyed him.

  “Are you going to make me fish for it?”

  Aaron drew breath. There was a hint of color in his face. His eyes had changed; they looked inward to some bleakness. Then his muscles loosened slightly; his eyes ran over the tiny, soundless room. “No,” he sighed. “I guess that would be pretty stupid.”

  “I guess it would too.”

  “It’s just—I never talked about it. To anyone.”

  “I suggest you start.”

  The tone of Jase’s voice brought Aaron out of his memories. He met Jase’s eyes squarely. “I’m a patroller. A good one. The last thing in the world I’m interested in is classified information about the Underworld.”

  Jase grunted. “Then what are you interested in, Mr. Fisher?”

  “I—” His hands tightened, relaxed again. He spoke quickly, his voice devoid of expression. “Seven years ago, my wife was murdered. She was a draftee serving in Desert Sector. She was killed by Terra Viridian. She was p—she was pregnant. I’ve been using that system in the bomb shelter for research. I don’t pretend it’s all been legal. I’ve been trying to find Terra Viridian’s sister. I wanted—I wanted to know—” His voice shook, and he swallowed, left Jase staring at his rigid face.

  After a moment, Jase found his voice. “Is that why you wanted to go to that concert tonight?”

  “What?” He looked bewildered, as if Jase had spoken old-world. His face was white; the backlog of emotions was crowding into his eyes. Jase straightened, a small movement, as though he were trying not to displace air.

  “Revenge?”

  “No.”

  “Then why?”

  “She—nothing made sense. Why she was killed. I just wanted to understand why. To try to understand. I loved—I loved her.”

  Let it go, Jase told himself, with sudden, urgent foresight. Let him go back without knowing. There’s no need. He’s put it into words.

  But there was still the matter of the docking procedures. He said carefully, “That’s an unusual thing for a patroller to do, isn’t it? You must have spent a good deal of time at it.”

  “I was assigned to it at first. The conspiracy theory, to cover up for the FWG for the trial that sent her here.”

  Jase nodded. “I remember the assignment.”

  “I told people—people I asked to help me—that I was still on assignment.”

  “I see.”

  “No one else—”

  “I understand. I’m not investigating your prowling through theoretically private information, but I strongly suggest that you climb out of your bomb shelter and find some healthier activity before someone does want to investigate. You may be a first-class patroller, Mr. Fisher. Your records say so, your superiors say so. But I’d like an answer to my question. If you didn’t request docking information, then who was using your computer?”

  “No—” He stopped. He stared at the air between them, the color draining from his face again, even, it seemed, from his eyes. Jase laid a hand on his desk.

  “Who, Mr. Fisher?”

  “Only one—only one other person I know used it.” His voice was husky. He swallowed, but the ache stayed in it. His face was smudged with some fresh pain, and Jase shifted, sighing noiselessly.

  “Who, Mr. Fisher?”

  “A woman. I brought her there. She needed information about fixing a cruiser-receiver; it wasn’t working right…”

  Jase touched his eyes. Damn it, he thought, feeling the weird stilling of time, as if they had reached the place where it ended its circle and began again. “Damn it!” he breathed, and stood up. Aaron was watching him. All the expression in his face had died. He looked, Jase thought, as if he had just become the man he had been afraid of becoming.

  “The concert.” His voice came easily then, without feeling. “You asked me about that. She’s in the band.”

  Jase sat down again, weariness dragging at his bones. All on a summer’s day…

  Terra stood in front of him.

  SIX

  She lingered in the doorway long enough to turn Jase into stone with her eyes. She carried a laser-rifle. Aaron turned at Jase’s stillness. The vision-drugged, alien eyes moved to him and he stopped moving, stopped breathing. She loosed him, melted back into the shadows, silently as she had come.

  Jase, frozen for another fraction of a second, moved finally. He hit the Hub-alert, and snapped at Aaron, who was heading toward the door, “Fisher!”

  Aaron, feeling the emptiness at his weapon belt, glanced down, surprised. Jase tossed him a stunner out of the desk. “Be careful!” His monitor screen was flashing different sections of the Hub: offices, computer rooms, storage, officers’ quarters, all quiet, all in shadow. “Where the hell is everybody!” The alarm was whooping in his ears. Men and women began running out of the Rec Room, out of their quarters. The screen showed him a door, welded shut with light. Then the camera eye over the door exploded.

  “God—” Jase breathed. He heard battering in the distance, shouting. Still no one came. He touched the com-light. “Get me Fiori.” His com screen darkened suddenly, eerily, but the com stayed open. “Dr. Fiori? Can you hear me?”

  “Chief Klyos! Thank God! She—”

  “She’s here in the Hub. Are you hurt?”

  “No, but she welded the doors closed. I don’t know what happened. We thought she was falling asleep, we took her out of the bubble and she just went berserk. She grabbed a rifle from one of the guards and started shooting. She shot two guards and the ceiling cameras. She shot the hell out of the Dream Machine. Then she locked us in.”

  “I’ll get someone to you, hang on.” The monitor screen showed him the transport corridor and he cursed, stunned. The robot squad was scattered in pieces all down the track. “She’s not human,” he whispered, and wondered, suddenly, if Aaron were still alive. “Fisher!”

  “Chief Klyos!” Nils’ voice, taut, pitched high, came over the security channel. “What’s going on?”

  “Nils, where are you?”

  “D-Level Rec, helping the band pack up. What’s—”

  “Terra Viridian is wandering around the Hub with a rifle. Grab Michele and get up here.”

  “Jase,” Nils breathed. “Shoot her.”

  “The thought crossed my mind. I think she’s blocked off Headquarters. Get a crew to open the transport doors, get Michele in here if you have to fly her around to the Hub-dock, and get me some security!”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Fisher’s here.”

  “Fisher? That’s all?”

  “Quit shouting and get in here, any way you can. Oh, and get a crew to rescue Fiori.” He glanced out; the smoky acrylic walls showed no movement in the hall. “Fisher!”

  Aaron emerged from the Hub-computer room, crossed the hallway carefully. “I didn’t see her,” he said. He still looked startled, but his hands and voice were steady. “We alone?”

  “She’s got us isolated.”

  “How—who is she?”

  Jase stared at him. Then he said, “I guess you wouldn’t know. You only saw her seven years ago. That’s Terra Viridian.”

  For a second Aaron looked at him as if Jase had told him the Earth was flat and the Underworld full of horned devils. Then the blood swept furiously into his face. He whirled so fast that Jase barely had time to get air to bellow. “Mr. Fisher!” Aaron stopped short at the doorway, as if Jase�
��s voice had tangled around his feet. He didn’t turn back, but he didn’t move forward. He raised one hand, gripped the doorway, holding himself there. Jase saw him tremble with the effort.

  He lowered his voice. “Mr. Fisher, if she kills you, I’ll be alone here. I want you alive.” Aaron said something inarticulate. “You don’t know the Hub. She’s not attacking us for some reason. I want to keep it that way. I saw what she did to twenty armed robots in the transport tunnel. She’s got a gift for staying alive. You wouldn’t fare better than the robots.”

  “I can’t—”

  “She’ll kill you before you can kill her. I need you alive. She’s hardly human anymore. She’ll kill you, you’ll die, and she won’t know why you came to kill her, she won’t care who you are, or what she did to you, and you won’t care either because you’ll be dead, and she’ll still be alive in here and so will I. If you’ll follow orders now, she’ll be dead in five minutes and we’ll both be alive.”

  The hand gripping the door eased a fraction. Aaron glanced back at him. The shadows had drained color from his eyes; they looked almost black. He made another sound. Jase moved toward him, said very softly, “Can you fly a cruiser?” He had to repeat the question before Aaron gave him a faint nod. His face was chalky with the struggle to keep himself still, listening.

  “The Hub-dock is above the computer room, just across the hall. There’s a ladder in the ceiling. I’ll drop it for you from here. Get up there and warm the engines.”

  “N—”

  “I’m going to put the Hub on defense. That means anything that moves, that the Hub-computer can’t identify by voice and code, will be destroyed. You’re not on record. You’d have a better chance against Terra than against the Hub-defense. Terra will be dead in sixty seconds.”

  Aaron’s lips parted. He took in air and managed an entire sentence. “You’ll be alone.”

  “I need to change the docking challenges since we’re on alert, and you can’t be down here when the Hub goes on defense. I’ll be with you in two minutes.” He waited. “Mr. Fisher. You’re standing in the doorway with the light behind you. Do you want her to kill you?”

  Aaron’s hand slid down. He turned finally. He looked, Jase thought, as if he had just been beaten for no reason. “No.” His voice shook. “I should have asked her.”

  “What?”

  “Her name. Michele Viridian. But with a rose you never ask.”

  “Mr. Fisher. Go.”

  He nodded, his face growing private again. Jase pressed a dusty button on his desk, saw the ladder descend swiftly, noiselessly, in the shadowy room across the hall. Aaron checked the hall. Nothing moved. Jase stood in the doorway, guarded him with a stunner until he had disappeared up into the dock.

  The Hub was soundless. He strained to hear footsteps, heard nothing. Nothing moved. He went back to his desk, touched a com-light.

  “Get me Nilson,” he said softly.

  “Here, sir,” Nils said instantly. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Nils, cancel bring Michele, we’re flying out.”

  “Good. I couldn’t find her anyway.”

  “I’m putting the Hub on defense, after I follow general alert procedure. Then I’m out of here. Meet me at Maindock.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He switched to voice command. A hundred years’ worth of docking challenges had been programmed into the system: famous names, mathematical equations, quotations from old literature, videos, song lyrics, riddles and poems, phrases of obscure origin and more obscure meaning. Fifty choices appeared on-screen. He gave his name and ID code, but it was his voice pattern, inimitable as the signature of an earthquake, that was crucial. Then he gave the code that signaled all docked cruisers to log the new challenges into their systems for a forty-eight-hour alert period. He was about to read the first challenge on the list—“Oh, to be in England now that spring is here”—when he sensed movement in front of him. He raised his eyes, his throat going dry.

  It was just the Magician. He had actually loosed a sigh of relief when the fact struck him. He breathed, “Mr. Restak, what the bloody blue blazes are you doing here?”

  “Terra brought me,” the Magician said, so calmly that for a moment that words made perfect sense. Then they made no sense whatsoever, and Jase moved his foot to push the door-shield switch on the floor. But the Magician was standing in the doorway, and bewildered as he was, Jase had no inclination to fry him.

  “Come in, Mr. Restak.”

  He shook his head. Jase lost his temper.

  “Mr. Restak, are you out of your mind? How did you get in here?”

  “Terra let me in.”

  “When?”

  “Just before she melted the transport door shut.”

  “Why?”

  The Magician didn’t answer. The expression was fading slowly from his face. His eyes widened; he looked vulnerable, absorbed, as if he were dreaming awake. The soft purple Jase had seen in Terra’s visions enveloped him in a gentle haze, and Jase remembered then how he had stood in the Infirmary, gazing up at Terra, the whole time, while everyone else watched the Dream Machine.

  He felt his skin prickle with shock. He heard his own voice from a distance. “Mr. Restak. If you don’t move out of the doorway I will kill you. I’m going to activate the shield.”

  “Killing me,” the Magician said, “is not in the vision.”

  Jase shot his stunner at an angle from beneath his desk, and like a hand, it swept the Magician out of the doorway. “God in Heaven,” Jase said incredulously, and activated the door-shield.

  It exploded in a dazzle of light. He flung himself backward, momentarily blinded. The soft bulk of the air-chair toppled over him, hampering his movements, like an awkward lover’s embrace. Then it bore down on him, refusing to move at all. He strained against it, astonished, swearing. Then his sight cleared. He stared into a laser-rifle. Terra Viridian crouched over the chair, her eyes riveting him as much as the rifle. The Magician, weeping blood from one eye, sat on the overturned chair, pinning Jase down. His hands were poised over Jase’s keyboard.

  “Right,” he said, no longer dreaming. “What we need now is a little Bach.”

  The Magician stumbled back down the transport passage a few minutes later in a dreamlike haze of amethyst and blood. The fused and shattered bodies of the robot squad lay like broken dolls along the track. The security cameras, a dozen eyes of the hundred-eyed watcher, the Hub-computer, had been blinded by Terra. The Magician had no idea where she was. She had found him; she had given him no choices. She had shown him the way through the maze of the Underworld, her mind a thread he had followed. Now she had vanished again, moving secretly before him or behind him, somewhere along his impossible path to the Flying Wail. He had played music for his freedom; what he needed now was an idiot’s luck.

  “Fool’s Run,” he whispered. His head throbbed; blood kept falling into his eye. His throat burned with thirst. He saw the red sun, then, casting a bloody light across an alien world. The vision is light. God, he thought feverishly, philosophically, we drink in light like air. How would we mutate, what thirsts would we develop under a dying sun?

  His footsteps rang hollowly down the passage. He had left Chief Klyos bound and gagged, but how long would he stay that way? Having freed himself, or been freed, what would he do?

  Warn the docks.

  The Magician increased his pace. The spoke from the Rings to the Hub seemed endless. He ran expecting to be killed at every step, expecting a fallen robot to move, turn toward him, eject light like a dying breath. But this was a wasteland, a blasted desert of fused wires, melted circuitry; nothing was aware of him. Phrases of music he had played after he had tracked down all the tones and half-tones the vast computer contained gave him a rhythm to run by.

  It will work, he thought, amazed at his own genius. It will work. If only they don’t kill me first. Or Terra. If only…

  Sparks sheared the shadows behind the vacant transport cars. He slowed, u
ncertain. Then, with a shrug at destiny, he moved forward, the aura dissipating, until he was simply a wounded survivor of a mechanical carnage, desperately seeking his own kind.

  The transport door opened with a rend of metal. The Magician continued doggedly toward it. The tech crew, faces hooded against hot metal, stared at him blindly. A small army of guards leaped past him into the transport cars. Others caught at him, not roughly but with authority. He felt a rifle behind his ear. Someone touched his face.

  “It’s one of the musicians.”

  Don’t shoot the piano player, he thought madly. A finger probed around his eye and he jerked.

  “What happened? What’s going on back there?”

  “Someone was shooting at me. I took a dive into a wall.”

  “Is Klyos alive?”

  “I saw him alive.”

  “What were you doing in there?”

  “He asked to see me; I never did find out why.” He started to shake suddenly, realistically. “Where’s a medic station? I can’t stand blood.”

  “Let’s go!” A voice yelled from the transport cars, and he stood alone suddenly, outside the tunnel, the cars already streaking away, the tech crew ignoring him, picking up their tools. He took a step. One of the hooded figures turned toward him.

  “Magician!” It pointed. “Medic down that hall. Suggest you stay in your quarters.”

  He walked until he was out of sight. Then he ran.

  Jase, buried under the air-chair, his mouth full of fabric, struggled to free his hands from the Magician’s body-wire. Bach, he thought furiously. Bach. Goddamn musicians—

  He saw a boot out of the corner of his eye and stopped moving. He stopped breathing. He heard a muttered word. Then the air-chair rolled off his back; hands untwisted the wire around his wrists. Turning his head painfully, he saw a grey uniform with the thin gold piping down a seam that said: Earth.

  Aaron. He made a muffled protest. Aaron freed his feet, pulled the wire and fabric away from his mouth. He felt at Jase a moment.