CHAPTER THIRTY

Sounds.

Sounds of the elevator, opening and closing.

Footsteps.

Sounds of doors being opened, and closed, and locked again. Sounds to raise the strain of listening to Brigit's breathing growing tighter, seeing the quiver of the carbine's upraised tip increase, the glitter of her eyes grow glassy. And then Hort was in the room, thrusting the boy in before him.

The boy who moved easily, unresistingly almost, in his stained coveralls, and who did not lose his balance at Hort's forceful pushing.

The boy who now stood as erect as I remembered him in the transhaus corridor when he'd led us to the body of Mahar Baas.

Erect, and on his face a calm that even the streaks of grease with which he'd tried to mask himself could not completely hide.

"I'm sorry, Fraan," I said. "I did not mean for you to be caught."

His eyes, moving toward me, and his voice were as calm as his face. "You are a friend," he said, and to me he sounded as though he was saying it more to identify me for himself than as if he meant it to be a comfort to me. The upraised tip of the carbine was shaking visibly and Brigit handed the weapon back to Hort.

"Watch them," she said, and she took hold of the boy's wrist.

He did not move, and she tugged at his arm. "Come," she said, and again, "come."

Hort prodded him with the tip of the carbine and the boy looked at it and at him with no change of expression that I could see.

But he moved.

He moved to the side of the trunk and let Brigit lift up his hand to the disk set into its top.

Laughter. Retching, weak laughter, but laughter. I swung on Plagiar. So did Hort with his carbine. Brigit stopped in mid-motion, the boy's finger extended in the grip of her hand, the tip of it pointed toward the disk on the trunk.

Plagiar laughing. "It would be funny," he gasped, with his weakening-phase lungs. "It would be oh so funny if Pike has led us to the wrong boy."

"You are a fool," Brigit spat at him. "You checked his fingerprints yourself."

And she thrust Fraan's hand down the remaining scant inch it had been hovering over the disk.

Thrust it down and held it

Nothing.

Nothing happened.

No whine of equipment activating, no click of a holding latch snapping back.

Nothing.

The thought of grease from his coveralls or his face coating his finger occurred to her as it occurred to me. She lifted up Fraan's finger from the disk, wiped it angrily with her skirt, the blubbering sound of her breathing growing loud enough now to be heard without straining. Back to the disk she moved the boy's hand, he all the while watching her do so with as much interest as might be displayed by a huge doll. Shock, I thought to myself. The boy is in a state of shock that borders on the catatonic.

And now she had his finger back to the disk, pressing it down until it bent back at the joint of its tip, her own growing white with the force of her gripping. And still nothing.

She fell back, bewilderment on her face, and the boy stayed as he had been put, his finger still on the disk. And now Brigit was staring into his face, the blubbering a heave, her eyes almost on stalks with the intensity of her looking.

And she screamed.

A scream of rage that opened her mouth wide and brought flecks of foam to its corners.

She screamed and she clawed at the boy's eyes. She clawed and even Hort took a step forward before he saw what she was about.

She clawed, but only at the boy's left eye, at the eyebrow above it; he not bringing up an arm to stop her. She clawed and I felt the start of a shudder as I saw the skin come away in a clinging strip.

But it was only the start of a shudder, stopped when I saw no blood, saw only the faintly-lilac-glowing "A." An android.

Fraan was an android and, as such, of course could not operate any cell-keyed lock, and of course he would have the real Fraan's fingerprints.

He would have the fingerprints of anybody you chose to make a cast of for a pattern, and Baas had managed the time for it least that much.

I laughed. Laughed without my really being able to help it. Laughed because I suddenly remembered something that the police corporal had told me about Baas.

That when he had disappeared from his university's lab there had gone with him equipment that his employers did not wish to talk about.

A bio lab ... a bioelectronic device.

An android, or at least the makings of one. And of course they would not wish such laxness in security to be known, at least not until that valuable property was safely back under wraps again.

Mahar Baas.

Mahar Baas was not the blackmailer coming to him for what he could get that Rolf Sklar had taken him to be; a tool to be used to keep key and trunk apart until Plagiar could be contained or killed. Mahar Baas was, instead, the friend of August Rook who realized that he had been duped into helping another steal the fruits of Rook's work. The friend who perhaps sought to recover those fruits for Rook's son ... or at least to confirm his suspicions as to Rook's fate ... but who Sklar alerted to the real danger when he spoke to him of Plagiar and the need for getting the boy safely out of reach.

The friend who stole from the bio lab that he worked in with the boy's father the android he needed to be the wild goose in the chase he meant to lead them all. His trail, hidden enough to keep his pursuers unsuspecting, yet open enough for them to follow him while he led them away from their real prey. Acting exactly as Sklar had told him to, except in one respect, in one all-important respect Brigit caught the thought as quickly as I did.

"Baas!" she shrieked. "Baas! He never took him away at all. The boy is still with his mother."

Hort. He was goggling at Brigit, the masher-beam carbine sagging.

Now. Leap upon him now!

But even as I started the move he caught it and for me to complete it meant only to throw myself directly into the beam of the carbine coming up.

But I had started to move. I could not stop now. I could only change direction.

To the side I went. To the side and over the top of Plagiar's table, tipping it over with me.

Over and down, in a flurry of flying papers, of crashing sound, of a sliding, wrecked pistol, to crouch behind the puny shelter of the upended top.

"Kill him." Brigit shrieking. "Kill him. Kill him."

"Gladly," I heard Hort say. "But not with this. Not quickly. Not easily. I owe him too much to do him that favor." I spun around to dart a quick look over the top of the table edge before I dropped down again.

Hort had handed his carbine to Brigit and my quick glimpse had shown me him beginning to remove his blue-andyellow tunic. It was plain he meant to pay me back for the broken fingers, the mashed face, the simple indignity of his having to take them.

And beyond him was the hot-eyed, wild-eyed Brigit with the carbine poised,

I pounded the floor with my fist, danger and frustration choking me ... and then I saw Plagiar's pistol ... and felt the flail of my record camera in the sleeve pocket of my jumpsuit.

I snatched up the wrecked pistol, pressed on its hooded top, struggling for a breath-holding moment with its refusal to budge.

The masher beam, if its vibration had disturbed the molecules of the metal, of what use . . . ?

The top snapped open and the gun almost flew out of my hands.

I caught at it, peered inside, swearing at the sweat that wanted to have me killed by pouring down into my eyes at just this moment.

I peered and I saw that I was right. The long crystal that emitted the invisible rays that made of this laser a killing weapon was intact, but the bits of broken glass demonstrated that the tubes that were the source of exciting light had indeed not withstood the vibration's touch. Their tiny foil reflectors sagged at my touch.

I put the pistol on the floor and snatched at my sleeve pocket and my record camera in it.

The windows in front of the flashtubes that provided the light for its pictures gave me no trouble. No trouble at all, and I threw them aside and reached for the tiny flashtubes they were meant to protect.

"You, behind there. Pike. Do you hear me?" It was Hort, ready for me now, ready and limbering, and having his fun making me sweat.

Well, sweating I was. Sweating and my fingers slippery with it, and the glass surface of the tiny flashtube they probed at slick.

But I had it free of its clip.

And now I had its mate too.

The pistol.

Could I make them fit the pistol?

Short. They are a little too short to reach from terminal to terminal.

"Pike. Come out and I promise to kick you only when you are down."

And he was laughing. But now I heard him moving toward me.

Clips. Bend the pistol's clips to reach.

How?

Don't have the leverage with my fingers alone ... have no tool.

Foil. Foil reflectors can conduct current. Slide them. Press them down and slide them a little to make them reach. No. Too light. Will not stand the current. Blow out with first shot.

Nothing else. Hort close upon you.

Nothing else.

May not need more than the one shot.

One shot.

All it takes is but one shot to prove a gun works. I slid the tiny foil scraps endwise, creasing them to make contacts for my flashtubes with the pistol's clips. I slammed shut the hooded top, came up over the edge of the table with the pistol in my hand and pointing.

Pointing.

And even a pistol that you know does not work will make you stop in your tracks, if only for a moment. Hort stopped.

And then he laughed and moved forward. And I pulled the pistol's trigger.

I fired it.

I fired it, but not at Hort

I fired it at Brigit.

Brigit who was bringing her masher carbine to a line on me.

Brigit who dropped the weapon and spun back, clutching at her side.

The left. The vibration has shifted the lenses to throw to the left.

Hort was frozen in his tracks, staring not at me, but at the weapon he thought to be dead come to life in my hand. I kept him that way.

Kept him frozen in his tracks with it and at the same time spoke to Plagiar.

To Plagiar who, sitting back in the corner of his sofa, had about him a waiting air that I knew from my own experience meant that he was waiting for a stronger point in his phasing strength before making a leap for the carbine lying on the floor.

"Don't you try it," I said. And inched over until I could feel it under my hand.

Only after I had picked it up did I let my eyes lessen their darting from Plagiar, sullen in his corner, and Hort, now recovered and watching me.

And Brigit. Eyes hot with anger and pain. Holding her side, sagged down on the floor where her seared side had dropped her.

"Back," I said to Hort, making the motion with the carbine. "Back." And when he was clear of the tipped table I snaked toward it sideways and hooked the cord of the fallen communicator with one foot. I did not duck down behind the table, nor did I take my eyes from the three in front of me.

I pulled on the cord with my foot until the communicator was out in sight. Then I squatted down beside it, pressed the tab carrying the hostel's own symbol and, when the genteel voice answered, asked for the police.

He was a good hostel man. He would have stalled until his own security people could come up and have a try at keeping any matter calling for police attention quiet. I cut him short. "The city police. Anyone else comes through the door gets a masher-beam bolt in the stomach."

"Yessir," he said, hurriedly. "Yessir, the city police." And I could hear the sound of his fumbling with the connections. I turned to the android. "Fraan," I said, "can you hold this weapon on these people for me?"

I was afraid that I knew the answer, but I had to ask the question. There was something that needed to be done and before the police got here.

Androids do only what they are programmed to do, so the one I'd called Fraan did not shake his head.

"No," it simply said. "I am programmed only for evasion and the leaving of a trail."

And the answer told me that, while the first explosion Brigit had told me of might have been set off by Baas, the second was the work of the android, following a preset plan that had successfully covered their escape before. But with Baas dead, there was no one to give it new instructions to fit the new circumstances, so that it must extrapolate for itself from new material presented to it but always within the framework of its old programming. And the new material had come to it, chiefly, from what it heard ... and much of that had come from the transmitter Baas had planted on me.

Well, there was no time for me to change that now, even if I'd had the know-how, which I didn't. But Hort could walk up to the android and it would not resist his taking the carbine from its hands.

I would have to go it alone.

"You," I said to Hort. "Over to the trunk." He stared at me but he moved to the side of the upended trunk.

I set the masher beam to its narrowest angle, stood to the side, and sliced with it.

Sliced down across the hinges of the trunk to the sound of gasps.

Like a keen knife the beam could cut, and it did, and the hinges fell free to the floor, first the one ... and then the other.

The back of the trunk was unsecured. It could be spread open now to pivot on its catches, its lock.

"Open it," I said to Hort. "Shove it open from the back."

"Are you insane?" he threw at me. "It is keyed to explode the moment it is tampered with. The hinges. I do not know why it has not gone off already. I will not touch it."

"No!" Brigit's gasp and Plagiar's weak shout had mingled with and been almost lost in the sound of Hort's protest.

"Open it," I said.

Our eyes locked. Locked and held and I was bringing up the muzzle of the carbine when I heard a smashing outside the door.

"Pike," I heard, and I recognized the voice of the corporal.

"In here," I said, and my relief at hearing the stocky corporal's voice was mixed with my chagrin at having failed to do what I felt must be done.

"You got here more quickly than I expected," I said to the corporal when the room was swarming with his men.

"We were already on the way when we got your call," he said.

"How?" I wanted to know, thinking of my wrist-chrono emptied of its transmitter and my communication with the corporal cut.

For an answer he plucked from his ear the small, antennaed shell of a receiver. He felt my left sleeve. "Your small camera, where is it?"

And when I had retrieved it from the floor behind the upended table, he held the receiver close to it and I heard the beginning of feedback; the unmistakable high-pitched protest of a receiver too close to its transmitter.

"When we found the packet of transmitters on Sklar, I took advantage of the opportunity to plant a second one in your camera." The corporal smiled. "I did not mention it at the time for fear that knowing of it might inhibit you." And the corporal's sitting duck had led him to the killer of Baas.

Sklar.

It had to be Sklar.

Sklar, feeling secure that Baas was keeping Plagiar and the trunk and the boy away from each other, coming to Baas for a pigeon. Sklar, who knew Rook's son and who would know the instant he laid eyes on the android how Baas had tricked him.

Know and be furious ... and in that fury kill as he had killed before.

And then, his fury spent, would realize that Baas had made his plan work all the better, and that now he, Sklar, alone knew that the boy was still back at the start of the trail. That he need only find another decoy to send Plagiar after while he, Sklar, backtracked. And that decoy he knew he had when his and Brigit's plan to have me kill Plagiar missed. A decoy who needed only a little play-acting on Sklar's part to become colored with the appearance of authenticity. Play-acting. Like pretending to be convinced with the others that I was Baas' accomplice and my knowledge of the boy's whereabouts might be bought with all his money ... and yet, after finding the transmitters, not wholly sure that I wasn't.

All his money drawn to prove his sincerity; only half of it offered to me because he needed the rest to run when he was ready, and he could not trust me not to pick it up and run on my own no matter how little I knew.

Play-acting to convince the others, and in the course of it and his need to be sure about me, getting his head bashed in by Hort.

I nodded at Hort, at Plagiar, at Brigit, all guarded by the corporal's men.

"What will become of them?" I asked. The corporal shrugged. "Plagiar? I cannot say. But the one called Hort is right. They will hang together, he and she." I looked at the trunk. "You know what is in the trunk?" I said to the corporal.

"Yes. I know what is in the trunk." He looked at me.

"You knocked the hinges off. Why?"

I did not answer him, but kept looking at the trunk. "Can we open it?" I said. "Alone?"

He took a long time answering and when he finally spoke, his voice sounded as though it were coming from far away.

"It can be arranged."

And when, under his direction, the room had been cleared and the prisoners moved to the anteroom, he came back in and closed the door behind him.

"I will help you," he said.

But with his hand on the trunk he hesitated. "Why are you so certain that it will not blow us to the sky the instant we spread its sides?"

"I never met Rook," I said. "But no matter what story he told to keep people from nosing around, I don't see a man who could worry himself half out of his mind that what he'd stumbled onto would hurt humanity, setting a trap to kill even one man, let alone whoever might be near him when he got curious about the trunk."

"You are sure of this reasoning," the corporal said.

"I would stake my life on it," I said.

"You are ... and mine as well."

And he bent his back and we shoved open the trunk.