PRESSURE PLAY
I locked the door behind Gaylord. Then, crossing to the rack beside
the psychostructor, I began hunting down city charts, transport and
communications guides, specifications for the planet's anti-Kel
defenses.
They added up to a neat pile of reels. Clamping electrodes to my
temples, I turned on the psychostructor, slapped the first spool into
place, and settled down to the tedium of waiting for the mechanism to
hammer data into my brain.
In twenty minutes, the streets and alleys were my own. In forty, I knew
my way through every observation post and satellite control board.
At fifty, the voco rang.
Numb with fatigue, I lurched up, tore off the clamps, and hurried to
the scanner-speaker unit.
Blonde and lovely, a girl smiled up at me from the plate. "How do you
do. May I speak with Agent Mark Traynor, please?"
"I'm Traynor."
"Oh! How nice! I was hoping I might catch you in." The girl's voice was
warm and friendly. "You see, I want to congratulate you, Agent Traynor,
on your new assignment to Rizal. We feel we have a lovely planet here;
and of course we're proud of our position as the outermost bastion of
the FedGov's defenses against the Kel. And since Security plays such
a vital part in mankind's battle against these alien invaders, one of
our citizens--he wishes to remain anonymous, so I can't tell you his
name--has asked that you accept a little present; a token of good-will
from Rizal to you. A messenger will come in just a moment, and--"
I said, "Come off it, Celeste. This is me you're talking to--me, Mark
Traynor. Remember? Remember?"
The girl in the scanner-plate broke off, lips still half-parted. Ever
so slightly, the clear eyes changed expression.
"I know what happened on Bejak, Celeste." I smiled as I said it--a wise
smile, I hoped, cool and confident. "I know because I was there, right
to the last. So that means I know about you, too, and what's going on
here. That's why I came: to block you. And don't tell me that first
wrench I threw into the works didn't hit hard--you wouldn't have called
me if it hadn't! But that's just the beginning. Count on it, there's
more to come! So you'd better break clear before I let go. Otherwise,
you'll get the same as your Kel friends."
It was as if a shutter had closed behind the clear grey eyes. The
girl's hands moved in small, uncertain gestures. "I--I don't know what
you mean. I've never seen you before--"
"You haven't?" I made it a point to chuckle softly. "Have it your way,
then. Though you certainly took a different view, that last night in
the bunker.--By the way, did that cut heal all right? The skin below
your throat was so soft, I was afraid it might scar--"
Celeste's lovely features seemed to stiffen. I couldn't be sure,
though, because the scanner-plate went blank in the same instant.
Like an echo, someone began pounding on the door.
Cutting off the voco, I went over and unlocked the heavy portal.
A messenger was waiting with a thrill-mill for me.
I frowned. "How did you get in here? Does Rizal Security let strangers
wander through its headquarters in the middle of the night?"
"I dunno." The messenger shrugged stupidly. "That man in
Communications--he said it was all right."
"Man? What man?"
"This man, Traynor."
The voice came from behind me. I whirled by reflex.
Agent Benjamin Gaylord stood in the office's second doorway. He had a
paragun in his hand, and the set of his jaw said that he'd use it.
With an effort, I drew myself together. "What nonsense is this,
Gaylord?"
"That's what I wondered." He came towards me a few steps, flat-footed,
the paragun's muzzle a steady focal point of menace. "Finally I got to
wondering so hard I put in a non-channel call about it to Controller
Kruze himself."
"A non-channel call--!"
"Risky, wasn't it?" Gaylord's grin could hardly have been classified
as pleasant. "Still, though, I thought it might be worth a gamble: my
future against yours, the way you said."
"So?"
"So it turned out even better than I'd dreamed of. I found out more
things!" Gaylord's ugly grin broadened. "You know, Traynor--interesting
things. Like how the lame-brains in Psychogenetics de-conditioned you
over Kruze's protests. How you broke discipline and warped out to
Rizal, here, in direct violation of all orders. How the business of
shipping all these thrill-mill people back to the FedGov IP Center is
strictly your idea, not Kruze's--"
He broke off; gestured with his weapon. "All right, get moving. It's a
detention room for you, till Kruze warps in."
* * * * *
The gun in his hand was uncomfortably steady. "Good enough to me. All
this line about don't care where you keep me, nor what lies you tell,
if it makes you feel any better. Though what Kruze is going to say when
he gets the truth is anybody's guess."
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Gaylord stiffen. "What's that
supposed to mean?" he demanded glowering.
I shrugged. "It seems plain enough to me. All this line about gambling
your future--it's a joke. You simply haven't got the nerve to do it."
"I'll let Kruze convince you, then."
"Kruze?" I laughed harshly. "He won't care. Not when he finds the facts
put both of us out of the way."
The last remnants of Gaylord's grin were fading. "Listen, you--"
I said, "Shall I play it back for you, Controller? Shall I tell you how
it really happened?" And then, pacing a few steps: "You went down to
your communications section first, of course; had the sigman on duty
put out my all-points order. I know that, because the Stelpa girl sent
me a thrill-mill. And unless my order had gone out, she wouldn't even
have known I was here.
"Anyhow, you sent my order--and then discovered there was a message
from Kruze himself on the hook. Probably it said that if I turned up,
you should contact him non-channel.
"You saw that as a good way of getting out of a bad spot with your
hide in one piece. So you called Kruze, got instructions to pick me up,
and here you are."
Gaylord stared at me as if hypnotized. "How did you know?"
"I warped in without a clearance. But one was on file when I got here.
That meant Kruze had guessed some of what I planned and was taking
steps. And one of those steps would be to get in touch with you."
Gaylord's expression, at that moment, might have meant anything.
Smiling thinly, I moved a trifle closer to the voco. "I do hope it
works out for you, you understand. And it may. But then again, it may
not. It's hard to predict Kruze's reactions. Sometimes it's almost as
if he were unconditioned, like us--"
I gestured as I talked, a lot more than was needed, as if somehow that
was going to make the words worth hearing. I walked, too--pacing,
turning, anything to keep Gaylord just a bit off balance.
Worry already was closing in on him. It hung about him like a cloak.
The paragun's muzzle wasn't following me quite so closely.
My next turn carried me even nearer to the voco. Then, when I started
to turn again, I tripped.
It was a nice job, deftly done. I reeled, arms flailing--and crashed
bodily into the bulky instrument.
The voco rocked wildly. Scanner, scriber, audex--they all tottered,
then swept out in a big arc, faster and faster towards the floor.
Gaylord yelled hoarsely and leaped in, trying to save them.
I waited till he'd passed me. Then, coming up fast, I chopped with a
stiff palm-edge at the base of his brain.
He pitched forward. Not even waiting to strike again, or see if he was
stunned, or snatch his paragun, I sprinted for the door.
The messenger still stood in the corridor, just outside. Only now,
unfortunately, he didn't look quite so stupid or nondescript as before.
Also, he had his hands up in a strega-fighter's stance.
That made him a Security agent.
I dived at him--a literal dive: head down, arms wide, feet and body
completely clear of the floor.
The man spun sidewise, fast, with all of a trained strega-fighter's
skill.
But my left arm scooped him in, and my weight and impact bore him down.
I drove up the heel of my right hand, hard under his chin. His head
snapped back.
Spasmodically, he shoved at me with hands and feet alike--trying to
break clear, striving to regain the inter-body space that gives a
strega-man his advantage.
For an instant I held him tight, then abruptly and without warning
matched his efforts to thrust clear with similar of my own. As if
spring-propelled, we bounced to opposite sides of the hall.
Strega tactics said it was a time for maneuvering, regrouping,
consolidation.
Instead, scrambling on all fours, I rocketed down the corridor and away
as fast as I could go.
There were ramps, after that ... doors and archways ... more corridors.
Then, at long last, the building entrance yawned ahead.
Sobbing for breath, I raced towards it.
Simultaneously, a knot of hurrying men appeared, crowding in from the
street and blocking off the doorway. They were grouped about a bulky,
familiar figure ... the figure of FedGov Interplanetary Security
Controller Alfred Kruze.
For me, it was a moment straight out of nightmare ... a lightning-flash
of horror, lifted from one of those awful dreams in which you run and
run and run only somehow your legs won't seem to work.
Desperately, I tried to reverse direction.
It was too late. I couldn't brake in time.
* * * * *
Someone yelled as I careened into the group. I glimpsed distended
eyes, a startled face. Clawing, I tried to twist past the wall of
bodies and slide out the door.
I might have made it, then. But suddenly a bull-voice roared, "Hold
him, rack you! Hold him!"
Controller Kruze's voice.
Like lightning, hands came at me from all directions. I rocked
back--dazed by their blows; pinned tight against the wall.
Another moment, and Kruze himself was towering over me.
"So!" He hissed the word, as if his rage were too great for normal
speech. "I've found you, have I, finally?" And then, turning abruptly:
"Back to the warping-chamber with him! I'll deal with him no place
short of the Interplanetary Center itself!"
Now the hands that pinned me jerked me forward. Still panting, head
still reeling, I found myself dragged out into the street.
"Controller!" I choked. "Controller Kruze! Please! Listen to me--"
"Don't worry! I'll listen! And so will a trial board, and all those
fools in Psychogen!"
"No!" I was shouting now; shouting and shaking. Though whether it was
out of my own feeling or from the contagion of Kruze's rage, I couldn't
say. "Do whatever you want with me. I don't care. But not now! I've
laid the ground; everything's set up--"
"No, rack you!"--This in a bellow.
But the others pulling at me hesitated, slowed. Desperately, I babbled
on: "Kruze, you don't understand! This whole thrill-mill business--it's
a Kel scheme to break through, here on Rizal! But you'll never crack
it, trying to back track. You've got to make whoever's in it come to
you. That's why I did the things I did. That action order, all the
rest--it was just so I could make a contact, be a decoy! I said things
that would scare them, raise suspicion. But if you send me back now,
it's all wasted. Please, Kruze, please--"
Kruze didn't speak. But standing there, pinioned, looking into his
eyes, I didn't need words to know his answer. Not with his hate pulsing
out at me like a living thing.
I slumped.
Coldly, then, Kruze said, "Did any of you gentlemen hear me mention the
warping-chamber? Or am I going to be forced to take this scum back for
trial by rocket freighter?"
Wordless, my captors shoved me towards a grav-car. I went without
protest, making no effort to resist.
But as I walked, I let the feeling of the street close in upon me. The
green-hazed black of the Rizalian night took on new, subtle overtones.
Fragment by fragment, sense by sense, it blended and became one with
the mass of tight-integrated information poured into my brain by the
psychostructor.
This street--it would be AX7. And that meant the cross-street ahead was
MR2.
Which was interesting, because MR2 was also a pneumotube route,
complete with sewer-like conduits beneath the paving and access shafts
at every corner.
So, if I could by some chance reach that intersection, and duck from
sight behind the building....
How far was it? Fifty feet? Sixty?
The first of my captors reached the grav-car. Fumbling, he got out his
lock-light.
The rest of us paused. Again, narrow-eyed, I measured the distance to
the corner.
Smoothly, the lock-light slid into its tube. The grav-car's door swung
open. One agent got in. A second stood aside, waiting for me and the
men who held me.
Together, we stepped forward. Then I bent to enter the grav-car, and
all let go of me momentarily.
There was just one man to my left, now. One man between me and the
corner.
I bent still lower--and then, without warning, drove my shoulder hard
into that man's midriff, bowling him aside as I raced madly towards the
intersection.
But instantly, behind me, yells rose in wild chorus. Feet pounded
pavement. Hands clutched for me.
Something was happening to my knees, too, and my lungs. They wouldn't
work the way I needed for this kind of running. The fatigue of my
earlier bouts was telling on them.
A last gasp; a last lunge. I spilled to the street.
The yells turned to hoarse, baying triumph.
It was the end of something, and the beginning of something.
The end of mankind, perhaps? The beginning of a ruthless Kel march to
victory?
I was too sick, too tired, to even think about it.
Only then, just as it seemed certain that the hands of Kruze's men must
surely seize me, there was a sudden flash; a silent sound of energy
impacting.
Behind me, a man gave a grunt of pain and shock. My own body went numb.
A grav-car whished down from nowhere in the same instant.
Incredulously, I felt myself being seized and lifted. A face came out
of the darkness to confound my reeling senses.
A lovely face, really. The face of a woman with blonde hair and
laughing lips and clear grey eyes.
Celeste Stelpa's face.
Only that was impossible, of course.
Besides, I couldn't seem to make the face stay in focus. While I
watched, the laugh changed to a leer.
Then, quite suddenly, blackness closed in....