"If they touch her again, you get it, Toby," I said. "Send her over
here. Move!"
"Let her go!" Mallon snarled. Renada stumbled into sight, moved around
the chair, then crumpled suddenly to the rug beside me.
"Stand up, Toby," I ordered. He rose slowly. Sweat glistened on his
face now. "Stand over here." He moved like a sleepwalker. I got to my
feet. There were two men standing across the room beside a small open
door. A sliding panel. Both of them held power rifles leveled--but
aimed offside, away from the Baron.
"Drop 'em!" I said. They looked at me, then lowered the guns, tossed
them aside.
I opened my mouth to tell Mallon to move ahead, but my tongue felt
thick and heavy. The room was suddenly full of smoke. In front of me,
Mallon was wavering like a mirage. I started to tell him to stand
still, but with my thick tongue, it was too much trouble. I raised the
gun, but somehow it was falling to the floor,--slowly, like a leaf--and
then I was floating, too, on waves that broke on a dark sea....
* * * * *
"Do you think you're the first idiot who thought he could kill me?"
Mallon raised a contemptuous lip. "This room's rigged ten different
ways."
I shook my head, trying to ignore the film before my eyes and the
nausea in my body. "No, I imagine lots of people would like a crack at
you, Toby. One day one of them's going to make it."
"Get him on his feet," Mallon snapped. Hard hands clamped on my arms,
hauled me off the cot. I worked my legs, but they were like yesterday's
celery; I sagged against somebody who smelled like uncured hides.
"You seem drowsy," Mallon said. "We'll see if we can't wake you up."
A thumb dug into my neck. I jerked away, and a jab under the ribs
doubled me over.
"I have to keep you alive--for the moment," Mallon said. "But you won't
get a lot of pleasure out of it."
I blinked hard. It was dark in the room. One of my handlers had a
ring of beard around his mouth--I could see that much. Mallon was
standing before me, hands on hips. I aimed a kick at him, just for fun.
It didn't work out; my foot seemed to be wearing a lead boat. The
unshaven man hit me in the mouth and Toby chuckled.
"Have your fun, Dunger," he said, "but I'll want him alive and on his
feet for the night's work. Take him out and walk him in the fresh air.
Report to me at the Pavillion of the Troll in an hour." He turned to
something and gave orders about lights and gun emplacements, and I
heard Renada's name mentioned.
Then he was gone and I was being dragged through the door and along the
corridor.
The exercise helped. By the time the hour had passed, I was feeling
weak but normal--except for an aching head and a feeling that there was
a strand of spiderweb interfering with my vision. Toby had given me a
good meal. Maybe before the night was over he'd regret that mistake....
Across the dark grounds, an engine started up, spluttered, then settled
down to a steady hum.
"It's time," the one with the whiskers said. He had a voice like soft
cheese to match his smell. He took another half-twist in the arm he was
holding.
"Don't break it," I grunted. "It belongs to the Baron, remember?"
Whiskers stopped dead. "You talk too much--and too smart." He let my
arm go and stepped back. "Hold him, Pig Eye." The other man whipped
a forearm across my throat and levered my head back; then Whiskers
unlimbered the two-foot club from his belt and hit me hard in the side,
just under the ribs. Pig Eye let go and I folded over and waited while
the pain swelled up and burst inside me.
Then they hauled me back to my feet. I couldn't feel any bone ends
grating, so there probably weren't any broken ribs--if that was any
consolation.
* * * * *
There were lights glaring now across the lawn. Moving figures cast long
shadows against the trees lining the drive--and on the side of the Bolo
Combat Unit parked under its canopy by the sealed gate.
A crude breastwork had been thrown up just over fifty yards from it.
A wheel-mounted generator putted noisily in the background, laying a
layer of bluish exhaust in the air.
Mallon was waiting with a 9 mm power rifle in his hands as we came
up, my two guards gripping me with both hands to demonstrate their
zeal, and me staggering a little more than was necessary. I saw Renada
standing by, wrapped in a gray fur. Her face looked white in the harsh
light. She made a move toward me and a greenback caught her arm.
"You know what to do, Jackson," Mallon said speaking loudly against
the clatter of the generator. He made a curt gesture and a man stepped
up and buckled a stout chain to my left ankle. Mallon held out my
electropass. "I want you to walk straight to the Bolo. Go in by the
side port. You've got one minute to cancel the instructions punched
into the command circuit and climb back outside. If you don't show,
I close a switch there--" he pointed to a wooden box mounting an
open circuitbreaker, with a tangle of heavy cable leading toward the
Bolo--"and you cook in your shoes. The same thing happens if I see the
guns start to traverse or the anti-personnel ports open." I followed
the coils of armored wire from the chain on my ankle back to the wooden
box--and on to the generator.
"Crude, maybe, but it will work. And if you get any idea of letting fly
a round or two at random--remember the girl will be right beside me."
I looked across at the giant machine. "Suppose it doesn't recognize me?
It's been a while. Or what if Don didn't plug my identity pattern in to
the recognition circuit?"
"In that case, you're no good to me anyway," Mallon said flatly.
I caught Renada's eye, gave her a wink and a smile I didn't feel, and
climbed up on top of the revetment.
I looked back at Mallon. He was old and shrunken in the garish light,
his smooth gray suit rumpled, his thin hair mussed, the gun held in a
white-knuckled grip. He looked more like a harrassed shopkeeper than a
would-be world-beater.
"You must want the Bolo pretty bad to take the chance, Toby," I said.
"I'll think about taking that wild shot. You sweat me out."
I flipped slack into the wire trailing my ankle, jumped down and
started across the smooth-trimmed grass, a long black shadow stalking
before me. The Bolo sat silent, as big as a bank in the circle of the
spotlight. I could see the flecks of rust now around the port covers,
the small vines that twined up her sides from the ragged stands of
weeds that marked no-man's land.
There was something white in the brush ahead. Broken human bones.
I felt my stomach go rigid again. The last man had gotten this far; I
wasn't in the clear yet....
I passed two more scattered skeletons in the next twenty feet. They
must have come in on the run, guinea pigs to test the alertness of the
Bolo. Or maybe they'd tried creeping up, dead slow, an inch a day; it
hadn't worked....
Tiny night creatures scuttled ahead. They would be safe here in the
shadow of the troll where no predator bigger than a mouse could move.
I stumbled, diverted my course around a ten-foot hollow, the eroded
crater of a near miss.
Now I could see the great moss-coated treads, sunk a foot into the
earth, the nests of field mice tucked in the spokes of the yard-high
bogies. The entry hatch was above, a hairline against the great curved
flank. There were rungs set in the flaring tread shield. I reached up,
got a grip and hauled myself up. My chain clanked against the metal. I
found the door lever, held on and pulled.
It resisted, then turned. There was the hum of a servo motor, a
crackling of dead gaskets. The hairline widened and showed me a narrow
companionway, green-anodized dural with black polymer treads, a
bulkhead with a fire extinguisher, an embossed steel data plate that
said BOLO DIVISION OF GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION and below, in smaller
type, UNIT, COMBAT, BOLO MARK III.
I pulled myself inside and went up into the Christmas tree glow of
instrument lights.
* * * * *
The control cockpit was small, utilitarian, with two deep-padded seats
set among screens, dials, levers. I sniffed the odors of oil, paint,
the characteristic ether and ozone of a nuclear generator. There was
a faint hum in the air from idling relay servos. The clock showed ten
past four. Either it was later than I thought, or the chronometer had
lost time in the last eighty years. But I had no time to lose....
I slid into the seat, flipped back the cover of the command control
console. The Cancel key was the big white one. I pulled it down and let
it snap back, like a clerk ringing up a sale.
A pattern of dots on the status display screen flicked out of
existence. Mallon was safe from his pet troll now.
It hadn't taken me long to carry out my orders. I knew what to do next;
I'd planned it all during my walk out. Now I had thirty seconds to
stack the deck in my favor.
I reached down, hauled the festoon of quarter-inch armored cable up in
front of me. I hit a switch, and the inner conning cover--a disk of
inch-thick armor--slid back. I shoved a loop of the flexible cable up
through the aperture, reversed the switch. The cover slid back--sliced
the armored cable like macaroni.
I took a deep breath, and my hands went to the combat alert switch,
hovered over it.
It was the smart thing to do--the easy thing. All I had to do was punch
a key, and the 9 mm's would open up, scythe Mallon and his crew down
like cornstalks.
But the scything would mow Renada down, along with the rest. And if I
went--even without firing a shot--Mallon would keep his promise to cut
that white throat....
My head was out of the noose now but I would have to put it back--for a
while.
I leaned sideways, reached back under the panel, groped for a small
fuse box. My fingers were clumsy. I took a breath, tried again. The
fuse dropped out in my hand. The Bolo's IR circuit was dead now. With a
few more seconds to work, I could have knocked out other circuits--but
the time had run out.
I grabbed the cut ends of my lead wire, knotted them around the chain
and got out fast.