'You're damn' right I'm angry! I'm tired of being ordered around!'
'If I've offended you, I'm sorry, Durant,' Igan said. 'But I must caution you that your present reaction is conditioned by your gene shaping. You've excess male protectiveness. Your wife will be all right. This sedative is harmless. She's hysterical because she has too much maternal drive. These are flaws in your gene shaping, but you'll both be all right if you remain calm.'
'Who says we're flawed?' Harvey demanded. 'I'll bet you're a Sterrie who's never-'
'That's quite enough, Durant,' the other doctor said. It was a rumbling, powerful voice.
Harvey looked at Boumour, noted the pinched-up elfin face on the big body. The surgeon appeared powerful and dangerous, the face strangely inhuman.
'We cannot fight among ourselves,' Boumour rumbled. 'We may be getting near the checkpoint. They're sure to have listening devices.'
'We aren't flawed,' Harvey growled.
'Perhaps you're right,' Igan said. 'But you're both reducing our chances of escape. If one of you breaks up at that checkpoint, that's the end of us.' He shifted his hand, extended the capsule to Lizbeth. 'Please take this, madam. It contains a tranquilizer. Quite harmless, I assure you.' Hesitantly, Lizbeth took the capsule. It felt cold and gelatinous against her fingers - repulsive. She wanted to hurl the thing at Igan, but Harvey touched her cheek.
'Maybe you'd better take it,' he said. 'For the baby.'
She brought up her hand, popped the capsule against the back of her tongue, gulped it. It must be, all right if Harvey agreed. But she didn't like the hurt, baffled look in his eyes.
'Now relax,' Igan said. 'It's fast acting - three or four minutes and you'll feel quite calm.' He sat back, glanced down at Svengaard. The trussed figure still appeared to be unconscious, chest rising and falling in an even rhythm.
For what felt like a long time now, Svengaard had been increasingly aware of hunger and a swooping, turning motion that rolled his body against a hard surface. There was a sensation of swiftness about the motion. He smelled human perspiration, heard the roar of turbines. The sound was beginning to press on his consciousness. There was light, dim and fuzzy through uncooperative eyelids. He felt a gag biting his lips, bindings on hands and feet.
Svengaard opened his eyes.
For a moment, he failed to focus, then he found himself staring up at a low ceiling, a tiny glowtube in the corner with a speaker grill beneath it bulging beside a dull ruby call light. The ceiling seemed too close to him and there was a blurred shadow shape to his right - a leg stretched across him. The single light emitted a yellow glow that almost failed to dispel the darkness.
The ruby light began winking, red fire flashing on and off, on and off.
'Checkpoint!' Igan hissed. 'Silence everyone!'
They sensed the van begin to slow. Its air suspension became softer and softer. The turbines whined downscale. They rocked to a stop and the turbines whispered into standby.
Svengaard's gaze darted around the enclosure. A rough bench above him to his right... two figures seated on it. A sharp edge of metal protruded from the bench support beside his cheek. Softly, gently, Svengaard moved his head toward the metal projection, felt it touch flesh through the gag. He gave a gentle push of his head upward and the gag pulled down slightly. The projection scratched his cheek, but he ignored it. Another gentle tug and the gag lowered another fraction of a millimeter. He turned his eyes, checking his surroundings, saw Lizbeth's face above him to the left, her eyes closed, hands in front of her mouth. There was a sense of suspended terror about her.
Again, Svengaard moved his head.
There were voices somewhere in a remote distance - sharp sounds of questions, murmurous answers.
Lizbeth's hands lowered to reveal her mouth. The lips moved soundlessly.
The sound of talking had stopped.
Slowly the van began to move.
Svengaard twisted his head. The binding of his gag broke free. He coughed it from his mouth, shouted, 'Help! Help! I'm a prisoner! Help!'
Igan and Boumour leaped with shock. Lizbeth screamed, 'No! Oh, no!'
Harvey surged forward, crashed a fist into Svengaard's jaw, fell on him with one hand over the man's mouth. They held their positions in an agony of listening as the van continued to gather speed.
Igan took a trembling breath, looked across into the wild staring eyes of Lizbeth.
The voice of their driver came through the speaker grill:
'What is the trouble? Can't you observe the simplest precautions?' The dispassionate, accusing quality of the voice chilled Harvey. He wondered about the driver then, why the creature took this tone rather than telling them if they'd been exposed. Svengaard felt limp and unconscious beneath him, Harvey realized. He experienced a wild desire to throttle the surgeon here and now, could almost feel his hands around the man's throat.
'Did they hear us?' Igan whispered.
'Apparently not,' the driver rasped. 'No sign of pursuit. I presume you'll not permit another such lapse. Please report on what happened.'
'Svengaard wakened from the narcotic sooner than we expected.'
'But he was gagged.'
'He... managed to get the gag off somehow.'
'Perhaps you should kill him. Obviously, he will not take reconditioning.'
Harvey pushed himself off Svengaard. Now that the Cyborg had made the suggestion, he no longer felt like killing Svengaard. Who was it up there in the van's cab? Harvey wondered. Cyborgs tended to sound alike, that computer personality with its altitude of logic so far above the human. This one, though, came through even more remote than usual.
'We'll... consider what to do,' Igan said.
'Svengaard is again secure?'
'He's been taken care of.'
'No thanks to you,' Harvey said, staring at Igan. 'You were right over him.'
Igan's face paled. He remembered his frozen immobility after that leap of fear. Anger surged through him. What right had this clod to question a surgeon? He spoke stiffly, 'I regret that I'm not a man of violence.'
'Something you'd better lean,' Harvey said. He felt Lizbeth's hand on his shoulder, allowed her to guide him back onto their bench. 'If you have more of that knock-out stuff, maybe you'd better use another dose of it on him before he wakes up again.'
Igan suppressed a sharp reply.
'In the bag under our bench,' Boumour said. 'A reasonable suggestion.'
Woodenly, Igan groped for a slapshot and administered it to Svengaard.
Again, the driver's voice barked through the speaker: 'Attention! We must not presume from the lack of immediate and obvious pursuit that they failed to hear the outcry. I am executing Plan Gamma.'
'Who is that driver?' Harvey whispered.
'I didn't see which one they programed,' Boumour said. He studied Harvey. That had been an appropriate question. The driver did sound odd, much more so than the usual Cyborg abnormality. They'd said the driver would be a programed reflex computer, a machine designed to give the surest response to achieve their escape. Who did they choose for that program?
'What's Plan Gamma?' Lizbeth whispered.
'We're abandoning the prepared escape route,' Boumour said. He stared at the forward wall of their box. Abandoning the prepared route... which meant they'd be completely dependent now upon the abilities of the Cyborg driver... and whichever scattered cells of the Underground remained and were available. Any one of those cells could've been compromised, of course. Boumour's usually stolid nature began to entertain odd wisps of fear.
'Driver!' Harvey called.
'Silence,' the driver snapped. 'Stick to the original plan,' Harvey said. They have the medical facilities there if my wife-'
'Your wife's safety is not the overriding factor,' the driver said. 'Elements along the prepared route must not be discovered. Do not distract me with your objections. Plan Gamma is being executed.'
'Easy does it,' Boumour said as Harvey surged forward supporting himself with a hand on the bench. 'What can you do, Durant?'
Harvey sagged back onto the bench, groped for and found Lizbeth's hand. She squeezed it, signaled, 'Wait. Don't you read the doctors? They're frightened too... and worried.'
'I'm worried about you,' Harvey signaled.
So her safety - and presumably ours - aren't the overriding concern, Boumour thought. What then is the overriding concern? What program controls our computer-in-flesh?' Fourteen
ONLY Nourse of the Tuyere occupied a throne in the Survey Globe, his attention on the rays, the winking lights and gauges, the cascading luminescences that reported affairs of the Folk. A telltale told him it was night outside in this hemisphere - darkness that spread across the land from Seatac to the megalopolis of N'Scotia. He saw the physical darkness as a sign of frightening events to come and wished Schruille and Calapine would return.
The visual-report screen came alight. Nourse turned to face it as Allgood's features appeared there. The security boss bowed to Nourse.
'What is it?' Nourse asked.
'Seatac Checkpoint East reports a van with an odd load of containers has just gone through, Nourse. Its turbines carried masking mutes which we deciphered. The mutes concealed sounds of breathing - five persons hidden in the load. Voices cried out from within as the van pulled away. Acting on your instructions, we put a drop marker onto the van and now have it under observation. What are your orders?'
It begins, Nourse thought. While I'm alone here it begins.
Nourse looked to the instruments covering the checkpoints. Seatac East. The van was a moving green pinpoint on a screen. He read the banked binaries describing the incident, compared them with a total-plan motivational analysis. The probability analogues he derived filled him with a sense of doom.
'The voices have been identified, Nourse,' Allgood said. 'The voice prints were-'
'Svengaard and Lizbeth Durant,' Nourse said.
'Where she is, her husband cannot be far away,' Allgood said.
Allgood's logical little announcements began to annoy Nourse. He contained the emotion while noting the man had overlooked the use of the Optiman's name-in-address. It was a small sign, but significant, especially when Allgood appeared not to notice his own lapse.
'Which leave us two unidentified,' Nourse said.
'We can make an educated guess... Nourse.'
Nourse glanced at his probability analogues, said. Two of our wayward pharmacists.'
'One may be Potter, Nourse.'
Nourse shook his head. 'Potter remains in Seatac.'
'They may have a portable vat, Nourse, and that embryo with them,' Allgood said, 'but we failed to detect appropriate machinery.'
'You would not hear the machinery being used,' Nourse said. 'Or, hearing it, you would not identify it.'
Nourse looked up to the banks of scanners - every one of them alive - showing the Optimen observing their Survey Globe. Night or day, the watching channels were jammed. They know what I mean, he thought. Are they disgusted, or is this just another interesting aspect of violence?
As could have been predicted, Allgood said, 'I fail to understand Nourse's meaning.'
'No need,' Nourse said. He looked at the face in the screen. So young it appeared, but Nourse had begun to notice a thing:
There was much youngness in Central, but no youth. Even the Sterrie servants betrayed this fact to the unveiled eye. He felt himself to be like the Sterrie Folk suddenly, watching each other for evidence of aging, hoping by comparison that their own appearance prospered. 'What are Nourse's instructions?' Allgood asked. 'Svengaard's outcry indicates he's a prisoner,' Nourse said. 'But we must not overlook the possibility this is an elaborate ruse.' He spoke in a resigned, tired voice. 'Shall we destroy the van, Nourse?'
'Destroy...' Nourse shuddered. 'No, not yet. Keep it under' surveillance. Put out a general alert. We must discover where they're headed. Every contact they make must be noted and| marked down for attention.'
'If they elude us, Nourse, it could-
'You've flagtapped the appropriate enzyme prescriptions?
'Yes, Nourse.'
'Then they cannot run far... or long.'
'As you say, Nourse.'
'You may go,' Nourse said.
He watched the screen long after it had turned blank. Destroy the van? That would be an ending. He felt then that he did not want this game to end - ever. A curious feeling of elation crept through him.
The globe's entrance segment swung open below him. Calapine entered followed by Schruille. They rode the climbing beams to their seats on the triangular dais. Neither spoke. They appeared withdrawn, oddly calm. Nourse thought of a controlled storm as he looked at them - the lightning and the thunder contained, that it might not harm their fellows.
'Is it not time?' Calapine asked.
A sigh escaped Nourse.
Schruille activated the sensor contact with the scanners in the mountains. There was moonlight suddenly in the receiving screens, the sounds of nightbirds, a rustling of dry leaves. Far off across moon-frosted hills lay lines and patches of lights tracing the coast and harbors of the megalopolis and the multilevel skyway networks.
Calapine stared at the scene, thinking of jewels and casual baubles, the playthings of idleness. She'd not had the inclination in several centuries to indulge in such toys. Why should I think of them now? she wondered. These are not toys, these lights.
Nourse examined the binary pyramids, the action analogues showing the course of Folk activity within the megalopolis.
'All is normal... and in readiness,' he said.
'Normal!' Schruille said.
'Which of us?' Calapine whispered.
T have seen the necessity longest,' Schruille said. 'I will do it.' He rolled a looping ring in the arm of his throne and as he moved it was appalled by the simplicity of the action. This ring and the powers it controlled had been at hand for eons, an insensitive linkage of machinery. All it took was a simple turning motion, a hand and the will behind the hand.
Calapine watched the scene in her screens - moonlight on hills, the megalopolis beyond, an animated toy subject to her whims. The last cadre of special personnel had departed she knew. Irreplaceable objects that might be damaged had been removed. All was ready and doomed.
Winking flares began to appear through the necklaces of light - golden yellow flares. The Tuyere's screens blurred as sonics vibrated the distant scanners. Lights began going out. Across the entire region, the lights went out - in groups and one by one. A low green fog rolled across the scene, filling in the valleys, overrunning the hills.
Presently, no lights were visible. Only the green fog remained. It continued to creep out beneath the impersonal moon, moving out and across and through until it remained and nothing more. Schruille watched the stacked numerical analogues, the unemotional reporters which merely counted, submitted deductions of sortings, remainders... zeroes. Nothing showed Folk dying in the tubes and warrens, in the streets... at their labors... at their play.
Nourse sat weeping.
