Shadow of Alpha (v1.0), page 18
“No choice,” Dix said and led the way up before Jessica could answer. Parric stared at the android’s back, then pushed her in front of him. There was a door at the top and the beat of one man walking behind it. Down the hall were wooden steps still climbing, and Jessica watched them while Dix bent to find a way to see into the room. When he straightened, he shook his head, took hold of the knob, and wrenched it. A scream of metal exploded in the dim corridor and Parric tried not to clamp his hands over his ears. The door swung in and Dix was gone before he could be stopped. Jessica and Parric didn’t hesitate charging in after him and saw him sitting on the floor with a man, the one they called Mark, trapped in the net of his arms.
Parric made sure he wouldn’t call out, then hurried to the oval window at the front. The street, as far as he could see, was deserted, but house lights and street-lamps kept the evening at bay and banished the outlines of the mountains.
“Where are they?’’ Parric said, kneeling in front of the man.
Mark shook his head as best he could in the vise of the android’s grip.
“Oh, I’m sure you know,” Parric said, remembering the needles of his interrogator, “and I’m just as sure you’re going to tell me. You see, this man here trying to separate your head from your shoulders isn’t a man after all. He’s an android.”
Mark’s eyes widened, tried to look up as Dix practiced an evil-sounding chuckle.
“He’s also quite mad, and I’m the only one who can control him.”
“Come on, Frank,” Jessica said impatiently. “Somebody’s bound to hear us before too long.”
“She’s right, you know,” Parric said, “and if they find us alive, that’s something you won’t be. Where are they?”
He nodded for Dix to loosen his grip, his own hand cupped near Mark’s throat to strangle should a cry escape, but the young guard was too frightened, too eager to be free of the android, to do anything but cower and massage his neck.
"Outside," he said finally, choking. "They took the little guy and that woman outside.”
“Where? Why?”
“I don’t know why.” Parric threatened with a look to Dix. "The girl will probably get shot or something," Mark said quickly. “I don’t know about the bald guy. Maybe they just want some fun, you know what I mean? Quilly sometimes lets us do that if—”
He shut up when Parric stood and rushed back to the window. “You have a cat or a landcar?”
Mark nodded, now only too eager to please. “Land-car in the alley outside. A cat’s not much good in the mountains.”
“Keys," Jessica snapped, holding our her hand. The man reached awkwardly into his hip pocket, pulled out a small case, and tossed it to her when she gestured. “How long ago did they leave?”
"Just a couple of minutes, honest. Hey, look, you’re going to let me go, aren’t you? I won’t say anything, really. I don’t want any trouble.”
“Come on, Frank,” she said. “We haven’t got much time.”
“Right,” he said. “Someone’s coming down the street. Willard, do something to keep him quiet, then follow us in a hurry.”
He grabbed Jessica’s hand and left the roof, almost running to the side of the building, but not fast enough to avoid hearing the half-scream choked off and buried. Jessica slammed open the only door in sight and was out without looking to see if anyone was watching. Parric, with Dix right behind him, joined her and found himself in an alley, a landcar parked ahead facing the street.
“That must be it.”
Jessica nodded.
“Well,” he said, noting the space between the vehicle and the buildings on either side, “he sure doesn’t have wing doors.”
“You buying or stealing?” she said and, when he looked at her, smiled.
“You I’m going to teach some manners someday,” he said. They ran to the car, used the keys to open the back hatch, and clambered in. Dix sat up front with Parric while Jessica crouched on the floor behind them. And once out of the alley, Parric could see movement several blocks ahead, small groups of people mingling, splitting, meeting again. Slowly he rode a sidestreet parallel to the activity, knowing what was planned and amazed to see people sitting on their porches or strolling along the sidewalks as if nothing at all untoward were happening.
“Callous bastards,” he said at one intersection.
“Survival,” Dix said.
“Maybe,” Parric said.
He guessed by their direction and the increasing density of houses that the building in which they had been imprisoned was close to the village’s limits, became positive they would find Cam and Peg somewhere near the center, perhaps at some ritual meeting-place where Quilly passed his law.
“Can’t you hurry?” Jessica said.
“Hurry! I don’t even know where I’m going.’’
“Try there,” Dix said, pointing to an intersection centered with a dead stoplight.
Parric turned left and encountered the fringe of a minor traffic jam. Landcars and hissing hovercats were pressing on all sides in the one-way street, heading right around the next corner. When Parric reached it, his hands beginning to slicken the rims of the cuffs, he saw a small crowd gathering haphazardly near the entrance to a ContiGov market.
“Don’t stop,” Dix warned, and Parric reluctantly agreed, knowing if they abandoned the landcar now, they’d never get back to it in time should they manage to reach and rescue their friends. A man crossing the street in front of him stopped for a moment and stared. Parric smiled and waved, the man waved hesitantly back and moved out of his way.
“Floyd is never going to believe this,” Jessica said, sitting up and staring at the scene outside the car. “Not even from me will he believe this.”
“Why? What’s so special about you?” Parric said, faking another smile at a group of elderly pedestrians.
“My dad, you know,” she said.
“Can’t be,” Parric said. “Your name is Windsor.”
“Archaic custom, clerk,” she said. “Keep the name of your late husband.”
He almost braked, frustrated at the timing of her news, shook off the impulse, and stared as he passed into the front of the store. The windows had been removed and there was a low platform erected just inside where ration displays had once been. It was empty, but by the agitation of the onlookers it wouldn’t be for very long.
And six armed hunters flanked a man Parric recognized as his tormentor.
“There!” Dix said suddenly, finally betraying excitement, pointing as Parric reached the far corner ready to dispair at their next move.
A half a block away, led and followed by a grinning, obviously anxious honor guard were Cam and Peg, their legs free but their hands bound behind their backs. They stumbled over nothings and their faces were streaked an ugly dark. The people who were waiting for whatever show had been planned had not yet seen them and before Parric understood what he was doing, he sped up, jumped the curb, and aimed straight for them. The guards, initially frozen in disbelief, suddenly scattered to safety, most of them sprawling into the street or under parked vehicles. Parric grunted as the steering fought him, braked hard when he came abreast of the prisoners, gunning the engine as Jessica flung up the hatch and grabbed for Peg’s pinioned arms. Cam blinked puzzlement until Dix shouted, then butted Peg in the back and jumped in after her as two of the guards, quicker than the others, unholstered hand weapons and began firing. Cam moaned and Peg cried out, but the landcar was off the sidewalk and into the street heading out of the village before the rest could react effectively.
Parric could only stare, then, watching the houses streak past, once closing his eyes at an intersection where he ignored a red warning light. He listened above the car’s protesting whine for bays of pursuit, but there was nothing, nothing at all but a roadblock ahead, which he squeezed past without slowing down, grimacing at the thud of a body that did not quite jump aside in time.
Driving while a woman cried.
Piercing darkness while a man grunted agony.
His hands began to shake and the car began to sway. He barely heard Dix telling him to slow down, barely aware that the android was guiding him to their destination.
Chapter 15
There was, finally, peace.
“Your father, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You never asked.”
“I asked you a hundred times what the story was with you, damn it, but you never gave me a straight answer.”
“I don’t think I would have, either, at least not for a while. He’s an incurable matchmaker, you see, and I don’t think I wanted to give him the satisfaction.”
“I think that’s a compliment.”
“Don’t let it go to your head, clerk.”
They had climbed the low hill that swelled the east end of the Central, were watching the streets fill with people taking an afternoon break from the painful business of survival. Low and ragged clouds kept the scene from being as bright as it could have been, but neither Parric nor Jessica were looking for omens.
“No androids yet,” Jessica said.
Parric shook his head. And there wouldn’t be for some time. Most of the Central’s original simulacra had succumbed to the plague and had been quickly destroyed. Less than a dozen prototypes, of which Dix had been one, were under intense experimentation and would not be released until their sanity could be guaranteed. Once that was accomplished, and Coates left no doubt that it would be, survivors such as McLeod would have to have their lingering doubts exorcised. It had dismayed Parric during the first few days to realize that the people he’d counted on to bring reason back to the world would have to be the first to be conquered.
Dismay, however, had finally turned the corner to optimism.
A cloud-shadow passed over him and he shuddered.
"I went by to check on Cam and Peg this morning." Jessica nodded absently. “Floyd’s been locking me up until I get all those reporters’ impressions down. I’ll try to get to them this afternoon if I can.’’
“Well, Cam is doing fine considering all the yelling he’s doing, and the new curses he’s thought up for the mediunits and doctors. His hip will be strong enough to carry his weight in a week or two, but his insides aren’t responding as fast. He says it’s a conspiracy to keep him from going back and strangling Quilly.’’
“I think they’re going to let him try.’’
“I believe it. Peg’s hand, by the way, is only bandaged. She spends most of her time gaging Cam.’’ “It seems lonely without them.’’
"It does," he said, and lonelier still when he thought of the reality brought to the dream he had had. Central had been the paradise, somehow immune from the plague and miraculously untouched by the panic and violence still awash in the country. But Central was, in fact, only human, and being human, afraid. Though the 'ContiGov had suffered more Cabinet casualties than he’d suspected, it had not fled to a secret capital in the country’s center but had, instead, debarked to the Central where it cast for a positive mold to shape the business of the future. Fear was the goad, determination the fuel, and Parric was just as adamant as anyone about his own role in the crisis.
Priorities: rest for himself easily attained, and a constant badgering of Coates not to shut the rest of the world out and allow insulation to poison the Central’s thinking.
“I’ll tell you one thing, Jess,” he said, pulling at the grass and watching the streets empty again, “I’m not going to be a goddamned clerk again.”
“What are you going to be ... a general?”
He grinned. “Hardly, lady reporter, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit behind a console while all this is going on. I’ve been talking with your father.”
There was a silence, not strained but apprehensive.
“He mentioned something to me,” she said softly.
"I didn’t have time to listen." Didn’t want to, her tone said* and Parric pulled gently at her hair.
“There are things that have to be done, Jess. Teams to hunt out birds we can breed. Fast, before the insects make food production impossible. Teams to bring in people and towns, bring them back to ContiGov before what’s left of the population fractures into kingdoms like Quilly’s.”
“There’ll be fighting.”
“And we’ll need soldiers, too. And ways to reestablish comlinks and transportation. We may be back on horses in some places.”
“Sometimes I wonder ...”
“Don’t!” he said sharply. “If we wonder, we’ll lose.”
“What about ... the androids?”
“Them, too,” he said, nodding. “Once Dix gets out of that lab with the others we’ll have to produce more like them, take them out into the field with rehabilitation teams.” He thought of Oraton and Eisentor. “That’s what I want to do, Jess. That’s what I am going to do. Coates is going to let me headman an expedition to Philayork to see what we can recover. Philayork, and other points east. They say I’m pretty good at getting androids accepted.”
“Don’t sound so smug, clerk. You may have convinced McLeod and Peggy, but the rest of them out there might not be so easy.”
“Maybe. But I have to do something.”
Again a silence, and Parric watched winds of expression move Jess’ features into something that finally gave him buoyant hope.
“I know what you mean,” she said. “I’m getting a little itchy myself. It’s too damned quiet around here." “I think Willard will go with me. He wants to, if I know him as well as I claim.”
“Why, Frank?”
“I couldn’t say for sure. Maybe he’s afraid Cam will teach him to say more than five words in a sentence. Maybe he likes me. I don’t know.”
“I didn’t mean that. I mean, why don’t you play it safe and do what you can around here? God knows you deserve that much!”
“Now that’s a loaded question, reporter, and you’ve already had enough answers to it.”
“Alpha?”
“That’s only part of it, now.’’
“So you’re going to save the world, huh?’’
“One way or another.'”
Shadows buried the houses beneath quiet trees, and as lights were turned on, the valley became a reflecting pool for the night sky.
“All right, clerk. Now I know what you mean. For history, right?”
“You got it, young lady. You got it.”
Unknown Author, Shadow of Alpha (v1.0)
