Dealing in Futures Part 17

The bubbles stopped coming out.

"Hold your fire-hold it!" One last grenade sailed in and hit the building right at the ground line, causing one petal to collapse.

"Maybe we'll get our prisoner here . . . first squads out of the first and second platoons, move in fast and take a look."

G.o.ddam, why us? On Aleph, all the Taurans were holed up in the Flower when we attacked, though we later discovered that the Salamis were their living quarters. That had been a surprise attack, too; they'd had plenty of warning this time. I chinned Tate.

"Tate, what the h.e.l.l is the combination for first squad, second platoon?"

"Two left, one right." Of course. Getting addle-brained.

I chinned it as we advanced toward the nearest petal. "Al-Sadat, this is Mandella.

Which of us goes first?"

"You're senior, Mandella. Besides, I was ahead at O'wari."

"Yeah. c.r.a.p. Okay. h.e.l.l, I don't even know how to get into the G.o.ddam thing.

Burn it down, I guess.

"Mandella, this is Cortez. Don't you burn that door down if you can get in without depressurizing the petal. Once we get our prisoner, you can rape and pillage all you want. Kid gloves until then, understand?"

"Roger, Lieutenant." Maybe they'd open the door for me. That'd be jolly.

I decided a simple plan would be best. Hard to think: scared and suddenly tired.

Swallowed another stimtab, knowing I'd pay for it in a couple of hours. But I figured that in a couple of hours I'd either be back in the ship or dead. "Al-Sadat, hold your people back for cover until we get inside, then follow us."

"Roger."

Chinned my squad frequency. "Tate, Yukawa, Shockley come with me-no, Tate, you stay behind, in case-rest of the squad give me a half perimeter about ten meters from the entrance. And for chrissake don't get trigger-happy."

While they were a.s.sembling, I took Yukawa and Shockley to the entrance. It was obviously a door, wide and squat with a small red circle painted in the exact center, windowless and with no hardware. Didn't look much like our complicated airlocks.

"Why don't you push on the circle, Sergeant?" That was Shockley, who was technically the most expendable. Smart, though; I'd look pretty silly now, ordering him to do it.

I checked to see that everybody was in position and pressed the circle. The door slid open.

No airlock. Just a long, well-lit corridor full of vacuum and cold. Lots of similar doors lining the corridor. With the uneasy feeling that it was some kind of a trap, I stepped inside. "Okay, squad, follow me." Change frequency. "Al-Sadat?"

"I'm coming."

"Leave your second-in-command with Tate at the door." "I've got a better idea- why don't I send my second up with you and-"

"Knock it off, Al. It's lovely in here. Soothing. Tauran dancing girls."

Cortez: "Will you all cut the c.r.a.p and get me a prisoner?"

When all thirteen of us had crowded into the corridor, I touched the first door and it slid open. It revealed a softly lit cubicle, empty except for a strung wire hammock and what looked like a piece of abstract sculpture in one corner. I described it to Cortez.

"All right. Leave it alone and go on to the next."

The next cubicle was exactly the same, and so were all the rest, along both sides of the corridor. I would have guessed that they were living quarters, except that they didn't look at all like the dormitory affairs we found on Aleph, inside the Salamis.

The inside of the Flower on Aleph had been filled with arcane machinery.

We approached the end of the corridor with caution. Corridors from all the other petals converged there in a large circular hall. In the center was a vertical metallic tube, two meters thick, that was connected with the bubble generator. The hall was littered with rubble and the tube seemed to be standing at a slight angle.

"Al, get your people on the left side of the corridor. I'll take the right. We'll move out along the walls and see what happens."

We spread ourselves evenly around the edge of the circular hall and waited for something to happen. Nothing did. I decided to maybe precipitate some action by having a grenadier launch one down one of the halls. Rabi was well-positioned.

"Rabi-" I didn't finish because suddenly we were all floating a meter off the ground and slowly rising.

"What the h.e.l.l, Mandella-"

"Shut up, Al. Everybody! Get ready to open fire-we'll burn this thing to the ground if we-"

"What's going on in there, G.o.ddammit?" Cortez.

"We're ,going up." That sounded inadequate. "Floating up. Under their control."

Cortez was silent for a second. "Ah . . . all right. Do what you have to do to protect yourself. But remember I need a prisoner. We get one and we're home free."

We floated to a second level and stopped. Everybody jumped onto the railless balcony. Only one corridor on this level. I walked around to it.

"Hofstadter, Rabi, come along with me." We walked down about ten meters to a door at the end of the corridor, just like the ones downstairs.

It also slid open at a touch, but instead of the hammock and sculpture, there were rows of what looked like library-style book-cases, covered with overlapping metal shingles. Each row was a different shade of blue. At the end of one row was a Tauran, looking at us.

The only movement was in his too-many-fingered hands, which undulated nervously. I felt a mixture of revulsion and pity at seeing his bloated/scrawny hourgla.s.s-shaped orange body, all huge swellings and ridiculously flimsy limbs-I'd seen so many of those bodies laser-slashed and smoldering in the slaughter at Aleph but still, they weren't human even though they were upright bipeds. You could feel more kinship with an egret.

"Keep an eye on him, Tate." I walked up and down the rows to see whether there were any others. The room was a large doughnut-shaped affair. I hadn't been in its counterpart on Aleph, but Fruenhauf had described it to me as being similar. It was evidently their computer. At last report-I had to keep reminding myself that it had been nearly a decade ago-they hadn't yet figured out what made it work.

The rest of the place was deserted. I made a report to Cortez.

"Good. You and three others stay and guard him. Send the rest back down and we'll go ahead with the battle plan, take the Salamis. They must be in there."

"If they haven't already left, sir."

"That's right. What do you think they would have left in, Sergeant? A matter transmitter? We got all the ships."

Possibly, I thought. They might have a matter transmitter out in the back yard, just didn't think to use it before.

"Let me have Tate, Mulroy, Hofstadter. We're going to stand guard on this ...

prisoner. Sergeant Al-Sadat-" That sounded too military. "Al, you're in charge of everybody else. Take them down and join up with your platoons."

"Sure, Mandella. How the h.e.l.l do we get down?"

"I've got a rope, Sergeant." That was Wiley, demolition "man." Somehow, it wouldn't sound right to call her a "demolition woman."

They filed out and we surrounded the Tauran. His cl.u.s.tered eyes didn't follow Tate and Mulroy as they went behind him; he just kept staring straight ahead, either unconcerned or paralyzed. The soap bubble that held his personal environment shimmered slightly in the light that seemed to come evenly from ceiling, floor, and walls.

There was a meter-high ribbon of window running all around the outside wall. I could see Cortez and the two platoons taking up positions around the east Salami. It occurred to me that perhaps that was what the Tauran was staring at, not us. I switched to the general frequency and positioned myself so that I could watch the Tauran and the Salami at the same time.

Al-Sadat and his men had just left the Flower and were moving toward Cortez when everything started to happen at once.

The far end of the Salami opened and Taurans, seemingly hundreds of them, came boiling out. And they came out shooting.

Each one of them had a box that looked incongruously like a suitcase, handle, clasps, and all, and held a flexible tube that led into the box. They handled it like a laser, fanning it back and forth.

Our laser beams danced through their ranks. If they had stayed bunched up, they would have all been dead in a couple of seconds. But they spread out quickly and took what cover the terrain and buildings allowed.

One touch with a laser would pop their life-support bubble, but to my horror I saw that their weapon was no less effective. All over the plain men and women were whirling and jerking in waldo-amplified agony, dying too slowly. Cortez was screaming.

"Pick a target and hit it! Stay with it till you hit it! Grenadiers, use your fingers- second platoon, third platoon, who the h.e.l.l's in charge over there? Akwasi! Bohrs!

Report!"

I turned to look at the west Salami, farther away, and it was obvious the same thing was happening there.

"Busia! Maxwell! Who the h.e.l.l's in charge?"

"Busia here, Lieutenant-I don't know, maybe I'm in charge. I can't raise Akwasi or Bohrs. I-ai!" A short yelp and no more transmission.

"Second platoon, third platoon, listen up. You've got weapons superiority, so use it. Everybody-just-pick-a-target. And stay with it until you kill it! We're winning over here and you should be winning too-heavies! Herz! Conte! Knock down those f.u.c.kin' Salamis, there might be more inside."

Two quick rockets reduced the west Salami to rubble. The east stood.

"Lieutenant, this is Ching. Herz is dead."

"Well then pick up the launcher yourself. G.o.d . . . d.a.m.n!"

"Luthuli here, I've got it." The first rocket went in low and scooped out a big crater in front of the building. The second knocked off a rounded corner and the third hit it dead center and collapsed it.

I chinned Marygay's frequency. "Marygay, this is William. Are you all right?"

Nothing.

"Are you all right?"

Cortez's voice cracked over the general freak. "G.o.ddammit, cut the private jawin', we haven't won yet. That includes you spectators up there. Luthuli to your right watch out! Good!"

The Tauran was still staring impa.s.sively.

My count showed only six Taurans alive to the east, and one of them got caulked while I was counting. I cranked my image amplifier up to twenty log two and looked west, but from this angle it was hard to tell what the score was. Plenty of activity going on.

"All right, that's it," Cortez yelled. "Follow me, let's help the second and third."

What was left of the first and fourth platoons sprinted across the plain after Cortez.

They left ten inert figures behind. One of them was Marygay.

Numb, I raised my finger and pointed it at the Tauran. But I couldn't get up any hate for him. I tried to hate Cortez, but that didn't work either. It was as if we were all just caught up in some impersonal catastrophe, and you couldn't blame some individual person or creature for the wrath of the elements.

The battle to the west was over by the time Cortez and his men got there. They had lost twelve. Cortez called for the ships.

I had expected that if we were going to have any trouble with the Tauran, it would be now, trying to get him outside and into a ship. But he seemed to understand our gestures and went along quietly. Whatever it was that had lifted us to the second floor worked both ways; following him, we just stepped over the edge and drifted gently down.

He walked to the ship without any protest and seemed to know what an acceleration couch was. We tried to strap him in, but the belt only encircled his bubble. The swabbie said that was all right; he was going to take it easy anyhow, not knowing how much tolerance a Tauran had for acceleration.

You couldn't help wondering why the Tauran was so docile. It occurred to me that perhaps he was a b.o.o.bytrap; a bomb that could walk into the middle of the Anniversary and explode. Somebody else had thought of that too, for there was a portable fluoroscope waiting for us when we docked. It didn't show anything unusual.

All things considered, the Anniversary was pretty well equipped for taking a Tauran prisoner. We had a special "brig" which duplicated the atmosphere we had found in the Salamis on Aleph, and a case of food containers from the same source.

We turned the Tauran over to the xen.o.biologists and retired to lick our wounds.

We had come to Yod-4 with seventy-three people and were leaving with twenty- seven, by my count. They hadn't released the casualty figures yet. But there were a lot of familiar faces missing. I had to find out sooner or later, so I went to Cortez. I rapped on the door of his cabin.

"Who is it?" he said gruffly.

"Sergeant Mandella, sir."

"All right. Enter."

He was sitting on his Spartan bunk cradling a coffee cup in both hands. There was a bottle at his feet that I recognized as being some of Lieutenant Bok's homemade booze. "Well?"

"Sir, I wanted to-I had to know . . . know how Marygay died."

He looked at me for a long moment, without expression. Then he took a drink and snorted. "Corporal Potter is not dead."

"Not dead! She was . . . wounded?"

"No. n.o.body was wounded. n.o.body was wounded and lived."

"Then . . . sir? What happened?"

"Catatonic." He poured a slosh of liquor into the cup and twirled it around, stared at it, sniffed it. "I don't know exactly what happened. I don't really care. She's in sick bay. You may check with Lieutenant Pastori."

She was alive! "Thank you, sir." I turned to leave.

"Sergeant."

"Sir?"