Mag Force - Hung Out Part 37

Xris would have reminded Jamil, rea.s.suringly, that Raoul had never before let the team down.

Xris not being there, Jamil had to repeat this to himself. Somehow it lacked the proper ring of conviction.

"Oh, by the way," Raoul said tearfully as Jamil was leaving, "the One has been asking for you."

"Mr. Jamil!"

"d.a.m.n!"

Having spotted Marmand rounding a boulder, Jamil had tried to keep to the shadows. He was just about to duck into the elevator, hopefully without being seen. Dremecks have sharp eyesight, apparently.

"Mr. Jamil!"

Jamil backed into the elevator. "Listen, Marmand, I'd love to talk, but I'm extremely busya""

The dremeck's face-folds were all pinched together and he was no longer blue. He was a mottled gray and his large eyes were wide open and glistening. He placed his three-fingered hand on the elevator controls, preventing Jamil from activating them.

"I am worried, Mr. Jamil. Very worried. I heard about that terrible battle at the Uglies burrow on the lake yesterday. Uglies firing guns and shouting about 'death to dremecks.' It is fortunate that no dremecks are allowed into that burrow or a great many people might have been killed."

"Look, it's not what you thinka"" Jamil began.

Marmand wasn't listening. "I have decided that this entire plan is far too dangerous. Nothing is worth risking so many innocent lives. Nothing. I thank you for all you have tried to do for us, but now you must go. Immediately. I fear you have done too much harm already."

The One stepped into the elevator. "I'm going to go down there with you today. I'm going to end this."

Jamil considered. Marmand was the leader of his people and he had the righta"the absolute righta"to send the team packing. Jamil might try arguing, but Marmand appeared about as easy to shift as that boulder.

To make matters worse, Jamil's conscience was bothering him. The team had been hired by an unknown someone, someone with the G.o.ds knew what motive, to come to Del Sol and conduct a revolution. Jamil couldn't be certain, but he was guessinga"based on what Darlene and Petronella hadn't told hima"that the purpose of this revolution was not saving the dremecks from extermination. Jamil was in a false position, he was lying to the dremecks.

Yet, while admitting that all this was true, he could still say with an absolutely clear conscience that the plight of the dremecks had touched him deeply and that he was committed to helping them now, if he hadn't been before.

"I am going to tell the young dremecks they must prepare to go back to work tomorrow," Marmand said stubbornly. "I will speak to Kirkov. I will promise him that we will be his slaves in perpetuity if he will only let us live."

"Live!" Jamil snorted, but Marmand had given him an idea. He left the elevator, walked over to a pile of leg-irons kept there by the human overseers to replace those whose locks didn't work. He picked up as many as he could carry, which was about seven. The d.a.m.n things were heavy.

"What are those for?" Marmand demanded "They'll need them for tomorrow, won't they?" Jamil said.

Marmand's face-folds twitched.

Jamil stepped into the elevator. It gave a lurch and began its slow, creaking descent. Marmand stood on the side of the cage as far from Jamil as he could get. He refused to talk. Jamil was just as glad to be silent. He stood in his own dark corner, brooding, wondering what the devil he was going to do if his plan failed.

The young dremecks were cl.u.s.tered together in small groups, some of them merrily tripping each other up, others practicing leaping on each other from behind, still others pointing the disabled beam rifles at their friends, who immediately flung their hands in the air in what Jamil had told them was a cla.s.sic sign of surrender.

Marmand watched, appalled. He cast Jamil one reproachful glance, then stalked stiff-legged into the cavern. One of the dremecks caught sight of Jamil and yelled, "Attention!"

The dremecks halted what they were doing. Grabbing their toy guns, they scrambled and pushed and shoved. Soon they were standing in four lines, each in his or her proper place.

"What are they doing?" Marmand demanded.

"Bayonet drill," Jamil replied. "It dates back to the time of Napoleon. I know that doesn't mean anything to you, but I think you should watch. They've been practicing really hard to show you," he added, seeing Marmand about to protest. "You don't want to disappoint them."

The One looked out into the eager faces, their face-folds bunched together into happy grins, which were not quite regulation.

"Very well," he said sourly.

Jamil took his place in front of the a.s.sembly. He drew himself up, barked out an order. "Close-order fighting, by the position. Carry arms!"

In near unison, the dremecks hoisted their rifles to the carry position and waited.

"Position one!" Jamil ordered.

The dremecks thrust their rifles out in front of them, held them in place.

"Position two!"

Dremeck rifles sliced through the air.

"Position three!"

Using an underhand motion, the dremecks used their rifle b.u.t.ts to strike an imaginary enemy in the jaw. The troops gave a loud yell, a yell which, for the soft-spoken dremecks, had taken more practice than all the rifle maneuvers combined.

"Position four!"

The dremecks returned their rifles to the carry position. Contrary to all military discipline, the young dremecks then turned around to nod, whisper, and grin at each other. The were obviously extremely pleased with themselves.

Marmand was horrified.

"What you have taught them is ... to kill!" He could barely squeeze the word out through the anger.

"Yeah." Jamil acknowledged his guilt. "If they run into Napoleon, they can chop him up into little bits. Or rather they could if they actually had bayonets, which they don't. I haven't taught them to kill. What I've taught them is discipline, how to act as a unified whole. I've given them something else, too. Look at them, Marmand. Take a good look at them."

The dremecks, aware of their leader's scrutiny, had regained their order, were standing at what, for dremecks, pa.s.sed as parade attention, which meant that half of them were standing stiff and upright, eyes forward, their face-folds quivering with the strain, while the rest shuffled their feet and giggled.

Marmand glowered. "They look like killers," he said in disgust. "Make them stop doing that."

"Right." Jamil stood in front of his command. In his hand, he held the leg-irons, chains dangling.

"That was rotten," he said, his voice harsh. "Rotten, lousy, clumsy, and stupid."

The dremecks were staring at him in bewilderment, their large eyes glistening, face-folds starting to droop.

"I don't know why I'm wasting my time," he went on. "I made a mistake. You were born slaves. You'll never be anything but slaves. Here"a"he motioneda""put these chains on. You'll report to work tomorrow as usual."

The dremecks curled up, wilted, withered. It was like pulling out plants by the roots. Heads lowered, shoulders bowed, face-folds sagged. Here and there a rifle clattered to floor.

"We might as well start now." Jamil slid one of the leg-iron rings off his arm. "Trella, come here."

Trella stared at him, frightened.

"Trella!" Jamil barked savagely. He held the leg-iron ring open and ready. "You filthy dremeck! I said come here!" He reached out to grab hold of her by the arm.

Trella lowered her head. But instead of waiting meekly for him to fix the chains around her leg, she ran straight at him, head down, and b.u.t.ted him. Ramming her head into his solar plexus, she knocked the breath from his body, sent him sprawling backward on the rock floor with a melodic clang.

"I am not a slave!" she cried, stamping her foot on the chains. "I will never go back to being a slave! I would rather die!"

The rest of the dremecks surged forward, shouting and stamping and banging the b.u.t.t ends of their rifles on the rock. Jamil was in peril of being trampled, and for a moment he feared he had gone too far. Hurriedly, he regained his feet, grimacing as he straightened, and looked at Marmand.

The One was cold and rigid, as if the rock had flowed down from the ceiling and formed itself into a dremeck.

"You say you would rather die," Marmand said gratingly, speaking to Trella, though his gaze included all the young dremecks. "Say instead that you would rather kill. Death is the price of freedom. Not only your deaths, but the deaths of other living beings! Is it worth it? Is your freedom worth ending the life of another? Think of it! We are given life once. We can never have it back, once it is gone. When you take a life, you take away a part of the future. You take away all that a person would have dreamed or thought. Worse, you take away all the other people who might have been born of that person. When you end a life, you do not end one life. You end many. And what do you gain?"

"Dignity," said Jamil. "Self-respect. Some people would say that to live without that is not living."

"What do you say, Trella?" Marmand asked gently.

Trella did not look at the One. Her whole body quivering, she stared at the chains that lay on the floor.

"I will not put that back on," she said softly, so softly that she could barely be heard. "I will not."

Marmand looked at Jamil with utter loathing.

"No one's going to die," said Jamil lamely. "No one's going to kill or be killed. It's all going to be for show...."

His voice trailed off. That wasn't the point. He had shown the dremecks a nice shiny red apple. He'd told them how sweet and juicy it tasted. He'd chopped it up and pa.s.sed it out for their enjoyment. He could almost hear the garden gate slam behind him.

Trella had begun to pound the chains with her rifle b.u.t.t. The other dremecks were joining her, pounding and smashing and battering the leg-irons that had marked their servitude.

Jamil should have stopped them in the mad fit of destructiona"Trella had already broken the stock on her gun and the other dremecks were adding to the damage. But Jamil's head ached. His whole body ached.

Sitting down on a rock, he watched the dremecks and thought about nuclear proliferation.

CHAPTER 36.

Would you realize what Revolution is, call it Progress; and would you realize what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.

"Check weapons," Jamil ordered.

Tycho drew a minigun from an interior pocket. The minigun was small, easily concealed, and highly effective in close-quarters fighting. The minigun fired short, lethal burst in rapid succession and could clear a hallway in milliseconds with minimum noise and maximum destruction. Tycho shifted the sleek little weapon to examine the power light at the bottom of the barrel.

"Off," he reported.

"Darlene." Jamil glanced at her. She was carrying the same weapon, concealed in her purse.

"Off," she said with a wry smile and a shrug.

Jamil checked his own. "Off." He slid it into the pocket of his suit coat.

"Can't we at least set them on stun?" Tycho pleaded Jamil shook his head. "There's no such thing as 'stun' to civilians. If you stun someone, what happens? There's a flash, a boom, and your man goes down. If you kill him, what happens? A flash, a boom, and your man goes down. Okay, the boom sounds different, but only to a pro. Seeing the target hit, watching him fly backward into a wall, most civilians will instantly a.s.sume the worst and then they'll go stupid on you."

"What if people shoot at us?" Tycho argued. "Their weapons won't be set on stun."

"We're thinking good thoughts today," Jamil admonished. "No one's going to shoot at us."

Tycho was not convinced. He had altered color to match the wall behind him and his skin was now pale blue, which was supposed to promote relaxed feelings according to the real estate agent who had been showing them the building. The room in which they were standing was part of a suite of offices available for rent in the building across from the vid station. It was empty except for the team members, who had left the agent standing at the front door, saying that they needed to confer in private. The relaxing blue was doing nothing for them.

"Your weapon will power up in thirty seconds," Jamil reminded him comfortingly. "In case we run into trouble."

"That's going to be a long thirty seconds," Darlene observed, not arguing, merely commenting.

Jamil knew very well how long those thirty seconds would bea"eternity, maybe, if someone got the drop on them. He briefly reconsidered his orders, went over the same arguments he'd gone over a hundred times before now. Tycho was an unknown quant.i.ty, untested. His brother had been one of the best, but who knew if a cool head and nerves of steel were hereditary? If anyone died, it was going to make arguing the dremecks' cause a lot more difficulta"maybe even impossible.

Besides, Jamil wanted to be able to show these people in a dramatic manner that he and his team were sincere.

And, after all, it was only thirty seconds.

"Doc, you ready?" He spoke into the commlink.

"Ready," Quong replied.

Dressed in a stolen overseer's uniform, Quong and thirty dremecks were waiting in a truck parked on the street across from the vid station.

"Make sure that they act like slaves, Doc. They looked like kids going to the fun park when we loaded up."

"I will do my best," Quong said. "But they are very excited."

"Fine, Doc. Remember, hit Maintenance first"

A moment's silence, then Quong said coldly, "Do you want to go over all my orders? Apparently we should, if I'm not to be trusteda""

"No, no, Doc," Jamil said hastily. "That's okay. I have every confidence in you."

He sighed, rubbed his hand over his sweaty facea"it was d.a.m.nably hot; they didn't turn on the air-conditioning just to show the place to prospective renters.

Jamil considered contacting Raoul to find out if Rusty Love's barge had come in and if it had brought Rusty Love with it. But though Raoul was fitted with an internal commlink like the rest of them, he generally forgot to turn it on, and if he did remember and anyone spoke to him, it might take him an hour or so to figure out which of the voices he normally heard in his head was speaking. Jamil abandoned the idea. He didn't have time to convince Raoul that he was who he claimed to be. Not G.o.d.

Jamil looked at his watch, noticed that Darlene was looking at her watch.

1500.

"There they go," Darlene said, pointing. "Right on time."