Starblood Part 2

And he was gone.

Timothy stood at the window, watching the detective leave. He knew full well that the film would be destroyed between here and police headquarters. The tape record would be edited as Modigliani saw fit before it was placed in police files. And the detective would receive a bonus from the Brethren this month, a bonus for a job well done-if not exactly in the interests of the public he had sworn to serve.

He returned to Taguster's house, ignored the simulacrum, which was reading a book and greeted him cheerily. He went from room to room, looking for even the smallest sign of murder or of the later presence of the Brethren gunmen. He found nothing. He returned home.

In despair and frustration, he pounded the leather of the Mindlink cup-chair with his servo-hands. Then, when his rage subsided, he saw he had clawed and ripped it until the stuffing showed through in many places. Now he was no longer able to weep for the loss of the musician; now there was only a cool, deep hatred for those people-and a determination to get them, to kill them. Strangely, the thought of murder did not repulse him, though he had always been extremely nonviolent. He' had reached that time in his life-as most men eventually do-when powers greater than he had so relentlessly and ruthlessly backed him into a corner and begun shredding at the fabric of his life that no response was too excessive. With many men, it is the government, a king or a dictator or a president. With others, it is is a large corporation, a blank bureaucratic monolith without a single shred of humanity. For Timothy, it was these men who took the law. into their own hands-with the blessings of the authorities who earned part of their living from them. a large corporation, a blank bureaucratic monolith without a single shred of humanity. For Timothy, it was these men who took the law. into their own hands-with the blessings of the authorities who earned part of their living from them.

Fury. It was worthwhile sometimes. Now, as he waited for the arrival of Klaus Margle, he did everything possible to nurture it...

CHAPTER 4.

He stood at the window, nervously watching the night. Time ticked by like water dripping from a faucet.

Behind him, there was a pistol from his collection propped between a stack of books, aimed at chest-level on the door. He could trigger it with his psionic powers when the time came. In his servo-hands were two more weapons. There was no use asking for police help. All calls would be routed to Modigliani, and that would be a dead end. These lethal devices were all he had to stop them from killing him as nonchalantly as they had killed Taguster.

He heard them as they entered the courtyard behind the house. They made no attempt to keep silent, blundering noisily along to let him know they had no fear. Footsteps on the pavement. Then a soft burst of laughter...

The door rattled, shook. It crashed inward as the Hound, yet another one, smashed through in a cloud of wood splinters. Ti had not been expecting this at all. His guns were absolutely useless. He turned into the dining area, dropping the pistols and calling his servos after him. He had been expecting men, not machines. Now what? He heard the Hound in the kitchen, but by the time he reached the living room, it was humming into the dining area, on his heels.

Don't panic, he told himself. Don't panic-just hate. It's only the hate that will save you.

The Hound entered the room, sensed his presence, sought him with its cameras and radar grids, ascertaining if he were the proper quarry or not. It would only need a split second to make that decision...

He sought an escape route-though he realized that the great house which was equipped to sustain him in luxury was not equally appointed to preserve him from death. The place would be surrounded; the doors were useless. Suddenly, he remembered the Revolutionary War cellars upon which the house was built. If he could get into those, there were countless outlets to other places on the mountain.

The Hound fired three pins.

Ti slammed down on his mobility sphere speed controls, streaked into the hall, through the cellar door and down the steps (there for the convenience of his legged guests). He crossed the Tri-D room and went into the shooting range, slamming the heavy door behind him. It was monstrously thick, resurrected from the Tory cellars. It was a munitions storehouse door, plated in lead. Even the Hound would require some time to break that down.

He floated along the left wall where the cellars lay behind the thin skin of his house, stretching far back into the mountain.

After the first four or five, which were man-made, the caves were rough and fortified. When he reached the end of the room, he used his servos to rip loose the half-round that filled in the corners of the plasti-wood paneling. Metal fingers gripped round that paneling, he proceeded to pry it away from the wall beams. He looked through, seconds later, into the cool darkness of the Tory cellars.

Behind, the Hound struck the leaded door, hard.

Unable to squeeze between the beams, Ti shifted his grav-plates so he lay on his side, then moved ball-first through the gap and into the darkness. Once inside, he shifted to vertical position and sent his servos back to restore the panel as best they could. It might confuse the demon machine for a few minutes, though it could not be a completely successful ruse. The Hound would be after him soon enough.

Through the part.i.tion, he heard the door to the shooting range give; then it crashed inward to admit the Hound.

He moved forward slowly, letting his eye adjust to the lack of light. Soon he could distinguish the outlines of fallen beams and broken tables, of rotted and shattered chairs, a few stretches of shelving, that had once held ammunition but which were now bowed and warped away from the walls and covered with ugly lumps of fungus. He moved into the second cellar room.

Behind him the Hound ripped loose the wall panel he had balanced in place, the sound echoing frantically in the cul-de-sacs of the Tory chambers. Light from the shooting range dispelled the gloom. The Hound came quickly after Ti moved toward the third cellar at top speed. He slammed his shoulder stump into a half-fallen beam, but he kept moving, his hatred and his fear denying the pain his nerves insisted was there. The Hound came faster.

When he reached the entrance to the fifth cellar, Timothy found nature had conspired against him. There had been a cave-in, and the beams and rocks of the ceiling had collapsed to effectively bar his escape. With the Hound at his neck, there was no time to break through.

He turned on his pursuer. Its sensors gleamed in the dim light, thirty feet away. It fired three pins...

He moved aside as he saw its intent. The darts studded the rubble wall behind him, where they quivered like arrows. He sent his servos to an overhead beam lying in the Hound's path and had them worry its tenuous connections with the rotting ceiling. Just as the Hound pa.s.sed beneath, the beam tore loose and crashed into it. The only effect was a momentary deflection in the machine's course. The Hound swerved, bobbled, recovered in only moments and swept closer, firing another three pins.

All three missed. Ti was surprised, for he had not had time to take, evasive action-and Hounds were not known for sloppy marksmanship.

The Hound fired three more; again, they all missed.

Ti abruptly realized he was turning them aside with his psionic power! The second time, he had been more conscious of his effort. Now he stood with his back to the collapsed ceiling, waiting the next attack. It fired, and the darts spun away to either side. Over the next several minutes, he deflected another two dozen of the slender spines. The Hound ceased shooting and bobbled gently from side to side, regarding him with its measuring devices. A moment later, it dispatched two servos for his neck...

Reacting quickly, he called his own servos to him. Four feet from his face, the enemy's hands and his own met and locked, metal fingers laced through metal fingers. He set full power into his hands and tried to snap the other set of prosthos.

His hopes for a swift triumph were destroyed when he saw the Hound had similar ideas. Its own servos wrenched at his, the four members swaying back and forth in the air, gaining and losing the same s.p.a.ce in a rhythmic duel. Finally, when both sets reached full power and stress, they did not move at all, but merely strained in frozen tableau against each other. The grav-plates on all four hands erupted almost simultaneously in smoke and sparks. The metal hands dropped to the floor as if they were a single creature, a metal bird with shot pellets in its wings.

Now both hunter and hunted were handless. Hunter and hunted...

Timothy realized the nomenclature was no longer adequate. With both of them handless, and with Ti able to neutralize the pin weapon, the balance of power had been equalized. As he moved past the Hound, he was aware that another facet of his power had made itself known tonight. Under moments of stress and anxiety, he seemed to acquire new abilities. The hate had been valuable, and he would still need it And with his power to influence small objects in transit as well as when they were still, he might be able to give vent to the hatred when he encountered Klaus Margle.

The Hound stopped following him when he moved into shooting range again. It b.u.mped purposelessly against the beams, as if its mind had been in its hands and, losing them, it had lost all cleverness. Ti floated upstairs and stopped in the hallway to to listen. He could hear footsteps in the kitchen... listen. He could hear footsteps in the kitchen...

He was prepared for them. Confidence surged through him, augmenting his hate. He drifted into the living-room just as the gunmen walked in with their weapons drawn. "Your Hound is finished," he said, drawing their attention from the areas of deeper shadow which they were cautiously exploring.

The man on Margle's left swung and fired. Timothy deflected all but one pin, lifted that and turned it back on the gunman. The dart sank into the Brother's chest, its poison exploding into his bloodstream. He gagged, doubled over, and dropped.

"I won't kill you if you surrender," Timothy said wearily. The hate was still there, but a deep welling sadness had joined it.

Margle and the remaining man were crouched behind a sofa, unwilling to surrender merely because of a lucky shot. In In the dark, they could not have seen that his hands were gone. "You're crazy," Margle said, his voice high and sharp, grating on the nerves. He was quiet, waiting for Timothy to speak and reveal his position. the dark, they could not have seen that his hands were gone. "You're crazy," Margle said, his voice high and sharp, grating on the nerves. He was quiet, waiting for Timothy to speak and reveal his position.

"Why did you kill Taguster?" Ti asked, remaining at the same place.

"Why tell you?" Margle asked. There was a giggle in his voice, an edgy little laugh that sounded almost s.a.d.i.s.tic. Apparently, they could not see him yet.

"You're going to kill me. Or I'll kill you. Whichever way, telling me why you murdered Taguster won't make much difference, will it?"

"He was on PBT," Margle said.

"What excuse does that give give you for killing him?" To discover that their reason was so thin made the death seem all the more meaningless to Ti and resurrected the hatred which had begun to die in him. you for killing him?" To discover that their reason was so thin made the death seem all the more meaningless to Ti and resurrected the hatred which had begun to die in him.

Margle chuckled, as if lax and unwatchful-although he was not. His kind of man never was. "It was getting too expensive for him. He decided to gather information on us. The Narcotics Bureau has never been able to synthesize the stuff, even with samples they obtained. Taguster was trying to get enough to give them some sort of clue so that, in return, they would make him a legal addict. Then he could get PBT free from supplies the UN has confiscated. One of his paid informers informed to us. We ransacked his house while he was out, found the file he had on us. Not much, but enough to get a good many people sold down the river-which means something might leak to help the UN find out what the stuff is."

"That shouldn't have bothered you. You could buy the authorities off."

"Local, not UN. Did you ever try bribing a UN delegate officer, the kind they have in narcotics? Impossible."

"So you killed him."

Margle was still trying to pin him down, keep him talking long enough to level a fairly accurate barrage at him. "The Hound did. You were pretty clever about that, you know. Had us worried. But calling the local constabulary-now that was a stroke of pure idiocy. It made finding you much easier."

Ti knew enough now. There had been a side to Taguster he had not known. It hurt him a bit to think the musician had not fully trusted him, but all of that was past now. Taguster was dead. He moved toward the couch, making no effort to conceal himself.

"There!" Margle shouted. Both men rose, seeing him in the same instant, and fired point-blank into his twisted body.

He deflected all the pins.

Then Ti was behind the couch and on top of them. They danced backwards, opening fire. He returned the pins, getting Margle in the cheek and the gunman in the neck. They died with such precision that it seemed like a grotesquely ch.o.r.eographed dance.

He left the room and phoned Creel, getting him out of bed. He asked for two reporters and two cameramen to cover all angles of the incident Creel, true to form, asked no questions; he merely wondered if he might come over too. He smiled slightly when Timothy said yes.

As Ti waited for his people to arrive, a weariness settled over him like a hand sliding onto a glove. He had once made a promise to himself that he would never kill. It had been a way of making amends to the G.o.ds-if there were G.o.ds-for having been the product of an experiment of war. And now he had broken that promise in order to avenge the death of his only close friend. It was going to take some time before he would be able to think this through, to learn and understand which was the most precious: integrity of one's self, or unlimited love and devotion for another human being.

He could not cry. He wished he could-that might relieve the tension. But Taguster was dead, his mind and personality beyond retrieval, and the world still turned. The hate would have to be dissolved, burned down, disposed of. A man could not live with such hatred. No matter how he had been hurt. He decided that, after the statsheet people and the police left, he would get roaring drunk. And stay drunk for two or three days. And then everything would be fine. He was sure that would end it...

CHAPTER 5.

A darkly painted personal grav-plate automobile, without benefit of any chrome fixtures, drifted up the mountainside in the dim wash of moonlight that managed to filter through the relatively heavy cloud cover of the humid summer night. The craft's interior lights were off, as were its headlamps and its fore and aft warning beacons. It was nothing more than a shadow among other shadows, and its power plant had been insulated against emitting noise so that the illusion of ethereal unreality could be maintained; it was a ghost searching the night, nothing more.

In the forest below, small animals scattered for cover into burrows and holes in rotted trees, somehow aware of the machine's presence. But the rest of the world knew nothing of it.

Farther up the cliffside, an ultra-modern house jutted from the forest, perched precariously on thrusting fingers of rock. Despite its advanced design, it seemed an integral part of the natural forces around it. The driver of the grav-car had required several minutes, at first, to make out the lines of it. Now, as he drew closer, his admiration for its architecture increased, even though he would soon take steps to destroy it utterly.

He held the car steady as it drew level with the house, and when he was certain it was deserted but for its owner and single occupant, he took his craft up again. When the car was above the roof of the house, with the entire grounds of the mansion visible below it, the driver put his machine on hold, opened his door, and released the package he had been sent to deliver.

The package was a cylinder three feet long, tapered to a round bullet snout at both ends, with a central diameter of twenty inches. It was featureless, its burnished coppery metal husk shimmering in the moonlight. It was quite heavy, though it did not drop any faster than a bit of dandelion fluff might have. It slid level with the house, changed from vertical to horizontal progression, and pa.s.sed by the long windows of the cliffside patio. It was noiseless and efficient-looking. And though its design gave no indication of its purpose, it had an air of deadliness about it.

Overhead, the grav-car moved cautiously along the side of the mountain, hugging the dark, jagged shapes of the trees, and slipped swiftly into the envelope of the night. Only when it was a mile away did the driver flick on the lights. And even then he phased them in slowly to avoid drawing the attention of another craft or someone on the ground. Five minutes later, fully illuminated, he picked up speed and returned to the garage from which his mission had begun.

And all the while, the Selective a.s.sa.s.sination Module he had left behind him was cutting an entrance portal in the gla.s.s patio doors. A jointed arm extended from the anterior end, tipped with a diamond cutting edge. As it worked, a fine gla.s.s powder fell to the flagstones. When the work was near completion and all but a perfectly circ.u.mscribed entrance had been cut, a second arm appeared, spidery but agile, and attached itself by a suction cup to the gla.s.s that would be removed. When the final cut was made, this new arm removed the circle of gla.s.s from the door, lowered it onto the patio floor, and released it.

It moved forward and into the darkened living-room. Timothy's house had been breached once again, but with a far greater degree of subtlety than Klaus Margle had employed some two weeks ago...

Though some moonlight found its way between the heavy velveteen drapes, the interior of the mansion was much darker than the night world beyond its confines. The SAM opened the receptivity of its visual scanners; two points on its anterior and two on its posterior, all the size of quarters, changed color from the fire-flecked coppery hue to yellow, emitting a slightly fuzzy amber radiance.

The thin spindles of the tool arms had been retracted and left no trace of their exit and entry in the smooth hull Other devices, as yet unused, could also be called forth and put away without trace. Such dexterity and heavy armament were possible through extreme microminiaturization; and the machine's power source was not contained within its housing. It gained operational energy from a broadcasting generator some miles away. It was an expensive means of murder. Weapons Psionic, its makers, charged whatever the traffic would bear, limiting its clientele but clearing excellent profits on those devices it did construct. And, though expensive, it was foolproof. Weapons Psionic had no known headquarters, files, or staff. Though ma.s.sive efforts had often been launched to discover the whereabouts of the company, both federal and United Nations police had failed miserably to uncover even a trace of it. Even the purchasers of its merchandise were ignorant of company's home. But those who bought the SAM liked that, for it meant that none of them could sell out Weapons Psionic and thus destroy a valuable tool of the underworld. A SAM provided anonymity for the killer, a perfectly untraceable means of murder. And for men closely watched by the authorities, such a cold, clueless tool as this was priceless.

The SAM's supersensitive receptors began to function now. The heat sensors directed the killer's attention toward a hallway on the right which more than likely lead to sleeping quarters. The aural pickups correlated the initial data by the heat sensors, and the a.s.sa.s.sin turned toward the hall.

It allowed its "ears" to listen: light breathing, a ragged sound of air moving through deformed nasal pa.s.sages.

It permitted its heat sensors to probe longer: a quant.i.ty of body heat radiating from the very end of the corridor.

It drifted quietly forward...

At the end of the hall, it ceased forward progression and rose on a level with the bedroom door handle. A thread of metallic substance weaved out of the husk and disappeared into the door's automatic mechanism. The seeking filament touched the motor within, and the portal slid soundlessly open. The SAM retracted the thread, hesitated, then slid forward into the dark, seeking...

It located the twisted body of the mutant lying in the sling bed against the far wall. It called forth a dart nozzle from its anterior snout and fanned the body with fifty poisoned spines. There was no sound from the form as they sank in; the poison would be too swift for that.

The SAM used the filament to turn on the overhead lights, then drew the thread back into its husk. When it was only half a dozen feet from the mutant, the amber light was bright enough to reveal that the target was not dead. There were no darts in it. Instead, the spines p.r.i.c.kled the wall behind and littered the floor below. The a.s.sa.s.sin stopped, fired another series.

They were deflected.

Timothy rose from the sling bed and set his servos after the SAM. He was quite aware that the thing might have more than one weapons systems, and that if he did not act quickly he might end up a corpse despite the advantage of his psionic powers. The a.s.sa.s.sin drifted backward toward the door, but a servo slipped past it and closed the portal. Ti wondered if it wouldn't be better to let it escape. Then he realized he would have nothing to show the authorities, no way to ascertain the ident.i.ty of his a.s.sa.s.sin. He would be left waiting for their next attempt, helplessly-like a man in a stalled car on railroad tracks, watching the locomotive screaming toward him...

A nozzle protruded from the SAM's husk, spewing a napalm-like chemical. But the deadly bright flames did no harm, since Timothy was able to deflect the chemicals on which the flames depended. A moment later, his servos clasped the device at each blunt end and held it still. Timothy flushed a wave of psionic power through the cylinder, flicking closed all the switches in the SAM's guts, which all succ.u.mbed to the relatively light pressure of his ESP ability.

The slight yellow luminosity of the sight sensors vanished as the device opaqued its hull and was still. In seconds, it had ceased to be a flame-spouting, dangerous antagonist and had become a docile hunk of metal.

Cautiously, he directed his servos to release the weapon. They moved away from it, and it did not respond in any fashion. Since its grav-plates generated their own power, it remained weightless, though stationary. He took the cylinder down the corridor, through the living room, into the library. On the keyboard of the Enterstat Enterstat computer, he punched: REQUEST SOURCE OF THIS DEVICE. DESCRIPTION AS FOLLOWS. After the description, in which he did not ignore any detail no matter how trivial, he pushed for a full data report. computer, he punched: REQUEST SOURCE OF THIS DEVICE. DESCRIPTION AS FOLLOWS. After the description, in which he did not ignore any detail no matter how trivial, he pushed for a full data report.

While he waited, he decided it must be the Brethren who were after him; surely his murdering Klaus Margle would have temporarily angered the man's cohorts. Then again, he had opened a position in the hierarchy of the underworld, and he could only have made a friend of the man who filled it. Yet only the money of the full organization could have purchased a device such as this; a splinter group of Margle's friends could never have financed it. His thoughts were interrupted as the data statted into the receival tray.

He picked up the sheet, startled by the brevity of the report on something so intriguing as the a.s.sa.s.sination device: SOURCE OF WEAPON: WEAPONS PSIONIC... ADDRESS UNKNOWN... NO MEANS OF CONTACTING WP; MAKES OWN CONTACTS WITH PROSPECTIVE CUSTOMERS... NO OFFICES... NO FILES... NO EMPLOYEES... WEAPONS CANNOT BE TRACED TO PURCHASER IN ANY KNOWN MANNER... WEAPONS CANNOT BE TRACED TO POINT OF PRODUCTION... PARTS OF WEAPONS CANNOT BE TRACED TO POINT OF PRODUCTION.

This was all very interesting, but it put him no further ahead. Someone had been contacted by Weapons Psionic and had agreed to purchase the killer. But who? And if it was the Brethren-why? He would have to answer that before he went to the police, if he went to them at all. And to get his answers, he would need to know more about this device. He went to the comscreen and called George Creel's home number. When the screen lit, after a long wait, Creel looked like something that had climbed out of the paleozoic swamps a little behind schedule and had lain all day on the mud banks trying to decide whether it could grow legs fast enough to survive.

"Remind me not to call you in the middle of the night," Timothy said. "I just ruined my breakfast."

Creel grinned His features firmed up when he saw who was phoning, and he looked halfway human again. "What is it?" he asked, the words distorted by a yawn he could not quite stifle.

"Have you ever heard of a company called Weapons Psionic?"

"Bad," Creel said, making a face. "What about them?"

"We have a story concerning them tomorrow. You heard the name Wallengrine?"

"Sounds familiar."

"Herbert Wallengrine was heir to the Wallengrine plastics fortune, twenty-seven years old. His father died eight months ago, and the will was settled four months later. Seven hundred million involved. Herbert Wallengrine was killed by one of these robotic a.s.sa.s.sins-attacked his grav-car while it was in flight, destroyed the engine. But when it couldn't get at the grav-plates through the heavy armoring, it smashed through the windscreen, slammed into his chest, and self-destructed. They've arrested his wife on suspicion, but she knows as well as they do that-even if it was her-they'll never prove it. She stood to inherit every dime of the seven hundred million. Besides that, it was well known she had taken on a lover and that Wallengrine was planning a divorce on grounds of unsanctioned adultery, cutting her off without a penny." He paused. "We're using it on page two."

"Do we have any contacts who could dismantle one of these machines?"

Creel examined Timothy's image carefully. "You have one?"

"Let's say my question is academic. Do we know a good electronics man who might be able to handle it?"

"Lambertson," Creel said. "We've used him on a few things before, to take apart bombs so we could get an exclusive on the story."

"Can you get in touch with him now?"

Creel shrugged. "I will. Whether h.e.l.l come or not is up to him, of course. But with the money we can offer and the word that this is a SAM he has at his disposal, h.e.l.l probably jump at the chance."

"SAM?" Timothy asked. It was the first time he had heard its name.