The Empire Of Time Part 11

"I've blocked the pain."

"Oh my G.o.d." She took a few tentative steps. "I can walk. And it don't hurt at all." Her face showed shock, delight, and then: alarm. "This is some kind of trap!"

Pierce realized, too late, what was happening, and saw Mrs. Curtice's fingers tighten on the wand. He leaped from the bus, but he was too far away to do anything. None the less, Anita might be able to take advantage of any distraction he could create. He got five or six steps toward them before the pain smashed up his arm. Everyone was screaming and falling-she had triggered all the bracelets at once.

Somehow Pierce kept his feet. His peripheral vision vanished. He was staring down a long tunnel at Mrs. Curtice, at Anita vomiting as she collapsed under the collective agony of thirty people, at Dallow springing at Mrs. Curtice, his face contorted. Dallow hit the old woman hard, knocking her fiat The wand splashed into a mud puddle.

The pain went on, and on. Pierce staggered and fell, and crawled awkwardly on one hand and his knees. Mrs. Curtice, pinned under Dallow's convulsing body, screamed in renewed pain and groped frantically for the wand.

Pierce grasped it and turned it off. Everyone in the group had been shrieking, but suddenly it was very quiet. The children sobbed.

Dallow picked himself up. Mrs. Curtice lay still, her clothes soaked in mud, her face unreadable. She looked at Pierce.

"I was right."

"About what?"

"Everything. You're a real pro, you are. n.o.body but a pro could keep moving with a hot bracelet on."

"Dallow, help her up."

Dallow lifted her gently while she spat and hissed with pain, and carried her into the bus. Pierce bent over Anita, touched the pulse in her throat. Her skin was clammy with sweat He picked her up and followed Dallow to the bus. As he did so, he heard the morning shape-ups in the other campsites, and realized no one had bothered to investigate the horrible uproar they had made.

The two women lay almost side by side in the doorway of the bus. Mrs. Curtice never took her eyes off Pierce.

"Boy, you're in real trouble now."

"Is that right," said Pierce.

"Incitement to riot Inducing an indent to abrogate his contract." She glared at Dallow. "Theft of personnel-management equipment. I'll have the law on you, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. And your weirdo girlfriend. Hope the b.i.t.c.h dies. And, Dallow, you're G.o.dd.a.m.n well finished. I'll have you so f.u.c.king blacklisted you'll have to go endo or starve."

"Put a bracelet on her, Dallow."

"Hey, man, you sure? She no indent."

Pierce looked balefully at him. Dallow fished a bracelet out of his jacket and sealed it around Mrs. Curtice's bony wrist. She made no resistance.

"Bring 'em up out'a the gutter, make somethin' of 'em, see they're fed and clothed and got work-look at the th-thanks you get. Oh, Billy Dallow, how c-c-could you?"

"Miz Curtice-that girl, that Anita, she healed you. She took away you pain. And what you do? You freak out, Miz Curtice, you hurt ev'body. You think we all out to get you."

She laughed bitterly. "And I was right, right. It was a trap, and I'da got out of it until you jumped me."

Dallow looked at Pierce. "You better not be playin' me for a fool, man. You said some smooth words las' night, you better not be lyin'."

"Don't worry, Dallow. You did the right thing." He looked down at Anita, wondering what it felt like to suffer that much pain. "I need sedatives. Something to keep Anita asleep for a few hours."

"Hunh? Miz Curtice, she don't stand for no drugs."

"You playing me for a fool? You've got drugs."

Looking embarra.s.sed, Dallow climbed past the two women and fumbled about in the bus's dark interior. He returned with a hypospray pistol and a single pink cartridge. Pierce recognized the drug-a nonprescription sedative that would keep her out for about four hours.

"Any more of these?"

"One."

"Okay." Pierce shot the drug into Anita's thigh; she trembled and relaxed. "Put her in the bunk above the cab. Mrs. Curtice, get up."

"I can't. It hurts too much."

"Get up."

Whimpering, she obeyed. He gestured to her to climb down. Somewhat absently, Pierce observed that the others were standing in a ragged semicircle behind him, watching silently.

"You're riding up front with me," he said to her. Turning to the workers, he said: "I'm the boss for a while. I've got the wand, and I'll use it if I have to. After we get to where I'm going, you can do whatever you d.a.m.n well want."

"Watchoo gonna do with Miz Curtice?" Dallow asked.

"Nothing, if she behaves. If she doesn't, I'll kill her. Okay, let's get going. Everybody in the bus."

Before getting behind the wheel, Pierce retrieved his Smith and Wesson from the glove compartment and slipped it into his jacket Then he helped Mrs. Curtice into the cab. They drove out of the camp without incident Mrs. Curtice sat sullenly glaring out the window, averting her face from Pierce. After a few minutes, she said: "What's all this about, anyway? What the h.e.l.l you doing?"

"A job."

"A job, a job. Why pick on me? What I ever do to you? I'm just a hardworking old woman, tryin' to get along-"

"Quit blubbering. You just came down the road at the right time."

"-Gonna get me in the s.h.i.t with the Copos, I always had a clean record, made my payoffs like clockwork-"

"Once we get to Farallon and I finish my job, you're on your own. You can have your wand back and everything. I don't think there's much future in blackbirding, though. Once we get one or two matters cleaned up, we're going to shake out every Colonial government from top to bottom. People like you are going to be out of business."

"Why, you sneaky son of a b.i.t.c.h, you're a Trainable, ain'tcha? You work for AID."

"Mm-hm."

She laughed. "The Agency ain't gonna mess with me. I done 'em too many favors."

Pierce said nothing. He reflected that he had been too high up, too specialized to be aware of everything the Agency had been doing. He was vaguely embarra.s.sed that the Agency should deal with blackbirders, though it was not really surprising. He remembered Wigner's remark about slavery on Beulah.

Highway 605 ran up out of the Alcatraz Valley to the lower slopes of the hills of Little Frisco-. Then it turned north to the Golden Gate Pa.s.s and followed the river west across the Farallon Dunes. The road was busy: logging trucks, bracero buses, and many, many Copo cars.

"Never saw so many," Mrs. Curtice said. "For Christ's sake, drive careful. They like to shake us down every time the brakes squeak."

Pierce laughed. He had the pleasant, light-in-the-stomach feeling of being in danger of his own free will, like a hang-glider stepping off a thousand-meter cliff. In a few hours at most, Gersen would be dead, Sherlock would be stalled if not stopped, and Pierce would be on his way back to Earth with a message for Wigner, and with Anita to back it up. This time tomorrow, the Gurkhas would be in control of Mojave Verde; a month from now, the Agency and all Colonial government would be thoroughly purged. After that, he could retire-but that was a long time away.

All around them the dunes stretched green and gray and blue in the mid-morning sun. Sloughs gleamed, their surfaces rippling in the wind; the dune gra.s.s waved shimmeringly. Overhead, millions of birds stormed into the sky and sank again to their ponds and thickets: snow geese, wood ducks, grebes, pa.s.senger pigeons, mallards, pintails-so many that their cries and the thunder of their wings drowned out the wind in a strange, dispa.s.sionate jubilation.

"Why'd you dope your girlfriend?"

"None of your business."

"She's got some kinda power, don't she? Something you can't control." Mrs. Curtice studied him for a moment "And she wouldn't like whatever it is you plan on doin'. You need her, or you'da ditched her some-wheres, but first you gotta do somethin' nasty. Probably kill somebody."

"Don't you worry, ma'am. The less you know, the less they'll hurt you."

"Who?"

"The Copos, if I don't succeed."

"Lord, lord. Well, it's my own d.a.m.n fault for pickin' up hitchhikers." She laughed at her own wit. Pierce laughed, too.

They entered Farallon City. The bus would attract attention in the city center, but Pierce had to risk it. From the bus to Gersen's office and back must be only a brief sortie. The downtown area stood between the western slopes of Mount Farallon and the harbor. Government House, thirty stories high, dominated the waterfront skyline. At the top was Gersen's office, no doubt heavily guarded. Pierce reviewed what he knew about the building as he drove into a parking lot two blocks away. The Copos' North American headquarters took up the first five floors; above that were various agencies and departments, with the Commissioner's staff situated on the top three floors. The building would be swarming with police; it had better be, if his plan was to work.

As soon as the bus was parked, Pierce used one of his last flechettes on Mrs. Curtice. She slumped back into her seat, eyes rolled up. Pierce opened the panel to the rear of the bus: "Dallow!"

"Yo." Dallow's lean face appeared in the opening.

"I'm locking the bus. Mrs. Curtice is out; so's Anita. You people just relax for a while. I should be back in half an hour, maybe less."

"Yeah. Hunh. What if you ain't?"

"Raise h.e.l.l. Scream, shout, whatever. But not for half an hour."

"Right."

Pierce left the bus, locked it, and began walking purposefully toward Government House. A hard, clean wind, smelling of salt, gusted down the street, and he could hear surf pounding the seawall. It was nearly lunch hour, and the streets were already filling with hungry civil servants.

A driveway led down into an underground garage: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Pierce strode down into the garage, past the rows of Copo cars, past the duty sergeant immersed in a newspaper, into the locker room. It was empty; the day shift had been on for almost four hours.

The lockers posed no problem; Pierce's tripled sensory-input synthesis made it easy to feel out the padlock combinations. The first locker held only civilian clothes; the second, a uniform a shade too large. Just as well; he put it on over his shirt and trousers. The hiking boots looked bad, but they would have to do. The Smith and Wesson fit snugly in the long holster.

He took the elevator to the fifteenth floor, got out, climbed a flight of stairs, took the elevator another five floors. Lunch hour was well under way, and the people in the elevator gave no more than a glance at him and the others in uniform.

At the twenty-sixth floor, Pierce went to the stairs again. He was just a little shaky with eagerness.

"Hold it."

Two plainclothesmen stood by the door to the twenty-seventh floor, their pistols aimed down the stairs at him.

"Who're you?" asked the older of the two.

"Turner. Just got in from Little St. Louis. I'm supposed to report to Mr. McGowan."

"Why you on the stairs?"

"I don't like waiting for elevators, so I ran up."

"All thirty floors?" The younger man laughed.

"Sure. Like to stay in shape." Both plainclothesmen had beer bellies. "Now can I

for G.o.d's sake come up and show you guys my orders?"

"Come up slow. Keep your hands where we can see them."

"Right."

They were office cops, very slow. Pierce dropped them without difficulty. He

took their pistols, serviceable Mallorys that scarcely showed when he tucked

them inside his shirt. He would have to hurry now.

Going through the door to the twenty-seventh floor, he found himself In a typing pool, rows of desks facing a supervisor's gla.s.s-walled office. A few of the typists looked up as he walked calmly to the supervisor's door. He knocked and entered.

"Sit down, ma'am. Would you mind, uh, opaquing the wall for a minute? This is

a confidential matter, I'm afraid. Thank you."

He leaned across the desk. His fingers reached out, curled around her neck, and his thumb pressed against her windpipe. She was a Latin-American of thirty or so, and she looked at him with stupefied horror.

"Where's Commissioner Gersen?"

"H-he's not here. He's not in Farallon City." Her eyes were round and focused tightly on him. "I swear, I swear."

"Where is he, then?"