The Empire Of Time Part 7

to distract the Copos long enough for Gordon to get his message out. You're armed."

"Badly. This pistol's almost empty."

"We'll get you a better one. But I hope you won't have to use it."

She led him out of the house into the huge backyard. Some redwood patio furniture stood near a brick barbecue. The uncut gra.s.s stretched a hundred meters behind the house, where the woods began abruptly. Pierce could see men in camouflage uniforms moving through the trees with the quiet deliberation of professionals. They were coming toward the house.

"Let's sit down for a minute," Anita said.

Chapter Six.

The Copos' approach was hideously loud to Pierce's heightened hearing. He sat, legs crossed, in an uncomfortable deck chair. The Smith and Wesson's b.u.t.t grew warm in his pocket as he held it. It was uncharacteristic of him to let anyone else take the lead in a fight, but Anita IKosi evidently knew exactly what she was doing.

It became still. Without looking directly at the woods, Pierce could see the men -probably a full squad of ten-were searching for cover just inside the edge of the woods.

Suddenly he noticed a small commotion: thumps, cracklings. Pierce saw some of the Copos collapse.

"They're all out cold," Anita told him. "Quick-go grab a rifle from one of them."

He sprinted across the yard and into the trees. The nearest Copo was then-sergeant, a huge Black man sprawled on his back. Pierce lifted the KG-15 rifle from the man's slack hand. The rifle was fully loaded with a clip of drugged flechettes, but the impact setting was a very lethal 10. A half-second burst from it would have blown Pierce and Anita to pieces. Pierce was about to dispatch the entire squad when he heard Anita call out a single word: "No."

He sighed and ran back across the yard. She was standing up, but seemed exhausted. When she spoke again, her voice was half-slurred.

"I couldn't stand ten deaths all at once."

"What the h.e.l.l did you do to them?"

"Like Shih and his men-induced paralysis. They couldn't breathe, and pa.s.sed out. But I can't... keep doing it. Need rest..."

Pierce heard a jeep rolling to a stop out near the front of the house. Dense shrubs stood between Cole's house and its neighbors. Pierce would have to slip through them in order to ambush the men in the street. He pulled Anita with him, and they crawled through until, by gently parting the branches, they could see out to the street.

The Toyota still stood at the curb, but its rear tires were flat. Fifty meters down the street, he could see a Copo armored jeep parked. Its windshield was down,. and a rifle muzzle jutting over the hood was trained on Cole's front door. The jeep's radio buzzed and spluttered. Evidently the jeep's occupants had found the Toyota, disabled it, and then called for a.s.sistance. In moments, the area would be crawling with police.

"Can you do anything to those guys?"

She shook her head; her eyes were dull.

He cursed. "We need that jeep. Be ready to run when I bring it up the street."

She did not ask questions or argue. Pierce checked the clip, turned the impact setting to 4, stepped out of the bushes, and opened fire.

The Copos were much too slow to react. The KG-15 sprayed ten flechettes per second through the jeep's open windshield. The Copo rifle dropped with a clatter onto the hood.

Crouching low, Pierce raced across the broad, empty lawns to the jeep. He yanked open the driver's door. A young Copo toppled out, four flechettes imbedded in his face. His partner, the sniper, was also unconscious. Pierce considered stashing them in the Toyota. No time. Instead, he dragged both of them into the street and left them there, then jumped behind the wheel, lurched up to Cole's house, and slammed on the brakes. Anita ran out and climbed in. Pierce could hear the sibilant flutter of a helicopter overhead.

"What about Gordon?" Pierce asked, almost breathless.

"He's still encoding the message," she responded.

"Well, he'd better hurry. We're getting out of here."

With no real destination yet in mind, Pierce drove to the next intersection and turned left. The jeep's windows were made of one-way gla.s.s; they pa.s.sed several Copos on foot, who waved casually as the jeep rolled on by. A small dog chased them, barking furiously.

"They're in the house," Anita suddenly announced.

"Who?"

"The Copos. Gordon can hear them-pounding on the door, the study door. The ca.s.sette's not ready, the Screen isn't on... Oh. OH!"

She covered her face with her hands.

"What is it?"

"He's dead. Just like Shih. They must've gotten into the room-Gordon knew he was caught-then a horrible pain in his chest, and nothing. He had a self-destruct."

She began to cry, like a frightened child. Pierce kept driving. He was scared and upset, but also somewhat amused at himself. The most alarming aspect of this business was the report he would have to write when it was all over.

They reached the road out to Oppenheimer Field, and Pierce swerved the jeep onto it. He switched on the radio and listened for a minute to the chatter of messages back and forth, about them. To add to the Copos' confusion, he contributed a few false reports of his own. He was a good mimic, and each report was relayed in a different voice. Then, to avoid being spotted by RDF, he switched off.

"We've got to get word back to Earth," Anita said unsteadily.

"All the I-Screens will be guarded. Gersen might even shut down all traffic, just to make sure we don't send someone else through." He smiled wryly. "Not that we have much to tell. Wigner will want some hard facts before he sends in the Gurkhas."

"Perhaps we can get something at Mojave Verde, some of my colleagues are still working on Sherlock-" "No. We're going to Farallon City."

"What? But there's no time-"

"We just have to. I've got to get to Gersen." He knew for sure now that he had to kill Gersen; whatever Sherlock might turn out to be, Gersen's death would stall it. "Trust me, ma'am. I know what I'm doing."

He turned on the radio again, this time to a regular broadcast wavelength.

"-repeat, Dr. Eugene Younger, Director of the Weapons Development Site, was murdered early this morning by an employee of the Agency for Intertemporal Development named Gerald Pierce. Colonial Police spokespersons say they have no motive for the brutal slaying, but expect to arrest Pierce at any moment. He is believed to be somewhere in Los Alamitos and should be considered armed and extremely dangerous. Police describe him as a white male, mid-thirties, height about one hundred eighty centimeters, weight seventy-five to eighty kilos, short brown hair, cleanshaven, last seen wearing a brown duffel coat Anyone seeing a man meeting this description is urged to contact Colonial Police headquarters. We repeat-"

They were nearly at the airfield, driving fast on the deserted road. As they rounded a curve, Pierce saw a black Ford sedan parked on the opposite shoulder, facing them. A man, obviously a plainclothes Copo, stepped out of the sedan, raised an old-fashioned bullet-ruing .45. Steadying himself against the car door and holding the pistol in both big hands, the Copo fired. The windshield cracked loudly, but held. Pierce steered straight for the man, accelerating.

"Don't kill him! "

"I won't." But even as the Copo dived over the hood of the sedan, and the jeep skidded back into its own lane, Pierce realized he could not-after that command -have killed the man. He glanced at Anita, and met her gaze. There was an excruciating pain in her eyes, and grief; but there was also a power in them to which only an idiot would not defer.

The gateway to Oppenheimer Field had been shut. As they approached, three Copos fired on them through the gate's wire mesh, to no effect.

"Hang on," Pierce ordered, and they crashed through the gate. Flechettes spattered on the windows like bugs. A field attendant, with more courage than brains, drove a baggage train across the jeep's path, and Pierce narrowly missed him. Then they were out on the main runway, racing for a row of hangars.

The first hangar was empty; the second held a medium-range Mitsubishi M120 with its starboard engine dismantled. In the third hangar stood a Cessna C60. Pierce drove right inside under its wing and jumped out. The smell of jet fuel was pleasantly strong.

Three men in ground-crew coveralls were standing near the hangar's rear wall, staring out over their coffee mugs. They were well away from anything that might be a weapon, but Pierce was taking no chances and shot all three at low impact. They cried out, more in fear than in pain, then collapsed.

"Pull out the chocks," he called to Anita. As she did so, he sprang up the gangway and into the Cessna's tiny cabin. A sour-faced technician was rising from the pilot's seat as Pierce shot her. The seconds ticked away in his mind as he carried her out. It seemed to take a long time before he and Anita were in the c.o.c.kpit- alone.

She helped him through a hasty preflight checkout, and he started the engines. The Cessna taxied out into the noon sunshine; Pierce steered for the nearest runway. He glanced over at the terminal building. A small crowd had gathered on the observation deck. No doubt quite an uproar was taking place behind the green gla.s.s of the control-tower windows. But there were no Copos visible. Pierce studied the white bulb of the radome, which gave the control tower an oddly Russian look. Then he pointed the Cessna down the runway and poured on power. They were in the air very quickly.

"We've made it!" Anita sighed, relieved.

"Not quite. Not yet" He put them into a steep climb as he mentally reviewed everything he knew about the plane he was flying. It was a tough, reliable subsonic, designed for short-range flights and sensible pilots. He was about to stress it badly.

They climbed west, out over the coast, until they reached an alt.i.tude of two thousand meters and began to circle. Los Alamitos looked very small, a little geometric s.p.a.ce carved out of a green-and-beige wilderness. There was considerable traffic below on the road to Oppenheimer Field, and Pierce could see the regular fluttering glint of a helicopter's rotors as it circled the terminal building. The radome stood out vividly. Pierce tilted the Cessna's nose down and put on power. Anita seemed nervous.

"I've got to blind them," he explained.

Their dive steepened as they accelerated, and the field grew larger again. The helicopter hovered near the terminal, evidently preparing to land. It was a Copo craft.

Anita understood what he planned, and rested a hand on his arm. "Please-some will be killed."

"Stop me, then, and we'll be killed."

She made no response.

The plane had pa.s.sed the speed of sound as it swept within two hundred meters of the control tower. The shock wave shattered the radome, blew in the control-tower windows, and knocked the helicopter off balance. It slammed into the asphalt and burst into flame.

Pierce regained just enough alt.i.tude to bring them over the Santa Monica Mountains. The nearest aircraft that could track or catch them were the fighters based at Mojave Verde. By the time they could be alerted, the Cessna would be long gone. He began to relax.

"In real life I'm a mild-mannered reporter for the New Ore Times." He grinned and looked over at Anita. Her face was a nightmare mask of agony.

"Get away, shut them out, get away, get away, they're dying so slowly-"

Pierce felt his self-congratulation turn sour. He had to protect this woman, but doing so half destroyed her. They flew on in silence for a few minutes, until she gradually relaxed.

"You'd better tell me more of what's going on," he finally said.

"Oh, shut up." She reached out blindly and grasped his hand. Her breathing was

harsh. "I'm sorry. I feel better now. They're out of range. Poor people. Poor suffering people!"

"You seem to be some kind of telepath."

"A clumsy word. It's less than that-and more. I can sense emotions, kinesthesia

-especially strong feelings in people I know. And, as you've found out, I can influence others."

"By some kind of direct stimulation of their nervous systems."

"Yes. I did it with Shih and his men. And with the Copos in the forest. But projecting is hard. So hard." She looked half drugged; her eyes were heavy- lidded, her voice slurred. "I can't do any more. Not for a day or two. Need rest."

"But you can still receive?"

"Mm. Yes, oh, yes. We never lose that. Sometimes it's like-like having your eyes taped open in a room full of spotlights.""We? Others can do this as well?""All of us. Everyone in the family.""The psychologists must know."

"No. We agreed at the very beginning to keep that much secret."

Pierce laughed without amus.e.m.e.nt. "Concealing anything from them is a better trick than reading minds. You realize such a talent can't be kept secret any longer? I'll have to inform the Agency. It's too important."

"Well, well see."

Pierce had an unpleasant suspicion: she might be able to erase his knowledge of her abilities, and might well do so if she could work out a plausible cover story. Well, he had enough to worry about.

"You really are the people of the future, aren't you?"

"Oh my. We've tried so hard to live that down." Pierce recalled that when the IKosis had first been discovered in South Africa on Luvah, they had been identified as Boskopoids, ancestors of the modern Bushmen. Someone had remembered an old essay by an American anthropologist named Eiseley, who had pointed out how closely the Boskopoids had resembled the stereotype of future mankind: big-brained, small-bodied, baby-faced people. The IKosis' talents had strengthened the idea. Their IQs were unmeasurably high; they were all Trainables, even the adults. Pierce was beginning to suspect that the Testing teams had probably been manipulated by the IKosis, since adults were normally never even considered for Testing. For a year or two the popular media had been full of articles about the Boskopoids as h.o.m.o superior, despite the unarguable fact that they had died out as a distinct group on all chronoplanes uptime from Luvah.

"No it's true," Pierce insisted. "You're the next step up from us. Your brains, your talents-"

"If you were an educated man, and not merely a Trained one, you wouldn't say that. There's no progress in evolution, only response to change. We're just a mutant strain, and our mutations lead nowhere."

Pierce looked confused.

"Our talents, as you call them, are a curse. You've seen what it does to me to be near a wounded or dying person. It's almost more than one can bear. We can even share the feelings of animals-that's why we were grubbers of roots when your people found us. For us, even birth is terrible. The whole family shares the mother's pain-mother and baby share each other's pain. We share our joys, too, and they're very great, but our sorrows..."

They flew in silence for a time, north on an irregular zigzag course into San Joaquin Valley.

"So you knew all about us, right from the first contact with the Testing and Recruiting teams."

"Sooner. We were aware of them a few days before that first visit In fact, we followed the team. We shared their feelings, looked at our world through their eyes. It's hard to describe. But we knew them, we knew what they were looking for, and we knew somehow that we had what they wanted. Then we went away from them, to decide what to do. We went to one of our holy places, a little lake by the Orange River. We thought our G.o.ds would tell us what to do. Instead, the holy place seemed just a deserted little lake, and nothing more. The rock paintings we had made there seemed stupid and childish, not sacred."

She paused for a moment. "We were so wretched. Our world didn't mean anything to us, any more, so we had to come to yours." Her voice turned cold and bitter. "And among the many things we've learned since then, we've learned that our sensitivity will vanish in the end and that our descendants will be the luckier for it."