They Also Serve: A Jump Universe Novel Part 12

Harry's place was blessedly still there, and easy for Jeff to spot. His yard was a blend of hearty earth plants and various local bushes he'd collected in his travels. Kat eased to a halt before the rambling two-story. Jeff was out before she'd brought the mule to a complete stop; he trotted up the gravel walk and took the four steps to the porch two at a time. He knocked softly.

After a minute he rapped louder. The house was dark, as was every other house they'd driven by. Not even a porch light?

Jeff glanced up. Streetlights were visible with his goggles; they did not burn. Jeff stepped back, checking the windows. Someone peeked out an upper one. He pointed at it, and the curtains slipped shut. Jeff went back to the door, knocked once, then began beating a slow, insistent tattoo.

Finally the door opened a crack. "Who are you?"

Jeff didn't recognize the face. He pulled the night goggles up. As he opened his mouth, it dawned on him that for the first time in his life, his name might not open doors. "h.e.l.lo, I'm a friend of Harry's. I need to talk to him."

"Harry doesn't need friends like you," he heard, but the door opened wider. Harry stood behind the man at the door. He rested a restraining hand on the younger man's hand, the one holding a baseball bat.

"Come on in, Jeff. Who are your friends?"

"Starfolks. Can they come in?"

"Sure, sure." Harry waved in his open, friendly way. Kat did something to the mule's steering, then trotted up the walk. Du followed her, walking backward, rifle at eye level, the barrel sweeping wide, in sync with his eyes. Even if Kat hadn't told him, Jeff would have known it now; Du scared people.

Jeff and company slipped through the door to be pointed toward the back of the house. Using his night goggles, Jeff had no trouble following the hall back to Harry's study. In it, a small candle burned, throwing fitful light over a collection of books and rocks. On the couch, a woman huddled, arms around two children. She gasped as Du entered the room.

Du took it in stride. He glided to the back window and took a long look out. "Sorry, ma'am. I have that effect on people." He turned to Kat. "Looks clear. Somebody want to update me on the situation?"

Jeff was a veteran of too many of Vicky's pushy binges; he knew how to push back. The quiet tone of Du's voice left him with a uncontrollable compulsion to please the man.

"Your sister announced layoffs yesterday morning," the young man said. "No warning, no idea when anyone might be called back. Rumor is she's been building up product in the warehouses to meet two or three months of demand. Now, with her wanting copper, who knows how long it will last."

"She also said she wouldn't release paychecks until the end of the month," the young woman said, "and then they'll be short."

"Vicky was always the milk of human kindness," Jeff drawled. "What did she expect people to do?"

Harry's mouth lifted in a bent smile. "There were buses to take protesters to Refuge, to demand the Great Circle immediately abolish aluminum coins."

"Did many go?" Kat asked.

"Some," the young man said, the baseball bat still in his hand. "I don't think half of the buses were filled. Me, I called Dad and asked if we could move in. He said yes, so I spent the time lugging our stuff over here."

"Why'd you move?" Du asked.

"I don't know." The man looked at his wife. "Greens say we're making a mess of this world. Street preachers say the end is coming. People getting more and more twitchy. Our apartment complex was right next to a shopping center. Food stores, small shops, and a liquor store. It got broken into. Then the others. Somehow they started burning."

"You figured on trouble," Kat said.

Both young people nodded, eyes on their sleeping children. "It's been coming since last year," Harry told Jeff, "when your sister took to paying everyone in aluminum. Prices went up. Wages didn't. There're hungry people on those streets, son."

"And sis didn't see this coming!"

"Maybe she did. Maybe she thought she could aim it at something she wanted taken down. You can never tell with her."

"And you can never tell her anything. Less lately," Jeff concluded. "Harry, I got some people here who need your help."

Kat quickly ran down their discovery of the planet's unusual flora and fauna...and the strange impact it was having on the humans. "We really need to know this planet's natural history. Jeff said you might be able to tell us something."

"I didn't think it was like this on other planets." The old man enjoyed his vindication for a moment. Even as he did, he was searching his bookshelf for binders, notebooks, and rock samples. "I keep a complete backup," he said, flourishing a box of disks. "It's yours."

Kat took the offered box. "We'd like you to come, too."

"I can't leave my family."

"Dad, if anybody saw these people come here tonight, Jeff and them, maybe you'd better be gone."

"Harold, but what about us?" the woman asked from the couch. "The way people are..." she trailed off. The young man looked from his wife and children to his father, lips tightly pursed.

The old man shook his head. "I can't leave them."

Du frowned. "Kat, these people can't stand against whatever is out there. Can we take them?"

"With the automated plants up, there ought to be jobs for them. Harry, my people really need to talk to you. I'll take the whole lot of you as a package deal."

Without a second word, the father lifted a child of six from the couch. The wife hoisted another of maybe three. Jeff helped Harry with a box of rocks. After snuffing out the candle, Du trailed them through the house, Kat just ahead of him, the disks in one hand. A small automatic had appeared in the other.

Jeff pushed the front door open, then held it wide as Harry and his family went through. He followed them, leaving the door to Kat-and came to a dead halt on the porch.

Around the mule, a crowd of thirty people milled. Several had clubs, two torches. "I told you I saw Jeffie Baby right here in our neighborhood. Come to visit his old friend, didn't he?" That brought murmurs of agreement, and a shout that they should have burned them out with the others. The son and wife recoiled against Jeff and Harry. Kat interposed herself to Jeff's left.

The mob started forward-and froze in midstride.

Du came around Harry, rifle held high. Du pulled the arming bolt back; it recoiled into place with a well-oiled ratcheting sound. The rifle rested easy on Du's hip. He eyed the mob; confronted by coiled death in black, the crowd stepped back.

"These people, and their home"-Du raised his chin to the house behind him-"are under my protection." The goggled, insectoid eyes moved over the crowd as if recording their faces. "You don't want anything to happen to it. Understand?"

Heads nodded.

"Now, if you'll move away from the truck..."

People stared at the mule, as if seeing it for the first time. Those nearest quickly took two steps back, then, once in motion, seemed to think well of the idea and kept going. In a moment the street was empty, two torches guttering out.

"I told you," Kat said, moving toward the rig, "you're good at what you do. Everybody into the car."

Du glanced at Kat and nodded. "I guess I am." He glided from the porch to the car, like a shadow at home in the night. Opening one door, he helped Harry and his family into the backseat. A lot of humanity crammed itself into not enough s.p.a.ce.

Jeff measured the front seat and weighed the prospects of walking over to the mansion to borrow a cycle. Du shoved him into the seat, then stood between his legs, holding on to the front window. "Move us out, Kat," he ordered.

She did a quick U-turn, gunned the engine, and zoomed through the twisting streets at double the speed they'd come in. Here and there something moved among the bushes and trees that lined the road. Nothing got in their way.

Ray let Ca.s.sie explain how they would help Refuge; if he did any talking, he'd bite off heads. Lek was already down the hall, setting up a command post. While two s.p.a.cers installed the borrowed stuff, local technicians strung cable from where the archives still smoldered. Until recently it had served as the central hub of what pa.s.sed for a local government network. All workstations available were being moved to Lek's command post.

At a screen in front of the room Ca.s.sie launched into an examination of the techniques of crowd control used by Humanity. "Rifles can disburse large crowds quickly," she told the gathered leaders of Refuge, then added dryly, "however, they have the unfortunate side effect of leaving dead bodies and angry memories in their wake. We don't want to go there." Most nodded.

"I don't know," came from the back. "They burn a building down, beat up some old folks. Why be nice to them? A bullet will get their attention real quick and keep it." Hum, maybe Ray and the rioters weren't the only ones feeling itchy.

Ms. San Paulo turned. "Gaspier, that might solve today's problem, but it would hardly help tomorrow's. We must take the long view."

"We take too long a view, and we won't be in it."

"Go on, Ca.s.sie," Ms. San Paulo overspoke the rejoinder.

Ca.s.sie started a familiar video. Good lord, Ray remembered it from his Academy days. Well, mobs hadn't changed much in twenty years. Why should mob control? The day had been long and hard. The room was hot after the cool night air. Ray let himself nod off; this he could sleep through.

Ray was in a room, arms tied painfully behind him. The light of a single, unshaded bulb glared down, giving him a headache. The rest of the room was dark. Ray closed his eyes to save them from the glare. Something stopped him; his eyes shot open. Two beefy men, sleeves rolled up, stood before him. One had a length of rubber hose. He raised it again.

"Where is he?" the hose wielder growled.

"Who?" Ray croaked.

"The Gardener. Where is he?"

"The Gardener," Ray echoed. "We talked. He told me stuff."

"What stuff?"

With the rubber hose hanging over him, Ray couldn't remember a word. "I don't know. Just stuff. Nice stuff. He wanted me to know stuff. Feel things," Ray said, remembering.

"The Gardener was not the Teacher. He was just a Gardener. Where is he?" The rubber hose came down.

Ray came awake with a start. Surrounded by strangers, he glanced up, confused, afraid. And spotted Ca.s.sie. Ray shook himself fully awake, made a mental note never to fall asleep when police films were on tap, and rose to visit the rest room while the video finished. Cane tapping on the marble floor, Ray shivered. His unconscious mind was having a field day. Now he recalled the old crime holovid his mind had dredged that scene from. If ever he needed a reason to stay awake in briefings, nightmares like that would do it.

Back in the room, Ca.s.sie was showing slides of the latest in riot fashion: helmets, face protectors, shields, leg protectors, rubber clubs. Standing at the door, Ray found himself with a new att.i.tude toward clubs. Suddenly they looked a lot more persuasive than he usually credited them.

"Looks like a hockey uniform," one official opined.

"That's great! We run around to all the athletic clubs, mooching their uniforms. We gonna borrow the players, too?"

"Why not? We need more people on the riot line. You saw the star woman's charts. Have so many riot police that the mob is afraid to riot. Last year, at the flood, we had plenty of volunteers stuffing sandbags."

"That was last year. How many of the guys out on the streets are hockey club members?" Ray listened to the voices go back and forth, like storm-tossed waves around a rock-strewn coast. This was more like the meetings he'd attended on Wardhaven, full of sound and fury, going nowhere.

"Mr. Amba.s.sador," Ms. San Paulo cut in, "where might we get shields like those? Or helmets?"

"We make them from ceramics, but we'll need feedstock. We've been hitting the locals around our base pretty heavily."

"We'll give you whatever support we can," Ms. San Paulo a.s.sured him, to doubtful faces from about half of her circle. Lek appeared at the door beside Ray. Conversation ceased.

"I've got the com center started," Lek announced. "Your folks can take it from here. We saw some blimps at the field. They'd make good observation platforms with a radio and camera aboard. I don't want to send crews out to install security cameras on the roads until I can provide them overhead support. Can we use a blimp or two?"

Ms. San Paulo glanced around the room. "You can have all of them for now. Haven and the Covenanters have halted all travel from the Refuge-Richland area until we regain control. Personally, I think they have problems of their own and do not want to admit it. The blimps are available. Use them."

"We'll also use a few to run between here and the base," Ray added. "The shuttle's fuel is limited."

Lek dismissed himself; Ray followed him. "What's going on here? People who filled sandbags last year are rioting this year. Was it really that nice before? What's changed? You get us into their news archives?"

"Done, boss. Feed's being squirted direct to base. A middie's already mining it." Ray sent Lek on his way. Back in the room, the meeting was breaking up into acrimonious debate. About what he expected of politicians. After five more minutes of it, San Paulo tabled all issues pending a good night's sleep-as if anyone there was likely to get one-and suspended the Circle until ten o'clock tomorrow.

Ca.s.sie came up beside Ray. "Colonel, I'll make the rounds of the guard posts. I saw you nodding off during the video. You didn't look any better after your catnap. If Mary was here, she'd push you straight for a bed. If you don't do it for me, she'll be kicking my a.s.s next time she sees me."

Ray started to tell Ca.s.sie to mind her own d.a.m.n business. Only twenty years of hard discipline, twenty years of harder-earned leadership held him in check. And that by a thin string.

Hen cackled from one clump of knotheads to another. His time would be better spent getting some shut-eye. Ray turned away, letting Ca.s.sie edge him down the hall to a small clinic that had been turned into a dorm. Ca.s.sie's troops had laid bedrolls in the aisles between high-raised hospital-type beds. Ray had a room to himself. He didn't take his boots off; tonight he'd better be ready to straighten out any screwup that came his way. Laying back in the bed, he closed his eyes.

And was back in the counsel room. Only this time, the room was vast, stretching out in all directions. The table seemed to have no end, either. Gathered around it were thousands, maybe a million men, all wearing the same gray robe. All with the same white hair. All with the same solemn face-identical in nose, mouth, eyes. One turned to Ray. "Where is the Gardener? He was here a short while ago. He sent a message. We have come in response to it. He is not here. Where is he?"

Ray did not want a repeat of his last dream. "He was here today when he last spoke to me. Where he is now, I don't know."

"If you do not know, we will teach you." The robed one frowned and turned back to the table. Ray himself frowned at that confused and confusing answer. Ignored and offered no explanation, Ray wandered down the table, studying each council member, if that was what they were. This had to be a dream. He'd had some dillies lately; here was another.

On close review, the people seated at the table were not identical. Their robes, though uniformly cut and blandly gray, showed different wear patterns. Some were quite worn, others almost new. A few were patched, and rather poorly at that. One man was missing an arm. Interesting. Alike, but not alike.

One of the robed ones raised a hand. A server in white wig and tight pants, a costume Ray had seen on the concierge staff of very expensive hotels, appeared, an empty tray held high in one hand. The two exchanged words in a whisper; then a silver cup appeared on the tray and the server offered it to the robed one with a flourish, then stepped back. Interesting way of doing things, Ray observed about this dream. He sidled up to the server. "Who are all these?"

The attendant eyed him, conveying in one haughty glance both dismay at his ignorance and his presence. "You were poorly prepared. This is the Teacher."

Ray noted the use of the singular for this very expansive group-and the expectation that he should know all this.

Ray pressed on. "What do they teach?"

"All that is known and knowable," the servant answered without looking away from his masters.

Ray didn't like the sound of that. Somehow he could not picture Kat ever accepting that her professors knew everything there was to know. "And who do they teach?"

Another sidelong glance, dripping with disdain for such an obvious question. "The Three, of course."

The Three, Ray echoed to himself. Before he could form a question, visions of cities and planets began to play in his head. They had a familiar feel to them. He'd seen them with the Gardener. He knew, without question, that he was seeing, remembering, the salient facts about the Three. One of the robed ones turned from the table. "Where is the Gardener?"

Ray weighed the question. Did it come from a teacher or the Teacher? He'd already said he didn't know where the Gardener was. Ray reran the final scene in the cave. "I guess he died," Ray said slowly. "At least that was what it looked like. He seemed to be falling to pieces. Old age. He said it had never happened to him before. I think he died."

"Died?" The word fell from the lips of the robed one as if it had no content.

"Yes. It appeared his existence came to an end."

"That is not possible," his interrogator said, looking Ray up and down. "There must be something wrong with your education. You should have spent more time in your studies." Their eyes locked. Ray looked deep into them, seemed to fall into them. He was in school. Not at the Academy, but a school that embraced an entire planet. A school that taught all there was to know or could be known. A school that...

Ray came awake with a start, heart pounding, mouth dry. Teeth clenched, he wanted to hit something. Instead, he checked his wrist unit; it was two in the morning. He lay back, waiting for his heart to slow, willing his body to relax. The itch he'd felt on the drive in was stronger now. He wanted to...what? Hit something? Burn something? Run riot through the streets? Oh, yes, he was definitely in the mood.

His bladder had its own needs. He made the required pilgrimage to the facilities down the hall, stepping over sleeping troops. Done, Ray weighed his alternatives for the night, then splashed cold water on his face, waking himself fully. He did not want to sleep again, not if it meant revisiting some of the places his sleep had taken him of late. Not if it meant letting loose whatever it was that he seemed to share with the rioters. He'd always prided himself on his iron control; tonight was no time to lose it. He tapped his commlink.

Lek answered. "Aren't you up early, Colonel?"

"Aren't you up late?"

"Just finished installing cameras and comm gear on three blimps. Rigged two with the solar arrays and fuel cells I stripped out of Mule One. That'll keep 'em up twenty-four hours a day. It's been a busy night."