05-A Gift From Earth (21 page)

Presently she said, "How did you get here, Matt?"

"Came to rescue you."

"You're not a Son of Earth."

"No."

"You could be a ringer. Harry's house was raided the night you came."

"That's highly ungrateful for a maiden in distress."

"I'm sorry." But her eyes were watchful and suspicious. She took her feet off the chair and rolled to sitting position on the floor. She was wearing an unfamiliar garment, like a playsuit, but made of soft, flimsy fabric. Her fingers had found a corner of the cloth and were playing with it, kneading it, pulling at it, rolling it, crumpling it. "I can't trust anything. I'm not even sure I'm not dreaming. Maybe I'm still in the box."

"Easy," he said, and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. "You'll get over — "

She snatched at his hand to hold it there, so quickly that he almost jerked away. Every move she made was exaggerated. "You don't know what it was like! They wrapped me up and put me away, and from then on, it was like being dead!" She was squeezing his hand, feeling the fingers and the nails and the knuckles, as if she'd never touched a human hand before. "I kept trying to remember things, and they were always just out of reach. It was — " She stuck, her larynx bobbing and her lips twitching without sound. Then she jumped at him.

She knocked him flat on his back and wrapped herself around him. It was nothing like affectionate. She clung to him as if she were drowning and he a floating log. "Hey," said Matt. "The gun. You knocked the gun away."

She didn't hear. Matt looked up at the door. It didn't move, and there were no ominous noises.

"It's all right," he said. "It's okay now. You're out." She had her face buried in the hollow of his shoulder, and she was moving against him. Her arms were tight around his chest with a grip of desperation. "You're out now." He massaged her neck and shoulder muscles, trying to do what Laney had done night before last.

The way she kept touching things, kneading them — he understood now. She was making sure they were real. The time in the coffin must have been worse than he could imagine. She must have lost all touch with reality, all her faith in the solidness of things outside that artificial womb. And so she ran her hands along his back, traced the lines of his shoulder blades and vertebrae with her fingertips; and so she moved against him with a sliding motion, with her toes, her thighs, her arms, her body--as if sensing, sensing with every square inch of skin ...

He felt himself coming alive in response. Trapdoors and curved metal walls, guns and Implementation police, ceased to matter at all. There was only Polly.

"Help me," she said, her voice muffled.

Matt rolled over onto her. The soft, flimsy looking fabric of her jumper tore like tissue. Fleetingly, Matt wondered why it was there at all. And that didn't matter either.

Presently Polly said, "Well. I'm real after all."

And Matt, drifting peacefully down from some far peak of Nirvana, asked, "Was that what you meant by help?"

"I didn't know what I meant. I needed
help
." She smiled slowly, with her eyes as well as her mouth. "Suppose it wasn't what I meant. Then what?"

"Then I've callously seduced you." He moved his head back a little to look her in the face. The change was incredible. "I was afraid you'd gone off the beam for good."

"So was I."

Matt glanced up at the trapdoor, then stretched to reach, for the sonic. Nirvana was over.

"You really came to rescue me?"

"Yah." He didn't mention Laney, not yet. No point in spoiling this moment.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome. We've still got to get out of here."

"You don't have any questions to ask me?"

What was she doing, testing him? Didn't she trust him now? Well, why should she? "No," he said, "no questions. But there are things I've got to tell you — "

She stiffened under him. "Matt.
Where are we?
"

"In the Hospital. Deep in the Hospital. But we can get out."

She rolled away and came to her feet in one smooth motion. "We're in one of the slowboats! Which one?"

"The
Planck
. Does it matter?"

She scooped the other guard's sonic stunner from his holster in what looked like a racing dive. "We can set off the fusion plant! Blow the Hospital and the crew into the void mist! Come on, Matt, let's get moving. Are there guards in the corridor? How many?"

"Set off — Are you out of your mind?"

"We'd wipe out the Hospital and most of Alpha Plateau." She picked up her ripped mock-playsuit and threw it down again. "I'll have to depants one of these police. And that'll be
it!
We'd win, Matt! All in one stroke!"

"What win? We'll be
dead!
"

She stood up with her hands on her hips and regarded him with disgust. Now she wore a pair of Implementation uniform pants too big for her. Matt had never seen anyone more thoroughly alive. "I'd forgotten. You aren't a Son of Earth. AL right, Matt, see how far you can get. You may be able to get out of range of the blast. Personally, I doubt it."

"I've got a personal interest in you. I didn't come all this way to have you commit suicide. You're coming with me."

Polly donned a guard's shirt, then hurriedly rolled up the pants, which were much too long. "You've done your duty. I'm not ungrateful, Matt, but we just aren't going in the same direction. Our motives aren't the same." She kissed him hard, pushed him back, and whispered, "I can't pass up this chance." She started for the ladder.

Matt blocked her way. "You haven't a prayer of getting anywhere without me. You're coming with me, and we're leaving the Hospital--if we get that far."

Polly hit him.

She hit him with stiffened fingertips just under the sternum, where the ribs make an inverted V. He doubled up, trying to curl around the pain, not yet trying to breathe, but gaping like a fish. He felt fingers at his throat and realized that she'd seen the gas filter and was taking it.

He saw her as a blur at the corner of his eye, climbing the ladder. He heard the door open, and a moment later, close. Slow fire was spreading through his lungs. He tried to draw air, and it hurt.

He'd never learned to fight. "The luck of Matt Keller" had made it unnecessary. Once he'd struck a guard on the point of the jaw. Where else would you hit somebody? And who'd guess that a slightly built girl could hit so hard?

Inch by inch he uncurled, straightened up. He drew his breath in shallow, painful sips. When the pain over his heart would let him move again, he started up the ladder.

Polly moved at a gliding run. The gas filter was in place over her nose. She held the sonic straight out ahead of her, pointed around the curve of the inner hull. If an enemy appeared, that was where he would be, right in the gunsight. Nobody would come at her from behind. She was moving too fast.

As one of the inner core of the Sons of Earth, Polly knew the
Planck
as well as she knew her own home. The flight control room was a diameter's distance from airlock. She ticked off the doors as she passed under them. Hydroponics ... Library ....

Flight Control. The door was closed. No ladder.

Polly crouched and sprang. She caught the handle at the top of her leap. The door was not locked; it was closed, because nobody ever used the flight control room. Unfortunately the door opened inward, upward. She dropped back, frustrated, landing silently on her toes.

If she'd chosen the fusion room ... but the fusion room was for fine control. There, the Hospital electricians kept power running to the colonist regions. She'd have run into people, and they might have stopped her.

The guard had carried a wallet.

She leapt again, caught the knob and turned it, pushed the wallet between the door and the jamb, where the catch of the lock ought to be. Again she dropped, and again she leapt. This time she slapped the flat of her hand hard against the door. It flipped upward ... and over.

Far down the curve of the corridor someone yelled, "What's going on down there?"

Polly's chest heaved, pulling deep lungfuls of air through her nose, under perfect control. She jumped a last time, caught the jamb, and pulled herself up. Heavy footsteps ... Before someone could come into sight, she had closed the door.

There was a ladder here, built into what had been the ceiling. Doubtless the
Planck
's original crew had used it to climb down from those six control chairs after the First Landing. Polly used it now.

She squirmed into the second seat on the left and found the control panel and the bypass. Part of the wall had been pried up, and a simple iron bar had been welded into place between two plates, removing control from the flight control room and giving it directly to the fusion room. In flight both control points had been necessary: the fusion room to keep the drive working and stable, and the flight control room to keep it pointed. Now the fusion drive was used only for making electricity. and Polly's control panel was dead.

She went down the ladder fast. There was a tool closet by the door. If it held a welding arc —

It did.

And if there was no anesthetic gas around — or if it wasn't inflammable —

Nothing exploded as she turned on the welder. She began welding the door shut.

Almost immediately she attracted attention. She could hear excited voices, muffled by the door. Then there was the faint numbness of a sonic beamer. The door didn't conduct subsonics well, but she couldn't take this long. Nonetheless she finished the welding job before she went back up the ladder.

She used the welding arc to cut away the bypass. It was slow work. Implementation would surely have barged in on her before she finished. Now they could whistle for entrance. She had all the time in the world. In their world.

Matt reached the corridor and began to walk, leaving the interrogation room open behind him. He walked bent, with his chest half collapsed and his arms folded over the pain. He'd forgotten to take the remaining sonic.

"I'm not the domineering type," he muttered, perversely enjoying the sound of his own voice. And, "Either that, or I'm trying to dominate the wrong woman."

A heavy figure came pounding around the curve. Jesus Pietro Castro, wearing a gas filter and carrying a heavy mercy-sliver gun, looked up in time to avoid a collision. He jerked to a stop, and then his mouth dropped open as he took in blue eyes, brown hair, a bitter and angry colonist's face, an ear with a small piece bitten out of it, and blood soaked into the collar of a crewish overjacket.

"You agree?" Matt said brightly.

Castro raised his gun. The "luck" was off.

And all the rage and humiliation in Matt broke loose. "All right," he yelled, "look at me! Damn you, look at me! I'm Matthew Keller."

The Head stared. He did not fire. He stared.

"I crashed my way into your crummy Hospital singlehanded, twice! I came through walls and void mist and sleepy gas and mercy bullets to rescue that damn woman, and when I got her loose, she punched me in the gut and folded me up like a flower! So go ahead and look!"

Castro looked and looked.

And finally Matt realized that he should have fired.

Castro swiveled his head from side to side in a negative motion. But his eyes never left Matt. And slowly, slowly, as if he were knee deep in hardening cement, he moved one slow step forward.

Abruptly Matt realized what was happening. "Don't look away," he said hastily. "Look at me." The Head was close enough now, and Matt reached out and pushed the barrel of the mercy-gun aside, still striving to hold Castro's eyes. "Keep looking."

They stared eye to eye. Above his bulky false nose, Castro's eyes were remarkable: all white and black, all whites and huge, expanded pupils, with practically no iris showing. His jaw hung loose under the snowy handlebar moustache. He was melting; the perspiration ran in slow streams into his collar. Like a man in an ecstasy of fear, or awe, or worship ... he stared.

Contract the pupils of eyes not your own, and you got psychic invisibility. Expand them, and you got ... what? Fascination?

For damn sure, he had the Head's complete attention. Matt drew back his fist, cocked it — and couldn't follow through. It would have been like attacking a cripple. Castro was a cripple: one of his arms was in a sling.

There was shouting from down the corridor, from the direction Polly had taken.

The Head moved another gluey step forward.

Too many enemies, before and behind. Matt slapped the gun out of Castro's hand, then turned and ran.

As he dropped through the door to the coffin room, he saw the Head still looking after him, still held in the strange spell. Then he pushed the door closed above him.

Polly cut the last of the bar away, and the control board came alight. She ran her eyes quickly over the lighted dials, then once more, slowly.

According to the control board, the fusion drive was as cold as Pluto's caves.

Polly whistled between her teeth. It was no malfunction of the board. The several dials checked each other too well. Someone had decided to black out the colony regions.

She couldn't start the drive from here. And she'd never reach the fusion room; she'd locked herself in with a vengeance.

If only this had been the
Arthur Clarke!
Castro would never dare cut power to the crew. The Clark's fusion plant must be going full blast.

Well, now, she thought in growing excitement. She slid out onto the ladder. There might be a way to reach the
Clarke ...
.

Jesus Pietro felt a hand shaking his shoulder. He turned and found Major Jansen. "What is it?"

"We've flooded the
Planck
with gas, sir. Everyone who wasn't warned should be unconscious, unless he's behind doors. I wish there weren't so many filters floating around, though. Whoever we're after has had too good a chance to pick one up."

"Good," said Jesus Pietro. He couldn't concentrate. He wanted to be alone, to think ... no, he didn't want to be alone ... "Carry on," he said. "Try the coffin room. He may be in there."

"He isn't. Or if he is, there's more than one traitor. Somebody's in the flight control room, welded in. It's a good thing the fusion plant is off."

"Get him out. But try the coffin room, too."

Major Jansen moved off in the direction of all the commotion. Jesus Pietro wondered what he'd find when he finally looked in the coffin room. Had Keller's ghost really gone in there, or had he faded out while running up the corridor? Jesus Pietro wasn't sure.

But he was sure of the ghost.

He would never in his life forget those eyes. Those binding, blinding, paralyzing eyes. They would haunt him the rest of his life ... however many minutes that might be. For surely the ghost didn't intend to let him go now.

His handphone rang. Jesus Pietro picked it off his belt and said, "The Head."

"Sir, we're getting some very strange reports," said the voice of Miss Lauessen. "A large number of cars are converging on the Hospital. Someone claiming to represent the Council is accusing you of treason."

"Me? Of treason?"

"Yes, sir." Miss Lauessen sounded strange. And she kept calling him Sir.

"What grounds?"

"Shall I find out, sir?"

"Yes. And order them to land outside the defense perimeter. If they don't, set patrol cars on them. It's obviously the Sons of Earth." He clicked off and immediately thought,
But where did they all come from? And where did they get the cars?

And he thought,
Keller?

His handphone buzzed.

Miss Lauessen's voice had turned plaintive — almost querulous. "Sir, the fleet of cars is led by Millard Parlette. He accuses you of malfeasance and treason, and he orders you to give yourself up for trial."

"He's gone insane." Jesus Pietro tried to think. It was all coming at once. Was this why Keller had appeared to him, shown himself at last? No mysterious symbols, this time; no invisible breaking of fingers. Keller's eyes ... "Try to land the old man without hurting him. The other cars too. Order them to set their cars on autopilot. Tell them they won't be hurt. Give them one minute; then knock them out with sonics."

"I hesitate to remind you, sir, but Millard Parlette is your superior officer. Will you give yourself up?"

Then Jesus Pietro remembered that Miss Lauessen was almost pure crew. Did her veins carry Parlette blood? It was reputedly easy to come by. He said the only thing he could.

"No."

The phone cut off, cut him off from the Hospital switchboard and from the world outside.

He'd gone off half-cocked, and be knew it. Somehow Polly's blow in the belly had made him want to die. He'd stumbled out into the corridor to be captured.

Not this time. He scooped up the remaining sonic and started for the ladder. This time he'd know just what he was doing when he went through that door.

But why go through it at all? The thought stopped him at the foot of the ladder. If Polly was going to blow the drive —

No, she'd never get that far. And she'd had all the rescuing she was entitled to. It was time to think about escape. He looked up at the exit — and shivered.

Some escape hatch. The moment he poked his head out there, somebody would shoot at it. He had to see his enemy to use the "luck," and he couldn't see in all directions at once.

Yet, this room was no place to stand off a siege. All anyone would have to do would be to fire mercy-needles down toward the floor. If he looked before he fired, the "luck" would get him; but that statement applied to an ordinary sonic stunner. And so he wouldn't look.

He had to get out.

But — Castro's nose piece. It meant Implementation was using gas. The corridor must be already full of it.

Too many things to think about! Matt cursed and began going through a guard's pockets. The guard stirred and tried to strangle Matt with limp fingers. Matt played the sonic over them both, then finished his search. Neither guard had a gas filter.

Matt looked up at the door. He could chance it, of course, but if there was gas in the corridor, only that airtight door was protecting him now. It had to be airtight, of course.

Get to another room? There were the doors leading to what must be bedrooms. But they were halfway up the walls and too far from the ladder.

And there, just under the exit, was a small door placed where any good apartment would have a coat closet. He might be able to reach it.

It wasn't a coat closet, of course. It held two spacesuits.

And it wasn't easy to reach. Matt had to lean far out from the ladder to turn the knob, let the door fall open, and then jump for the opening. Leaving the cubbyhole would be just as bad when the time came.

Spacesuits. They had hung on hooks; now they sprawled on the floor like empty men. Thick rubbery fabric, with a heavy metal neck-ring set with clamps to hold the separate helmet. Metal struts in the fabric braced the rocket backpack and the control unit under the chin.

Would the air converter still work? Ridiculous, after three hundred years. But there might still be air in the tank. Matt found a knob in the control panel of one suit, twisted it, and got a hiss.

So there was still stored air. The suit would protect him against gas. And the big fishbowl of a helmet would not interfere with his vision, nor his "luck."

He snatched up the gun when the door to the corridor dropped open. A long moment later two legs came into sight of the ladder. Matt played the sonic over them. A man grunted in surprise and toppled into view, and down.

A voice of infinite authority spoke. "You! Come out of there!"

Matt grinned to himself. Quietly he put the gun aside and reached for the suit. A wave of dizziness made the world go dreamy. He'd been right about the gas.

He turned the air knob on full and put his head through the neck ring. He took several deep breaths, then held his breath while he slid feet first into the suit.

"You haven't got a chance! Come on out or we'll come in after you!"

Do that
. Matt pulled the helmet over, his head and resumed breathing. The dizziness was passing, but he had to move carefully. Especially since the suit was a size too, small for him.

The door dropped open suddenly, and there was a spattering of mercy-slivers. A snarling face and a hand came into view, the hand firing a mercy-gun. Matt shot at the face. The man slumped, head down, but he didn't fall; someone pulled him up out of sight by his ankles.

The air in the suit had a metallic smell thick enough to cut. Matt wrinkled his nose. Anyone else would have been satisfied with one escape from the Hospital. Who but Lucky Matt Keller would have-