Buck Rogers 2 - That Man on Beta (6 page)

Uncountable metal filing cabinets stood about, lay on the floor, hung at precarious angles. Some were open, some rusted shut, some still obviously full, others with their contents strewn wildly across the dust-laden marble floor.

Buck stumbled around the room, stunned by the experience. He stopped, lifted a crumbling document, tossed it aside and seized another, “My God,” he muttered, “it looks like . . . a holocaust.”

“It was,” the girl agreed. “This is the heritage of the great holocaust.”

“What happened?” Buck asked.

“I don’t know,” the girl shook her head. Through the caked dust and straggly curls, she managed somehow to have the beauty of childhood’s innocence. “The holocaust was hundreds of years ago,” she went on. “We know that there was a terrible destruction and plague visited upon us—or our ancestors. But no one is old enough to remember what happened, and the tales we are told do not tell either.”

Buck smiled grimly. “Some of us are
too
old to remember,” he said, more to himself than to the child. “Well”—he picked up another file, then cast it aside—“there’s nothing here newer than 1988. There’s nothing here that can help me.”

Suddenly a mellow, yet oddly mechanical voice was heard. “I told you you’d find nothing.”

The girl jumped, startled.

Buck whirled and saw the robot Twiki with Dr. Theopolis suspended around his metallic neck. “What are you doing here?” Buck demanded. “I thought you were guarding the car.”

“There’s no one out there, no danger, Buck. I decided that you might need my wise counsel in your researches, so I asked Twiki here to bring me in.”

The robot squeaked—several short, annoyed-sounding squeaks.

“Oh, all right,” Theopolis said. “Yes, it is kind of spooky out there and we both feel better being with Captain Rogers.”

The young girl interrupted the exchange. “What
is
that thing?” she asked, pointing to Twiki and Theopolis, apparently mistaking them for a single device.

“It’s a pain in the diode,” Buck said. He cast a last, despairing look at the scattered files of the hall, then turned and began to make his way back toward the ground floor and the street. In a few minutes he and the robot-team were climbing back into their groundcar. Buck turned and smiled at the two children. “I’d like to pay you for the help you gave me,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a quantity of Inner City scrip.

“What’s that?” the girl asked.

“Money.”

“Never heard of it. What’s it for?”

Buck shoved the scrip back in his pocket and pulled off his coat, aware that both children were trembling in the chilly air. “Here, try this,” he held the coat toward the girl.

She tried it on, petted it, ducked her head and murmured, “Thank you,” to Buck. Her brother came up and rubbed his face on the cloth of the sleeve. The girl pulled off the coat and slipped it around her brother’s shoulders. It fit him like a circus tent. “There,” the girl said, “he needs it more, he’s colder than I am. And it fits him better, anyhow. Where are you going?” she asked Buck suddenly.

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “I’m trying to find some information. I’d hoped to find it in the Hall of Records. But . . .” He shrugged helplessly.

“Maybe Pandro can help you,” the girl said. “He was here yesterday.”

“Who’s Pandro?”

“Boss of the gypsies.”

“Gypsies!” Buck exclaimed. “There are still gypsies?”

“Oh, sure. They come through every so often. They’re camped pretty near here now.”

Buck’s landcar approached the gypsy encampment through the gloom that seemed to hover perpetually in Anarchia, be it day or night, summer or winter. The encampment, to Buck’s first glimpse, resembled a bizarre parody of the traditional gypsy encampment. Campfires burned in a roughly circular clearing while colorfully dressed men and women circulated, chattering and visiting one another; pots of food hung, bubbling and smoking, over fires—that much was just as usual. The gypsy vehicles were drawn up around the clearing, but instead of the horse-drawn wagons of wood and canvas that Buck in his boyhood had associated with gypsies, these were a fleet of campers, motor homes, and recreational vehicles. They were dusty and rust-marred, battered, painted and repainted beyond any hope of ever determining their original shape and color. But as Buck approached he saw a gypsy arriving on a rusty, fenderless motorcycle—so somehow the gypsies managed to keep their power-packs replenished and their running gear functional, at least on one heavy, German-made motorcycle.

Buck climbed from the landcar. He reached toward Twiki and lifted Dr. Theopolis from around the drone’s neck. “I may need some of that wise counsel you were peddling, Theopolis. Twiki, stay here. Stay out of trouble if you can. I’ll be back.” With a careful movement, Buck hung the computer brain around his own neck.

Twiki squealed in angry protest but obeyed, remaining in the landcar as Buck walked into the gypsy encampment. He walked slowly up to a woman in almost traditional gypsy garb and offered a tentative greeting.

“Howdy, howdyl” the woman responded. “What’s your handle?”

Buck looked around helplessly, finally asked, “Uh . . . can you tell me where I can find Pandro?”

“Over your shoulder. Come on,” the woman said.

Buck gaped at her but she didn’t move. He turned his head and looked over his shoulder. All he could see was a half-demolished recreational vehicle.

“Pandro,” Buck tried again. Maybe the woman mistook his meaning.
“Pan-dro,”
he repeated, “do you understand me?”

“Wall to wall and treetop tall,” the woman said. “Don’t you have no ears?”

Buck wondered what the woman meant, whether she understood him. She
seemed
to speak English. Her words were ordinary enough, and her sentences were gramatically correct. But they didn’t
mean
anything! He smiled, walked to the half-demolished cruiser. He pounded on the door and asked, “Pandro? You in there?”

“Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” a voice called back. The vehicle’s door opened. A man gazed out at Buck. The man was middle-aged, a grizzled-looking, stubble-faced, tough- and competent-looking man who had clearly done his share of rough living, survived it, and emerged battered but unbowed.

Buck introduced himself.

“It’s your nickel,” the grizzled man said.

“Uh-huh.” Buck stood looking up at the other man. “Can I come in?”

“You got the break,” the man said. “I’ll pour coffee on ya.” He gestured Buck into the vehicle, offered him a seat, poured him a cup of some vile greenish stuff that he claimed was coffee.

Buck made a face at the vicious brew. Well, at least it was hot, whatever other shortcomings it might suffer from. Buck explained his mission, finished with a request. “Anything. Any clues, leads to my family. What happened to them? Do any of my descendants still survive?”

“I don’t know nothing,” Pandro answered. “But I know a good buddy that might could help ya. Handle’s Aris. Very old dude, been breathin’ longer as anybody I know. And he’s got smarts he ain’t even used yet. Lives in Skipland.”

“Great. Skipland, eh? How do I find him?”

“I need some greenstamps,” Pandro stated.

“Greenstamps?” Buck saw Pandro make a gesture. “Oh, sure. He reached into his pocket again, pulled out the same Inner City scrip that he’d previously offered to the girl at the Hall of Records. “How much?” he asked.

“That ain’t greenstamps,” Pandro said. “Not in this lane.”

“Then what’s greenstamps?” Buck asked.

“Could be most anything. I can’t use it, I’ll trade it off.” He pointed to Buck’s laser-gun. “Like that smokey stunner, f’rinstance.”

“You mean my laser?”

“Pository.”

Before Buck could reply to the demand, Theopolis put in, “Giving him a weapon is forbidden, Captain Rogers.”

At the sound of the strange voice, Pandro jumped, he stared wildly around, looking for the source of the words.

“It’s all right,” Buck explained. “There’s no one else here. It was this box that I’m wearing. It talks.”

Pandro bent and stared at Theopolis, almost hypnotized by the arrays of flashing lights within the plexiglass. “Come again?”

“Theopolis,” Buck commanded, “say something. Pandro wants to hear you talk.”

The computer remained silent.

“Dr. Theopolis, I’m warning you,” Buck fumed. “Talk!”

Nothing.

“He’s being quiet just to make me mad,” Buck explained thinly. “I kept telling him to shut up, earlier. Now he’s sulking. Talk, Theo!”

“Ah, you’re pulling my antenna,” Pandro laughed. “That thing don’t talk. But I like them lights, them’s real pretty. I know a chick who’d fancy that box for a decoration. So you give me it and I’ll Q.S.O. ya Aris’ 10-20.”

“Does that mean you’ll tell me how to find him?” Buck asked.

Pandro nodded, still staring at Theopolis’ lights. “Four ten.”

“Okay,” Buck said. “It’s a deal.” He removed the computer’s strap from his neck and handed the plexiglass box to Pandro.

“No,” Theopolis shrieked. “You can’t do that!”

“Hey!” Pandro exclaimed, almost dropping the box. “It really talked!”

“And now it’s your turn, good buddy,” Buck answered.

“Way off in Skipland where the big cliffs have faces,” Pandro said. “Just under the faces is a cave. That’s Aris’ home 20.”

“How far?” Buck asked. “Which way?”

Pandro pointed outside the vehicle. “That way,” he said. “ ’Bout half a day’s ride if you drop your hammer in that roller skate of yours.”

Buck frowned with concentration. “Mount Rushmore?”

“A big ten-four,” Pandro grinned.

Buck offered his thanks, started toward Pandro’s door, then turned back for a moment. “Tell me, Pandro, why do you people talk that way?”

Pandro looked blank. “What way?”

Buck shook his head. “Never mind.” He climbed from the vehicle, stood outside. “So long,” he added, starting toward his landcar.

“Threes on ya,” Pandro called after Buck. As soon as the spaceman had pulled away in his landcar, Pandro turned back toward Dr. Theopolis. “Talking box, huh?” the gypsy gritted. “Otherwise known as compuvisor model Theo 1480, member of the Inner City council. But a dumb old buddy like me wouldn’t know that, would I?”

He grinned, opened a section of wall inside his camper, entered a glittering, ultramodern communications room. He stepped inside, pressed a series of controls and spoke into a microphone. “Pandro here, looking for a break. Excelsior. Come on.

The answer that came seemed to carry an almost tangible air of remoteness and bitter cold. “This is Excelsior,” the voice said. “Go ahead, Pandro.” The voice called itself Excelsior, but to those who could identify its owner it was clear who the voice of Excelsior really belonged to: Kane. “Have you located Rogers, Pandro?”

“Located?” the gypsy leader replied. “You bet! He fell right on my head. Just like we planned.”

The cold voice gave an oily chuckle. “You sent him to see Aris, Pandro?”

“Rodger-dodger. And I copped his compuvisor into the bargain!”

“Oh, wonderful, Pandro,” Kane gloated. “Wonderful! Oh, ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! The Gregorians had better beware!”

“A big ten-four, good Draconian buddy.” Pandro switched off his transmitter.

S I X

Colonel Wilma Deering was walking across the tarmac at Inner City spaceport, en route from her office to the armaments hangar. This was no matter of critical urgency, no exciting new development: it was part of her daily routine, part of the never-ending responsibility of command.

She was surprised by a gentle touch at her elbow, turned, exclaimed, “Dr. Huer! What are you doing out here at the spaceport?”

“Just a little informal call,” the aged scientist explained. The bright daylight gleamed off his old-fashioned spectacles as he looked up into Wilma’s face. “I’m a little worried about Captain Rogers, Colonel. Perhaps you’ve been working him too hard. The sensor readouts turned up an alert on him the other morning.”

Wilma shrugged. “Nothing unusual in that. Could be anything. Maybe he was up celebrating something the night before. He couldn’t make it to my fancy Clipsop dinner!”

“No, my dear, it wasn’t just that. In fact, we had alerts on Captain Rogers three mornings running. His overall metab ratings have dropped 12 leers. But we couldn’t find any physiological cause in the sensor readouts!”

“Then it must be psychological, obviously. You know, I am concerned for the health and welfare of my command, Dr. Huer. But I’ve always had my reservations about Rogers—his emotional stability, his psychological suitability for his assignment. A man from five hundred years in the past is going to have problems adjusting, no matter how well he seems outwardly to fit in.”

“Suppose he’d been staying up all night, Wilma? Night after night. That would explain the metab drop, wouldn’t it?”

Wilma halted and faced Dr. Huer. “Captain Rogers’ ship is right over there,” she gestured. “Let’s see if he’s in it. Most of our pilots spend a lot of hours working over their ships. The ground crews that we have are tops, you know—but it’s the pilots who put their lives on the line every time they fly.”

They peered into Buck’s ship, saw a figure stretched across the cockpit. For a moment he appeared to be dead, but a slow, steady rise and fall of his chest showed that he was merely napping.