City Wars (9 page)

The circle drew closer. Someone had blackened whatever source of light there’d been. The room seemed to shrink into darkness.

“Listen to me!” Gilcrest cried. “Listen, Giles. All of you! I don’t deny the injustice you’ve known. I swear to God, I know it for what it is. But there’s nothing—”

They’d closed in around him. Great hands touched him, pawed his clothes. He couldn’t make out faces, features.

“I’m part of Government,” he said, turning from one faceless tormentor to another, “but I am not Government itself. These demands—I can take them to the ministers, I can argue your cause. But I must tell you the truth, and you must value it. You’ve known lies all your life, I won’t give you more. And I’m telling you, there’s no way these demands will even be considered, let alone met. Not now. Not with the war coming—”

He heard Giles’ voice above the chanting.

“Your war, Minister. Not ours.”

“But this city is yours! Its fate is your fate—”

Gilcrest squinted frantically in the gloom, tried to find the young lunk’s voice. With Giles he might—there was a chance he could reason—

The chant droned on, louder still.

Gilcrest was thrashing, pushing at the hands touching him everywhere.

“Giles—listen, please! Listen to me! If we can reason this out, if we can—Giles, you can come with me! I’ll bring you to Government, bring you and your demands. Maybe … I can’t promise … but maybe together we—”

Then Gilcrest heard a scream echo through his mind, and knew it to be his, the scream of his own agony, his own death.

The heavy wooden plank had been swung with much force and took most of the side of his head off.

The old man’s lifeless body collapsed against the closed cell formed of his tormentors, their arms unwittingly catching him as he fell.

Giles cried out. “No!!!”

The lunks, terrified, shrank back, their brave chant silenced. Gilcrest’s blood had splattered their arms, chests, dead faces.

Giles was moving among them, shoving, winding through the maddened lurch of their bodies. He lumbered across the room, pulled down the heavy tarpaulin covering the largest window.

Light splashed the room.

They saw Gilcrest’s body lying on the floor, legs folded under him, blood soaking the floorboards red all about.

Giles watched his fellow rebels swaying in the pale light, as though suddenly without balance, their hands clutching desperately for the anchor of the walls behind them.

Only one man stood in the middle of the room, still holding the wooden plank.

Giles came away from the window. The tarpaulin dropped from his awkward hands with a rustle that seemed jarring in the heavy silence.

The man who was standing tossed the plank on the floor in front of Giles. It clattered at the feet of the rebel lunk. It was thick with blood.

Giles looked from it up to the man standing across from him.

Giles said one word. “Why?”

“Because,” Wilkins answered, “I’m your friend.”

“Friend,” Giles said evenly.

“Of course.” Wilkins rubbed the bridge of his nose, where his eyeglasses rested. “Wasn’t I responsible for your safe passage into and out of Mrs. Gilcrest’s private chambers? Didn’t I tell you when to take her; didn’t I make sure there were no sentries, no interference of any kind …?”

“Yes. Yes.” Giles’ frustration made his words come with a choking sound. “Yes. All so that we could bring Gilcrest here, frighten him, get him to listen to our demands—”

“Oh, yes. That, too.” Wilkins smiled. “I’d almost forgotten the way I left that second note where the old bastard would be sure to find it. He was so busy trading insults with Hadrian, he didn’t notice me doing it. Yes, all in all, I think I’ve been quite a good friend to the lunks.”

“But don’t you see what you’ve done?” Giles exclaimed. “The plan was working. He was frightened, he was about to give us what we wanted. He said he’d take me to Government, my brothers and I, and—”

He covered his face with his hands. He started to cry. “Why?” he whispered, the harsh whisper of a lunk. “Why did you kill Gilcrest?”

“So that rebel lunks would be blamed for the death,” Wilkins replied matter-of-factly. “I should think that rather obvious. Even to a lunk.”

He turned to the silent creatures staring at him from the far side of the room.

“The police will have to be notified, of course,” he told them. “They’ll probably start rounding up all the lunks in the area. I’d consider running away from this place as fast as you can.”

Giles lowered his hands. His face was tear-streaked, vivid in its fury.

Hesitantly at first, then more quickly, the lunks began leaving the room. The last of them were running, arms akimbo, scattering into the streets.

In moments, Giles was standing alone with Wilkins in the old room, listening to the rumble of receding footsteps.

Wilkins tilted his head quizzically.

“Why aren’t you running with them, Giles?” he said. “You’re the freak among lunks, aren’t you? The one born with a brain, with the will to hate and to want. Then you ought to at least have sense enough to get out while you can.”

Giles merely kept staring at him.

“Run, Giles,” Wilkins said. “Into the streets, into the slums and the trash yards. Run and take your place with your brothers and sisters.”

Giles did not run.

He bent suddenly, took up the heavy plank, raised it over his head. His cry was thick with anguish as he rushed toward Wilkins—

12

As far as she could tell, the building was deserted. Cassandra moved cautiously toward the unmarked side door, its face weathered and stained. Someone had tried, unsuccessfully, to scrub the words “Lunks Eat Shit” off its pale green wood.

The door was unlocked, and swung open easily. Beyond it ran a dismal, unlit hallway, criss-crossed with fallen support beams.

Something dark and plump scurried up one of the beams at her approach. Cassandra stepped adroitly over the beam and headed for another open door.

She peered into the room. Dust swirled before a cool curtain of sunlight thrown from one large window across from where she stood. She made no sound as she walked on the uneven floorboards.

The first body she saw was that of a young lunk. She hadn’t been sure at first, because of the colorful coat thrown over his head and shoulders. She knelt beside the body, examined it quickly, expertly. The lunk’s neck had been broken.

Beside the body lay a bloodied length of wood, perhaps the instrument of death.

Cassandra carefully replaced the coat and got up.

A dozen feet away, another form lay covered by a thick tarpaulin. A trail in the dust told her it had been dragged from somewhere near the large window.

She went over to the tarpaulin, pulled it aside.

She almost didn’t recognize him. Then she bent closer, lay her head against Gilcrest’s chest.

Cassandra allowed herself to cry.

There were footsteps marching determinedly behind her. Voices.

Cassandra had just drawn the tarpaulin back over Gilcrest’s body. She turned now to face two armed sentries, their faces as hard-edged as the armored lines of their Service rifles.

Cassandra readied herself, then hesitated. She knew she could drop both men where they stood before either could fire his weapon. But still she hesitated.

They were Government sentries. The function of a Guardian was to serve Government.

She found the words.

“Minister Gilcrest has been murdered. Alert Police.”

One of the sentries spoke, motioning with his weapon. “Our orders, are to return you to the labyrinth and confine you to quarters for the duration of this emergency.”

“By whose authority?”

“That of Minister Hadrian’s, Guardian.”

“You mean he’s—?”

“Come along, please.” Neither sentry seemed aware of the two bodies in the room. Cassandra stared at their lean faces, the whiteness of their skin against the dark Service collars.

Again the sentry said, “Come along, please.”

She took only a moment to consider. Then, with a last look at the covered figure of Minister Gilcrest on the cold floor, she surrendered to the sentries.

It was like nothing he’d imagined. Great mounds of newly formed rock, lava-spawned, dotted the mid-western terrain. Everywhere was the blackness of fire-hardened earth. There were valleys cut in the land shelf, steaming lakes of radioactive residue.

There were no signs of life. Debris riddled the plains, scattered by the winds. Swollen hunks of metal, long pitted by the elements of man and nature, piled
up as refuse, grim reminders of the towns and communities that had once been.

And above and throughout the wasteland hung the haze, gray and endless and thick, its entrails poking amid the ruins, its grayness blanketing all and sparing nothing.

Bowman could not get above the haze, not in the two-seater. He had to cling to its underside, a forced witness to the awesome spectacle of destruction below.

He didn’t know how long he’d been in the air. Once beyond the outer boundary of Chicago, Bowman had concentrated on little else but his radiation indicators and sweep scanners. And focusing his attention on the bright arena of lights and dials in his cockpit helped keep his mind from dealing with the jumble of thoughts that crowded it. Thoughts about Cassandra, and what she’d come to mean to him; about old man Gilcrest; about the very city in whose defense Bowman now soared through an unfamiliar sky. Two days before, standing at Cassandra’s picture window, Chicago had seemed strangely alien, unapproachable; as though capable of assuming meaning to its citizens only as they sustained the meaning in their own lives.

Which brought him, as it had a dozen times, back to Meyerson. Phil Meyerson, who’d seemed in life almost a caricature, yet whose death suggested parallels Bowman couldn’t make himself deny.

He stirred in the cramped cockpit.

Crazy bastard! Oughtta know better than to let your mind go all over goddam Creation when you’ve got the gig all laid out for you. It’s so easy. It’s always been so easy. The buttons to push, the knobs to turn, the dials to read. Just do it, for Christ’s sake! That’s what you are, that’s all there is. All you have to do is
…

Bowman took a full scan of the area. No problems. Same as before. He was almost used to it by now, the ruptured earth, the scattered remnants of homes and lives, the great sea of ash that rolled to the sun.

The buttons to push, the knobs to turn
—

Back in Chicago, back in the labyrinth, they’d be waiting for his transmission, waiting for whatever information he could provide as to New York City’s defense systems, the topography of its immediate surroundings, any estimate as to its fleet strength. He’d have to get in pretty close. Risky, but necessary. There were five fully armed Air Service cruisers waiting to lift off and follow in his wake. Maybe something he’d transmit back would get them inside faster, enable them to unload and get out before New York’s scanners could pick them up, target-read their emissions, signal anti-aircraft weapons …

Always been so easy. The buttons to push, the
—

He was tired of the games his mind was playing. He was Service, pure Service, and he could make them stop. His hands were at the controls, he knew his objective. He would make the games stop.

All you have to do is
…

He checked his guidance module. His flight vector was stable. Ahead lay many more miles of ruin, and beyond that, the city of New York.

The enemy.

“I’m sorry, Minister,” Hadrian said in reply to another question from the conference table. “Our information is just too sketchy to answer you with any degree of certainty.”

It seemed to many of the ministers of Government assembled in the Tactics Room that Hadrian had lost some of his sharpness of tone since assuming temporary chairmanship. His thin hands were spread on the table, and he looked out at their long, frightened faces with hollowed eyes.

“I’m not ashamed to tell you that the very suddenness of this outrage is what has shaken me,” he said. “And all of you … well, I’m sure all of you share with me the most profound sense of loss at the death of our eldest minister, Andrew Williamson Gilcrest. His record of service to this Government, his love for Chicago are known to all. And yet, more
shocking to me even than the tragedy of his death, is the knowledge of its perpetration at the hands of rebellious lunks.”

He turned to Mr. Wilkins and gestured for a thin folder in the assistant’s hands.

“Our earliest reports,” Hadrian went on, “appear to confirm that a group of militants among the lunks has been plotting against Government for some time. We hear of such fanatics all the time, of course, and perhaps it is to our shame that we’ve never treated the problem with the seriousness it obviously deserves. And now …” He tossed the folder onto the table. All eyes were on it as it slid thirty inches on the polished surface before coming to a stop. “And now, in some insane attempt to cripple Government, these rebels have struck down our most respected member.

“Ironically, our sources report further that the rebel leader behind the slaying, a lunk known to his followers only as Giles, has himself been killed, apparently by one of his own kind.”

Hadrian straightened with effort, and his eyes were gray with reflection.

“Often it seems that tragedy strikes when it can be borne least, and now is such a time, with our enemy New York openly against us. Wiser men than I have said that it is the way of the cities to bring down war upon each other. Well, perhaps that is the way things are. But rather than let this great loss weaken us at a time when our transgressors are at our very walls, we should instead have a new resolve. We should see to it that the retaliation which our late Senior Minister had now come fully to support be carried out as soon as possible.”

Hadrian paused, nodding to Wilkins. The slender man bowed stiffly and hurried out of the chamber.

The assembly buzzed with concern. Someone called for increased security measures, against the event of another rebel assassination. Another rose and voiced his agreement with Hadrian, and asked that the retaliatory strike time be moved forward. The Minister of Police offered a second to that motion.

Hadrian said nothing during this last exchange, but watched with folded arms as Government voted to approve an action which Wilkins had already been sent to initiate.

Two levels below that of the main hive of Government, Communications officer Roberts was receiving his new orders.

“The Air strike lift-off has been pushed up,” Wilkins said, pointing to a wall module. “Minister Hadrian wants the cruisers fully armed and ready in thirty minutes.”

The other man frowned. “Sir, I was given orders to relay any transmission from Colonel Bowman’s re-con mission upstairs, prior to authorizing a strike.”

Wilkins peered through his glasses at the stoic-faced young officer. “Those orders have been countermanded as of this moment. The attack is to commence in thirty minutes.”

“Yes, sir.” Roberts shrugged and began keying a new set of disembarkment instructions into the com.

“Oh, sir?” Roberts had an afterthought, as Wilkins was turning away.

“Yes?”

“What of Colonel Bowman’s transmission, sir? We have a channel open for it.”

“Close it, Lieutenant. Whatever information the Colonel might have given us is quite useless now.”

“Yes, sir.”

William hated seeing his mother cry.

“You’re not mad at me, are you, Mom?” He touched a tentative finger to her red cheek.

“No, I’m not mad at you.” Clemmie took his hand in hers, drew him to her breast. “No, I’m not mad at you.”

“I shouldn’ta told you. It’s all my fault.”

“That’s not true. I would have seen it anyway. Sooner or later.”

“Well …” He looked down. “Now I’m just sorry I had to be the one. I thought it was important.”

She nodded. “It was. You did the right thing.” Clemmie managed a smile. “We don’t punish bearers of bad news anymore. If we did, we’d all be tossing bombs at our Media screens.”

William returned his mother’s smile and embraced her.

“Tell me,” she said. “Did Media say anything more about Mr. Meyerson?”

“No. Just that he’d been found … uh … you know …” William squirmed in his mother’s arms. “They said Police would be questioning any lunks in the area. Y’know, ’cause of what happened to old man Gilcrest.”

“Media’s had quite a week,” Clemmie said, more to herself than to William.

William shifted position again.

“Okay,” Clemmie said, kissing him brusquely before releasing him. “You can go watch.”

“Aren’t you coming, Mom? They said any minute now!”

She waved a hand. “Go on, go on. I’ll be right behind you.”

William raced out onto the terrace, waving his arms. Clemmie got up from the small couch and followed, bending to take her lyre from its special niche in the wall.

She went through the glass and stood behind her son on the terrace. They were just in time to see the take-off. The siren had sounded moments before, cascading off the walls of the city, scattering Urbans before it. And though she’d stayed inside most of the day, anchored by that same numbing depression she’d felt the night before in the diner, now she couldn’t help but look out at what was happening in Chicago. She couldn’t help but watch as Urbans flocked to every corner, to every curb, pointing to the sky, waiting, waiting.

They were not denied their spectacle.

From deep in the bowels of the earth they came, the great cruisers, the Chicago emblem on their hulls. Steadily they rose from their berths, poised, engines crying; then, armadalike, the war cruisers soared beyond
the outskirts of the city, heading east, cheered by the Urbans below, as though propelled not by fuel but rather the collective will of the people.

William stood transfixed. He didn’t see his mother extend her long white hand over the terrace railing and let go of the lyre. He didn’t see it drop a dozen stories, to shatter with an almost profound silence on the gray pavement below.