Forever Free (10 page)

As the sheriff turned, Max clamped his forearm around his neck and grabbed his right arm. The sheriff tried to kick back, but Max had anticipated the move and blocked it; meanwhile, I reached into the sheriff's vest and yanked out the pistol.

"Don't choke him, Max!" Max dropped his left arm enough to let him breathe, at the same time forcing him to his knees.

The sheriff coughed twice. "What is this?"

"Figure it out," Max said. "Use your group mind." Marygay came out of the office holding a big roll of building tape. "Into the cell! William … point the gun at him!"

I was holding it loosely, aimed at the floor. Might go off. I gestured with it. "Keep a hold of him, Max."

He didn't resist. "You're going to be in real trouble. Whatever you think you're doing."

"You've got that right," I said. "Real trouble now. But by the time we get back, it won't make any difference." Max had walked him into the first cell, and pushed him down into the chair. "What? You think you can … you're going to take the starship?"

"These guys are fast," Max said. Marygay secured him to the chair with the tape.

"We don't mean you any harm, Sheriff," I said, "nor anyone in Centrus. We're just going ahead with what we proposed—with what you approved of."

He was regaining some composure. "But that was provisional. Before we heard from the Whole Tree."

"You do what you want," Marygay said. "We don't have to take orders from Earth."

"From Taurans on Earth," Max said.

"But it's not practical," the sheriff said with an edge of exasperation. "The three of you—"

"Seventeen," I said.

"Even seventeen, you can't steal the starship and run it."

"We have a plan. Just sit back and watch us."

A few people had come in and were standing at the door. "You don't seem to need any help," Jynn said.

"Look around and see if you can find any more weapons," Max said.

"There aren't any," the sheriff said, nodding at me. "Just the pistol. Just for emergencies."

"Like this." Max stuck his hand out and I gave him the pistol. He aimed it at the viewscreen over the keyboard and fired. The explosion was loud in the small room. I shielded my eyes and didn't see what it looked like, but the result was pretty dramatic. There was more hole than viewscreen.

"What the hell was that?" somebody shouted.

"Testing." He handed it back. "Works."

"You aren't going to steal the starship with an old pistol."

"We really just have to steal a shuttle," Marygay said. "The starship will do what I tell it to."

"And we'll have more than a pistol," Max said.

Cat came to the door. She and Marygay exchanged nods. "We found some crowd-control stuff. Gas grenades and tanglefoot."

"Probably what they'll use on us, in Centrus," I said. "Might as well have our own."

"The mask would be more useful," the sheriff said.

"What?"

"The gas mask. It's in the top right-hand drawer of my desk." He shrugged. "Might as well cooperate."

"We couldn't get that one open," Cat said. "Thumbprint?"

He nodded. "That's where the ammunition is, too." He wiggled his thumb. "You could bring the desk here, or set me free."

"It's a trap," Max said. "It probably sends a signal."

"Do as you wish," the Man said.

"Why would you want to help us?" Marygay said.

"For one thing, I'm on your side; I've known you since I was a boy, and know how much this means." He looked at Max. "Also, you have the gun. At least one of you could use it."

Max pulled out a big pocket knife and the blade snapped out. "I could cut off your thumb." He sawed at the tape and freed him. "Move slowly, now."

The drawer had the ammo and gas mask, and also handcuffs and ankle restraints. We put them on the sheriff. "Floater's here," Po said from the door.

"Driver?" Marygay called back. He said no; it had the autodriver light on. "You're coming along, then. Hostage."

"If you leave me locked up in the cell, there's no way I could hamper you. I'd prefer that."

Max grabbed his arm. "We'd prefer to have you along."

"Wait," I said. "You think they're going to kill us."

"As soon as they see you're armed, yes. My being with you wouldn't affect the decision."

"One reason we love you so much," Marygay said. "Your concern for one another."

"It wouldn't just be Man making that decision," he said; "not in Centrus. A Tauran truly wouldn't understand why it made any difference."

"They let Taurans in on police matters?"

"No, but it won't be a police thing, once the starship's part of it. Matters that involve space are going to involve Taurans."

"The more reason for a hostage," Max said.

"Do you hear yourself?" the sheriff said. "Which of us now is placing a low value on life?"

"Just on yours," Max said, and gave him a push toward the door.

"Wait," I said. "Until they know what we're doing, there won't be any Taurans involved?"

"Only people and Man," he said. "But it won't take them long to see what's happening and contact the Taurans."

"Yeah." I pointed at the door. "Take him out and lock him up. We have to confer."

Max was back in a minute. "It may be time to gamble," I said. "The floater's going to go down Main to get to the spaceport. I could slip out by the museum, and you all go on. With the sheriff, you'll have the expected seventeen people, if anybody's looking. That will gain us some time. Then you can disable the floater before it gets there."

"But then you don't have the floater's fuel cell." We had planned on that in case the fighting suit was cold. "Yes, he will," Max said, intense. "We get a klick or so from the spaceport and put the floater on manual and ground it. That's five, maybe seven minutes from dropping him off. Give him a minute or two to get into trouble. Then we turn the floater around and take it back to him."

"With the police in hot pursuit," Marygay said.

"Maybe; maybe not," I said. "You keep the gun, in case, but hell. They don't have police like on Earth." Probably not on Earth now, either. "Unarmed traffic cops."

"You don't want the gun?" Max said.

"No—look; that tear gas is a godsend. I go in with the tear gas and the mask and a crowbar, I'll be inside the suit in minutes. Hell, I'll meet you on the road to the spaceport."

Marygay nodded. "It could work. And if it doesn't, at least you won't have used a deadly weapon on the guard."

I was able to stuff the gas grenades and mask into the sheriff's briefcase. Hard to disguise a crowbar, but I found I could slide it down my pants leg to the knee, and the belt held it in place, with the top part concealed by my coat.

We all got situated in the floater and it took off, rising to about a hundred meters. The snow had gotten pretty heavy; you couldn't see the ground. We hoped it was like this in Centrus. It would slow things down for them, but not for us, so long as the wind stayed calm. The shuttle was okay in snow but wouldn't launch in a strong crosswind.

It was an uncomfortable hour. The sheriff wasn't the only hostage, in fact; everyone else's fate was dependent on the outcome of a string of unpredictable events. And nobody wanted to talk about it, not with the sheriff listening.

I became curiously calm as the floater dropped to ground level, near the city limits. There was a certain amount of danger ahead, but it was thin soup compared to what I remembered of combat.

I didn't want to think about how many years ago that was. I hoped the museum guards were soft city boys and girls—bookish and unfamiliar with violence. Maybe old folks. I'd give them a story for the grandkids, regardless.

"I was there when the crazy vets highjacked the starship." Or maybe "One day this crazy guy ran in with tear gas. I shot him." But none of us could remember the museum guards being armed, which would have been memorable. Maybe they just kept the guns out of sight. Maybe I should worry about something else.

Marygay had her thumb on the OVERRIDE button, but it wasn't necessary. The floater stopped for cross-traffic a block before the library. I gave her a kiss and slipped out the door.

The snow was sifting down slowly, straight—still good for the shuttle and perhaps for me, since it would slow down response to a call for help from the museum. I threaded my way through the inching traffic, people perhaps being extra-courteous because of my limp. The crowbar had slid past my knee.

It occurred to me that the museum might be closed, and that might be a good thing. I could break in and, although it would doubtless set off an alarm, I would just be dealing with police, and not a lot of bystanders.

No such luck. As I approached the museum, someone was leaving, backing out the front door with a wide covered tray, probably breakfast.

I went through the heavy wooden door, and sure enough, the guard was nibbling at a piece of cake from a stack of assorted kinds on a plate. She was a female Man, in her early twenties. She said something to me in their language, mumbling through a mouthful. I think she said good morning, and invited me to leave my coat and attaché case there.

She had the broad chin they all have, a good target for a punch. When she looked inside the case, I'd give her an uppercut that I hoped would knock her out for a minute and leave her disorganized for another.

It wasn't necessary. She asked me what was in the bag, and I said, in slow English, "I don't know. I'm from Paxton, supposed to deliver this to the Man in charge of the weapons exhibit."

"Oh, he's not a Man; he's one of you. Jacob Kellman, he came in two or three minutes ago. You could take it right to him, A4." The small building only had two stories, with four rooms each.

The door to A4 was closed. I opened it and there was no one inside. No lock. I eased it shut and worked fast—pulled out the crowbar and ran past all of the less potent examples of man's inhumanity to all species, straight to the glass case with the fighting suit. Two swings with the crowbar and the front pane of glass cascaded in.

I ran back toward the door and got there just as it opened. Kellman was a greybeard, at least as old as me, unarmed. Drawing on my vast knowledge of hand-to-hand combat, I shoved him hard and he fell down sprawling in the corridor. I slammed the door shut again and wedged the crowbar in between the door and the jamb, as a crude lock, and hurried back to the exhibit.

The fighting suit was a newer model than the last one I'd had, but I hoped the basic design hadn't changed. I reached into the concealed niche between the shoulders and felt the emergency lever and pulled. It wouldn't work if there was anyone alive in the suit, but fortunately it was unoccupied. The suit clamshelled open, smashing another pane of glass, and the reassuring hydraulic wheeze meant it had power.

Someone was pounding on the door and yelling. I got one boot off and with a stockinged foot swept away enough broken glass so I could stand barefooted while I undressed. Got my sweater and pants off and tried to rip open the shirt, but the buttons were sewn on too well. While I fumbled with them, the pounding became a rhythmic heavy thump—someone bigger than Kellman was applying a shoulder to the door.

I got both gas grenades out of the briefcase, pulled the pins, and hurled them the length of the room. They popped with a satisfying swirl of opaque cloud and I stepped backward into the suit, slid my arms into the sleeves, and clenched both hands, for the "activate" signal. I didn't bother with the plumbing; I'd either hold it in or live with the results.

For a long second, nothing happened. I smelled the first acrid hint of the tear gas. Then the suit closed around me with a disconcerting jerkiness.

The monitor and displays came up and I looked to the lower left: power was at 0.05, weapons systems all dark, as expected.

A twentieth of normal power still made me a Goliath, at least temporarily. The cool machine-oil smell meant I had my own air. I reached down to pick up my clothes and fell on my face with a huge crash.

Well, it had been a long time since I'd been in one of these, and even longer since I'd used a GP unit—General Purpose, one size fits everybody. Normally, I'd had one tailored to my dimensions.

I managed to clamber back up to my feet and stuff the clothes, minus boots, into a front "pocket," just before they beat the door open. There was a lot of coughing and sneezing. One figure came staggering out of the cloud, a female Man who was pumped up like our sheriff, in a similar uniform, also with a pistol. She was holding it in both hands, waving it in my general direction, but her eyes were streaming and I assumed she hadn't seen me yet.

These people were not my concern. There was an emergency exit door behind me. I turned, rocking like a zombie from a 1950s movie, and lurched toward it. The Man fired three shots. One of them put a nice hole in a display of nuclear weapons and one broke an overhead lamp. The third must have ricocheted off my back; I heard it zing away but of course felt nothing.

I supposed she knew the suit was unarmed but extremely dangerous. I wondered how brave she would have been if I'd turned around and started lumbering toward her. But there was no time for play.

I pushed on the emergency door and it ripped open, then ducked slightly as I passed through. The suit was almost eight feet tall; not really for indoor wear.

People scattered in all directions, making considerable noise. The Man or someone else was shooting at me—an easy target, a matte-black giant in a snowscape. Twisting the wrist control turned me camo green, then sand yellow, then I finally found a glossy white surface.

I walked as fast as I could to Main, almost slipping twice in the snow. Come on, I thought, you've operated these things on frozen portal planets a few degrees above absolute zero. But not lately.

At least Main Street had salt and sand, so I could run. Some of the traffic was on manual, and it noisily parted for me as I sprinted down the middle. A lot of them went spinning dangerously out of control. I shifted back to green, so they'd have more warning.

I picked up the pace as I became more sure of the clumsy thing's abilities and limitations. I was loping along at about twenty miles per hour when I met Marygay's bus, just outside the city limits.