Pallas (44 page)

Perhaps he secretly agreed with it.

Perhaps all politicians did.

It was an odd moment of uneasy peace, the only one they’d had in fifty years. It was probably the only one they’d ever have. Emerson couldn’t see them burying the hatchet and becoming one big happy family. The idea made him sick to his stomach.

In the end, the two old enemies waited together in silence, broken only by the rhythmic beep of Emerson’s heart monitor, for news of Rosalie’s struggle to bring new life into a world that didn’t seem terribly happy to receive it. Emerson was surprised to find
himself
dozing off from time to time. He didn’t know what Altman was doing. He didn’t care. Outside, the wind howled and shrieked, sculpting the snow into dunes and, for all he knew, piling more on top of them.

After what seemed like days, Doc Sheahan came back into the room, examined the monitor, then Emerson, and grinned down at him. She’d ignored the Senator.

“I’m beginning to think you’re going to live. If you feel like climbing into this
four
-wheeled contraption, I’ll take you to see Rosalie—and somebody else.”

Emerson sat up straight. “Let’s go! What about all this?” He waggled a tube-laden arm at her.

“We’ll get that fastened onto the chair before we move you,” she replied. She glanced over at Altman. “You’re invited, too, although if it
were up to me—”

Altman rose without a word and waited while Emerson was tran
s
ferred from the bed to the chair. He didn’t offer to help, so Emerson didn’t have to turn him down rudely. Doc Sheahan pushed him through the door, with Altman following, down the hall a few feet to the next room. As the door swung aside, he saw Rosalie.

An inexpressible joy filled him. He hadn’t known it was possible to be so happy, and he was suddenly afraid—for the first time, really—about damaging his heart. He hardly noticed that Mrs. Singh, Digger, and Miri were crowded into the room, as well.

“Congratulations, Papa!” Rosalie’s voice was more than a little shaky. She’d had time to wash her face and comb her hair, and she never wore makeup. “It’s a boy!”

“It’s our baby!” Emerson exclaimed, taking the tiny bundle from her.
“Our baby!”
His mind had left him somewhere out in the hall and he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “What’s his name?” he asked, feeling stupid as soon as the words were out. He discovered that huge tears were rolling slowly down his face.

“Funny,” Rosalie told him, pressing a palm to his cheek, “I was going to ask you the same thing!”

The thought of suicide is a great consolation; with its help you can get through many a bad night.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

A
voice whispered, “Nice try, Dad!”

William Wilde Ngu—known to friends and family as Billy—flopped down across the sandbags between his father and mother, every bit as curious as they were about the enemy’s latest tactic. The elderly caterpillar tractor, of course, had not fallen over like a metallic silhouette when Emerson had fired.

Now Emerson unleashed his second major surprise of the evening, grateful he’d thought to bring along the great weapon. It was the only one
of its kind on all of Pallas. He’d inherited it regretfully from his old friend and mentor, Digger.

He remembered the way Pallatians everywhere had been saddened to hear of the death of Raymond Louis Drake-Tealy. It had been followed, almost at once, by that of Mirelle Stein. Only he and Rosalie had ever known the whole truth, and they weren’t talking. Aloysius Brody had died in the asteroid’s first three-wheeled contraption accident and been buried in space, as he had wished, at a solar-escape velocity that would take him to the stars in a few million years. They were all gone now, or going, all the founders, all the pioneers.

Having practiced with the mighty .416, Emerson didn’t look forward to using it, but was more than confident it would do the job. He also wondered a bit absently whether his insurance would cover the damage he was about to do to his own tractor.

Or his collarbone.

As calmly as he could, by feel alone, Emerson lifted the enormous rifle to his shoulder, worked the glassy-smooth bolt upward and backward, forward and down to chamber one of the banana-sized cartridges, and waited quietly for the little earth-moving machine to trip another flare. When it did, he aligned the post-shaped front
sight,
its square top centered in the ghostly ring of the rear, on that portion of the upraised bucket which he calculated was shielding the driver.

He squeezed the trigger.

The big converted Enfield slammed into his shoulder with the force of a heavyweight boxer’s punch. The blast from the front end of the African game rifle momentarily became the only thing he was aware of, the only thing he was capable of being aware of. When his head cleared and he heard the tractor-motor still running, it took considerable courage and determination to reshoulder the weapon—he wasn’t consciously aware of having lowered it—operate the bolt to eject the spent hull and chamber a second round, and fire another shot in the same direction, this time guided only by his memory of the first shot.

It wasn’t the best or safest technique, he knew, but it worked. This time he heard reverberation as the bullet, almost an ounce of thick copper
and alloy-hardened lead, struck the bucket at twice the speed of sound. It was followed by a hideous shredding noise as the tractor’s electric motor, damaged and still running at high speed, began to destroy itself. Above that came the screaming of a man hit by bullet fragments or tractor parts, begging to be rescued by his cohorts.

Rescue never came. In a few moments, the wounded man fell silent. “Out of the corner of his ear,” as Mrs. Singh would say, Emerson heard Rosalie swapping pistol magazines.

She’d been shooting more than he’d realized.

“I think,”
she
whispered, “that there’s only one more of the sons of bitches out there!”

Could it be? She’d been shooting
a lot
more than he’d realized, and apparently so had Billy, which was why the young man had joined them on this side of the sandbag fortress.

“All right,” Emerson yelled into the darkness, “that’s enough! Throw down your weapons now and give up, or we’ll come and get you like we did your friends!”

The only answer was the sound of a flying yoke dwindling in the distance. Cautious, Emerson waited a long time before he stood up. Colors had begun to gather on the horizon, signaling the approach of dawn, and it was by the light of this fantastic multicolored display that they searched the camp and found that they were alone.

“Dad,” Billy told him at last, “I just got off the phone with Mirella, checking on the kids back home. We weren’t the only ones who got hit tonight.”

“What do you mean?” Rosalie slid close and laid a hand on her son’s arm. Emerson held his breath.

“Another bunch of thugs attacked Mrs. Singh’s house. They were driven off—you taught us how—but Grandma...”

“What is it, Will?” demanded Emerson. “Grandma” was Mrs. Singh.

“She had a stroke or something. They got her to the clinic, but she didn’t make it.”

“Then neither,” his father declared, “will the Senator!”

Among the consequences of what he always thought of as the Night of the Wolves, Emerson had finally produced a flying yoke independent of batteries. The tiny fusion reactor at his back would have taken him through the canopy if he’d soared upward. As it was, it whisked him at high altitude at three hundred miles per hour from the Pocks to the ra
m
shackle slum that was all that remained of the Greeley Utopian Memorial Project. A lifetime of hatred burning inside him made it a shorter flight than it might otherwise have seemed.

Miles behind him, Billy and Rosalie followed. He knew she was using her own cellular phone to call for help, probably to restrain him, but he didn’t care. He’d lived a long, full life. All he wanted now was blood on his hands.

There was no one to greet him. His mother had died long ago, and there was only one light burning, in what had been the Senator’s study. Stooping on the house like the bird of prey he’d become, Emerson kicked his feet out and burst through in a shower of glass. Altman jumped up, face ashen with shock and outrage. Emerson could see the old-fashioned communicator on his desk, its screen showing the same man he’d bribed himself, reporting failure of their mission.

“You one-eyed, slant-eyed bastard!”

Altman raised his cane and swung it down as hard as he could on Emerson’s head. His feet actually left the ground for an instant with the force of the effort.

The comparatively younger man was too fast. He dived under the swing, the automatic pistol he carried completely forgotten, his fingers crooked into claws directed straight at his ancient adversary’s throat. He was on the Senator, choking the life out of him, before the cane came down where he’d been.

Instinctively, Altman dropped the cane and forced his wrists between Emerson’s forearms, breaking the hold. As his enemy’s hands left his throat, however, his own arms sprang wide, leaving him open for the fist, rocketing in, that caught him on the nose and upper lip. Both of them heard the distinct
pop!
of
Emerson’s little finger breaking. Before Altman could quite finish marv
e
ling that he was really seeing tiny purple stars, Emerson hit him again.

It wasn’t quite so hard this time, because it was the same damaged hand, but it was in almost the same place. After he heard the cartilage grinding on itself inside his nose, the Senator stopped feeling pain. All the older man experienced now was a fury utterly beyond comprehension or containment, a frenzy of outrage which had been building, under pre
s
sure, for three-quarters of a century, a destructive ferocity for which something inside him held Emerson responsible, because any likelier, more accurate alternative was unthinkable. His opponent cocked his bloodied, broken fist back for a third and final blow.

Altman suddenly lashed out at him, seized him by the shirtfront, and, without thinking about it, smashed his forehead down onto the shorter man’s upraised face.

Emerson grunted and reeled backward, momentarily overcome, glassy-eyed, with blood spouting from his nose. He staggered, but m
a
naged to keep his feet as the Senator charged him, arms outspread, teeth gritted. Emerson thrust an arm out as if to fend Altman off, the fingers extended upward. By accident, the heel of his hand caught the older man in the eye and swerved him off course. As he passed, Emerson, somewhat under control again, swiveled like a bullfighter and hit Altman, bac
k
fisted, and with all his strength, over the right kidney.

Altman kept going and fell on his face. But as Emerson lifted a heel to stomp him, the Senator somehow managed to turn over. His hand found his lost cane, which he swung upward, catching Emerson in the solar plexus.

Emerson collapsed.

Both men were on the floor now, crawling toward each other through a litter of broken window glass, snarling under their breath, which came in ragged gasps.

Each man was now reduced to a ferocious, single-minded animal d
e
sire to kill the other after a lifetime of mutual hatred. The older of the two had sunk his teeth into the flesh of Emerson’s face, and Emerson’s thumbs were on Altman’s eyes, pressing hard, when Billy, Rosalie, and Nails began pulling them off each other.

By which time neither of them cared.

Altman regained awareness in his office, where he’d been left lying on a soiled and threadbare couch, after he and Emerson had pounded each other into unconscious, bleeding pulp before they’d been separated. Feeling more pain than he’d known was possible, he arose and limped to his desk, toppled into the chair behind it which squeaked in protest, took a moment to catch his breath, then reached out with a hand trembling from exhaustion and slid open the upper right-hand drawer.

Bodily pain wasn’t the only thing he was feeling. In fact, it scarcely counted.

Yes, there it was, gleaming dully back at him from the dark recesses of the drawer, the very embodiment of evil in two pounds of stainless steel. It had been confiscated, years ago, from one of the peasants and had somehow wound up in his custody.

Altman picked up the pistol, surprised at its weight and by how nat
u
rally and comfortably it fit his hand. There was no hammer to cock, no safety, just a sensuously curved trigger begging to be pulled. Feeling nothing in particular, he swung the muzzle around until it pointed at his face. No need to check if it was loaded. He could see the coppery glitter of a hollow-pointed bullet inside the abbreviated barrel, its hungry serrated lips eager to taste blood.

He wouldn’t disappoint them. He pressed the muzzle to his temple, felt the cold ring of steel on his flesh,
then
remembered this wasn’t the way. He might destroy his frontal lobes, leaving a paralyzed vegetable hulk still capable of feeling.

For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to put the barrel in his mouth. But he could do the next best thing, aim it at—what was it called?—the philtrum, so the bullet would follow the nasal passages to the cerebellum. It would be fast, it would be final. The problem was
,
it hurt. Emerson had hit him there, and the punished flesh was crushed and swollen. Sharp pain brought tears to his eyes. He put his finger on the trigger and began increasing the pressure, bit by bit until he could feel small parts begin to move inside the gun.

Suddenly he jerked the pistol away, laid it carefully on the desk, and
stared at the words engraved in the silvery slide:

NGU DEPARTURE

CALIBER 10 M/M

MADE ON PALLAS

Somehow, this changed everything. If he killed himself with one of these damned ubiquitous things, it would mean that Emerson had won. He couldn’t let Emerson win, not again.