The Complete LaNague Page 24

  Stafford’s voice was low. “For some reason, I thought things were going to be different. When I saw Merry Men operating the shuttle, I figured Metep and all the rest were on the way out, that things were going to be different now.

  Better. But they’re not. And they never will be, will they?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I mean, you’re going to set yourself up as another Metep, aren’t you?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then let me go home.”

  “I can’t. You don’t seem to understand that I–”

  “All I understand,” Stafford said, rising to his feet and gesturing angrily, “is that I had it better under Metep VII. I could walk the streets. I could sleep in my home. I can’t do that now!”

  “You wouldn’t be able to do it if Haworth found you, either,” LaNague replied. “Think of that.”

  “The only thing I’m thinking is that I’m a prisoner and you’re my jail keeper. Which makes you no better than anyone else in the Imperium. In fact, it makes you worse.”

  The words struck LaNague like so many blows. He mentally fought the implications, but finally had to accept them: he had put aside everything he believed in, his entire heritage, in order to further the revolution.

  Above all else: Kyfho…Adrynna’s words came back to him… forget Kyfho in your pursuit of victory over the enemy, and you will become the enemy… worse than the enemy, for he doesn’t know he is capable of anything better.

  “The enemy…me,” he muttered, feeling weak and sick. Stafford looked at him questioningly. “You wouldn’t understand,” he told him. He glanced at Kanya and Josef and saw sympathy there, but no help. It was his battle, one that could only be won alone.

  So close…so close to victory that victory itself had become his cause. How had he let that happen? Was this what power did to you? It was horrifying. He had always felt himself immune to that sort of lure… above it. Instead, he had placed himself above all others, ready and willing to subject their personal desires to his ultimate vision – the very reason for which he so loathed the Imperium!

  When had he begun to yield? He couldn’t say. The onset had been so insidious he had never noticed the subtle changes in perspective. But he should have realized something was wrong that day by the mint when he had been willing to risk the lives of some of the guards inside rather than delay activating the Barsky box. Since when had a Robin Hood caper meant more than a human life? He should have known then. He was embracing the “can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs” attitude that had brought the out-worlds to the brink of ruin. Ends had never justified means for him in the past. Why had he let them do so now?

  If not for Mora that day, he might have killed someone. And life was what his whole revolution was about… letting life grow, allowing it to expand unhindered, keeping it free. The revolution he had originally envisioned was for everyone on all the out-worlds, not just a few. And if his revolution was to be everyone’s, it had to be for the men in the Imperial Guard, too. They had to have their chance for a new future along with everybody else. But dead men weren’t free; neither was a probe pilot locked up in a warehouse.

  He wanted to run, to kick down the doors, and flee into the night. But not to Mora – anywhere but to Mora. He felt so ashamed of himself now, especially after the way he had been treating her, that he couldn’t bear the thought of facing her… not until he had made things right.

  “You can leave,” he said, his voice barely audible as he leaned back against the office doorframe.

  Stafford took an uncertain step forward. “What? You mean that?”

  LaNague nodded, not looking at him. “Go ahead. But be warned: Primus City is not as you left it. It’s night out there now, and the streets belong to whoever feels strong enough or desperate enough to venture onto them. You won’t like it.”

  “I’ve got to get to my wife.”

  LaNague nodded again, stepping away from the doorway. “Find her. Bring her back here if you wish, or take your chances out there. I leave the choice up to you. But remember two things: the Imperium is looking everywhere for you, and we offer you and your wife safety here.”

  “Thank you,” Stafford said, glancing between LaNague and the two Flinters. Hesitantly at first, and then with growing confidence, he walked past LaNague, across the warehouse floor, and out the side door. He only looked back three times before he was out of sight.

  LaNague was silent for a while, gathering his thoughts. The next steps would have to be moved up, the schedule accelerated. “Follow him,” he told Kanya and Josef. “Make sure he’s left with a choice. If a few Imperial Guardsmen should get hold of him, let him go with them if that’s what he wants. But if he decides he’d prefer to stay with us, then see to it that they don’t get in his way.”

  The Flinters nodded, glad for an opportunity to do something besides sit and wait. They adjusted their holosuits to the middle-aged male images, and started for the door.

  “One thing,” LaNague said as they were leaving. “Don’t bring him back here. Take him and his wife to my apartment. Under no circumstances bring him back here.”

  LaNague could see no expression through the enveloping holograms, but knew the Flinters must have looked puzzled.

  “Trust me,” he said. The words tasted stale on his tongue.

  They were not gone long when Broohnin entered. “Where’s the probe pilot?” he asked, his head swiveling back and forth in search of Stafford.

  “Gone.” LaNague had taken over the seat Stafford had vacated.

  “Where’d you hide him?”

  “I let him go.”

  It took a moment for the truth of that statement to register on Broohnin. At first he reacted as if to an obvious and rather silly attempt at humor, then he looked closely into LaNague’s face.

  “You what?”

  “I don’t believe in imprisoning a man completely innocent of any wrongdoing.”

  The small amounts of facial skin visible above Broohnin’s beard and below his hairline had turned crimson. “You fool! You idiot! Are you insane? What he knows could ruin everything – you said so yourself!”

  “I realize that,” LaNague said. An icy calm had slipped over him. “I also realize that I cannot allow one unpleasant fact to overcome a lifetime’s belief.”

  “Belief?” Broohnin stormed across the office. “We’re talking about revolution here, not belief!” He went to the desk and started rifling through the drawers.

  “What do you believe in, Broohnin? Anything?”

  Pulling a hand blaster from a drawer, Broohnin wheeled and pointed the lens directly at LaNague’s face. “I believe in revolution,” he said, his breathing ragged. “And I believe in eliminating anyone who gets in the way of that belief!”

  LaNague willed his exterior to complete serenity. “Without me, there is no revolution, only a new, stronger Imperium.”

  After a breathless pause that seemed to go on forever, Broohnin finally lowered the blaster. Without a word, he stalked to the far exit and passed through to the street.

  LaNague lifted his left hand and held it before his eyes. It was trembling. He could not remember being exposed to the raw edge of such violent fury before. He let the hand fall back to his lap and sighed. It would not be the last. Before this thing was over, he might well come closer to even greater physical danger. He might even die. But there was no other way.

  He heaved himself out of the chair and toward the disheveled desk. Time to move.

  “WHY DON’T YOU CALM DOWN?” Metep VII said from his formfitting lounger as he watched Daro Haworth pace the floor. There was an air of barely suppressed excitement about the younger man that had grown continually during the few moments he had been present in the room.

  “I can’t! We’ve just heard from the municipal police commissioner. They’ve had a tip on the whereabouts of Robin Hood.”

  “We’ve been getting those ever since the first currency heist. They’ve
all been phony. Usually someone with a grudge on somebody else, or a prankster.”

  “The commissioner seems to think this is the real thing,” Haworth said. “The caller gave the location of a warehouse he says is the center of all the Robin Hood activities. Says we’ll find Robin Hood himself there along with enough evidence to convince a dead man that he’s the genuine article.” Haworth’s hands rubbed together as if of their own will. “If only it’s true! If only it’s true!”

  Metep coughed as he inhaled a yellow vapor from the vial in his hand. He had always liked the euphorogenic gases, but appeared to be using them with greater frequency and in greater quantities lately, especially since the recall talk had started. The calls for votes of confidence in the legislature recently had only compounded his depression. “I’m not so sure the commissioner is the right man to oversee such a project. After all, the municipal police lately have been–”

  “I know that,” Haworth snapped. “That’s why I’ve told them to wait until Tinmer, our illustrious commander-in-chief of the Imperial Guard, can arrive with reinforcements and redeem himself after bungling the capture of that orbital shuttle this morning.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Metep said. “Speaking of the shuttle incident, you still have men out looking for that pilot?”

  “Of course. I’ve also got them waiting at his apartment here in the city just in case he shows up looking for his wife.” Haworth smiled. “Wouldn’t that be nice: Robin Hood himself, and our elusive probe pilot in hand before daybreak. That would change everything!”

  VINCEN STAFFORD HAD NEVER SEEN the streets of Primus dark before. Glo-globes had always kept the shadows small and scarce. But someone had decided to smash every globe up and down the street, and no one had bothered to replace them. As he walked on, the intersections he crossed gave dark testimony to the fact that this was not the only street to be victimized so. Every street was dark, lined with useless pedestals supporting dim, dark shattered fragments.

  He was not alone on the street. There were dark forms huddled in doorways and skulking in the deeper shadows. He was also aware of other pedestrians ahead of him and behind; not many, but enough to make him feel that he could at least count on some help should there be any trouble.

  As Stafford walked on, he had the distinct impression that he was under scrutiny. But by whom? He could detect no one following him. Soon the sensation passed, replaced by a gnawing fear.

  Robin Hood had been right. This was not the Primus City he had left a year ago. That city had been bright and lively – dingy on the edges, true, but nothing like this. The streets were choked with litter; ground-effect vehicles were virtually absent from view, and only one or two flitters crossed the night sky. After walking two kilometers, he gave up hope of ever seeing a taxi. He’d have to try the monorail.

  As he entered the business district of town, he was in for an even greater shock. A number of the stores stood dark and empty, their fronts smashed open, their insides either stripped of their contents or gutted by fire. The ones that were intact but closed had left their lights on. Stafford peered into the window of one and saw a man sitting conspicuously under a light in a chair against the rear wall of the store. A short-range, wide-beam blaster rifle rested across his knees. When he noticed that Stafford did not move on immediately, he lifted the weapon and cradled it in his arms. Stafford moved on.

  Only one store on this street was open. Before he had left on his probe ship mission, every store would be open and busy this early in the evening. Tonight the lights from the front of the open store – a food store – shone out on the street like a beacon. People were clustered around the front of it, waiting to get in. Some carried luggage cases, other shopping bags, some nothing.

  Drawn by the light and by other people, Stafford decided to take a quick look to see what the attraction was. As he approached, he noticed armed guards on either side of the doorway, and more inside. On closer inspection, he could see that many of the customers were armed, too.

  Since he was not interested in getting through the door, he found it easy to push through the press to the window. A careful, squinting inspection revealed only one product for sale in the market: flour. The center of the floor was stacked with transparent cylinders of it. Stafford gauged their probable weight at fifty kilos each. One by one, people were being allowed to go to the pile, heft a cylinder to a shoulder, and exit through the rear.

  But first they had to pay. At a counter to the left, an armed man was counting bundles of currency, stacking it, then dumping it into a bin behind him when the proper amount was reached. The bin was half full; another toward the rear was completely full, and an empty one waited. An armed guard stood over them. Customers were allowed into the store one at a time; a guard frisked them, removed their weapons at the door, and returned at the exit. There was a strong family resemblance between the guards and the storekeeper – father and sons, most likely.

  Fascinated, Stafford watched the strange procession for a while, watched the customers empty sacks and satchels of currency onto the counter, watched the second bin behind the man grow full. And then two men were allowed to enter at once. Both were empty-handed. The first caused a stir at the counting table when he produced a handful of what looked like old silver marks, extinct from general circulation for half a generation. The storekeeper studied them, weighed them on a scale, and placed them in an autoanalyzer one at a time. Apparently satisfied with their metal content, he nodded to the two men. Each claimed a cylinder and exited through the rear.

  “Nice what a little silver can do these days,” said a man beside him at the window. Stafford stepped back for a better look at the speaker. He saw a shabbily dressed man of average build with greasy hair who was giving his flight jumper an appraising glance. There was a bulge under the man’s coat that probably meant a weapon, and an overloaded suitcase in his left hand from which a few stray marks protruded at the seam.

  “What are they charging for that flour in there?” Stafford asked.

  The man shrugged and glanced through the window. “Around ten thousand marks, I’m told.” He saw Stafford’s jaw swing open. “A bit expensive, I know – a whole day’s pay – but I’ll be glad to get it at all, what with the surface and air transport unions on strike again.”

  “Strike? Again?”

  “I don’t blame them though,” the man said, seeming to look right through Stafford as he continued speaking in a tremulous monotone. “I wouldn’t want to get paid by the week, either. They say they’re going to stay out until they get daily pay. Otherwise, it’s not worth working.” Without warning, tears began to slip down his cheeks and he began to cry. “It’s not really worth working, anyway. The money loses value faster than you can spend it… and nobody cares any more… we’re all just putting in our time… used to like my job at the bureau… used to like my house… and my family… nothing matters now ’cause I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to keep any of them…”

  Embarrassed by the display of naked despair, Stafford pushed away from the window and out to the open sidewalk with a single worrisome thought in his mind: Salli! Where was she? How could she have survived this insanity on her own? She could be dead of starvation by now! His only hope was that she had somehow got to her family, or they to her. He never should have left her on her own. He broke into a run. He had to get back to the apartment.

  There was a monorail station at the next intersection. The glo-globes that usually surrounded it were shattered like all the rest he had passed, but he did see a light at the top of the platform where the ticket booth would be. On his way to the float-chute, he passed half a dozen loitering men who eyed him with little interest. He quickened his pace and was about to hop into the chute when something stopped him. Pausing at the threshold, he thrust out a hand – no breeze. There was supposed to be an updraft. The sound of derisive laughter made him turn.

  “Almost got him!” The loiterers had known the chute wasn’t operating but ha
d chosen to wait and see if he fell down the shaft. Stafford took the stairs two at a time up to the platform and gave a crosstown station as his destination to the man in the ticket booth.

  “Fifteen hundred,” a voice rasped from atop the blasterproof compartment.

  Stafford gulped. “Marks?”

  “No, rocks!” the man within snarled.

  Stafford turned and walked slowly down the stairs. He had a grand total of forty marks in his pocket. He’d have to walk. It would be a long trek, and he was already weary – a year in a probe ship, despite artificial gravity and a conscientious exercise program, had left him out of condition and short on stamina – but it was the only way.

  First, however, he would have to pass through the knot of six or seven idle men blocking the end of the stairway.

  “Nice suit you’ve got there,” said the one in front. “I rather think it would fit me better than you.” He smiled, but there was nothing friendly about the grimace.

  Stafford said nothing. He glanced around and saw no one he could call upon for help.

  “Come on, now. Just take it off and give it to us – and whatever money you’ve got on you, too – and we’ll only rough you up a little. Make us chase you and we’ll have to hurt you.” He glanced up to the monorail platform ten meters above. “We may try and see if you can really fly in that fancy flight suit.”

  “I – I have no money,” Stafford said in as stern a voice as he could manage. “I didn’t even have enough for a ticket.”

  The man’s smile faded. “No one who runs around in that sort of outfit is broke.” He started up the steps toward Stafford. “Look like you want to do this the hard way.”

  Stafford vaulted over the railing and landed on the ground running – and collided head-on with a darkened glo-globe pedestal. Before he could regain his feet, they were upon him, fists and feet jabbing at his face, his groin, his kidneys.

  Suddenly the weight on him lessened, the blows became less frequent, and then stopped. Using the pedestal for support, he struggled to his feet, gasping. When the agony caused by the brutal pummeling subsided to a bearable level, he opened his eyes and looked around.