M. Harrison - THE CENTAURI DEVICE

'John!'

Pigs squealed in some dream, wriggling in comical flabby fear from under the knife, like mad Grishkin in a bunker: but the squeal he woke to was of brakes, and in the street outside. Half a dozen armored vehicles had arrived beneath Ruth Berenices window — doors slammed, turbines raced up and down their power curves then died abruptly.

'John!'

Both ends of the street were sealed off. From down in the hallway came a curious muffled thud as a small explosive charge knocked the outside door off its hinges. The stairwell rang with falling debris, then footsteps. A two-hundred-watt amplifier truck began to broadcast garbled Martian commands into the night

'John!'

At first, he didn't realize what was happening. He struggled up out of the abattoir with his mouth hot and gummy. Worked his tongue round it, blinking at the ceiling, where streetlight made an asymmetric screen. Ruth's dark figure bent over him, caught at his shoulders. ' John! ' He shook his head. It wouldn't clear. Then, on the second flight of stairs, someone manufactured an illusion of resistance from the shadows — fired off his Chambers gun.

'IWG!' yelled Truck. 'Christ!'

He clawed at Ruth's hands and flung her away from him. He threw himself off the bed and rolled across the floor, scooping the Centauri Device up as he went Ruth was sobbing softly somewhere off by the window, and all around him the hinterland seemed to be full of sirens: faint, distant, of impersonal intent; rising and falling on the compass wind like an anxiety on the edge of reflection.

With sweat pouring into his eyes and his teeth chattering, he dragged himself to where he could set his back against a wall and face the door. Ruth looked desperately down into the street. 'Truck?' she pleaded. He was on the edge of a dark hole. 'Ruth, I — ' They were on the landing outside, kicking lumps out of the wall while they waited for an order. 'Ruth — ' It was too late for any of that.

He bit his lips.

The door caved in.

'I promised we'd meet again, sonny,' said Alice Gaw complacently.

She stood in the doorway, squat and brutal, dust and fumes from the explosion downstairs drifting up the stairwell to settle on the landing behind her. She seemed preoccupied. 'God, what a leprotic hole this place is.' She was back in the black short skirt of her WA uniform, stomach sagging over the leather belt that held her holster up.

She studied the room amusedly for a moment, then sauntered in and stepped aside: Fleet policemen hurried past her and began to go methodically through it, breaking up the furniture with careful efficiency. Truck coughed dismally, the paper-shredder at work in his lung again. Now it had happened, he felt curiously remote. The General looked him over, chuckled.

'I see they made a bit of a mess of you in Gottingen.' She shook her head. 'Was it worth it? You might have started a real war this time. If it hurts, I'll get a quack in as soon as we've got tills little business over with.'

'Don't bother, General. Ill survive.'

She ignored him, absently watching the Fleet men as they tore up some loose boards. 'Look sharp, you lot,' she chided them, 'or I'll do it myself. You haven't got all day.' Her features went lax. Still looking away from him: 'I'm not sure you will, Truck. And I don't have all that much time here myself,' Her one eye focused on him suddenly. 'Frankly, you've made it a shade difficult for me with the people I answer to. They're sending me over to the Strip to sort out the cock-up you caused there — '

She ran a hand through her hair. Her attention wandered. 'Truck, my love, why haven't you introduced us?'

And she smiled over at Ruth Berenici.

— who, emerging from whatever personal nightmare found its expression in the street below only to find herself in a more public one, cried, 'Who are you ? How can you just burst in here like this -! Animal!'

Alice Gaw cocked her head to one side like a small deformed bird. 'My, my,' she said. She planted herself, feet apart, in front of Ruth and stared up at her with an expression of chilly intimacy. 'Look, lovie,' she began evenly, 'I like you. I liked you on sight. If I hadn't, I might have resented that.'

She reached out lazily and captured Ruth's lower jaw in one hard hand. She tutted sympathetically.

'That's a nasty scar. No, don't be shy. Let's have a look at it.'

And, with the muscles of her forearm trembling slightly, she forced Ruth's marred profile into the light.

'You know, that really is nasty,' she mused. 'Look duckie,' she murmured confidentially, 'I'll tell you what: I'm fifty-six years old, and I've been on my feet all bloody night long. Just you keep on the right side of me, and I'll keep on the right side of you. Hm?'

'Leave her alone, General,' said Truck quietly.

Since his trip across the long floor, it cost him pain to breathe, to speak — even to concentrate. A warm brown fog had crept up while he was unaware and filled the room: events filtered through it to him only after a peculiar delay. There was a salty taste in his mouth.

'You can leave her alone, now.'

The General relaxed her grip. Rum Berenici twisted out of it and fled whimpering toward the door, her long body ungainly with fear. One of the Fleet men caught hold of her. 'Just see she doesn't do herself any harm, lad,' said Alice Gaw. Tiredly, gazing out of the window: 'All right then Truck — where is it?'

Keeping his eyes open had become difficult — some kind of grit had worked up under the lids. He got the Centauri Device out from under his cloak, painstakingly stripped the charred and blood-stained rags of that other garment off it, and set it on his lap. It didn't look much.

'What do you see, General?' he asked. He shrugged painfully. 'I don't think I really want to know. No — I'd stay put if I were you. You're talking to a Centauran.'

And she was.

His eyes closed. In twos and threes, driven across airless spaces by a wind no one can name, coming the long way round from the gutter-edge outposts of the Galaxy, they were still drifting into his head, pressing up against the shuttered windows to await a glimpse of that crucial room — a direct, inevitable link between the Centauri Genocide and the deaths of all his friends.

All us losers are Centaurans — and that conceit established his ancestry more effectively than any biochemistry. Eyes open again he discovered General Gaw squinting across the room at him.

'You'll regret that, sonny,' she promised. And: 'It doesn't look like the thing I saw in the bunker.'

'I think it armed itself when I picked it up. You only saw its dormant phase.'

Something caught at his throat: he swallowed, coughed, tasted blood again — and this time the contraction of his diaphragm muscles triggered off a quick, uncontainable spasm of his lower intestine — he'd dislodged the spent Chambers bolt and it had fetched up somewhere in the mess behind his window. 'Oh,' he whispered. 'Oh, shit.'

Then, hearing a sharp intake of breath, a scrape of feet, 'I can set it off at any time, General!' He raised his head slowly from where it had slumped on his chest. She had moved in a couple of yards and stood before him in a relaxed professional crouch. 'What made you think you'd be any closer to owning it when you found your Centauran?'

She showed her teeth.

'Come off it, Truck. I'm your only chance. From the stink in here, I'd say somebody stuck one right in your guts. What's to stop me waiting? You're going to die, Truck.'

'I promise you I'll fire it off if that looks like happening, General. I've got nothing much left to lose.'

Confounded, she withdrew; and through the thickening fog he watched her confer with one of her policemen, who presently nodded and left the room.

'Ruth?' said Truck, but she didn't hear him. He wiped his hand across his mouth, and it came away wet and shocking. Successive storms of fear and pain and vertigo swept through him, each crisis leaving him weaker — while the Centauri Device, a high, electrical voice, vibrated in every cell of his brain.