Bob Shaw - The Ceres Solution

“We reached this stage once before,” Lorrest replied, slipping his right hand into the pocket of his jacket, “but the situation is more urgent this time. I need that location, and you’re going to give it to me—whether you want to or not.”

Gretana rose to face him, keyed-up and apprehensive, but not fully believing the threat of force. She was still formulating a reply when from the direction of the hall there came a violent pinging sound—half-explosive, half-electronic in nature—and a small metallic object slid into view on the parquet floor between the dining area and the kitchen. Heart stopped, mind numbed by the certainty that she was close to a grenade which was on the point of detonating, she threw herself backwards, collided with the table and was turning to run when her identification of the object was completed. It was the main lock from the apartment’s outer door. In the same instant a squat-bodied man with protuberant pale eyes and a down-curving gash of a mouth came running into the room. He was holding a weapon which appeared to be a laser pistol.

“Nobody move,” he ordered in a hoarse voice. “Don’t nobody move.”

Gretana forced her speech organs to manufacture distant sounds. “What do you want?”

“Shut it.” The intruder examined her briefly and dismissively, eyes as unsympathetic as those of a deep-water fish, and turned his attention to Lorrest. “The hands, big man—hoist ’em.”

“Gladly.” Seemingly unperturbed, Lorrest raised his right hand almost to the ceiling and spoke in conversational tones. “Would you mind saying what you want?”

The stubby man gestured with the pistol. “Get the other hand up.”

Lorrest smiled apologetically. “I’d like to oblige, but I’ve got a broken arm. I don’t usually walk around doing this Napoleon imitation.”

“You better hold real still,” the man said. “You so much as fart, I burn your arm off.”

Keeping the pistol trained on Lorrest, he felt in his overcoat pocket with the other hand and produced a small object which resembled a photographic light meter. He pointed it at Lorrest and made scanning movements. Gretana watched him with a sense of alarm which increased with every second. Violent crime was rife throughout the country, but it would have been too much of a coincidence if she and Lorrest had fallen foul of a casual raider at this particular time—and the intruder appeared to be unusually well equipped. The implication was that he was acting for the Bureau of Wardens, as a kind of bounty hunter, but what other inferences could be drawn?

“So you’re carryin’ no hardware, just like they said.” The man put the scanning device away. “You got a coat?” Lorrest nodded towards the kitchen. “In there.”

“I’ll pick it up on the way out. Walk in front of me.” Lorrest took one step towards the kitchen, but halted directly underneath a fluorescent light fitting, his face unnaturally shadowed. “This woman doesn’t know anything about me. She has never seen me before.”

“She never seen me before, neither.” The small man looked at Gretana, and for the first time there was a flicker of animation in his eyes, a door opening at the end of a long dark passageway in his mind. She saw the pistol in his hand swing towards her. Its movement seemed to grow slower with every degree of rotation, but the effect was subjective—a thin sad voice had warned her that her life was ending, that she was on the edge of oblivion, and her mind had reacted by seizing on the single moment that remained, attenuating it, reluctantly yielding it up by the microsecond.

In that cryogenic state of perception she saw with an awful clarity everything that happened as Lorrest reached higher with his upraised hand, snatched the fluorescent tube from its clips, and—turning it into a two-metre glass spear—drove it with all his strength into the stubby man’s face. It hit him on the bridge of the nose, shattered into little daggers which gouged through his eyes, then shattered again under the continuing impetus of the thrust to wreak further hideous damage. He fell backwards, howling, his pistol turning towards Lorrest. With the light tube in his hand reduced to a bloody spike, Lorrest went down after him. Gretana turned and ran to the bedroom as the howling abruptly ceased.

Death is real! The words shrilled silently inside her head. I’ve seen a butcher at work, and I’ve smelted the blood…

“Gretana!” Lorrest was standing in the doorway, and even in the reduced light from the other room it was obvious that his right hand was wet and red. “Playtime is over—you are now going to tell me where that node is.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t.”

“Think again.” He came towards her, reaching out with the hand which was wet and red, his face an inhuman mask. “Think again, Gretana.”

“Near Carsewell, New York,” she heard herself whimper as she tried to avoid the hand. “On a ridge called Cotter’s Edge, just west of the Greenways enclave.”

“Thank you.” Lorrest retreated and left the room, and a few seconds later she heard a rush of water from the bathroom. She buried her face in a pillow, trying to suppress a gory kaleidoscope of after-images, and waited for any sound which would indicate that Lorrest had left the apartment. There was a brief silence and then, with the unexpected suddenness of a reptile attack, something warm and pliable fell across her legs. She sprang upright with a sob of panic to find that Lorrest had returned to the bedroom and had thrown one of her overcoats on to the bed.

“On your feet,” he said tersely. “Let’s go.”

She raised her hand, symbolically warding him off. “Go? With you?”

“What did you expect? If one man traced me here others could do it and, believe me, there’s no way you could get out of telling them where I’d gone. Besides, you don’t want to go on sharing your apartment with a corpse, especially if the police come nosing around.”

“You’re the killer. You! ”

“In our special circumstances, that hardly matters. On top of all this, I need you as insurance.

“I don’t understand,” Gretana said, pushing the coat away with a trembling hand.

“Don’t you?” Lorrest’s smile was barely recognisable as such. “I don’t trust you any more, Gretana—you’ve been too long on Earth. The only way I can be sure that node location is correct is to take you with me. If it is. vou can skord yourself off to Station 23—which would be the safest place for you anyway—and blab everything you know to the Warden. Perhaps he’ll give you a vacation.”

Gretana dredged far into her reserves and found the strength for defiance. “Perhaps he’ll give you one.”

“He’d have to find me first—and there’s an awful lot of galaxy out there.” Lorrest tilted his head and stared for a moment in the direction of the unseen Moon. “And in two days’ time nothing the Warden does is going to make any difference.”

The animal had been watching Hargate all day.

Its body was the best part of a metre in length and had an asymmetrical green-and-grey pattern which camouflaged it so effectively that Hargate was still unable to decide whether it was shaped like a beaver or a wolf. He was equally uncertain about the creature’s intentions. When he was wakening from a doze he would notice a clump of grass a few paces away and while he was trying to recall if it had been there earlier the clump would blink a green-gold eye, letting him know he was under close surveillance.

Shouted swear words and sudden movements of his arms were always enough to drive the creature off—it scuttled away backwards , eyes filled with mute reproach—leaving him to speculate about whether it had been motivated by friendship, curiosity or hunger. The third possibility seemed the most likely to Hargate, and he was deeply uneasy about his prospects during the coming hours of darkness.