Flame licked him. He jumped.
Slow motion?
He went past me like a falling safe. I saw him hit; I heard him hit. It"s not a good sound. Living on Wall Street during November "80, I heard it night after night during the weeks following the election. I never got used to it.
Despite everything my belly and groin were telling me, I was not falling. I was sinking, like through water. By now half a dozen people were watching me settle. They all had their mouths open. Something poked me in the side, and I slapped at it and found myself clutching a .45 slug. I plucked another off my cheek. Handel was shooting at me.
I fired back, not aiming too well. If the martian hadn"t been "helping" me I"d have blown his head off without a thought. As it was- anyway, Handel turned and ran.
I touched ground and walked away. A dozen hot, curious eyes bored into my back, but n.o.body tried to stop me.
There was no sign of the martian. Nothing else followed me either. I spent half an hour going through the usual contortions to shake a tail, but that was just habit. I wound up in a small, anonymous bar.
My eyebrows were gone, giving me a surprised look I found myself studying my reflection in the bar mirror, looking for other signs that I"d been in a fight.
My face, never particularly handsome, has been dignified by scar tissue over the years, and my light brown hair never wants to stay in place. I had to move the part a year back to match a bullet crease in my scalp. The scars were all there, but I couldn"t find any new cuts or bruises. My clothes weren"t mussed. I didn"t hurt anywhere. It was all unreal and vaguely dissatisfying.
But my next brush with Sinc would be for, real.
I had my GyroJet and a spa.r.s.e handful of rocket slugs in one pocket. Sinc"s mansion was guarded like Fort Knox. And Sinc would be expecting me; he knew I wouldn"t run.
We knew a lot about each other, considering we"d never met.
Sinc was a teetotaler. Not a fanatic; there was liqour on the premises of his mansion-fort. But it had to be kept out of Sinc"s sight.
A woman usually shared his rooms. Sinc"s taste was excellent. He changed his women frequently. They never left angry, and that"s unusual. They never left poor, either.
I"d dated a couple of Sinc"s exes, letting them talk about Sinc if they cared to. The consensus: Sinc was an all-right guy, a spender, inventive and enthusiastic where it counted.
And neither particularly wanted to go back.
Sinc paid well and in full. He"d bail a man out of jail if the occasion arose. He never crossed anyone. Stranger yet, n.o.body ever crossed him. I"d had real trouble learning anything about Sinc. n.o.body had wanted to talk.
But he"d crossed Domingo. That had caught us both by surprise.
Put it different. Someone had crossed Domingo. Domingo had been waiting for rescue, not bombs. So had I. It was Sinc"s policy to pull his boys out if they got burned.
Either Domingo had been crossed against Sinc"s orders, or Sinc was serious about wanting me dead.
I meet all kinds of people. I like it that way. By now I knew enough about Sinc to want to know more, much more. I wanted to meet him. And I was d.a.m.n glad I"d shaken the martian, because...
Just what was it that bugged me about the martian?
It wasn"t the strangeness. I meet all kinds. The way he shifted shape could throw a guy, but I don"t bug easy.
Manners? He was almost too polite. And helpful.
Much too helpful.
That was part of it. The lines of battle had been drawn... and then something had stepped in from outer s.p.a.ce. He was deus ex machina, the angel who descends on a string to set everything right, and incidentally to ruin the story. Me tackling Sinc with the martian"s help was like a cop planting evidence. It was wrong. But more than that, it seemed to rob the thing of all its point, so that nothing mattered.
I shrugged angrily and had another drink. The bartender was trying to close. I drank up fast and walked out in a clump of tired drunks.
My car had tools I could use, but by now there"d be a bomb under the hood. I caught a cab and gave him an address on Bellagio, a couple of blocks from Sinc"s place, if you can number anything in that area in "blocks." It"s all hills, and the streets can drive you nuts. Sinc"s home ground was a lumpy triangle with twisted sides, and big. It must have cost the Moon to landscape. One afternoon I"d walked past it, casing it. I couldn"t see anything except through the gate. The fence was covered by thick climbing ivy. There were alarms in the ivy.
I waited till the taxi was gone, then loaded the GyroJet and started walking. That left one rocket slug still in my pocket.
In that neighborhood there was something to duck behind every time a car came by. Trees, hedges, gates with ma.s.sive stone pillars. When I saw headlights I ducked, in case Sinc"s boys were patrolling. A little walking took me to within sight of the ivy fence. Any closer and I"d be spotted.
So I ducked onto the property of one of Sinc"s neighbors.
The place was an oddity: a rectangular pool with a d.i.n.ky poolhouse at one end, a main house that was all right angles, and, between the two, a winding brook with a small bridge across it and trees hanging over the water. The brook must have been there before the house, and some of the trees too. It was a bit of primal wilderness that jarred strangely with all the right angles around it. I stuck with the brook, naturally.
This was the easy part. A burglary rap was the worst that could happen to me.
I found a fence. Beyond was asphalt, streetlamps, and then the ivy barrier to Sinc"s domain.
Wire cutters? In the car. I"d be a sitting duck if I tried to go over. It could have been sticky, but I moved along the fence, found a rusty gate, and persuaded the padlock to open for me. Seconds later I was across the street and huddled against the ivy, just where I"d taken the trouble to hunt out a few of the alarms.
Ten minutes later I went over.
Sifting duck? Yes. I had a clear view of the house, huge and mostly dark. In the moment before I dropped, someone would have had a clear view of me, too, framed by lamplight at the top of the fence.
I dropped between inner and outer fence and took a moment to think. I hadn"t expected an inner fence. It was four feet of solid brick topped by six feet of wiring; and the wiring had a look of high voltage.
Now what?
Maybe I could find something to short out the fence. But that would alert the house just as I was going over. Still, it might be the best chance.
Or I could go back over the ivy and try the gate defenses. Maybe I could even bluff my way through. Sinc must be as curious about me by now as I was about him. Everything I knew about Sinc was in the present tense. Of his past I knew only that there were no records of his past. But if Sinc had heard about my floating lightly down from a sixth-floor window, not unlike Mary Poppins ... it might be worth a try. At least I"d live long enough to see what Sinc looked like.
Or- "h.e.l.lo. How does your war proceed?"
I sighed. He drifted down beside me, still manshaped, dressed in a dark suit. I saw my mistake when he got closer. He"d altered his skin color to make a suit, shirt, and tie. At a distance it would pa.s.s. Even close up, he had nothing that needed hiding.
"I thought I"d got rid of you," I complained. "Are you bigger?" At a guess, his size had nearly doubled.
"Yes. I became hungry."
"You weren"t kidding about your appet.i.te."
"The war," he reminded me. "Are you planning to invade?"
"I was. I didn"t know about this fence."
"Shall I-"
"No! No, you shall not whatever you were thinking about. Just watch!"
"What am I to watch? You have done nothing for several minutes."
"I"ll think of something."
"Of course."
"But whatever I do, I won"t use your help, now or ever. If you want to watch, fine, be my guest. But don"t help."
"I do not understand why not."
"It"s like bugging a guy"s telephone. Sinc has certain rights, even if he is a crook. He"s immune from cruel and unusual punishment. The FBI can"t bug his phone. You can"t kill him unless you try him first, unless he"s breaking a law at the time. And he shouldn"t have to worry about armed attack by martians!"
"Surely if Sinc himself breaks the rules-"
"There are rules rules for dealing with lawbreakers!" I snapped. for dealing with lawbreakers!" I snapped.
The martian didn"t answer. He stood beside me, seven feet tall and pudgy, a dark, manlike shape in the dim light from the house.
"Hey. How do you do all those things you do? Just a talent?"
"No. I carry implements." Something poked itself out of his baby-smooth chest, something hard that gleamed like metal. "This, for instance, damps momentum. Other portable artifacts lessen the pull of gravity, or reprocess the air in my lung."
"You keep them all inside you?"
"Why not? I can make fingers of all sizes inside me."
"Oh."
"You have said that there are rules for dealing with rule breakers. Surely you have already broken those rules. You have trespa.s.sed on private property. You have departed the scene of an accident, Don Domingo"s death. You have-"
"All right."
"Then-?"
"All right, I"ll try again." I was wasting too much time. Getting over the fence was important. But so, somehow, was this. Because in a sense the martian was right. This had nothing to do with rules...
"It has nothing to do with rules," I told him. "At least, not exactly. What counts is power. Sinc has taken over this city, and he"ll want others too, later. He"s got too much power. That"s why someone has to stop him.
"And you give me too much power. A- a man who has too much power loses his head. I don"t trust myself with you on my side. I"m a detective. If I break a law I expect to be jailed for it unless I can explain why. It makes me careful. If I tackle a crook who can whip me, I get bruised. If I shoot someone who doesn"t deserve it, I go to prison. It all tends to make me careful. But with you around-"
"You lose your caution," said the dark bulk beside me. He spoke almost musingly, with more of human expression than I"d heard before. "You may be tempted to take more power than is good for you. I had not expected your species to be so wise."
"You thought we were stupid?"
"Perhaps. I had expected you to be grateful and eager for any help I might give. Now I begin to understand your att.i.tude. We, too, try to balance out the amount of power given to individuals. What is that noise?"
It was a rustling, a scampering, barely audible but not at all furtive.
"I don"t know."
"Have you decided upon your next move?"
"Yes. I- d.a.m.n! Those are dogs!"
"What are dogs?"
Suddenly they were there. In the dark I couldn"t tell. what breed, but they were big, and they didn"t bark. In a rustling of claws scrabbling on cement, they rounded the curve of the brick wall, coming from both sides, terribly fast. I hefted the GyroJet and knew there were twice as many dogs as I had shots.
Lights came on, bright and sudden, all over the grounds. I fired, and a finger of flame reached out and touched one of the dogs. He fell, tumbling, lost in the pack.
All the lights went deep red, blood red. The dogs stopped. The noise stopped. One dog, the nearest, was completely off the ground, hovering in mid-leap, his lips skinned back from sharp ruby teeth.
"It seems I have cost you time," the martian murmured. "May I return it?"
"What did you do?"
"I have used the damper of inertia in a projected field. The effect is as if time has stopped for all but us. In view of the length of time I have kept you talking, it is the least I can do."
Dogs to the left and dogs to the right, and lights all the h.e.l.l over the place. I found men with rifles placed like statues about the wide lawn."
"I don"t know if you"re right or wrong," I said. "I"ll be dead if you turn off that time-stopper. But this is the last time. Okay?"
"Okay. We will use only the inertia damper."
"I"ll move around to the other side of the house. Then you turn off the gadget. It"ll give me some time to find a tree."
We went. I stepped carefully among the statues of dogs. The martian floated behind like a gigantic, pudgy ghost. The channel between inner and outer fence went all the way around to the gate at the front of the house. Near the gate the inner fence pinched against the outer, and ended. But before we reached that point I found a tree. It was big and it was old, and one thick branch stretched above the fence to hover over our heads.
"Okay, turn off the gadget."
The deep red lights glared a sudden white. I went up the ivy. Long arms and oversized hands are a big help to my famous monkey act. No point now in worrying about alarms. I had to balance standing on the outer fence to reach the branch with my fingers. When I put my weight on it it dipped three feet and started to creak. I moved along hand over hand, and swung up into the leaves before my feet could brush the inner fence. At a comfortable crouch I moved along the side of the house, looking for a window.
There were at least three riflemen on the front lawn. They were moving in a search pattern, but they didn"t expect to find anything. All the action was supposed to be in back.
The martian floated into the air and moved across the fence. He nicked the top going over. A blue spark snapped, and he dropped like a sack of wheat. He landed against the fence, grounded now, and electricity leaped and sizzled. Ozone and burnt meat mixed in the cold night air. I dropped out of the tree and ran to him. I didn"t touch him. The current would have killed me.
It had certainly killed him.
And that was something I"d never thought of. Bullets didn"t faze him. He could produce miracles on demand. How could he be killed by a simple electric fence? If he"d only mentioned that! But he"d been surprised even to find that we had electricity.
I"d let a bystander be killed. The one thing I"d sworn I would never do again.
Now he was nothing like human. Metal things poked gleaming from the dead ma.s.s that had been an anthropologist from the stars. The rustle of current had stopped seconds ago. I pulled one of the metal gadgets out of the ma.s.s, slid it in a pocket, and ran.
They spotted me right away. I took a zigzag course around a fenced tennis court, running for the front door. There were man-length windows on either side of the door. I ran up the steps, brought the GyroJet down in a hurried slashing blow that broke most of the panes in one window, and dove off the steps into a line of bushes.
When things happen that fast, your mind has to fill in the gaps between what you saw and what you didn"t.
All three gunmen chased me frantically up the steps and through the front door, shouting at the tops of their lungs.