Sagittarius Whorl Read online

  "Small one, maybe. Funny. I'd have thought bears would have hibernated by now." Something else was odd about the presence of the animal, but I was too maxed-out mentally to make sense of it. "Okay, babe, down we go. Hit the pad to roll back the hangar elevator door."

  "I thought I already did," she said, frowning.

  "The lid's still closed. Give me the phone and I'll recheck the menu."

  A blinking red telltale. I queried it and the display read

  HANGAR DOOR IS LOCKED. PLEASE GIVE PASSWORD.

  Well, damn. The thing wasn't supposed to lock until I fed it my own new password. I tried the override and reboot, but the maneuvers didn't succeed. The circular opening remained sealed shut.

  "Rats. Could be a computer glitch. Or maybe some jerk forgot to purge the old password when the staff left. Well, we'll do things the old-fashioned way for now, and I'll check the lift machinery tomorrow."

  I touched down in an open area less than twenty meters from the back of the house. The night was windless and pitch-black after I doused the hopper's spotlight, the snow depth modest, and the temperature minus-twenty Celsius.

  We spent a few minutes in the cargo bay sorting out clothes and toiletries for our immediate needs and stuffing them into a large duffelbag. I pulled a couple of guns out of the weapons locker—a holstered Ivanov to discourage wandering bears, and a big ugly Talavera-Gerardi 333 actinic blaster with an autotargeting scope, in case the Haluk slammed the perimeter defenses and started besieging the house. The rest of the supplies and weapons could wait until tomorrow.

  "Why don't we slip into the envirosuits instead of carrying them," I suggested to her. "It's pretty cold out there and the snow's deep enough to ruin your nice shoes."

  So we did that, hauling the lightweight coveralls over our regular clothes and donning heated overboots and helmets. I strapped on the Ivanov, slung the heavy Tala-G on my back, and carried the duffel and a heavy-duty flashlight. Joanna had her purse and a plastic grocery sack that contained the makings for a late supper of scrambled eggs, Nova Scotia smoked salmon, French bread, fresh Tasmanian strawberries, and Veuve Cliquot champagne.

  I used a remote-control gorget hung around my neck to open the hopper's cargo door and deploy the steps. Said, "Mush, you huskies! That means you, Professor DeVet."

  She giggled and we disembarked into shin-deep snow. I used the gorget to close up the aircraft and turn on its security system and environmental shield. Then we stood side by side in an immense dark silence roofed with overarching stars. It was every bit as beautiful as Arizona.

  I was about to make a romantic remark when Joanna said, "What's that smell? Could it be the bear?"

  A very faint disgusting odor hung in the icy air and penetrated our helmets. It wasn't the familiar skunky perfume of bear scats, though; this stench was as offensive as the reek of the Y'tata, although composed of different molecules. And I knew what kind of creature had produced it.

  "Not a bear, a wolverine. That's what we must have seen moving below the hopper."

  I turned on the flashlight and found a line of prints that made a beeline across the compound. We went to look at them. They were nearly as long as a human hand but much wider. Big guy. The animal had stepped neatly in its own tracks, placing the hind foot where the front foot had pressed down the snow, so that each print seemed to have a double row of five stout claws.

  "That's strange," I murmured. "The perimeter defenses let small animals and birds get through without getting zapped. But something as large as a wolverine should have triggered a painful warning shot from one of the Tazegard units, then a lethal Kagi blast if the beast kept on coming. I wonder if part of the perimeter is down?"

  We paused while I unzipped my suit and asked my phone to run a system check. All the defensive units were on-line. The obvious explanation eluded my fuddled brain. "I can't figure it. But I hope the critter managed to escape the lodge perimeter while we were landing. We sure as hell don't want a wolverine loose inside the compound."

  "Why?"

  "They don't hibernate, they're powerful enough to kill a moose, and they like to break into wilderness houses and smash things for the fun of it. Then they spray the bits and pieces like a giant skunk and... sometimes deface the scene of the crime in other unpleasant ways."

  "Good grief! I've never seen a wolverine. Are they very large?"

  "A big specimen can weigh nearly 30 kilos and be more than a meter long. I've only seen one in the wild. It had reddish-black fur and looked like a small bear. They're notoriously fierce and have the worst temper of any North American wild animal. You don't ever want to meet a wolverine."

  "Well, I guess not," said Joanna, looking apprehensively over her shoulder.

  Instead, we were about to meet something a whole lot worse.

  We had unlocked the lodge's heavily secured back door before leaving the aircraft, so we entered easily into a warm, brightly lit mudroom where we were able to take off our envirosuits. I hung the hopper gorget and the pistol belt with the Ivanov on a handy peg beside my suit.

  Joanna was still wearing the handsome camel-colored wool ensemble and blue silk blouse she had chosen for the earlier festivities. With her shining hair pulled back into a braided coil, and a discreet string of pearls at her throat, she looked like every randy student's dream of a female academic.

  Mine, too.

  I was still clad in Dan's perforated athletic garb, although I had shed the body armor right after the media conference. I looked shabby and ridiculous and felt like a sack of azure ordure.

  A domestic robot appeared, one of those faceless yard-high jobs with umpteen recessed grab-arms and finicky cleaning accessories. It said, "Good evening! May I carry your baggage?"

  Someone had pasted a label on it that read: roberta. Clever. Half the domestic bots in the Commonwealth were named Roberta. The rest were called Robbie.

  Nevertheless, I gratefully handed over the duffel and the weighty long gun. Joanna kept the groceries.

  "May I know your names, sir and madam?" the machine inquired.

  "I hate these things," I muttered. "So pushy. Mom and Pop would never have them in the house."

  "Don't hurt its feelings," Joanna admonished me. "It's only trying to do its job." To the machine: "I'm Joanna. He's Helly. Please follow us with the things, Roberta. Don't make any gratuitous remarks or offer helpful comments unless we ask you to do so."

  "Yes, Joanna."

  The three of us moved into the kitchen, which wouldn't have shamed a small hotel. Joanna began opening cabinets and inspecting appliances.

  I said, "I'd love to cook for us, but I don't think I could boil water tonight. Can you manage?"

  "Poor baby. Of course I can. Why don't I get our little supper ready now. The lodge has a servitron robot. It can bring the food and wine to us when we want it. Meanwhile, you go unpack our things and relax. Just tell me how to find our room—"

  "Master suite," I corrected her. "Go down the long hallway until you get to a living room the size of the Commonwealth Art Gallery. The suite's on the opposite side of the living room, down another hall that leads into the guest-bedroom wing. Remember that your bath awaits, madame! I'm going to have one that's lavender-flavored."

  The bot and I trundled off, while Bill Evans and Jim Hall played "Angel Face" on the global stereo.

  When my brother Dan was in residence, he had inhabited the master suite—the family wanting to make him as comfortable as possible. I'd tell Joanna about Dan's incarceration when our stay in the lodge was over. Why infect the ambience for no good reason?

  The decor was luxuriously backwoodsy, with floors of heated stone flags relieved by large rag rugs. Walls of dark-glazed pine were decorated with watercolors, limited-edition photoprints of outdoor scenes and animals, and Indian carvings. Not a stuffed critter head in the place. Officially, no one was allowed to hunt out of Kingfisher Lodge. All the windows were covered by armored shutters disguised as wood. I decided I'd roll up the ones in the
bedroom so we could enjoy starlight on snow. If the wolverine came around, we'd show him a thing or two.

  With Roberta trailing after, I passed a breakfast room, the main dining room, a game room, a huge library, a room devoted to fly-tying paraphernalia and fishing tackle, and a full bar with a baby grand piano and other musical instruments. Beyond that was the main entry hall, with one set of closed doors opening into the living room and another, heavily secured now, leading to a large sunporch that was used only during warm weather. A third door led to the service wing.

  I opened the doors to the living room and said, "Follow me, Roberta."

  It kept quiet. No gratuitous conversation.

  The chamber was cavernous, with a high beamed ceiling and a hideous chandelier made of discarded caribou antlers that for some reason had not been turned on. Most of the room was deeply shadowed. The bot and I went about halfway across the room, to where half a dozen leather settees were grouped around a huge fireplace fashioned of granite blocks. The only light came from gas flames flickering among faux paper-birch logs, and a Tiffany-style bridge lamp standing near a liquor cart full of decanters and glassware. The stereo speakers in this room were playing some Germanic opera that Joanna certainly had not programmed.

  She hadn't ordered the huge living room fireplace turned on, either, or requested the liquor cart.

  "Stand perfectly still," he said, from somewhere behind me and to my right. "It would be a great pity if I had to double-dart you before we had an opportunity to talk. We've never really had a decent conversation, you and I. It's an appropriate time, don't you think? On the brink of events that will stagger the galaxy."

  It was my voice, but overlaid with an intonation that was British or Scottish. No trace of a cowboy twang. The theatrical diction was way wrong.

  He stepped out of the shadows holding an Ivanov MS-120, a model that fired darts with extra sleepy-juice. Two shots would put an adult human out for twelve hours. I saw a tall, husky man with breadcrust-colored hair and a prominent widow's peak. His eyes were mean green and his mouth thin-lipped and wide. He wore knife-creased brown slacks, a tan wool Pendleton shirt, a cream neck scarf, and Gucci loafers. The duds were nice, but hardly my style.

  He said, "Are you armed?"

  "Only the Tala-'G the bot's carrying. Left an Ivanov in the mudroom."

  "Let's make sure. Strip down."

  "Aww—"

  "Do it!" God, he was an ornery-looking devil. Is that what people had seen when they looked at me! "Don't bore me with false modesty, laddie. I've watched you floating in the tank. And a gratifying sight it was."

  He made me give my phone to the bot and tell him where the remote control for the hopper was. As I removed my clothes, shook them out, and then immediately got dressed again, my fatigued mind was putting it all together. Too late.

  His own aircraft was inside the locked hangar, secured by his password. Not Makebate, which was much too large to fit, but her orbiter gig, with the starship herself parked in space, concealed by the powerful dissimulator.

  The wolverine had snuck into the compound when he lowered the lodge defenses for landing, then found itself trapped.

  His own "Asahel Frost" personal phone, programmed with virtually all of the data in my own instrument, would have given him access to the lodge. And of course he'd been here before, during Dan's abduction. He'd know what a superb hideaway it was.

  Two great minds with but a single thought...

  He told the robot to withdraw to the opposite end of the room, after instructing it to accept commands only from him. "As for you, lad, please be seated. We'll wait for your lovely wife." He indicated a couch opposite the liquor cart. "I was surprised to see her at your side during the media conference. Her loyalty was touching."

  "Joanna never had anything to do with you," I said. "Let her go. Do whatever you like with me."

  He poured amber liquid from one of the decanters into a cut-glass tumbler and sipped it, still standing, without offering me any. The Ivanov was tucked in his belt, its two-shot ready-lights glowing. I didn't have a prayer of rushing him, even if I'd been fit.

  "I'll do whatever I like with both of you," he said. "Your wife will be just as valuable a negotiating piece as you. When I came here to the lodge, I could conceive of only one way to save my neck. Now, thanks to you, I have two alternatives—and the second is much more attractive than the first. After tomorrow's Assembly vote—"

  Joanna screamed, "Helly! Oh, God, Helly!"

  She had entered the darkened room and seen him illuminated by the Tiffany lamp and the flames. The man with my face.

  I rose from my seat. "No. It's not me."

  She stood transfixed, staring incredulously at the two of us, clutching the strap of her shoulder bag as though it were a lifeline.

  "Let me introduce myself, Professor DeVet. My name is Alistair Drummond. I am the former chairman and CEO of Galapharma AC. Please come and be seated beside your former husband."

  She obeyed, moving like a sleepwalker, unable to take her eyes off him. He had put down his drink and taken the Ivanov from his belt, holding it negligently, apparently without threat.

  "Please empty your purse onto the coffee table," he said. She complied and he stepped closer to inspect the contents—a card wallet, a cosmetics case, a computer notebook, several stylomikes, a flat-key folder, a handkerchief, a tiny tin of peppermint Altoids, and a phone. He scooped up the computer and the phone and tossed them into the darkness.

  "Roberta! Pick up the two items I dropped. Take them and the other things you're carrying to the communication room. Leave the things there and secure the door with my password."

  "Yes, Citizen Drummond," said the machine. No facile familiarity with los domesticos for our Alistair. "I was instructed by Joanna not to offer helpful comments. Will you rescind that order?"

  "Yes," Drummond said. "What d'you have to say?"

  "A servitron containing cold champagne and hot food prepared by Joanna is waiting in the kitchen. Shall I summon it?"

  A brilliant smile broke over Drummond's face—my face. I heard Joanna gasp. She'd always loved my smile.

  "Yes," Drummond said to the robot, "I'm feeling a bit peckish. Good of you to've obliged, Professor."

  Joanna glared at him.

  "Only two place settings have been included," said the robot. "There are adequate amounts of food and wine for three. Do you wish an extra place setting?"

  Drummond laughed. "Yes, by all means, Roberta. And now you are dismissed."

  "Damned fink-bot," I growled. "God, I hate those things."

  So we ate and drank, Joanna and I sitting side by side, Drummond lounging on the couch opposite us. He was only slightly inconvenienced by having to keep us covered with the stunner while shoveling down eggs and lox and hogging most of the strawberries. He was in excellent spirits and seemed eager to talk. Maybe megalomaniacs aren't really happy unless they have an audience.

  As Karl had suspected, Drummond knew the game was up as soon as Fake Sam informed him that Helly the Haluk had been accepted by the Rampart Board of Directors. Even if Sam's demiclone security officers had been able to take control of the boardroom and its distinguished occupants, there was no possible way for Sam to salvage the situation. Murdering the directors would accomplish nothing. Taking hostages was an even more useless option. Realistically, all Sam could have hoped to do was retreat, taking the Rampart demi contingent with him.

  Sam had urged Drummond to immediately take refuge in Macpherson Tower. Not bloody likely! The Scotsman was crazy but not stupid. The brilliant stratagem he had conceived was totally buggered, and in his Fake-Helly demi-clone condition, he was a dangerous liability to the aliens. If he entered their embassy, he would never emerge alive. Free, he might think of a way to blackmail the Haluk into financing a new life for him on some comfortable freesoil world. But where could he hide while waiting for events to ripen?

  He remembered Kingfisher Lodge.

  Taking a Rampart
hopper there would have meant almost instant capture—either by Rampart or by the aliens. Every corporate ground vehicle, aircraft, and starship had a monitoring chip in its navigator that sent a coded data stream directly to Fleet Security and from there to the bean-counters in Finance. Haluk demiclones were present in both departments.

  The only Rampart ship exempt from monitoring was Makebate. I had made sure of that.

  Drummond was reluctant to leave Earth for the reasons I had already noted. He was a wanted man; Makebate's ultra-luminal fuel-trace was easy to identify, given enough people looking for it, as was the ship herself; he had no outplanet hidey-hole ready to receive him; and he wanted to stay close to the action in Toronto so he could judge his options accurately. Therefore he did the only practical thing—took off in the starship using ordinary sublight drive, parked in geosync orbit, then returned to Earth immediately in the gig, staying outside the air traffic control network.

  I said, "But you must have suspected that the day would come when the aliens wouldn't need you anymore. Didn't you whomp up some sort of insurance policy, the way Ollie Schneider did when he was your mole?"

  "No," he said quietly. "It wasn't necessary."

  Oh, boy. Maybe escape hatches and fallback maneuvers were too mundane for hubris-loaded nutcases: every contretemps a fresh challenge. Even now he wasn't planning a getaway. He was mulling over a new scam involving Joanna and me.

  I could hardly wait to find out what it was.

  Joanna said to Drummond, "May I ask you something?"

  That damned smile. "You may ask." He poured the last of the champagne into his own glass.

  "How in the world did you escape from the landslide at the Arizona gold mine?"

  "By following rattlesnakes." He threw me a humorous look. "Spare me the obvious comment, lad. The mine was riddled with old tunnels and shafts. I had my little penlight, which I tied to my head with my scarf, and I had my Lanvin actinic pistol. There was water to drink. So I coped."

  He had crept and crawled inside Copper Mountain for nearly three days. A couple of times he nearly died in rock-falls. One of them cut him off from returning back the way he'd come. (And convinced searchers that he must be lying dead beneath it.) On the third day, weak from hunger and with the penlight battery starting to give out, he began following what seemed like a moving stream of air, thinking it might lead to an exit. It only brought him into a dead-end gallery.