Never Love A Stranger Part 25

James stared at him impa.s.sively. "By killing Dekka, Gar, you have made yourself an outlaw. You may as well throw in your lot with us."

"I can't," Gar said wretchedly.

James struggled to a sitting position. "Then shoot me," he challenged.

Annie watched with bewilderment as the gun started to waver. Gar hesitated a long moment, then threw the gun to the floor.

"Thank you, Gar," James said quietly.

Gar covered his face with his hands for a long moment. "I couldn't let her kill you," he said in a whisper.

"I can't kill you. I owe you too much."

"I don't understand," Annie said. "What do you owe him' I thought everyone in your world believed

that humanoids were inferior. So how did you become friends with one of them'"

Gar lowered his hands and looked at her. She saw with shock that there were tears streaking his cheeks. "He is much more than merely a friend," he said harshly.

"What do you mean'"

Gar strode across the room, knelt next to James, and helped him to his feet. "James belonged to my family. He raised me from a baby. He was more of a parent to me than my own mother ever was." He hesitated, then added in a whisper, "I owe him everything."

Chapter 20.

Annie watched with bewilderment as Gar stood with his arm around James' waist, steadying him. She remembered that James had told her he was a nanny. Apparently he had raised this man as a child, and in so doing had earned his affection and respect.

Gar had enough affection for James that he was willing to kill a human for his sake. That hardly seemed to fit with her notion of a world that had turned a blind eye to the suffering of fifty million humanoids as they were executed without mercy.

She wondered how many other humanoids that had been with families for years, for decades, had been destroyed by the Bureau. She wondered how many other people were out there in this world, angry and resentful and saddened that the humanoids they had trusted enough to raise their children had been denied rights, then summarily destroyed.

"Would you mind letting me go'" she asked.

Gar blinked, then lifted a hand and brushed away his tears. "Of course," he said in a husky voice. He walked to the wall and touched it. She couldn't see a control panel, or any sort of b.u.t.ton, but the invisible something that had held her fast immediately dissipated. She staggered, and James was immediately at her side, holding her until she had regained her equilibrium.

"What are we going to do now'" she asked.

"We must return to the twenty-first century," James said. "It is the only sensible alternative."

"Don't be stupid, James. We have an opportunity to figure out what else we can do to fix things. We need to stay right here until we figure it out."

"We cannot afford to stay here," Gar said. "Before long Dekka's death will be discovered, and then--"

"We'll be dead meat," Annie said.

James lifted his eyebrows. "Metaphorically speaking, in my case."

Annie clenched her fists, annoyed by his ability to find humor in their current desperate situation. "Look, James, you said you couldn't figure out another way to change the future. I mean, the present. The world we're in right now. But there has to be another way. Suppose we take another look at those records'"

"The Bureau is not going to permit us to sit down and peruse their computer records at our leisure," James said mildly. "We are, as you once put it, on the lam. We need to escape this place at once." "No," Gar said.

Annie looked at him with surprise. She saw that James had much the same reaction. "Huh'" she said. "Ms. Simpson is correct. We need to take this opportunity to fix things, James. We won't get another chance."

"Don't be absurd, Gar. You are in as much danger as we are. Perhaps more. You killed Dekka."

"Is Dekka that important'" Annie demanded.

James glanced at her. "Her status is irrelevant. Your society was plagued by violence and murder, Annie.

This society is not. Here the murder of a human being is treated as the serious matter it is. Murder is not tolerated."

"Murder isn't tolerated in my society, either."

"Odd that you have so much of it."

Annie flushed. She remembered Dekka's contemptuous reference to her as a barbarian, and hoped James didn't see her that way. Most likely he did. Here she was nothing more than a savage, a refugee from the Dark Ages. "We have laws against it," she said stiffly.

"Laws mean nothing without commensurate punishment. Here murder is met with a prompt and

appropriate response."

She guessed he meant the death penalty but realized she didn't really want to know for sure. "If murder is that serious an offense, then why did you kill her'"

Gar looked at her with surprise. "She was torturing James, Annie. She was going to kill him."

"Yes, but don't those things'" She waved vaguely at the gun on the floor'"have lower settings'"

"At such close range, the lower setting would have killed Dekka, but much more painfully. At least with

the high setting, she did not suffer." Annie privately thought a little suffering would have been good for Dekka, but she really didn't have a problem with the woman being reduced to a puddle, either. She supposed that just went to prove that she was, in fact, a barbarian. Then again, Gar didn't seem terribly sorry about Dekka's demise, either.

"Okay," she said, "Gar has killed someone. That means big trouble. I get it. And you've killed people too, so the two of you are in--" "I believe the colloquial term you use," James said with a faint quirk of his mouth, "is deep s.h.i.+t." "And you are in jeopardy, too, Ms. Simpson," Gar said. "Make no mistake. You are an accessory to the crime. If they find us, they will--punish--all of us."

"Who' The Bureau' I thought you guys were just in charge of hara.s.sing humanoids."

Gar shook his head. "No, the Bureau is the planet wide security network. And murder is our society's most abhorrent crime, so we are in a great deal of trouble." He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Despite that, I propose that we try to find a solution to our problem."

"What do you suggest'" James said.

Gar paused. "You two return to the twenty-first century, and I will stay here--"

"Unacceptable," James said.

"h.e.l.l, no," Annie said at the same moment.

"Please, both of you, hear me out. I will hide myself and break into the computer files. I'll try to find a solution, then I'll come back to Ms. Simpson's century. We can fix the problem together."

"No," James said. "Come on, James. Do you really want to risk her life'"

James looked at Annie a long moment. "No," he said quietly. "But she must return. She belongs to that century."

"I'm not going anywhere without you," Annie said grimly. "d.a.m.n it, it's the only chance we have," Gar growled. "You don't know a d.a.m.ned thing about the present, Ms. Simpson. You will only slow me down. And James should return to your time as well, in order to ensure his safety. If I--"

He hesitated. Distantly Annie heard the sound of voices. "d.a.m.n," Gar said. He pushed the wall again, and part of it slid away, exposing a narrow hallway. "Let's get out of here. Discuss it later." He paused for a moment to pick up his gun, then pushed them ahead of him, down the corridor.

Annie glanced surrept.i.tiously at her surroundings as they went down the hallway. There wasn't much to see. Apparently the humans of James' time weren't big on interior design. There were no paintings on the walls, not even the bland and unartistic prints one found adorning the walls of most office buildings in the twenty-first century, nor were there windows. There were no annoying flickering fluorescent lights on the ceiling. There was nothing but the subtly glowing silver metal, which seemed to give off a light of its own. The floor was a rubbery, soft substance, which made no sound as their shoes fell on it. It was almost the same charcoal gray as Kay's carpets, but it was definitely not carpeting.

She thought sardonically that even Kay had a better sense of interior design that these people did. "This way," Gar said, and urged them down another pa.s.sageway, identical to the first. They encountered no one. Perhaps it was after hours. Since there were no windows, she had no way of gauging whether it was nighttime or not.

Ahead of them a doorway slid open, exposing a weird nothingness.

Annie stopped. She couldn't help it. All the money on earth couldn't have tempted her to step into the odd mist beyond the door. She could see no floor, no ceiling, no walls, just a peculiar emptiness that terrified her on some visceral, primitive level.

"Come on," Gar said impatiently. He was busily pressing the wall, evidently setting some sort of code.

Annie shook her head. She could no more have stepped voluntarily into that mist than she could have stepped into an empty elevator shaft on the thirtieth floor of a building. "It is all right, Annie," James said gently.

"I can't," she said in a whisper.

"Yes, you can. Trust me, Annie."

She closed her eyes, then, with James at her side, stepped forward into nothingness.

Somewhat to her surprise, she did not plummet to her death. Hesitantly, she opened her eyes. Almost at

once the fog surrounding them s.h.i.+fted in an indescribable manner, and she felt a vague sense of

disorientation. It wasn't as unpleasant as time travel had been, but it was nevertheless an odd sensation. A door materialized in front of them and slid open, revealing a different hallway. Gar pressed the wall several times, then led them out.

"That should keep them confused for a while," he said with satisfaction.

"I don't understand," Annie objected. "What was that thing' An elevator of some sort'"

James looked down at her. "Annie, I will explain it to you later. Right now we haven't time to discuss it.

Suffice it to say Gar has temporarily mystified any pursuers." He glanced over her head at Gar. "Where do you intend to go'"

Gar looked embarra.s.sed. "I think we need to visit Mother, James."

James' features hardened. "No," he said forcefully.

"James, she knows more than anyone else does about the module, more even than you do. She's the only one who can help us."

James hesitated a long moment. "All right," he said at last. They stepped back into the box of mist. Annie overcame her instinctive dislike of the device by closing her eyes and letting James lead her in. A moment later there was a brief sense of disorientation, and then another. Then a door appeared. It opened, revealing what was evidently a private home. Unlike the other places Annie had seen here, it was decorated with furniture and pictures on the walls. The ceiling was low, so low that she suspected James would almost b.u.mp his head against it, but it was a s.p.a.cious, rather pleasant room. They stepped forward. The door slid closed behind them and immediately disappeared into the wall, in that disturbing way that doors had here.

There was a chiming sound, which Annie a.s.sumed was a sort of doorbell. A moment later a woman clad in long white robes appeared. She was even taller than Annie, and quite regal, with a head of silver hair and piercing gray eyes. Her face was unlined, but she was not young. She came to a halt when she saw her visitors, and her eyes went wide.

"Gar," she said with surprise. Her eyes flickered to James, and a look of even greater shock washed over her face. Annie risked a glimpse at James and saw his that features were hard with anger and distaste.

The memory of his voice echoed in her head: My mistress used me for purposes other than housekeeping occasionally, when she got bored. I had to do whatever she wanted, or suffer a rather excruciating punishment.

She realized she was looking at the woman who had owned James.