Coven. Part 40

Wade grabbed the hewer and rolled. Suddenly Jervis was wrapped up in his own legs. This confusion gave Wade time to rise.

Jervis fumbled to untie himself. Finally his legs came untangled and stood back up.

The hewer blazed down. The first strike cut the legs in half. Without the foundation of unity, the legs now hopped about independent of each other, useless.

Jervis, the walking torso, looked up in horror. The hewer's second strike took off Jervis' right arm, the third his left.

"Now I've made five of you," Wade pointed out. "What are you gonna do now? Roll after me?"

"Aw, s.h.i.+t, Wade. You've ruined everything," Jervis complained, dismembered.

"Let's get down to business." Wade dropped to one knee. "Where's the bomb?"

"Can't tell you, man. That's against the rules. At one minute after midnight, that bomb goes off, and there's nothing you can do about it."

"But the labyrinth leaves at midnight. One minute after?"

"In that one minute, Wade, the labyrinth will be a million miles away." Jervis turned his head toward the wall clock. He smiled. "Twenty five minutes."

"Tell me where it is!"

"No can do, buddy. It's a doozie, though-the same yield as a Pers.h.i.+ng II warhead. Everything-the campus, the town, and every single person in it-will be vaporized. We're talking about a ten mile radius of scorched earth."

Wade looked numb with despair.

"The Supremate likes to leave his mark," Jervis continued. "Just a little memento, like a promise in the wind."

"But thousands of people will die!" Wade shouted.

"Yeah, but someday the Supremate will return, for the repopulation phase. When that happens, he'll kill everybody."

Now Wade was on both knees, a beggar. "Jervis, please!"

"We'll just have to make do without a holotype. I'm sure they'll be able to find something suitable in the holds, it's no big deal. So face it, Wade. You're screwed."

CHAPTER 40.

In a bimagneticfieldeffectelectrostatic snap, the Supremate blinked. It blinked as might a tired old man. The blood of its hypervelotic heart and line hash veins ran cool and slow. So much power was flooding the reserves that there was little left for anything but the discreet switch systems. The Supremate needed nothing else at this point, however. It could sleep and dream as the labyrinth prepared itself for recharge and exitpulse.

It felt good to be sleepy, a welcome lull in an endless fury of high speed computer transactions. All life in the labyrinth lay in hibernation now, save for a few sisters in the emergencysensorcove. The Supremate, in other words, was quite alone. In this strange magnetic solitude, it felt peace.

Jervis was so far away, his transception signals could no longer be read-there was no power left, no blood. The Supremate guessed that Jervis had failed in securing the earth holotype. That was unfortunate, but it mattered little. The Supremate grew weary of this frivolous world. It looked forward to returning in some future eon and destroying it.

The one called Besser had been trying to escape when the sensorposts winked out. This, too, was of no significance. If the Supremate's pets in the grove didn't get him, the bomb most certainly would.

-THINGS COULD BE WORSE, the Supremate considered.

It smiled then-in a sense, at any rate.

Then it went back to sleep.

"I'm going to report you," the girl complained. She was driving a silver Saab, obviously an Exham student on her way to the summer sessions. Lydia had flagged her car down on the Route. The girl did not take kindly to being commandeered by police.

"Do whatever you want," Lydia said.

"This is outrageous," the girl replied. She wore a s.h.i.+rt that read "If pro is the opposite of con, what's the opposite of progress?" A frosted, purple Mohawk ridged her head.

They'd been on the road a half hour now; a half hour more and they'd be there. Sid and Nancy stood awry on a sticker adhered to the dash. "I want your name and badge number," the girl said.

Lydia gave them to her. "You want my shoe size too?"

"And you can bet my father won't like this. He'll sue you."

"Clam up and drive," Lydia said. "Jesus."

The girl simmered. Her Mohawk looked like a scrub brush.

When they finally arrived back on campus, the girl stopped just past the gates. "You wanted a ride to the campus," she said, "and here's the campus. I refuse to drive you another inch. This is where you get out."

"Wrong, brushhead. This is where you get out."

"I-hey!"

Lydia shoved her out of the car. She landed on her rump.

"You can't steal my car!" she wailed.

"Sure I can." Lydia slid behind the wheel and slammed the door.

"Hey!"

"Shut up," Lydia said. G.o.d, she hated girls who whined. "And fix your hair." She jammed the gas and sped for Campus Drive.

Professor Besser was a sight. Blubbering like a baby, he hopped down the servicepa.s.s. The .357 slug had exploded in his knee. Each time he fell down, he bellowed. But he had to get out. Any death was preferable to dying in the labyrinth. He would either be fed into the sustenanceprocessor or consigned to the communal holds where his r.e.c.t.u.m would prove a most welcome entertainment to the holotypes.

Mother! he thought.

Even the slightest weight on his bad leg sent bolts of pain up his spine. The shattered joint crunched like broken gla.s.s. He should have been wearing diapers, for all the crying and pants wetting. Oops. Here came a big number two now, to add to the disgrace. In truth, that's all Besser was and ever would be: a three hundred pound pants p.i.s.sing and s.h.i.+tting baby. Terror had a way of bringing out the best in a man.

"Mother!" he rejoiced. He could smell his own s.h.i.+t. But this was too good to be true!

The mindsign, though very weakly now, glowed its promise: POINTACCESSMAIN#1.

Besser crawled forward, blubbering. He took a deep breath, raised his key, and plugged it into the extromitter.

When he was out of the labyrinth, he found himself not in the safety of his office, nor the student shop, but in the grove. His eyes bulged.

CHAPTER 41.

Wade sat up on the table, looking down at the dismembered torso of his friend. Jervis inclined his head up and smiled.

Wade a.s.sessed the agenda as thus: 1) It was now 11:35 P.M.

2) At 11:55 P.M., recharge would occur, whatever that was.

3) At midnight, the labyrinth would take off.

4) At one minute after midnight, the bomb would detonate and wipe out the entire campus and town.

5) Wade didn't know where the bomb was.

6) Jervis wasn't going to tell him.

Beautiful, Wade thought.

Next he a.s.sessed the obvious yet elusive elements of evil involved. (1) The labyrinth was a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p/genetic engineering factory that would someday return to earth and repopulate it with mindless integrated slaves optimally hybridized from various life forms. (2) The Supremate ran the show. (3) The Supremate enlisted certain natives-i.e., Tom, Jervis, Winnie, Besser-to a.s.sist in specimen procurements. (4) The Supremate was evil.

But evil was relative, wasn't it? Certain people gave their allegiance to evil for certain reasons. Some of these reasons were voluntary. Besser and Winnifred, for instance, had sided with evil through their own greed. But Tom and Jervis had gone over involuntarily, which meant that their loyalties must be maintained by control.

Evil, Wade thought. Control.

He glanced at Jervis. "You're not evil. Neither was Tom."

"There's no such thing as evil," replied the head affixed to Jervis' limbless torso. "There's only idealism and reality. What joins the two together isn't evil, Wade. It's perfection."

Hadn't countless presidential candidates made the same a.s.sertion, as well as countless monarchs?

"All I know," Wade speculated, "is that a couple of days ago, you were a good person. Now you're evil. I want to know why."

Jervis gushed laughter. It had-yes-an evil ring to it.

Wade hopped off the table. "It's that thing, isn't it? That thing they put in your head."

Jervis stopped laughing.

"What would happen," Wade wondered, "if I pulled it out?"

"Get away from me!" Jervis shouted. His torso was suddenly shrugging, rocking, inching back. "Stay the f.u.c.k away!"

"That's it, right? If I take it out, you won't be evil anymore."

"I'll die!"

"You know what I think, Jerv? I think you want to tell me where the bomb is. You want to tell me how to defuse it. Except that thing in your head won't let you."

"Don't, Wade! Please don't!" the torso yelled.

Wade grabbed the small black k.n.o.b in Jervis's head. It was about the size of a marble, and it was warm.

As he pulled, Jervis screamed.

The torso went stiff. The head arched back, mouth locked open in an unbroken howl of pain. The transceptionrod didn't come easy; it creaked out a little at a time, like twisting a nail out of old wood. Two inches, then three, four, five. Finally, at the sixth inch, the rod came out.

Jervis' head and torso fell still.

Wade threw the wet transceptionrod into the hall.

The reaper worked quick, giving Jervis an instantaneous refund on the time he'd borrowed from death. The torso and face began to rot in short order, going from gray to brown to...mush.

"d.a.m.n it," Wade muttered. It had been worth a try, at least. But instead of removing Jervis' evil, he'd only succeeded in removing life. In seconds, it seemed, the torso began to bloat.

Then the sagging brown face said, "Time."

"Jerv! You're still with me!"

The order of nature reduced Jervis' voice to a sluggish, phlegmy rattle. "How much...time?"

Wade glanced at the clock. "It's twenty till midnight."

Jervis made a facial gesture of approval. Putrefactive slime oozed from his stumps, his s.h.i.+t dark face melting. He spoke in a liquid wisp. "The bomb is in my car, right outside."

"Great! Tell me how to disarm it! How do I turn it off?"

"Can't," Jervis bubbled. "Preprogrammed. Can't disarm it."

Wade was outraged. "What do I do with it, then? It's got a ten mile kill zone! I can't just throw it into the woods and stick my fingers in my f.u.c.king ears! Tell me what to do!"

Jervis smiled, if in fact his percolating lips were still capable of it. "Put it..." he wheezed, hacking up slop. "Put it in the labyrinth."