A Tale Of The Continuing Time - The Last Dancer Part 50

"Protecting myself."

Chandler sat with his eyes closed, and then, after a long moment, opened them and said irritably, "Fine.

Look, Daimara, we're deadly short on time. Are youquite done?"

Jimmy looked at her without expression. "What about me?"

Denice looked straight at him. "Some risks are worth taking." She turned away and left them together in the cabin, cycled back out into the garage, and walked back up to the lounge. She felt the gentle shudder as the yacht disengaged from the house, moved out into the vacuum.

After she was gone, Jimmy Ramirez sat with a silly grin on his face, a grin not entirely due to the fierce acceleration of the yacht, in their high-gee sprint to Halfway.

- 10 -.

I cancelledeverything .

For most of a day I sat in my office and, with a growing coldness in the pit of my stomach, monitoring the InfoNet.Electronic Times, NewsBoard, CNN, The LondonTimes; virtually every one of the major news Boards was arrayed in a semicircle of holos against the wall of my office.

Bad. Very, very bad. Riots in St. Louis, and Albuquerque; something very close to an armed insurrection in Miami.

It was worse in j.a.pan. The j.a.panese had, without so much as a shot being fired, taken most of the Unification officials in the country hostage, aside from those few who, like Shuji Kurokawa, had simply gone over.

Hostages: better than a dozen Unification Councilors, two of Secretary General Eddore's webdancers, over thirty thousand members of the various civil services; the j.a.panese rebels had already executed a pair of babychasers from the Ministry of Population Control. Not surprising, that; n.o.body likes the Ministry, but the Asian nations-including China, which was one of the founding Unification countries-have a particular rage for the babychasers. They feel, with some justification, that the Ministry was created by Westernersbecause of the Asian nations, with their historically high birthrates. It's certainly true that most non-Asians don't even know someone who was subjected to forcible sterilization; in the Asian countries, about forty percent of all women have undergone the operation.

While I was watching, they announced that another pair of MPC employees had been lynched in Kyoto.

Displays off to my left snowed theUnity, sitting smack in the middle of Halfway; s.p.a.ce Force had brought the s.h.i.+p's cannon emplacements up for use. Lights glowed across the huge surface of the s.h.i.+p, cl.u.s.tered around the cannon. Typical of s.p.a.ce Force; the d.a.m.n thing had no airplant, no computers to speak of, the rockets didn't work-but the weapons did, all of them.

The door behind me curled open without my say-so, which meant that it was Jay, or Vasily, or Marc.

"Neil."

Jay's voice; I said, without looking away, "Yes?"

"The circus is in town."

I turned in my chair and stared at him. "You're kidding. Theycame?"

Jay shrugged. "The Collective s.h.i.+pLew Alton, carrying the Cirque du Mars. Just docked."

I didn't even have to think about it. "Send them back."

"Can't, Neil. Their airplant died and their 'ponies are in bad shape; they're tight on both air and water.

It's why they came on ahead after we warned them off. They'dprobably make Luna, but they can't get back to Mars. I had them tie up with our computers and we ran diagnostics to double-check theirs, and it's legit. They're breathing their socks."

"Great." I worked my way through it. "All right. Let them dock, cable them up for air services, but keep them on board their s.h.i.+p."

"Um, they already docked."

I sat rubbing my temples. "I don't suppose there's any chance at all that they're still on board the d.a.m.n s.h.i.+p?"

"Haven't been down there myself; I'm told that eight of them came down off the s.h.i.+p together before I was notified. They're being detained in the debarking area outside Lock Ten; a woman in a white tie and tails, a couple of roustabouts, and, um"-his cheeks twitched, but he kept it under control-"five clowns.

They want to talk to you."

"Five clowns." I nodded grimly. "Who let them in?"

Jay paused, glanced down at his handheld; a holofield sprang into existence. "McCarthy and Lopez," he said after a moment. I recognized the names; rookies, both of them. The two of them had come to my attention recently for something else-but the memory wouldn't come, and I had more important things to worry about. "They want to talk to you," Jay repeated.

"They're not going to enjoy it," I said grimly. "Get ten Security carrying needlers, in case our clowns don't feel like being sent home. I'll meet you there in five minutes."

I worked myself up into a cold rage on my way down to Lock Ten.

Jay stood waiting outside the Lock Ten debarking area when I got there, two Security squads with holstered needlers standing behind him. I nodded to them, palmed open the door to the waiting area, and swept in, moving fast, with the lot of them at my back.

They sat in the small plastic chairs that are all the amenities the debarking areas offer, and they came to their feet as I entered. The Master of Ceremonies was a tall, painfully thin woman, Loonie sized, with a makeup job that made her look as though her skin were covered by fine feathers, wearing, as Jay had said, a white tuxedo.

The clowns, naturally enough, caught my immediate attention; there were five of them, as I'd been told, in full costume-clown suits, striped and polka-dotted, with either big smiles or frowns painted on their faces. One of them, a young, dark-skinned fellow with a huge smile and a single white rose painted on each cheek, stepped forward at my approach. At the back of my mind I noticed that, unlike all the other clowns, he wore a pair of those big floppy clown shoes. A red glove with big yellow b.u.t.tons covered his left hand; his right hand was bare.

I'd intended to grab the Master of Ceremonies, possibly push her off her feet, shake her up a bit. Basic Gestapo tactics, you use them because they work. But when I saw what she was Icouldn't. Getting physical with women is something I have a problem with; I do it because the job demands it, but there's always a moment of hesitation I don't have with men. But the Master of Ceremonies looked like any rough handling would break her in two.

So I changed the approach. I kept my eyes fixed on the Master of Ceremonies, and backhanded the clown with the roses on his cheeks. Lock Ten is under a tenth gee; the clown lifted off his feet and went down. I snapped, "I'm Chief Corona and I've got s.p.a.ce Force and PKF to deal with and no time for you. What are you f.u.c.king idiots doing here and what do you need from us to get the h.e.l.lgone?"

The black clown got back to his feet, He was my size, or a bit taller, with Earth-grown muscles. Tall for a downsider. One of the floppy clown feet had come off, and he frowned down at the bare black foot.

He took a step back toward me, and said, "No hitting, okay? Can I talk?"

I used my very best psycho cop voice. "Make itfast."

He nodded. "I left Earth seven years ago. In that time, do you know the most interesting thing I've learned about downsiders?"

It was so completely out of line with anything I'd been expecting to hear from him that it threw me completely out of position. I stared at him, unsnapped the guard on my holster-heard the sound of holsters popping all around me-and said finally, very gently, "No. What is the most interesting thing about downsiders?"

"Downsiders," said the clown, "never look up."

Tytan Security, I think I've mentioned this, is mostly downsiders. It's the nature of the beast.

Someone behind me murmured, "Oh, s.h.i.+t." Necks around me craned upward, and I joined them.

The debarking area at Lock Ten is about ten meters high; cargo often gets unloaded here, and the extra cubic is useful.

Five-no, six of them, and four of them were clowns-had tethered themselves to the ceiling, high above us. They pointed laser rifles straight down on us.

Two of them wore Tytan Security blues: Lopez and McCarthy. McCarthy grinned at me, called out, "Hi, Chief."

I brought my eyes back down from the ceiling, to face the young black clown. From nowhere the clown had produced a small hideaway maser; he held it in his naked right hand, pointed straight into my face.

"Make one wrong move," said the clown in a grim voice, "and we'll kill you all."

Jay stood closest to me; he took a step back, and then lifted his hands very carefully and put them atop his head and stood completely motionless. I heard the distant rustle of uniforms as the others emulated him.

I stood still, didn't move at all, not even to put my hands on my head.

The clown smiled then for real, and pa.s.sed the maser to the Master of Ceremonies. He looked at me.

"You're Neil Corona, aren't you? The Neil Corona?"

When people say it that way the only thing they ever mean is,Are you the Neil Corona who surrendered to the Unification outside of Yorktown? I always am. "Yeah. That's me."

"Great. Pleased to meet you." The clown held out his bare right hand to be shaken. The other was still enclosed in a red clown glove. "I'm Trent."

- 11 -.

"Trent?" Jay said stupidly."The Trent?"

His hand dropped back to his side. Dark brown eyes studied Jay from inside white clown makeup.

"You know," he said after a moment, "when people say it that way the only thing they ever mean is, are you Trent the Uncatchable? I always am."

"You don't look like your pictures."

"I used to be a white man, yes. You're Jay Altaloma, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"I thought so. They said you were stupid." Trent turned back to me, held his hand out again. "Pleased to meet you."

I took it this time. I wasn't being the least sarcastic when I said, "Likewise."

Over the course of the next two hours I watched one of the most professional operations it has ever been my dubious pleasure to have run on me. The lock cycled all the way open, inner and outer doors both, and some two hundred men and women in United Nations s.p.a.ce Force uniforms came pouring through, armed mostly with needlers.

s.p.a.ceFarers' Collective. If I hadn't known they couldn't be real s.p.a.ce Force-not with Trent there-I'd have bought them for what their uniforms proclaimed. Theylooked like downsiders-but s.p.a.ceFarers do; the Collective raises its children under gravity, so that they can withstand the kind of boost that s.p.a.ce Force employs chasing them. The only thing that marked them for Collective rather than s.p.a.ce Force, and I doubt I'd have noticed this if I hadn't been looking for it, was that though they had the compactness of size that only comes from being raised under gravity, they moved in free fall like Halfers; humans are only capable of learning to move that way in childhood.

Trent the Uncatchable, I learned quickly, knew Halfway's security layout every bit as well as I did.

He did what I'd have done in his skin; restrained the Security Jay had brought down with us, snakechains all around; left most of his troops in the debarking area, put a laser in my back and walked Jay and me up to Marc Packard's offices. Marc's offices sit in a little blister on the outer surface of Administration Central; mine are down the hall. They went in and secured Marc's office before bringing Jay and me through. Marc sat unconscious in his chair, with half a dozen anesthetic slivers still visible, though melting rapidly, in one cheek.

They put Jay and me in a corner of the room, snakechained us together, and put a huge clown with a laser rifle on us.

Trent pulled Marc free from his chair, tossed him over to a bunch of clowns who had come up with us, and sank down behind Marc's desk.

Abruptly things got quiet. Jay started to say something, but the big clown waved him to silence. Trent sat with his eyes closed, doing G.o.d knows what; if it was true, as I'd heard, that he was one of the greatest Players in the System, it could be almost anything.

In the distance, breach alarms went off. None of the circus people, if any of themwere circus people, seemed alarmed, and I worked it out quickly enough; the breach was not real, it was simply that the alarms would seal Administration Central off from the rest of Halfway more quickly than anything else.

After perhaps five minutes Trent opened his eyes, stretched slightly, and smiled at me. "You have six tunnels, fourteen major airlocks, forty-seven single-person locks, seven emergency locks. All sealed. Am I missing anything?"

"If you were I wouldn't tell you."

Trent nodded. "Fair enough. I think I've got Administration, Central sealed off. We took care of the Security barracks on the way in; blew off a couple of fadeaway bombs inside it. We'll go in and clean up in a bit; fadeaway, if you're not familiar with it, won't hurt your people. Please notice, Sieur Corona, that we've gone to real lengths to make sure that none of your peopleare hurt."

"I've noticed."

"Good. So, by now the rest of Halfway thinks that there's been a breach at Administration Central; by the time they'll expect the emergency to be over, they'll have been believably informed that s.p.a.ce Force has taken over both Halfway Administration Central, and-" Trent paused, got a slightly distant look, and said, "And the Halfway InfoNet Relay Station. We're set up to do a very good imitation of a s.p.a.ce Force battalion, and as long as we don't have to deal with PKF or real s.p.a.ce Force I think we'll get away with it. We'll be cleaning up Administration Central for the next several minutes, but we're already reporting secured for about eighty percent of Central. The Relay Station we've got cold, along with one of the Secretary General's webdancers." Trent stopped, looked at me where I sat with Jay, and said, "

'Sieur Corona, I'd like your help."

Jay said hotly, "You can't think you're going to get away with impersonating s.p.a.ce Force. It-"

"I do think so," said Trent without looking away from me. "s.p.a.ce Force is busy at the moment, trying to take back the laser cannon; the PKF are just as busy getting ready to take back j.a.pan. All we have to do here is stay quiet for a couple days, give the Halfers an explanation they'll accept. A s.p.a.ce Force takeover will make sense to them, to the degree they bother to think about it. Most of them are distracted by the fighting over the laser cannon anyway."

I'd worked my way through it by then; I said simply, "Tell me what you need." I could feel Jay's stare of disbelief boring into the side of my head.

"We're going to hold Administration Central, and the Halfway Relay Station, for two, three days; it depends. After we've done what we came for, we're out of here. Shortly after we've left, it's going to become apparent that it wasn't s.p.a.ce Force here at all, but Trent with Collective troopers. As soon as that gets out, the PKF will have Halfway under martial law. Do you follow the chain of events?"

Unfortunately, I did. "Yes."

"Okay. So you have no real choice. Perhaps today, if we screw up, a couple of days from now, if things go well, Halfway goes under martial law. And when that happens, 'Sieur Corona, you're going up against the wall."

He was absolutely correct, and we both knew it.

"Look," said Jay, "you don't know-"

Trent did not raise his voice particularly. "Shut up, Altaloma. 'Sieur Corona," said Trent softly, "I need your help. Do you want to live?"

I looked around Marc's office, at Marc's unconscious form, the clowns, the men in s.p.a.ce Force uniforms. I said to Trent. "Sometimes it seems like a lot of effort."

Trent nodded. "I've had whole days like that. You can come with us when we leave; or we can try to arrange pa.s.sage downside, and you can take your chances hiding among Earth's seven and a half billion."

"And if I come with you, how are you getting out of Earth/Luna without being blown to pieces?"

"We're going to run backward."

"That thing you came in is a boat. What are you going todo when it's time to leave?"

Trent shrugged. "Leave."

"Just like that."

"Run away."

I'm sure the skepticism showed in my voice. "You're not serious."

Trent looked genuinely perplexed. "Why do people alwayssay that to me?"

Jay said, "I don't think you know what you're doing here."

"Yes, I do. Listen, Corona, this is-"