Engineman - Eric Brown [199]
"My daughter?"
"By the time I deliver the crystals, your daughter will be in the safe care of the city hospital."
Kennedy nods his understanding. Spider Lo pushes papers across the table and Kennedy signs. "Mr Lo will take you to the hospital, Mr Kennedy." I shake him formally by the hand, but his shield deflects my probe.
We move outside and Spider and I slap palms and go our separate ways. Little Becky Kennedy will be alive again in a short while. Thirty minutes ago Spider rushed a medic-squad to the gym to retrieve her corpse, and soon she'll be respiring normally in the resurrection ward, the attack edited from her memory, looking forward to whatever it is little girls look forward to nowadays. Her sub-orbital trip to Vienna, maybe.
I ride the boulevard, one last time. In case Kennedy suspected anything and put a watch on me, I dodge clever. I alight on 5th and take a devious detour through the downtown quarter, lose myself in crowds and backtrack numerously. Then I hire a flier and mach uptown to the cryogenic-hive.
After the formalities of payment and after-care instructions, I decant my shining knight from his sarcophagus and assist him to the flier. His head is hardly awake yet, barely thawed from the cryogenic state, and it's his power-assisted Soma-Sim that walks him from the ziggurat.
I think love at him to help the thaw.
I programme the destination of Rio de Janeiro into the flier, but before we set off there's the small matter of my indenture to sort out. I fly to the Satori Line towerpile, Joe immobile beside me. I leave the flier on the landing pad, drop to the twentieth level and enter the museum.
I have to wait a while before a rich family decide they've had their fill of wonder, and when they leave I leap over the laser-guard surrounding the shimmering shield of the nada-continuum.
I stand mesmerised, regardless of the danger should anyone enter and find me here. Before me is the ultimate, the primal state we all aspire to - the only thing ever to be wholly beyond my ability to grasp.
My contemplation is interrupted by a glow at the end of my arm. My hand tingles. Gassner's miniature portrait becomes animated. I hold up my arm, as if shielding my eyes from the nada-continuum, and stare at him. "What do you want, Gassner?"
"Sita!" he cries, and he uses my real name only in times of stress. His regular pallor is suffused now with the crimson of rage, and he's sweating. "Sita - where's Kennedy? I thought you-"
"I didn't crack the case, Gassner. Spider Lo got there first. Kennedy owes the Massingberd Agency, not you."
"Sita!" He's almost in tears. "Get back here!"
I smile. "I'm sorry, Gassner. I'm through. I've had enough and I'm getting out. Goodbye-"
He panics. He knows that without a telepath he's nothing. "You can't, Bangla-"
I can, and the desh is lost as I thrust my hand into the nada-continuum/reality interface. The satisfaction of getting rid of Gassner dilutes the pain of losing my hand; my tele-ability repels the frenzied communications shooting up my arm and keeps the agony below the tolerance threshold. The wrist is neatly severed when I stagger back, the stump cauterised and blackened. I jump the barrier and stumble through the chamber.
The hologram of the scientist stands beside the portal. Pedro Fernandez, discoverer of the nada-continuum and opener of the way. He seems to be smiling at me, and I know the smile. I give him a wink as I leave.
Joe touches my hand as I climb into the flier and take off. We bank over the city and head towards the ocean. I probe him. His head is slowly coming to life, warming as if to the sunlight that shines through the screen. I read Joe's need, his craving.
Above the city, canted at an angle, the hologram screen pours morning news over a waking world. Did the Gassner Agency surrender to the take-over bids that must surely come now? Come on, an ending like that would be just too storybook. I can only wait until we reach Rio and find out then.
Meantime, I hope.
Weakly, Joe says, "You get the crystals?"
I open the valise