Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [0]
THE END OF EVERYTHING heralded itself as a metallic hum near Montoya’s left ear.
He kept his eyes on the stairs under his feet and marched upward—one short, brown-skinned, gray-haired, slightly overweight man in a crowd of workers at the end of their munitions factory shift.
No need to turn around and look. The hum had to come from a one-eye: a lead-colored object, about the size of a human torso, with a single staring camera eye and a bristling, spiky penumbra of antennae. It was gliding behind Montoya’s head, intercepting and reading his thoughts.
Montoya knew his only chance for survival was to keep from thinking about …
The small case rested lightly in his hand. He ignored it, shut his eyes to it, hummed a tuneless tune to forget about it.
What the case held was of no monetary worth yet was valuable beyond reckoning. To possess it here, on the planet of Rampart, was a crime punishable by death.
Montoya’s anxiety made him short of breath. His legs felt rubbery as he trudged. The one-eye hummed behind him like a giant chrome mosquito.
He was near the top of the stairs. He could see cold light from the sun, rho Ophiuchi, slanting through the dusty panes of the factory’s outer wall, silhouetting the vacant-eyed men and women who waited in line at the timeclock.
Montoya took sanctuary in the thought of his wife by enfolding himself in her smooth brown arms, replaying the last time they had made love. He sought the most vivid, tactile moments. He involved his entire mind and body, trying to confuse the one-eye hovering behind him.
In spite of his efforts, fugitive thoughts that lurked in the shadows of his mind tried to interrupt the imagined scene.
He heard the one-eye come closer.
He switched his thoughts to the sound and movement around him, the clang and hum of the machines, the tired clunk-steps of the workers above and below him on the stairs, industrious but lost little people like …
In the right temporal lobe of Montoya’s brain, an evanescent web of electrochemical impulses danced for a scant second, expending only a millionth of a volt, as a certain image formed in his mind.
It was an image of the very thing in his case. An entire society of tiny humans, scuttling around in there, waiting for a very large revelation.
The thought died away, but Montoya knew the one-eye must have picked it up. It swung from behind his head, hummed to a position in front of his face, and stopped. Montoya was forced to halt his steps at the top of the stairs to avoid collision. The workers below him had to halt as well. A pool of silence widened around him as he looked directly into the camera lens and antennae of the one-eye.
Two broad-shouldered figures, their white uniforms bearing the blue Cephalic Security logo, walked with smartly clicking steps as they threaded their way along the upper floor to the top of the stairs, where they confronted Montoya.
Montoya would not look at them. He didn’t want to indulge himself in contempt now. There had to be something better to do as one’s last act.
They were saying something to him about arrest, clamping handcuffs on him.
One of the CS men pulled at the case in Montoya’s hand. Montoya let it slip out. They guided him along the wall to a cage-like elevator. Their one-eye floated along behind Montoya’s head. He saw the service-issue radiation guns the CS men carried on their belts. That might be a better way to go, he supposed, than what they had planned for him.
As the lift ascended toward the helipad on the roof, Montoya stared at the grating under his feet. He allowed himself to be overcome with sadness by thinking about the tragic course of his life, and rubbing salt on it. He smote himself for the momentary lapse—just one stray thought!—that would mean the arrest of friends and family. He started to weep.
The lift emerged onto the roof. A strong hand gripped him and pushed him out onto the tarmac. The white tilt-rotor hovercraft ahead of them started its engines and chopped at the air.
Montoya let the sobs shudder through him, tears streaming down his