Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [59]
Three hundred meters—that was half the length of the ring. All he would have to go. But what if the camouflage plastic was sealing the ring's launch exit? What if he had already passed the exit in the blackness, noticing nothing?
Starlight. Lindsay leaped upward frantically, remembering only at the last moment to catch himself on the rim. esairs' gravity was so weak that his leap would have put him into circumsolar orbit.
Once again he was outside the asteroid, amid streaks of charred black and off-white blast sumps.
He leaped across a buckled crater, almost missing the far rim. When he grappled along a stretch of pumice, rock powdered under his fingers and went into slow orbit just above the surface.
He was gasping when he found the second airlock: plastic film dappled with camouflage, inset into the surface of esairs where the Family's first drill had bitten in. He brushed the film aside and twisted the hatch wheel. His right arm was bleeding steadily. It felt broken again. The hatch popped free. He slipped into the airlock and slammed the outside hatch behind him. Then there was another. He was panting steadily; each lungful offered less, and he tasted inhaled blood.
The second hatch opened. He pulled himself through, and there was a sudden flurry of movement in darkness. He heard his suit rip. Cold steel nicked his throat, his legs were seized, and he screamed as hands in the blackness grabbed his wounded arm and twisted.
"Talk!"
"Mr. President!" Lindsay gasped at once. "Mr. President!" The knife against his throat drew back. He heard a deafening buzz-saw grinding, and sparks flew. In the sudden gory light Lindsay saw the President, the Speaker of the House, the Chief Justice, and Senator 3. The sparks went out. The Speaker had held the blade of her small power saw against a length of pipe.
The President ripped the head from Lindsay's suit. "The arm, the arm," Lindsay yelped. The Chief Justice released it; Senator 3 released his legs. Lindsay breathed deeply, filling his lungs with air.
"Fucking preemptive strike," the President muttered. "Hate 'em."
"They tried to kill me," Lindsay said. "The equipment—you destroyed it?
We can leave now?"
"Something tipped 'em off," the President growled. "We were in the launch center with Paolo. Learning how to smash the launch controls. Then Agnes and Nora show up. Supposed to be sleeping. And all of a sudden, black as fire—"
"Power blackout," said the Speaker.
"I yell ambush," said the President. "Only it's black. They have the advantage: fewer of them, less chance of hitting their own. So, I go for machinery. Sleeve knife into the circuitry. We hear Second Senator howl, meat breaks open."
"Something wet touched my face," the Chief Justice said. His ancient voice was heavy with doomed satisfaction. "The air was full of blood."
"They were armed," the President said. "I caught this in the scuffle. Feel it, State."
In the darkness, the President pressed something into Lindsay's left hand. It was the size of his palm—a flattened disk of dense stone, wrapped in braided thread. Part of it was sticky.
"Had 'em taped to their ribs, I think. Swinging weapons. Bludgeons. Stran-glers. Those threads are thin enough to cut. Opened my thumb to the bone when I caught it."
"Where are the rest of us?" Lindsay said.
"We got a contingency plan. The two Reps were cleaning up after Ian—
they're aboard the Consensus now, getting ready to lift."
"Why'd you kill Ian?"
"Kill him?" the Speaker said. "There's no proof. He evaporated."
"The FMD don't take a wound without returning it," the President said.
"We thought we'd be gone by morning, and we thought, Hah, let 'em think he defected with us! Cute, huh?" He snorted. "The Senate were with us but two got lost. They'll show up here, 'cause this is rendezvous. Justices Two and Three are looting, lifting some of that hot Shaper wetware. Good loot for us. We figured— we seize the exit. If we have to, we jump to the