Rock Killer (31 page)

Trent let out a long sigh. “Damn. Can’t they come to my office tomorrow?”

“I’ll ask,” Vera said, leaving the room to hike back to the front door. She smiled slightly. This would mean more time the men would have to spend in the chill outside. She again walked slowly back to the entry, unlocked it, leaving the chain attached, and opened it. “Can you come to her office tomorrow?”

“No,” one, the African-American, replied rather forcefully. “We need to see her now.”

Vera swallowed hard on her anger at this impetuous man.

“Fine,” she said simply and closed the door again and walked back to the kitchen again taking her time.

Trent was listening to the computer messages.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Trent cried anxiously.

“What?” Vera asked.

“We got a message from Whaltham. The police know everything. Those FBI men must be here to arrest me.”

“What can we do?” Vera asked.

“The car?”

“It’s charging but it’s pretty low.”

“We’ll have to try it,” Trent decided. It might just get them far enough away. “Out the side door.”

Outside the front door, Freeman pulled his coat around him. Why that woman wouldn’t let them in was beyond him. He looked at the other agent, named Palmer. Palmer pulled the radio pinned to his lapel closer to his mouth. “Report.”

“Nothing here,” the woman watching the back door replied.

“Nothing, yet,” the man watching the side door reported.

“I give them 30 seconds and then we break down the door,” Freeman mumbled.

Palmer nodded. “Everyone, prepare to go in,” he said into the radio.

Trent and Vera ran out the side door. Another man was there, walking up to the door.

“Ha—” he started before Vera tried to knock his head over the centerfield wall with her baseball bat. The man crumpled to the ground.

“Shit,” Trent breathed.

“In the car,” Vera hissed, trying not to talk too loudly. She unplugged the car and got behind the wheel.

Electric cars make about as much noise as an electric can opener. Vera pressed the anachronistically named “gas pedal” and the car backed out of the driveway. As usual, it scraped the pavement as it pulled into the street.

Palmer turned to see the old electric swing around and start down the road. He hit Freeman on the arm. “Hey, look!”

Freeman saw the escaping Chevy. “Damn,” he spat. He ran for their car. The electric was going around the corner by the time they got into the Fiat and started the engine.

“All units,” Palmer was saying to his label, “suspects are escaping in a distressed, gray Chevy Erg.”

“Roger,” the woman replied. There was no answer from the man watching the side door.

“Skwodovska,” Palmer said, “there’s no reply from Ligon. Check it out.”

“Roger,” the woman said.

Palmer then used the car’s computer. “Patch me into the Alexandria police.”

Freeman put the transmission in gear and slammed on the accelerator. The motor screamed as it burned hydrogen and oxygen into water. Freeman threw the car round the corner, ignoring protests from the tires. He glimpsed the taillights of the electric turning another corner. He couldn’t see around the turn because of trees and bushes. The Fiat accelerated until Freeman braked just before the next intersection. Again the tires squealed as Freeman put the car around the corner. Then he slammed on the brakes. The electric had stopped in the middle of the street and its lights were off.

The Fiat whacked the back of the electric, propelling it forward a few feet. The air bags blew in the Fiat and the belts tightened momentarily and then loosened.

Freeman and Palmer jumped out and ran to the electric. Trent and the other woman were sitting in the front seat, dazed and bruised but, as far as Freeman could tell, unharmed.

Deflated air bags hung from the steering wheel hub and the dashboard and into the women’s laps. The side airbags hadn’t blown. Freeman pulled open the door and wrenched Trent’s rotund form out and against the car. She offered no resistance. He heard Vera say, “Don’t touch me, damnit,” and saw that Palmer was pulling her out the passenger side. Freeman brought Trent’s hands around to her back and clapped on handcuffs.

Palmer looked at Freeman while holding a struggling Vera by the handcuffs around her wrists. “Why’d they stop?” he asked.

Freeman looked down into the car. A red light blinked on the instrument panel. Freeman started laughing.

“What?” Palmer asked.

“They ran out of juice.”

The next morning he finished up his paperwork. He kept smiling. The electric car ran out of juice. Explaining the damage to the Fiat, government property, was going to be interesting.

The computer beeped and he hit the answer button and turned to the screen. It was Chaikin.

“Freeman,” she said, “I’ve been looking for you. McConnell’s missing. His wife says she doesn’t know where he is. Airline records show that he bought a ticket to Seattle.”

“You called the Seattle office?”

“Yes and they met the plane. He wasn’t on it. He bought a ticket in Whaltham’s name to L.A. but he wasn’t on that flight either.”

“Damn,” Freeman said. “What happened to him?”

Chaikin shrugged. “He disappeared into thin air.”

***

McConnell tried not to think about how thin the air was outside the tiny window. The shuttle took off just like a spaceplane but continued to accelerate into low Earth orbit. It docked with the intra-lunar shuttle and the passengers and equipment were transferred. Using Masuka drives manufactured by Space Resources Inc., the stubby, cylindrical shuttle proceeded to the Moon.

McConnell hated free-fall and lost his last meal into a little bag. He was happy when the Masuka drives kicked in. He looked for Trent and half expected her to be on the shuttle. She did have eight hours to catch up.

He watched the news from his seat and learned Trent had been arrested. The FBI was being closed-mouthed about the charges but there were reports it had to do with terrorism. O
h, well
, McConnell thought. He never liked that old dyke anyway.

There was a lot of news on the continuing drama of the asteroid and some on the Los Angeles shoot-out. Beatty, it seemed, had found that SRI spy in the hospital but she’d killed him. And they weren’t charging her. In fact, she was being treated like a hero by the right-wing, establishment media. He turned off the news program in disgust.

Then he smiled at the memory of his last night in L.A.

***

Charlie’s doctor released her, reluctantly, on the evening of the second day after she’d been admitted. With Williams in the lead, two local cops, and a nurse, Charlie was led to a room marked “Checkout.” A tired looking clerk sat behind a computer.

“Name?” he asked.

“Charlie Jones,” a cop said. “Admitted under Jane Doe in the ER.”

The clerk spoke softly to the computer for a moment, then said, “Uh-oh. We have a problem. You must not be a U.S. citizen. You’re not covered under MediSecurity. You’ll have to pay for your treatment or apply for government assistance.”

“Space Resources Incorporated Medical Services will be paying the bill,” Williams said, handing her SRI ID.

“What’s this?” the clerk asked.

“Treat it like a MediSecurity card.”

He put the card in the slot on the computer and watched the screen, occasionally raising an eyebrow. He spoke to the computer a couple of times, then looked surprised.

“Okay,” he said, “paid in full. You’re free to go.” He handed back the ID.

With her entourage, Charlie left the room. In the lobby, police were watching everything and everybody. They wheeled Charlie out the door into the cool night air, where even more police and an ambulance waited. Behind it was an empty van. The nurse and Williams helped Charlie into the ambulance and the nurse made her lie down on the stretcher. Williams knelt beside her.

Just before the door of the ambulance was closed, Charlie saw men and women that she assumed were just passersby run to the van and start to get in. The ambulance drove away and the van followed.

At the airport, after passing through a gate, the ambulance drove out on the tarmac. The world’s only business-sized spaceplane, built for SRI by Mitsubishi-Sukhoi, was sitting on the concrete, bathed in light that was beating back the darkness. With its curved fuselage and delta wings, it looked like a living thing, a lovely, powerful bird ready to spring into space.

SRI Security personnel exited the van and fanned out around the ambulance. Charlie saw their weapons glisten in the harsh, artificial light. Charlie wondered briefly how many laws were being broken.

Cathy Williams looked out the window in the van’s rear door.

“Looks secure,” she said. “Let’s go.”

The door to the ambulance opened and Charlie’s stretcher was gently pulled out and taken to the door of the spaceplane.

Charlie gingerly stood and, with Williams’s help, moved to the door.

Mitchel came out of the plane.

“Mitch!” Charlie exclaimed and held out her arms. “You old son of a bitch, I’m glad to see you.”

Mitchel came down the stairs to meet her and gave her a gentle embrace. “Hi, Charlie. Ready to go home?”

“Home?” she asked as he released her.

“I can have you on the Moon in two days if you feel up to it and the doctors approve.”

“You mean off this dirt-ball?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Let’s go!” she said moving too quickly. “Ow, damn it.”

In the descent phase of the SRI spaceplane’s parabolic arch over the Pacific, Mitchel looked at Charlie and said, “What are you going to do now, Charlie?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I still have to recover from this.”

“Yes, but after that?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

“There’s still asteroid positions available for 2062. That’ll be a rush job because of what happened to 1961. It’ll be a challenge, but after this I think you can do anything you put your mind to.”

Charlie shrugged. “I don’t know, Mitch. I don’t know if I can do it. If it hadn’t been for your help I’d still be stuck in Esmeraldas. And Frank helped me a lot on the Moon.”

“I don’t understand, Charlie.”

“I mean, on the Moon, Smitty had to save me when my suit blew. The police rescued me from the GA. I’ve never been able to succeed without help from you, or Frank, or someone else.”

“What about Beatty?” Mitchel asked. “He killed three cops to get to you and you, practically unarmed, stopped him.”

“I got lucky and he was stupid.”

Mitchel looked out the window for a second. Then he turned to look at her. “Well, think about it Charlie. You did a hell of a job and I can get you anything you want. Even a safe job on the Moon, if that’s what you want.”

“Thanks, Mitch.”

The spaceplane landed at Narita and Mitchel and Charlie moved to a helicopter. It rose into the morning sky and headed south.

The SRI archology rose out of Suruga Bay like a monolithic monument to technological hubris. The rising sun made its glass and metal curtain wall glitter against the backdrop of Mount Fuji.

Flying in on the helicopter, Charlie didn’t realize the scale of the structure until it grew bigger and bigger and still bigger. The first hundred or so floors were finished but the next hundred were only a lattice framework. The last hundred hadn’t even been started. The archology was six hexagons surrounding a central, hexagonal core. Each hexagon was, when the building was finished, to be a different length than the others and no length an integer multiple of any other. This was to prevent standing waves from forming on any of the sections in case of an earthquake. Suruga Bay’s entrance was delineated by a major fault line.

“Where are we going to land?” Charlie asked Mitchel.

He pointed to a ledge hanging about 70 stories above the water. It looked big enough for, maybe, a large bird.

“There?” Charlie asked.

Mitchel nodded. “There.”

The balcony grew to remarkable size by the time the helicopter set down on it. Two doctors and three nurses met them. Charlie was put in a robotic wheelchair that had multiple control options including voice command. Mitchel said good-bye.

“Where you going, Mitch?”

“It’s morning, time for me to go to work,” he said. “Give me a call when you reach the Moon, Charlie.”

“I will, Mitch.”

“And take care of yourself.”

“I will. Good-bye.”

“Bye, Charlie.”

He boarded the helicopter that lifted and headed north toward Tokyo.

Charlie was wheeled into the hospital and thoroughly examined.

They filtered some of the perfluorodecaline artificial blood, that which had been replaced by Charlie’s own, from her circulatory system. Only then did they approve her to go to the Moon if, and only if, once she got there she checked into the NESA hospital for a check-up and to have more PFD removed. They spent a few minutes teaching the chair to recognize Charlie’s voice, although she was sure that she’d only be using it a short time and the joystick control was fine. But they insisted, saying it was a useful function to move the chair near your bed when you wanted to get up, for example. Also, a young Japanese man accompanied her, checking her blood pressure and temperature like a worried mother with a sick child. Charlie at first resented the nursemaid but then decided to enjoy the trip despite him.