Strings (21 page)

Cedric was about to protest, but Alya spoke first. “I’ll look. I just want Cedric with me, that’s all.”

The light went on at the far door, to indicate decon was complete.

“And that’s another point,” Devlin added sourly. “The way she clings to you like tired ivy doesn’t exactly reinforce my confidence in this famous judgment of hers.” His voice grew angrier as Baker swung the door open. “Sure, I’ve seen the records on the others, and I saw her sibs pick Raven and Etna. But there can be black sheep in any family.”

“Now, look here—” Cedric began, trying to disengage himself from Alya’s embrace.

“No, you look here!” Devlin’s square face was growing ruddy, and he thrust his chin out as he glared up at Cedric. He was a big man—Cedric knew how big men disliked him. “I’m not going to risk hundreds and thousand of lives just on the word of a dippy, slant-eyed floozy unless I believe in it, and if she picks you as her ideal of manhood, then I don’t think she knows what’s good for her, which is what this exercise is all about. If she can show me what there is on Saskatchewan to be so all-powered scared of, then I—”

Ping
!

Lost in the argument and growing hotter by the minute, Cedric had not noticed that there was a comset on the wall of the decon chamber. He spun around and was surprised to see a red helmet and red uniform and the familiar scowl of Bagshaw Barney.

“Hugging’s more fun without those suits on, Sprout.”

“Go away. I’m busy.”

Bagshaw shook his massive head like a bull aiming a charge. “You’re crazy. You know damned well your grandmother’s been trying to get through to you. Nobody—
but nobody
!—keeps Old Mother Hubbard waiting, laddie. She’ll pop your balls in the stellar converter if you don’t smarten up fast.”

Cedric could see the area behind Bagshaw, and he recognized the waiting room outside Dr. Fish’s office.

Baker had gone on into the dome. The two guards hovered by the door. “Come on, Princess,” Devlin said.

Alya clutched Cedric’s arm harder.

“You go ahead, sir,” he told Devlin with all the calm he could muster. “Give me two minutes to settle this, then Her Highness and I will be right with you.”

Devlin shot him a flinty glare. He turned and strode through the door without a word. The two rangers hesitated, then followed him. Cedric turned back to the com, but Bagshaw spoke first.

“Listen, kid, this is important! Eccles is going to blow up bridges tonight on WSHB.”

“Okay, okay!”

“It’s dangerous and it’s all wrong. We can’t stop her, but we do have a chance to put out the real story right afterward—and Fish has pulled more strings to get that chance than you could believe. But there’s not much time. You’ve got to be briefed before she even starts. And get your hair combed this time.”

Cedric felt as though part of his intestines had fallen loose. “Why me?”

“It has to be you, Sprout.”

Twice in two days? “No! No! No! I’m fed up with being a comedy act. I don’t know the first damned thing about appearing on holo shows, or media relations, or whatever this scandal of Pandora’s is all about. Gran’s just setting me up to look like an idiot again, the way she did yesterday. Tell her to go find another sucker.”

Bagshaw’s lashless eyes narrowed to slits.

“The last man who said something like that to your grandmother got a whole world all to himself.”

“Bugger off!” Cedric said shrilly. “Oh, hell—tell her I’m escorting Princess Alya, as she asked me to. We’re going to go and take a quick look at Saskatchewan, and then we’ll be all through for a while.” He hoped that was correct. He wondered if he dare mention his long-overdue lunch, and decided not to. “Then I’ll come right away—just give me ten minutes.”

“And you’ll do this interview?”

“Not that! I told you—I’m sick of being the world’s joke of the day. Come, honey.”

“Wait!” Bagshaw seemed to hesitate. His eyes flickered momentarily.

Alya uttered a little wail as Cedric released her and made a seven-league sideways leap to catch another angle in the holo. As he had suspected, Dr. Fish had been standing just out of view. Cedric pulled a face at the pair of them and went back to Alya.

Bagshaw’s expression became blacker than ever. “You fallen in love, Sprout? The old hormones really perking? That must be what’s made you so god-fired uppity, ’cause you were a nice, quiet, polite boy yesterday. You’re rutting!”

“Yes,” Cedric said. “I’m rutting. In heat. I have fallen in love. Madly. It’s crazy time. I’ll come in ten minutes.” He turned to the door.

“I was in love, too,” Bagshaw said softly, and something in his voice stopped Cedric faster than a shout would have done. “Can you believe?”

“Huh?”

“Remember in the chopper I lectured you about the environment?” The guard’s voice had gone strangely flat. “I told you I was pairing with an ecologist? We’d been together about a year. Cute little thing, soft and graceful and gentle…amazing she’d fall for a lunk like me.”

“And?” A cold finger stroked the back of Cedric’s neck.

“She’s dead.”

For a moment Cedric wanted to doubt, but Bagshaw was not the sort of man who would easily seek sympathy. He would not easily bare his soul, either, and to do so falsely would be even more out of character. And the topic lay too near his manhood for begging. Bagshaw believed he was tough; he had to believe in his own toughness.

So Cedric had to believe his story. “And?”

Bagshaw took a deep breath, as though his next words were going to hurt. “She was murdered. Raped and then murdered. I want justice, Sprout—revenge! Need your help. I’d appreciate that.”

This was the man who had saved Cedric from BEST’s agents in the Lincoln Hotel, the man who had caught him when he fell seventeen stories.

Of course, he was also the man who had pushed him out the window to start with, and the man who should have sneaked him quietly out the front door an hour earlier with no trouble.

Maybe it was just flattering to have a man like Bagshaw ask for his help. Cedric looked at Alya, but she was obviously suffering her own torments and not paying much attention. He did not turn to the com.

“Why me? Why do I have to look like an idiot?”

“Because you’re so well suited to the part! Yes, you were set up yesterday. So today who’s going to believe you?”

“No one!”

“Exactly.”

Cedric spun around, feeling a quiver of rage raise goose bumps on him. “Are you saying that I was made to look like a lunkhead in front of the whole world yesterday just so I wouldn’t be believed today?”

“I didn’t say that, but—it could be. Could well be. It’s necessary that we give out the truth, but that the truth not be believed—we have a trap to spring. It has to be you, Sprout.”

“Because I don’t know enough to see through your lies?”

Bagshaw roared. “We’ll show you holos!” He lunged forward, as though about to fall right out of the comset. “Take you down to the morgue and let you smell the bodies. Is it blood you want?”

“Just the truth.” Cedric wondered if anyone in Cainsville knew what truth was.

“You’ll get the truth. And tell the truth. And you’ll not be believed—that’s the meat of it.” Bagshaw brought his temper under control with a visible effort. “Listen. I’ve sweet-talked a lot of girls in my time, but I’ve never asked a favor from a man since I was old enough to stop wetting the bed. I’m asking you now, Sprout. And if you won’t do it for my revenge, maybe you have some good times of your own you’d like to remember?”

Oh, God in Heaven!

Cedric’s lips moved. “Glenda?”

Bagshaw smiled softly and nodded. “Fish can show you how to sink Eccles Pandora’s dinghy, lad. She’ll be all through, all washed up.”

Cedric swallowed something that wouldn’t go away. Oh, Glenda! He owed that much to Glenda. “Ten minutes.”

“You’ll do the interview?”

Glenda, sliced and wrapped in little paper packets.

“Sink Eccles Pandora?”

“Dead in the water. Your doing. Promise.”

Glenda!

“I’ll do anything you want,” Cedric said.

The set went blank instantly.

David Thompson Dome was even larger than de Soto, or perhaps it just looked that way because it was empty. The central pit glowed with a muddy red light, like a sunset under rainclouds, but the skivs had all gone and the gaunt superstructures of cranes and gantries were still.

Cedric paused and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light. He could see only one ramp extended, and he recalled that Tiber had been given more than the standard treatment. Three men stood lounging on the rails of the spectators’ enclosure at the near edge of the pit. Two carried torchguns slung on their shoulders. The other was too tall to be Baker, who must have gone down to the surface.

“Let’s run,” Cedric said. “We’ll belt down to the rail, and you take a quick peek and say ‘wrong color,’ or whatever you fancy. Then we’ll scamper like hell back here again. Okay?”

Alya nodded, staring down at the pit. “I feel such a fool! I’m really not this sort of sniveling idiot most of the time.”

“I know you’re not. And you’ll be all right in two minutes when we’re back here again and it’s done.”

She nodded, shivering. “Just keep hold of my hand.”

“Ready? Go!” They took off down the slope together.

Considering relative leg sizes, she ran well. Cedric loped at her side, hanging on to her hand. Devlin had turned and was watching them come.

Panting, they reached him and flopped against the rail to peer down.

Below them lay a leprous swamp of rocks and scummy puddles, with scrub and tufty vegetation in lurid yellows and browns. Rain was falling—which was a paradox—and wind ruffled the more open parts of the pools. Soupy mud bubbled in the tracks left by the wheeled vehicles at the end of the ramp, while right below the viewers was the largest growth of all, a lumpy thing like a pallid barrel, which instantly squirted upward, extending into a high, thin column like a palm tree that simultaneously curved over, directing down at the viewers a hollow crown ringed with stubby knobs; and those in turn stretched out into long white ropes to reach over the railing and wrap around Alya, scooping her up high, tearing her hand from Cedric’s grip before he had even registered what was happening. The two guards unslung their guns. Devlin yelled at them not to shoot, and their sudden movement attracted the attention of more of the white ropes, which flashed out to entangle the weapons also.

Cedric made a standing leap up on the rail, and his outstretched hands caught hold of Alya’s ankles just before she was elevated beyond even his long reach. Wildly off balance, he hooked one toe under the rail, and then his other foot as well, for he, too, was now swathed in tentacles and being hoisted and pulled outward. Grips on his legs were probably human hands. He thought he heard his joints crack as he stretched out like taffy. He dared not release his hold on Alya—who was screaming and cursing in a dozen different languages, and that was a good sign because it meant that nothing had wrapped around her neck yet. He cried out at the pain of the rail on his feet and an already unbearable tension that kept on increasing, trying to tear him in half.

Then buildup of air pressure in the top of his suit made his ears go suddenly dead and plunged him into choking, stuffy-headed silence. Gradually he was tilted from near vertical to horizontal as the ropes tried to carry their prey back home. Their grip tightened mercilessly around him, squeezing his bubble suit out in ridges, crushing his chest so he could not breathe. The ends of the ropes bore mouths or teeth or eyes of all of those; butting and pummeling at him, they tried vainly to chew through the crysfab. But his feet were slipping, and between the agony in his feet and the effort of keeping his toes up to maintain his hold, he could hardly think of anything except to wonder whether Alya’s knees would come apart before his arms were pulled from their sockets. If the railing came loose from the floor, he was lost.

He was stretched out flat, staring down at the rocks and puddles far below, and also seeing the deadly blur that surrounded the pit. Even as he watched, a stray rope touched it and was severed in a flash and a crackle. Cedric was going to be dragged down, and when he was standing on his head, he would be crushed against the edge of the string, and that was death.

Then a coil twisted around his neck and that was much quicker death. It began to tighten.

As the ropes shortened back toward their source, they were growing thicker. The trunk had contracted almost into its original barrel shape. In a moment or two Alya was going to be sucked completely inside the monster. And he was going to be strangled.

Darkness
!

Everything went black, and he dropped a meter and smashed his face into a steel floor. His feet were still hooked over the railing.

The ropes and the bubble suit had cushioned most of his fall, but his nose had taken the rest of it. Damn, but that hurt!

His bindings lashed and buckled in death agonies, which slowly stilled to small twitchings. Dim lights appeared, or his eyes adjusted. He was still clasping Alya’s ankles. Dazed and giddy, choking on blood, he disentangled himself and thought he saw her trying to sit up. Then more lights and lots of people—and of course what had happened was that Devlin had ordered the window closed, and the rope plant or herd snake or whatever it/they was/were had been cut in half, and Cedric and Alya were lying on the steel object plate of the transmensor, barely lower than the rest of the dome floor, and all sorts of medics and rangers were flocking uselessly around, and Cedric’s ears popped back into life again with a sudden influx of shouting and babbling voices, and his face and throat were full of blood from his goddamned nose, and perhaps he was just a little too close to losing control…

He took a firm grip on himself, and the world stopped spinning.

He retched and spat blood and wished he could wipe the tears of pain from his eyes. He could barely see out of the suit because of the blood smeared on the plastic, and his nose throbbed as though someone were standing on it.