The Free Lunch Page 10

  When he was five meters from the first grate, he slowed his crawl to a crawl and listened as hard as he could. It was difficult to hear anything over the hammering of his own pulse.

  Voices. Indistinct male voices.

  Silent and inexorable as old age, Mike moved forward.

  When he reached the second grate, he could tell he was as close as he was going to get to the voices. He rolled over onto his back and went into freeze.

  “I’m not sure, Boss,” a man said.

  Something about his voice told Mike he was talking to someone elsewhere by phone or radio. Sure enough, there was a buzzing-bee sound that had to be the reply, though Mike couldn’t make it out.

  “How the hell should I know?” the speaker went on. “I’m no doctor.”

  Another reply buzz.

  The man overhead sighed deeply. “What can I tell you? She looks like she’s having a heart attack. Her bracelet says she’s having a heart attack.”

  Mike was in freeze; he did not cry out. But there was a buzzing in his ears he knew had nothing to do with any reply. God, he’d never thought of this! Annie was old, and old people weren’t built for adventure.

  “Sure, I can strap a doctor on her arm and take her anyway. Maybe she’ll be alive when you get her.”

  Buzz. Pause. Buzz.

  Mike left freeze, reached up with a pair of needlenose pliers and began untwisting the screws holding the grating above him.

  “An hour, maybe hour and a half, depends on traffic.”

  First screw unscrewed as far as he could get it from beneath, no problem. Second, the same. Third one stuck a little—back off the pressure the instant it gives so it won’t squeal—

  “So what do I do? Take her, leave her where she is…or lose her?”

  Short two-syllable buzz. But which two?

  “Okay, Boss. Out.”

  Third screw all but out. Nobody up there had noticed the screws unscrewing themselves. Yet. Mike attacked the fourth and last fastening—

  “What’s the story, Tom?” a second man asked. The first speaker seemed to be standing a few meters to the left of the grate, this one to the right.

  “We’re taking her,” Tom said. “Life support unit’ll meet us out in the parking lot. Ape, you and Tom go Topside and get that powered chair—and make it quick! I’ll have Little Miss Muffet ready to transport by the time you get back.”

  “Shit,” said the third man—located with Tom to the left of the grate. “She gon’ die, you watch.”

  “What do you care? You’re still getting paid.”

  “I know. I’m jus’sane. Nome sane?”

  “Waste of energy and risk,” the second man said.

  “Thassumsane,” Ape agreed.

  “Go,” the leader ordered, and Mike heard the two walk away at a fast clip.

  He set the pliers down silently. The grate was now held in place by no more than a thread or two of each of the four screws. If he slammed it suddenly with both hands, it would pop off. Damn, if he’d only looked in Annie’s bathroom he might have found one of those little mirrors, and he could sneak a peek before committing himself. His fix on Tom’s voice was not precise.

  He heard sounds that had to be an elevator closing its door and beginning its ascent.

  Well, the odds would never be better. And he didn’t have much time.

  He took the weapon he’d chosen from the tool locker out of his waistband and fitted it to his hand. A nail gun, roughly the size and weight of an old .45 automatic. He set it alongside his hip and rehearsed his moves. Slam the grate with both hands, then flip it sideways and out of the way. Retrieve weapon with right hand, grip edge of opening with left hand, and pop up firing. Okay, go—

  He could not do it.

  At close range, the nail gun might well be lethal. Indeed, part of him was counting on it, for Tom sounded dangerous. But Mike had never shot anybody before.

  Even if he had the stomach for it—even assuming he could pull it off—what the hell did you do with a corpse in Dreamworld? The lid would be off…of everything.

  Oh, what difference did it make? The lid was off anyway. Maybe Annie was dying while he dithered.

  Just then, he heard Annie groan.

  A compromise plan came to him, one that seemed unlikely to work but was better than nothing.

  He raised the nail gun to one of the openings in the grate, tilted it in what he prayed was Tom’s general direction, pulled it back away from the grate as far as he dared, and fired. Luck was with him twice: the nail went through the opening cleanly, and the gun made less noise than he’d feared.

  Quickly now. Set down gun. Pop grate. Success! Flip aside. Recover gun. Stick head up—

  Everything working out great so far. Tom three meters distant, facing the other way. Most of the gun’s poot had stayed in the pipe, so the first sound Tom had heard was the nail landing somewhere beyond him. Mike got his arm out, took dead aim at the back of Tom’s head, flung the solid nail gun with all his strength at point-blank range—

  —missed—

  —and Tom spun and drew down on him with one of those new vibrator guns that jellied whatever their beam hit.

  Mike got ready to die. It wasn’t as hard as it had been the first time.

  Tom’s eyes widened as he grasped that his antagonist was a child, and raised his gun. “Jesus Christ, she’s got a kid!” he said. “Show me your other hand, kid—now.”

  Numb, Mike obeyed. At Tom’s feet, he could see Annie, lying on her back, face gray and eyes closed. A first-aid unit was strapped to her upper arm but not yet activated.

  “All right, come on up out of there—slow and careful.”

  Mike eased himself up into the room. Blew it, blew it, blew it—

  “Anybody else down there?”

  He shook his head miserably.

  Tom shook his head, too. “Now what the hell am I gonna do with you?” He produced a roll of duct tape from his coverall. “Call in again, I guess.” He stepped over Annie and yelled, “SHIT!” when she yanked his ankle out from under him. As he was falling she was rising; there was just time for his face to hit the floor before she kicked him in the groin from behind, a beauty that curled him up like a bug and left him gasping for air that wouldn’t come. His gun slid across the floor to Mike, who picked it up automatically. Annie stepped around Tom, studied him, and carefully kicked him again, behind the ear. He made a rattling sound and went limp.

  Mike thought about joining him.

  “Nice work, boy,” Annie said. She no longer looked like she was having a heart attack. She wasn’t even breathing hard.

  He snapped out of his trance. “Yeah, right.”

  “Let’s go home. I could use a nice cup of tea.”

  Mike blinked. “What about him?”

  Annie glanced down at him. “Not our problem,” she said. “He can take care of himself…or not.”

  “Okay.” Mike started to make for the stairwell at the far end of the depot.

  “Wait,” she said. “Leave that here with him.”

  He turned, and she was pointing at the vibrator gun, forgotten in his hand. He looked down at it, then at its former owner. “Annie—,” he began.

  “Listen to me, Michael,” she said softly, holding his eyes. “I will not tolerate guns in Dreamworld. And especially not in my own house. No matter what. Put it down.”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah. Okay.” Sigh. “But gee—”

  “Take the charge out of it first. And wipe the handle.”

  He did so, then put the gun at Tom’s feet.

  When they reached the stairwell, she stopped. “You go on ahead. Give me that charge pack.”

  “But—” he began, handing over the cylinder.

  “Wait for me halfway up. I’ll be right along.”

  He did as he was told. He waited on the second landing, fretting, for something like a minute before she appeared, looking very pleased with herself. “Home, Jeeves.”

  Mike was numb by thi
s point; his “Very good, Mr. Wooster” was automatic.

  Just as they began to climb up the stairs, they heard the sound of the freight elevator carrying Ape and the other man and their wheelchair down. Annie chuckled. “See? Plenty of time.”

  THERE WAS NO conversation on the way home. As soon as they conveniently could, they went back Under, and laid a complex meandering trail that crossed itself more than once. Twice Annie paused and simply waited in silence for a few minutes before continuing. By the time they got back to her place, both were sure they had not been followed.

  The moment her door closed behind them, Annie whirled on him and snapped, “What the hell did you do that for?”

  He was beyond being startled or defensive. “To save your life.”

  “That was more important than saving Dreamworld?” she blazed.

  He thought for a moment. “I guess so,” he said simply.

  All the wind went out of Annie’s sails. Her face smoothed over, became unreadable. She turned, walked to the kitchen table, and sat down. Mike sat on the side of the bed.

  “The heart attack was saccade tricks and acting, you know,” she said after a while. “I could have taken them. All three of them.”

  “I know.”

  There was an even longer pause, and then she said, “Thank you, Mike.”

  He nodded. “You’re welcome. What did they want?”

  She frowned. “I don’t know. Oh, me, obviously—but something else, too. Information, but they wouldn’t say what it was. Something they thought I could tell them once they got me out of here.”

  “What?”

  She shook her head.

  Mike nodded again and lay down and stretched out. It occurred to him that a little nap before dinner might not be a bad idea, but by then he had already been asleep for several seconds.

  HE WOKE AN indeterminate time later with a terrible sense of urgency. Something was wrong, something needed to be fixed so badly that he had to remember what it was even before opening his eyes.

  Right. He’d left the message to Phillip Avery on-screen, where a careless elbow might accidentally send it.

  He opened his eyes and looked. Annie was at the computer, typing away. She had put a blanket over him. He snuggled into it and went back to sleep.

  AT DINNER ANNIE caught him being depressed, though he was being quiet about it. “Why the long face?”

  He did not answer.

  She sighed. “Mike, your alien hypothesis made sense. I believed it, didn’t I? It was the only hypothesis we had that made sense. In fact, it still is.”

  He was stubbornly silent.

  “So now we’ll just start over, with newer and better data, and develop a new—”

  “I missed him!” Mike blurted.

  “Pardon?”

  “He was two meters away and I missed him. Totally.”

  Her face went smooth. She said nothing for a moment, then picked her words with obvious care. “Mike, anybody can miss even an easy throw. That’s why they invented guns. Professional pitchers throw wild all the time, under pressure.”

  “Two lousy bastard meters,” he said, but he knew she was right.

  “Consider this,” she suggested. “At the angle he presented to you, there was exactly one place you could have hit him and disabled him at once. And it was about the size of a poker chip.” She pointed to a spot behind her own ear. “Anywhere else you could have hit him, he’d simply have turned and shot you before I could stop him.”

  He thought about that. Vibrator guns were pretty awful.

  She spoke even slower. “He was well trained and alert. If you had not diverted his attention, I don’t know if I could have taken him. You saved my life, Mike. And even if you had failed utterly and we both had died or been captured, you would still be the bravest boy I have ever known.”

  He felt his cheeks grow hot. No, his whole face. And his ears.

  “And if you ever take a risk like that for me again, I’ll slap you cross-eyed.”

  He drew breath to defend himself—and let it out.

  “Do you understand me?”

  He looked stubborn.

  Annie studied him and sighed. “I can’t give you orders, can I? Much as you respect me. You’ll do what you think is right.”

  He looked at her eyes, saw she wanted an honest answer, decided to risk giving one, and nodded.

  And to his utter astonishment she grinned hugely and said, “Good man.”

  In spite of himself, Mike burst out laughing.

  ANNIE? HE ASKED as he was washing up.

  “Yes?”

  “I could have shot him. Instead of throwing the nail gun, I could have shot him with it.”

  “And got yourself killed, like I said.”

  “Yeah, maybe. I guess. But that’s not why I didn’t. I couldn’t!”

  “Ah.”

  When she made no further comment, he asked openly. “Well, what do you think about that?”

  “Look at me,” she said.

  He stopped washing dishes and did so. Her eyes bored into his and held them. “This is what I think you are asking me. You want to know if I think you less than a man should be, because you cannot bring yourself to kill, even to save your friend’s life. Am I close?”

  He squirmed under her gaze. “Well…yeah.”

  Very slowly and solemnly, she shook her head from side to side. “No. I would think you less than a man should be if you found it easy to kill a stranger, in cold blood, with a gun, from ambush. Okay?”

  He nodded, but must not have looked convinced.

  She sighed. “Mike, murder has nothing to do with manhood. Finding me, in time, thinking up that brilliant drainpipe entrance—all that was more than most grown men could have done. And it was enough. And, for what it’s worth, it is more than any other man has ever done for me.”

  He felt his face get hot again, and returned to his dishes. “Okay,” he said after a while, and when next he snuck a peek at Annie, she was busy straightening the covers on the bed.

  “SO WHAT DO we do now?” he asked when the morning chores were all done.

  “Now we defeat the bastards,” she said cheerfully.

  He nodded. “Cool. How? We still don’t know who they are or what they’re doing or why. Do we know anything more than we did yesterday, except that they’re not Martians?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Some of it even mildly useful.”

  “Like what?”

  She sat across from him. “The man we took down together is named Thomas McAnaly, a private-security thug with a police record that took twenty seconds just to download. He’s supposed to be unemployed and on benefits at the moment, but his last employer of record was an outfit called RTC Security, owned by one R. T. Conway. His record took over two minutes to down-load, and there were at least eight nations and three governments among the complainants. It is alleged that Conway worked for the American NSA once, and they found him too treacherous. A real piece of work. If you want a small country overthrown or a Supreme Court justice murdered, and you can afford the best, you hire RTC.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?” Mike asked.

  “McAnaly handled my Command Band when he was trying to see if I was really in cardiac arrest. Maybe you noticed, he wasn’t wearing gloves. After you fell asleep last night, I ran the Band through the scanner. It turns out Photoshop can be tweaked to bring out a fingerprint, if you play with it a little. The rest was just hacking.”

  He grinned. “Way cool.” He thought about what she had learned. “So who hired Conway? To do what?”

  She sighed, slouched in her chair, and put her feet up on the table. “Here we enter into guesswork. I didn’t even try to go near RTC’s own data. And the same with the guy I suspect is Conway’s client. The best I could probably accomplish is to give them one of my bogus e-mail addresses.”

  “I see that,” he agreed. “So who do you suspect?”

  “What do you know about Thrillworld?”

&n
bsp; He shrugged. “I’ve never been there. People say it’s almost as fun as here.” He shrugged again. “Different, though. My cousin Magdalen said some of the magic was, like, creepier. And there’s a lot of gross stuff: blood and guts, and shooting and stuff. I hear more people go to Thrillworld, but they don’t keep coming back as often as Dreamworld fans do.”

  She nodded. “A fair summation. It is owned and operated by a man named Haines. He is a toad, and richer than even a toad should be, and he probably hates Dreamworld more than Satan hates Heaven. He has been trying to close this place since it opened.”

  “I heard about that,” Mike agreed.

  “Up until now, he has used lawyers and money and political leverage—and hasn’t succeeded, because Phillip Avery is smarter than he is, and has just as much of all three. But Haines has come very close, once or twice, because he’s more unscrupulous. It would be absolutely in character for Haines to give up on legal means and try some kind of direct sabotage. It’s how he operates in most other areas of his business. Until now he hasn’t quite dared with Dreamworld, because…well, because it’s Dreamworld…but he has tried to pressure others into wrecking the place for him, more than once. I think he finally ran out of patience, good judgment, or both, and decided to do his own dirty work—or at least hire it done. RTC’s corporate headquarters are in the same city as Thrillworld.”

  That certainly made sense. “But I still don’t get it. How does it help him wreck Dreamworld to smuggle five or six little people in and then back out again every day? They don’t seem to do anything while they’re here.”

  “That we know about,” Annie corrected. “For all we know, they’re mining the place.”

  Mike was horrified. “Jesus, we have to start tailing them.”

  She shook her head. “Two people can’t follow six. And they may not know anything useful about what they’re doing. And we still don’t have a clue how or where they’re getting in. We need to talk to Haines himself.”

  His jaw dropped. “How?”