Bruce rolled onto his chest and started to crawl. Gore moved fast and clamped a hand around his neck. Their clashing force fields buzzed like a high voltage cable shorting out.
Bruce was hauled off the ground, and turned so Gore could study him in profile.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Gore told him. “From a tactical point of view I should take you in and try to break your conditioning. We’d probably learn a lot from that, Bruce.”
Bruce McFoster’s eye twitched.
“But you tried to kill my daughter and my grandchild. So fuck that.”
Bruce’s jaw opened, sending out a spray of blood, as he tried to say something. Then his contorted face calmed. “Do it. Kill the alien.” His force field switched off.
“Good for you, son,” Gore said in benediction. His hand closed around the man’s neck, snapping the spine.
***
The last time Hoshe had visited the High Angel there had been a couple of bored Diplomatic Police reviewing the ID of everyone who entered the transit station, and scanning their baggage. Today it was a little different. There were now eight transit stations, all of them a lot bigger than the single original. All of them were guarded by a squad of fully armored navy troopers.
Hoshe, who had seen quite enough of armor suits in the last twenty-four hours, eyed them warily as he approached the entrance to a transit station marked CIVILIAN PERSONNEL. The big trollybot carrying Isabella’s suspension shell rolled along quietly behind him, screened from any scan by an e-shield. He called Paula while he was still fifty meters away along the white concourse. “I’m being chicken. I think I need help already.”
“Okay, Hoshe,” she told him. “I’m calling the High Angel now.”
The navy troopers watched him approach, and moved to form a protective cordon around the entrance. Two of them walked out to meet him.
One of them had a captain’s star, and the name Turvill printed on his chest. He held out a hand, stopping Hoshe. “What the hell is in that?”
Hoshe stared at the captain’s helmet, seeing a curving reflection of himself in the gold-mirror dome. “Luggage.”
“What’s in it?”
“That’s not your concern, Officer.”
The squad around the entrance raised their plasma rifles.
“Oh, yes it is. Open it.”
Hoshe gave him a pleasant smile. “No.”
“We are taking you into custody. Sergeant, get a team to scan the box.”
Hoshe stood his ground, smiling in what he hoped was a natural fashion, while praying he wasn’t sweating too obviously. The squad started to advance, their rifles still raised. Some were covering the trolleybot and its large oblong shell.
Captain Turvill suddenly became very still. The squad halted. Their rifles were lowered. The captain saluted. “Sorry, sir. There has been a misunderstanding. Please go through. Your shuttle is waiting. Can my men be of any assistance?”
“No. Thank you,” Hoshe said. “I’ll just, er…” His hand waved at the entrance to the civilian transit station. He felt like tiptoeing past the squad. A schoolboy smirk was trying to break out on his face; it was hard not to laugh.
Poor Captain Turvill would never know what happened, but Paula had spoken with the High Angel, who called Toniea Gall and rather pointedly asked that a prearranged shipment to the Raiel should not be subject to interruption or examination. The alien starship had never been so blunt with her before. A furious, and frankly worried, Toniea Gall immediately called Admiral Columbia, who told the captain to back off. Now.
Hoshe was the only passenger on the shuttle. The stewards helped him float the suspension shell along the connecting tube, then strapped it securely to some seats for the duration of the flight. They docked at the base of the New Glasgow stalk, where all the airlocks were compatible to human ships. When they were inside, Hoshe’s e-butler connected him to the High Angel’s internal information net. His virtual vision filled up with strange fluid graphics in dusky colors. He thought it was a guidance display of some kind. Fuseto patches on his cuffs secured him to the wall, and he looked around the corridor. The tapering ribbons of light in his virtual vision undulated into new patterns as his head moved.
“What is this, exactly?” he asked.
“Detective Finn, welcome back,” the High Angel said. “I am showing you which direction to take.”
The ribbons undulated again, ushering him along a small corridor. Hoshe beckoned the stewards, who tugged the suspension shell along for him. A door opened to show a small elevator capsule, and Hoshe drifted in along with his cargo. He used the fusetos on his soles to keep his feet on the floor as the elevator began to move.
Several minutes later the elevator rose up the stalk into the Raiel dome. “Can you send whatever the equivalent of a trolleybot is for me, please?” Hoshe asked. The dome’s gravity was eighty percent Earth standard; there was no way he could lift the suspension shell, let alone drag it through the streets.
“That will not be necessary,” the High Angel said. “Your cargo will accompany you.”
“Right. Thanks.” The elevator doors opened. Hoshe looked out onto the Raiel city—if that’s what it was. The light was the same gloomy gray he remembered from his earlier visit. Ahead of him was a street made from walls of unbroken matte-black metal. Lines of tiny red lights glimmered along the base of each building.
The ribbons in his virtual vision waved about like seaweed fronds, aligning themselves onto the street. He took a breath and walked out. The oblong shell that contained Isabella Halgarth slid out after him, its base half a meter off the floor.
“Oh, neat,” he muttered. It wasn’t particularly impressive, even though such a feat was currently beyond human technology. But then every High Angel dome had artificial gravity; if you could generate it you could certainly manipulate it.
With the virtual vision display guiding him, Hoshe Finn walked along the dim alien streets. There were more curves, this time, he thought, and the junctions weren’t all right angles. Other than that it was the same interminable featureless metropolis, illuminated by row after row of small colored lights set along the bottom of the walls.
He wound up facing a sheer cliff of metal, identical to all the others. The lights along the foundation were purple, as before. A vertical line split open in front of him, widening to allow him through. Inside was the same circular space with a glowing emerald floor, and a ceiling lost in the overhead shadows.
It was Qatux waiting for him, of that there was no mistake. The Raiel’s health hadn’t improved since they last met. Several of its medium-sized tentacles were coiled up tight; the large pair at the bottom of its neck rested on the floor, as if they were helping to prop it up. Given the way the big body was sagging on its eight stumpy legs, Hoshe thought that might be a correct assessment. Not that it should have any trouble holding its own weight; judging by how tight the brown hide was stretched over the skeleton platelets it was suffering from the Raiel equivalent of anorexia. One of the five eyes was permanently shut, with a blue rheum leaking from the clenched eyelid; the remaining four eyes were twisting around independently.
Hoshe bowed to the creature, feeling enormously sorry for it. You poor desperate thing, if you had to get addicted to anything, it should never be humans, we’re not worth it. “Hello, Qatux, thank you for seeing me,” he said formally.
Qatux raised its head. “Hoshe Finn,” it sighed as air gusted through the pale wrinkles of flesh that made up its mouth region. “Thank you for returning.” Two of its eyes turned in sequence to gaze at the shell. “Is this her?”
“Yes.” Hoshe’s e-butler sent a code to the shell’s array, and the top dilated. Isabella was floating in a clear gel, eyes closed, slim tubes reaching in through her nostrils. Hundreds of fiber-optic strands had been inserted into her shaven skull, forming a white gossamer crown. Long incisions on her arms, legs, and torso were covered with strips of healskin that were even paler than her Nordic skin. She looked so peaceful she was almost angelic. A vicious contrast to when she’d last been conscious.