Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail

CHAPTER SEVEN Working Both Sides of the Street

The psych job was no big problem. In fact, the hardest thing about it was not betraying how much more I knew about the tech’s machines than she did. Still, as someone allegedly under psych probes for over a year after the murder, I could be expected to have a certain amount of familiarity and expertise.

The routine psych exam was designed to catch problems before they developed into something that might cause real trouble for the Guild and the system. I did learn, by casual conversation while taking the exam, a bit of interesting additional information to file.

There was no psych school on Medusa; all psychs native to the Warden system were trained on Cerberus. It stood to reason, therefore, that this Opposition might also have Cerberan origins. I had no evidence, of course, but such a level of technological expertise combined with such an amateurish and naive set of people led to the inescapable conclusion that we—the Opposition, that is—were the arm of a widespread, Confederacy-backed underground whose main objective, at least on Medusa, was to get organized and remain in waiting until needed.

I got along well with the cell members, particularly once I disdained that silly robe, hood, and veil the rest of them used. Hell, they all knew who I was anyway, so why fool with that sort of stuff? To my disappointment, most of them were also in the Transport Guild—I wanted to broaden my base—although at least two were fairly high up. But they were such eager amateurs, that I felt I had to more or less lead them along and also maybe dangle some bait for the higher-ups. Therefore, at one meeting I dropped a real bombshell. They were doing their usual debating-society stuff about the problems in breaking the system as opposed to crawling around in the cracks when I interrupted. “I think I’m pretty clear on how to destroy totally TMS’s hold on Medusa.” All of a sudden you could have heard a pin drop.

“So? What master plot has the superkid come up with now?” one of them finally asked.

“Let me tell you about the harrar,” I began. “They’re too big not to eat all the time, and too big and fat ever to catch anything. Yet there are plenty of harrar in the wild. You remember some of the old wives’ tales about them?”

They nodded and shook their heads and mumbled and finally somebody said, “But nobody believes that crap.”

“On a world that’s been settled for this short a time, there’s almost always a good reason for those tales,” I pointed out. “And the harrar itself fits in perfectly. They can change shape. They can make themselves look like other, more familiar things and then just sit there until prey comes near. Maybe they even attract it. But they change shape all the same. On a more primitive basis, I think the tubros have a little of this ability as well. They have a tail that looks like their necks with a ball of fat on the end of it. Why? A neck with no head, or a ball of fat, isn’t going to fool any predator worth its. salt. I think they make that ball of fat look just like their pointy heads, when they have to. All of them change color to fit their background, as do almost all the animals on Medusa. Hell, even we do that, sort of.”

“But that’s animals,” somebody noted. “What’s that to do with us, even if it is true?”

“I think humans can do it, too. The fact is, the Warden cells that make-up our bodies are basic living cells for plants and animals. They’re not like normal human, plant, or animal cells, but they’re more like each other than like normal cells. They protect us from cold and heat and even from starvation, within limits. Given air and water we can live anywhere and on most anything if we had to. Nature is really pretty consistent. Shape-changing is simply a practical survival characteristic the Wardens could develop.”

“Then why can’t we do it?” somebody wanted to know.

“Because we don’t know how. I suspect that if we were out in the wild the ability would come more or less naturally. But it does exist, even here. I’ve seen scars heal almost while I was watching them. I’ve seen three people I knew change sex so absolutely you’d swear they were born with that new sex. If we can accomplish something that total, we can surely make changes with any face and form.”

“That may be,” Sister 657 put in, “but nobody can control these things so it does no one any good.”

“I think they can be controlled. I think the harrar and the tubros’ tail tell us it’s possible. With them it’s probably instinctive, but the ability is there. It’s only a matter of our finding out how to do it. I’m convinced the government knows. They went to a lot of trouble to suppress any idea that it’s possible because they know it is. Their system is one based on visual and audio surveillance. Anybody who looked and sounded just like somebody else could use the card of whoever they appeared to be. Replace somebody—almost anybody roughly your size—and you can walk where he or she would walk and the monitors would never pick up the substitution. A lot of TMS’s offices, for example, have no monitors themselves. The watchers don’t like to be watched, and they need a few places off the record sometimes. A relatively small group of malleable people could walk into TMS as prisoners and wind up replacing everybody in top authority. A coordinated effort could collapse the system beyond easy repair.”

“He makes it sound so easy,” our other male member grumbled.

“No, it’s not easy, and the plan is not without risk. Some people would die. A lot of homework would be necessary to keep detection away as long as possible. But our group has enough people placed in top levels to phony those records now—they’re using the same principle I’m referring to, only in a more limited way. They understand that a totalitarian government is dependent on its technology for its controls and is secure only as long as that technology works and remains in their hands. They’re going slightly nuts just because we beat the system, even though we haven’t done anything threatening to them. Take away their system’s confidence in knowing that the person on their recordings is really that person and you have rabid, absolute paranoia and fear on the part of the leadership. Shake it and it topples. It’s more fragile than you’ve been brought up to think.”

This set off a furious debate that was ended by Sister 657 with the comment, “All this might be true—if such body control is really possible. And that’s a big if.”

“I’m not so sure it is,” I replied. “Look, we’re pretty low down on the Opposition chart right now, but somebody up top is very bright and very well placed. If we can get this idea kicked far enough upstairs we might find out for sure. Can you arrange it?”

“I’ll try,” she assured me, “but I still think it’s nothing but a fairy tale.”

I had been on Medusa for more than six months when I finally got an answer. I’ll say this for them—whoever was at the top was cautious in the extreme. The information, when it came, was both good and bad at the same time, and not something that could be used immediately.

Yes, all humans on Medusa were potentially malleable, but in order to accomplish a change, you first almost literally had to develop a sense of the Wardens and their connections, one to another. Once you had this sense—this ability to “talk” to your Wardens—you could, through hypnosis or psych machine, perform what was needed to be performed. The trouble was, nobody had ever found out how you accomplished it. Oh, it was possible, and had been done, but those who could do it could not explain how they did it, or even accurately describe the sensation. Nor had they been able to teach others. And unless you had that “sense of communication,” as they called it, all the hypnos and psych machines in the world couldn’t do a damned thing.

There was a general feeling that people who had the ability were born with it, at least as a latent ability that could not be learned. The government spent some time looking for those people, spiriting them away to a special compound far from anything and anybody else. They had hoped to breed the ability, but that plan had fallen flat. There were reports that many of the Wild Ones could do it, and often did, but whether this was voluntary or a response to the harsh conditions under which they lived was unknown.

Stimulus-response, that was the answer; but what stimulated this “sense” into action? Find the stimulus and you had the key—but Opposition sources had failed to find it and hardly believed in it, at least for the record. Still, if either certain social conditions or psychs could induce sex changes, then there had to be a way to induce the rest of it.

Certainly this same “sense” was responsible for the fabled powers of the leaders of Lilith, although there, too, the power was not for the masses and could not be acquired. You either had it or you didn’t. That thought was depressing, since the same sort of thing might be the case here. Neither I nor anybody I knew might have that ability.

On Charon and Cerberus, though, everybody had it, at least to a degree. On Charon a person required training; on Cerberus the ability was involuntary, automatic, and universal. The lack of consistency between the three other worlds didn’t help in finding a Medusan key.

Although I’d been warned about it, I can remember the shock at my first experience with the sex-change business. It wasn’t some gradual thing—one person slowly changing—it was dramatic, taking place entirely in a matter of days. Medusan society was certainly the least sexist in any sense I could remember. Oh, certainly, there was complete sexual equality on the civilized worlds, but the two sexes still were physically different, hormonally different, arid it was never really possible for one sex to understand the other totally. Neither sex had ever been the other. On Medusa you could be one or the other, either according to some odd formula the Wardens had or because you wanted to through psych sessions—and that was the key to my theory, the clincher. If something so drastic as sexual change could be induced, any change could be induced, if only you had the key.

This brought me to the Wild Ones. Nobody really seemed to know much about them except that they had a primitive hunter-gatherer tribal society. There were no romantic legends about them on Medusa; the very thought of living away from power and transportation and automated meals terrified even the bravest Medusan. That was irritating, but understandable. What was less understandable was why the Medusan government allowed Wild Ones at all. They served no apparent purpose, contributed nothing to the society—although, it’s true, they also took nothing from it—and remained a totally uncontrolled, independent element who owned the wilderness portion of the world, and that meant the bulk of it. I knew from bitter experience that totalitarian minds like those of Ypsir and his associates would find the very existence of such bands intolerable. Their psychology simply wouldn’t allow people to remain so free and unfettered for long. Of that I was absolutely certain, unless one of three conditions existed: (1) they performed a useful, valuable, or essential service to the government—highly unlikely; (2) they did not exist—even more unlikely; or, (3) no matter what Medusa could do, they couldn’t catch them.

And now I had reliable reports from above somewhere that the Wild Ones were reputed shape-changers, that they were at least on equal terms with the harrar. So, logically, the third choice seemed the most probable. Medusa wanted them, but had been singularly unsuccessful in catching those primitive folk. That conclusion led, too, to the question of just how primitive they might be, but this was something I could only learn by going and seeing for myself. If they were indeed a bunch of tribal types munching roots and grunting, I’d be stuck with them and out of luck.

Right now working both sides of the street had its advantages for me, but that, too, couldn’t last forever. Major Hocrow would keep me going on the leash only as long as I was feeding her information that was either useful or might lead to useful information. If too long a dry spell came along, or if she decided that was all I could get, I knew my future wasn’t too bright no matter what her assertions were as to my ultimate destiny. She was a good agent, with just the right nose for trouble, and she smelled a rat in me.

On the other hand, no matter how disappointing a debating forum these so-called rebels were, they were scared enough of the Medusan government and TMS to kill at the first sign of a double cross. Since they were such nervous amateurs, it wouldn’t take much to push at least a couple of them over the edge against me. The man in the middle is always living on borrowed time.

About the only bright spot was that both sides realized I was not sentimental enough for them to use Ching against me. I was really fond of her. As hard as that was to admit, I also had to admit that I was really far more comfortable with her around, even if she was just there, doing something else quietly in the same room, than on the few occasions when I was alone. I liked to think that my feelings were more paternal than anything else. It was deadly for anyone in my line of work to ever form real attachments—and never more so than here and now. I was convinced I was above really needing other people except as tools or means to ends, but I did sort of realize that Ching needed me.

It would have been ridiculous and unfair to drag her to the café at irregular intervals while in Rochande, then knock her out for a period and try and cover. Not only was doing so impractical, the routine would soon become something she would do anything to avoid. Actually, it was Hocrow’s tech who came up with the answer, with my help. Ching already knew I was up to something with TMS, and she trusted me. Therefore I was able to put her under the second time at Hocrow’s and use the tech to reinforce the hypno. With a simple posthypnotic command I could make her either a totally loyal member of Medusan society or a totally committed Opposition member, pretty much-going along with whatever I was playing at the time—only believing in it. Since we already knew their screening procedures, it was pretty easy to fake her past the Opposition’s security checks.

In the meantime, the routine continued. Ching was bright enough to understand that my position, and thus, hers as well, was precarious at all times. I had to admit that I was not fond of that situation. I felt a little guilty at having thrust her into it, but, dammit, I hadn’t asked for her.

Winter snows gave way, at last, to spring, and yet the situation dragged on, with me stuck at a stone wall. I knew my proposal for revolution was valid, and I was even more certain that those in the top levels of the Opposition not only agreed but had the means, somehow, to crack that needed stimulus. The only real question was why they didn’t act. Certainly it wasn’t out of fear of failure—what they had now was dead-ended and stagnating—but something else. If, in fact, I was correct about the off-planet origins of that leadership, it might mean that we were waiting for a concerted, multiplane! effort—but that wouldn’t do any good here, I knew. These people simply didn’t have adequate training, nor did we really know what sort of “soldiers” they would be if push came to shove.

And yet, I was curiously reluctant to move on my own. I was still trapped by the system as well, and I didn’t like it at all. Sooner or later, I began to understand, I would have to break free, and take the chances beyond the simple ones I had taken to date. But somehow I was reluctant to do it. I had so little data. If only I knew more about the Wild Ones! I couldn’t help but wonder if my counterparts on the other three worlds were feeling this frustrated. In a perverse sort of way I kind of hoped they were—I wouldn’t like to be the only flop.

Not that I really gave a damn about the mission any more, though I was very slow to realize that. When I had awakened on that ship, even before planetfall, I had pretty much closed my mind to the dear old Confederacy and its causes and ways. It was odd how easy it was to slam the door on a lifetime—but then, I wasn’t the one who slammed the door. They threw me out, then slammed it shut behind me.

Still, the primary objective of the mission and my own personal objective remained the same. I wanted the Medusan system overthrown, and I wouldn’t have minded knocking off Talant Ypsir one bit. And yet, here I was, months in, stalled and half-beaten. Damn it all, I didn’t even know where Ypsir was, and I had no means to get to him if I did.

What was happening to me down here? What was I changing into? In my quest for the key to physical metamorphosis, had I, somehow, had a mental metamorphosis that slipped right by unnoticed?

As had happened before, my next play was forced on me by factors beyond my control. It began with the sum-| mons to a particularly urgent meeting of the Opposition, : one which all cell members were expected to attend. I was actually a little excited by the summons—maybe, just | maybe, somebody had finally decided to move.

What I found in the maintenance room was not just my cell, but five separate cells, perhaps sixty people, all crowded into a place that could hardly hold one-third that number. Up front somebody had set up a screen and small recorder. A sense of extreme tension pervaded the air, yet few speculated or even said much to one another. The cells were uncomfortable being this packed together, and not just in the physical sense.

A tall woman from one of the other cells, all masked and robed as usual—even Ching was so disguised, although I still refused—looked around, took a count, then, satisfied, began by asking for quiet. The request was quickly granted by the uncomfortable crowd. Ching and I climbed up in the back on top of some crates so we could get out of the crush and still see at least the top part of the screen.

“We have been directed by our leadership board to gather you here and play this recording for you,” tlie woman told us. “None of us have any more idea of what it contains than you do. Therefore, we will proceed to find out as quickly as possible. I am told that the recording card will destroy itself as it plays, so there can be no repeats.” She punched the card into the recorder, and the screen flickered to life.

They could have saved themselves the trouble of a screen for all it was worth. It simply showed a man, masked and robed himself, sitting at a desk. It was impossible to tell anything about the scene, even the planet of origin, and it was obvious from the start that even the voice was distorted.

“Fellow comrades in opposition to the Lords of the Diamond,” he began, “I bring you greetings. As some of you may have guessed, you are a part not only of a planet-wide organization but a systemwide group devoted to the overthrow of all Four Lords of the Diamond.”

There were gasps and some rumbling in the crowd.

“All of you have your personal reasons for wishing to overthrow the Medusan system, reasons we well understand. Simply because you are a part of a larger plan, please do not for one moment think that your own hopes and objectives are not part of that plan,” the man went on. “Events have a way of overtaking plans, however, and that has happened in this case. The Confederacy itself is taking an active hand against the Four Lords, and has some chance of success. It is time, therefore, to explain to you all a little of what this is about.

“An alien race, totally alien to anything we know, discovered humanity before humanity discovered it. That race is somehow bound up with our homeland, the Warden system itself, and they are very clever and have a very good understanding of the way people work. Instead of warring with the Confederacy, they contacted the Four Lords, who jointly accepted a contract to destroy human civilization outside of the Diamond.”

A lot more whispering and rustling now, and I could hear some snatches that included the words “mad” and “insult” and the like. Clearly this cloistered group, few or none of whom had ever known anyplace except the Warden Diamond, either didn’t believe the man or they couldn’t care less about the aliens. This reaction was understandable, and, I found, exactly what the speaker had anticipated. Either he Vas a psych or he had some good ones prepare the talk.

“Now, I know this doesn’t seem to apply to you, but the fact is, it does. The Four Lords have made this contract and they are in the process of carrying it out. Their means are irrelevant to you, since they are worked against non-Diamond people, but those means depended on secrecy to the very last minute. Now that secrecy is blown. The Confederacy knows. Knows, but not enough. They are left with two options. We are one. The Four Lords must go, and be replaced by more honest, Warden-oriented people who will work for the Diamond and not on some sort of mass revenge. But we are no tools of the Confederacy, I assure you. We do this for our own good.”

Nice dramatic pause here, I thought.

“The second and only remaining option as to the overthrow of the Four Lords and the consequent flushing out of these aliens is simple. The Confederacy, if it can not achieve or see the first, will not hesitate to do on a mass scale what they fail to do on a simple scale. They propose to incinerate the four Warden Diamond worlds totally and kill every living person and thing upon them.”

Another pause and much agitation and some really loud comments rose from the crowd. It sounded angry and upset.

“They have the power to do this. They have the means. And those aliens won’t save us. If they could, they wouldn’t have needed the Four Lords in the first place. Therefore, this organization of good, serious men and women of the Diamond, very different on each world but nonetheless there, was formed not to save the Confederacy, which means nothing to us, but to save our homes, our worlds, our very lives. The Four Lords will not back down. They are in this to the death, since anything less than the aliens’ total victory will destroy them. And since we know very little about them ourselves, we have no reason to think that, even in the case of a now improbable alien and Four Lords victory, those aliens would then be friendly to us. We have no choice.

“However, each planet is different, and must be dealt with by different methods—and is best dealt with by th” natives of those worlds. Therefore, the members of Medusa’s Opposition must now sit back, reflect, and discuss the situation among themselves. Cells will be asked within no more than two weeks to propose plans for action. Those plans will be examined and coordinated by us, and then a single master plan will be developed. We will win. We must win. I leave you now to discuss the situation in your individual cells. With your help, Medusa, TMS, and the very idea of monitors that strangles the world will be vanquished within a year.”

With that the recording stopped, and there was instant pandemonium that took the group leader some time to quiet down to a dull roar. Finally she got enough of a lull to yell, “Discussion will be in individual cell groups. Those with numbers beginning in four will file out first, then those with six, following your cell leaders. Those in my cell will remain here! Do it now!”

Everyone stood around for a few moments, then a small group of four started toward the exit, followed by the rest, still grumbling and talking. As for me, I was reasonably excited by this development, since it meant action in the foreseeable future. I could just, imagine the furious debates that would ensue when we met in private from now on. But something still bothered me a little. Was it really true that they had no plan, or was this simply a test? And would the truth sell to these folks?

I saw Sister 657, and turned to Ching. “What do you think?”

She shrugged. “It’s hard to believe.”

“It’s true,” I told her. “I knew it before I ever got to Medusa.”

She thought about that one for a moment. Finally she said, “But is it any of our business, really? I’m not sure I even know what he means by aliens, and as for the Confederacy, all Outside is just a fairy tale to us, anyway.”

I expected more of this logic when we assembled in our cell meeting. A lot more. What could you expect from people who weren’t even sure what wild animals lived on their own native world? What did the concept of “alien” mean to them, anyway? Cerberan or Charonese was as alien as they could probably think. The idea that somebody, somewhere, could or would give an order and be willing and able to blow up a world was incomprehensibly abstract. I suspected that the Opposition leader had his hands full. I could tell just from his accent that he was a transportee himself, probably from the civilized worlds. His fancy, wood-paneled office wasn’t in the Medusan style, at least none I’d ever seen, leading to the inescapable conclusion that our leaders were Cerberan or Charonese, not Medusan. That would also be the ultimate conclusion of the group, I knew—and would cause even more intense anti-leadership feelings. For the first time these play rebels were being asked to do something, possibly to put their lives on the line, and they would do anything to avoid that.

Our, group was going out, and I jumped down and helped Ching down as well. We turned and followed the others, bringing up the rear of the group. I moved only a few paces outside the door when I stopped and ducked back inside. Ching, startled, looked at me. “What’s the matter?”

“TMS!” I shouted so that everybody could hear. “It’s a trap!”

The monitors also heard my echoed warning, because there was the sudden sound of an amplified official voice. “This is TMS! Everyone inside that room will come out, one by one, hands on heads, starting exactly one minute from now! We will gas anyone left after the rest have emerged, so there is no reason to hold back. You are trapped, and there is no way out. You have fifty seconds!”

Ching looked at me, scared and confused. “What will we do?”

I peered back out the door and saw perhaps a dozen agents, lined up on both sides of the catwalk about ten meters on either side of the temporary bridge. I had never seen TMS monitors armed with anything more lethal than a night stick, but these held very familiar-looking laser weapons.

I turned back to Ching and lowered my voice. “Now, listen carefully. I’m going to try and bluff us out of here with Hocrow’s name. At the very least that should get us taken to her.” I turned and looked at the remaining Opposition members in the room. Most had their hoods off and defeat registered all over their faces and in their mannerisms. They were sheep who’d do what they were told, like good little children, now that they’d been caught.

“Thirty seconds!”

“Damn!” I swore. “No, that Hocrow thing won’t work except as a diversion. She’s got to be behind this, at least partly. That means I’m no longer useful to her. We’ll get psyched with the sheep. We’ve got to escape.”

“Twenty seconds!”

“Escape? How?” Ching’s whole expression showed that the very concept was alien to her. On Medusa, you were raised from birth to believe that there was no escape.

“I’m going to get one of those guns, then go over the rail into the sewer. Follow me if you want, but it’s gonna be rough.”

“Ten seconds!”

“But—where can we go?”

“Only one place. It’s that or the Goodtime Girls, love. Ready?”

She nodded.

“Come out now!”

I walked out, hands above my head, and Ching followed. The rest of the cell walked behind us, looking very dejected. I could now see the others who’d gone before us lined up on both sides, and I couldn’t help but be disgusted at the sight. Not a single weapon was aimed at them; in fact, nobody was even looking at them.’ Yet there they stood, hands meekly over heads, waiting for the rest of the sheep. Well, by God, they had one rabid dog in this bunch. Still, I couldn’t believe that these were the shock troops of a real rebellion. If they had any guts or weren’t so completely conditioned by their society, they could have easily taken all those TMS agents and their weapons. Escape? Where? Rule one: first escape, then go where they aren’t.

Thanks to the illuminated stripes on its top, you could see a pretty long ways up and down the pipe, and the dozen TMS agents were all I saw. Only two on each side held laser weapons, short rifles from the looks of them.

“Get over against the wall with your traitorous friends!” snapped the laser-armed woman closest to me.

“Hey! I’m with Major Hocrow—I’m her inside man!” I protested.

“Major Hocrow is under arrest, just like you,” the monitor snapped back. “You’ll meet her in traitor’s belli”

Oho! Well, that was interesting. At least it meant that Hocrow was either being done in by a subordinate who was walking into her job or she really was with the Opposition and was one of those who ran cover for us. I would never know which, but the comment removed any last doubts I had about what I was going to do. There was no reprieve, and, once out of here, no chance at all.

I walked on past the monitor with the nasty tone, who, I saw, was no longer even looking at us but idly holding the rifle while gazing at the people coming behind us. I was about the same size as the monitor, but I had several advantages, not the least of which was that I wasn’t conditioned by Medusa and I knew how to use that fancy rifle.

I whirled, pushed, and knocked her head into the rail, then reached out and grabbed the rifle from her loose grip as she struck.

In one motion I ducked, came up with the rifle, using it to push Ching on past, then opened fire on the line of monitors across from me. The beam, set to kill, sliced through them all pretty neatly, leaving just one weapon and four unarmed monitors at my,baek.

Men and women screamed at the violence that was not and had never been a part of their lives. I grabbed the groggy monitor I’d pushed into the rail in a hammer grip and, using her as a shield, started firing at the others.

I still would have failed, though, if three of the sheep still pressed against the wall hadn’t made a split-second decision and rushed out. The officer holding the laser rifle on the far end was pushed into the muck, toppling nicely over the rail. The other three monitors, looking not just stunned but actually stricken, had eyes only for my rifle—and they stood still as stone.

“Thanks!” I called out to the three who’d come to my aid. “I couldn’t have done it without you!” One of them waved, and I looked over at Ching. “You all right?”

“You—you killed them!”

“It’s my job. I’ll tell you about it sometime. Right now we have to get out of here—fast.” I looked up and down at the Opposition members, some of whom still had their hands over their heads. I could sympathize, sort of. What they’d just seen was impossible, and that’s why it’d worked. The monitors were simply too self-assured and too relaxed, too confident that the sheep would all be meek. They reacted very slowly, and, amateurishly, they had their rifles on narrow-beam kill, which allowed me to get that whole neat row with a single shot. Even the monitors were products of Medusa, conditioned to certain kinds of behavior and confident in their total mastery over the common herd.

I pushed my prisoner into the others and freed myself of any physical restrictions. The monitor rubbed her head and looked at me with a mixture of fear and confusion. “You better let us have that! There is no escape. Your entire organization is broken.”

I smiled at her, which confused her all the more. “Okay, you Opposition members, listen up!” I yelled. “They’re picking up our people all over the city, maybe all over the planet. You have only three choices. You can kill yourselves, go with the monitors, or come with me!”

“Come with you? Where?” somebody yelled back nervously.

“Outside! In the bush and the wild! It’s the only place to run!”

That suggestion stopped them for a moment. I let them mull over the implications, but only for a short period. We had to move fast, before we were missed. This group of monitors was the usual bunch of egomaniacal incompetents, but TMS had much better than these, and it wouldn’t take very long for their best to set out after us. I wanted to be long gone by then. “Anybody here know where the sewers dump outside the city and how to get there from here?”

“I know ’em pretty well,” one of the three who’d pushed at the right moment called back. “I think I can get us out of here.”

“Who’s coming? I have to know now!”

It didn’t surprise me that only the three who’d showed any guts wanted to come. Counting Ching, who was still looking pretty scared and confused herself, and me, that was five out of almost sixty. Some rebels!

“You three come up with me!” I called, then turned to Ching. “Coming?”

She was frightened and shocked, but she nodded affirmatively. “I go with you.”

“Good girl!” I looked at the three. All were women, and one was familiar. “Well! Morphy! I thought you’d have the guts!”

Our demanding shift supervisor looked sheepish. “You knew?”

“Almost from the start. Introductions later, though.” I flicked the rifle field to wide scan. “This won’t hurt anybody,” I said loud enough for all to hear, “just knock you out for a couple of minutes. I gotta say, though, that you deserve what you’re going to get from TMS.” I looked around. “Last chance.” Nobody moved.

I fired first at the side with the monitors, then turned as the others on the other side screamed once more and started to panic. They all dropped in their tracks, although they were going to be a pain to crawl over on the catwalk.

I looked at them, feeling oddly confident and solid with the rifle in my hand. Four women and me. That could make the wild easier to take, that was for sure.

“C’mon, tribe!” I said, and we started picking our way through the unconscious bodies toward the clear area of the tunnel.