The Shield of Time

XVI

“Pete! The generator!” Vivienne cried.

It was on Koskinen’s back. He spun the adjustment wildly, hoping to expand the field so it would include her and Trembecki, and threw the switch as Hill’s gun spat.

Too little, too late. Silence thundered at him. The bullet fell harmless to the floor. Ricoletti charged and rebounded, six feet from Koskinen. But Brorsen and Lanphier had seized Vivienne by the arms. Thomson and Washburn did the same to Trembecki. Gannoway plucked the Pole’s gun from its shoulder holster, tossed it on the sofa, and shut the door. The happenings were for Koskinen like a nightmare dumb show.

There was noise, before he closed us off, he thought. Whoever heard—No. What would be done here about a scream?

Gannoway spoke to Vivienne. She answered him haughtily. The councillors argued among themselves. Gannoway shushed them with an imperious gesture, walked to the screen edge and looked at Koskinen for some time. Koskinen could only snarl at him.

Gannoway snapped his fingers. Opening a drawer, he took out a couple of minicoms. He scribbled on a piece of paper and held it where Koskinen could see.

“This is too clumsy a way of communication. I will toss one of these at you. If you switch your field off very briefly you can get it. I’ll lay my gun down across the room so I can’t reach it in that short a time. Those who aren’t holding your partners will keep their hands in the air. Okay?”

Koskinen nodded. He wanted to shout something to Vivienne in the split second when the screen field wasn’t between them, but he was too busy with his timing.

Insulated again, he put the instrument on his wrist. Gannoway turned the other one high, so it could detect anything spoken in the room, and laid it on a table. “Now we can talk,” he said.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Koskinen answered.

“On the contrary, there’s everything. You’ve gotten a fantastically wrong idea about us.”

“Everything you do makes it look more and more right.”

“You were willing to listen to us in the conference room. Then Jan Trembecki poisoned your mind.”

“He only showed me what the things really meant that you’d been advocating. I am not going to be a party to the murder of my fellow citizens.”

“Go ahead and make an exception for some of them,” Trembecki said.

Ricoletti stuck him in the face. “Hey, none of that,” Gannoway ordered.

“What’s a little roughness to a revolutionary?” Vivienne gibed.

“We want to be friends,” Gannoway said.

“You can start by letting us go where we want to go.”

“That’s lunacy. You wouldn’t last a week in the open. I can’t permit something like the shield to fall to Marcus.”

“Then help it fall to the President.”

“I’ve explained to you—”

“We don’t accept that explanation,” Koskinen interrupted. “I’m supposed to turn this thing over to the proper authorities. You’re not one of them.”

“It’s no use, Carse,” Thomson growled. “They’re fanatics.”

“I’m afraid Jan is,” Gannoway sighed. “But Pete, you seem like a reasonable man. Can’t you see our point of view?”

“Yes,” Koskinen said. “That’s exactly the trouble.”

“I hate to get tough. But you are immobilized in there. A man dies of thirst in a few days.”

Koskinen was faintly astonished at his own lack of fear. He wanted to live as much as the next human being, or perhaps a little more so. But there didn’t seem to be room in him for anything except anger. “I’m quite prepared for that,” he retorted. “But then my body will be inside the screen forever, unless you wreck the generator with a heat ray. That won’t help you to build another.”

“Eventually we might.”

“Not for a devil of a long time. Meanwhile, other men can go to Mars-Abrams could finance an expedition by himself if need be—whom the Martians would be willing to give the plans to.”

“Yes. There is that, isn’t there?” Gannoway brooded a moment.

When he looked up again, something terrible lay in his eyes. “You may not be afraid to die,” he said, “but can you let your friends die, simply because of your own stubbornness?”

Trembecki spat on the floor. “Isn’t he the big bad villain, though?”

“I mean it,” Gannoway said. “I really do. It’s that important.”

Heat and cold pursued each other through Koskinen. “You kill them and you’ll kill the last atom of a chance you ever had!” he yelled.

“I didn’t mean immediate death,” Gannoway said. “You could last three or four days in there. Given stimulants to help her along, Mrs. Cordeiro should be about equally durable.”

The color drained out of Vivienne’s face. She had to try twice before she could say, “Don’t pay any attention to him, Pete. Whatever happens.”

“You know where the equipment is,” Gannoway told Hill and Ricoletti. “Bring it here.”

The councillors went out. Ricoletti was grinning. Gannoway sat down and helped himself to a cigarette. “Go ahead and talk to each other,” he invited mildly.

“Vee,” Koskinen croaked.

She drew some long breaths before a degree of steadiness came. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Pete. I’m not interested in living, if the price is to help out creatures like these.”

“Wait a minute, you,” Thomson protested. “You don’t think we enjoy hurting anyone, do you?”

“Why, yes,” Trembecki said. The councillors glared at him.

“I honor your motives,” Gannoway said with a note almost of desperation. “You can’t imagine how I’d like to have you as my friends. And you could contribute so much to the world. Do I look like a fiend? If this happens, will I ever get the blood off my hands?” his mouth twisted. “Only if I let you go, how much more blood will be shed?”

“Dry up,” Trembecki said. To Koskinen: “I’m getting off easy, it seems. There’s no percentage in their doing more than shooting me. But—” He blinked his eyes. Tears stood in them. “If I break first and tell you to turn off that field, Pete, don’t listen to me, you hear?”

Koskinen paid him small heed. The terror had come upon him now, high and shouting. He saw Vivienne as if through a haze. “You decide,” he begged her. “You’re the only one who’s got any right to.”

“I’ve already decided,” she said. “You stay put.”

“No, listen, I mean it. What’s all this politicking to you? If anything, you should want nothing more than revenge on Marcus. The Equals can promise you that, better than anybody else. This isn’t your cause, Vee. I…we want you to be brave enough to choose for yourself.”

She smiled ever so faintly. “You’re being a coward, Pete. You want to shift the responsibility.”

“It’s not one I can take,” he wept.

“Okay, then, I’ll take it. Stay put, Pete. My life hasn’t been worth such a lot to me, these last several years. There’s no great loss involved.”

“Don’t talk that way!”

“Hush, dear.” She murmured to nun, meaningless comfort, while Gannoway chain smoked. The councillors holding her and Trembecki shifted about in their unease. Tune crawled.

“How about the you-know-what?” asked Trembecki suddenly.

The detonator! Koskinen remembered. A lunatic hope swerved through him. “Sure, I’ll come out,” he said. “Just release her…them…and I’ll surrender.”

“Come out first,” Gannoway replied. “I’m not chancing any tricks.”

“It’s no good, Pete,” Vivienne said. “An intact unit, that’s too big a gift to give them.”

“But if you get the chance, while I’m still inside the screen—” he whispered.

He wondered why she seemed so appalled at the thought of blowing his head off. It was better to die thus than from thirst and hunger, after watching her in pain. “No,” she said shakily. “I can’t. Not possibly.”

“What’s going on here, anyway?” Brorsen demanded.

Attention was diverted by the return of Hill and Ricoletti. They carried a heavy box with a handle and a large roll of plastic sheeting. “Where should we put this?” Hill asked, Gannoway gulped, but decided: “Right there in that doorway to the bedroom. The force field is taking up too much space here in the parlor.”

Ricoletti spread the sheet as directed. “Don’t want to mess the rug,” he chortled. Hill opened the box and tossed a coil of rope at Washburn’s feet. “Tie that guy up,” he suggested.

Trembecki drew a quick breath and whispered something in Polish. He made no resistance as he was led to a chair and lashed in place, but he called, “Pete.” The third time Koskinen heard him.

“Yes, yes?”

“Pete—Look at me.” Trembecki caught Koskinen’s eyes and would not let go. “Listen. I’m a dead man. Whatever happens, short of the U.S. Marines bursting in the door, I’ve reached the end.”

“No, no,” Gannoway said. “Give me the shield and I hope you’ll live many more years.”

Trembecki ignored him. “Listen very carefully, Pete. / don’t mind. I’ve enjoyed life, but I got over being scared of death a long time ago. I saw so much of it. And I’ve no dependents, my wife is dead, my children are grown. I can’t think of a better way to go out than, well, helping freedom along a little…or a worse way to survive than being a slave. Do you understand?”

Koskinen nodded dumbly. He felt, through his heartbeat and dizziness, that Trembecki was trying to tell him something. But he could not think clearly enough to see what it was.

“If something should happen, if you get a chance, forget about me,” Trembecki said. “I’ve had a full share of life. Vee is still young. So are you. And you’re also the man with the shield to give the world.

“Once, back in Europe, I ordered a town shelled where some of my own men were kept prisoner. They died. But we had to reduce that town. I’ve never felt bad about it. You shouldn’t either.”

Gannoway rose, suspicious. “What’s going on here? Shut up, Jan.”

“Okay,” Trembecki said. “Goodbye.”

“Not yet,” Gannoway said. He approached Koskinen. “Pete, do you realize what this means? She won’t be herself very long. Toward the end, she won’t even be human.”

“So you’ve done it before,” Vivienne said.

Gannoway bit his lip in exasperation. “We’ll begin with a nerve machine,” he said. “That doesn’t do serious harm, if it isn’t left on too long. Any time you want us to stop, we will. But if you don’t—well—” He waved a hand at the instruments which Ricoletti was taking out of the box and laying on the floor.

Hill put a chair on the plastisheet in the bedroom doorway. Ricoletti plugged in the neural exciter. Brorsen and Lanphier led Vivienne to the chair and bound her fast.

“All right, stand back there,” Gannoway said thickly. Ricoletti alone remained with Vivienne. The rest moved into the parlor again. Koskinen couldn’t see Trembecki, who sat by the wall behind him. His vision was blurred anyway.

“Well, Pete?” Gannoway asked.

“No,” Vivienne said. “See them in hell first.”

Ricoletti began to clip the leads to her arms and legs.

“Pete!” Trembecki roared. “Expand the field!”

It was as if another body moved. Koskinen’s hand flew to the adjustment knob. He twirled it toward maximum. Driven by the energy stored in the power pack, the force shell exploded outward. Only then did he comprehend what he had done.

He saw Gannoway smeared across the wall like an insect. And the rest of the council—No, one man was jammed into a corner. The field swelled further, crushed him to red ruin. The walls cracked open. Shards fell from the ceiling. The window shattered outward and a table crashed through to the street.

Vivienne and Ricoletti were merely pushed into the bedroom. Koskinen snapped off the field and plunged toward them. Ricoletti lurched back out into the demolished parlor. He fumbled in a stunned fashion beneath his tunic. A gun came forth. Koskinen snatched a blade from the debris on the floor and charged him. The gun spat. A slug puffed dust an inch from Koskinen’s feet. Then he was upon Ricoletti. He struck. The knife laid open the man’s throat.

Ricoletti went down in blood and wreckage. Koskinen leaped over him, into the bedroom. “Vee!” he yelled. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” she gasped. “Cut me loose, though. We’ve got to get out of here. This’ll draw everybody in the house.”

He hacked at the ropes. When he had finished, he threw the knife skittering across the floor. She got to her feet with more self-possession than he had. “Come on.” She stopped only to pick a gun from the rubble and slip it into her purse. The main door, burst open, showed a hallway full of swirling dust.

Koskinen didn’t look at the place where Trembecki had been. But he raised one hand as he went by.

A girl stood screaming in the corridor. Vivienne led Koskinen in the opposite direction. A male attendant ran around the corner of a side passage. “What happened?” he bawled.

“Something exploded, I think,” Vivienne said. “We’re going after help.”

Her hand hovered near the purse, ready to draw and fire. But the man ran witlessly on. Vivienne took the hall down which he had come. The nearest upramp was crowded with excited humanity, but the escapees had the downramp to themselves and were not noticed. Two floors below, Vivienne took a corridor again. When they were out of sight around a corner, in a deserted stretch lined only with doors, she stopped to get her breath.

“We’re clear,” Koskinen said stupidly. “We’re clear. We got away.”

She leaned her arm against the wall and buried her face in the crook of it. “Jan didn’t,” she said through tears.

Koskinen took her about the waist. It was hard to say which gained more from the few minutes they held to each other.

In the end she raised her head and said with some life in her voice: “We’d better get out of here before they connect us with what’s happened and start looking for us. And we’ve got to get out of town, too. Let me think…Our suite was on the south side. Let’s leave by the north entrance then, where the commotion won’t have been noticed in the street. Get the generator off your back, Pete, and carry it in your hand. Less noticeable that way.”

They walked on at a normal pace. She took out comb and compact and made some repairs to her appearance as they went. “What a man Jan was,” she said once.

What a woman you are, he thought.

It seemed odd to him how neutral his emotions were with respect to those he had killed. Trembecki he mourned, of course, with the Pole’s own absolution to preserve him from any sense of guilt. But as for the others, his enemies, he felt neither glad nor sorry. Their deaths were merely something that had happened, impersonal, already fading in his memory under the urgencies of escape.