Zone Yellow

Epilogue

The trip in was routine, until I noticed a sudden dip in the continuum-integrity sensor, and looked out to see a familiar landscape: the dreary hills, the one road, and the cozy cottage, where I’d met Swft for the second time. I considered the matter in depth for a full microsecond, and phased-in.

I could see the marks in the muddy road where the traveler had settled in last time. How long ago was that, local? I wondered. There were footprints, too―the party that had shot Swft and hurried away―only now the trail led toward the high-tech “cottage.” The boys were still here, it appeared; there were no tracks leading away from the little house. I had a passing impulse to go over and check on what was afoot, but I had an urgent job to do, so I resumed my trip to Zone Yellow. There were still plenty of loose ends to tie up before I could report the situation stabilized.

I resisted the temptation to use the view-screen to monitor my progress across the Zone to its centroid at Ylokk. My instruments would tell me when I arrived, unobtrusively, in the alley behind the Skein shops. I’d paced off the distance, as nearly as I could remember, back in the Net Garage.

I checked. I was getting close: city streets. I didn’t really have any plan. I intended to play it by ear.

A few more minutes, and my sensors picked up something moving in the Net, close to me, pacing me. I slowed, and it slowed; when I went back to cruise it stayed with me. I tried some evasive action, phasing-in with a line picked at random; I saw it was very close to the nuclear A-line of the Ylokk, so I moved in carefully. Sure enough, his trace disappeared; he’d overshot me. That was a relief.

I nudged the shuttle across the last few feet and dropped it into identity. I needed some fresh air; no extended EVA this time, just a quick look, and off again. After overriding the safety interlocks, I cycled the hatch and looked out at a busy marketplace, where people haggled at open-air stalls. There were no rat-corpses and the stink was gone, replaced by a somewhat subtler stink of plain rat. There were no broken windows in sight, no roving bands of looters in the background.

“This means Minnie has consolidated her position and eliminated the Two-Law nuisance,” I told myself, glad to hear the news.

Apparently, in this line the warehouse had burned down; I had arrived out in the open. I noticed a fellow with a gray stripe down the back of his overcoat, and I stepped down on the wet cobbles and went over to him.

“Good day, Major,” I said in my best Ylokk. He jumped and gave me a searching look, then looked around rather wildly, I thought.

“Who are you?” he demanded. “Whoever you are, you shouldn’t be here. If the local constabulary notice you―”

“They won’t, Major,” I reassured him, “unless you give me away. They’re busy shopping, and I’m just a strange-looking fellow talking to an officer.”

“Yes, of course, but―” He lowered his voice. “I am Major Hsp. Perhaps you’re not aware of the situation, sir,” he suggested. I agreed I wasn’t.

“The remnant of the Two-Law rebels have gone to earth here in this remote phase,” he explained. “They blame you humongs, excuse me, humans, for all their troubles, and―”

“Damn right,” I agreed. “Why didn’t Her Majesty’s troops hunt em all down?”

“There wasn’t time,” the major mourned. “We were rounding them up as quickly as we could, and this one crowd―a fanatical group known as the ‘Liberation Front,’ whatever that means―”

“Just silly malcontents’ jargon,” I told him. “How did they get past you?”

“They were well organized. Apparently they had spies in the palace and knew every move we made. A party of them got into the technical compound by night, and stole three transports; they shifted off-phase and established themselves in the park, where the rest of them waited. My fellows arrived just as the last of them were dropping out of identity. We traced them here easily enough. This line is very close to the Nuclear one; they’d prepared a refuge. They’ve gone underground, mingled with the local population, it seems. All we can do for the moment is keep matters under surveillance. However, we have found their transports and immobilized them. They’re trapped. The sudden appearance here of a human could destabilize the situation.”

“Someone was shadowing me,” I said. “Your boys or theirs?”

“Not mine,’ he told me, “which means they already know you’re here. You’d better depart at once―” He cut off as a yell went up across the square. Someone was hoisting a banner that the major explained read kill the humongs. He gripped my arm. “Where’s your machine?” he squeaked in my ear, over the rising crowd-noise.

I pointed out its position to him, an invisible presence among a group of big packing-cases and lift-vans. He hurried me in that direction. That was all right with me. It was Barbro I was after, not another entanglement in local politics.

“―well clear of the Zone,” he was saying. “I can rendezvous with you and discuss―”

“Never mind,” I told him. “Now that I know their location, I can call in a strike force to round them up. All I need to do now is get out of here.”

Oddly, the folks nearby paid no attention to me; instead they were craning their necks to see what the excitement was about across the market.

Inside again, I asked Major Hsp how things had gone with Her Majesty after her dramatic return.

“She was acclaimed by all,” he told me worriedly, “but the story began to circulate she had sold the folk out to foreigners―aliens―in a word, to ‘hum-ongs.’ They said she had taken a slave as her closest advisor.”

“After all, she was raised by humans,” I reminded him.

“I wonder who that slave/advisor would be?” he commented. “We rounded up every human slave we could find, and all were sent back to their home lines.”

“How did the slave get in solid so quickly?” I asked.

“No one knows,” he admitted. “All rumor and innuendo. But, with this untroubled phase from which to operate, the rebel scum can launch a coordinated attack. Until they’re extirpated, the Noble Folk will not know peace or security.”

He was looking at me expectantly, I thought. So I asked him, “What’s that got to do with me?”

“Surely,” he replied, “you will wish to assist in this worthy enterprise.”

“I have a project of my own,” I told him. “Good luck, but I have to go.” He made a motion with his hand, and a dozen Ylokk in uniform materialized from the apparently heedless crowd of shoppers, to surround me.

“I require your assistance,” Hsp told me. “I regret the necessity to employ force, but if you insist, I shall do so.”

“You mean these?” I inquired, as if incredulously, looking at his six bodyguards. “What do you expect half a dozen recruits to do?” I took a step sideways and a quick leg-sweep knocked the nearest enforcer back into a cart loaded with tubers. The two adjacent hard boys closed the gap, putting them close enough for me to grab both of them by one arm and crack their narrow heads together; then I threw them at another, closing in fast. That left two, plus the major. He called off his remaining pair and said, “Never mind; I see you’re not prepared to be reasonable. You may go.”

“You’re got your signals mixed, Major,” I told him. “I just want to make it clear that my cooperation will be voluntary. What do you have in mind?”

“They have a headquarters,” he told me, “somewhere in an outlying Phase. I’ve not yet managed to locate it. I suspect it’s a former technical installation of the Governance, taken over and operated by the traitors.”

“And…?” I prompted.

“Using your small transporter,” he suggested, “it might be possible to locate the HQ undetected. Then, a swift attack, and they’d be marooned, outnumbered, ready to be hunted down at leisure.”

“Come on,” I said. “I’ve got an idea.” He told his remaining two hard boys to alert somebody named Colonel Lord Twst, and stepped to my side. I escorted him to my sophisticated two-man scout, and ushered him inside.

“There’s an isolated transfer station I learned about from General Swft,” I told him. “I happened to notice, on the way here, that it’s still in use. That could be the Two-Law HQ.” He seemed interested all right, eager to go. I checked my back-trail recording and found the locus. It was a five-minute crossing, and we came to rest just as a party of about ten Ylokk in civvies were approaching the lone building.

“Commissioner Wsk,” the major identified one of the party. “That’s him in the lead―the treacherous moopah! And the others are junior officers of the Guard! The rot was better entrenched than I suspected!”

“Swft could have told you a lot about that,” I told him. “Too bad he didn’t have a chance to brief you.”

“A pity,” Major Hsp agreed. “However, their secret is out, now. It remains only to return to the Palace and denounce the rascals.”

“And leave this bunch here, to do as they please?” I queried.

He nodded curtly. “There’s no need to bait them here in their stronghold. Let us go, Colonel, without delay.”

I almost argued with him, but didn’t. The coil was still hot, so we were off in a moment. This time I steered right to the Ylokk Nuclear Line, which put us in the Skein depot, dark, empty, and echoic in the late evening. We used the “VIPs only” tunnel to the Palace next door, and emerged in the basement guardroom. Hsp used the beeper-recall system to assemble a dozen soldiers, well armed with clubs. He gave them―and me―a fast briefing, then he headed for the staff apartment wing.

Old Prince Vmp was indignant when we routed him out of his big, feathery bed, but he seemed oddly fatalistic. “So it’s you, Hsp,” he grumbled. “I told General Ngd you were unreliable. Should have purged you long ago.”

Hsp told him to shut up and had the troops truss Vmp up and secure him, head-down, by a rope tied to his ankles, in his garage-sized closet. We left him there trying to curse around the gag in his mouth.

When I commented that security seemed remarkably lax in the Palace, Hsp told me he was in command of the Guard, and had told all hands to be alert for a sneak approach from outside and to ignore any unusual activity inside the Palace itself. Thus, nobody bothered us as we neutralized a couple more of what Hsp assured me were the prime movers in the plot.

We were doing fine until we opened the big, armored door leading to the Royal Apartments. A small force was waiting for us there. I was the first one through the big double doors, and the heavy drapes beyond, and I was looking at old Gus, flanked by a dozen or so uniformed troops.

Gus took time to give me an astonished look and launch into a speech. “You, you damned fool! You should have stayed back in Stockholm with all your fat friends! Don’t you understand, this is my turf?”

I waited patiently for him to pause for a breath, and socked him good and hard in that soft gut. As soon as he collapsed, his loyal bodyguards split, in all directions. Hsp was body-blocking them off from the wide corridor leading to the Royal living quarters. We locked our three captives in a utility closet just outside the big doors and posted two fellows to watch.

I got Gus on his feet and breathing again, and asked him what he was doing there. “I’d heard Minnie was rumored to have a new, human advisor,” I told him when he seemed reluctant to discuss the matter.

“Oh, that’s right, Colonel,” he confirmed eagerly. “Her Majesty won’t make a move without my say-so. I―”

“You’re a liar,” I reminded him. “Minnie knows what a treacherous skunk you are―even if she doesn’t know you were behind the revolt in the first place. She wouldn’t trust you to supervise the garbage disposal. Speaking of which, I’m considering what to do with you.”

“Oh, just let me go now, and I’ll overlook this incident,” he gushed. “After all, you didn’t know―”

I cut that off with another jab to his short ribs.

Hsp told me Her Majesty’s personal suite was just down the corridor, and we went there, prodding old Gus along with us.

“She’ll kill me,” he was telling me, as if that were a consideration that would stop me in my tracks.

“Nonsense,” I told him. “If Minnie has a flaw as a sovereign, it’s that she’s too kind-hearted.”

“Not her!” Gus gulped. “It’s that big red-headed she-devil!”

“The Ylokk don’t have red hair,” I corrected.

He brushed that off. “I’m not talking about a rat,” he corrected me. “You said yourself she had a new human advisor! This damn female showed up here at the palace just a few days ago, just when I was ready to cinch my position. In another hour I’d have been in control of all palace functions, nothing in or out without my order―but then this dame comes along. Seems she’d been demanding to see Her Majesty―and had ‘inflicted grievous bodily injury’ on anyone that laid a hand on her, so…”

By then we were at the sanctum sanctorum, and before Hsp could use his master-key in the door, it opened, and someone tall and red-haired stepped out and into my arms.