Daughter of Regals (32 page)

I didn’t hear anything.
But still my nerves were strung as tight as a cat’s as I went over to the
gurney. I think I was holding my breath.

Under the sheet I found
a dead man. He was naked, and I could see the bullet holes in his chest as
plain as day. There were a lot of them. Too many. He looked as if he’d walked
into a machine gun. But it must have happened a while ago. His skin was cold,
and he was stiff, and there was no blood.

Now I understood why
Ushre and Paracels needed a cremator. They couldn’t very well send bodies to the
next of kin looking like this.

For a minute I just
stood there, thinking I was right, Sharon’s Point used people instead of
animals, people hunting people.

Then all the lights in
the lab came on, and I almost collapsed in surprise and panic.

Avid Paracels stood in
the doorway where I’d entered the lab. His hand was still on the light switch.
He didn’t look like he’d even been to bed. He was still wearing his white coat,
as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to be up in his lab at
I AM. Well, maybe it was. Somehow that kind of light made him look solider,
even more dangerous.

And he wasn’t surprised.
Not him. He was looking right at me as if we were both keeping some kind of
appointment.

For the first couple heartbeats
I couldn’t seem to think anything except, Well, so much for technology. They
have some other kind of alarm system.

Then Paracels started
talking. His thin old voice sounded almost smug. “Ushre spotted you right away,”
he said. “We knew you would come back tonight. You’re investigating us.”

For some strange reason,
that statement, made me feel better. My pick hadn’t failed me after all. My
equipment was still reliable. Maybe I was better adjusted to being. cyborg than
I thought. Paracels was obviously unarmed-and I had my blaster. There was no
way on God’s green earth he could stop me from using it. My pulse actually
began to feel like it was getting back to normal.

“So what happens now?” I
asked. I was trying for bravado. Special Agents are supposed to be full of bravado.
“Are you going to kill me?”

Paracels’s mood seemed
to change by the second. Now he was bitter again. “I answered that question
this morning,” he snapped. “I’m a doctor. I don’t take lives.”

I shrugged, then
gestured toward the gurney. “That’s probably a real comfort to him.” I wanted
to goad the good doctor.

But he didn’t seem to
hear me. Already he was back to smug. “A good specimen.” He smirked. “His genes
should be very useful.”

“He’s dead,” I said. “What
good’re dead genes?”

Paracels almost smiled. “Parts
of him aren’t dead yet. Did you know that? Some parts of him won’t die for two
more days. After that we’ll burn him.” The tip of his tongue came out and drew
a neat line of saliva around his lips.

Probably that should’ve
warned me. But I was concentrating on him the wrong way. I was watching him as
if he were the only thing I had to worry about. I didn’t hear the door open
behind me at all. All I heard was one last quick step. Then something hit the
back of my head and switched off the world.

5

Which just goes to show that being a cyborg
isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. Cyborgs are in trouble as soon as they
start adjusting to what they are. They don’t rely on themselves anymore—they
rely on their equipment. Then when they’re in a situation where they need
something besides a blaster, they don’t have it.

Two years ago there wasn’t
a man or animal that could sneak up behind me. The hunting preserves taught me
how to watch my back. The animals didn’t know I was on their side, and they
were hungry. I had to watch my back to stay alive. Apparently not any more. Now
I was Sam Browne, Special—Agent—cyborg—hotshot. As far as I could tell, I was
as good as dead.

My hands were taped
behind my back, and I was lying on my face in something that used to be mud
before it dried, and the sun was slowly cooking me. When I cranked my eyes
open, all I could see was brush a few cm. from my nose. A long time seemed to
pass before I could get up the strength to focus my eyes and lift my head. Then
I saw I was lying on a dirt path that ran through a field of low bushes. Beyond
the bushes were trees.

All around me there was
a faint smell of blood. My blood. From the back of my head.

Which hurt like a
sonofabitch. I put my face back down in the dirt. I would’ve done some cursing,
but I didn’t have the strength. I knew what had happened.

Ushre and Paracels had
trussed me up and dropped me off in the middle of their preserve, Smelling like
blood. They weren’t going to kill me—not them. I was just going to be another
one of their dead bunters.

Well, at least I was
going to find out who was bunting what (or whom) around here.

Minutes passed before I
mustered enough energy to find out if my legs were taped, too. They weren’t. How
very sporting. I wondered if it was Ushre’s idea or Paracels’.

That hit on the head
must’ve scrambled my brains (the pain was scrambling them for sure). I spent
what felt like ages trying to figure out who was responsible for leaving my
legs free, when I should’ve been pulling myself together. Getting to my feet. Trying
to find some water to wash off the blood. Thinking about staying alive. More
time passed before I remembered I had a transceiver .in my skull. I could call
for help.

Help would take time.
Probably it wouldn’t corns enough to save me. But I could at least call for it.
It guarantee that Sharon’s Point got shut down. Ushre Paracels would get murder
one—mandatory death sentence. I could at least call.

My tongue felt like a
sponge in my mouth, but I concentrated hard and managed to find the
transmission switch. Then I tried to talk. That took longer. I had to swallow
several times to work up enough saliva to make a sound. But finally I did it.
Out loud I said one of the Bureau’s emergency code words.

Nothing happened.

Something was supposed
to happen. That word was supposed to trigger the automatic monitors in the tape
room. The monitors were supposed to put the duty room on emergency status. Instantly.
Inspector Morganstark (or whoever was in charge) was supposed to come running.
He was supposed to start talking to me (well, not actually talking—my equipment
didn’t receive voices. Only a modulated hum. But I knew how to read that hum).
My transceiver was supposed to hum.

It didn’t.

I waited; and it still
didn’t. I said my code word again, and it still didn’t. I said all the code
words, and it still didn’t. I swore at it until I ran out of strength. Nothing.

Which told me (when I
recovered enough to do more thinking) that my transceiver wasn’t working. Wonderful.
Maybe that hit on the head had broken it. Or maybe— I made sure my right hand
was behind my left. Then I tongued the switch that was supposed to fire my
blaster.

Again nothing.

Twisting my right hand,
I used those fingers to probe my left palm. My blaster was intact. The
concealing membrane was still in place. The thing should’ve worked.

I was absolutely as good
as dead.

Those bastards (probably
Ushre, the electronics engineer) had found out how to turn off my power pack.
They had turned me off.

That made a nasty kind
of sense. Ushre and Paracels had already cremated one Special Agent. Probably
that was where they had gotten their information. Kolcsz’s power pack wouldn’t
have melted. With the thing right there in his hand, Ushre would’ve had an easy
time making a magnetic probe to turn it off. All he had to do was experiment
until he got it right.

What didn’t make sense was
the way I felt about it.  Here I was, a disabled cyborg with his bands taped
behind him, lying on his face in a hunting preserve that had already killed
forty-five people—forty-six counting the man in Paracels’s lab—and all of a
sudden I began to feel like I knew what to do. I didn’t feel turned off: I felt
like I was coming back to life. Strength began coming back into my muscles. My
brain was clearing. I was getting ready to move.

I was going to make
Ushre and Paracels pay for this. Those bastards were so goddamn self-confident,
they hadn’t even bothered to search me. I still had my knife. It was right
there—my hands were resting on it.

What did they think the
Bureau was going to do when the monitors found out my transceiver was dead?
Just sit there on its ass and let Sharon’s Point go its merry way?

I started to move, tried
to get up. Which was something I should’ve done a long time ago. Or maybe it
wouldn’t have made any difference. That didn’t matter now. By the time I got to
my knees, it was already too late. I was in trouble.

Big trouble.

A rabbit came out of the
brush a meter down the path from me. I thought he was a rabbit—he looked like a
rabbit. An ordinary long-eared jackrabbit. Male—the males are a lot bigger than
the females. Then he didn’t look like a rabbit. His jaws were too big; he had
the kind of jaws a dog has. His front paws were too broad and strong.

What the hell?

In his jaws he held a
hand grenade, carrying it by the ring of the pin.

He didn’t waste any
time. He put the grenade down on the path and braced his paws on it. With a jerk
of his head, he pulled the pin. Then he dashed back into the bushes.

I just kneeled there and
stared at the damn thing. For the longest time all I could do was stare at it
and think, That’s a live grenade. They got it from the Procureton Arsenal.

In the back of my head a
desperate voice was screaming, Move it, you sonofabitch!

I moved. Lurched to my
feet, took a step toward the grenade, kicked it away from me. It skidded down
the path. I didn’t wait to see how far it went. I ran about two steps into the
brush and threw myself flat. Any cover was better than nothing.

I landed hard, but that
didn’t matter. One second after I hit the ground, the grenade went off. It made
a crumping noise like a demolition ram biting concrete. Cast-iron fragments
went ripping through the brush in all directions.

None of them hit me.

‘But it wasn’t over.
There were more explosions. A line of detonations came pounding up the path
from where the grenade went off. The fourth one was so close the concussion
flipped me over in the brush, and dirt rained on me. There were three more
before the blasting stopped.

After that, the air was
as quiet as a grave.

I didn’t move for a long
time. I stayed where I was, trying to act like I was dead and buried. I didn’t
risk even a twitch until I was sure my smell was covered by all the gelignite
in the air. Then I pulled up the back of my shirt and slipped out my knife.

Getting my hands free
was awkward, but the serrated edges of the blade helped, and I didn’t cut
myself more than a little bit. When I had the tape off, I eased up onto my
hands and knees. Then I spent more time just listening, listening hard, trying
to remember how I used to listen two years ago, before I got in the habit of
depending on equipment.

I was in luck. There was
a slow breeze. It was blowing past me across the path—which meant anything
upwind couldn’t smell me, and anything downwind would get too much gelignite to
know I was there. So I was covered— sort of.

I crawled forward to take
a look at the path.

The line of shallow
craters—spaced about half a dozen meters apart—told me what had happened. Antipersonnel
mines. A string of them wired together buried in the path. The grenade set one
of them off, and they all went up. The nearest one would have killed me if it
hadn’t been buried so deep. Fortunately the blast went upward instead of out to
the sides.

I wiped the sweat out of
my eyes and lay down where I was to do a little thinking.

A rabbit that wasn’t a
rabbit. A genetically altered rabbit, armed with munitions from the Procureton
Arsenal.

No wonder Ushre and
Paracels raised their own animals—the genes had to be altered when the animal
was an embryo. No wonder they had a vet hospital. And a cremator. No wonder
they kept their breeding pens secret. No wonder their rates were so high. No
wonder they wanted to keep their clientele exclusive.

No wonder they wanted me
dead.

All of a sudden, their
confidence didn’t surprise me anymore.

I didn’t even consider
moving from where I was. I wasn’t ready. I wanted more information. I was as
sure as hell rabbits weren’t the only animals in the Sharon’s Point Hunting
Preserve. I figured those explosions would bring some of the others to me.

I was right sooner than
I expected. By the time I had myself reasonably well hidden in the brush, I
heard the soft flop of heavy paws coming down the path. Almost at once, two
dogs went trotting by. At least they should’ve been dogs. They were big brown
boxers, and at first glance the only thing unusual about them was they carried
sacks slung over their shoulders.

But they stopped at the
farthest mine crater, and I got a better look. Their shoulders were too broad
and square, and instead of front paws they had hands—chimp hands, except for
the strong claws.

They shrugged off their
sacks, nosed them open. Took out half a dozen or so mines.

Working together with
all the efficiency in the world, they put new mines in the old craters. They
wired the mines together and attached the wires to a flat gray box that must
have been the arming switch. They hid the wires and the box in the brush along
the path (fortunately on the opposite side from me—I didn’t want to try to
fight them oft). Then they filled in the craters, packing them down until just
the vaguest discoloration of the dirt gave away where the mines were. When that
was done, one of them armed the mines.