Norton, Andre - Anthology (15 page)

 
          
 
"Look what I found,
Pop
,"
he said.

 
          
 
"Not now, Leston," Fraswell barked.
He glared until the lad shrugged and departed. Then he looked alertly at Nolan.

 
          
 
"Tomatoes, eh?" he said
thoughtfully. "I thought they couldn't be grown here on Kaka Nine."

 
          
 
"Just one experimental plant," Nolan
said grimly. "Leston seems to have terminated the experiment."

 
          
 
Fraswell grunted. "Well, have I your
word, Nolan?"

 
          
 
"I don't think you'd like the word I'm
thinking of, Mr. Fraswell," Nolan said.

           
 
"Pah!" the director snorted.
"Very well, then." He eyed Nolan severely. "Don't say I didn't
give you every consideration! Grotz—
Chester
—take them away and lock them up somewhere
until they see reason."

 
          
 
In the dark of the tool shed where he had been
confined, Nolan massaged his bruised knuckles and listened to the soft sigh of
the wind, the lonely call of the native night birds—and to a stealthy,
persistent rasping, barely audible, coming from beyond the locked door across
the small room.

 
          
 
The sound ceased with a soft clank of metal.
The knob turned; the door swung inward. Through the opening, a youthful face
appeared.

 
          
 
"Tim! Nice work!" Nolan breathed.

 
          
 
"Hi, Dad!" the boy slipped through,
closed the door. Nolan held out his wrists, linked by braided steel a quarter-inch
in diameter. Timmy clamped the bolt cutter on the cable, snipped through the
strands.

 
          
 
"My ankle is cuffed to the cot,"
Nolan whispered.

 
          
 
Timmy found the cable, cut it deftly. A moment
later, Nolan and his son were outside. All was silence, though there were still
a few lights in the upper rooms of the house, and down by the dock side.

 
          
 
"Your mother?"
Nolan said as they moved off.

 
          
 
"They've got her in the last tent in
line—down by the pond. Dad, you know what they did? They used a net and took
every fish out of the pond! All our panfish and bass fingerlings! They cooked
'em up and ate 'em."

 
          
 
"They can be replaced—in time."

 
          
 
"They sure smelled good," Tim
admitted.

 
          
 
"You had anything to eat?"

 
          
 
"Sure. I raided the kitchen while that
fat man with the funny lips was trying to figure out how to work the
tricor-deo. All he could get was the ref patterns. He was pretty mad."

           
 
They passed behind the ranked tents. A light
burned in one.

 
          
 
"That's where the honchos stay," Tim
said.

 
          
 
"No sentries?" Nolan asked.

 
          
 
"Nope.
They
talked about it and decided they didn't need any."

 
          
 
They were behind the last tent in line.

 
          
 
"About here," Tim said, indicating a
spot six paces from the corner. "I saw Mom just before they opaqued
it."

 
          
 
"I'll take the knife," Nolan said.
"You move back and
be
ready to run for it if
there's an alarm."

 
          
 
"Heck, Dad—"

 
          
 
"So you can try again, if they catch
me."

 
          
 
"Oh, O.K."

 
          
 
Nolan worked the knife point through the tough
material. Air hissed out. He ripped upward. From inside the tent there was a
sharp exclamation, followed by a muffled thud. He thrust the cut flap aside and
plunged through.

 
          
 
Annette met him.

 
          
 
"I knew you'd come," she whispered,
and kissed him swiftly. "I had to hit her over the head." She nodded
toward a bulky figure slumped at her feet.

 
          
 
"Timmy's outside," Nolan whispered
as he passed her through the breach in the fabric wall.

 
          
 
Already the taut plastic had begun to sag.

 
          
 
"Patching goo," the boy said, and
handed Nolan a roll of wide tape. Quickly they sealed the opening.

 
          
 
"Where to first?"
Tim asked.

 
          
 
"The house," Nolan said.

 
          
 
The back door was locked; Nolan keyed it open.
Inside, he went silently to the den, selected two small handguns and a
lightweight power rifle. In the kitchen, Annette had assembled a small heap of
concentrates not yet looted from the stores. Tim came in from the tackle room
with packs.

 
          
 
Back outside, Nolan posted his wife and son
near the path leading to the hills and set off toward the powerhouse. Inside,
he made certain adjustments; he locked the door behind him as he left. Moving
on to the pump house, he closed two large valves, opened others. Last, he
engaged the massive power lock on the equipment shed.

 
          
 
"That's about it," he said as he
rejoined the others. "Let's go.”

 
          
 
"If they hadn't showed up," Tim
said, as they set off up the steep path, "I guess we never would have
taken that camping trip we're always talking about."

 
          
 
The cave was a large and airy one, with a
narrow entrance well concealed from below by a rocky ridge, and a fresh-water
spring that trickled at the rate of ten gallons per hour into a stone basin. It
was a cave the Nolan family knew well; they had once lived in it for two
months, until the first rooms of the house had been completed.

 
          
 
It was the work of an hour to sweep out the
accumulated wind-blown rubbish, set up the inflatable cots,
arrange
the collapsible cooking equipment around the stone fireplace. By then the sun
was coming up.

 
          
 
Nolan looked down across the stunted mountain
growth toward the house far below. The binoculars showed a cluster of men
around the pump house.

 
          
 
"They must have emptied the reserve tank
already," he said.

 
          
 
"They'll just blow the door off the pump
house, Reed," Annette said. "Won't they?"

 
          
 
"Maybe—if they have the right explosives.
But they'll still have to know which valves to open."

 
          
 
"I feel pretty mean—cutting off their
water supply."

 
          
 
"There's always the pond and buckets.
They won't suffer —except for a few blisters."

 
          
 
Nolan and Tim spent most of the morning busy
on the slopes. The tusker herds were gathering in the high meadows now; using
binoculars, Nolan estimated their numbers at over ten thousand. They returned
to the cave with a specimen bag filled with fossils, low-grade gemstones, and
some new varieties of fungus to add to Tim's slide collection. Annette greeted
them with hot soup and sandwiches.

 
          
 
Late in the afternoon they watched a party of
men spread out and scour the underbrush near the house. After an hour or two
the search petered out.

 
          
 
"I'll bet old Fatty's plenty mad by
now," Tim said cheerfully. "I'll bet he still hasn't figured out the
tricordeo."

 
          
 
The Nolans set out a board and played
three-handed chidge until dinner time. Annette served recon chicken-and-chips.
She and Reed had cold dehi-beer, Tim hot cocoa. Just after dusk, all the lights
went off in the house and on the grounds below.

 
          
 
"I suppose we'll hear from Director
Fraswell pretty early in the morning," Nolan said as they composed
themselves for sleep.

 
          
 
Half an hour before dawn there was a soft
beep!
from
the small black box beside Nolan's bed.

 
          
 
"Visitors," he said, checking the
indicator lights that told him which of the sensors he and Tim had planted the
previous day had been activated.
"On the east trail.
They didn't waste any time." He rose and donned the clean clothes Annette
had run through the precipitator, picked up the power rifle.

 
          
 
"Dad, can I come?"

 
          
 
"Negative. You stay here with your
mother."

 
          
 
"Reed ...
are
you sure—"

 
          
 
"I'm not that bad a shot," he said,
and grinned at her. "I'll be back for coffee."

 
          
 
It took Nolan ten minutes to reach the vantage
point he had selected the previous day. He settled himself in a comfortable
prone position, adjusted the sling, and sighted through the scope sight. Three
men toiled upward on the trail. Nolan took aim at the rock wall ten feet above
them and squeezed off a burst. Dust spurted. When he lowered his sights, the
men were gone. He picked them up a quarter of a mile back downtrail, running
for home.

 
          
 
Twice more that day the spotters Nolan had
planted on the slopes signaled intruders; twice more a single warning shot
sufficed to discourage them.

 
          
 
Late in the afternoon, a bucket brigade formed
across the lawn far below, hauling water to the house. The men working on the
powerhouse door gave up at twilight. A crew of men set about chopping wood to
heap on the lawn for a bonfire.

 
          
 
"Reed—the baby peach trees, and the
pecans, and the limes . . ." Annette mourned.

 
          
 
"I know," Nolan said tersely. They
watched the fire for an hour before turning in.

 
          
 
It was mid-morning when the signaler beeped
again. This time it was a party of three men. One of them, the man called
Winston, whom Nolan had last seen with Fraswell, carried a white towel attached
to a section of sapling— pecan, Nolan thought. They waited for a quarter of an
hour at the spot marked by a small crater in the rock wall from Nolan's shot of
the previous day. Then they advanced cautiously.

 
          
 
On a rocky ledge a hundred yards below Nolan's
position, they halted. A shout rang faintly: