The Long Run Read online

Trent had not expected to get shot with sonic stunners tonight. He lay and waited for control of his body to return.

  What the hell, he wondered, happened tonight?

  He had plenty of time to think about it.

  He had been in custody for four hours when they came to get him, one in goldtone riot armor and one in plainclothes.

  Trent was barely able to walk.

  He did not ask where they were taking him. Their path led them through the front waiting area and its associated babble, too many people in too small a space speaking in voices that were too loud.

  Denice Castanaveras was seated in one of the glassite-walled cubicles. An angry, red-faced lady detective was saying something to her. The combination of soundproofing and outside noise was unbeatable; Trent could not even guess at what the lady gendarme was saying. Denice sat in a straight-backed chair, sat upright with such rigid self-control that her shoulders did not touch the back of the chair.

  Trent looked toward her as the gendarmes led him into Mac Devlin's office. Her parents had been telepaths; amazingly, frighteningly powerful telepaths.

  The girl did not even glance at him.

  In a chair just outside of Mac Devlin's office, glaring at Trent, sat a stiff-faced man in a black and silver uniform.

  Trent categorized the man immediately, with a cold chill.

  PKF Elite.

  Cyborg.

  They would have taken him while he was still young; not past thirty-five. Taken to Spacebase One at L-5, Peaceforcer Heaven where the Peaceforcer Elite were created. Surgery that was impossible under the crushing 980 centimeters per second squared acceleration of Earth was just barely feasible when performed in the free fall of L-5. Peaceforcer genegineers and surgeons had taken him and changed him; injected him with transform viruses designed to strengthen his muscles, to speed his neural reactions by better than forty percent. Changed by the transform viruses, doubly changed by surgery and cyborging; his eyes were not real, nor his skin. He would see in infra-red and ultra-violet as easily as a normal human distinguished between blue and green. Beneath his right shoulder blade was a power source good for six months. A secondary nerve network laced itself through the first, fused itself to that which a human was born with; the network and all of the Elite hardware it controlled was controlled in turn by a combat computer implanted at the base of his skull. Carbon-ceramic filaments wound themselves through and around his muscles, joints, and ligaments, reinforcing the bones; this, the direct work of the transform viruses, enabled the Elite to withstand acceleration that would have quickly killed any normal human. Threads of room temperature superconductor were woven into his skin; he would barely notice most lasers. His skin would turn a knife, and his hair would not burn.

  There was an inskin at the Peaceforcer's left temple.

  Trent stood motionless under the weight of the Peaceforcer Elite's frozen glare.

  "Come on," said one of the gendarmes contemptuously, and shoved Trent forward into Mac Devlin's office.

  "I like to dance," Trent tried to explain to the man.

  Police Chief Maxwell Devlin was responsible for overseeing the precincts that policed much of the Fringe and a considerable fraction of the Peaceforcer Patrol Sectors.

  Devlin's office was an odd mixture of gray leather and chrome. There was a huge sheet of opaqued glassite immediately behind Trent; cleared, it would look out on the waiting area. A single painting, done fashionably in electrolytes, hung immediately to Mac Devlin's left: a glowing violet Easter egg in the midst of a scarlet desert, sitting exactly on the divider line of a laser-straight two-lane highway.

  The sunpaint was turned off. A small bright reading lamp sat at Devlin's right elbow, providing the only illumination in Devlin's office; it seemed to Trent that he and Devlin hung suspended in dimness, two images at the edges of the light.

  Aside from Devlin's desk, the chair he sat in and the chair Trent was seated in, there were only two pieces of furniture in the room: a coat rack with two identical overcoats hung on it, and a small credenza immediately behind and to the right of Mac Devlin. The credenza had a miniature antique cannon on it.

  The cannon pointed directly at Trent.

  Devlin said, "What were your people doing down on Eight tonight?"

  Devlin could not possibly have expected an honest answer from Trent.

  Trent said, "We were going to boost CalleyTronics and then go dancing and drink coffee over at The Emerald Illusion, in the basement of the Red Line Hotel." His left hand was snaked to the chair he sat in. "Actually, Jimmy was probably going to get drunk and fight somebody, but then he would have drunk coffee with us." Trent's right hand was still twitching, but he could sit upright without help and so far had not spilled any of the coffee he was drinking with his free hand. "Jimmy's been reading Hemingway again. I don't know what to do about it."

  Mac Devlin was middle-aged, which, with modern geriatrics, might have meant anywhere from forty to seventy. His brown hair was streaked with dusty silver and his features were comfortably wrinkled. He was a big man, two hundred and five centimeters; a hundred and ten kilos of solid muscle.

  His complexion was tinged with the faintest trace of pallor, a suggestion of gray.

  Devlin gazed at Trent. "You're either a lot smarter than I ever thought," he said at last, "or I've been giving you way too much credit, these last couple of years. I don't know which." With the windows darkened Trent could not see the Peaceforcer sitting out in Devlin's waiting room, but Trent had no doubt he had not left. Devlin continued. "I either have to give you to the Peaceforcers or charge you with a crime. No matter what your papers say you're not nineteen yet; if you're convicted of emblade possession you'll end up in Public Labor for sure. On the other hand," he said without change of expression, "that might be better than giving you to the Peaceforcers."

  Trent sat quietly and said nothing. He did not bother pointing out that he'd written tracking software for the department on occasion, nor that he'd paid his dues, promptly and regularly; Devlin knew it, and in the current circumstances both items were meaningless.

  Trent could think of only one thing that was not meaningless.

  The antagonism between the largely French United Nations Peace Keeping Force--the Left Hand of the Devil--and the city police across Occupied America was old, deeply ingrained, and very powerful. Even in New York City, even on Manhattan island itself, where the United Nations had established Capitol City, little love was lost between the Peaceforcers and the police. Police had been known to look the other way for members of the Erisian Claw, and though Trent had never heard of any gendarme being involved with that group of religious ideologs, there were indeed police who had gone in front of PKF firing squads for Johnny Reb activities.

  Devlin said abruptly, "Why were you going to boost Calley's place?"

  Trent simply looked at the man for a moment. "I was getting paid."

  Devlin actually smiled. "Excuse me, that was a stupid question, wasn't it?" His fingers drummed restlessly on the desktop. "You're a problem for me, Trent. With this" --he glanced down at the field glowing in midair two centimeters above the surface of his desk--"Denice Daimara's testimony, I could, I'm fairly sure, put you into Public Labor. My options are limited." Devlin sipped at a glass of iced tea. "It's either charge you with emblade possession or give you to the frogs. I'm reluctant to do the latter for two reasons. First, I don't think you deserve to be handed over to the Peaceforcers, and second, for the bleeding life of me I can't figure out why the United Nations Peace Keeping Force is interested in setting up a small-time contract thief like yourself." Mac Devlin leaned forward and fixed bright, lively, interested eyes upon Trent. "What happened tonight, Trent?"

  "I honestly don't know."

  Devlin nodded slightly, hanging on Trent's every word. "Yes, go on. Use as many words as you like. Whole sentences at once, even."

  Trent thought about it for a moment, and then said, "You see, I wanted to go dancing--"

  "So you
said," Devlin agreed.

  "Except Jimmy Ramirez thinks I'm lazy." Trent thought about it some more. "And he may be right. He's the one who made me promise from now on we wouldn't keep having parties all the time unless we had a reason for the party. So then we had to agree what constituted a reason, and Jimmy wouldn't accept anything except a boost. Like I said, too much Hemingway; it makes him crazy with ambition, the desire to prove he has true grit. This all happened, oh, two years ago, when we were all still living out in the Fringe."

  "You could have stayed there, you know."

  "Too dangerous," said Trent flatly. "There's criminals and crazies in the Fringe, you know."

  "And Peaceforcers in the Patrol Sectors. Yes," said Devlin after a pause, "staying in the Fringe might not have been a bad idea. Captain Klein's officers are demoralized to begin with; they'd pretty much gotten used to you. You know, Captain de Morian's been after me to have your Resident Status for the Patrol Sectors revoked."

  "In the last six months," said Trent evenly, "violent crime along Flushing has declined fourteen percent. A juice peddler on Ryerson closed up shop because of us. The BloodSilk Boys haven't killed anybody in almost three months, not even a Dragon. The Syndic likes us, the Tong likes us, and the Old Ones don't work in our neighborhood. You want to revoke my Resident Status?" Devlin stared at Trent as Trent leaned forward until the snake at his wrist stopped him. "I dare you."

  Devlin rubbed his temples wearily. "I know, I know all of it. You're the strangest criminal I've ever met, Trent. Finish up about tonight."

  Trent felt the first distant flicker of anger, suppressed it almost without allowing himself to become aware of it. "We spent six years in the Fringe, Mac, me and Bird and Jimmy and Jodi Jodi. We're not going back, not any of us, not ever. What are the statistics, Mac? Residents of the Fringe are nine times as likely to be murdered as residents of the Patrol Sectors, something like that? You go into the Fringe in your Armored AeroSmiths and you think you know what it's like to grow up there, without parents, without protectors?"

  Devlin said placatingly, with an obvious touch of surprise, "I understand."

  "I doubt that very much. For God's sake, Mac, you're from Harvard!" Trent realized with distant surprise how tense the muscles in his shoulders had become. "Mac, have you ever had a Player out to get you?"

  "Once," said Devlin quietly, "eleven years ago. We had to go to the Peaceforcers for help; DataWatch finally took him down. It was close, though."

  "I'll protect myself, Mac. I'll protect my people."

  "I hear you. Finish up about tonight."

  Trent took a deep breath and ordered his thoughts. "About a month ago, a man tried to hire me to boost fifteen terabytes of RTS from CalleyTronics. I turned him down for all the obvious reasons. He came back a week later and just about tripled his offer; said Frank Calley had stolen the RTS from him in the first place, and that he wanted his superconductor RAM back." Trent looked down into his coffee, remembering. "He was convincing. I checked him out as well as I was able..." Trent looked up again. "I am possibly the best Player you'll ever meet, Mac. The man who hired me to boost Calley was either exactly what he said he was--or DataWatch constructed his background. He had all the right records for a businessman from Atlanta--IDs, birth record, business license, vehicle license, three bank accounts; even a passport showing one trip to Luna in '64. I audited the Atlanta news Boards for past mention of this person and found four instances."

  "Did you go to Atlanta, to check on him?"

  "I've never even been on a plane, Mac."

  Devlin nodded. "You should have gone. I'd have done it in your skin. Then what?"

  "I told him we'd do it," Trent said simply. "Jimmy and I worked up a real good variation on the bookends routine; Calley would never even have known he'd been hit if it had worked right. We hired the BloodSilk Boys for the diversion, and Jimmy dressed to play the bookkeeper. We planned to hit at 6:30, about half an hour before CalleyTronics closes for the night. Just before 5:00, I got a call from a man who called himself--never mind what. He said he was a businessman from Atlanta, needed to talk to me urgently about Frank Calley."

  "Go on."

  Trent looked directly at Maxwell Devlin. "This person says to me almost word for word what my original client said to me, about the RTS, about Frank Calley, about how he was referred to me. It was too weird. I headed over to the Plaza, found something fairly odd, I'm still not sure what, sitting up inside the security Board, and went word up on the boost." Trent thought for a moment. "The boost was going bad anyway at that point, I think. The BloodSilk Boys were getting nervous because I was late, and your boys were watching them pretty close."

  Devlin grinned widely. "So you decided to let yourself get rescued from the Peaceforcers by the police?"

  Trent glanced at the snakechain on his wrist. "If you want to put it that way."

  "You've got balls, Trent."

  "No, I was desperate." Trent sipped at his coffee to see how cold it had gotten; it was still lukewarm, and he gulped the rest of it down all at once. "There's a difference."

  "I know. I don't suppose you've eaten?"

  Trent said clearly, distinctly, "I beg your pardon?"

  The Chief of Police for the City of New York said, "Would you like to go get dinner? I know a pretty good place near here that's open all night."

  Thinking of Denice Castanaveras, sitting in the room outside with the Peaceforcers, Trent said finally, "I'd love to. Thank you."

  Devlin nodded. "Command, chain off." The snake at Trent's wrist loosened and coiled itself around the arm of the chair. "Have you ever been to L'Express?"

  Devlin looked startled when Trent laughed.

  Trent said, "Once."

  "Command," Devlin said, "outspeaker." The intercom came on with an almost inaudible click. "Janice, tell Elite Sergeant Garon to go home. We're going to charge the boy ourselves."

  Trent's right hand, rubbing his left wrist, froze in the action.

  Elite Sergeant Garon.

  Devlin took his coat from the coat rack beside his door.

  Elite Sergeant Emile Garon.

  For the first time Trent knew what was going on.

  Seven years ago, Elite Sergeant Emile Garon had been DataWatch Staff Sergeant Emile Garon, one of a group of webdancers in DataWatch who were assigned the task of monitoring the communications of the telepaths in lower Manhattan.

  In the early months of 2062, before the destruction of the telepaths, Trent, acting through his first Image, Ralf the Wise and Powerful, had helped protect the telepaths from DataWatch.

  Trent sat still, unseeing. All of his dealings with DataWatch Sergeant Emile Garon had been through the person of his first image, Ralf the Wise and Powerful; he had never known what the man looked like.

  Emile Garon was a tall, thin Peaceforcer with black hair and a glare that could stop a man in his tracks.

  After seven years of safety, the Peaceforcers were finally on his trail again.

  Thinking again of Denice Castanaveras, the girl with whom he had been raised, whom he had also not seen in seven years, Trent said quietly, "What amazingly horrible timing."

  Shrugging into his coat, Devlin glanced at him. "Timing? You're not hungry?"

  Trent said, "Not any more."

  Trent had never sat in the front of a police car before.

  The car had a steering wheel; ambulances and fire trucks, police and Peaceforcer and babychaser cars were the only vehicles Trent had seen in the last five years that did. Even in those, the steering wheels functioned only under emergency conditions. Manually operable vehicles were outlawed inside TransCon's ever-growing Automated Traffic Control Regions, and had been since the Speedfreak revolution in the summer of 2063, almost six years ago.

  Devlin never touched the steering wheel; the hovercar's instrument panel lit up when his palm touched the locklarm. Devlin turned on the impact field himself and said, "Command, destination L'Express Restaurant."

  They were six l
evels beneath the ground, and nearly four kilometers from the restaurant.

  In the twenty minutes it took them to go that distance, Mac Devlin said only one thing to Trent.

  "I really want to know," he said as they were leaving the parking garage, moving out into the drumming of the nighttime rain, "why an Elite Sergeant of the PKF is camped out in my office over you."

  Neither he nor Trent noticed the car that followed them up out of the garage.

  The manager was the same one who had been at L'Express some six hours before.

  For just a moment, as Mac Devlin and Trent were ushered in for dinner at five minutes before midnight, the woman looked positively distressed. The expression vanished in the next instant, and with professional restraint she personally showed the police chief and Trent to a private room in the rear of the restaurant. It was a shadowed place of leather-lined booths, burnished mahogany and crisp table linen. The glowpaint was dim, supplemented by the soft shine of gentle white spots.

  Trent heard Devlin's earphone beep as they were seated. Murmuring, "Excuse me," Devlin touched a point immediately beneath his ear. His expression immediately took on a distant cast, and he nodded once. Suddenly his eyes snapped back into focus, staring directly at Trent. He said aloud, "Exactly when?" There was more silence; Devlin's gaze, fixed upon Trent, did not waver.

  A live human waiter appeared at their table, glanced at Devlin briefly and then murmured to Trent, "Drinks, sir?"

  "Coffee for me, iced tea with lemon for Chief Devlin."

  "Will you be having dinner?"

  Trent suddenly realized that he'd had nothing to eat in over twelve hours. "I will. Do you have scallops here?"

  "Yes, monsieur."

  "Butter-fried scallops with--do you have french fries here?"

  "Yes, monsieur."

  "With french fries. Make the french fries well done."

  The waiter nodded, gestured to Devlin. "And the Chief?"

  "I don't know if he's hungry. Can you leave a menu?"

  The waiter nodded again; a menu holo appeared hanging in midair fifteen centimeters from Devlin's left elbow. The waiter left.