The example inspired him; he breathed deeply, stoked his brain with oxygen and felt the cobwebs begin to melt away. This is great, he told himself. How did I do this?
As Rand began to show signs of recovering consciousness too, a hatch opened nearby and Duncan Iowa appeared. “Good,” he said. “You’re awake. I ditched their comm gear on the assumption it’s trackable, but we ought to move anyway. No telling which systems they have up and running.” He moved to Rand, started to slap him awake… then thought better of it, and instead spun him, to centrifuge blood into his head. “Take this and keep lookout,” he added.
Jay got his hands up in time to catch a laser considerably more powerful than the police-issue job he’d liberated from the front desk. He blinked at it for a moment—then snapped out of his fugue. He checked charge and safety, assessed the tactical situation, and assigned himself a guard post. “You’re something else, kid,” he said wonderingly. Duncan ignored him, busy with Rand.
Rand spent less time in stupor than Jay had. Groundhogs and new spacers usually shook off drug effects faster; their blood pressure was higher. He looked around at the drifting bodies, shook his head like a horse shooing flies, glanced at Jay and turned back to Duncan.
“I punched you in the mouth,” he said wonderingly. “And you let me live.”
“I had it coming,” Duncan said tightly. “Look, we’ve got to move. I don’t need to know who we’re running from or why just now, but if you know anything that would suggest where to, I’d love to hear it.”
“Shit,” Jay said. “I wish I knew more about riot-control procedures…”
“What do you need?” Duncan asked.
“For a start, a large tank of sleepy gas with a hose on it.”
“Come on,” Duncan said, jaunting away. “I’m an Orientator—I know this dump better than Kate Tokugawa.”
I hope you’re right, Jay thought. Rand jaunted after Duncan, and Jay took up the rear, gun at the ready.
In the discreetly unmarked riot-control compartment Duncan led them to, they found the tank Jay wanted, fresh thrusters, and a sonic rifle for Rand. While they swapped the new thrusters for their exhausted ones, they also exchanged information.
“I was heading for Deluxe country, I knew the panic would be worst there, and I took service corridors to make better time. Then I saw Martin and those two goons go by at an intersection ahead of me, guns out, towing you two. They didn’t see me in the lousy light.”
“What made you decide to butt in?” Rand asked. “And how did you know which side you were on?”
Duncan didn’t duck the question. “I’m in love with your wife, and she’s in love with you. I didn’t want her hurt.”
Rand didn’t duck the answer. “I understand. How did you ever manage to take all three of them?”
Duncan shrugged. “All three were earthborn. Taking Martin’s gun wasn’t a major challenge. Actually the other two didn’t do too badly; I was trying to keep one of them alive to question, but they hurried me. So tell me: who are the bad guys and what do we do about them?”
“Anybody could be a bad guy,” Jay said. “But the one we know about is Kate Tokugawa herself.” Duncan’s eyebrows raised, but he made no comment. “And what we’re going to do is take her alive for questioning. But I almost hope she hurries us. She’s behind the system crash—she’s using it to cover a kidnapping.”
Duncan’s eyes widened, then shut tight. “Jesus.”
“You think they’re alive, then?” Rand said.
“Have to be. There are much easier ways to kill somebody.”
“Easier ways to kidnap people too. They could have snatched us off the shuttle without all this hooraw.”
“The Space Command keeps a careful eye on moving objects in High Orbit,” Jay said, “but they hardly ever look at the Shimizu. Doing it here cost the bastards, but it probably bought them enough lead to get away clean.”
“Who got kidnapped?” Duncan asked.
“Fat Humphrey Pappadopoulos, Reb Hawkins, Meiya and Eva Hoffman. Possibly others, but I’m sure of those. They snatched them right out of a suite: right out the goddam window and into a stealthed ship, long gone by now. I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but it has something to do with a coup against the UN.”
“Jesus Christ!” Duncan said. “An honest-to-God old-time coup d’état?”
“I think coup du monde is more like it, from the way Ev was talking. I don’t care what historians call it, as long as they put ‘failed’ in front of it. So we need Kate—alive, and with her vocal cords intact; everything else is optional. She’s in her office… and I think I know how to get her out, if we can get there alive. But that might be a problem. I’m sure she has a private surveillance-and-defense system. She let us approach the last time because Martin didn’t want to have to explain embarrassing laserburns on our corpses to the cronkites—but if she sees us coming again, I don’t think she’ll hesitate.”
“So what’s the plan?” Rand asked.
Jay sighed. “I was hoping one of you would come up with something. I don’t know how you storm a castle with a slingshot when they know you’re coming.”
“I do,” Duncan said. “You use the servant’s entrance.”
Twenty minutes later, they peered out through the grille of an air-circulation tunnel ten meters from Tokugawa’s office door. They were all wearing stock p-suits scavenged from the riot-control locker, but maintaining radio silence. Jay unsealed his hood and sniffed the air; when he didn’t pass out, the others did the same.
“I think we’re inside her perimeter,” Duncan said. “I don’t see anything in that hallway that looks like the business end of a laser.”
Jay wedged past him and looked. Bare walls. He clutched the tank of sleepy gas to his chest. “So one of us tries it and the other two avenge him if necessary.”
“Let’s not rush into this,” Rand said.
Jay laughed mirthlessly. “Feel a little stuffy in here to you, bro?”
“Now that you mention it, I’m sweating like—oh!”
“When a groundhog starts to sweat, he smiles and reaches for a cold beer. When a spacer starts to sweat, he reaches for his p-suit.” The hotel’s backup system had power for air circulation and limited lighting—but none for cooling. The Shimizu was a shiny ball of metal in the sunshine, full of heat-producing people, and contrary to groundhog belief space is not cold at all. “Folks are going to start dying if the system doesn’t come back up in the next hour or two: we’re running out of time.”
“How do you plan to get her to open the door for your gas?” Duncan asked.
Jay grinned wickedly. “I don’t need to. Ev Martin drilled a neat little hose-sized hole for me about a meter earthward of the door.” He started to push the grille free, but Rand stopped him.
“Let me,” he said.
“I claim privilege,” Jay protested. “I’ve known Eva and Reb a lot longer than you have.”
“My point exactly. You said before you almost hope she hurries you. I don’t. I have less need to find an excuse to kill her.”
“That could get you killed.”
Rand grinned. “Well, bro, just now the world doesn’t need a first-class shaper as badly as it needs her.”
“I’m faster than both of you put together,” Duncan said.
Rand turned to him. “Yeah. But that’s a massy tank: you haven’t got the muscles to hump it. Some things, earthborns are better at. Besides, it’s my turn to do something heroic. Okay?”