He stepped outside, and into the helitaxi. He gave the driver the address.
He sat back, and waited as the cab soared through the night.
At this hour, the neighborhood was even more deserted than ever. No one, no one at all was in sight. Harris approached the shabby building circuitously, watching constantly for an ambush. His heart raced. It was not normal to fear his own people; he was not accustomed to the idea of coming to grief at the hands of Servants of the Spirit, he thought.
There was a cluttering sound in an alleyway, Harris, startled, clapped his hand to his hip, started to press down on the subsonic’s activator. A small furry creature slithered out of the alleyway and glowered up at him, and made a tiny miauling sound.
Harris smiled in relief. That was a close one for you, friend cat. Another moment and you’d have been extinguished.
He knelt for a moment, scratched the animal’s mangy fur, then kept going. The sound of his own footfalls echoed weirdly through the empty streets. Earth’s moon, high overhead, glimmered brightly, its pockmarked face bizarre and subtly disgusting. Harris moved on.
Now he was only a block from the Aragon Boulevard headquarters. Still no ambush. He took one step at a time, kept his hand close to his hip, and advanced across the wide street, then into the building.
Upstairs.
The gravshaft creaked out its protest as it lifted his mass a hundred feet in ten seconds.
Tension mounted in his brain, his respiratory system, his belly. He could feel pores closing, feel sweat rolling down his synthetic skin. Pain drilled into him back of his eyeballs.
The gravshaft halted. He stepped out, ready to slam the subsonic into activation the moment anything menacing appeared. But the hall was empty. It was dark, too, but his Darruui eyes, accustomed to sight on a world where direct sunlight was a rarity, cut easily through the darkness as he headed toward the rooms occupied by the Darruui conspirators.
Just before he reached them, a figure detached itself from the shadows and called his name.
“Harris!”
It was Reynolds, the pudgy surgeon. His pale face was shiny with sweat. Harris scanned him for weapons, saw nothing in his hands.
“Hello, Reynolds.” He eyed the pudgy man uncertainly. “What are you doing in the hall?”
“I came out for a drink. I hear your mission was a success.”
“Five of them dead. A pity you and the others couldn’t wait around.”
“A pity,” Reynolds said. “Well, if you’ll step inside with me, we’ll get that subsonic out of your leg—”
“Oh, you’re going to remove it?”
“Of course. You don’t want to walk around with a thing like that in you, do you?”
“Why not?”
“It’s dangerous. It can get activated so easily. Someone jostles against you…”
“I’m shielded,” Harris said. “If it’s all right, I think I’ll keep it. It’s a handy little gadget. I don’t understand why all agents aren’t equipped with them right from the start.”
Reynolds looked at him perplexedly. “You won’t let me remove it?”
“I’m afraid not.”
The fat man’s soft lips moved soundlessly for an instant. Then, panicking, Reynolds turned and dashed through the doorway, slamming it behind him.
Harris hesitated, not caring to follow on into a possible cul-de-sac. He smiled at Reynolds’ fear. The ruse hadn’t worked, and Reynolds had been smitten with sudden terror.
A Servant of the Spirit, Harris thought derisively. The noblest creature of the universe.
“Harris?”
It was Carver’s voice, sounding hollow and indistinct from behind the closed door.
“Harris, do you hear me?”
“I hear you. What is it? Why don’t you let me in, Carver?”
“Reynolds says you refuse to let him remove the subsonic.”
“That’s right.”
“Subsonics are not part of an agent’s standard equipment. It was installed on you for a specific purpose that has now been fulfilled. It must be removed at once, do you understand?”
“The Medlins aren’t all dead yet,” Harris said. “Five out of a hundred…”
“The subsonic must be removed. That’s an order, Harris… Aar Khülom! If you defy that order you are defying the Spirit Itself.”
“All right,” Harris said in a light, mocking voice. “Send Reynolds out here with his tools and he can remove the subsonic.”
There was a long pause. Harris fancied he could hear whispering behind the door. No doubt the five of them were barricaded beyond the forty-foot range of the subsonic, and Reynolds was now refusing to go within its reach. The argument continued for a moment more, and at one point Harris heard Carver’s voice spitting angry curses.
Then Carver called out, “Remove the subsonic yourself. We can’t risk a man.”
“I’m no surgeon.”
“All you have to do is open the thigh-plate and detach the subsonic. Reynolds can finish the job once you’ve done that much.”
“Sorry, but the answer is no, Carver.”
“You will not defy the Spirit!”
“I will not commit suicide,” Harris retorted. He knew what would happen once he had the subsonic detached. They’d fry his brains with their disruptors ten seconds later.
“I order you!” Carver thundred.
“I can’t obey that order,” Harris replied. “And now I’m coming in. We can finish this conversation face to face.”
“Stay out. We are armed!”
“I imagine you are,” Harris said.
He started for the door. They had disruptors, he knew, but the range of a disruptor was only twenty to twenty-five feet. He could reach them and stun them before they could get to him. Probably they had stunguns as well, but those lost most of their impact after a dozen yards.
He threw open the door.
He caught sight of the five of them, madly scrambling backward into one of the inner offices. He started for them, but a moment later there was a burst of flame and a splash of molten metal against the doorframe inches from his head.
Projectile guns!
Bullets!
It seemed laughable, in a way. To fall back on crude projectiles in a crisis was a pathetic way of doing business. But yet he had to admit that bullets had their advantage. They could travel great distances without losing force. They could do great damage, too.
He dropped to the floor as a second bullet thudded into the wall above him. Sighting along the floor, he measured the distance. This room was a good thirty feet long. They were in the room beyond it, which was even bigger. They had plenty of room to move around in before he would be in range. And, if they had bullet guns, they could pick him off before he could succeed in stunning them with the subsonic.
He edged forward, slithering along the floor. Another explosion sounded, another bullet slashed through the air and buried itself in the floor near him, tunnelling deep and picking up a cloud of splinters.
“This is blasphemy, Harris!” Carver called. “I order you to stop.”
Harris bit down on his lip. One wild charge, he thought. That would do the trick. If he could avoid getting shot as he raced toward them…
“I order you in the name of the Spirit, Harris! By all you hold holy! Get away from us! Remove that subsonic! Aar Khülom, you are destroying your own soul! You are withering the roots of your birth-tree! Do you hear me, Aar Khülom!”
“I hear you,” Harris answered.
“Obey us!”
“I can’t,” he replied evenly. He paused a moment, gathering strength.
Then he scrambled to his feet and rushed forward in a blind, mad dash.