His luck held all the way up the ladder and perhaps four steps along the catwalk itself. But his fifth step brought his weight down on what was apparently a rust-weakened section of the grating, and with a loud snap that seemed to reverberate forever one of the heavy wires broke under his foot.
He froze, and on the floor below the quiet conversations abruptly ceased. "What was that?" one of the kids whispered nervously—and the words were barely out when Axel's bellow split the air. "Grack! Omega—he got away!"
"Damn you, Axel—no, hold it, damn it, everyone just stay where you are for a minute. Jarvis, you can't get away—we've got the doors blocked and we'll tear your head off if you try for one of the windows. Give yourself up right now or I guarantee the consequences will be very, very painful."
Under cover of Martel's voice, Jarvis had made it another six steps along the catwalk. Now, as silence again settled onto the room, he paused, hardly daring to breathe. Clearly, no one below had yet realized where the original noise had come from, and he had no intention of giving them unnecessary hints. Pitch darkness or not, once they figured out he was on one of the catwalks they could have him in thirty seconds flat. Squinting into the darkness, he tried unsuccessfully to see how far ahead the next intersecting catwalk was, the one he needed to get on.
"All right, Jarvis, have it your way," Martel snarled suddenly. "Axel, Brody, Royce—go to the east end of the room and start working your way west. Cover every square centimeter of floor and wall and make sure he hasn't climbed onto any of the machinery."
Jarvis had made it to the intersection and onto the proper catwalk by the time Martel finished talking—but he knew his time was nearly up. The mere mention of climbing was bound to bring this aerial walkway to mind, and the minute Martel remembered it he would certainly reach the proper conclusion. Quickly, Jarvis unfastened his belt and took it off, coiling it as tightly as he could. Giving it enough loft to clear the other catwalks, he tossed it as far as he could toward the west wall.
"Aha!" Martel shouted triumphantly. "The cat—"
And with a clatter the belt hit the floor.
The flurry of activity at that end of the building was all Jarvis could have hoped for, and he didn't hesitate. Abandoning all efforts at stealth, he ran at full speed along the heavy wire mesh, his hands merely brushing the low guard rails. Distances were impossible to judge in the gloom, but he tried to form an estimate by counting his steps... and two earlier than he'd expected the door loomed suddenly ahead and he slammed full tilt into it. Beneath him Martel bellowed. Ignoring the stabbing pains in his cheek and right kneecap, the scientist fumbled the door open and staggered into the tiny control room, slamming the door behind him. The pale square of a small outside window gave him direction, and he crossed the room in four quick steps, hands searching the wall for the emergency exit he knew would be there.
It wasn't.
For a long second Jarvis stood perfectly still, his mind doing a slow tumble as all his hopes unraveled like an old sweater. The kids would be on him in seconds; far too short a time for him to try squeezing out through that tiny window, or even to sneak back out onto the catwalk. Not that the latter would help him, anyway. Blind or not, they would have him back in their control soon no matter what he did.
And, almost too late, the answer hit him.
He banged the same kneecap a second time in getting to the long control board spanning the room's right-hand side, and he broke a fingernail against the rim of one of the meters set into it as he desperately threw every switch and spun every dial he could find. Most of the equipment had presumably been disconnected or shut down at the machines themselves... but Martel had mentioned both a generator and battery bank. If the connections were still intact—
He was halfway down the board and someone outside was fumbling for the doorknob when he found the right section of the board. Without warning, two floodlights blazed on, lighting up the main room with a brilliance that seemed devastating after the blackness. Jarvis squeezed his eyes shut reflexively and got two more switches before he was abruptly yanked off his feet. He got just a glimpse of Axel's face at one of the control room's inside windows, his face distorted almost beyond recognition by fear and hatred, before being slammed hard against the door. Below, on the floor, Martel was screaming something incomprehensible as he pointed up at the floodlights. There was the sound of breaking glass and one of them abruptly went out—
And with a slap Jarvis heard all the way inside the control room, everyone below suddenly slammed face downward onto the concrete floor. Axel spun around, releasing Jarvis from his teekay hold, and an instant later was flying past the catwalks in a desperate attempt to reach the west windows. But he'd barely covered ten meters before his body seemed to slam into an invisible barrier, and he was plucked from midair to land roughly on the floor beside the furnace. An instant later the outside door was blown in off its hinges and the room began to fill up with police and righthands.
It wasn't until Jarvis walked back onto the catwalk that he saw that Axel was lying facedown in the spilled cyanide powder he'd been holding so recently over Jarvis's head. Lying with unnatural stillness...
Chapter 30
"I suppose you're going to gloat now," Martel said, a sardonic smile tightening the corners of his mouth. Leaning back in his chair, he idly scanned the books on the shelf beside him, pulling one out for closer examination.
On the opposite side of the desk, Tirrell took a deep breath, refusing to acknowledge Martel's obvious attempts to irritate him. He would have given practically anything to put this talk off until morning, when he would at least have been able to snatch a few hours' sleep; or, failing that, to have used one of the Plat City Police Department's interrogation rooms instead of Detective Kesner's office. But by morning there would be no chance at all of stuffing the genie back into its bottle... and interrogation rooms were always rigged with hidden recording and observation equipment. "Gloating is the last thing on my mind," he told the other. "As a matter of fact, I brought you here to offer you a deal."
Martel turned back to face him, an eyebrow cocked. "Oh, really? I'd never have guessed. Let me see—can I assume my part of it will be to keep quiet about Jarvis's experiment?"
Tirrell grimaced, but he knew he should have expected this. Martel was far too smart to have missed the significance of the detective's choice of meeting room, and he'd obviously put considerable thought into the implications of Jarvis's work. "You're very perceptive," he told the other. "That's precisely what I want you to do."
"It would cause a great deal of chaos, wouldn't it?" Martel mused, as if Tirrell hadn't spoken. "Everyone worried about the changes that might or might not hit the society, wondering whether this was going to start a new Lost Generation type of period—and of course the whole population would be dithering over it for ten years before anyone even knew how successful the project had been. A whole society jumping at its own shadow for a solid decade—that would be something to see, wouldn't it?"
Tirrell waited until he was finished. "To see, perhaps, but not to live in. Now—"
"Ah, but I wouldn't really be living in it, would I?" Martel interrupted him. "I'm an outcast, remember?—a criminal who's going to be spending the next several years in confinement and supervised service programs. Why should I care what happens to Tigrin society?"
"That's a stupid question, but since you're only asking it to try and raise the value of your silence, I'll ignore it," Tirrell said tartly. "Consider your point made, all right?"