Twenty minutes later he was rubbing bare wrists, scratching furiously where he'd been unable to scratch before. His arms felt ten pounds lighter without the handcuffs.
The time of waiting sat heavily on Jesus Pietro.
It was long past quitting time. From the windows of his office he could see the trapped forest as a darker blur in a darkening gray mist. He'd called Nadia and told her not to expect him home that night. The night shift was in charge of the Hospital, reinforced at Jesus Pietro's orders with scores of extra guards.
Soon he'd have to alert them for what he expected. Right now he was trying to decide what to say.
He wasn't about to impress them with the startling news that all of five prisoners were loose somewhere on Alpha Plateau. They would already have heard about the escape. They'd leave the mop-up job to the hunting squads.
Jesus Pietro activated the intercom. "Miss Lauessen, please connect me with all of the Hospital intercoms."
"Will do." She didn't always call him Sir. Miss Lauessen had more crew blood than Jesus Pietro-she was nearly pure--and she had powerful protectors. Fortunately she was a pleasant person and a good worker. If she ever became a disciplinary problem...
"You're on, sir."
"This is the Head," said Jesus Pietro. "You all know of the man captured last night infiltrating the Hospital. He and several others escaped this morning. I have information that he was scouting the Hospital defenses in preparation for an attack to take place tonight.
"Sometime between now and dawn the Sons of Earth will almost certainly attack the Hospital. You have all been issued maps of the Hospital showing the locations of automatic protective-devices installed today. Memorize them, and don't stumble into any of the traps. I have issued orders for maximum dosage of anesthetic in these traps, and they can kill. Repeat, they can kill.
"I think it unlikely that the rebels will make any kind of frontal attack." Unlikely, indeed! Jesus Pietro smiled at the understatement. "You should be alert for attempts to infiltrate the Hospital possibly by using our own uniforms. Keep your identification handy. If you see someone you do not recognize, ask for his ident. Compare him with the photo. The rebels have not had time to forge idents.
"One last word. Don't be reluctant to shoot each other."
He signed off, waited for Miss Lauessen to clear the lines, then had her contact the Power Sections. "Cut off all power to the colonist regions of the Plateau until dawn," he told them.
The men of Power took pride in their work, and their work was to keep the power running. There were loud protests. "Do it," said Jesus Pietro, and cut them off.
Once again he thought longingly of issuing death darts to his men. But then they would be afraid to shoot each other. Worse, they'd fear their own weapons. Never since the Covenant of Planetfall had Implementation used deadly weapons. In any case the poison slivers had been stored so long that they'd probably lost their effectiveness.
He'd raised hell with tradition tonight; there'd be hell to pay if nothing happened. But he knew something would. It wasn't just the fact that this was the last chance for the rebels to get their prisoners out of the vivarium, it was the cold certainty in Jesus Pietro's viscera. Something would happen.
A vague red line divided black sky from black land. It faded gradually, and suddenly the Hospital lights came on outside, making the night white. Somebody brought Jesus Pietro dinner, and he ate hurriedly, and kept the coffeepot when the tray was gone.
"Down there," said Laney.
Matt nodded and pushed in the fan levers. They dropped toward a medium-sized dwelling that at first glance looked like a large, flat haystack. There were windows in the haystack, and on one side was a porchlike platform. Under the porch was an oddly curved swimming pool. Lights showed at the windows, and the swimming pool area blazed with light. The water itself was lit from underneath. There was no rooftop landing-zone, but on the other side of the house were two cars.
"I'd have picked an empty house, myself." Matt was commenting, not criticizing. He'd decided hours ago that Laney was the expert in rebellion.
"Then what? Even if you found a car, where would you get the keys? I picked this one because most of them will be out in plain sight by the pool. There, see them? Hover the car and I'll see how many I can pick off."
They'd flown east along the void, flying blind in the fog, staying far from the edge, so that even the sound of their fans would not carry. Finally, miles east of the Parlette mansion, they'd turned inland. Matt flew with the gun balanced beside him on the seat. He'd never owned anything with such power in it. It gave him a warm feeling of security and invulnerability.
Laney was in the back seat, where she could fire from either window. Matt couldn't tell how many people were down around the swimming pool. But the guns had telescopic sights.
There were pops like balloons exploding. "One," said Laney. "Two. Oop, here comes another ... Three, and out. Okay, Matt, drop her fast. Yeee! Not that fast, Matt."
"Listen, did I get us down or didn't I?"
But she was out and running for the house. Matt followed more slowly. The swimming pool steamed like a huge bathtub. He saw two fallen crew near the pool, and a third near the glass doors to the house, and he blushed, for they were naked. Nobody had ever told him that crew threw nude swimming-parties. Then he noticed blood pooling under a woman's neck, and he stopped blushing. Clothing was trivia here.
From the pool area the house still looked like a haystack, but with more normal solid structures showing through the grassy yellow sides. Inside it was vastly different from Geoffrey Eustace Pariette's house; the walls were all curved, and a conical false fireplace occupied the center of the living room. But there, was the same air of luxury.
Matt heard a pop like a balloon exploding, and he ran.
He rounded a door jamb as he heard the second pop. A man stood behind a polished table dialing a handphone. He was beginning to fall as Matt saw him: a brawny middle-aged crew wearing nothing but a few drops of water and an expression of ultimate terror. He was looking straight at Laney. One hand pawed at a blood spot on his ribs. His terror seemed to fade as he fell, but Matt remembered it. Being hunted was bad in itself, but being hunted naked must be far worse. Naked had always been synonymous with "unprotected."
"Try the upstairs," said Laney. She was reloading the gun. "We'll have to find where they changed. If you find a pair of pants, search the pockets for keys. Hurry; we can't stay here long."
He came down a few minutes later with a bunch of keys dangling from his finger. "They were in the bedroom," he said.
"Good. Throw'em away."
"Was that a funny?"
"I found these." She too had a key ring. "Think it through. Those clothes upstairs must belong to the owner of the house. If we take his car, Implementation can trace it back here. It may not matter; I can't think of any way they could trace us from here back to Parlette's. But if we take a visitors car, they can't trace us anywhere. So these are the ones we want. You can ditch yours."
They went back to the pool area for Parlette's car. Laney opened the dash and fiddled inside. "I don't dare send it back," she muttered. "Harry'll have to use the other one. Ah... So I'll just send it ten miles up and tell it to head south forever. Okay, Matt, let's go."
They found a key to fit one of the cars on the roof. Matt flew, east and north, directly toward the Hospital.
The fog had not been abnormally thick on the ground, but at this height it was the edge of Creation. Matt flew for an hour before he saw a faint yellow blur to the left.