“And good luck.”
“Thanks.” I knew I’d be needing it.
A few minutes later I had my blue van parked at the side door. I managed to get it there without running over anyone or wrecking it. To say I was a little nervous would be an understatement. Between the two days without sleep, liters of caffinex, and my lack of practice at being a criminal, I was a little shaky.
Once back in the lab, I felt like a kid at Christmas. It’s one thing to work with expensive equipment day after day…another to take it home with you. The main thing was to pick up what I needed and what wouldn’t be missed. I figured that if Hampton Weisenbender thought I’d taken anything, he’d personally lead the SWAT commando raid on my house.
So I had to split the difference between being overly cautious and bloodsucker greedy.
We had about eight super mini-computers and umpteen compucalcs; in went three compucalcs and two computers (which I told to shut down so they’d not chatter at me when I drove through the check point later on).
What next?
I plugged a power cable into my van’s batteries. Might as well use a little power for my last day at work.
Then a lot of odds and ends of equipment that I thought I might need, one labbot (a very small one—the space in the van would be a bit tight with the rods), a whole box of notes that hadn’t yet been given to the computers to read, and a nice array of tools—including the laser cutting/welding torch. That should all just fit into the van.
The tricky part was getting the rods into the van. They weighed five kilograms if they didn’t get tilted. There was a little leeway, but if they passed the point of no return, they went from weighing five kilograms to almost a thousand! Obviously I didn’t want to let them tip over in the van. The disaster would be hard to explain if I survived the experience.
So two of the large labbots and I inched them into the van after I had checked to be sure no one was around to see what was going on. The bots helped me anchor the rods in the van. Then I shut down all the bots in the lab.
By 11:30 it I was finished. I looked around. “OK, what did I forget?”
My pay chip for the rest of the month. I needed that. It was crazy, but while I had a bit of priceless technology in my van, there was no capital to work with. Especially since my Mastivisa account was in borrowed-to-the-quick condition. And I knew my local friendly electric banker wouldn’t be giving me a loan to work on a whacko idea like anti-gravity devices.
A few moments later, with pay chip in my hot fist, I headed around the huge plastic bubble that formed the lab and administration complex, got into the van and—very carefully so that the rods wouldn’t break lose from their moorings—eased toward the front gate that was the only exit through the mass of mines and electrified barbed ribbon surrounding me.
That’s where things started looking bad.
Ralph wasn’t there; in his place swaggered Frank Small, whom my staff maintained was Hampton Weisenbender’s bastard son. They were half right at least, if not about the son part. If anyone would make an effort to go through my van and give me fits, it was Frank.
I slowed down very carefully.
“Hear you got canned,” he smirked.
“Yeah.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t do it sooner.”
I gave a weak grin, trying to play the part of someone who’d lost his job. I’m pretty good at swallowing my pride when it might keep me out of jail. I eased the van forward.
“Wait a minute!” Frank yelled.
I stopped, swallowing hard. “Yes?”
“I need your badge and compukeys.”
At this point I was hoping Frank couldn’t smell fear. I tried to swallow again and discovered I couldn’t. ” I already turned them in,” I explained. “At the front desk when I picked up my pay chip.” How ironic. Here cowboy Frank was worrying about next to nothing while I was trying to sneak out with the crown jewels. I looked at my scared face reflected in his mirrored glasses and wondered what it would be like to be in jail with a three hundred pound synthapunk who called me Honeybunch.
I don’t know why, but instead of playing it cozy, I said, “Go ahead and check, you’ll just be wasting your time.” I said it half-heartedly because I was afraid that Frank was about to search the van.
Instead he thought I was lying about turning in the compukeys and my badge.
So he thought it was his big chance to catch a petty thief. “Yeah, we’ll see,” he said, a broad grin crossing his face with his icy eyes putting the lie to his smile. He turned to the vidphone and told it what extension to contact for the head desk. He murmured to it for a few moments while I wished I had a machine gun to fire at his fat rump.
After what seemed an eternity in neck high slime, he turned back with a look of sheer disappointment. “OK. You can go.”
I started to ease forward again when…
“Wait a minute. What’s in the van?”
Well, my last smart answer had paid off, why not try up the ante and try again?
With a big fake smile, I told the truth, “A stolen labbot, two computers, several boxes of lab tools, and anti-gravitation rods worth more than anyone can probably imagine. Want to look?”
He didn’t even glance toward the back of the van. Lucky for me he couldn’t see into its dark interior with his sunglasses. “Yeah, right,” he snarled and waved me through.
We probably both thought goodbye and good riddance. But I had the valuables and he only had the bad taste in his mouth.
The noon Kansas City traffic leading to my home was the usual hassle. All the crazies were out with the usual unipeds, bikes, modif-horses—and my blue van. All the while I was trying to accelerate/brake without causing the massive rods to come loose and either drop out the back doors of the van or come sliding forward to crush me. If I had to choose between driving those things through rush hour traffic or juggling primed RAW grenades, I’d go for the grenades every time.
I was doing well until I almost smacked into the robed figure of a Dweller on a bicycle when he suddenly cut into the van’s path. As I bore down on him, it was the first time I’ve ever seen one of those guys show any emotion; also the first time I’ve ripped anyone’s robes off their back when passing.
No police unipeds or traffic eyes were about so I just speeded up a little and left the guy before he could get his privates covered and get my van’s tag number.
Needless to say, I was very, very glad to get to my little green bubble dome and open the garage door with my scramble coder. If I’d been more alert I would have noticed the bars had been pried off the side window with all the finesse of a cosmetic surgeon using a machete. But I was too preoccupied for the sight to register as I glanced at the bent bars.
When the plastic garage door closed behind the van, I opened my van door and heard the intruder alarm inside the house. Great. I quickly closed the van door.
The house system gives off a false alarm about once a month (which is why I removed it from the vidphone cable; if the police come, they charge per trip for false alarms, plus you’re apt to get on their black list.) I was cautious but had that old “It can’t happen to me” attitude. Nevertheless, I reached down under the driver’s seat of the van and pulled out the plastic bag that contained my old Beretta 92-F nine millimeter semiautomatic pistol.
Now before you go moral on me, I know that having a firearm is illegal. But if you’re fair, you’ll also admit that just about everyone has an unregistered gun squirreled away somewhere.
I’m no different than the next guy.
So I pulled out the weapon and clicked off the safety (I always carry it with a round in the chamber, ready to fire once the safety is released).
While I was fumbling around with the pistol, the door from the dome to the garage opened and two “gentlemen,” who were unmistakably pukers, stepped through the opening: Mohawks, flowered shirts, chains…you know the look. They acted like they owned the place.