CHAPTER 6
Closing the hotel door behind him, Caine tossed his bag the length of the room to land on the bed. All the anger, frustration, and—yes, admit it—the contempt had drained out of him on the ride back to Capstone. Mordecai had been no more talkative than he had been earlier in the day, and if he was friendlier it would have taken a micrometer to measure it. Maybe that had been for the benefit of hidden microphones, but Caine doubted it. The smaller man just didn't like him. In all fairness, Caine couldn't blame him. Dhonau's rash pledge of cooperation, inefficacious though it was, would still get the blackcollars in trouble if Galway found out about it. If, hell—when.
Sighing, Caine went to the bed and began to unpack his bag. Dusk was falling outside; there wasn't much else he could do today except try to think up a new approach. Probably a waste of—
The thought coasted to a halt, and he stared down at the clothes he had dumped onto the bed.
His pills were missing.
"Damn," he muttered, searching in vain through folds and sleeves. How had he forgotten—? Then he remembered: the blackcollars had packed for him. Swallowing another curse, he went over to the phone and dialed for the directory.
Mordecai, it turned out, was one of the thirty percent of non-government Capstonians who had private phones. The blackcollar answered on the sixth ring. "Yes?" he said, and his face immediately went neutral. "Oh. What is it, Rienzi?"
Caine explained the problem, feeling obscurely gallant for not mentioning whose fault it was. "I can't find any phone listed for the lodge. Do you know any way to get in touch with them?"
"Yeah—by car or by foot." Mordecai exhaled noisily.
"Meet me at the east gate in thirty minutes; I'll drive you back up there."
"No, that's all right," Caine said hastily. "Look, I can probably get a refill in town somewhere—"
"It's no trouble. Wouldn't want you put out on our account. East gate, thirty minutes." The screen blanked.
Scowling, Caine scooped up his coat and left.
The drive into the mountains was quiet agony. Mordecai never actually used the word "stupid," but Caine knew he was thinking it. It was a relief when they finally pulled up at the lodge.
Lights were blazing through the curtains from the main hall, and as they walked to the door Caine could hear loud, slightly raucous voices. The homemade liquor was flowing freely tonight.
Reaching for the door handle, Mordecai turned to Caine and put a forefinger to his lips. Frowning, Caine nodded. Mordecai pushed open the door and they stepped into the babble of voices.
The room was deserted.
Caine looked at Mordecai, swallowing his questions, to find the blackcollar studying his face. Whatever he saw seemed satisfactory, and he nodded to the long table they'd eaten dinner at. Moving silently to its edge, Caine glanced over its top and then squatted and peered at its underside. Five cassette players were fastened there, playing their hearts out.
He stood up. From a door across the room Mordecai beckoned. Caine joined him, and the voices faded away as the blackcollar led them through a maze of darkened halls and down long stairways. They were, Caine judged, a good fifty meters underground when they reached a dim passage. At the far end, lit by two small lights, was a double door.
"Welcome back," a voice behind them said suddenly. Instantly, Caine spun around, arms snapping into a karate defense stance as he tried to pierce the gloom.
The voice chuckled. "Nice reflexes," it said, and a big, black-clad figure slid noiselessly from a darker alcove into the dim light. Pushing back his non-reflective goggles with one gloved hand, Skyler grinned at Caine and shifted his attention to Mordecai.
"Good." Mordecai nodded toward the double door. "Let's go, Caine."
They walked through into a large, well-lit room... and Caine stopped short in astonishment. The room was full of blackcollars! Blinking as his pupils adjusted to the light, Caine gave the room a fast scan. No mistake—there were at least a hundred men, maybe more, all dressed in tight-fitting black outfits like Skyler's. Most were checking their equipment or carrying boxes to the far end of the room, where two large monorail cars waited; others were in the final stages of dressing. Caine was still staring when someone stepped to his side. "Sorry we had to pull that stunt with your medicine to get you back here on the sly. But the collies have ears everywhere."
Caine turned to face him, noting in passing that Mordecai had vanished. He almost didn't recognize the newcomer, even though he wasn't yet wearing headgear and goggles. "Lathe?" he asked in disbelief.
Lathe smiled wryly. "So I'm told."
Caine could hardly believe the change in the man. His beard had been trimmed down to a neat fringe; it and his hair had been dyed back to their original dark brown. Even more striking, though, was the new determination in his face. For the first time Caine could see past the lined skin to the blackcollar spirit underneath. An involuntary shiver went down his back. "You've changed since this afternoon," he managed. "About fifteen years' worth."
Lathe smiled again, his eyes not leaving Caine's face. "Most of those years were superficial. Idunine in small doses does wonders for muscle and bone."
"So you did get Idunine. I hoped you had, but I had doubts..."
"My senility?"
Caine nodded. "It was a good act." He looked around the room. "All of it was. I can't believe you managed to fool everyone for so long."
"Thirty years." Lathe glanced around, then turned back, all business again. "Come over here and get suited. We've got a flexarmor outfit that should fit you."
He led the way toward a bank of lockers. "Where are we?" Caine asked as they passed a humming bug stomper, one of five or six he could see spaced around the room.
"The old tube station under Hamner Lodge," Lathe told him. "Been unused since the end of the war. We started uncaching our equipment and moving it here about five years ago, after the collies got tired of dogging our every move. The track between here and Capstone is still good, and we've put our own power supplies into those two monorail cars. Here we are."
They had stopped before an open locker, and on Lathe's order Caine began to strip. "I hope that stuffs all it's cracked up to be," he commented, eyeing Lathe's own flexarmor dubiously.
"It is," Lathe assured him as Caine put on a soft one-piece suit of underwear. "It'll stop most non-explosive handgun projectiles, including some that'll throw you a meter backward from the impact alone. It goes rigid under that kind of punch, by the way, spreading the impact around. A clean hit with an antiarmor laser will get through, but the usual antipersonnel settings will just take off the top layer."
"So the second shot gets through?"
"The average gunner only gets one," Lathe said calmly.
Caine swallowed. "Oh."
"Understand, though, that this isn't medieval plate armor," the other continued. "For hand-to-hand combat you're on your own. Punches and kicks are too slow to make it go rigid."
Great. "Thanks for the warning."
Lathe apparently heard something in his tone. "You should consider yourself lucky we even had an outfit you could wear," he said, a bit tartly. "A lot of the boys going into combat tonight won't have anything but plain black cloth and maybe a flexarmor vest."
"How come?"
"Because most of the kids are just that: kids. We recruited them during martial arts classes a few years back—right under Galway's nose, as a matter of fact. They've been training with us ever since."