He went looking for his second indulgence. Taking all of his debris, from that brandy bottle to the electronics tools he'd purchased with him, and leaving them in an industrial dumper.
He found a restaurant big enough so he wouldn't be remembered, and savory-smelling from the outside. And he ate. First he protein-packed, even though he knew that wasn't the best way to prep himself for the run, but clot th‘ nutritionists, he thought. Ah'll hae someat't' think aboot, eatin‘ bushes an' pap. Three seafood cocktails. Two very large steaks, ultrarare. A side of sauteed fungi. A large salad, with a simple dressing. A half bottle of wine, to help digestion. The waitress lifted an eyebrow when he finished, sighed, and announced he was now ready for part two of his meal, but said nothing. Part two was carb-packing. He stuffed pasta, in as many permutations as the menu offered, until even he could detect outward movement in his rotund belly. He drank heavily. Water. Pitcher after pitcher of it. Water-packing.
By the time he finished gourmandizing and rolled out tipping well as Laird Kilgour ought, considering this might be his last real meal, it was getting on.
Now he was operational. The plan was running.
In an exclusive residential enclave he had cased several days earlier, he stole an expensive gravcar, easily subverting its alarm and ignition cutouts. He put the registration plate lifted from the bar's parking lot on the car, and that craft's legal plates on the gravcar just in front of it Confusion shall noo be m‘ epitaph, he thought and lifted the gravcar away toward his slum. That was a bit of a risk, as he left the out-of-place gravcar down the street long enough to grab his gear and bid a long, last farewell to the slum. Ah'd say thae's naught humbler, but Ah know, i' an hour or so, Ah'll be thinkin't ae aught havin‘ a roof wi' infin'te fondness.
Into the car, and away. He headed for his jumping-off point—the ultraluxury part of Fowler, the grand estates of the wealthy who sucked around the Emperor and his palace as closely as they could.
Now was when his registration switchy-swappy of a few nights before would pay off, if it had even been noticed yet. If it had been narked, and a copper bleeped him, they would be expecting a prankster, not a criminal. A pity for them, he thought, making sure the pistol in his lap was loaded and locked.
The Imperial Grounds around Arundel were walled and given every imaginable security device. Alex parked his stolen gravsled on the closest street to the wall, and shouldered his gear. Again, another justification for the swapped plates. When the gravcar was reported stolen, it'd be on every rozzer's hotsheet, since it belonged to a richie. Or, at any rate, its registration plate would be. And that plate was sitting on another vehicle entirely, back at the theft sight, adding more confusion to the situation.
Kilgour needed this expensive sporter of his to sit where he had parked it without being noticed for at least three days-—and he knew that any money district, especially one as close to Arundel as this, would be patrolled. He also planned to use the gravcar for his slither-stage-left, with Poyndex, back to Ashley-on-Wye.
Confusion to m‘ enemies, he thought, sitting across the street from the wall, meter-metering the security precautions. In two hours, he had the Emperor's system nailed. A walking guard every hour/hour and a half, one well-trained enough to vary his appearances. One sensor just before the wall. One atop it. The coiled razor wire on the wall itself would be tagged. He thought he saw a tree-mounted sweep in a treetop on the other side. An aerial about every hour. A vehicle patrol in between on the street.
Amateurs, Kilgour sneered. A‘ th' rankest sort. A standard Mantis test was to break in—or out—of a max-security prison within one E-day. The test wasn't regarded as one of the section's more stringent.
It's time, lad. And he went across the street, through the security, over the wall, and was on the far side of that tree-mounted pickup in less than ten minutes.
Tsk, he thought. Th‘ Emp's noq^omy gaga, but he's hirin' brainburns't‘ boot.
Now it would get sticky.
There were twenty-seven kilometers of unpopulated forest and glade between him and Arundel Castle.
What would be a morning's jog took him three days and nearly cost him his life on four occasions. Dogs. More auto-sensors, of every possible configuration, from seismic to UV to motion to anything the Imperial Household's Head of Security could come up with. Set in unlikely locations. Irregular patrols. Aircraft. It could have been worse, however. A weak point was that the Emperor had insisted his security must be as unobtrusive as possible. So this meant dead zones, killing fields, checkboard light-searches, and the like had been forbidden by His Eternal-ship.
Alex remembered a boast he had once made to Sten, saying he could do something, i‘ his sleep, draggin' a wee canoe. He felt as if he was doing just that, lugging the McLean-powered stretcher he had stolen from the ambulance that he planned to stick the unconscious Poyndex into, which would give Alex only a few kilos of weight to lug all the way back to the wall.
He moved a few meters at a time, checking his backtrail, sanitizing it when necessary. He never slept, but huddled under the camouflaged groundsheet now and again for a necessary breather and a return to full alertness. He defecated in streams and carried his empty ratpacks with him. Once he hid in a pond, trying to find the promised pleasure in gnawed jerky as a pack of hounds quartered the shores.
At last he saw Arundel, standing black against a blazing hot sky. Its cannonports appeared eyes, staring straight at him. And the crenellations of its battlements... he turned off his imagination.
Alex stashed the stretcher in an impenetrable thicket. He was right on schedule—it was midmorning of the first day of the weekend. By tonight, he would have to be inside its walls, or else go to ground for another week.
He would, if necessary. But he would rather not.
There was nothing between him and the 200-meter-tall, 50-degree-sloped walls of the castle's bailey, walls that actually enclosed offices and storerooms for Arundel's vast staff. In the late afternoon there came a clamor, and he imagined the palace employees who had been stuck working on a rec day hurrying toward the pneumosubway that'd whoosh them back to Fowler.
Among them, he knew, would also be the lucky sods of the palace security who had been given passes.
All that would be left in Arundel would be the skeleton weekend shift, plus whatever personnel had pressing tasks that couldn't be put off for two days, the workaholics, and a full staff of palace functionaries, from cooks to bakers to laundry people to butlers.
Big clottin‘ deal, Kilgour thought. There wae a time whae th' staff d be taken't‘ consid'ration, bein' ex-Guard, -Merc, or -Mantis. But wee Poyndex hae all ae those dismissed. An‘ replaced, so Senn an' Marr said, wi‘ other people, who's qual'fications dinnae be greater'n a droolin' adoration ae th‘ Emp.
Plus security.
Not Gurkhas—they were long-gone. Nor the Praetorians— they'd never been reformed after their colonel had converted them to a private army in a plot to overthrow the Emperor. Thae wae th‘ prob' lad, he thought to the memory of the deceased Colonel Fohlee. Y‘ were whae thae call a preemie antifascist. An f'r y'r pains y' got fed int‘ a meatslicer.
Now the guards were Internal Security. Poyndex's own. Which no one from Mantis or Mercury who'd encountered Internal Security was very impressed with.
Come night, we'll find oot, Kilgour thought, if the rankin's pure jealousy, or wi‘ grounds.
There were two other beings who would be in the castle.