Laird sighed, limped slowly to the control room, intending to walk down the interior stairs. The blow that caught him below the sternum did not wholly paralyze him but shocked his diaphragm muscle into a spasm. Exhausted by his twelve-hour shift, now robbed of his ability to breathe, Laird fell to his knees at the stairwell, clutching the rail with both hands.
His assailant hacked twice at his upper arm, pulled Laird around to a sitting position with his back to the stairwell. The man didn't match Laird's bulk — seventy-five kilos, at a guess — but O Lord, what pitiless strength! A bandanna covered the face, only the eyes showing, and the ugly snout of an automatic pistol was leveled at Laird's breast. The crouching man's other gloved hand came up slowly to the bandanna, its forefinger vertical over where the mouth must be. Laird tried to speak, folded his hands over his belly, felt his chin jerked roughly upward. Again the forefinger, this time over Laird's own mouth. The head nodded vigorously, then paused and cocked sideways.
Laird understood; nodded; let his head loll against the rail as he peered at his captor. His work-callused hands came up, faltering as he fought for breath, in an ancient gesture of surrender.
The man's empty hand flickered at a hip pocket, came up with a tutorial voder the size of a wallet, and then placed the voder on the cement floor. Yet the vented barrel of that handgun never wavered, and Laird tried not to wheeze as his breath returned.
A soft luminescence lit the voder's alphanumeric studs under flying fingers. Then, impersonal and crisp as any other language-teaching machine, the voder said softly: "Whisper all you like. One loud noise and you are dead."
Laird tried twice before he could even whisper. "What have I done to you?"
Fingers flew again. Finally: "Union organizer. Does not matter true or false. Next two days many government enemies dead, you included."
Laird licked his lips and almost forgot to whisper.
"The government? I'm no traitor. You mean the general contractor?"
In due time: "White House Deseret. You more important than you think. Your only hope is disappear.
Now, next few minutes."
Pause. "I have a family, for heaven's sake. How can I leave them without telling them?"
"Their only hope is to think you dead. If anyone knows you survive, you and I both die. Lion of Zion plays for keeps. Time wasting; run or die?"
Laird looked at the gun muzzle, now indistinct in the gloom, and felt cold sweat. "Lord Jesus Christ help me, I wouldn't know how to run! Or where. Maybe I could hide out along the transient camps awhile, but—"
The man's head shook sideways, fingers flickering again. "I have clothes, false papers, money for you.
Written directions for best route, Ogden to Pocatello, across Snake River into Canada. Not long if you go now. Now. Now," said the insouciant tutor with no more urgency than a mattress commercial.
"I think I'd rather die than let my wife think I ran out. You don't know what it means — how it would affect the kids."
"Send for them in a month. Or your wife can be a widow tomorrow. Will not trade my life for you.
Losing patience."
A long shuddering breath; then, nodding his whole body: "All right. I don't really have a choice, do I?"
"Not since your file came to S & R."
"Search & Rescue?" Even in semidarkness, Laird's teeth gleamed as he smiled. "They're rescuing me?
But I thought they were the President's own—"
But the man was waving his hand as if shooing flies. After a moment, from the voder: "S & R has group called rovers. Primary job is assassination. Good at it. Tell Canadians. Truth."
"I whipped my son for repeating that rumor." As if to chase the memory away he went on quickly: "So what do I do?"
"Follow me down after two minutes. May be someone monitoring outside fence, so I carry you deadweight to company pickup."
Laird stood up with difficulty. The smaller man scooped up the voder, moved in a predator's silence down the first few stairs. "It all seems unreal — hard to believe," Laird muttered, not quite a whisper.
Gun muzzle and voder were both out again. "This is real," said the voder lackadaisically, as the gun moved side-to-side. "Death is real. If I have to come up after you, will prove it."
"Go on before I lose my nerve," Laird husked, and marveled at the soundlessness of the man's passage down six flights of stairs. Meanwhile he counted to himself. At a hundred and twenty he began his own descent, swiveling so that each footfall was as steady as the last, no matter how it hurt the bad leg. He did not know whether he expected the apparition to be gone, or to feel the impact of bullets as he reached the first landing.
Yet his nightmare continued as the smaller man handed him a large filmy sack. The voder was already programmed: "Step into bodybag, pull it up over head. When I pick you up, go limp. Whatever happens, play dead until I tell you to speak. May take an hour."
Laird took the huge bag, fumbled as he whispered, "Look, I have to believe you're on my side."
In the dimness, the head nodded.
"How would I recognize the rovers sent to kill me?"
In answer, the man jerked a thumb at his own breast.
"Maybe you would, but—." Laird stopped. "That's not what you meant, was it?"
Slow headshake. Accustomed to the gloom, Laird thought he saw a crinkle around the eyes. A wry smile, perhaps.
Now the body bag was nearly up to his chin. "You're the rover sent to kill me," Laird whispered hoarsely.
Slow nod.
"So you'd have the keys to the perimeter gate and access to a company pickup, wouldn't you? And you still might throw me off a cliff somewhere."
A shrug — but that odd, ugly little automatic was now in the man's hand, held by the muzzle for display.
Yes, if he wanted a man dead he sure didn't lack the means to do it; could have done it already. Over the roof parapet; down the stairwell with a broken neck; or maybe into the bodybag quietly, into the damned company pickup and then out to some canyon where the man could shoot him like a trussed goat.
Laird felt the top close above him, fought an urge to scream, then found himself hoisted in a fireman's carry. An arm slapped at his legs, not hard, and he made himself suitably limp.
All the way out of town and up the old freeway, Laird bounced under a tarp in the bed of that pickup.
And at every bounce he wondered whether he'd been hoaxed into his grave.
When at last he felt himself being dragged feet-first onto the tailgate, Laird vented the smallest of strangled sobs and felt steely hands grip hard against his ankles. Then he was again carried over uneven ground for some distance. He heard the murmur of water; began to breathe deeply, wondering if he could fight his way out of the bag before he drowned.
Laird found himself deposited carefully on grass, then heard the voder again: "Whisper. Pickup may be bugged."
"Where are we?" He helped the man shuck the bag away and now for the first time he began to hope, to truly believe, that he might live.
Pause at the voder. "River near cemetery in Ogden. Good place to lose a deader. Good place for you to walk to monorail." Laird felt, more than saw, the pile of clothes that dropped in his lap. But the voder's glow gave him enough light for him to change.
"Mind if I ask — well, don't you speak American?"
Pause. Then, "Not with a radio planted in my skull. They can hear every word I say. Do not hear this gadget."
"How d'you know they can't?"
Pause. "Still alive. Explosive in the radio in my head. If you get caught…"
Laird jumped and did not hear the last few words from the voder, for the man was suddenly speaking aloud; a young man's voice. "I hear you, Control. No, not yet. Message is in process but not yet delivered." A brief pause before, "You know my em-oh, why not get off my ass until my message is delivered?" Then after a moment, "How should I know? Maybe an hour. I'm already in Ogden so it shouldn't take me long to deliver message two." After the last pause, a sigh: "Into the goddam river. It's the quickest way; quicker still if I don't have to give you a blow-by-blow. Thank-you-Control-and-out,"