"Get him on his feet," Mallon snapped. Hard hands clamped on my arms, hauled me off the cot. I worked my legs, but they were like yesterday's celery; I sagged against somebody who smelled like uncured hides.
"You seem drowsy," Mallon said. "We'll see if we can't wake you up."
A thumb dug into my neck. I jerked away, and a jab under the ribs doubled me over.
"I have to keep you alive-for the moment," Mallon said. "But you won't get a lot of pleasure out of it."
I blinked hard. It was dark in the room. One of my handlers had a ring of beard around his mouth-I could see that much. Mallon was standing before me, hands on hips. I aimed a kick at him, just for fun. It didn't work out; my foot seemed to be wearing a lead boat. The unshaven man hit me in the mouth and Toby chuckled.
"Have your fun, Dunger," he said, "but I'll want him alive and on his feet for the night's work. Take him out and walk him in the fresh air. Report to me at the Pavilion of the Troll in an hour." He turned to something and gave orders about lights and gun emplacements, and I heard Renada's name mentioned.
Then he was gone and I was being dragged through the door and along the corridor.
The exercise helped. By the time the hour had passed, I was feeling weak but normal-except for an aching head and a feeling that there was a strand of spiderweb interfering with my vision. Toby had given me a good meal. Maybe before the night was over he'd regret that mistake…
Across the dark grounds, an engine started up, spluttered, then settled down to a steady hum.
"It's time," the one with the whiskers said. He had a voice like soft cheese to match his smell. He took another half-twist in the arm he was holding.
"Don't break it," I grunted. "It belongs to the Baron, remember?"
Whiskers stopped dead. "You talk too much-and too smart." He let my arm go and stepped back. "Hold him, Pig Eye." The other man whipped a forearm across my throat and levered my head back; then Whiskers unlimbered the two-foot club from his belt and hit me hard in the side, just under the ribs. Pig Eye let go and I folded over and waited while the pain swelled up and burst inside me.
Then they hauled me back to my feet. I couldn't feel any bone ends grating, so there probably weren't any broken ribs-if that was any consolation.
There were lights glaring now across the lawn. Moving figures cast long shadows against the trees lining the drive-and on the side of the Bolo Combat Unit parked under its canopy by the sealed gate.
A crude breastwork had been thrown up just over fifty yards from it. A wheel-mounted generator putted noisily in the background, laying a layer of bluish exhaust in the air.
Mallon was waiting with a 9-mm power rifle in his hands as we came up, my two guards gripping me with both hands to demonstrate their zeal, and me staggering a little more than was necessary. I saw Renada standing by, wrapped in a gray fur. Her face looked white in the harsh light. She made a move toward me and a greenback caught her arm.
"You know what to do, Jackson," Mallon said speaking loudly against the clatter of the generator. He made a curt gesture and a man stepped up and buckled a stout chain to my left ankle. Mallon held out my electropass. "I want you to walk straight to the Bolo. Go in by the side port. You've got one minute to cancel the instructions punched into the command circuit and climb back outside. If you don't show, I close a switch there-" He pointed to a wooden box mounting an open circuit-breaker, with a tangle of heavy cable leading toward the Bolo-"and you cook in your shoes. The same thing happens if I see the guns start to traverse or the antipersonnel ports open." I followed the coils of armored wire from the chain on my ankle back to the wooden box-and on to the generator.
"Crude, maybe, but it will work. And if you get any idea of letting fly a round or two at random-remember the girl will be right beside me."
I looked across at the giant machine. "Suppose it doesn't recognize me? It's been a while. Or what if Don didn't plug my identity pattern in to the recognition circuit?"
"In that case, you're no good to me anyway," Mallon said flatly.
I caught Renada's eye, gave her a wink and a smile I didn't feel, and climbed up on top of the revetment.
I looked back at Mallon. He was old and shrunken in the garish light, his smooth gray suit rumpled, his thin hair mussed, the gun held in a white-knuckled grip. He looked more like a harassed shopkeeper than a would-be world-beater.
"You must want the Bolo pretty bad to take the chance, Toby," I said. "I'll think about taking that wild shot. You sweat me out."
I flipped slack into the wire trailing my ankle, jumped down, and started across the smooth-trimmed grass, a long black shadow stalking before me. The Bolo sat silent, as big as a bank in the circle of the spotlight. I could see the flecks of rust now around the port covers, the small vines that twined up her sides from the ragged stands of weeds that marked no-man's-land.
There was something white in the brush ahead. Broken human bones.
I felt my stomach go rigid again. The last man had gotten this far; I wasn't in the clear yet…
I passed two more scattered skeletons in the next twenty feet. They must have come in on the run, guinea pigs to test the alertness of the Bolo. Or maybe they'd tried creeping up, dead slow, an inch a day; it hadn't worked…
Tiny night creatures scuttled ahead. They would be safe here in the shadow of the troll where no predator bigger than a mouse could move. I stumbled, diverted my course around a ten-foot hollow, the eroded crater of a near miss.
Now I could see the great moss-coated treads sunk a foot into the earth, the nests of field mice tucked in the spokes of the yard-high bogies. The entry hatch was above, a hairline against the great curved flank. There were rungs set in the flaring tread shield. I reached up, got a grip and hauled myself up. My chain clanked against the metal. I found the door lever, held on and pulled.
It resisted, then turned. There was the hum of a servo motor, a crackling of dead gaskets. The hairline widened and showed me a narrow companionway, green-anodized dural with black polymer treads, a bulkhead with a fire extinguisher, an embossed steel data plate that said BOLO DIVISION OF GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION and below, in smaller type, unit, combat, BOLO MARK III.
I pulled myself inside and went up into the Christmas-tree glow of instrument lights.
The control cockpit was small, utilitarian, with two deep-padded seats set among screens, dials, levers. I sniffed the odors of oil, paint, the characteristic ether and ozone of a nuclear generator. There was a faint hum in the air from idling relay servos. The clock showed ten past four. Either it was later than I thought, or the chronometer had lost time in the last eighty years. But I had no time to lose…
I slid into the seat, flipped back the cover of the command control console. The Cancel key was the big white one. I pulled it down and let it snap back, like a clerk ringing up a sale.
A pattern of dots on the status display screen flicked out of existence. Mallon was safe from his pet troll now.
It hadn't taken me long to carry out my orders. I knew what to do next; I'd planned it all during my walk out. Now I had thirty seconds to stack the deck in my favor.
I reached down, hauled the festoon of quarter-inch armored cable up in front of me. I hit a switch, and the inner conning cover-a disk of inch-thick armor-slid back. I shoved a loop of the flexible cable up through the aperture, reversed the switch. The cover slid back-slicing the armored cable like macaroni.
I took a deep breath, and my hands went to the combat alert switch, hovered over it.
It was the smart thing to do-the easy thing. All I had to do was punch a key, and the 9-mm's would open up, scythe Mallon and his crew down like cornstalks.
But the scything would mow Renada down, along with the rest. And if I went-even without firing a shot-Mallon would keep his promise to cut that white throat…