The dispassionate, accusing quality of the voice chilled Harvey. He wondered about the driver then, why the creature took this tone rather than telling them if they’d been exposed. Svengaard felt limp and unconscious beneath him, Harvey realized. He experienced a wild desire to throttle the surgeon here and now, could almost feel his hands around the man’s throat.
“Did they hear us?” Igan whispered.
“Apparently not,” the driver rasped. “No sign of pursuit. I presume you’ll not permit another such lapse. Please report on what happened.”
“Svengaard wakened from the narcotic sooner than we expected.”
“But he was gagged.”
“He… managed to get the gag off, somehow.”
“Perhaps you should kill him. Obviously, he will not take reconditioning.”
Harvey pushed himself off Svengaard. Now that the Cyborg had made the suggestion, he no longer felt like killing Svengaard. Who was it up there in the van’s cab? Harvey wondered. Cyborgs tended to sound alike, that computer personality with its altitude of logic so far above the human. This one, though, came through even more remote than usual.
“Well… consider what to do,” Igan said.
“Svengaard is again secure?”
“He’s been taken care of.”
“No thanks to you,” Harvey said, staring at Igan. “You were right over him.”
Igan’s faced paled. He remembered his frozen immobility after that leap of fear. Anger surged through him. What right had this clod to question a surgeon? He spoke stiffly, “I regret that I’m not a man of violence.”
“Something you’d better learn,” Harvey said. He felt Lizbeth’s hand on his shoulder, allowed her to guide him back onto their bench. “If you have more of that knock-out stuff, maybe you’d better use another dose of it on him before he wakes up again.”
Igan suppressed a sharp reply.
“In the bag under our bench,” Boumour said. “A reasonable suggestion.”
Woodenly, Igan groped for a slapshot and administered it to Svengaard.
Again, the driver’s voice barked through the speaker: “Attention! We must not presume from the lack of immediate and obvious pursuit that they failed to hear the outcry. I am executing Plan Gamma.”
“Who is that driver?” Harvey whispered.
“I didn’t see which one they programed,” Boumour said. He studied Harvey. That had been an appropriate question. The driver did sound odd, much more so than the usual Cyborg abnormality. They’d said the driver would be a programed reflex computer, a machine designed to give the surest response to achieve their escape. Who did they choose for that program?
“What’s Plan Gamma?” Lizbeth whispered.
“We’re abandoning the prepared escape route,” Boumour said. He stared at the forward wall of their box. Abandoning the prepared route… which meant they’d be completely dependent now upon the abilities of the Cyborg driver… and whichever scattered cells of the Underground remained and were available. Any one of those cells could’ve been compromised, of course. Boumour’s usually stolid nature began to entertain odd wisps of fear.
“Driver!” Harvey called.
“Silence,” the driver snapped.
“Stick to the original plan,” Harvey said. “They have the medical facilities there if my wife -”
“Your wife’s safety is not the overriding factor,” the driver said. “Elements along the prepared route must not be discovered. Do not distract me with your objections. Plan Gamma is being executed.”
“Easy does it,” Boumour said as Harvey surged forward, supporting himself with a hand on the bench. “What can you do, Durant?”
Harvey sagged back onto the bench, groped for and found Lizbeth’s hand. She squeezed it, signaled, “Wait. Don’t you read the doctors? They’re frightened too… and worried.”
“I’m worried about you,” Harvey signaled.
So her safety—and presumably ours—aren’t the overriding concern, Boumour thought. What then is the overriding concern? What program controls our computer-in-flesh?
14.
Only Nourse of the Tuyere occupied a throne in the Survey Globe, his attention on the rays, the winking lights and gauges, the cascading luminescences that reported affairs of the Folk. A telltale told him it was night outside in this hemisphere—darkness that spread across the land from Seatac to the megalopolis of N’Scotia. He saw the physical darkness as a sign of frightening events to come and wished Schruille and Calapine would return.
The visual-report screen came alight. Nourse turned to face it as Allgood’s features appeared there. The Security boss bowed to Nourse.
“What is it?” Nourse asked.
“Seatac Checkpoint East reports a van with an odd load of containers has just gone through, Nourse. Its turbines carried masking mutes which we deciphered. The mutes concealed sounds of breathing—five persons hidden in the load. Voices cried out from within as the van pulled away. Acting on your instructions, we put a drop marker onto the van and now have it under observation. What are your orders?”
It begins, Nourse thought. While I’m alone here it begins.
Nourse looked to the instruments covering the checkpoints. Seatac East. The van was a moving green pinpoint on a screen. He read the banked binaries describing the incident, compared them with a total-plan motivational analysis. The probability analogues he derived filled him with a sense of doom.
“The voices have been identified, Nourse,” Allgood said. “The voice prints were -”
“Svengaard and Lizbeth Durant,” Nourse said.
“Where she is, her husband cannot be far away,” Allgood said.
Allgood’s logical little announcements began to annoy Nourse. He contained the emotion while noting the man had overlooked the use of the Optiman’s name-in-address. It was a small sign, but significant, especially when Allgood appeared not to notice his own lapse.
“Which leaves us two unidentified,” Nourse said.
“We can make an educated guess… Nourse.”
Nourse glanced at his probability analogues, said, “Two of our wayward pharmacists.”
“One may be Potter, Nourse.”
Nourse shook his head. “Potter remains in Seatac.”
“They may have a portable vat, Nourse, and that embryo with them,” Allgood said, “but we failed to detect appropriate machinery.”
“You would not hear the machinery being used,” Nourse said. “Or, hearing it, you would not identify it.”
Nourse looked up to the banks of scanners—every one of them alive—showing the Optimen observing their Survey Globe. Night or day, the watching channels were jammed. They know what I mean, he thought. Are they disgusted, or is this just another interesting aspect of violence?
As could have been predicted, Allgood said, “I fail to understand Nourse’s meaning.”
“No need,” Nourse said. He looked at the face in the screen. So young it appeared, but Nourse had begun to notice a thing: There was much youngness in Central, but no youth. Even the Sterrie servants betrayed this fact to the unveiled eye. He felt himself to be like the Sterrie Folk suddenly, watching each other for evidence of aging, hoping by comparison that their own appearance prospered.
“What are Nourse’s instructions?” Allgood asked.
“Svengaard’s outcry indicates he’s a prisoner,” Nourse said. “But we must not overlook the possibility this is an elaborate ruse.” He spoke in a resigned, tired voice.
“Shall we destroy the van, Nourse?”
“Destroy…” Nourse shuddered. “No, not yet. Keep it under surveillance. Put out a general alert. We must discover where they’re headed. Every contact they make must be noted and marked down for attention.”