The Syndic Part 21

She sat bolt upright, screaming. Her eyes didn't see Charles. He drew back one hand and slammed it across her cheek in a slap that reverberated like a pistol shot. Her head rocked to the blow and her eyes snapped back from infinity-focus.

She never told Charles what they had done to the sick slave in the machine shop, and he never asked her.

Without writing equipment, for crutches, Charles doubted profoundly that he'd be able to hang onto any of the material she supplied. He surprised himself; his memory developed with exercise.

The shadowy ranks of the New Portsmouth personnel became solider daily in his mind; the chronically-fatigued ordnance-man whose mainspring was to get by with the smallest possible effort; the s.e.x-obsessed little man in Intelligence who lived only for the brothels where he selected older women--women who looked like his mother; the human weasel in Bus.h.i.+ps who was impotent in bed and a lacerating tyrant in the office; the admiral who knew he was dying and hated his juniors proportionately to their youth and health.

And--

"... this woman of yours ... she ain't at home there ... she ain't at ... at home ... _anywhere_. ... the fat man, the one that kills, he's talking to her but she isn't ... yes she is ... no she isn't--she's answering him, talking about over-the-sea...."

"Lee Falcaro," Charles whispered. "Lee Bennet."

The trance-frozen face didn't change; the eerie whisper went on without interruption: "... Lee Bennet on her lips, Lee Falcaro down deep in her guts ... and the face of Charles Orsino down there too...."

An unexpected pang went through him.

He sorted and cla.s.sified endlessly what he had learned. He formed and rejected a dozen plans. At last there was one he could not reject.

XV

Commander Grinnel was officer of the day, and sore as a boil about it.

O.N.I. wasn't supposed to catch the duty. You risked your life on cloak-and-dagger missions; let the sh.o.r.e-bound fancy dans do the drudgery. But there he was, nevertheless, in the guard house office with a .45 on his hip, the interminable night stretching before him, and the ten-man main guard snoring away outside.

He eased his bad military conscience by reflecting that there wasn't anything to guard, that patrolling the sh.o.r.e establishment was just worn out tradition. The s.h.i.+ps and boats had their own watch. At the very furthest stretch of the imagination, a tarzan might sneak into town and try to steal some ammo. Well, if he got caught he got caught. And if he didn't, who'd know the difference with the accounting as sloppy as it was here? They did things differently in Iceland.

They crept through the midnight dark of New Portsmouth's outskirts. As before, she led with her small hand. Lights flared on a wharf where, perhaps, a boat was being serviced. A slave screamed somewhere under the lash or worse.

"Here's the doss house," Martha whispered. It was smack between paydays--part of the plan--and the house was dark except for the hopefully-lit parlor. They ducked down the alley that skirted it and around the back of Bachelor Officer Quarters. The sentry, if he were going his rounds at all, would be at the other end of his post when they pa.s.sed--part of the plan.

Lee Falcaro was quartered alone in a locked room of the O.N.I. building.

Martha had, from seventy miles away, frequently watched the lock being opened and closed.

They dove under the building's crumbling porch two minutes before a late crowd of drinkers roared down the street and emerged when they were safely gone. There was a charge of quarters, a little yeoman, snoozing under a dim light in the O.N.I. building's lobby.

"Anybody else?" Charles whispered edgily.

"No. Just her. She's asleep. Dreaming about--never mind. Come on Charles. He's out."

The little yeoman didn't stir as they pa.s.sed him and crept up the stairs. Lee Falcaro's room was part of the third-floor attic, finished off specially. You reached it by a ladder from a second-floor one-man office.

The lock was an eight-b.u.t.ton piccolo--very rare in New Portsmouth and presumably loot from the mainland. Charles' fingers flew over it: 1-7-5-4-, 2-2-7-3-, 8-2-6-6- and it flipped open silently.

But the door squeaked.

"She's waking up!" Martha hissed in the dark. "She'll yell!"

Charles reached the bed in two strides and clamped his hand over Lee Falcaro-Bennet's mouth. Only a feeble "mmm!" came out, but the girl thrashed violently in his grip.

"Shut up, lady!" Martha whispered. "n.o.body's going to rape you."

There was an astonished "mmm?" and she subsided, trembling.

"Go ahead," Martha told him. "She won't yell."

He took his hand away nervously. "We've come to administer the oath of citizens.h.i.+p," he said.

The girl answered in the querulous voice that was hardly hers: "You picked a strange time for it. Who are you? What's all the whispering for?"

He improvised. "I'm Commander Lister. Just in from Iceland aboard atom sub _Taft_. They didn't tell you in case it got turned down, but I was sent for authorization to give you citizens.h.i.+p. You know how unusual it is for a woman."

"Who's this child? And why did you get me up in the dead of night?"

He dipped deeply into Martha's probings of the past week.

"Citizens.h.i.+p'll make the Guard Intelligence gang think twice before they try to grab you again. Naturally they'd try to block us if we administered the oath in public. Ready?"

"Dramatic," she sneered. "Oh, I suppose so. Get it over with."

"Do you, Lee Bennet, solemnly renounce all allegiances previously held by you and pledge your allegiance to the North American Government?"

"I do," she said.

There was a choked little cry from Martha. "h.e.l.l's fire," she said.

"Like breaking a leg!"

"What are you talking about, little girl?" Lee asked, coldly alert.

"It's all right," Charles said wearily. "Don't you know my voice? I'm Orsino. You turned me in back there because they don't give, citizens.h.i.+p to women and so your de-conditioning didn't get triggered off. I managed to break for the woods. A bunch of natives got me. I busted loose with the help of Martha here. Among her other talents, the kid's a mind reader. I remember the triggering shocked me out of a year's growth; how do you feel?"

Lee was silent, but Martha answered in a voice half puzzled and half contemptuous: "She feels fine, but she's crying."

"Am not," Lee Falcaro gulped.

Charles turned from her, embarra.s.sed. In a voice that strove to be normal, he whispered to Martha: "What about the boat?"

"Still there," she said.

Lee Falcaro said tremulously: "Wh-wh-what boat?"

"Martha's staked out a reactor-driven patrol speedboat at a wharf. One guard aboard. She--watched it in operation and I have some small-boat time. I really think we can grab it. If we get a good head-start, they don't have anything based here that'll catch up with it. If we get a break on the weather, their planes won't be able to pick us up."

Lee Falcaro stood up, das.h.i.+ng tears from her eyes. "Then let's go," she said evenly.