Seas of Venus(99)

"Patrol!" the blonde shrieked. "Patrol! Where are you, you lazy bastards?"

There were discreet cameras and audio pick-ups every hundred yards down the corridor. As soon as the blonde screamed, a bright blue strobe light flashed a quarter mile away at the guarded entrance which separated the Palm Walk from the public areas of Wyoming Keep.

"Now, you haven't any business here, madam," Wilding said, queasy with the shock of the unknown. It couldn't be anyone he knew. He still couldn't make out the woman's features, but her body odor and the stench of cheap perfume flared his nostrils. "If you don't cause any trouble, then I'm sure the Patrol will let you—"

"Hal, my God, it's me, Francine!" the figure cried. "You've got to help me see Tootles."

Good God, it was Francine.

"Tootles picked her up somewhere," a man explained to his companion. "Then she found him in bed with her maid and hit him with a bottle. She tried to kill him!"

A Patrol scooter, silent except for the hiss of its tires against the pavement, sped toward the disturbance. Its strobe pulsed across Francine's swollen features. She looked as though she had applied her make-up in the dark.

"Tootles isn't here, Francine," Wilding said. He wondered if she was armed.

Chauncey Callahan, Tootles, had started the evening with their party but he'd dropped away hours ago. Nobody else in the group knew Francine as well as Wilding himself did.

Francine snatched his wrist. Her trembling grip had no strength, but her false nails felt like the touch of broken glass. "Hal, you're my friend," she wheezed. "You've got to explain to Tootles that it was just a mistake, that I love him."

"Sent her back where she belonged, of course," said an ice-voiced woman in answer to a question Wilding hadn't heard. "Which was nowhere."

The Patrol scooter pulled up so hard that it squealed. Three men jumped out. One of them swept the group with a hand-held spotlight. The white glare steadied on Francine's raddled, desperate face. Her dilated eyes glowed red in the beam.

"Hal, please," she begged as the other two Patrolmen seized her elbows. Her nails left scratches as she lost her grip on Wilding. "Hal, you remember me! You remember me!"

Francine's blouse was of a natural material from the planetary surface, a soft clinging fabric that fluoresced in white and blue-white light. The cloth blazed now in spotlit radiance, but that only emphasized the stains and tears which had made the garment too worthless to barter for drugs.

Francine pulled the blouse open. Her breasts sagged. "You remember!" she screeched.

"Get her out of here!" Wilding shouted at he turned his face.

One of the Patrolmen injected Francine with something. She sprawled limp and let the pair of them load her into the scooter.

The third Patrolman switched off the spotlight. The strobe pulsed twice more, then cut off also.

"I'm very sorry for this problem, ladies and gentlemen," the senior Patrolman said. His tone was unctuous over an edge of real concern. This could mean his rank, his job, or—or he could fall back into the bleak emptiness reserved for those who had basked in the favor of the powerful, and then lost that favor. Empty days filled with algal protein and holonews images of the glittering folks with whom he had once been in daily contact. A life like that of Francine, drooling in the back of a Patrol vehicle.

"Unfortunately, the man at the entrance recognized the woman and didn't check her name against the updated admissions list," the Patrolman continued. The filament of his spotlight was a fading orange blur. "I trust that none of you were injured, or . . . ?"

"You useless bastards!" the blonde shrilled. "We could have been—"

Wilding grabbed the woman's shoulder. "Shut up," he said very distinctly.

Glory, if her name was Glory, gasped and nestled against him.

Wilding waved at the scooter and its contents. "Get her out of here," he demanded. His voice rose. "Get her out of my life!"

"At once, Mr Wilding," said the Patrolman in relief. He leaped aboard the vehicle. The driver had already started it rolling.

The scooter sped back toward the entrance to the Palm Walk and oblivion. Its tires keened like a woman sobbing.





8


May 17, 382 AS. 1723 hours.




We been rammed by a fucking battleship! Leaf thought as the bamboo crashed down in a monstrous bow wave.

The grasshopper's headplate was smoothly curved and a yard across. The waxy chitinous surface gave no purchase to the hooked foliage, and six powerful legs drove the creature through stems that proved a nearly impassible barrier to humans.

OT Wilding vanished beneath a mat of vegetation that muffled his screams. Yee tried to jump out of the way, but the disaster was too sudden. He got his torso clear, but the stems that cascaded over the trail pinned the gunner's hips and feet to the ground.