Alan Dean Foster Read online

  Sykes felt something hot and hard strike his back. He didn't slow down to check it out or even to feel if his coat might be on fire. It was a chilly evening. A small blaze would be welcome.

  As for Kipling, Sykes was warmed by the knowledge that he'd been able to spare the taxpayer one more court cost. But Kipling was nothing; a loose screw, a cog in the wheel. The wheel himself was up ahead, fighting to clear the top of a ten-foot-tall fence.

  Harcourt fell to the pavement on the other side, struggled to his feet, and recovered the suitcase. He stumbled toward the dark silhouette of the drawbridge. With great satisfaction the detective observed that the Newcomer was now limping.

  Reaching the fence, he paused briefly to aim the Casull with both hands, blowing the lock to scrap. A single kick opened the gate.

  The bridge's roadbed hung frozen in the open position, a massive dark slab of steel and asphalt stabbing the night sky. Harcourt ran through alternating pools of moonlight

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  and shadow as he approached the towering structure. Black seawater drifted past him. He ignored it as he concentrated on the way ahead, the only path remaining open to him. Once, his foot slipped and he almost went over the edge. He was panting hard now.

  Sykes pounded along close behind, trying to regulate his breathing the way he'd learned on the street. If the other guy doesn't have a car waiting or a ready hole to bolt into, you take your time and wear him down. Don't kill yourself trying to catch up to him. Wait until he collapses from exhaustion. Then you pick him up and read him his rights.

  A pity Miranda had been extended to cover Newcomers. The Casull weighed heavily in his fist.

  Harcourt finally ran out of protective shadows near the beginning of the bridge. He turned a slow circle, his gaze intent on his surroundings, but there was nowhere else to run. The leap from the crest of the drawbridge to the other side was too much for any Newcomer, even had he been able to negotiate the steep climb to the top. There was ocean on both sides, and the. relentless human detective hardly a few strides behind. He might conceal himself for a minute or two and then make a dash back to the main roadway, but his leg was hurting and the human appeared intact.

  Though it was too late, he now realized how badly he'd underestimated the seemingly ignorant, foul-mouthed, poorly educated cop. Not that he wasn't ignorant, foul-mouthed, and poorly educated, but he knew his job. Harcourt realized he would have no chance to flee back to the road. The man would hunt him down, checking each hiding place until he had Harcourt cornered.

  If by some miracle he managed to elude the detective momentarily, there was still the matter of the enormous handgun the man was carrying. Even with a limp he might outrun the tired human, but he could not outrun a steel slug.

  It was intolerable.

  A great calm came over him. When there is nothing else left, you do the last thing. Flipping the double latches on the suitcase, he slowly opened it to reveal the precious contents. Tube after gleaming glass tube, each brimming with blue

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  ecstasy. The culmination of a lifetime's dreams, of endless hard work and planning. All worthless now. Worthless, but not useless.

  Sykes slowed as he neared the buildings. Several minutes had passed since he'd last seen Harcourt, and there were places here where even an outsized Newcomer could conceal himself. He wasn't as worried about Harcourt as he'd been about his bodyguard Kipling, but the entrepreneur was still an alien: big, strong, and desperate.

  Something moved in the darkness on his right and he brought the Casull to bear on it. It moved again-and flew away. A nesting gull, disturbed by all the activity. Taking a deep breath, he walked on, his finger tense on the Casull's trigger as he studied the night.

  More movement, there to his left. Up came the big gun again. Despite the chill he found he was perspiring, and not just from exhaustion. He found himself wishing for the backup that wasn't there.

  "Come on out, Harcourt," he said tensely. "It's all history. Kipling's dead, your people are scattered, and we found your lab. You're history, too. " A drop of sweat stung his eye. He ignored it.

  No reaction from the shadows, and then Harcourt stepped into the moonlight. His expression was composed, relaxed. The smile was back on his face, the glint of superiority in his eye. He held his hands out from his sides, palms facing upward, in a gesture of surrender.

  Sykes advanced cautiously. Harcourt stared back at him, unmoving, reading the conflict in the detective's face. He wanted Harcourt to try for the gun, to run, to give him an excuse. How disappointed he must be at my compliance, Harcourt thought amusedly.

  "Here I am, Officer. As you can see, I am unarmed."

  "Yeah, I can see. Move a finger, Harcourt, and you'rehistory for sure.

  Tug- I wish he was here, wish he was the one holding this. But he ain't, so I'll have to do."

  "Each of us does what we have to do, Sergeant. But you are wrong. History is not involved here. Eternity is."

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  Sykes's eyes fell as he saw what Harcourt had been carrying concealed in the crook of one arm: one of the kilo-size cylinders of the blue drug.

  Ssjabroka. The glass gleamed in the moonlight. As he looked on, the still grinning entrepreneur quickly lifted the tube to his mouth and swallowed.

  A full kilo of pure concentrate poured down his throat, dribbling like runaway jello down his chin as his mouth filled to overflowing. He chugalugged the tube's contents before Sykes could react.

  Tossing the empty cylinder aside, he gazed defiantly back at the detective.

  It hit within seconds. His face contorted in agony as his whole body convulsed from the effects of the massive overdose. A gaping Sykes lowered the muzzle of the Casull and stared as the Newcomer collapsed on the ground, his body in the grasp of a massive, violent seizure. Limbs hammered against the earth and his back arched spasmodically.

  It took all of ten seconds, maybe twelve. Then Harcourt lay still.

  It took Sykes longer than that to rewver enough to move. Still holding firmly to the Casull, he slowly approached the motionless form and took its pulse the way he'd watched his partner do it. There was nothing. No indication of life whatsoever.

  The gun dangling heavy and cold in his fingers, Sykes rose. Espying the suitcase lying nearby, he latched it shut and hefted it in his free hand.

  Then he turned back to the still blazing cars.

  Francisco lay where his partner had left him. Sykes picked up his pace a little as he came within sight of the prone detective. His mind was still full of what he'd just seen, so it wasn't surprising that he failed to notice that the door on the driver's side of the police cruiser was standing open.

  The weight hit him hard and heavy, knocking him down. The suitcase went flying and the Casull skittered noisily across the pavement. Sykes rolled, found himself staring up at the singed, badly burned and still bleeding nightmare shape of Kipling. As the Newcomer reached for the suit-196

  case, Sykes heard the sound again, a sound as distinctive as the tarnished silvery bracelet the Newcomer wore. The sound of Bill Tuggle's killer.

  He'd hit the ground hard, bouncing his head, and though he struggled hard he was unable to stand. Nothing from his eyes to his toes was working right. Kipling raised the heavy case preparatory to bringing it down on the detective's skull.

  Somewhere in the distance a gun roared. A huge hole appeared in Kipling's chest, He stood tottering over Sykes's prone form, the suitcase held high overhead. The detective rolled to his right, saw Francisco sitting up and holding the smoking Casull in his right hand as he tried to steady himself with the other.

  Kipling came on again, wielding the suitcase like a club. Francisco fired a second time, kept firing until he'd emptied the cylinder. The fusillade drove Kipling backward, back into the molten inferno that had once been two vehicles.

  Rising painfully, Sykes stumbled to his partner's side. Francisco let the weight of the handgun carry his hand back to the ground as the sergeant knelt b
eside him. Gently he took the hot Casull from the thick, alien fingers.

  They stayed like that, resting together, ignoring the crackling, stinking blaze behind them as sirens began to wail against the night.

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  After the first cruiser arrived to check out the reports of a fire, things moved quickly. Sykes got on the radio and exhaustedly ran through the events of the evening, leaving out only what he thought was unnecessary. Ordinarily he would have been full of piss and vinegar, swearing at the dispatcher, boasting of his own accomplishments, cursing the entire department for not moving fast enough to help and for not reading his mind. But not this time.

  Not tonight. He was too tired, and still stunned from what he'd witnessed.

  The mop-up was winding down. The blazing cars had lorIg since been doused and the fire department people were rewinding their hoses and washing up.

  Cop cars formed a black and white halo around the scene of destruction. The coroner's wagon had parked close by. Two techs were studying Kipling's remains, marveling at the size of the holes Sykes's nonregulation pistol had put in the Newcomer body. Radios crackled, disembodied voices speaking to the living across miles of metropolis.

  Having completed their preliminary reports and concluded their interviews, the two detectives were finally left alone. They sat side by side on a curb, staring out at the harbor. A ship was heading slowly to Somewhere Else, its lights moving at right angles to the horizon like computerized fireflies.

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  Francisco held his knees up close to his chin, his fingers locked. Now he turned to regard his partner.

  "With Harcourt and Kipling dead and this business concluded to your satisfaction, I would assume you will be requesting reassignment now.

  You've obtained what you wanted."

  "It'd be for your own good," Sykes mumbled without meeting the Newcomer's eyes. "I'm not just shitting you. I mean it. I think you'd be better off with a partner who's a little more," and he couldn't keep himself from smiling, "by the book. In tune with procedure. Like you said, you've got a wife and kids. You're the first Newcomer detective. With luck you might become the first Newcomer lieutenant, maybe even captain someday. You'll never do that hangin' around with me. I'm strictly street, George. I break too many rules, step on too many toes. You, you're not the toe-steppin'

  type."

  "You could find yourself in line for a promotion out of this as well, Matthew," his partner reminded him.

  Sykes shook his head. "Administration doesn't appeal to me. You know, I never really wanted to make Lieutenant. Got to kiss too many boots, get dressed up and go to the fight kinds of places. Functions like where we first ran into Harcourt. That means dealing with and being nice to people like Harcourt. That's not my style. I'm a duty cop, George, even if somebody did lose his mind and make me a detective. That's what I do. I like doing it.

  "You, you're admin material. You give good speeches. I don't talk so good.

  And you sure dress a helluva lot better than me. "

  "My wife," he declared with a shrug. "I can get by."

  "You sure can. I gotta tell you, George, for a quiet gu you're sure hell on wheels when you make up your mind to get goin'. I'd kinda hate to miss your next two days as a detective."

  The Newcomer smiled, glancing up as red and blue lights approached. Sykes recognized the uniform who was dfiving, a solid uniform named Whiltey. He rolled down his window and leaned out.

  "You guys want, I'll give you a lift back to the station. They're waiting there to take your statements on the shootings."

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  "We've already done that," Sykes told him.

  Whiltey shook his head and looked apologetic. "You know the routine. Where shootings are involved, all field reports have to be followed by formal debriefings. You're gonna have to go through it all again, Sykes." His eyes shifted uncertainly to Francisco. "You too."

  "I am aware of the procedure," the Newcomer informed him blandly. "I thought we might have some time to rest."

  "Don't look like it. Hop in."

  Sykes started to rise. "Let's go, partner." He looked back at Whiltey. "Oh, and it's shooting. Singular."

  The cop frowned. "They said there were two."

  Sykes was shaking his'head as he started around the front of the patrol car. "Nope. I guess some joe just assumed. I didn't shoot Harcourt. He OD'd.-

  Since he was walking ahead of his partner, Sykes didn't see the look that came over Francisco's face.

  The coroner's wagon was jouncing along the side road, the driver in no hurry to make it to the freeway. Why rush? Their stiff passengers never went anywhere and nobody was getting paid by the hour. So they took their time. To keep from bruising the bodies, the official reports always insisted. Made the work of trying to tell which bruises were induced by blunt objects and which by the long ride in the wagon much easier.

  The driver handled the wheel with one hand. His assistant leaned against the door and gazed at the dark street in front of them. He was looking forward to the relaxing drive back to the morgue. Night duty was a delight.

  Oh, it played hell with your social life, but anything was worth not having to fight L.A. traffic during the day.

  "So it's just me and her left in the hot tub, right?" the driver was saying as he cruised through a green light.

  "You and the blonde?" the other man asked.

  "No, man, the redhead." The driver kept his attention on the road ahead.

  "The blonde's in the house with some other guy. But a few minutes later she comes back alone, when me and the redhead are going at it fast and furious in the

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  tub, ya know? And she sees us, and she climbs right in with US."

  The assistant made a face. "You're full of shit.-

  An expression of outraged innocence came over the driver's face. "I swear it! If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'."

  The argument kept them too busy to see the hand that ripped through the tough material of the body bag secured in the back of the wagon. The hand was not human.

  It was not even Newcomer.

  Francisco rode up front with Whiltey. Sykes sat on the edge of the rear seat as he nervously scanned the road ahead. His partner was trying to look every direction at once, wishing for eyes in the sides of his head, His stomach was twisting itself slowly around an invisible steel bar.

  "You are certain this is the route they would have taken?"

  Whiltey frowned. "I ain't positive. Sometimes those meat wagon guys do funny things. I wouldn't want 'em truckin' my corpus around. They might've stopped off for a quickie somewhere, or a burger, or to see somebody's mother, without reporting it in. But if I were drivin' and heading straight for the morgue, this is the way I'd go."

  Sykes couldn't stand it anymore. "What's this all about, George? I know that look. -

  Francisco started to reply, instead spotted something out his window and began gesturing wildly. His usual calm had deserted him. "There! Go back.

  Down that side street."

  Whiltey obediently braked, backed up, and made a left turn. There was little enough traffic on the main drag, but down here by the docks it was utterly deserted this time of night.

  Deserted, but not empty. They found the coroner's wagon halted in the middle of the intersection. Headlights and roof lights were still on, cutting through the blackness. The back doors stood ajar. There was also a patrol car, parked on the other side of the wagon. Sykes searched for signs of life, found none.

  Whiltey approached the eerie scene slowly. The wagon 201

  and car looked like abandoned props from a film waiting for cast and crew to return and bring them back to life. His eyes were as big as saucers as he reached for the radio mike. A huge hand quickly covered the pickup.

  "No!" Both Sykes and the uniform gaped at Francisco. From the looks on their faces he knew more than action was required. "We must do this alone.

  "

  "Do what?" Sykes was at t
he end of his always short mental rope. One minute they were taking it easy preparing to head back to the station, then George was going crazy, insisting they take off in mad pursuit of the coroner's wagon. What the hell was going on, anyway?

  When asked, Francisco responded by exiting the patrol car. Sykes and Whiltey had little choice but to follow. Not if they wanted answers.

  They reached the van. Sykes took a flashlight from Whiltey and shined it through the open back doors. They had not been opened in the manufacturer's approved fashion. Both were bent outward, smashed half off their hinges.

  He played the light around the interior until it came to rest on the split body bag. The rotating blue and red lights atop the deserted patrol car filled the wagon with garish carnival colors.

  Francisco took one look and sprinted for the patrol car. There was no sign of the occupants. One door had been torn off and lay like a dead scallop in the middle of the street. The front windshield was completely gone, smashed in, pulverized. Shattered glass filled the front seat.

  It was Whiltey who reached the other side of the car first.

  "Oh, God. . ."

  The two detectives joined him, saw what had brought their companion officer up short. The bodies of the coroner wagon driver and his assistant lay stretched out on the asphalt, battered and crushed. Twisted and bent Re mistreated children's toys, the two uniforms who'd arrived in the freeway cruiser lay in a heap not far away.

  Whiltey held a hand to his mouth as he backed away from the corpses.

  "That's it. I'm calling for backup, now."

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  Francisco took a step toward him, "Whiltey, no."

  The cop wasn't in the mood to listen to anyone, much less a Newcomer.

  Trying to follow, the detective found himself caught and spun around by an angry and frustrated Sykes.

  "Okay, George, I've had enough. I want an explanation." He nodded tersely in the direction of the four bodies. "You've got an idea what happened here, I want to know what you know. What is this, George? What the hell's going on here?"