Sunburst Page 11

  Shandy looked at the boy in the cage, and the sensitivity of her insights into Jason’s feelings deepened once again. Hate and longing were mixed on Doydoy’s face: the Dumplings were his siblings in psi if not under the skin. In the eight years of their relationship there must have been even for him instants of emotional unity so deep and strong that wrenching away meant leaving something of himself behind. Only the Dumplings had needed and respected Doydoy.

  Yet he had broken away.

  She breathed deeply and spoke to them for the first time. “You see how happy he was.”

  Quimper murmured, “You know a lot about it.”

  “I can see he’s in a cage. I can see he was so hot to get away he didn’t care that he couldn’t get out.” She smiled out of pure reckless delight, because the situation was so nearly hopeless. “It’s kind of a funny choice for somebody who was so happy.”

  Quimper watched her speculatively. The Kingfish snarled, “What we waitin’ for?”

  Quimper held up a hand. “This is interesting.” He said to Shandy, “You’re not lookin’ worried. Maybe you know something we don’t.”

  “Sure, I know something you don’t—and maybe I should be worried.” She smiled again. “I’m just Impervious. You can’t read me, but I haven’t got any kind of psi at all. Not any.”

  There was a stir among them, and she disregarded both that and Jason’s exasperated grunt. This kind of ace was not a card she could hold very long or play more than once. Whatever ability she had to help Doydoy now could not depend on imaginary powers.

  Quimper had not moved. “What are you telling me this for?”

  Shandy was almost beginning to like Curtis Quimper. She took another deep breath. “If I pretended to be something big you might be scared at first, but then you’d find out I was a nothing and you’d have a big laugh. I wouldn’t like that. So I’m telling you the truth, that I am a nothing, and you respect me because I’m not cringing or whimpering. Except for power, it’s the only thing you do respect. Maybe not much, but you’re not laughing.”

  “That right?” the Kingfish yelled. He laughed, stupidly, in order to disprove her words; but it was an angry bark, and it echoed in uneasy stirrings among the others. They were tired of all this.

  Curtis Quimper passed a hand over his face. There was a suspicion of weariness in the gesture, but nothing she would have depended on.

  She said, “Maybe you better ask your friend here”—she indicated Doydoy—“if he wants to come. I can’t talk for him.”

  A boy yelled from the Pack, “He needs somebody to talk for him, that’s for sure!” and flicked his lower lip with a forefinger in an ugly wub-wub sound.

  Curtis Quimper frowned and there was silence, but the Kingfish was certainly swearing with his eyebrows. “I don’t like that kind of thinking, Scooter,” Quimper said.

  The Dumplings shifted their feet, and LaVonne laughed. “You gettin’ old, Quimp?”

  “No fights here!” Quimper snapped. “I ain’t askin’ for bombs.” He gave his attention to the cage again. “Come on, Doydoy. We’ll take your friend Hemmer, too, and we don’t have to worry about spies.”

  He reached for the latch, and Shandy took a dreadful chance.

  “Stand back!” she cried, and Quimper, startled, retreated a step. She put her hand on the latch and said very quietly, “I think Donatus ought to make his own choice.” In a continuous unhurried movement she swung down on the stiff handle and pulled the heavy door open. “It’s all yours,” she said.

  It was all the power she had: to stall and give Doydoy a few minutes to pull himself together and make his own decision; to startle Curtis Quimper—something only an Imper could do—in order to give Doydoy the freedom to act for himself. After that, if he went with them it was his own choice. And all of the blame would rest with her.

  There was the stillness of a second, and Doydoy moved stiffly in the cage, drew breath with a shudder, and soared.

  In the air he was at once commanding and ridiculous: a pterodactyl, or a Portuguese man-of-war, with his humped back and his limp legs dangling. But he was far from helpless: as he hovered over their gaping upturned faces, three riderless tractors plunged down the ramp, roaring and directionless; the Dumplings yelled and scattered as the tractors swerved, huge tires screaming.

  Doydoy hovered for one second over the melee; then, almost graceful, he rose again and dipped down to land on Jason’s back. His arms went over Jason’s shoulders, Jason’s hands reached back to pull the hanging legs round his waist; and, as one, they disappeared.

  The tractors skidded and stopped. But the Dumplings had vanished one by one, yelling, emptying the place with dust-swirls to mark their passage.

  All but one.

  Shandy clung to the cage and trembled; dust settled around a crumbled figure on the floor.

  She ran over and knelt beside it as a swarm of men began to pour down the ramp. It was the Kingfish. One of the tractors had crushed him and he was dead.

  He was not going to lead the Pack.

  Sunburst: 9

  She had been shoved into a small empty office on the ground floor, and had nothing more to do than wait there, heels hooked on chair rungs, hands gripping elbows. Prothero had addressed a single remark to her as they brought her past his doorway: “Judas Priest! What did I ever do to deserve you!”

  She heard his fury still boiling out of the office and along the corridors, breaking against the walls and washing like ashes and lava against her locked and guarded door.

  She was neither ashamed nor proud of what she had done, but she could understand Prothero’s point of view—for all the good it would do her. Jason Hemmer was more valuable to him than any other single person in Sorrel Park, Colin included. Doydoy was nothing to him, and she had lost him Jason.

  For herself, in unloosing Doydoy she had contributed to the death of the Kingfish, a living person. She knew what it was to be afraid of psi now, not because she had felt its effects, but because she had manipulated it like a sorcerer’s apprentice. Its danger threatened not only the powerless, but the psyche of its user. Only a psychopath could use it without damaging his spirit: a psychopath had no conscience.

  Jason and Doydoy gone…if she could be sure they were safe it would be consolation in a comfortless world. Probably they had gone to join Jason’s friends; probably they would find a way to take care of themselves; she would never see them again, and never know if she had helped them.

  The door opened. Tapley was there, sardonic and pink-cheeked. She remembered him—he had taken notes for Grace when Jason was brought in to Prothero’s office after the Dump checkup. Her duffel was swinging over his shoulder. “Come along. Prothero’s got plans for you.”

  She got up slowly. “He’s not giving me up to the civvies!”

  “You wanna argue with him?”

  “N-no.”

  “Then come on!”

  The jeep rolled out of the gate without farewells. It was no loss; she didn’t feel like facing Urquhart or the others.

  She did want a serious conversation with Tapley, but the jeep was bouncing so wildly her teeth were chattering nearly out of her skull. There were only three-and-a-half miles between the Dump and the town. The late evening sun was burning down along the hills; it was too good and warm to give up for one of Casker’s cells.

  “Not so fast, please!” she begged, nearly biting her tongue in half.

  Tapley glanced at her. The open misery in her face must have touched even his stony heart, because he eased up on the accelerator a trifle. She cast about wildly, estimating the force of the thud she would land with if she jumped out.

  “It’s no use,” he said. “I’ve heard about all your tricks. If you want to look at the sunset you better get Casker to give you a cell on the west side.” And he speeded up again.

  “Gee, Tapley, can’t you let m
e go? I never did you any harm.”

  “No, and you’re not gonna, either.” He kept his attention on the road. It was desolate, with scrubby wood lots on either side, and barbed wire beyond them.

  “You’re not a very sympathetic person,” she ground out between clenched teeth. They were approaching Pringle’s Post, a weather-beaten shed that had once been a fruit stand when jobs were good at the power plant and traffic passed in the mornings and evenings. “I thought the Dumplings were camped out here.”

  “Scout says they’ve shifted.”

  “I’m hungry. Couldn’t we stop somewhere and get something to eat?”

  “Nope.”

  No-one had offered her supper, and anyway she had lost her appetite at the sight of the Kingfish. But she was young and healthy and a few foodless hours had brought it back. Four days ago she had eaten with Jason at Jake’s. The food was awful even by her low standards, but she had a feeling it was vastly superior to what she would get in jail.

  “I really am awfully hungry, Tapley.”

  “Civvies don’t starve anybody. Be there in three minutes.”

  “Three minutes!”

  He slowed down again. “Look, kid. I gotta bring back a receipt for you from Casker. Neither snow nor hail nor heat of day’s gonna stop me from delivering you and getting that receipt. I still got three weeks to go in this hellhole. I want to have my brainwash and get back to my wife and kids. You understand?”

  “Yes…but I’ve been here all my life, and I don’t want to be here and in jail too.”

  He glared over the steering wheel.

  “I thought the MP didn’t give people up to the civvies.”

  “You’re a special case.”

  Special. “The civvies knocked in my stepmother’s still—and bust her jaw besides.”

  “They might not do that to you if you’re good. …though it’d shut you up some.”

  She was ready to cry. They had already passed the market gardens and gingerbread houses of the outskirts. One minute, perhaps less.

  She noticed suddenly that it was very quiet for a Sorrel Park Friday evening, usually a warm-up for Saturday night. She imagined a cowed and downbeaten people holed up like rabbits in fear of Dumplings to whom walls were nothing. There were no street lamps winking on in the thickening dusk; the men had probably been afraid to come out and repair the lines. And there weren’t any emergency generators to switch on here when the main power blew. A few flickering lights in windows suggested candles or hurricane lamps.

  The jeep turned along Main Street toward the municipal offices. Tapley began to whistle a tune. His plump pink face drawn up in a whistler’s pout looked as innocent as a baby’s. She had a terrifying vision of him vanishing out the door whistling like that while Mrs. Baggs the police matron was dragging her off to the slop buckets by the slack of her jersey.

  There was plenty of space in front of the offices and he parked there. This place had a generator: a dismal yellow lamp burned in the fanlight.

  She turned to face him for the last time. “Gee, whiz, Tapley, you wouldn’t want to see this happen to your kids.”

  He got out of the jeep and stood there. His face was shadowed, but not so shadowed that his eyes did not show dark and angry. She had known she said the wrong thing as soon as the words left her mouth, not for their effect on him, but for what they did to her own self-respect.

  “No,” he said, “I wouldn’t want this to happen to my kids. And it couldn’t happen to my kids, because they’re decent. Not as bright as you’re supposed to be, but they’re decent.” She shrank a little at his intensity. “My kids wouldn’t have been lugging bootleg liquor, or hiding in Prothero’s office to steal his papers. My kids wouldn’t have lost us our peeper. Now come on!”

  She got out and pulled the duffel after her. His argument had hurt, but she thought she had an answer for it. She paused and searched for the sensitive in his truculent face. “You’re self-righteous, Tapley. Your kids weren’t brought up in Sorrel Park.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Good’s good anywhere.”

  “That’s right. But you know what the civvies are like, and how they enforce their laws. I’ve done bad and stupid things, but I’m not sorry I helped Jason save Doydoy—and I shouldn’t have to be treated this way. You figure you’ll be brainwashed soon, you won’t ever hear of this place again, and you’ll never have to figure out what’s really right and wrong in Sorrel Park. But I’m stuck here, and I have to do that every minute.”

  His lips were drawn tight. She sighed and started up the stairs, dragging her bundle.

  She pushed on the heavy door, and it swung open, creaking. The hall was stuffy with the accumulated heat of day, and silent. The cooling winds swept in and began to whirl a small litter of torn papers on the floor; the doors creaked and swung closed; the papers tumbled and became still. They stood there, looking about. Then there was one strange noise.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tapley stiffen; there was a faint snap as he undid his holster. He took her by the arm and led her to an office door. The pane of glass was broken, and “…SKER…OUNTY…EF” with cracks running through it was all that was left of Casker’s golden name. It seemed there was going to be plenty of work for glaziers in Sorrel Park if the place ever settled down.

  “Looks like the Dumplings’ve been here already,” said Shandy.

  The noise resumed, coming from Casker’s office. It sounded as though someone were bound and gagged in there, and Shandy cheerfully pictured Casker tied up in knots. Tapley pulled out his gun with his free hand.

  “But they aren’t around now, or you’d never have got to lay a hand on that.”

  “Shut up.” He stepped into the doorway, pulling her along behind him. At least he didn’t intend to use her for a shield. There was still a dim light from the windows, enough to show that the room had been wrecked, desk pushed over, chairs in pieces, floor awash with crumpled papers. Tapley replaced his gun and groped for the light switch. The generator put forth one more feeble light and they discovered not Casker but Mrs. Baggs on the floor, trussed and gagged like the pig she ordinarily resembled, hair awry and face a furious red.

  Shandy said happily, “Well, that’s not Dumplings—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Tapley snarled. “Undo her.”

  Shandy hesitated. She would have been perfectly satisfied to leave Mrs. Baggs as she was.

  Tapley allowed his hand to rest on the gun butt. She dropped her duffel, knelt down beside the helpless woman and began to pick at the knot in the handkerchief gag.

  “Hurry up!”

  “I can’t go any faster, I’m breaking my fingernails!” The knot loosened and the gag came off at last. Mrs. Baggs spat and expressed her feelings freely.

  “Save that. Who did all this—Dumplings?”

  “Nah, we had that this morning. This is a buncha hoodlums turned the place upside down, grabbed Casker an’ two others—gossake, git this stuff offa me!”

  “Where was everybody else?”

  “Some kook come in with a story about a riot over on Ticonderoga, Casker was dumb enough to send everybody out but us four an’—come on, I’m gettin’ rope burns!”

  Shandy rubbed her fingers. “They’re all square knots—”

  “I don’t give a damn what they are, git’m off!”

  No use putting off the inevitable. She undid them.

  Mrs. Baggs pulled herself up and flexed her biceps with a will that promised revenge. “No use goin’ for the phone. Lines are down.” She twisted a knot in her hair as though it were the neck of a miscreant, and pegged it down with a fierce hairpin. “Who’s the brat?”

  Tapley was surveying the wreckage of the office. Shandy had moved away a few steps and now stared at the cracks in the dirty floor. Waiting for the ax to fall. She was not going to be caught dead making an appeal this
time.

  “Hah? I said, who’s—”

  “Oh—uh…just a package I’m delivering somewhere for Prothero.”

  “Hah?” The pig-face opened in a grin, remarkably like LaVonne’s. “Valuable?”

  “She thinks she is.”

  Shandy was numb. Tapley put a hand on her shoulder. “Come on, I gotta radio from the jeep.”

  Mrs. Baggs called after them, “Hey, when you guys gonna help us out with a few soldier-boys?”

  Tapley turned. “Thought your blueboys wouldn’t be caught dead having us around.”

  “Them? Them rednecks, their mas runs the stills. Listen, I could tell you—” But the doors were closing behind them, and they were out in the evening.

  Shandy followed meekly, afraid to say a word and spoil everything. Tapley stopped beside the jeep and reached for the microphone. He spoke a few curt words, hung up, and dug in his pocket for a cigarette pack. He lit up, inhaled, and blew a plume of smoke out on the dark blue air. Shandy waited.

  He stood there a moment, leaning against the jeep and smoking. Then he said, “Well?”

  She blinked at him.

  “You got friends here to take you in?”

  “Yes.”

  “This place is dangerous, and it’s gonna be worse. I can’t take you back, but I don’t want you running around the streets.”

  “They live here.”

  He dropped the butt and stamped on it; sparks flashed and died under his foot. “Now…all I need is a story for Old Ironpants.”

  Treading on eggs, not to spoil it, she said very gently, “You didn’t want to leave me with the old bat because you’re too decent. Why don’t you just tell him the truth, Tapley?”

  He gave her one glare, jumped in, and gunned the motor. The jeep swung out with furious sound in the deserted street. She watched the taillights disappearing and there was darkness and emptiness again.

  * * * *

  She parked her duffel in the nearest trashcan and trotted along Main over toward Seventh. If the Pypers wouldn’t take her in she had no idea what she was going to do. There was no-one about, but the air was filled with urgency. With the civvies losing control the place was going to be full of life in an hour. She wanted to be out of the way, especially out of the way of hoodlums; it was not much fun matching wits with the witless. Dumplings were not extra bright, but there were plenty of interesting things about psi that were not shared by mobs and civvies. She would have liked to meet Jason’s friends, but she didn’t know where they lived, and had no right to bother them with her troubles, anyway.