"It's b.l.o.o.d.y obvious," said the sergeant. He sat down, staring aggressively at Truck.

"Look," said the IWG man, "really this is a Fleet matter, Sergeant. Medical supplies are involved. There's a 'hold' order out on this man from General Gaw herself." He found a piece of paper.

The sergeant looked impressed. Truck felt as if a fish was trying to escape from his lungs. He squirmed about in his chair, trying to think of something to do. The local law had been allowed its pound of flesh, then circ.u.mvented.

'Til tell you everything, Sergeant!" he said desperately. "I'm a small cog in a vast machine. A chemist on Sad al Ban is planning to flood the market with an augmented heroin-AdAc mixture. He has Trotskyist-Leninist backing-but I'll only tell you-**

The sergeant hissed and bent over the table. An expression of triumph crossed his thick features. "I knew it!" he whispered. Then he shook his head ruefully. "Taken out of my hands,** he said. "Taken right out of 47 my hands-** He glanced sulkily at the IWG man. "I could have made it to lieutenant."

Truck jumped to his feet and ran for the cell door. Furniture clattered behind him. He was halfway there when the IWG agent kicked him effortlessly in the base of the spine. He hit his head on the wall. These days, he always seemed to be falling down. He noticed that the lice had stopped biting him; he suspected they'd left the sinking ship.

The IWG man turned out to be called Nodes. He seemed peculiarly out of touch with his own situation. He even introduced himself formally as he walked Track through the sterile but greasy corridors of West Central (inst.i.tutional corridors have this quality-they combine against odds asepsis and grime, as if the ancient cycle of daylight fouling and midnight disinfectant has imparted a glaze, an intermediate patina, to their walls) toward the dreary Carter's Snort morning outside.

He said that there was no reason for them to have a negative relationship; he said that he was as human a being as Truck, since he had a wife and three fine children; he insisted on calling Truck "John," unaware that by attempting to change their traditional roles, he. was simply implementing and reinforcing them. In short, he was a policeman. "We shouldn't be alienated," he said.

Truck tried to catch his watery, old-animal eyes.

"You're off your head. You know this charge is a frame? You know this General Gaw woman?"

Nodes smiled, staring off down the corridors.

"You know, that isn't much of a contribution, is it John? Honestly? If I offer you a more constructive relationship than that of officer and detainee, you should come some way to meet me, shouldn't you?*

"For Christ's sake stop calling me that."

Truck thought, 7 should have kept moving, I could have been halfway across the Galaxy by now (steering

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The Cenfauri Device

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for the b.l.o.o.d.y edge). It was too late for that. He felt the world turn beneath frm^ obstinate, grinding, heavy. '*Too much gravity."

"What was that you said, John?"

The corridors paled, cooled; they came into a sort of front lobby with wide gla.s.s doors. A drunken s.p.a.cer slumped on a bench, belching ruminatively; he glanced up as Truck pa.s.sed. "The fact is, bosun, I need surety-" he began, blinking. He saw Nodes, shrugged, closed his eyes, and retched disinterestedly. Outside, a thin gray sleet was falling on half a dozen blnnt, armored Fleet vehicles drawn up against the curb, spattering across the wide, wet street on brief gusts of wind. Fleet marksmen with oily reaction rifles and subtly polarized contact lenses covered the surrounding area-lounging bored and professional, eyes st.i.tted against the wind.

General Gaw was waiting for him there-he saw her through a sc.u.m of condensation on the gla.s.s. She had discarded her Women's Army uniform for a black coverall which accentuated her small but well-shaped potbelly and brutal thighs. She was carrying a yellow riot helmet in the crook of her arm. She grinned as Nodes ushered Truck through the doors, said something to one of the marksmen. A short, metallic laugh rang down the quiet street "Welcome home, sonny. Cold enough to freeze your b.u.m, eh?" Truck hesitated on the shining pavement; the wind whipped his hair across his eyes; he shivered, and fumbled with the zip of his second-best jacket. The General, though, was impervious to weather. She scowled ferociously up at him like a one-eyed parrot, her head .turned slightly. Shook her index finger at him.

"Oh"-drawing the syllable right out and clicking her tongue with huge enjoyment-"oh, but you've done it now. If only you'd been a bit sensible about it all, lad. I could have saved you all this-"She took his arm in a steely possessive grip. The Fleet executioners shifted un.o.btrusively into a pattern of maximum security, placing themselves on likely lines of fire, their hard eyes flickering to and fro across Truck before going to sweep the misty intersection at the end of the block, the slick, damp rooftops. The sleet fell faster, soft and wet "You and I are going to have a quiet talk, laddie, somewhere nice and dry."

She laughed. "A quiet talk!" she repeated loudly, grinning round "at the marksmen.

Abruptly, one of them let out a high-pitched cry, raucous and mechanical. He fluttered his fingers rap-Idly in front of his eyes to adjust the polarization of his contact lenses, and began firing off his weapon. Bolts flared up into the sleet, vanished utterly. At the intersection, gray shapes shifted jerkily in the murk.

General Gaw shoved Truck powerfully away from her and screamed, "Get him back in there, Nodes, get him back!" She seated the yellow helmet like a bulbous growth on her head, spun away. "Well talk later, Truck, when IVe squashed these rats."

As she vanished into the gloom a great, groaning concussion shook the street, filling the ah* with bits of floating paper and plastic and dust

FIVE.

Under the Snort with the King of the Moment For an instant, the sleet fell as mud, bellying like a curtain in a storm wind as the wave front of the explosion pushed it down the conduit of the street.

Track staggered back toward the doors of West Central with his knees quivering and his hair wrapped round his face (the cilia of some wet friendly animal, tickling his eyes and filling his mouth). Above him, the concrete symbol of hinterland justice broke op .Into powder and stones and fell like a waterfall, the globes shattered, the balance dropping away, the grasping hand dissolved.

"Sodding h.e.l.l!"

He stared up at it, terrified, Lumps of it bruised his shoulders, beat him coughing to the floor. Nodes dragged him into the lobby, pushed him headlong into the cool plastic floor where he lay trying to ignore his soaking wet trousers. Something burned its way through the gla.s.s and battered itself into a glowing smear on the further wall, hissing furiously. The drunken s.p.a.cer surfaced from some maudlin contemplation of his confinement, stared wildly about him. He shouted, "Christ, skipper, Num-

50.

ber Five's dropped its load again!" blinked enormously, and rolled under his bench.

Truck twisted round to get a look at the street. Visibility was a dead loss.

Engines raced as the Fleet tried to get its vehicles out from under; patched with a dermat.i.tis of half-melted sleet, they maneuvered in blunt confusion, booming and roaring. General Gaw was invisible in the murk, but he could hear her voice raised in anger. Slow red bolides arced through the weather to a common vanishing point, and the reaction rifles coughed and choked like sick old men.

"Who the h.e.l.l is that out there?" he demanded ot Nodes.

The IWG man gave it consideration, his tired eyes resting on the commotion outside. "Fd say that's a politically naive question even from you," he decided. IBs hands discovered a small Chambers pistol in one of his pockets.

He pointed it at Track. "I think we'd be safer away from here, don't you, John?"

As they backed cautiously out of the lobby, the s.p.a.cer stirred beneath his bench. Down in the abused recesses of his skull some vestige of a martial emotion prodded his bruised brain. He raised a wavering contralto and, after a couple of false starts, a.s.sayed a pa.s.sage from the Finnsburg fragment:"Each man made his private piece with Reagan/And, at a signal, released/Heat seekers, stde winders, desiccant, decorticant, defoliant;/They ran out their salvaged disrupter grids,/Swallowed their anti-sympathy piHs,/Hoping for a sight of the enemy.**

ffis delivery was round and tremolando; he drew great sobbing breaths between the lines and beat out the intervals with his h.o.r.n.y hand. Pleased with the acoustics of West Central, he began on "Salute the Fleet!"-guttered into a gloomy silence three bars in. "G.o.d bless you, bosun," he called after Truck.

He JL.

52 belched, gazed disconsolately round the flickering, vacant lobby. "You're a sterner man than I ant!"

Later, Truck said, "I think we're-** But then, he owed IWG nothing. He shuffled along, feeling dismal and exposed, while Nodes pursued a steadily downward course, into the chilly and echoic deep-detention levels where n.o.body had bothered to plaster the walls. Every three or four minutes, a fresh explosion-perceptible here only as a sustained vibration in the soles of the feet-shook the peripheries of the building.

Condensation dripped from the expansion joints in the ceilings, growing milky nubs of mineral, and seeped across the sour untreated floors. It was a warren of right angles: cl.u.s.ters of small-bore pipes followed the pa.s.sages, faithfully, like giant circuitry; dust furred the ventilators. Peculiar underground winds whistled aimlessly in the stairwells. Nodes avoided the elevators, "in case of power failure, John."

"Look, I think we're being followed," Truck admitted finally. The soft whisper of feet-receding feathery echoes, hesitant, spasmodic-had unnerved him.

The warren opened out into an underground motor pool, a wistful gray light leaking down its access ramp. It was empty but for a few Port Authority five-tonners, jacked up and incomplete. Old rags and bits of paper blew around the oily floor and mere were little mounds of dust in the corners.

"That would be a pity, John," said Nodes absently, working his way round the walls, inspecting each vehicle in turn. He stopped, rubbed at a smear of oil on his gun hand with his other thumb (the Chambers threatened erratically: a support pier; a pile of sixty-inch wheels; and a notice which read DISCIPLINARY ACTION WILL fcE TAKEN AGAINST OFFICERS CAUGHT-the rest was grimy and illegible). "None of these work, you see."

He stared up the ramp. "You may not be much use The Centauri Device

53.

to the General in other hands. In those circ.u.mstances, I suspect you would be a definite danger to security." "What other hands? Come on, Nodes!" "Frankly, John, I have orders to kill you if that looks likely." Nodes's eyes became interested in the stairwell that had dropped them into the pool. Truck backed off rapidly; he didn't know whether it was fear or repugnance; he felt ent.i.tled to either, but outrage looked like eclipsing them both.

"I've had it with you, Nodes! I'm sick of being *John*! I'm sick of being itT He waved his arms about. Evaporating sweat chilled his skin. "My G.o.d, you lot crawl out of your holes and turn the entire Galaxy into an asylum. Whose hands?" He wiped the hair out of his eyes. "And as for General bleeding Gaw's bleeding 'sentient bomb'-"

Nodes swung on him, alert and tense. The old-animal eyes focused properly on Truck for the first time since he had entered the interrogation cell.

"Don't go on," he said quietly. "That is information cla.s.sified above my level, and I'm not prepared to hear it." He made a most human gesture with his free hand. "You can only damage us both by giving information I'm not cleared to hear. I suggest we-"

A sc.r.a.pe of bootsoles like the sound of bandages tearing.

A shadowy figure in the stairwell. Nodes turned far too late.

His Chambers blew a pit in the concrete at his feet; splashback set histrouser-legs on fire. He tangoed back, trying to shake both legs at once, looking horrified. Fizzing and moaning like an angry cat-like Tiny Skeffern's Fender-a five millimeter sh.e.l.l took him full in the chest and began to burn its way in. He fell on his back, crying "Shoot! Oh, shoot!" trying to get a final desperate message to his fingers. The figure on the stairwell cackled softly, its feet sc.r.a.ping like torn cloth, like b.u.t.ter muslin, faint destroyed, on it came. Nodes emptied the reaction pistol at the ceiling, at-

54.

tempting to get Truck. Down on one knee over the maimed ribcage, choking on the stink and smoke, Truck took it gently away from him and tossed it across the garage. It clattered and rang. Nodes groaned, put his fingers in the soft wet edge of his atrocious wound. "I have an odd blood-group, Mary," he said clearly. "Oh Jesus Mother Christ."

"You needn't have done that," accused Truck, getting reluctantly to his feet "I swear you all take pleasure from it."

The King chuckled faintly. He was wearing a white leather jumpsuit of peculiar cut, tight round the crotch and armpits, hanging loosely off his old frame elsewhere. His hands were quite steady, puncture marks standing up among the hairs on then- backs, sore scarlet against the gray junk grime deep in the very cells of his wrinkled pachydermic skin.

"Ingenuousness spoils the Moment, Captain Truck," he whispered. "It can't be your cynical amorality they all want you for. Are you out of your wits?"

He scuttled off like a lizard surprised on a warm brick, over to a dark corner, where he scrabbled in the dust on the floor. A section of the wall above him creaked and slid away. His decaying voice rattled across the garage to John Truck (puzzled and hurt and never noted for his eager intellect), two sticks rubbing in a dry wind: "I prepared long ago for some much eventuality-I sensed a similar Moment whispering back to me across the years-H-lines alive with meaningless programs. Escape all situations. Everything comes to me beneath the rocket-mail pits, Captain-I-" He raised his voice. "Come! Come in, now, my friends! You are back in the domain of the King, and you can come to no more harm!"

And he vanished inside.

From the stairwell came a timid susurrus of movement. White faces peeped into the motor pool, retreated, tasting the air this way and that. Giggling and The Centaur; Device

55.

murmuring in hushed but rising tones, joking at last, their confidence growing by the second, the King's guests issued from their brief captivity in the West Central warren, their gauzy sleeves fluttering nervously at every disturbance of the air.

Truck stood like a mad stone over the fuming corpse, and they fled past him, giving him not a second glance, their lips parted, their eyes bright. The longest-running party in the history of the universe disappeared into the earth. He stared inarticulately after it. He thrust his hands hi his pockets and hunched his shoulders.

Other, harsher footsteps rang in the corridors above-other voices, mechanical and raucous. He shook his head over the dead man. He ran.

The party having streamed on ahead of him, bent on the bright lights and the delicacies of the cutting-room floor (among which, presumably, might be numbered one hundred Denebian mainliners sweating out their unnamed obligation to the King), Chalice Veronica was alone behind his secret door. IBs reptilian, scrawny hand urged Truck through the gap; he c.o.c.ked his head and listened; he threw the steel lever that fastened the bolthole.

"Run for it, Captain!" he hissed. CfThe invading faction has been embarra.s.sed; they are preparing a final stand." And he made off down a low, ill-lighted tunnel. Crouching and lurching, sc.r.a.ping the top of his head on ancient stinking brick, his feet reluctant in two inches of evil water, Truckfollowed.

They had made perhaps four hundred yards from the motor pool when the floor sank a foot and the bolthole cleared its throat behind them with a vast, bellowing cough. Dust stormed about them, the lights went out, and they clung together in the dark, staggering about to keep their balance like practioners of a strange vice. Locked in that unpleasant embrace, the King's sour old junkbreath in his nostrils, Truck felt

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