“Well, they’re quiet, they’re not hurting anybody,” the man in yellow said. Then, with some embarrassment, he added, “Besides, the patrols are understrength now. Finances are, well. . . .”
“Sure,” Lacey said, glancing over his shoulder at the party. He was visualizing how twenty men could clear the street with a tanker of stun gas and enough trucks to hold the bodies. It wasn’t his city, though; and Lacey was far too intelligent to believe the State would be a better place if everyone’s instincts were like his. Control was the key . . . but no control was as important as his own self-control.
Barbee stopped finally in front of one of a line of concrete buildings, new enough to be twenty stories high instead of eighty. The windows were opened in more facets than a beetle’s eyes. “Here you are,” said the guide, “the Tweed Building. You’re to report to Captain Max Nootbaar on Level Twenty. He’ll have your instructions.”
Lacey looked upward. Yellow-painted air cars burred to and from the landing stage on the building’s roof. At least somebody on the City payroll had access to transport that couldn’t be mired by block parties. “Crime Service headquarters?” the Southerner queried.
“That’s right.”
“And no elevators, I’d guess.”
“Of course not.”
Barbee was already walking away, toward a more distant building of the vast Complex. Lacey let out an inarticulate scream and leaped upon the slimmer man, throwing him to the ground. The Southerner brought a flat tube from under his tunic. It snicked out a 5-cm blade when he squeezed. “I’ll kill you!” he shouted to the guide. “I’ll cut your heart out!” Only someone who had seen Lacey in a killing rage before would have noticed that this time his neck scar did not writhe against flushed skin.
The street was straight and broad; a dozen scanning cameras on it recorded the incipient mayhem. Relays tripped, panels glowed red, and a patrol car slowing to land on the Tweed Building instead plunged down toward Lacey. In contrast, the pedestrian traffic surged outward like a creek against an obstructing rock. The passers-by continued to move as if they were oblivious of the mingled screams of victim and assailant.
Lacey suddenly stood, closing and slipping away his knife. He reached out a hand to help Barbee up. The guide screamed again and tried to crawl away. Fear wedged his body against the seam of building and sidewalk.
The ten-place patrol car slammed to the pavement behind Lacey. “Get ’em up!” a hoarse voice shouted.
Lacey raised his hands and turned with a quizzical expression. The four uniformed policemen had him covered with needle guns and a stun gas projector. “Good morning, sergeant, patrolmen,” Lacey said calmly. “I’m Field Agent Jed Lacey from Greater Greensboro. I’m due for an appointment with Captain Nootbaar. My guide here tripped on that crack in the pavement. Must say I’m a little surprised to have a Red Team react to that.” He smiled. “I’d have expected Public Works, if anyone.”
The sergeant frowned. Barbee saw that Lacey’s back was turned. He began running down the sidewalk, first in a crouch and then full-tilt. Lacey glanced at him. “Must be in as much of a hurry as I am,” he remarked disinterestedly.
The patrolmen wore puzzled expressions. Their sergeant queried his mastoid implant, then waited for the answer with his hand cocked. When it came, he spat disgustedly and reslung his gas gun. “Yeah, Captain Nootbaar says send him up,” he said. “Two bleeding false alarms in one day.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll ride up with you,” Lacey said, lowering his hands as the Red Team locked its weapons back on safe. “I was afraid for a moment I’d have to climb twenty flights of stairs.”
“Sure, room we got,” the sergeant grunted. “Men, no, but we got room.” The driver lifted them vertically, faster than they would have dropped in free-fall. “First the computer crashes us in on a strangling. That turns out to be two kids screwing under a sheet. Then we’re held over our shift ’cause the bloody Streets Department sits around with its thumb up its ass instead of fixing the sidewalks. I swear, a bit more of this and they’ll have to look for me Underground too.”