“If we depend on topside, they own us,” Black May said, as much to herself as to Lacey. “Down here, now, we got synthizers and enough algae to work from to feed the whole City. We got power, a well four hundred meters down for fresh water, and a pair of ducts into the East River to dump waste heat. If we got to, there’s the power and the tools here to punch a line out to the ocean. There’s a thousand techs to work it, and I got ten thousand guns I can put topside without emptying the bars.” May knuckled Lacey’s shoulder to make sure she had his attention as she concluded, “They were too late up there, sonny. I got a base. I own the City. I just haven’t gone up to tell ’em—yet.”
They had finally reached the far side of the artificial cavern. Apartments of opaque sheeting were built against the stone. There was a neatness and order to these dwellings which was missing from what passed for human habitation elsewhere Underground—or topside, for that matter. Some of the buildings appeared to be shops and offices as well.
“Where’s your power come from?” Lacey asked idly.
Black May looked at him. “It’s here in the Basement,” she said. “Don’t worry about it, sonny.”
A group of nervous techs was drifting out of the nearest building. A few of them carried tools in feigned nonchalance, hammers and hand cultivators. Against May’s crew, they were as harmless as dolphins facing killer whales.
“I need to talk to Doc Swoboda,” May boomed jovially. The listeners stirred, frowning.
“He’s not—” a young black woman began. She broke off when a man stepped out into the bright light. He was old, balding, and knife-nosed.
Lacey pointed at him. “That’s the one,” he said. “That’s the informer.”
All but one pair of eyes followed Lacey’s gesture. The exception was a squat thug with curling black hair so thick on his arms that it made his pallid skin seem swarthy. His fellows had called him Horn. The girl who had spoken saw where the cut-throat’s gaze was focused. Her mahogany skin flushed deeper and she crossed her arms over her breasts, bare in the clean warmth.
“I don’t understand,” Jerry Swoboda was saying, drumming both forefingers nervously on his sternum. “Is something wrong, May?”
“Hard telling, Doc,” the queen said, arms akimbo, “but I need to take you back for a while to see. Put the irons on him, Boxie.”
“No!” the black girl shouted. As she leaped forward, Bill Allen blew her head apart with a bolt from his powergun. At the shot, a thug with a sub-machine gun sprayed a burst into the stone floor and his own feet. The lead splashed and howled. The clot of technicians flew apart screaming. The gunman toppled in silence, too stunned for a moment to feel pain.
“For Chris’ sake!” Black May stormed. A chip of jacket metal had cut her cheek so that it drooled a fat line of blood down to her jawbone. “Get them chains on and let’s get outa here.”
There was no question as to where the powerplant was located. A great conduit lined across the rock ceiling. Lacey had seen its exit into Underground proper through its own opening above the air-lock door. Wire tendrils from it fed the thousands of glow strips, and the roots of the conduit were somewhere in or beyond the apartment from which Swoboda had appeared. When the time came, Lacey would have no difficulty in locating his target.
His non-human target. Swoboda’s eyes had the glassy stare of a fear-drugged martyr. Two women wearing knives were fastening his shackles. They used small padlocks through the holes in lieu of rivets. The physicist was given twice the length of chain that hobbled Lacey; no one was concerned about what the old man could do with a moment’s inattention and a sudden leap.
At Black May’s order, her entourage turned back the way they had come—with one exception. Lacey had already noticed Horn and what he was doing. Now Bill Allen noticed also and shouted, “Hey!”
There was no response. The chief’s face hardened. He took two steps and kicked his subordinate in the buttocks. Horn leaped up from the tech’s corpse. His eyes for the instant were as blank as Swoboda’s had become. “You stupid bastard!” Allen shouted. “Save that for later!”