They made their way through the rest of the enormous house. Most had died in bed. Clearly the house had been terrorized before the diversions had started. “Probably needed the lights to make sure they got everybody,” Matson guessed.
Many of the upstairs rooms were unoccupied. They found one and recognized Suzl’s bag, but there was no sign of a body. Back down, they finally discovered where the children had stayed. They entered the room, but found no bodies. Although relieved, they were puzzled.
“What the hell was this all about?” Rondell wanted to know.
“I can tell you,” said a voice behind them.
They whirled, guns up, electronic torches pointed.
“Suzl! My God, girl! I almost killed you!” Matson said, relief breaking in his voice.
She ran to them, sobbing uncontrollably for several minutes. They finally got her outside into the air and she did her best to get control of herself. Ultimately, her story came out.
“Everybody was already dead when I got here,” she told them, quickly explaining why she hadn’t been home in the first place. “My only thought was the children, and I entered through the back entrance there and didn’t find anybody. I went up into the main house, couldn’t see a thing, tripped over the first two bodies, and got back here. I was going to leave to see what I could do when I heard them out back. They were still here.”
“Why did security take you in?” Matson asked her.
“It’s what they came for. They were so afraid I was a security leak and all the time lots of others knew it.” Quickly, she told them about the alien craft and Vishnar’s scientists’ discovery.
Matson gave a low whistle. “Yeah, that explains a lot. Maybe all of it. But how the hell could they move that flying top? Damn thing must have weighed forty or fifty tons.”
“They didn’t. Vishnar’s men had gutted it long ago. I could see that much. It wasn’t anything from the ship that they had. They just built it from what they learned. I never saw it. I don’t know what it looks like, how big it is, or anything about it except that it was built in the labs out back and Vishnar said it worked. He was going to show it off to the New Eden brass next week. Big test.”
“Makes sense,” Rondell said. “They used the carnival to infiltrate, and they cut the timing so close they minimized the chance of any run-in with the law and registrations. They had to act now, because it would be moved under army security to an area near Flux any time now and they’d have had to fight an army to get it. Longer and it’d be out of here and being mass-produced by the New Eden brass.”
“Suzl—you said they were still here. Did you see them?” Matson asked.
She nodded. “Some. They all looked like Fluxgirls in the dark. Is that possible?”
“It’s how they did it. Now—this is important. Did you see them get away?”
“No. I only heard them. There’s a separate road over there and the view’s blocked by trees. Whatever it was it was big and made a powerful amount of machine noise.”
Matson stroked his beard. “A lorry.”
“A what?”
“Lorry. We have to keep up with things in New Eden or the Guild will be at a bad disadvantage. There aren’t too many built yet, but it’s like a big wagon only it has an engine instead of horses. They run them off some kind of alcohol they distill from corn, if you can believe it. They’re big and noisy and not very practical, but they can carry tons of stuff. I guess it was here to help move the gadget or whatever it was, and they used it for just that—before the guard was on. Damned if I know how they managed to drive it, though, or even turn it on. It’s a complicated contraption. It’s something they got from the old engineering books. It’s not anything in any program you can call up in Flux.”
“Maybe they had practice—or help,” Rondell replied.
“Some folks had to be in on this in advance—planning and finding out the schedules and everything.”
Matson nodded. “Might have been as simple as four or five Fluxgirls down south where they have several of these lorries overwhelming a mechanic with sexy charm. Ooooh! Neat! Will you take us for a ride? Please? Huh? Oh, you steer it like that. Can I squeeze over and try? Then she’s sitting in his lap and he’s got ass and boobs and he’s all turned on and all he wants to do is show off some more since he’s the expert on this. Works elsewhere. Works here, too. Better here, since they just wouldn’t think of a squealing little Fluxgirl as having a devious mind and ulterior motives.”
“This—lorry. It’s gonna stand out like a sore thumb,” Suzl nodded. “How do they expect to get away?”
“Honey, those things with a full load can do thirty kilometers an hour, and the powers that be still don’t know it’s gone. Give ’em an hour-and-a-half start, and a predetermined route, and they’ll be driving right into Flux in a matter of twenty or thirty minutes.”
“You gonna tell ’em?” Suzl asked.
“Well, I think we’ll try and find those children first, dead or alive. Then we’ll decide on a course of action for the future.” He frowned. “There should have been a lot of kids from the looks of that place, not just ours.”
“Thirty or forty at least,” Suzl agreed. “They couldn’t have taken them all with them!” She had a thought. “I couldn’t see very well, but there’s no adult bodies, either. There were nannies and caretakers with the kids.” She had a note of hope. “You don’t think maybe they got wind of what was going on and got the kids out?”
“Damn it, I want to look for the kids, too—but don’t you think one of us should tell somebody? I mean, that gang of cut-throats is getting away with the most powerful machine now around this world!”
Matson looked at him. “We got a bunch of very dangerous people with a real bad machine in Flux. In wizard and stringer territory. On the run, at that. One thing they can’t yet know is just how to use it. It weighs a lot, and that truck can’t run on Flux and can’t be fixed on Flux, either. Yeah, I think both World and we are a hell of a lot safer if they make it.”
“Don’t look at me,” Suzl responded, regaining some of her spunk. “I’m a fugitive from internal security.”
“That point, I think, is moot,” Matson replied. “Now let’s find those kids.”
Incredibly, they found the children before security found them, and they found them alive. One of the nannies, a woman named Vena, had gone into the main house for something and had come upon the horror in progress. Not stopping to believe her eyes, her only thoughts were to protect the children. She managed to get back, rouse the others and the watch, and use a little-known service corridor to get them to a side exit near the big hedge-maze. Several of the women in there gave their lives to keep the door shut; it was their bodies that were found just outside.
The two Freehold boys, Micah and Robby, had been detained by security. The nannies didn’t know where they were except that they hadn’t even made it to the house.
The most amazing thing, though, was that the children did not escape. It was impossible to keep the littler ones from crying and some of the older ones had panicked. They found themselves boxed in the hedges.
“And then, it was crazy,” one of the nannies, Clira, told them. “All of a sudden these girls shouted to us. “We’ll let you all live,’ they said, ‘if you stay right where you are and don’t come out until you’re found. Let you all live, that is, if you give us the Freehold children.’ ”
And they had done so. They had had no choice, considering that the raiders could have just sprayed the hedges with automatic fire and killed them all. They had given them the three girls, and were still amazed that they had not then all been massacred.
“They were very brave,” Clira told them. “Even the little one.”
After that, they waited until they heard them go and the lorry and a lot of horses ride off, and then they’d chanced leaving. They had gotten the last ones out while Suzl was meeting Matson and Rondell.
Matson sighed. “Well, I guess this makes it our fight. Can’t figure out why they did it, though. They haven’t raided in Flux, so they’re pretty safe there. Now they deliberately went and alienated the biggest, most powerful family of wizards there. Don’t make sense. Unless …”
“Those poor girls. With those murdering savages,” Suzl sighed.
“I don’t think they’ll be harmed. Not just yet,” Matson told her. “I think we might just be hearing from them. We—the family, anyway—has the power. They got the gadget, but only average power. Not a world-class wizard among “em.”
“You mean,” Rondell put in, “that they’re gonna hold the kids as hostages to get us to show them how to use it? Or get our expert help on figuring it out? Maybe operating it for them?”
“Something like that. Whatever it is, it’ll be clever. This gang ain’t no pussycat. They’re gonna be rough as hell to take out. This stuff with the kids was deliberate. Not just taking ours, but sparing the rest. They showed us by the whole thing that they’re clever, ruthless, that they’ll kill kids with a smile, and yet by sparing those kids and nurses when they didn’t have to—and killing might have bought more time—they showed they keep their word. That was a message for us.”
“First we gotta get out of this,” Suzl noted. “That sounds like an army arriving with full battle gear.”
It took all night and most of the following day before they were able to spring the two boys and get some rest in a guest hotel in the city. Power had still not been restored to much of Logh Center, except the immediate center-square area which was fed by the transformers from the old temple and only needed some new wiring.
Still, Matson was almost a blur of action after they rested.
“Dell, I want you to get back to Freehold. Tell Sondra to come here, in full old stringer regalia, understand? Just Sondra. I don’t need a mob scene, and Jeff’s got to run things and won’t be a big help on this anyway. Tell somebody to get to New Pericles. Bring both Spirit and Morgaine if they can. Tell ’em we’ll meet ’em at the old West Gate. All of them. West Gate in—oh, two days. Suzl, you stand by with me. Me, I’m going down to the stringer office now and fire off a message to Cassie she’s not gonna like.”
Suzl was excited. “You’re sending for Cass?”
“No. Damn it, she’s totally immune to Flux. Totally. Anybody shoots her, all the wizards in the world can’t stop the bleeding, or mend a broken arm. Up at the Guild redoubt she’s got doctors for that. She’s also lecturing in history at the Guild college, and doing a fine job raising prize horses and good beef. I’m telling her to stay put. That’s what she isn’t gonna like. But I want her standing by with a world-class Guild wizard, the strongest there. It’s entirely possible we may have to fly her God-knows-where at a moment’s notice.”
Suzl looked at him. “You’ve got a plan.”
“A bunch of ideas. Can’t have a plan until they make the next move.”
Rondell looked at him in wonder. “You’re actually enjoying this! All these dead, three innocent kids out there in terror, a horror weapon in the hands of their kidnappers, and you’re enjoying this!”
Matson sighed. “Son, last night five firefighters died fighting those blazes. It’s a crappy, risky job that’s ninety percent boredom and ten percent life on the line. They don’t get much respect, but they’re necessary. Ever wonder why anybody’d be one?”
“Huh? I don’t see. . . .”
“There’s some folks that just love fires. It’s a thing in their heads. The crazy ones go around setting them, or just follow the firefighters and dote on ’em. Now, the firefighter’s got the same disease, only he’s a sane and normal sort. He doesn’t want any fires to break out. He doesn’t want anybody to get hurt, and he doesn’t want anybody to lose property to fire. But, by God, if there’s a fire, he wants to be there! Same with me. I hate this kind of shit for the damage it does to people’s lives and futures. I really do. I wish there never was a bad crisis or a gang of murderers or a kid kidnapped or abused or invaders from another world or anything else. I like peace. Among my happiest times were the past few years. But I got a talent and I’m good at what I do. If there’s some kind of trouble I want to be there. And, by God, here I am again.”