Sparta yanked the thing out of Antreen’s back almost instantly. Only then did she see what the weapon was. She knew she was too late— —for the telescoping needle had already sprung out and was writhing like a hair-fine worm in Antreen’s spinal cord, questing for her brain. Although she could no longer feel the fast approaching mind-death, still she screamed.
Sparta tossed the barrel of the empty hypodermic on the mat and sat back, legs splayed, sagging onto her rigid backthrust arms, sucking in great gulps of air. The corridor thundered with booted feet and around its curve a squad of blue-suits appeared, stunguns drawn. They stumbled to a halt in good order, the front rank to their knees, half a dozen gun snouts pointing at Sparta.
Antreen had kept on rolling, onto her back. She was crying now, great sobs of pity for her dwindling awareness.
Viktor Proboda shoved his way through the patrollers and knelt beside her. He reached out his big hands and hesitated, afraid to touch her.
“You can’t do anything for her, Viktor,” Sparta whispered.
“She’s not in pain.”
“What’s happening to her?”
“She’s forgetting. She’ll forget all this. In a few seconds she’ll stop crying, because she won’t remember why she’s crying.”
Proboda looked at Antreen’s face, the handsome face framed in straight gray hair, a face momentarily stretched into the mask of Medusa but where even now the terror was fading and the tears were drying.
“Isn’t there anything we can do for her?”
Sparta shook her head. “Not now. Maybe later, if they want to. But they probably won’t.”
“Who are they?”
Sparta waved him off. “Later, Viktor.”
Proboda decided he’d wait; Inspector Troy said lots of things that went past him the first time. He stood and shouted at the ceiling. “Where’s that stretcher? Let’s get moving.” He stepped over Antreen to Sparta, holding out his hand. She took it and he pulled her to her feet. “Practically the whole company was watching you. They called us right away.”
“I told her it was clean. She was so eager to get me she believed me. What’s happening to her is what would have happened to me. . . .”
“How did you know they’d call us?”
“I . . .” She thought better of it. “Lucky guess.”
There was a commotion among the police, and the stretcher came through. As the two bearers were kneeling beside Antreen she spoke, calmly and clearly. “Awareness is everything,” she said.
“Are my parents alive?” Sparta asked her.
“The secrets of the adepts are not to be shared with the uninitiated,” Antreen replied.
“Are my parents adepts?” Sparta asked. “Is Laird an adept?”
“That’s not on the white side,” said Antreen.
“I remember you now,” Sparta said. “I remember the “I remember your home in Maryland. You had a squirrel that slid down a wire.”
“Do I remember you?” Antreen asked.
“And I remember what you did to me.”
“Do I remember you?” Antreen repeated.
“Does the word SPARTA mean anything to you?”
Sparta asked.
Uncertainty creased Antreen’s brow. “Is that . . . is that a name?”
Sparta felt her throat tighten, felt tears well in her eyes.
“Good-bye, gray lady. You’re an innocent again.”
Blake Redfield was waiting in the weightless corridor outside the Ishtar Gate, mingling with the floating pack of gawkers and mediahounds who had been trailing the police in eager desperation. Sparta slipped past the yellow tape and sought him out.
When he saw her face he was surprised, then concerned.
She let him study her bruises. “I watched my back, like you told me.” She tried to grin with swollen lips. “She got me from the front.”
When he held out his hand, she took it. Holding his hand, it was easier to ignore the questions the reporters were shouting at them, the curses of those who sounded like they were ready to kill for a quote. But when Kara Antreen was pulled past on a floating stretcher the photogram recorders all swung to follow the procession, and the mediacrowd swam off after them like sharks after chum. Sparta and Blake lingered behind a moment— “Want to take the short cut?”
—and a few seconds later they had disappeared.
They darted through the darkened tunnels and conduits toward the central sphere, keeping pace with each other.
“Did you know it was Antreen all along?” Blake asked.
“No, but the first sight of her prodded my memory.
Something down deep, something I couldn’t bring to consciousness made me know it was a good idea to stay out of her way. This just now was her second attempt. She was the one who used the robot on us.”
“I thought that was Sylvester!”
“So did I. Anger is the enemy of reason, and I was so mad I wasn’t thinking straight. Sondra Sylvester wanted that book more than anything, much more than she wanted Nancybeth, or even to humiliate Darlington. She never would have risked the real book, even if she’d overheard us talking and knew she was caught. It was Antreen who bugged the ship and heard us.”
They flew in silence, then, until they came to their lookout overlooking the central gardens and went to ground. Perfectly alone in the swinging cage of light, they found themselves suddenly, unaccountably shy.
Sparta forced herself to go on. “Antreen went aboard Star Queen and fueled the robot, while I was staging my show-and-tell lecture about sabotage. Setting a trap for the wrong people.” She laughed wearily. “She got the opportunity she wanted before she was ready for it. She sure didn’t expect to deal with you. When the robot didn’t do the job I think she realized how hard it was going to be to kill me outright, at least in a way that wouldn’t bring suspicion on herself. So she went for my memory. After all, it worked once before. She’d have been after you, next.”
“Did you learn anything about your parents?” he asked, quietly and urgently. “About the rest of them?”
Sparta shook her head. “Too late,” she said sadly. “An- treen couldn’t tell us anything now if she wanted to.” This time she reached out to him and gently took his hand.
He covered her hand with his, then reached to cup her chin. “Then we’ll have to do it alone, I guess. The two of us. Find them. If you’re ready to let me play this game.”
His spicy aroma was especially delicious when he was only inches away. “I should have let you before.” She leaned weightlessly forward and let her bruised lips rest on his.
Epilogue
McNeil told the rest of the untold truth without further hedging, the next time she confronted him. He had moved out of the clinic and rented a room in transient crew quarters, but he spent most of his time in his favorite French restaurant, on the concourse opposite the poplars of Samarrand.
Recorded meadowlarks sang sweetly among the nearby trees.
“I knew you’d be back,” he said. “Will you have some of this excellent St. Emilion?”
She declined. She told him what she knew, and he filled in the rest. “And if I cooperate fully, how much time do you think they’ll give me for it?” he challenged her.
“Well, since the property was recovered . . .”
“Don’t forget, you’d have a hard time proving intent, if my lawyer was to be wise enough to keep me off the stand,” he said cheerfully.
“Slim chance. At any rate, we’d get you for the wine bottles.”
“Alas, the owner of all the commodities in question is since deceased.”
Sparta knew the cause of justice would not be served if she laughed out loud, so she nodded solemnly. “McNeil, you’ll be cooling your heels in a cell for at least four to six months.”
“Pity. Almost the length of a quick trip to the Mainbelt.
Always tried to avoid those.”
“Perhaps I will have a glass of that,” she said. He poured and she sipped. She thanked him. McNeil grew serious.
“One thing you may be overlooking, Inspector. That is a magnificent book, not merely an object. It deserved to be owned by someone who could appreciate its contents.
As well as its binding.”
“Are you suggesting you were motivated by more than greed, Mr. McNeil?”
“I’ve never told you a lie, Inspector. I admired Mrs.
Sylvester. I’m sorry to see her come to ruin.”
“I believe you, McNeil. I always did.”
McNeil could take care of himself. Blake Redfield needed help. The investigation of Kara Antreen’s inexplicable pathological behavior would no doubt continue for months, if not years; it was with fleeting regret that Sparta laid sins at her door that she had not committed. Blake was never suspected of having blown a hatch, of having cut power, assaulted workers, broken into and burgled impounded government property. Instead, he faded into Sparta’s shadow. . . .
Viktor Proboda was there at the docking bay to see them off with a bouquet of hydroponic asters. Accompanied by a chorus of mediafolk, Blake and Sparta were about to board the Helios, the first step in the long return trip to Earth.