Dream thief

5

… You'RE IN AL0T of trouble, Packer. Care to tell me what this is all about?" Elliot Ramm, Gotham security chief, crossed his long legs and leaned on the edge of his desk. A penitent Olmstead Packer sat facing him with his hands between his knees and his face long and unhappy. There was a note of smoldering indignation in his voice when he spoke.

"To tell you the truth, Chief Ramm, I don't know myself." He jerked a thumb toward the two guards who stood watching him with cool disinterest. "Maybe you should ask your men. I was just talking to a friend when they came in and grabbed me."

The security chief nodded to his men, dismissing them. "I have your report. You can return to duty." He turned to Packer. "I also have a statement from Dr. Williams. He says that you obtained entrance to his infirmary under false pretenses after you were told you could not see the patient Kalnikov. He claims you were endangering the life of his patient."

Packer grinned sheepishly. "I guess I may have overdramatized a bit."

"Hmph." Chief Ramm picked up a white folder from his desk. "He's pressing charges against you."

"He's what?" Packer suddenly became very red. "He's nuts! This is all crazy. Let me talk to him. I didn't mean any harm. It was that nurse of his-she acted too snippy and fresh; I just decided to take matters into my own hands."

A faint smile crossed Ramm's lips; he nodded and shoved a lock of his black hair away from his forehead. "All right, I believe you. You scientists hate to be told 'no' to anything."

"Then I can go?" Packer asked hopefully. He had been in detention for over three hours, and was getting tired.

"I'm afraid it's not that simple. Whether I believe you or not doesn't really make a lot of difference. You see, Williams has filed a formal complaint. It's up to the director to review it and decide what to do."

"Director Zanderson's gone. No telling when he'll be back."

"I'm sorry. You'll have to stay here until he gets back, or-"

"Or what? If there's another way to settle this I'm all for it."

"Or Dr. Williams could agree to drop the charges."

"Then let's talk to him by all means. I'm sure he'll listen to reason.

Ramm held up a hand. "Not so fast! He was pretty steamed up over this. I'd let him cool off a little first."

"But I've got to get out of here. I'm a busy man; I've got an experiment running."

"It'll just have to run without you for a while. You should have thought of that before your performance of Swan Lake in the sick bay."

"All right, I guess I had that coming."

"I'll talk to Williams after a bit and see what I can do."

"I'd appreciate it, Chief Ramm." Packer rose and shuffled to the portal. "You know, there's something funny about this whole thing. I never knew anyone to have to be sedated after getting buzzed by a taser. I thought those things were fairly safe, if you know what I mean."

"I'm sure there's an explanation. I'll check into it. In the meantime you can wait in the outer office until I get this cleared up. I won't put you in the tank."

Packer nodded and left. Security Chief Ramm returned to the chair behind his desk and picked up his officers' report and glanced over it. He tossed it down on the desk, laced his hands behind his head, and leaned back in his chair. He frowned as if deep in thought and then shoved his chair back, rose, put on his red and black cap with its gold emblem, and went in search of the physician. …

ARI HAD NEVER SEEN her father so shaken. He sat slumped in the seat beside her, face white as the pale sliver of moon that shone in the jet's small oval window. His eyes were closed, though she knew he was not asleep. He was shutting out the reality of what was happening around him.

The plane was not large; their captors sat all around them and watched them incessantly. Although they had not forbidden them to talk to one another, their close proximity tended to limit the exchanges between father and daughter to mere whispers and nods.

She knew there was more to what was happening than she had as yet been told, more than their kidnapping and the trouble with Spence, though he was certainly central to the whole escapade. Her father seemed to know more than he let on, and the way it had affected him was not explainable in terms of his normal behavior. Ari was seeing a new side of her father and it scared her.

She went to sleep wondering what it was that he knew and would not, or could not, tell her.

The plane flew on through the night, stopping only once for refueling at a hoverport in Germany. Ari roused herself and peered sleepily out the window. She saw a golden-gray dawn sky and a ground crew of men in blue overalls wheeling orange machines around the wings of the jet. Across the field she saw a building with signs on the roof in German and guessed they were somewhere in the middle of Europe at least.

When she woke again the blue sky held a fierce white sun above a lumpy landscape of gray and white clouds. She could not see the earth below and had no idea where they were or which direction they were heading. Not that it mattered at all.

Shortly after that she and her father were given a simple breakfast: orange juice and a dry roll. No one else seemed to be eating, so Ari thought they were at least being shown some small courtesy. She hadn't eaten in almost a day, and wolfed down the food in several large bites, then turned to her father.

"Daddy, you're not eating." ''I'm not very hungry, dear. You may have my roll if you like."

"No; you eat something and drink your juice. You have to keep your strength up. No telling when we might eat again, and anyway we want to be alert for any chance of escape."

Her, father did not say anything, but his expression gave her to know that he considered any thought of escape pure foolishness.

The jet dropped down through the clouds and landed on a square of concrete near a small town on the edge of a desert. Ari could see brown desolate hills in the distance and the white stucco buildings of the town like bleached bones in the sun. Squat, bushy-topped palm trees and low dusty shrubs stood off away from the landing field like forlorn travelers awaiting transportation that never arrives. There were no human passengers or greeting committee that Ari could see on her side of the plane.

Someone popped the hatch and the cool interior of the craft was assaulted by warm dry air from the desert. Then, one by one, all of the occupants disembarked. Ari and her father stayed in their seats until Tickler came back and told them to get out. They emerged from the plane and walked a few paces along the concrete landing pad.

"Stay in sight!" Tickler called. But other than that admonition no one seemed to pay the least attention to them.

Hocking and his assistants withdrew to the far side of the pad to confer with a group of five or six men in black and white kaftans, fuel smugglers, no doubt. Ari thought she saw a camel's head moving among the shrubbery a little way off.

"I wonder where we are?" Ari whispered to her father. "And what's going on?"

"Does it matter?" The resignation was so strong in her father's voice that Ari spun around and faced him, gripping him by the arms.

"Daddy, tell me. You're hiding something and I have a right to know. It's my neck, too. Don't think you're protecting me by not talking. It's too late for that, and besides-I'm a big girl now."

Her words brought him back. He looked at her and blinked, as if recognizing her for the first time since the ordeal started. "Of course, my dear," he said gently. He looked around and saw that they were unobserved. "I'll tell you all I know and what I guess " He paused and looked at her once again.

"Is it about Spence? Tell me. I won't be spared the details no matter how it hurts."

"Spence? Oh, no. I mean, yes-it started there. At first it was him, but not anymore. He doesn't matter anymore, not really."

"Doesn't matter?"

"They told me he'd kidnapped you, that he and Adjani were stealing advanced technology secrets to sell, and I don't know what all. I thought I was helping you, Ari. I never dreamed…"

"I don't understand. Why did you believe them. Didn't you know-"

"No," her father said curtly. "I… I had to believe them. I had no choice."

"Daddy, who are these people? What do they want from us?"

He turned sad and bitter eyes on her. "It started almost a year ago. He came to me"-a jerk of the head indicated Hocking"and said that there were people who would pay handsomely to know the truth about your mother. I was afraid-I couldn't let that information out. It might have ruined my career. The board elections were only a few weeks away. There had been some mumblings of dissatisfaction among the more conservative board members; my reappointment was by no means assured."

"What did he want?"

"That was the odd thing. Only to come aboard Gotham and observe, he said. We made a deal: I would let him come on board-no questions asked-in exchange for his silence about Caroline. I didn't see him after that. He stayed out of sight."

"Didn't you wonder what he was up to?"

"I didn't want to know! After the elections I forgot about him, put him out of my mind."

"He was there all the time. Spence was right." "Spence knew about him?"

"Spence saw him once and had me try to find out who he was. Of course I couldn't; there was no record of him anywhere."

Director Zanderson passed a hand in front of his eyes. "I've been such a fool! Now everything's gone."

"What do you mean? We're not finished yet, not by a long shot."

"What difference does it make?" He returned to his whining tone. He looked at her again with eyes showing white all around. "Don't you understand? They are taking over control of the Center! The space station will be theirs."

"Impossible!"

"Far from it. Gotham is totally self-sufficient now. It's quite possible. No one would even know."

"But GM would find out eventually and they'd put a stop to it.

"By then it would be too late. With only a slight modification of the thrusters the station could be moved anywhere in the solar system-the whole galaxy!"

"They'd go after it. They wouldn't just let it go."

The elder Zanderson shook his head wearily. "Remember, the only craft capable of traveling that far is the transport Gyrfalcon, and it's based at the station. It could be years before another craft of that kind could be readied. By that time the station could be hidden somewhere in the asteroid belt or beyond. Why, Gotham would be a true space colony; it could conceivably go anywhere."

The thought of a thing so huge hiding out in plain sight in the empty openness of space seemed ludicrous to Ari. But then, the universe was a very big place.

"What will they do with us?"

"I don't know. I suppose we'll be useful to them until they have secured control of the Center. Then… who knows?"

"We've got to do something. We can't just give up hope."

"There is no hope."

"Daddy, we can't just let all those people up there become slaves to this madman. We've got to do something. We've got to try."

"It's too late. It's already happening."

"It is not too late," Ari said harshly. She took her father's arm and shook it hard. "Spence is still out there and free. He knows about them. He'll try to find us and free us."

"It's too late. He won't know where to start looking-we don't even know where they're taking us."

"He'll find us." She gave her father a knowing look. "Spence has as much at stake in this as anyone else, maybe more. And I have a pretty good hunch where we're headed and where he'll start looking."