Hammer

Chapter 2 of Signature.

Signature

Chapter Two

Hammer

Amantu opened his eyes to find the Group staring roguishly. Even the telepresence appeared amused. The professor pushed himself upright, his thoughts still steaming.

“A Nyear toast,” said Izzy over his flask, “to Moses Mantu, Burghbridge favor son and now…now…newst member Group!”

Abel nodded. “Hear! Hear!”

“And here,” the telepresence responded.

“Well.” Izzy searched his brandy. “Well…nickname. For Group ear, mind you, only. Let see now. Moses. Tough one. Not many great many men share suchlike forename. ‘Mo’? Uh-uh. Doesn’ ring. How bout ‘Mosey’? Nah. Too…lay back. Are you guy help me nail this or not? We need something…meet. Something meet the man’s bearing, meet the man’s aplomb, meet the man’s--wait, wait! ‘Nail this’, I said. I tell you, I was on something! Man’s a hammer, that’s what he is.” He beamed all around. “And so ‘Hammer’ shall be he!”

“Bravo!”

“And here.”

Amantu tried to focus, but wasting emotions, normally reserved for lesser men, were gumming up his intellect. He’d never been given a positive nickname, never been accepted by anything warmer than a panel of starchy deans. That these two fine men, closer than brothers, should hold him as one of their own was inexpressibly moving. He blinked back the first tears since childhood. “You gentlemen will forgive me,” he bubbled, “if I appear to blush.”

Abel peered from behind his upright thumb. “Not from where I sit, you don’t.”

“Did I lie?” the telepresence gloated. “Never cut quality!”

“You’re still here?” Abel glowered at that extended translucent paw. “Generally speaking, criminals don’t go begging gratuities from their victims.”

The stabilizing image ignored him. “So how’s the old pump, big fella? You’re okay now?”

“Odd. I feel lighter, both physically and spiritually.”

“That’ll be the ephedrine.”

The peddler’s eyes burned to the side. “Not on your account, signate.”

“Go. You’ve made your sale.”

The telepresence threw open a ragged vest, revealing pockets overflowing with miniature rockets and miscellaneous small firearms. “Perhaps a noisemaker or two. Something for the holiday.”

“Go!”

“Half a minute!” Amantu begged. His vision had never been so keen. “Is that the barrel of an MRA, or do my eyes deceive me?”

The hawker raised an apparent eyebrow. “Oh? You like history stuff?” He slid the slim, oblate, dully shining weapon from an armpit pocket. “Your eyes, generous sir, would make the sharpest sentry weep with envy. A vintage piece, a real collector’s item.”

Abel smacked down his palms and pushed himself to his feet. “That does it! You’ll bring the Barrier, as well as the police. Beat it! That means now!” They stood nose to nose; Abel bristling, the peddler fizzling in and out of focus.

“But I must have it!” Amantu panted. “Eight pulses, retractable chamber, magnetic load. Where on earth--”

“I don’t give a damn where he got it!” Abel looked the snarling illusion in its sputtering diaphanous eyes. “Get your felonious a*s off my View!”

The telepresence immediately tapped his grungy signet on the gun. The slender tube appeared to firm in his hand. He laid it on the table like a straight flush, his face sizzling with defiance.

Amantu picked it up.

“I’ll see you fry,” Abel swore.

The transparency nodded in acknowledgment. “But--until that glorious day, signate, I’ve got to eat. And I like to eat well.”

“Beautiful!” Amantu breathed.

Abel whirled. “Professor…‘Hammer’. Just leave it alone, man. Give it back and I’ll dispose of this imaginary little crook headfirst. Understand something: that blue concoction he produced may cause you to make regrettable decisions. Decisions we may all regret. Please, Professor. Think how the Barrier will react if they learn intellectuals are in possession of a military weapon.”

“Up for grabs!” the peddler called. “One of a kind! Won’t last forever!”

“Well…” Amantu tapped his signet on the gun. “As of precisely now, it is exactly--mine!” He and the peddler clicked signets.

Abel sat hard. “Be gone, then!”

“Losers,” the telepresence sneered. “Crybabies with shallow pockets.”

At this Izzy rose unsteadily, one pudgy fist poised. “And stay away, blast you! Where’s my liba--you promised--where’s my--” He picked Amantu’s MRA off the tabletop curiously and raised it over his head.

The men jumped to their feet.

Amantu leaned halfway across the table, Abel threw out his hands. The transparency stepped back.

Whoops rang on parallel Views. Someone yelled, “Kick his butt!” and another hurled a flask that bounced harmlessly off Abel’s stool.

“Where’s the hell my libation?” Izzy howled.

A hail of containers blew onto the Group’s View.

Izzy up-thumbed the trigger. “For Christ’s sake, where?” The force of the discharge nearly broke his arm. A white pulse tore skyward, erupted as a bright silver jellyfish, and dissipated in a counterclockwise spiral of glittering platinum.

“Moron!” the telepresence screamed, and was gone.

Abel swore up and down, pounding his fists on the table while Izzy turned in a slow circle, stunned.

Amantu snatched back the weapon.

“What in Reason’s name are you doing? This is not a toy!” He was hyperventilating. “Doctor Weaver, I arrived under the impression you were a man of character, not merely a character. But in my eyes you have failed, and failed miserably, to live up to even the minimal requirements of a professional man.”

“That tears it,” said Abel.

Izzy looked from his empty hand to Amantu’s nightmare mask. His brows came together. “Sorry my. My sully my…” Comprehension dawned. “Sullied my reputation!” He flicked his fingers disdainfully, as though blowing off a malingering client. “My reputation!”

The psychoanalyst backpedaled clumsily while pumping his fists.

Sensors instantly extended the railing, but it was too late. Izzy’s substantial bottom came down just beyond the mapped lip, so that the furiously re-calibrating shelf served only to help flip him into space. He vanished as he’d celebrated, throwing a haymaker at the sky.

Abel and Amantu watched breathlessly as he bounced off fleeting splotches of light.

“It is my fault,” Amantu offered. “I should not have provoked him. His faculties are incapacitated.”

Abel paced the rail, squatting and rising, intuitively employing the scientific method.

The data were not promising: stretching View to View, and visible only through the disturbance of its tympanic vibrations, the bowl-shaped safety net was now rimmed by a remapped rail rising to an insurmountable twelve feet. Every sudden movement brought a siren’s howl and accompanying bright beam.

“Nonsense. I’m supposed to be monitoring him.” Abel’s face went white. “Damn! I’ll have to summon an emergency breach. Get rid of that weapon, Professor. I don’t care what you do with it--toss it. No! There’s probably a trace already. Hide it. Anywhere.” He twisted a lip.

At the tracking field’s wide depressed hub, the gently bobbing psychoanalyst lay on his back in a web of briefly radiating light pulses.

Over a hundred feet below, ground sensors released a storm of bright orange beams.

Abel swiped his signet across a length of blinking horizontal rail, saying, very distinctly, “Breach.” That portion of the rail dissolved. He clung to the active stubs like a novice parachutist.

Izzy, by rolling round and round and side to side, eventually made it to his hands and knees. He clawed ineffectually against the planet’s pull, losing a foot for every two gained.

As Amantu took his deepest breath, Swirl seemed to flood into every capillary.

“Pardon me.”

Decorously leading a golden hem, he swung a leg through the breach and set down his foot as though testing a pool’s temperature. A spray of light met his sole. There was a sensation of resistance.

Abel called down, “Hold still, damn you!” Izzy feebly thrust out a hand and rolled. “I said,” Abel screamed, “hold…still!”

A chant grew on those rides made contiguous by the net. “Hold still! Hold still! Hold still!”

Amantu was shaky as a foal. It required near-superhuman focus to concentrate on his object, rather than on the gaping metropolis so far below. The experience was similar to walking on glass, in that the lack of a visible surface produced in the brain an unshakable sense of impending doom, but in another sense it was far worse; here there was not even the comforting feel of solidity. The field, active only where contacted, produced a fleeting, squishy support for the weight of each placed foot, instantly eliminating that support once the weight was removed. The effect was intensely unnatural. Amantu went straight down on all fours.

If not for Swirl he’d never have recovered. Amantu scurried down on his hands and knees, leaving bright vanishing prints.

When he reached Izzy, the professor adroitly flipped onto his back, grabbed the doctor’s wrists, and began hauling him along a yard at a time, using his own heels and posterior as points of thrust. The pair came lurching up to the breach. Abel, on his belly, grabbed collars and yanked. Once again the heroics were all Amantu’s. The Hammer pulled himself onto the deck with a bicep in either fist, gave a mighty heave, and dragged Izzy aboard. He tried to assist the analyst onto a stool, but Izzy shook him off.

“There’s gratitude!” Abel snarled.

Amantu was exhilarated. “No matter.” He smoothed his robes up and down. “We are safe and sound.” He watched excitedly while a harsh light tore skyward like a rocket.

Abel cursed as he deleted the breach. The net shut down, the rail sank back to normal. “Don’t,” he grated, “break out the horns and whistles just yet.”

Amantu would have been amazed to see the juvenile grin on his face. “Gentlemen! I am to be congratulated. This will be my debut with the police.”

Izzy raised his head, a self-deluded, punch-drunk prize fighter. “’Grats.”

The professor seated himself ceremoniously, but, unable to be still, ordered and reordered the cups and chest, inspected the table for drops and crumbs. “I suggest a show of nonchalance.”

“My repu--”

“Izzy, if you don’t shut up I will personally spoon-feed you disulfiram. You got me?”

The light, rising to eye-level, slowly swung round to expose three properly seated gentlemen mildly distracted by all the pyrotechnics and revelry. The glare intensified as it neared. The Group shielded their eyes. When the beam was alongside the View it waned to a rolling amber glow on a hovering chopper’s handlebars. A scarlet, pencil-thin beam shone into each squinting face, resting longest on Izzy. The officer popped his scrambler from its holster and aimed it at the deck. A section of railing dissolved, quickly reforming as a broad jutting ledge. He stepped off, disengaged his chopper’s emergency lights, and firmly pushed the machine down by its seat until the blur of its undercarriage melded seamlessly with the ledge. Seven feet of irresistible authority, he loomed over the dead-silent Group, the glossy black of his helmet and visor reflecting their ash and ebon faces. The visor swung onto Abel.

“You, signate, were warned to monitor.”

Abel cleared his throat. “There’s been no damage, officer. Our friend here simply lost his balance. He was quickly rescued and, as far as I am aware, nary a contusion resulted from the affair. Please notify your captain that my account will accommodate any expenses incurred by the ride’s owners, and also your very professional work here.”

The officer locked in place. An excruciating minute later the visor swiveled to Izzy. “Up.”

Izzy raised his blood-red eyes. “Why, you--”

“Doctor Weaver! You are on my signet!”

“Up!”

“My reputation,” Izzy snarled. “My reputation!”

The officer’s arms spread like wings, his ramrod forefingers zeroing in on Izzy’s temples. The twin flashes were so faint they might have been figments. Izzy’s head snapped back, his feet kicked up, and he flipped off the stool onto his rear. When his eyes reopened he was dead sober.

“Up.”

Izzy glared menacingly. Abel and Amantu made to assist, but froze at a jerk from that looming black helmet.

“Up!”

Izzy pulled himself to his feet.

The officer studied each man in turn. “Down!” Amantu winced as the Group took their seats. “An unauthorized firearm was discharged on this map.” Nobody moved, but their eyes were all over the place.

“Up!” The officer removed his scanner and walked once around the table, sampling the standing men. “Down.” The Group resumed their stools. “Signate.”

“Yes?”

“Your account is canceled.”

Abel went absolutely limp.

A flurry of data raced across the polyvinyl visor. The black carapace cocked. “What was your destination?”

“Was?” Abel squealed.

The night stopped on a dime. Those nearer View riders, picking up on the tension, watched quietly.

“Officer. Am I--am I under arrest?”

“Up!” The mechanical voice was deadly.

“The incidence of public drunkenness is waived. A discharged military weapon was traced to this map.”

Another flurry further straightened his back. The input ceased and he leaned back down. The voice went flat. “The courts are closed for the holiday. Due to the expected crush of cases, bail may be remitted against a suitable sponsor’s account in lieu of arrest.”

“Oh, thank you, officer!”

The helmet didn’t budge. “On my discretion. Down.”

Abel sat with his hands folded on his lap. “We are,” he said as distinctly as possible, “on our way to visit a colleague, the celebrated astronomer and wave cataloger Titus Mack. He lives outside the city proper, but he’s a highly respected citizen. I’m sure he’d be cheerfully willing to overwrite this little misunderstanding.”

“By proceeding, you agree that the request will be monitored here in my presence, and that a recording will be duly filed as a legal document.”

Sweat broke from Abel’s hairline. Suddenly he was weak as a transvestite in a holding tank. “Look, officer. It’s really putting Ti on the spot, you know? I mean, couldn’t we just like, laugh this off, make a New Year’s resolution or two, and be done with it?” He looked down, toeing the paused map. “I really feel your demand is prejudicial.”

The officer snapped to attention. “Up!” Abel rose agonizingly, swaying like a cobra. “Approach!” Abel took a timid step forward. The cop strode up titanically, bent at the waist, and got right in his face. “Raise. Your. Eyes!”

Abel’s mousy reflection became a funhouse image on the visor’s convexity. His breath fogged the acrylic, but the officer didn’t move. Now sweat was flowing freely on Abel’s forehead and cheeks. His knees and shoulders caved and recovered, caved and recovered. When he thought he’d faint, a whisper broke his lips. “Officer--”

“Down!”

Abel crumpled on the stool and buried his face in his arms.

In a minute Mack’s voice could be heard, seemingly emanating from the air just above the table.

Titus Mack here. What’s this all about?

Abel raised his head and looked around deliriously. “Ti? Ti! It’s Abel. There’s been some kind of a mix-up. We’re on one of those View rides over the Burghs. Somebody shot off a rocket or something, and somehow or other we’ve been implicated. There’s no way to clear it up right now, and anyway they’ve gone and canceled my account. It’s the holiday, so they’re giving us the option of a sponsor over jail. Can you handle it, man? The officer’s right here, and he’s recording. As far as I know, we’re not yet under arrest.”

A pause. Is everybody aboard?

“Yes, we’re all here.”

Then of course I’ll sponsor. Mack’s voice cut out.

The cop raised his scrambler and rapidly tapped out a sequence using thumb and forefinger. The deck shimmered under his gleaming jackboots. Table and chairs melted in a reverse of their formation. The ledge, now a tongue appended to the View, began porting the Group, officer, and chopper high over the metropolis. The officer ignored them completely, standing erect and motionless, facing away. The men stood tightly bunched. After a while their hands and feet were freezing. They sat very gradually, facing one another with legs crossed and heads almost touching.

Abel moaned into his cupped hands. “We’re…going to jail. I knew it. We’re going to jail!”

“Not so,” Amantu gushed. “I shall gladly bear our burden, as my account is spotless. I assure you, my wise and stalwart friends--the moment I encounter a magistrate these little follies will be laughed right off the books.”

Two pairs of eyes looked up darkly.

“Professor Amantu,” Abel grated, “what took place here tonight is on my signet. Everything that has happened, from the moment I scanned us onto this stupid flying snail, is officially on my tetherball of a head!”

“My fault,” Izzy whimpered, whipping out the flask while the cop’s back was turned. “Me! Me! All me!”

“Well, Izzy, hopefully the judge will take your contrition into account. Because, damn you all to hell, we’re going to jail!”

It was a long ride over the metropolis. Re-keyed ground sensors delineated an official corridor to courthouse and substations, complete with flashing lights and wailing sirens. The Group weren’t the only ones so escorted; similar green tongues were approaching the civic center from every direction. And some were in the process, already, of dissolving on police docks. It was pretty obvious the rides would be undergoing some serious rethinking after the holiday. Now the twin bloody comets of a lost ambulance, disoriented by the aerial displays, rocketed by overhead, causing proximate Views to dip and pause. The Group shakily regained their feet. The officer didn’t turn. They were halfway across the Burghs’ M Grid when the tongue halted abruptly, its tip suspended a hundred feet above a pulsing tower.

The officer straightened like a man being electrocuted.

After a minute he came up to the Group and brought his shiny black visor in close.

“Up!”

The men watched encrypted data race across their reflections as he studied each face in turn, dwelling longest on Amantu. The cop stomped back to the tip and resumed his stance. Holding his rigid arms straight down, he pointed his scrambler at the Burghs and banked the tongue away from the sprawling Center, clear across the great expanse of the grids, toward the Outskirts’ wide lonely plains.

The new morning grew chillier as they rode, and the landscape progressively less attractive. A bitter wind replaced the composite warmth of bustling humankind. Mystified by the proceedings, the men bundled themselves deeper into their robes and scarves, speaking only with their eyes. By the time the tongue’s tip was testing the surface, the moon’s misty white medallion was shining coldly on a boundless desert junkyard, and the proud torch of civilization was a wan and distant glow.