The monitor said, ‘It’s enough for you now to know that THC will want you dead.’
The woman glanced at the monitor then shrugged.
Ansel had been with the Company for many years and done a lot for them. He was not the kind they had killed — he was the kind who did the killing.
‘Okay, get up,’ said the monitor.
He sounded angry. Ansel stood up and, as he stretched his legs and arms, the snout of the pulse-gun did not waver from his face.
The monitor nodded towards the door. ‘Out of here.’
The shuttle had been manoeuvred into one of the large barns, which was why Ansel had not seen it from the hill. He followed the woman and the monitor out into orange sunset where the bearded villager and Kelly’s daughter waited. The two of them glanced questioningly at the monitor.
‘He’ll give evidence. He is evidence,’ said the monitor, prodding Ansel in the back with his pulse-gun.
As he walked ahead, Ansel noted that the bearded villager carried his pack. Perhaps his thin-gun was in there, along with those other lethal devices to which the monitor had referred.
When they reached one of the houses the monitor leant close in behind him. ‘Remember this, assassin: you’re just as much evidence dead as alive.’
Ansel nodded. Whatever this bullshit was he knew he would never testify in an EC court.
The Company had too much pull and he would be bailed and gone in an instant. But he had no intention of it coming to that. The pistol snout nudged him in the back again and he entered the house.
‘Where’s Kelly now?’ Ansel abruptly asked.
Before the monitor could stop her Annette answered, ‘My father is upriver getting the Book of Statements.’
Ansel noted the reverence in her voice. He smiled to himself as the monitor shoved him forward.
‘Secure him,’ said the monitor tightly.
They tied him in a back bedroom, rough ropes securing his wrists and feet to the bedposts. He guessed the monitor did not want him aboard the shuttle where he might get free and have access to whatever weapons might be there. As soon as the door closed he tested the tension of the ropes. Steady flexing did not loosen them, it only drew them tighter on his wrists and ankles, but the frame of the bed moved. Its creaking brought the bearded one to the door.
Ansel closed his eyes and decided to rest. Later.
When he woke he checked the timepiece set in the nail of his right forefinger. Two hours had passed and he hoped everyone in the house was asleep. He steadily pulled on the ropes securing his wrists and managed to slide himself far enough down the bed to hook his feet under the bottom rail. There was one weapon the monitor had been unable to remove, and perhaps had been unaware of: Ansel’s home planet had a gravity of one and a half gees, and though he looked just like an Earthman, he was much stronger. He gripped the ropes around his wrists and pulled hard with his feet. There was a loud crack and he lay still, listening. No movement. He pulled again, steadily, until the tenon holding the bottom rail to the bottom bedpost broke through and the rail pulled away. With the toe of his boot he levered the rope that secured that leg up and over the post. Lying still, he listened again. Nothing. He levered the rail back and forth with his foot until the other tenon began to work free, finally pulling the rail all the way back onto the bed so that when it came out of its mortise hole it did not drop to the floor. With both legs free it was then a simple task to snap the top rail and get his hands free. He was removing the rope from his wrist when an explosion rattled the windows and fire seared the darkness.
Ansel was off his bed in an instant. The door was locked, but he turned the handle until something broke with a dull thud. Easing the door open, he peered through, just in time to see the bearded man rushing outside. On the table in that room rested his rucksack, which he stepped in and grabbed, before retreating to the bedroom. From outside came another explosion, and he could hear yelling. He did not speculate about the cause since he would find out once outside. In his rucksack he found his thin-gun, which he holstered, before opening the bedroom window and stepping through.
‘It’s the shuttle,’ said the woman.
He spun to see her squatting in the darkness a few paces behind him. Automatically he drew his thin-gun and aimed it at her. Then he looked ahead and saw that the barn was burning.
‘Where’s the monitor?’ he asked.
‘In the shuttle,’ she replied.
Ansel made no comment about that.
There were villagers running out of the houses, hastily clothed, yelling questions to each other. Ansel stayed where he was. The woman moved closer and he saw that she wore a pack on her back and held her cutting laser.
‘You can drop that,’ he said.
After she did as he instructed, he snatched the device up and put it in his belt. He then gestured with his gun for her to move where he could see her more clearly, before turning most of his attention to the fire and the villagers. Silhouetted against flame came a striding figure.
‘Jesus,’ said Ansel.
‘Who is it?’ the woman asked.
‘Not a who, a what.’
Ansel suddenly had a very bad feeling about all this.
