The Vor Game

lot.'

Miles made a small leaky noise. 'I don't have that much on me.'

The officer pulled out his come-along stick. 'Well, then.'

'I'll have to make arrangements.'

'You'll have to make arrangements from Detention, sir.'

'But I'll miss my ship!'

'That's probably the idea,' the officer agreed. 'Considering the timing and all.'

'Suppose—if that's all this Cavilo wants—he then withdraws his bid?'

'He'll lose a substantial deposit.'

Jacksonian justice was truly blind. They'd sell it to anyone. 'Uh, may I have a word with my assistant?'

The officer pursed his lips, and studied Overholt suspiciously. 'Make it fast.'

'What d'you think, Sergeant?' Miles turned to Overholt and asked lowly. 'They don't seem to have an order for you. . . .'

Overholt looked tense, tight mouth annoyed and eyes almost panicked. 'If we could make it to the ship. . . .'

The rest hung unspoken. The Escobarans shared the Polian disapproval of Jacksonian Consortium 'law.' Once aboard the liner, Miles would be on Escobaran 'soil'; the captain would not voluntarily yield him up. Could, would, this Cavilo be able to bid enough to intern the whole Escobaran liner? The sum involved would be astronomical 'Try.'

Miles turned back toward the Consortium officers, smiling, wrists held out in surrender. Overholt exploded into action. The sergeant's first kick sent the enormous goon's come-along stick flying. Overholt's momentum flowed into a whirl that brought his double hands up against the second goon's head with great force. Miles was already in motion. He dodged a wild grab, and sprinted as best he could up the concourse. At this point he spotted the third goon, in plainclothes. Miles could tell who he was by the glitter of the tangle-field he tossed in front of Miles's pistoning legs. The man snorted with laughter as Miles pitched forward, trying to roll and save his brittle bones. Miles hit the concourse floor with a whump that knocked the air from his lungs. He inhaled through clenched if teeth, not crying out, as the pain in his chest competed with the burn of the tangle-net around his ankles. He wrenched himself around on the floor, looking back the way he had come.

The less enormous goon was standing bent over, hands to his head, dizzied. The other was retrieving his come-along stick from where it had skittered to a stop. By elimination, the stunned heap on the pavement must be Sergeant Overholt.

The goon with the stick stared at Overholt and shook his head, and stepped over him toward Miles. The dizzied goon pulled out his own stick and gave the downed man a shock to the head, and followed without a backward glance. Nobody, apparently, wanted to buy Overholt.

'There will be a ten percent surcharge for resisting arrest,' the spokesman-goon remarked coldly down to Miles. Miles squinted up the shiny columns of his boots. The shock-stick came down like club.

On the third blazing blow he began screaming. On the seventh, he passed out. He came to consciousness altogether too soon, while still being dragged along between the two uniformed men. He was shivering uncontrollably. His breathing was messed up somehow, irregular shallow gasps that didn't give him enough air. Waves of pins-and-needles pulsed through his nervous system. He had a kaleidoscope impression of lift tubes and corridors, and more bare functional corridors. They jerked to a halt at last. When the goons let his arms go he fell to hands and knees, then the cold floor.

Another civil security officer peered over a comconsole desk him. A hand grasped Miles's head by the hair, and yanked it back; the red flicker of a retinal scan blinded him momentarily. His eyes seemed extraordinarily sensitive to light. His shaking hands were pressed hard against some sort of identification pad; released, he fell back into his huddle. His pockets were stripped out, stunner, IDs, tickets, cash, all dumped pell-mell into a plastic bag. Miles emitted a muffled squeak of dismay as they bundled the white jacket, with all its useful secrets, into the bag as well. The lock was keyed closed with his thumbprint, pinched against it.

The Detention officer craned his neck. 'Does he want to outbid?'

'Unh . . .' Miles managed to respond, when his head was pulled back again.

'He said he did,' the arresting goon said helpfully.

The Detention officer shook his head. 'We're going to have to wait till the shock wears off. You guys overdid it, I think. He's only a little runt.'

'Yeah, but he had a big guy with him who gave us trouble. The little mutant seemed to be in charge, so we let him take payment for both.'

'That's fair,' the Detention officer conceded. 'Well, it'll be a while. Throw him in the cooler till he stops shaking enough to talk.'

'Sure that's a good idea? Funny-looking as he is, the boy-ohs might want to play games. He might still ransom himself.'

'Mm.' The Detention officer looked Miles over judiciously. 'Throw him in the waiting room with Marda's techies, then. They're a quiet bunch, they'll leave him alone. And they'll be gone soon.'

Miles was dragged again—his legs didn't respond at all to his will, only jerking spasmodically. The leg braces seemed to have had some amplifying effect on the shocks administered there, or maybe it was the combination with the tangle-field. A long room like a barracks, with a row of cots down each wall, swam past his vision. The goons heaved him, not unkindly, onto an empty cot in the less-populated end of the room. The senior one made a dim sort of effort to straighten him out, tossed a light blanket across his still uncontrollably-twitching form, and they left him.

A little time passed, with nothing to distract him from the full enjoyment and appreciation of his new array of physical sensations. He'd thought he'd sampled every sort of agony in the catalogue, but the goons' shock-sticks had found out nerves and synapses and ganglial knots he'd never known he possessed. Nothing like pain, to concentrate the attention upon the self. Practically solipsistic, it was. But it seemed to be easing—if only his body would stop these quasi-epileptic seizures, which were exhausting him. . . . A face wavered into view. A familiar face.

'Gregor! Am I glad to see you,' Miles burbled inanely. He felt his burning eyes widen. His hands shot out to clench Gregor's shirt, a pale blue prisoner's smock. 'What the hell are you doing here?'

'It's a long story.'

'Ah! Ah!' Miles struggled up onto his elbow and stared around wildly for assassins, hallucinations, he knew not what. 'God! Where's—'

Gregor pushed him back down with a hand on his chest. 'Calm down.' And under his breath. 'And shut up! . . . You better rest a bit. You don't look very good right now.'

Actually, Gregor didn't look so good himself, sitting on the edge of Miles's cot. His face was pale and tired, peppered with beard stubble. His normally military-cut and combed black hair was a tangle. His hazel eyes looked nervous. Miles choked back panic.

'My name is Greg Bleakman,' the emperor informed Miles urgently.

'I can't remember what my name is right now,' Miles stuttered. 'Oh—yeah. Victor Rotha. I think. But how did you get from—' Gregor looked around vaguely. 'The walls have ears, I think?'

'Yes, maybe.'

Miles subsided slightly. The man on the next cot shook his head with a God-save-me-from-these-assholes look, turned over and put his pillow over his head. 'But, uh . . . did you get here, like, under your own power?'

'Unfortunately, all my own doing. You remember that time we were joking about running away from home?'

'Yeah?'

'Well,' Gregor took a breath, 'it turned out to be a really bad idea.'

'Couldn't you have figured that out in advance?'

'I—' Gregor broke off, to stare up the long room as a guard stuck his head in the door to bawl, 'Five minutes!'

'Oh, hell.'