From: km4j+@andrew.cmu.edu (Kip G. Moore)
Subject: Fugue, Part 1
Date: 31 Mar 92 15:40:16 GMT


Continuing the resolution of the Model 66 scenario......With thanks to
Phyllis, of course.  Comments welcomed.

_______________________________________________________________________


     It was only a month, but Leadfoot felt as though he'd met the wrong
end of a shockrod after a kick-boxing match with an H-K drone.  He was
bone weary, tired, frustrated, angry, nervous, and generally in a bad
state.  He still even had scars from the encounter on the roof of ARES'
Cadaemus Division complex.

     A gaunt, ghostly pale shadow of a man stood before him, grinning
the grin of a man who is not laughing at you nor with you, but somehow
in spite of you.  Argent was turning this almost into a rite of passage.
Leadfoot had spent sleepless nights dreaming of this moment, but like
the truly inexperienced headstrong young man that he was, he had never
thought past this point.  His ecstasy that had thrilled up from the base
of his spine upon reanimating Argent, giving him back the life that he
was here to protect, had turned into smoke and wafted away at the
appearance that grin, and the tension and activity of the past, lost
month settled down upon him like a gilden lead overcoat.

     Argent didn't even know how truly he had lost his life, how truly
dead he still was.  Leadfoot's job was far from finished.

     Leadfoot looked around the room; for the first time he actually saw
what was in the room.  It was dark in the room.  There was no need for a
light, seeing as how the automatic monitoring devices took care of
everything.  Presumably, once Argent was all healed, they would break
him up.  The only light in the room came from the life support console
embedded in the wall.  The eerie green CRT glow suffused the room with a
ghostly, sickly, monochromatic, pulsing glow.  The room was nearly
perfectly cubical, each face about long as Leadfoot was tall, giving him
just enough room to stand.  The bed took up most of the space in the
room; any space left over was dominated by the cabinet that held various
medical paraphernalia.  Luxury acommodations for a dead man.

     Leadfoot mustered up the remaining strength he had into a manic,
possessed grin.  "I've tied these security systems into wet knots every
time I've visited in the past month.  You're in for a treat."

     Argent turned around to look at the two-dimensional prison that he
had been relegated to for the past month and grinned that ghost of a grin
back a the young man, "Good.  I've been a bit... short on treats, lately."

     Leadfoot could only shake his head in agreement.  He was too busy
cross-routing the alarm system that had been hooked up to Argent's
life-support net.  Argent stirred himself, reached for the medkit and
pulled out a small sea-green derm. He pulled off the backing and
slapped it to his inner thigh.  The noise made Leadfoot jump,
"Adrenaline-hemoglobin analog.  Gotta get my blood flowing again," Argent
remarked wryly.

     Leadfoot stood up sharply.  "Let's get a move on, shall we?  This
won't last for...."  A red LED started to strobe on the wall next to the
bed.  "......long.  Shit."  He handed Argent his stakakker, who held it
as though it were a barely subcritical mass of plutonium.  "Just humor
me will you, Argent??  It's for your own good."  Argent nodded in
agreement, sighed and pocketed the weapon.

     Leadfoot and Argent froze at the sudden low rushing sound that they
heard coming from the circulation vents in the baseboard of the room.  A
tenuous, heavy pale gas was beginning to circulate around their feet.
As a tendril of it wafted across Argent's bare foot, he hissed
urgently:.  "Nerve gas!!  My whole foot just went completely numb!"

     Leadfoot flashed over to the door and flipped it open, ducking
behind the adjacent wall for cover, and peeked out into the hall.  "We
have to go out the front door," he mumbled.  "We're only five stories
up, but the adjacent buildings are a little too far and I only brought
climbing gear for one--"

     The door opened onto a narrow metal catwalk, at one end of which was
a small one-man elevator.  The layout of the organleggers' lair was not
unlike that of a coffin hotel, the coffins being self-contained highly
flexible single-occupant life-support units that could be removed from the
structural framework and doubled as a meatwagon.

     Argent followed Leadfoot out of the door and along the open grating
of the catwalk.  He wondered how many other people were being kept barely
alive in their little cubes, just waiting for their turn to be broken up
into parts.  Most of an organlegger's business is legit, but everyone
knew what to do when they just happen to have a cooling body on their hands.
It was Biz, close and simple and short, but he hadn't gotten this close to
this end of it for far too long.



-Kilimanjaro West