The Battle for Terra Two Read Free Page B

"What do you want?"
    "Everyone asks that," sighed the blonde. Her china-blue eyes met his. "You know what I want.
    "Harrison, Shalan-Actal's transmutes are gunning for me, so I'll make it short. I know Sutherland just briefed you—laid a moral imperative on you. Will you go?"
    "I don't know," he said honestly.
    "Harrison," said the S'Cotar urgently, "if those machines establish a bridgehead in this universe, it's all over—for you, for us, for all intelligent life. They'll wipe Shalan the second he's no longer needed. One of their battle units is five times the size of the K'Ronarin fleet. Harrison, they have over ten thousand battle units! Maybe the Imperial Fleet could have stood against them—nothing of this time can."
    "How do you know all this?"
    "Some few of us can receive their internal communications—cold, alien thoughts, dedicated to the death of all sapient life. The dead hand that programmed them created an undying malevolence. We either stop them now, one reality away, or we're all dead meat."
    "We?" John shook his head. "I don't trust you, bug."
    "Trust this then," said the blonde coldly. "Your wife's visiting in Israel. She's now seated in the Cafe Hertzel, on Jerusalem's Dizendorf Street, sipping Turkish coffee from a white, chipped demitasse cup. Her girlfriend tells an anecdote—your wife laughs, her brown eyes sparkling.
    I've but to signal and she's dead. And I will, unless you help us."
    Harrison laughed bitterly. "Kill her if you want. We're getting divorced. Zahava's gone home to stay."
    "Fine," shrugged the blonde.
    "No!" John grabbed the S'Cotar by the shoulders, ashen-cheeked.
    The transmute smiled quizzically. "Bluffing?"
    "Yes." He dropped his hands.
    "I wasn't."
    "She's not . . ."
    "No. Your tough little hellcat's safe, Harrison. For now."
    They resumed their slow walk, the lunchtime crowd flowing around them.
    "I'm glad that's resolved," said the transmute. "I'll be taking you through the portal to Terra Two, tomorrow at noon."
    "Why then?" asked John, wanting very much to kill Guan-Sharick.
    "It's the only time for the next seven months that my loyalists will have charge of both sides of the portal. I could get you through now, but not without some commotion."
    "Then what?"
    "Then we slip you into Major Harrison's new posting— Boston. There you'll contact the resistance, and lead them against Shalan-Actal's outpost in Vermont, escaping just before they blow up the portal device."
    "Either you're crazy," said John, "or you've set this all up very carefully."
    They stopped at the corner of Fourteenth and H streets, waiting for the light.
    "Major Harrison was a resistance sympathizer," said the transmute. "His assignment to Boston was arranged by certain elements of the CIA for the very purpose we want—disposal of Shalan's covert outpost on Terra Two."
    "You had nothing to do with that, I suppose?"
    "Me?" said the blonde, wide-eyed.
    "Why aren't those killer machines trundling down the street, slaughtering away?" asked John as the traffic rolled past. "The portal works, the machines are on Terra Two."
    "Not in great strength. And there's a problem with the linkage between Terra Two and the machines' universe. You have to close the portal from Terra Two to here before machine reinforcements reach Terra Two."
    They didn't notice the light flashing. Pedestrians streamed around them. "Take an army through, seize the portal," said John.
    "Shalan would disengage the portal device before even a platoon got through. My loyalists hold only a few key points on both sides—not enough to mask the hosts of humanity."
    "We're going to miss the light." They hurried across as the warning blinked.
    "Read the briefing book," said Guan-Sharick as they continued down H Street. "Know it. I'll be at your town house tomorrow morning, at eleven. Then we'll flick through the portal to Terra Two." The S'Cotar stopped in front of a junk electronics store, back to a doorway full of kids and the blare of punk rock.