AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I couldn’t let you and Paul have all the fun, could I? Who’s the young lady? You two have seemed awfully close on the journey.”
“Candy, meet Norris Quay, the richest asshole in this time zone.”
Candy puts her hand up to shield her eyes from the glare of lights.
“Wow. He does look like Paul.”
“Paul looks like me, dear,” says Quay. “Get the lineage right.”
The man behind him pushes past the attendants and points at us.
“They’re the ones who destroyed my workshop. Them and some Mata Hari. Now I can’t make any more familiars.”
Candy waves to him.
“Hi, Mr. Rose. How are you?”
Quay holds up a hand.
“Calm down, Atticus. We’ll have you set up in a new space as soon as we get what we came for.”
“Which brings me to the sixty-four-dollar question. What the hell are you doing here, Norris? You already have Paul planted with us. Does he even know about you? What’s going to happen if he sees you?”
“I don’t give a tinker’s balls what happens to him. He’s an instrument. A pocket watch bought and paid for. As to why I’m here, I thought that would be obvious. Redundancy.”
“There’s plenty of assholes in Kill City already. We don’t need duplicates.”
“Did you know that when NASA sent the Apollo rockets into space, they each had three computers on board? Three, on the assumption that two would fail.”
“So Paul is the first two and you’re lucky number three?”
“No. Paul is one. You’re two. I know you’d move Heaven and earth to get what you set out for. But what if you both failed?”
“What if I succeeded and didn’t want to give the 8 Ball up?”
“That too. And now that we’re this close, I don’t know that a redundant system is all that necessary.”
“We’re not there yet.”
“When the Apollo Eleven lunar module, the one that first put men on the moon, was landing, all three computers failed. Neil Armstrong had to land on the moon manually. But he was an experienced pilot and they were so close that it was not only feasible but doable. And so man landed on the moon and returned safely. I believe that from here my little team can pilot ourselves down to Mare Tranquillitatis all on our own.”
Shadows move in the cavern behind Quay and his people. They’re so focused on Candy and me that they don’t notice.
“Do you really want the thing so bad that you’re prepared to fuck up the plan this close to the end?”
“Yes. And we won’t fuck it up.”
“And this is all because you’re an art lover and not some crazy old man who thinks the Qomrama can somehow make him live forever.”
“My reasons are no concern of yours.”
Whatever is moving in the dark is getting closer. I take a step toward Quay. His goons level their guns at me. I’m fast but there’s no way I can get to Quay without acquiring many, many new holes in my body. Am I strong enough to throw any hoodoo? Maybe. But if the door to the spiral staircase was any indication, nothing fancy. On the other hand, maybe I won’t have to do a thing.
“What if you’re wrong, Norris? Did you find the bridge? Did you see the spiral stairs back there? Did your master plan include any of those? What if there’s more of that ahead?”
“Of course we didn’t cross the bridge. Some idiot destroyed it. But another family showed us a safe way around. You’re not the only one who thought to bring trinkets to trade with the natives. As for the stairs, slippery as they were, we navigated them just fine.”
“You walked straight down the stairs?”
