When the frost-capped gray peak on the misty mountainous horizon first came into view from the quarry, Questor's heart jumped in spirit if not in physical actuality. The sight at once swamped his pain with warm hazy memories of his and Jerry Robinson's desperate race to beat an atomic death-watch, and his brief yet warm encounter with his long sought creator.
Questor recalled all this with the crisp freshness of a yesterday and he almost wished he could withdraw into that illusionary past
His cautious evasive route had taken three times as long via air connections first to Toronto then Paris then Cyprus, but Questor was nearly home.
He was confident of his disguise, but even more confident in calling in the markers of the underground groups Vaslovik then he himself aided in their assistance for liberty and liberation. Two groups were even willing to spirit him all the way to his destination though he politely declined. They couldn't understand it. They discretely sensed Questor was gravely ill and felt obliging to a sympathizer of their cause. But no one could accompany him on these final dozen miles, and only one human ever tread the way he was about to embark.
Like a pigeon to a beacon, he already knew a hundred miles exactly where to go; the challenge was making his body follow. The winding path was discernible to his eyes only; human senses would miss the traces though for several thousand years several hundred of his kind had walked the same final miles. Fortunately today the way was well off the beaten tourist path, coursing terrain so rugged not even local herdsmen brought their goat flocks there. Off-road in the foothills would demand every erg of energy and resolution to climb the rocky slope of the mountain.
What fueled Questor's drive more than his program directives and fusion furnace was pleasure. His link with the Information Center gave him a front row seat to the progress of his surrogate.
She was doing better than he dared hope.
In fact Vicki's keen and resourcefulness surprised him. It wasn't that she was doing anything that her racial memory of Servers didn't supply, rather it was her bold impromptu actions that were totally unanticipated. She was apparently drawing much of inventive inspiration from her static memories with the Lawsons, not to mention her overt femininity. Though Vicki's original electronic memory was pathetically tiny, the quality of her human education was impressive in the scope and depth of its intimate family experiences. The never-born human girl whose niche Vicki occupied quite likely would've grown into a very exceptional child.
As illogical as it sounds Vicki possesses the spirit of her human family, Questor mused somewhat soberly behind the pride. She'd certainly be a vital asset to--correct our mistakes. If she gets here.
Of course she could still fail, but the 90:10 possibility was rapidly starting to even out. And there was also the possibility that the Caretaker of The Place wouldn't be as impressed enough to allow her continuance much less evolving.
In that sad event...
In small quarry in view of Mount Ararat, Questor pointed out a granite stone to the waiting cutter and grinder.
"A little slab, please."

From the jungled mountaintop's rebel encampment, Valdez's binoculars stared over at San Rey's balmy sparkling capital beneath the hard bright stars.
There were many more lights dotting the dark mountainsides and illuminating town proper than he last recalled from this perch last year. Santos' plans and ploy was becoming strikingly evident and beguiling.
Soon it'll look like Panama City if Santos has his way, Valdez grimly mused.
Nothing is worst than a seemingly benevolent dictator, and Santos is making the transition with elegant elan. Free electricity, soon central clean water and with the new energy resources under his command the plantations will supply food in ample abundance and oil would again feed pregnant tankers to suckle the greedy mouths of distant lands. The citizens of San Rey need never go hungry or without modern conveniences or free health care again.
And Santos promised to pack up his magical toys and gracefully leave office if he lost the election.
But all knew who would really lose.
Senorita Mercedes Bogota was right; the contras winning at the polls would only ignite a vicious revolution amongst the people who we are trying to unshackle from Santos.
Something hot-blooded Gomez failed to fully comprehend; the results of a violent revolution would only fall into the same trap.
The spectre of the people marching the streets on their own, without guns at their backs, yelling and shouting and demanding the return of Santos was an irony too bitter and despairing to imagine.
Santos wins coming and going.
Unless this miniature marvel of a woman can pull her small miracle.
Valdez vented a wistful sigh and trained his glasses to the former Holiday Inn Hotel, barely able to pick out the lighted balconies.
She would be in there, quietly sleeping in her petite grace and beauty. What must she look like but a diaphanous angel tiny in the cloud of her bed?
Valdez savored the memory of her petite heft when she deigned his chivalrous whim to hoist her on her jeep. So tiny, so beautiful, yet so bold and lethal! She was a truly a woman of their culture; strong-willed and logical and formidable, but she knew when to release the reins of social power to be a charmingly delicate woman. Her blue eyes commanded icy respect in their peculiar seasoned wisdom, but they twinkled like a child's at their parting.
He prayed she didn't notice the depth of his fascination with her.
Yes, what was it she whispered in my ear before parting--
"Be wise of Gomez?"
That was a starting breath from an angel's lips.
Granted, he and Gomez didn't see eye to eye on the course of the revolution, but they were comrades at arms again a common snake.
What did she know? How?
We must meet again so I can ask Mercedes, Valdez promised with a longing sigh of lame excuses; And about matters more important than revolution.

"When was the last time you made a jet drop sir??" asked the Delta Force sergeant on the aft deck of the cavernous C-5A Galaxy jet, and Phillips glared at him as though a breech of protocol and rank. "DEFCOM reports a British cruiser with Lynx choppers is already on station 12 miles offshore, and a U.S. and French sub are prowling for any rafts or small craft off the beach with SEALS and SAS teams for boarding. We've already two infiltration teams in the jungle and the town."
Not to mention the U-2 and satellites imaging the island nation down to a coconut, Phillips reflected without exaggeration.
"All for one tiny terrorist."
"It's not out of proportion, sergeant; we'd pull out as many stops to recover a kilogram of pure plutonium, and she's carrying a X-plague vial which is a ten times more deadly."
Properly chastised and invigorated with the sober urgency of mission, the sergeant moved off.
Phillips sighed. If only the forces under his command knew that this 'slip' of a girl might lead us to technologies that'd dwarf everything now being summoned to find and cage her. And everything's looking up like an end game now. Not even Questor, when his presence was realized usually long after he'd left the scene, let himself be bottled up on some ship or island when the heat was on.
Phillips felt even more optimistic now then ever.

The sargent reluctantly let Dr. Michaels into the stockade where a frightened Domingo shakily got up as though the calvary had arrived. "Dr. Michaels! Thank God!"
"Not quite yet," Michaels intoned with gentle admonishing. "First, you must tell me what you were doing breaching the drill housing."
"I was concerned, Doctor! I was taking measurements and readings. Much of it doesn't make any sense. There are gamma readings at flux levels that should kill everyone for miles, and the voltage potentials in the matrix are off the meters, yet a few centimeters from the crystal these readings vanish! Almost as though there was a thirty meter wall of lead between it and I!"
"There's nothing to be fearful of. These were once classified high energy physics experiments finally coming to light of day," Michaels nimbly lied.
"But that crystal seems to defy physics, doctor! It looks more mineral than any heavy metal like uranium or plutonium, and that alone makes its radiation flux impossible! In fact, I almost don't believe these energy emissions are nuclear at all!"
Michael's eyebrow twitched, muting piqued intense curiosity. "Oh? You have a speculation?"
Michaels looked like a professor teasing a pupil at a guessing game that would determine his life.
"I--I am not versed in atomic physics, Doctor Michaels...but it's as though the energy wasn't being generated from within the crystal itself, but immediately beyond its matrix. As though it were more like a--a field lens funneling in radiations from the ether around us...but such is beyond any science theory I know."
Michaels nodded, burying any overt expression of intrigue and interest. "You've a good head on your shoulders, Domingo . I can understand scientific curiosity. Unfortunately my sponsors here don't."
"Dr. Michaels, I'm innocent!"
"I'll convey that to Santos." Michaels padded Domingo's shoulder and smiled. "Fear not, my friend. We'll clear up this misunderstanding."
Michaels left Domingo in the slam and by jeep returned to his opulent room in the presidential palace where he pulled up a chair to his desk and broke out his Powerbook laptop and began excitedly typing in fresh theories for thought and Nobel Prizes.

Gomez spent his wait in the alley outside the hotel honing his knife and imagining its consummation plunged a still beating breast as deeply as the insult at the hands of a malapert pink devil chihuahua.
Senorita Mercedes Bogota.
Enjoy your final hours on Earth for soon you shall beg to leave it.
Gomez longed to savagely soil her with himself first; not so much in pleasure as with punitive pain. Remind her that she was a mere female in the grand Darwinian scale of things. Her intelligence, her degrees, her talents: these were just artificial excesses conferred her sex by the ivory tower vagaries of civilization. Nature in the wild for billions of years had no use for brains in females; only their wombs mattered.
Yes, the Hunter would have to remind her--re-educate her--of that fact of life before she died. He would have to fight off the guilt that although childlike Bogota was not a child; it was one thing to taste a pretty child but only butchers slay them. Still, the serrated metal would not mercifully plunge into her; no, that would rob him of savoring his lesson. He wanted to see those blue eyes slowly budge as the honed steel tip delicately parted her creamy skin and puffy flesh as it slipped between her ribs and chest cage and kissed the membranes enveloping her vital beating muscle. He thought of even pausing there and whispering into her ear, maybe bargaining with her pleas and begs to shove it all the way through quickly instead of slowly twisting the blade and severing nerves and blood vessels one by one just shy of her pounding heart. To stroke and feather her fluttering muscle with the metallic tip before creeping deeper, feeling her leaking pounds surround the polished steel, cling and lubricate the metal as it ever so slowly slid within her deepest gasping chambers before they ran dry of vital ruby essence.
I want to kiss the warm blood welling her mouth.
Gomez wiped the spittle running his beard; Yes, it must take her at least a half hour to die.
For my honor as a Man, it is only Just.
He tensed at a sound at the alley's front and relaxed as five stocky shadows lumbered his way.
"Saludo, Senior Gomez--!"
"Do not use my name, Roberto!" Gomez muttered, grumbling at resorting to recruiting street gangs and rowdies too politically naive or apathetic to join the revolution in any shade. At least they were totally out of the contras circuit and knew nothing of his affiliations--and humiliation--at the hands of a mere girl-woman. In that minute everything changed of how his comrades regarded his face, suddenly only politely talking to him when asked and keeping their distanced as though to avoid some contamination by shame and effeteness.
Even Richardo was now half-enthused taking his orders.
It was all so damn unfair!
Did they all not witness the she-animal that lashed at him and Richardo?
Yes -- but they also saw a delicate tiny cream-puff of a woman, and that appearance more than her action made for far more credible and damning rumors. He'd boasted his hand-to-hand skills too long without an occasional match, and now all saw these claims bested by a mere slip of a girl. Girl as in female child, since the battle hardened macho-nursed guerrillas didn't see a woman because a child-sized child or child-sized woman was the same thing;
A child.
And one had beaten him.
The tiny poodle of a chihuahua will pay!
And Roberto and his gang shall witness it to spread awe and useful rumor of his ice-cold ways in dealing with informers and traitors. Of course, they must never know it was personal. He maimed and tortured spies for information, pure and simple and honorable. Any information Bogota begged to volunteer for swift eternal sleep would be helpful for his next rung up the palace ladder, yes, but that was quite inconsequential to his passion of the moment.
But how to murder the minx without evoking attention! As ineffectual la policia were, the Secret police kept the pulse of its puppets and would want to know the reasons of an unauthorized homicide in the capital and perhaps set off extra precautions or contingencies in the security apparatus that could interfere with his greater plans.
No; the senorita had to disappear, no body, no trace, and no missing person report.
Gomez saw a basket and smiled and rubbed his knife.
There were ways to stuff a body places smaller than a casket.

Interior Minister Sandeval's aide-de-camp tore the photo fax from the fax machine and nodded. "Senor Sandeval! Madame Carmen Trinidad's likeness just faxed in from our agents in Buenos Aires."
"Let's see this!" Sandeval said, joining smiles of wistful pleasure. "So, her beauty's not an exaggeration! I'm sure she'll be a very welcome sight at the reception!"
The aide nodded and pinned the photo to a security reference wall packed with full face pictures of dignitaries and guests.

"Vicki, wait--" Jamie said as she handed him a soda can with a curtness beyond her usual wooden demeanor, and Jamie could even detect a slight grudging smirk on her face as she obligingly re-faced him.
"Yes?" she intoned if in a hurry to leave the room to her cabinet's new home in the garage.
"Vicki, we gotta talk," Jamie said, halting to summon his guts and stash his shame. "Look...I...I've done some...some bad things in the past. Things that...that I thought I could get away with because... because I figured you were too dumb to say anything. That I could get my kicks off you without anyone stopping me or turning me down. I -- I took advantage of you...and I want to say that...that I was wrong. Worst than wrong. I don't want to think of you like that anymore. Next time I'll find a girlfriend, a real girlfriend, not my sister."
He sighed and stood. "I wish you really understood what I was saying, but at least you know."
He turned for the door.
"It's about time," crisply quipped a pert natural girls' voice behind him. We whirled and faced a uncharacteristic wry smile. On first impulse he thought--
"Vanessa??"
"A little -- after all I'm in her body!" Vicki pertly said, her stoic countenance vanished for the limber pose of an 11-year-old. "The other Vicki mixed my memory data with Vanessa's A.I. to give me some personality...and to keep an eye on you. At least you kept your promise."
"I have! I really feel bad about what I did."
"O Sure."
"I do! It doesn't matter that you're a machine, you're supposed to be my sister no matter what! But I didn't care! I treated you like you'd no sense or feelings or emotions at all!"
"Well, technically I don't."
"That's not the point, Vicki! If I thought that way that bad, I'd probably feel the same way if you were born my retarded stepsister! Worst, I wasn't treating girls with a lot of respect and I wasn't looking at them like they had minds and brains or like people. All I could think whenever I looked at girls was wondering how they'd like compared with you..."
Jamie stopped and blushed.
"Jessica slapped your face," Vicki conjectured and he meekly nodded. "A lame reason to reform, but I believe your remorse sincere."
"So you forgive me?"
"Forgiveness is just a term to me. Deeds matter to me, not words, Jamie. If you value me as a sister the way sisters are supposed to be valued you'd show it."
"I will. I will!"
"Good. Well, I better get along and do the kitchen," Vicki said, her entire demeanor abruptly stiffening up again as she pivoted for the sink.
"Wait Vicki!" he blurted in dismay, "You're not going back to being like a robot again?"
"I AM a robot!" she monotoned as usual.
"I mean can't you stay normal like you were just now??"
"I could, but I can't let dad get curious about the alien algorithms making my A.I. work a hundred times better."
"Then just be that way around me! It'll be our secret! Com'on, Vicki! It'll just be like having a real sister, not some Frankenstein maid!"
Thawing back into a human mien, Vicki sighed. "I have to warn you Jamie, I'm not like the other Vicki. I don't really have a mind or conscience or think like you do. I'm just not that advanced, I'm afraid."
"So what! If it acts like a duck, walks like duck, and swims like a duck, you're sister enough for me! Wanna play checkers?"
Vicki smiled. "Okay. I'm glad you changed, Jamie. Nights are kind of chilly out the garage!"

Phillips' sat-phone chimed. "Speaking," he irritably answered loudly over the rumble of the jet.
"Yes sir," Jacobs issued, "I was cleaning up matters at the hospital when I can across something that might not mean anything--"
"Let me determine that."
"Yes sir. Anyway sir, our techs were going through the ICU monitor strip logs. There are definite spurious sideband signals in the EEG we can't account for, but there was definite stimulation throughout the brain coinciding with the upstart of glandular activity."
"You're saying no drugs were used. Just some type of electro-stimulation?"
"Basically, sir, but the lab boys believe that the biosensors only brushed the surface of more subtle and intense neural frequency transmissions. They say she was tuning up his nervous system like a piano to literally re-program his systems to maximum regeneration."
"Incredible--but how? Didn't the duty nurse and guard state she only touched him with her hand? I was banking that she got around giving Robinson an injection by using some sort of volatile neuro drug on her fingers. Now you're telling me some sort of electronic apparatus was used when none was evident."
"I can't explain it sir. No one at the hospital can. Robinson's healing like there's no tomorrow. He'll be out of intensive care by the end of the week."
"Incredible."
"We also got a security camera analysis. She kept her face low well enough in the hallways and ICU, but she passed in front three light sources bright enough to silhouette her body through her patient's gown. The image enhancement lab suggests a mature woman's stature, approximately 19 or 20 years old. Not a child's."
"So she's really not a brainwashed child, but a midget! A professional! That's a relief, though I've a feeling I'll be personally testifying to that shortly!"
"Yes sir," Jacobs said in a funny reserved way Phillips disliked.
"Is there something else, Jacobs?"
"Sir--" Jacobs sound oddly uncertain, as though unsure of bothering his boss with a possible error.
"Get on with it, Jacobs!"
"Sir, the ICU was utilizing the Dalcon 70a EEG and EKG monitors on Robinson. These are about the most sensitive units on the market...there's something missing, sir."
"Yes?"
"The strip charts only read Robinson's vitals."
"Explain."
"If she was touching him as long as the witnesses claim and ICU cameras show, her vitals should've registered on either machines. Not anywhere as strong as his, of course, but they'd be there. Even through surgical gloves."
Phillips felt the hairs on his neck rise as he sat up, his bewilderment tinged with an new hauntingly familiar apprehension. "How...how do the lab techs explain that?"
"They can't, sir."
Phillips felt his mind fog over as his nearly cocky confidence seemed to evaporate. "No..."
"Sir...didn't we always wonder how 'He' passed airport metal--"
"Keep this under your hat, ultra-hush!" snapped Phillips, partially on automatic. "Secure any extrapolations, understood?"
"Yes sir," Jacobs said as though pleased some subtle hunch had worked.
Phillips hung up, dazed and incredulous. "My God...he couldn't have...!"

Helena gasped at the living shadow in the room then fluttered her hand to her chest. "Dear me, you frightened me! But--what's that for?"
"Reconnaissance," Vicki replied as casually as a child about to go out the backyard to play, except she was filling out a jet-black bodysuit head to toe, her sleek lithe lines making her seem a sleek panther than a child.
"Reconnaissance? Now? Where?"
"I can't tell you that for your protection. I'll be back before the ball, Cinderella," she tried for an assuaging joke.
Helena muted her consternation. "I've learned not to underestimate you, Victoria, but -- I can't help feeling concerned. Call it belayed maternal instinct."
Vicki looked up at Helena, a look of puzzlement and intrigue etching her face. "You are worried like a mother for me?" she asked in a way that pleased Helena; So you don't know all the answers, little Victoria.
"Maybe one day we'll both learn it for a fact," Helena chuckled and was met by a strange look on Victoria's face.
"Learn?"
"You know, having children. Babies."
"Oh. Possibly for you, not for me."
"Why not? I think you'd make a fine mother someday."
"It cannot happen so it's a meaningless subject."
"I don't believe there's a female alive who's never thought at least once of having children; imagining what giving birth is like, to hold and nurse your child, a part of you. Even though you might never have any, having thoughts and feelings about it is what most makes us female."
Vicki faced her with a wide-eyed funny wistful look and for an indefinable reason Helena felt sorry, almost regrets for the girl. "I...I would like the--the experience," she slowly admitted as though inside herself going off a wild tangent from logic and reason. "But it cannot be."
"Give it time Victoria...provided you're careful," Helena warned.
"I shall," Vicki said, perking up if glad to get back on the track, startled as Helena suddenly hugged her close. For a few milliseconds Vicki excused the action as another illogical though intrinsic human response, but as Helena's soft pressure began to envelope her, Vicki sensed an indefinable apprehension and loss.
In silent panic she summoned her conscience and Imogene materialized, cross-legged on the nearby chair.
"What's happening to me?" Vicki cried in confusion in their private ether. "I feel like -- like I want to attach myself to this human, and when we were discussing maternity I--I felt like -- like--something in me is missing, but I sense everything's nominal."
Imogene smiled. "You're feeling human feelings."
"It feels different from ours. It's like everything I am is part of her and she is part of me. It feels--timeless, from within myself somehow. It's all so--so illogical!"
"These feelings are beyond your physical fact. Don't try to analyze them. Immense yourself in them. Learn them. You won't know how to truly understand humans unless you do."
"Am I...becoming -- human??" Vicki asked with a slight fear and Imogene coyly smiled.

The state marksman thought he caught fledgling shadow leaping from small balcony and suddenly it was gone, like some swift passing raven. That it happened in the blink of an eye stayed his alarm and only made him squeeze his eyelids of fatigue.

A living shadow bounced from side of a street corner to the other then sprung up to a rooftop two stories up. A peon high on tequila saw it and threw his bottle away.
"Better ease up again, core temperature's up," Imogene warned as Vicki landed on a low roof and darted into the shadow of an overhanging palm.
"Some people saw me," Vicki worried.
"Doesn't matter. They don't believe it. The palace grounds are a kilometer away. We should be there in three minutes."
Vicki shivered. "It feels like sunlight at night."
"Your epidermal temperature sensors have been recalibrated to detect the emissions of Xon radiation. Oh -- Oh."
"What?"
"Someone's been tinkering with the phase frequency. Dr. Michaels has been busy, unfortunately."

Phillips had moved away from the other Delta Force commandos in the transport. Though the muted rumble of the engines made it impossible for anyone to hear that far away, Phillips nevertheless donned earphones and plugged them into his Powerbook.
The cautious optimism that launched this flight had suddenly turned chancy as a dice throw. It was all too familiar, and now, abruptly dumped with a once unthinkable new factor, he anxiously longed solace and coaching.
With ginger reverence, he took out a CD "jewel box" from his suit jacket and inserted the CD-ROM and punched in the twin descrambler codes and watched the panel flicker on with the weary look of his predecessor.
Dr. Geoffrey B. Darro looked incongruously disheveled with his loose tie and slightly tousled hair, and that in itself was disturbing. He looked like a man with days without sleep or one who had witnessed an unsettling revelation.
Phillips sensed it was a little of both.
"Phillips," Darro spoke up with authority fringed with weariness and sobriety. "If you're playing this then I'm presumed dead during our pursuit of the android Questor in Turkey."
"You've read all official classified literature on Project Questor, however, almost from the start there have been many things bothering me relating to this enterprise. Mainly the scientific and technological discoveries incorporated in the android. Many of which are beyond our known science. Officially, this aberration has been dismissed as simply the product of some super-secret research technology which Vaslovik had access to, but this is a lame explanation. No super technology can be developed in a vacuum. There are manufacturing and developmental roots virtually impossible to cover. We found this out as far back as the Manhattan Project when only very few intelligence agencies around the world didn't know the United States was building an atomic bomb, only not how far along and where. It's how far and where Questor came from that bothers me.
"I am hardly a neophyte on technology, and I've watched the faces and shaking head of five Nobel Prize scientists pondering Questor's components. The elements of Questor that the assembly team do recognize represent states of art that would've required billions of dollars in R and D each to create. Just to've developed the elements of Questor which we do understand would bankrupt the United States fifty times over. I also have my private doubts that Vaslovik, either himself or in collaboration with other anonymous protean geniuses, conceived and fabricated technology so beyond known physics and electronics..."
Darro's face turned pensive, almost soberly inward, as though reluctant to confess some dim startling reluctant awareness. "My latest contact with the android after its repair from bullets incurred in England has further raised indefinable questions in my mind. That, beyond merely an ambulatory computing device, that the android indeed possesses cognition, a sense of self and awareness of the human world. Though I cannot quantify it, the android Questor almost presents itself as a human life-form in its intellect and sensitivity of our emotions. In fact, on personal encounter, you could almost feel a mind, an actual mind emanating from Questor. If true, this capability is so far beyond our science that assumptions as to Questor's true origins must be put to question."
"Phillips, I want to share my opinions on this so that you are prepared in the event Vaslovik is located and Questor is recaptured and rendered powerless and the project's national combine have at its technology again. You might question my sanity and command eligibility on this, but shortly I believe you shall come up with your own similar conclusions. I believe you should know this in the event...in the event something utterly beyond our comprehension occurs and unsanctioned action is demanded. It bothers me that Questor was built with a nuclear auto-destruct, not so much for Vaslovik's motives, but because in light of the awesome potentials of the android's science, it would be a very logical idea. I believe we are children playing with fire, and that the question of Questor and Vaslovik's origins and intentions are greater than any of us have dreamed..."

The hotel bellboy was dumping trash in the alley dumpster when Gomez slipped up behind him and -- resisting an instinctive move for his knife -- slugged him unconscious then waved Roberto's gang to strip the boy of his apron for Rico to don then truss and toss him in the dumpster before moving on into the kitchen door. Tactically, as a guerrilla, he would've dispatched the youth with a blade, but it was important to show Roberto's boys that he wasn't a mad-dog killer; that he slayed for and showed compassion for the lowest peon as the mailed fist of the people.
Gullible unconditional loyalty was always a premium asset.
Shuffling backwards in the kitchen with the apron on as though pulling in a garbage can, Rico drew no looks from the cooks until he spun around and pointed the Uzi at them. The gang flooded in and trussed up the cooks and Gomez peeked out the inner door at the man on the chair next the rear stairway.
Secret police smelled all over him. Doubtless one of the hotel security detachment for the dignitaries to Santos' ball.
Damn!
Gomez had no compunctions of killing the swine, but again that would alert the authorities--and the palace--that something serious was going on.
Happily, his sponsors provided a solution.
Gomez took out the dart gun, aimed and fired. The security man swatted at his neck if at a wasp then collapsed.
"He'll be out for a half-hour," Gomez informed Roberto. "We want him to wake thinking he fell asleep. Did you tell them?"
"Yes. The cooks know if they say anything their families are dead."
"You are learning well, amigo. Now remember, capture the girl and bring her down here to me -- alive. Her ransom will be handsome."
Roberto's eyes sparkled and he waved his gang up the stairway while Gomez stifled his smile: Though pride urged him to do it himself, Gomez decided that his underlings experience for themselves the surprise and humiliation he felt. He'd no doubt the tiny senorita would overwhelm his over-zealous disciples. She was a devil, as loco as it sounded.
Gomez loaded the dartgun in one hand and his treasured .45 automatic in the other and followed his minions upstairs.

The palace glittered.
From a nearby rooftop Vicki scanned the grand gardens and the complex of quonset huts and machinery against the distant line of banana grooves and jeeps and armored military trucks.
"That's a lot of soldiers," Vicki commented semi-soberly. "How are we expected to get near it?"
"With Helena's wit, Santos' vanity, and your insufferable cuteness," Imogene quipped, hovering cross-legged beyond the roof as though sitting on an invisible magic carpet.
Vicki was about to reply when a haze of languor rushed her and she had to catch herself from falling off.
"Careful!" chided Imogene.
"So woozy!" Vicki replied.
"Xon radiation. Feel the resonance?"
It feels like a hum inside me. Why's it affecting me so?"
"The radiation inside your radiothermonic generator's being tapped by the gleaning fields of the hypercrystal. In another twenty-four hours your upgraded systems should compensate enough for that to carry on with the job."
"If it's this strong what about humans?"
"The wavelengths haven't shortened enough to affect organic and other electrical systems, but it'll happen once it decays into the region. But the way the hypercrystal's being abused that'll be the least of San Rey's problems."
Vicki willed her vision to magnify the distant complex and smiled as it zoomed. "This is so neat!" then her view began to waver and collapse and even Imogene shimmered and faded in and out. "Not so good. Are you sure it'll be safer when I go in?"
"So long as Michaels doesn't tinker with the hypercrystal's confinement field we're okay."
"He must be a very stupid physicist as well as a thief," Vicki mused. "Doesn't he know what can happen?"
"Oh, he knows. He's just greedy, that's all. The bane of this race."
"How much of Questor's technology has been stolen?" Vicki asked and Imogene fell demure.
"It's not so much as what they've tried to rip off as what they think they could copy, that's the danger. Most Server technology can't be duplicated on Earth today, but they gawk the assembly diagrams of Questor's matter-energy converter units and think they can all build his "fusion furnace" too--using primitive substandard techniques and guesswork."
"So foolish."
"Yup, the story of this world."

The green light went on in the C-5A's aft doorway and the commandos hitched their black parachutes on the overhead rail and moved toward the black breezy door and hopped out. Phillips went last, his once phobias utterly swamped out by rabid anticipation.

Vicki bounced back on the balcony and into the room.
Imogene frowned. "Something's wrong--" Suddenly her ears pricked up and she whirled and in real-life unison so did Vicki as she whirled as Roberto's boys popped out from the bathroom and hallway doors.
Gomez appeared at the door in time to see Rico being bodily flung to slam against the wall across the room on a floor littered with crumbled bodies.
Truly a devil, he muttered, firing the dart--which was intercepted by a blur of motion between her pinched fingers.
Impossible!
"Stop or your friend dies!!" he barked and Vicki fell still, watching as the groggy and bruised gang struggled to their feet. Their hurt and humiliation is worth it now that they've personally witnessed that I was not exaggerating or my defeat by mortal weakness.
"Why didn't you warn me??" Vicki chided Imogene who shrugged.
"The Xon radiation's effecting your sensors. Hate things like this!"
Gomez chuckled. "Well, well, my little Chihuahua. It's very later for little girls to be out for a stroll."
"Where's Helena?" Vicki snapped in her Mercedes voice.
"Your secretary is safe. She's too lovely to waste. I cannot say the same for you. You have caused me much embarrassment, senorita."
"What do you want to do?" she asked and Gomez almost cackled out loud. "You don't want to know."
Imogene smirked. "He means serious hurt, sis!"
"We took him last time."
"Last time Helena was safe. Get that assurance--now!"
"Come downstairs with us," Gomez ordered. "I don't wish to stain such a fine carpet."
"Promise me no harm will come to Helena. She's innocent."
Gomez snickered. "Worry about yourself, little devil."
"Your grudge is with me, not an innocent hostage. Real soldiers aren't butchers," Mercedes said, looking over the gang. "Real soldiers honor their word!"
Gomez frowned. "Don't tell me what to do, pup!" he snapped, briefly considering the face of command. "Your friend won't be harmed. I shall -- take very good care of her."
The gang chuckled vindictively at that; they saw her like he did now. Not a girl-woman but a martial arts freak many times her stature.
"I know about you and Boris," Mercedes haughtily said, startling him, "Should we talk in private?"
Gomez was nonplused. How could she know? Had she been spying on him?? If Roberto and his gang suspected that their leader was himself a puppet -- even if it wasn't so. Maybe if he killed her right then and now and silenced that lip, but haste promised a boomerang in the making in front Roberto's gang. Suspicion had to be dissolved discretely by playing on his past accusations--and their freshly bruised skins and egos.
"We shall talk." Gomez signaled Roberto and his grumbling gang outside and slammed the door and towered over her.
"You know nothing!"
"Then why are they outside? Gomez, you interfere with me and you'll have the new KGB to contend with."
"What are you ranting about?"
"There is a power struggle in the KGB. Boris is with the old guard. I am with the new, and we've other plans to aid this country. You'd better start choosing sides, Gomez."
"You are KGB?"
"Of course, fool! How else do I know about all of Valdez's men and plans? And now you're about to ruin our new operation!"
Gomez was confused. One thing he didn't want to do was get between two wrestling bears, but his honor had one serious score to settle and other commitments to keep. As for sides, Daka had already fed his Swiss account while this puppy of a woman had only trashed his more precious manhood.
Wait.
What's that sound? He glanced about. "What is that whine?"
"What whine?"
"It sounds like--like an old camera electronic flash. Are you bugged?"
"Search me."
"You mean move near and touch you? I'm not stupid, my she-devil. Strip!"
Vicki gnashed her teeth and quietly did so. Gomez grinned.
"So, you really are a woman! Very nice. The whine, it is still coming from you!"
"You're imagining things."
"I don't think so. Lie down--on your belly, spread out--now!"
Vicki dropped to the floor and did so. He lifted his .45.
"If I let go this trigger it fires, senorita, and even you're not faster than a bullet," he said as he stepped up towards her above her head, the automatic pointed at her skull as he circled her then stood over her back. He cocked his ear at her, baffled. "Yes, it's coming from you!"
"You're sick!" Mercedes snapped, and in anger he shoved the muzzle against her nape --

The glass tray with the ham crashed to the kitchen floor.
"Joan!" Ted cried out, jumping up from the table and beside his wife who was holding fast to the oven if a life raft, breathing hard in a groping daze.
"Vicki!" she gasped, eyes wide with horror. "Omigosh! Something's happened to Vicki!!"

From the beach Phillips watched the SEALS dash from the shoreline and into the bush to join up with their Delta comrades.
"Sir--" The SEALS captain ran up to Phillips. "All beaches secured, all roads monitored. The CIA teams are on the road."
"Remember, this is a black blockade; we come and leave with no one the wiser. This place is a tinderbox and we don't need to muddy things up by setting it off. Your men are to search for this individual and locate and report to me. If this individual attempts to leave the island, any force necessary must prohibit this. Do not let looks fool you; this is an extraordinary resourceful and elusive--midget...and a potentially dangerous individual."
"Yes sir!" snapped the Captain, scooting back to his men.
Phillips gazed at the tropical jungle and grimly pondered. His orders and the resources at his command normally would've satisfied him were the objective merely a girl or a midget, but the ramifications of the hospital had sobered him next to dismay.
And if Darro's incredible speculations were right, maybe everyone on earth were far more outclassed than they dreamed.

For a moment Gomez felt a fleeting daze then shook his head if to clear a fog and again grinned at Mercedes's tiny naked form sprawled on the floor before him, his belt tight around her grossly tilted neck.
He grinned, wiping his mouth and scratching himself before zipping his trousers. He was still winded, an almost electric tingle lingering throughout his body still.
"I hope you haven't turned me into a child molester, senorita!" he clucked. He was sore, but it was such a novel pleasure hurting one so small without guilt or regret.
Yes!, he reflected standing up; It was so, so satisfying! There'll be literally no other hour better spent except maybe my appointment as Vice Minister! To hear this once insolent chihuahua whine and gasp and plead for the bullet! Such an insult!
Gomez almost wished there was no hostage to make her capitulate so meekly to his power; he wanted a rematch. He wanted her to fight for her honor and life, but alas, time was waning. Still, her resistance was so different and challenging and more delicious than the best fighting whore. Pity it had to end since he was completely drained out, but the finale came magnificently. The gurgle and foam erupting from her tiny throat as he tightened his belt notch by slow notch, her neck popping and snapping and her head falling limp as a rag on a hook.
I should've videotaped it. True, it would've been more satisfying to've used my knife, but the damning traces...
Still, there must be an object lesson...
Pulling out his knife, very carefully, skillfully, Gomez poked the point between Mercedes' left fourth and fifth ribs and with a hefty shove drove the shiny shaft in all the way right to the hilt. The razor cut was so clean only a ring of wet crimson seeped from around the blade's root. He turned her over and grinned as the knife's very tip poked through her back in a tiny crimson bead. He barely resisted the zeal to pump and twist the shaft.
Too bad her heart wasn't beating but there must be no trace of her disappearance. Not one drop of fountaining gushing blood on this floor.
He released the belt and grinned as her lifeless head limply thudded back on the floor at its gross angle.
If I had more time I would continue having you until your body rotted then gut you like a fish, but revolution calls. But I'm not through with you yet, senorita Mercedes. When there's time I will dismember you and parade your parts on poles in our victory parade as examples to all malcontents and females who let crazy Western ideas corrupt their natural place in the world.
He kissed her wide sightless eyes then pulled the sheet off the bed and rolled the tiny body inside and slung it over his shoulder then went to the door and waved the puzzled gang captain over.
"Done already??" Roberto said as though surprised and Gomez smirked.
"Not in mood for jokes. We have move to my camp in La Cesendo immediately. Your group are due heavy arms training and bonita muchachas."
A swell of eager grins and nods swept the group. "Take all of Mercedes' effects down to the car. Leave everything neat, as if they checked out. That will baffle the police even more."
And what the secret police -- and Boris's rivals don't know won't hurt him, Gomez thought.
Going down the back stairs and out the alley again he waved Rico's car over from down the street and opened the trunk and dumped the little bundle inside. After the others came downstairs with suitcases and clothes thrown inside the trunk, Gomez summoned them as he thickly wrapped a damp towel around his gun.
"Death to traitors of the revolution!" he announced, firing at the twitching sheeted bundle then passing the gun and oath to each the gang to do and say. After the last he reached inside the holed sheet and pulled out his knife and kissed its crimson sweet-sour film and sheathed it and slammed the trunk's lid.
Gomez jeered at Lady Helena trussed in the back seat and smacked his lips.
"So much for your delicious saucy little friend, senorita. You, woman, shall live as long as you obey...and please me."
A tear seeped down Helena's defiant pale face before a torrent of sobbing broke through her valiant wall as Gomez got into the car and nodded Rico to head for the mountains.