Free Trickster by Steven Harper Page B

horrendous screech of metal and a shower of sparks as the gates scraped the sides of the van. Then they slammed shut on Gretchen's foot. Gretchen screamed and tumbled into the van on top of Lucia. Lucia disentangled herself, got the doors shut, and turned to look at Gretchen's tight, pale face.
      "My foot," Gretchen moaned. "Oh god, my foot!"
      Steeling herself, Lucia looked down, expecting to see crushed bone and spurting blood. Nothing of the sort greeted her. Gretchen's shoe was missing and her trouser cuffs were torn, that was all.
      "You still have it," Lucia said. "Blessings to Irfan for that. Let me have a look."
      Ben, meanwhile, had turned onto the main road and was once again driving at breakneck speed. Lucia touched Gretchen's foot, and the blond woman howled in pain.
      "It's broken," Lucia said. "And you have some abrasions on your legs. We'll have to have Harenn take a look when we get back to the ship. You were lucky, I think."
      "It sure as shit doesn't feel lucky," Gretchen growled. "God."
      The van slowed, and Lucia glanced out the window in time to see Father Kendi detach himself from a patch of brush near the Sunnytree Farm wall. A thin rope hung over the wall behind his hiding place. The other end, Lucia knew, was tied to the slave shackles that carried a frequency she had taken from the copycat. Father Kendi had been hauling the shackles over the wall with the rope and then tossing them back in order to set off the escaped slave alarm.
      Father Kendi hopped into the passenger seat. "What happened to the van?" he asked. "We're going to lose our damage deposit."
      "We had to make a break for it. The van almost got caught in the gate," Ben said. "So did Gretchen, for that matter."
      "Just drive, computer boy," Gretchen snapped. "My foot isn't getting any less broken back here."
      Kendi looked suddenly panicked as the van moved onto the road and zipped back toward the city. "They know what we did? All life--they'll call the cops."
      "Not for a while, they won't," Ben said. "They'll have to find the chip Gretchen installed first. Until then, they're going to find they can't reach anything but one of the downtown porn shops. I give it an hour, and by then we'll be long gone."
      Kendi laughed, then turned in his seat to face the boy. "So you're Jerry, huh? I'm Father Kendi of the Children of Irfan. How's it feel to be a free man?"
      "I'm really free?" the boy said in wonder. He held out his bare wrist and looked at it.
      "Damn straight," Kendi told him. "And not only that, there's someone back on our ship who's dying to meet you."

CHAPTER THREE

     

"We must protect our children not because they are innocent, but because they are powerless."
    -- Ched-Balaar Child-Rearing Manual

     
      Harenn Mashib sat stiffly at the pilot's board of the Poltergeist . If she moved, even dared to blink, she would start clawing at the walls. Kendi had just called to tell her they had Bedj-ka and that she needed to make sure the ship was ready for take-off. Harenn wasn't a pilot, couldn't fly even a paper airplane, but she could switch everything on, prime the systems, and get take-off permission from the spaceport authorities. All this she had done. Now all she had left to do was wait.
      Harenn felt like she had been waiting forever. She still remembered with excruciating clarity the day she had come home to find her baby missing and her husband gone. Initially Harenn had assumed Isaac had taken Bedj-ka and gone out, perhaps to the park or for a walk. She had enjoyed an hour of solitude, even taken a nap. But when evening came and Isaac didn't return, she became worried, then frantic. She called everyone she knew, everyone they both knew, but no one had seen them. Finally she called the Guardians, the police and legal force for the Children of Irfan. Late the next day a Guardian Inspector named Linus Gray informed her that a man matching Isaac Todd's description had been seen carrying a baby on