Free Assault on Sunrise (The Extra Trilogy) by Michael Shea Page B

Testing. “We’re ready, Val.”
    “Great, Aud. Send me a boat.”
    As he rafted across the burgeoning set of Quake, he conceded that Mark Millar had an eye for layout. But how would he do in the field, on unknown ground? Mark’s greatest talent was in assisting Val’s own work. Perhaps as a parasite on that work he’d do equally well.
    He joined Audrey and her crew down in APP testing’s amphitheater beneath the set. Pilots practiced APP evasion here, in case they should be downed on-shoot, but the subject of this test wasn’t going to be doing any evasion.
    Clearly, the man who lay on the gurney was incapable of evading anything—an older man, hair half white, whose Irish-featured face was contorted by paralysis on one side, so that he wore a cramped, pained smile, the smile stranger still for the wetness of tears in the orbits of his eyes. He was murmuring into a com, which he clicked off on Val’s approach.
    “Hey, Mr. M.” His words were pretty clear because only a corner of his mouth was frozen. “I’m O.K. ’bout this, no sweat. I was jus’ sayin g’bye to m’ wife.”
    “I understand, Mr. MacMahon. May I call you Jack? Please call me Val.”
    “Sure, Val, and … I really ’preciate what you’ve done for my Shelly.”
    Two million dollars were secured in his wife’s account in return for this gift of what were—at most—the two weeks left of his cancer-riddled life. “… But I don’ wanna talk. Can’t we just?”
    “Instantly, Jack. I just have to say how I admire you, how brave and fine this is, what you are doing. There will be no pain at all, and death will be instantaneous. May we blindfold you?”
    “Sure … I’d ’preciate that.”
    Standing so near this disease-dwindled shape in a hospital tunic suddenly gave Val himself a sense of nakedness, the sensation he’d felt on the set of Alien Hunger, running for his life with an arachnid APP tight on his ass. An ice-cold emptiness between the skin on his back and the out-thrusting fangs. He’d reached out to pat the man’s shoulder, and this flashback froze his hand in midair. Catching himself, he converted the gesture to a go-ahead signal to Audrey, and stepped back from the gurney.
    The APP was released into the amphitheater the moment the blindfold was placed. And as far as anyone could tell, all Jack MacMahon knew of it was a sudden soft yet powerful hum, a stirring of the air, and a touch, no more. Then he lay perfectly still.
    Val asked, “How long are we looking at, Audrey?”
    She smiled, a dark lean woman with probing eyes. “There’s a fifteen minute minimum. But it’s lunchtime—want us to make it an hour so you can grab a bite in the canteen?”
    Val turned his gaze, his half-smiling surprise, full on his employee. “Ouch! Is that your way of saying I’m a monster? Understand—I’m not offended. You’re tops at your job here, and it’s yours as long as you want it. But really—shouldn’t you quit? Feeling that way?”
    “Not if you don’t insist I do, Val.” She smiled cooly. “I like to smartass about people’s morals because I don’t have any.”
    Val chuckled. “There are those who preach morals, and the rest of us who have work to do in the real world. Let’s go for the quarter hour.” A grin here. “I’ll skip lunch, and settle for taking a leak.”
    And he strolled out of the arena to the showers. In the bathroom, he took time to look in the mirror a while. He liked the new calm he saw there. Audrey’s attitude had helped, had centered him.
    Was this fellow in the glass here a monster? Sure. A monster-maker who was about to inflict his homicidal brood on people who had not volunteered to face them.
    “And how do you feel about that, Mr. Margolian?” he asked himself pleasantly, seeing the glint of his own genuine curiosity in the question.
    “I feel … airborne. I feel I am about to witness a miracle of my own creating.” He studied the face that had just said that, and saw there a