Seamus was out of condition, weary from the day’s exercise, and long unpracticed in the skills of hand-to-hand combat. On the other hand, in addition to being a perhaps second-rate poet, he was one of the Wild Geese, the most respected warriors in the galaxy. “We Only Fight When We Have To” was one of their many mottoes. And another was “Don’t Make Us Mad.”
Well, he had to fight now. And he was very mad indeed. These shitheads had been sneaking around behind him long enough.
He quickly shifted his shoulders, ducked the knife, twisted it out of the hand of his assailant and threw him into the path of a second attacker. As the man crashed into the floor, Seamus heard a sickening thud. Ah, that’s the end of him, poor fellow.
The second one rushed at Seamus with a big vicious pike, aiming straight at his chest. Seamus ducked. The man turned, backed him into a corner, and charged again. Seamus had no choice but to plunge the knife into his heart and twist it out again savagely.
That was that.
In less than half a minute, two black-hooded figures were dead on the station platform. O’Neill, panting for breath, stood over them, a knife dripping with blood held tightly in his hand.
These idjits with the hoods made the mistake of taking on someone trained to kill if he had to.
Sammy was screaming. Another hooded figure had her pinned to the wall, and a fourth had torn off her robe. Ernie lay unconscious, his head bleeding badly. O’Neill kicked an oncoming Hooded One in the stomach and sent him sprawling against the monorail car, which had appeared silently in the midst of the fight. He grabbed the two who were assaulting Sammy and cracked their skulls together. A quick knife thrust at the reviving attacker and there were five dead bodies on the platform. Ernie was still unconscious; Sammy’s back was pressed against the wall, her body shaking with shock.
O’Neill grabbed her by the shoulders and yelled, “You look at Ernie, I’ll find the police!”
Sammy willed herself calmer. “No, not the police. It will be the end of us all. You must do exactly as I say, Geemie. I will explain later.”
She bent over Ernie, touched his head, lifted his eyelids. She steadied herself against O’Neill’s arm. “It is bad, Geemie. If I don’t get life serum he will not survive—my beloved. Quick, or he will die!”
They pried open the door of the monorail car and lugged Ernie inside. They propped him up in the seat behind the control panel. “They are automatic this time of night,” she panted. “I think I can make it start. Get rid of those monsters. No, bring them on the car. And clean up the floor.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Seamus hopped to it, as he always did when a woman gave an order.
He dragged the five Hooded Ones into the car, used the remnants of Sammy and Ernie’s clothes and a spray container from the station wall to clean up most of the blood, and buried the blood-soaked garments in the bottom of an overstuffed trash container.
Inside, Sammy was desperately pushing at buttons. O’Neill watched helplessly. Ernie was hardly breathing. A goner, Seamus thought to himself.
Then the lights went out, the vehicle leaped forward. “I think I’ve turned the override key for emergencies,” she shouted over the roar of the lumbering train. “It will take the car directly to the Body Institute; no other station can stop or divert it.”
“Isn’t that nice now?”
The car plunged through the pitch-black tunnels, speeding by dimly lit stations, until it swerved to the left off the main line and entered the Body Institute’s underground complex. Using manual controls, Sammy guided the car through a number of sliding doors that opened automatically when it approached. When they stopped, Sammy jumped out into the darkness and pressed a button on the wall.
A panel slid aside to reveal a large, low-ceilinged chamber illuminated by a pale green light. Save for a walkway around its perimeter and what appeared to be a loading platform in front of the door, the entire room was a vat of thick, slowly bubbling liquid. It had the hideous smell of death.
Sammy didn’t hesitate. “Quick, Geemie, our lives are lost if anyone sees us!” She began to pull one of the Hooded Ones toward the seething rolling substance. Seamus tried to remove the hood; she stopped him. “We do not want to know who they are. That would be too much.”
As the first body struck the surface, a hissing vapor arose and partially obscured the disintegration of skin over muscle, muscle over bone, and the skeleton itself in the caustic action of the acid. As each body followed the last, the vapor rose higher. When Seamus dumped the last body into the vat, the surface was frosted by a thick layer of sickly greenish cloud.
Sammy rushed around the edge of the vat to a panel halfway across the room, exclaiming, “I’m going to get serum for my mate!”
O’Neill spent interminable minutes in the dank underground chamber directing prayers to Yahweh, Brigid, Patrick, Columcile, Finnbar, James, Brendan, Kevin, and any other Celtic saints who might have been listening, sparing just a few moments to point out to Yahweh’s local representative, Deirdre Cardinal Fitzgerald (a title to be used only when one wanted special psychic assistance) that help in this particular instance would be most appropriate. No answer from any of them. Ernie’s eyes flickered dangerously; his slight breathing became more labored.
Not long to go. Seamus prayed all the harder.
Sammy returned breathless with a large syringe in her hand. She plunged it into her mate’s chest. O’Neill watched anxiously as the fluid level went down. Sammy listened to his heart, her ear pressed to his chest. Seamus could see the movements in Ernie’s thin brown chest slowly become more regular; the blood which was still reddening his iron-gray hair stopped flowing.
Sammy stood up. “He lives, Geemie,” she said wearily, and collapsed sobbing into O’Neill’s arms. Slowly and gently he caressed her to peacefulness. After a moment’s relaxation, she dashed back into the chamber and pulled out fresh robes from a closet. Sammy quickly and skillfully guided the monorail car back into the main tunnel.
So the Honored Poet and his hosts returned to the living-space complex after a pleasant if slightly prolonged Zylongday outing on the Island. “A small accident with the car,” Sammy explained to a station attendant as they helped the now conscious but groggy Ernie out of the car and into the elevator of their living tower.
“It is well that the trains run this late on Zylongday,” he replied with mild reproof.
As they left the elevator, Sammy muttered, “He will report us, of course, but no one will know what happened.”
Lots of spies around this place, aren’t there?
Later, in the privacy of their living space, while his mate began her ministrations to his skull, Ernie painfully filled O’Neill in on their attackers. “The Hooded Ones,” he said, “are not the same as ‘those who are no longer with us.’ They are anarchists, not dissidents. They rarely appear in the daytime, although they have been seen more often at that time recently, it is reported. They attack after dark, then usually only isolated individuals or small groups like us. Recently the attacks have been both more vicious and more frequent. Their attacks are usually on the fringes of the City. Tonight’s attack, so near the main gate, was very unusual. Few people dare to go out after midnight because they fear attack. We were late coming back; still, it was before midnight.”
Those who are no longer with us, mused Seamus. There’s more damned categories of baddies around here than a poor space bard can keep straight.
“Why didn’t we go to the police? Why were we so afraid of being seen? Why did we cover up traces of the attack—as if we were guilty?” O’Neill was baffled.
“The Hooded Ones,” said Sammy, carefully stitching her mate’s wound, “do not exist officially. Some of them may live as ordinary citizens during the day, but many more live in the caves beneath the underground system—which also do not exist officially. It is not wise to talk about what does not exist in public. If one reports an attack from something that does not exist, one is causing trouble for the City. If the police are forced to encounter something that does not exist, whoever is responsible is an enemy of the City. They will likely end up in a vat like the one you saw. Geemie, we came very close to being there ourselves tonight. I was running down a corridor in the Body Institute with the life serum when something seemed to tell me to turn into another corridor. It was lucky I did. There was a police patrol in the first one. Now, beloved, the stitching is over.” She touched his face with gentle affection.
Seamus took a blind-leap guess. “Are the Hooded Ones the same as the Guardians?”
Sammy paused with a medicine bottle in her hand. Ernie spoke: “We do not think so, although it is said that the Hooded Ones think of themselves as ‘Guardians of the Next Day.’ Of the ‘New Reconstruction.’”
“Do they now?”
“Still,” added Sammy, “they might occasionally cooperate—especially if there were a plan to eliminate an intruder who was no longer welcome.”
“It is better not even to think that,” said Ernie very slowly. “Not at all, at all.”