Millennium by John Varley Read Free Book Online Page A

would have stood her up against the wall and shot her. And then, possibly, have shot herself. I had a team leader do that once.
    Nobody ever said it was easy duty.
    I came through the right way this time. I still didn’t have my squealer, but Operations knew that now, and knew nobody but snatchers would come through the Gate until they closed it for good. Which they were preparing to do.
    We all fetched up at the padded Team Recovery Area. Medics were waiting all around us, like crash trucks at an airport. We all made hand signals that we were okay except one girl who wanted a stretcher.
    It’s traditional just to lie there for five or ten minutes. Ourportapaks had automatically returned to normal operation when we passed through the Gate, so our hysterical strength was fading fast. Behind it was the exhaustion the drugs had masked, both physical and mental.
    But I had to get up.
    “Reward time,” I said, as I grabbed Lilly’s weapon and headed for the door to Operations. “One hour at full power. Set ’em up, girls.”
    “See you in intensive care, Louise,” one of them called out, twisting the dial on the portapak strapped to her wrist.
    “Tell my dear mom I died grinning,” yelled another.
    I ran into Operations and confronted Lawrence. He was going through his checklist preparatory to shutting power to the Gate.
    “One of my people is still on that plane,” I told him. “I want you to keep the Gate focused on it until it actually touches the desert.”
    “Out of the question, Louise.”
    “One of my people is still on that plane, Larry. If she manages to find her weapon she can still come back.”
    “Do you
realize
the problems we have keeping the Gate tuned in on a plane that’s flying
straight and level
? Do you have any inkling of how that problem squares and cubes in complexity when it starts to twist and turn on the way down? It can’t be done.”
    There are three settings on a stunner. The first puts you to sleep. The second delivers pain. I let him see me set Lilly’s gun on the third notch. I put the muzzle to his temple.
    “One of my people is still on that plane, Larry. I have now said that three times.”
    *    *    *
    He managed to bring the Gate to the falling plane twice, once for two seconds, then again for almost five. Pinky didn’t come through.
    What the hell. I had to try.
    *    *    *
    I sat on the floor beside Larry’s console and watched him supervise the powerdown operation. I asked him if he had any smokes, and he tossed me a pack of Lucky Strike Green. I lit three of them.
    When he was through, I reversed the stunner and handed it to him.
    “For me?” he said. He took it, hefted it in his hand.
    “Do whatever you want with it,” I said.
    He aimed it at my forehead. I took another drag, and waited. He used the barrel to brush hair away from my eyes, then tossed the weapon to me.
    “You don’t really care right now,” he said.
    “No. I really don’t.”
    “That would take all the fun out of it.” He folded his arms and leaned back. Well, not really. He didn’t exactly have a chair; he was more or less built into it.
    His eyes lit up.
    “I’ll wait till things are going great for you. The next time I see you smile, you’ve had it.”
    Tricky bastard. I did smile, but he didn’t ask for the gun.
    “Larry, I’m sorry.”
    He looked at me. We’d been lovers for a while, before he fell apart too much to get around under his own power. He knew my feelings on apologies.
    “Okay. My fault, too. Tempers run a bit high during a snatch.”
    “Don’t they, though.”
    “Forgotten?”
    “Until the next time,” I said.
    “Naturally.”
    I looked at him and felt a deep regret for what had once been. No, let’s get brutally honest here. For what I would one day become. One day real soon now.
    Larry had elected to acknowledge his gnomehood all the way. Most of the gnomes at the other consoles looked like anyone else except they had thick bunches of