He closed his eyes, opened them. Jessica stared, helpless to aid him. He hasn't mastered the Voice yet, she thought, if he fails . . .
The 'thopter touched sand with a soft lurch, and Jessica, looking north back across the Shield Wall, saw a shadow of wings settle out of sight up there.
Someone's following us! she thought. Who? Then: The ones the Baron set to watch this pair. And there'll be watchers for the watchers, too.
Czigo shut off his wing rotors. Silence flooded in upon them.
Jessica turned her head. She could see out the window beyond Scarface a dim glow of light from a rising moon, a frosted rim of rock rising from the desert.
Sandblast ridges streaked its sides.
Paul cleared his throat.
The pilot said: "Now, Kinet?"
"I dunno, Czigo."
Czigo turned, said: "Ah-h-h, look." He reached out for Jessica's skirt.
"Remove her gag," Paul commanded.
Jessica felt the words rolling in the air. The tone, the timbre excellent--
imperative, very sharp. A slightly lower pitch would have been better, but it could still fall within this man's spectrum.
Czigo shifted his hand up to the band around Jessica's mouth, slipped the knot on the gag.
"Stop that!" Kinet ordered.
"Ah, shut your trap," Czigo said. "Her hands're tied." He freed the knot and the binding dropped. His eyes glittered as he studied Jessica.
Kinet put a hand on the pilot's arm. "Look, Czigo, no need to . . . "
Jessica twisted her neck, spat out the gag. She pitched her voice in low, intimate tones. "Gentlemen! No need to fight over me." At the same time, she writhed sinuously for Kinet's benefit.
She saw them grow tense, knowing that in this instant they were convinced of the need to fight over her. Their disagreement required no other reason. In their minds, they were fighting over her.
She held her face high in the instrument glow to be sure Kinet would read her lips, said: "You mustn't disagree." They drew farther apart, glanced warily at each other. "Is any woman worth fighting over?" she asked.
By uttering the words, by being there, she made herself infinitely worth their fighting.
Paul clamped his lips tightly closed, forced himself to be silent. There had been the one chance for him to succeed with the Voice. Now--everything depended on his mother whose experience went so far beyond his own.
"Yeah," Scarface said. "No need to fight over . . . "
His hand flashed toward the pilot's neck. The blow was met by a splash of metal that caught the arm and in the same motion slammed into Kinet's chest.
Scarface groaned, sagged backward against his door.
"Thought I was some dummy didn't know that trick," Czigo said. He brought back his hand, revealing the knife. It glittered in reflected moonlight.
"Now for the cub," he said and leaned toward Paul.
"No need for that," Jessica murmured.
Czigo hesitated.
"Wouldn't you rather have me cooperative?" Jessica asked. "Give the boy a chance." Her lip curled in a sneer. "Little enough chance he'd have out there in that sand. Give him that and . . . " She smiled. "You could find yourself well rewarded."
Czigo glanced left, right, returned his attention to Jessica. "I've heard me what can happen to a man in this desert," he said. "Boy might find the knife a kindness."
"Is it so much I ask?" Jessica pleaded.
"You're trying to trick me," Czigo muttered.
"I don't want to see my son die," Jessica said. "Is that a trick?"
Czigo moved back, elbowed the door latch. He grabbed Paul, dragged him across the seat, pushed him half out the door and held the knife posed. "What'll y' do, cub, if I cut y'r bonds?"
"He'll leave here immediately and head for those rocks," Jessica said.
"Is that what y'll do, cub?" Czigo asked.
Paul's voice was properly surly. "Yes."
The knife moved down, slashed the bindings of his legs. Paul felt the hand on his back to hurl him down onto the sand, feigned a lurch against the doorframe for purchase, turned as though to catch himself, lashed out with his right foot.
The toe was aimed with a precision that did credit to his long years of training, as though all of that training focused on this instant. Almost every muscle of his body cooperated in the placement of it. The tip struck the soft part of Czigo's abdomen just below the sternum, slammed upward with terrible force over the liver and through the diaphragm to crush the right ventricle of the man's heart.
