Unwise Child | Page 3

lab. He was hunched
over a little, his small, bright eyes peering steadily at Mike the Angel
from beneath shaggy, silvered brows. There was no pleading in those
eyes--only confidence.
Next to Old Harry was a kid--sixteen, maybe seventeen. He had the JD
stamp on his face: a look of cold, hard arrogance that barely concealed
the uncertainty and fear beneath. One hand was at Harry's back, and

Mike knew that the kid was holding a vibroblade at the old man's spine.
At the same time, the buzzing against his thumb told Mike the Angel
something else. There was a vibroblade much nearer his body than the
one in the kid's hand.
That meant that there was another young punk behind him.
All this took Mike the Angel about one quarter of a second to
assimilate. Then he jumped.
Had the intruders been adults, Mike would have handled the entire
situation in a completely different way. Adults, unless they are
mentally or emotionally retarded, do not usually react or behave like
children. Adolescents can, do, and must--for the very simple reason that
they have not yet had time to learn to react as adults.
Had the intruders been adults, and had Mike the Angel behaved the
way he did, he might conceivably have died that night. As it was, the
kids never had a chance.
Mike didn't even bother to acknowledge the existence of the punk
behind him. He leaped, instead, straight for the kid in the dead-black
suède zipsuit who was holding the vibroblade against Harry
MacDougal's spine. And the kid reacted exactly as Mike the Angel had
hoped, prayed, and predicted he would.
The kid defended himself.
An adult, in a situation where he has one known enemy at his mercy
and is being attacked by a second, will quickly put the first out of the
way in order to leave himself free to deal with the second. There is no
sense in leaving your flank wide open just to oppose a frontal attack.
If the kid had been an adult, Harry MacDougal would have died there
and then. An adult would simply have slashed his vibroblade through
the old man's spine and brought it to bear on Mike the Angel.

But not the kid. He jumped back, eyes widening, to face his oncoming
opponent in an open space. He was no coward, that kid, and he knew
how to handle a vibroblade. In his own unwise, suicidal way, he was
perfectly capable of proving himself. He held out the point of that
shimmering metal shaft, ready to parry any offensive thrust that Mike
the Angel might make.
If Mike had had a vibroblade himself, and if there hadn't been another
punk at his back, Mike might have taken care of the kid that way. As it
was, he had no choice but to use another way.
He threw himself full on the point of the scintillating vibroblade.
A vibroblade is a nasty weapon. Originally designed as a surgeon's tool,
its special steel blade moves in and out of the heavy hilt at speeds from
two hundred to two thousand vibrations per second, depending on the
size and the use to which it is to be put. Make it eight inches long, add
serrated, diamond-pointed teeth, and you have the man-killing
vibroblade. Its danger is in its power; that shivering blade can cut
through flesh, cartilage, and bone with almost no effort. It's a knife with
power steering.
But that kind of power can be a weakness as well as a strength.
The little gadget that Mike the Angel carried did more than just detect
the nearby operation of a vibroblade. It was also a defense. The gadget
focused a high-density magnetic field on any vibroblade that came
anywhere within six inches of Mike's body.
In that field, the steel blade simply couldn't move. It was as though it
had been caught in a vise. The blade no longer vibrated; it had become
nothing more than an overly fancy bread knife.
The trouble was that the power unit in the heavy hilt simply wouldn't
accept the fact that the blade was immovable. That power unit was in
there to move something, and by heaven, something had to move.
The hilt jerked and bucked in the kid's hand, taking skin with it. Then it

began to smoke and burn under the overload. The plastic shell cracked
and hot copper and silver splattered out of it. The kid screamed as the
molten metal burned his hand.
Mike the Angel put a hand against the kid's chest and shoved. As the
boy toppled backward, Mike turned to face the other boy.
Only it wasn't a boy.
She was wearing gold lip paint and had sprayed her hair blue, but she
knew how to handle