Part 9 (2/2)
He moved. The door was buckled beyond repair but he crashed it savagely and the weakened metal buckled and broke. The terrain outside was a fantasy painted in red and black. The cepi was charred black ash, brittle charcoal traceries which fell constantly with minute rhyming tinkles on to the brick-faced soil. The only light was the blood-red radiance from the pit, deepening and dying even as he ran out into the darkness. It was a grotesque shadow-play, a macabre pictorial comment on a contemporary scene of destruction.
Ombudsman Rhodes looked up as the girl entered. ”Your name is Zdenka?”
The girl frowned at the hospital dress in which she had been attired. ”What business is it of yours what my name is?”
”It's my job to ask questions about people in trouble. One of my a.s.sistants pulled you out of the river.
You were so stiff with drugs he didn't know whether to call an ambulance or a hea.r.s.e. That sounds like trouble to me. Have you anything you'd like to add to the story.”
”Go to h.e.l.l!”
”Soon,” said the Ombudsman patiently, ”but first I have a few questions. Your ident.i.ty tablet lists you as working for Ivan Dalroi. I'd have thought a girl could get into enough trouble around town without a.s.sociating with someone like him.”
”Dalroi's all right,” said Zdenka. ”It's just that he goes out and looks for trouble before it comes round looking for him.”
”He seems to have found enough this time,” said Rhodes critically. ”If we're going to get him out of it I need every sc.r.a.p of information I can get.””What happened to him?”
”He bulldozed a sizable piece out of the side of Failway Terminal by diverting an express into the unloading bay, and was last seen heading into Failway, purpose unknown.”
”That's Dalroi!” Zdenka said. ”He was all set to tear the place apart.”
”One man?”
”Dalroi's not one man. He's a kilo of fissile uranium with a grudge against everybody who doesn't see life the way he sees it. Failway enticed his girlfriend away, and he means to make somebody sweat because of it.”
”As an individual, he can only do so much damage before he falls.”
”Then you don't know Dalroi. Dalroi's fights are a well-known local phenomena. When he gets in a tight corner he goes mad. I don't think he knows it himself, but n.o.body can touch him, and ... ”
”And?” asked Rhodes.
”I don't know,” Zdenka said. ”I've seen it but I don't believe it. Somehow he - jumps. One second he's being threatened with a gun and the next second he's holding it. You can't see him go. His reaction speed is fantastic”
”That agrees with my own information,” said the Ombudsman. ”How much more do you know about what's going on?”
”Not much. Dalroi was working for the Cronstadt committee, but he never takes anybody's word as gospel. He wanted to know more about the committee itself. I located an ex-journalist named Harry Dever and took him to the cabin at Pa.s.sfields for an interview with Dalroi. Somebody attacked us at the cabin and Harry Dever was shot. I think they must have used a hypo-gun on me because the next thing I remember was awakening on the river bank with your a.s.sistant trying to persuade me back to life.”
”And you remember nothing of what happened to you between the time you were at the cabin and when we found you?”
”Nothing, why?”
”You'd been treated with a very full measure of a somewhat exotic truth drug normally available only to police laboratories. Somebody very much wanted some information out of you and didn't much care if he killed you to obtain it. When he'd got what he wanted he dropped you in the river. You were lucky ...
The drugs slowed your metabolism else you'd have died from exposure even though you didn't drown.
You were never intended to come out of the river alive. Have you any idea who did that to you?”
”I - I can't remember anything. It's all a blank.”
”Very well,” said Rhodes, ”but try. There's an unseen war going on which could break out into the most b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.sacre of the century. What it's all about I can only guess, but Dalroi's in the middle of it somewhere and if he isn't dead already then it's only a matter of time. Failway against Dalroi is the sort of odds which makes my blood run cold, and I'm not even sure the situation is as simple as that. If you can remember anything at all which might help you've got to let me know.”
”Just before Dever and I were attacked he started to talk about Gormalu.””Anything else?”
”Dever said the Black Knights were looking for Dalroi - asking questions.”
”Yes,” said the Ombudsman quietly. ”I rather imagine they would be. There's a loose a.s.sociation between the Cronstadt committee and the Black Knights, but they make strained and unhappy bedfellows. It will be interesting to see what happens to Democracy when the bonds of expediency break down. It will be even more interesting when they learn they've been fighting the wrong battle. Between them they have conspired to put Dalroi precisely where his opponents most wish him to be. In the name of Humanity I've got to help Dalroi in any way I can. That's why I still think you can help me.”
”So help me, I've told you all I know.”
”I don't think you have. You've omitted one person from the story - somebody who could be vital. I'm familiar with the tactics of Failway and of the Black Knights, and it was neither of their teams who attacked you at Pa.s.sfields, else I scarcely think you'd be alive to tell the tale. Neither of them have need to use rivers to dispose of unwanted bodies. I can only conclude, therefore, that the attacker was a friend of Dalroi's - and that raises the question of what he wanted from you. Tell me Zdenka, why did you kill Harry Dever - and who was it caught you in the act?”
Her outraged reaction was stillborn, nullified by the Ombudsman's swift horror at something behind her at the door. He reached for the gun at his knee, but the plate gla.s.s of the door shattered and a gas sh.e.l.l cracked against the wooden desktop before he could complete the action. As the vapour fanned out the paralysis was instantaneous. He stiffened and fell, his features locked in outraged amazement and his eyes fixed gla.s.sily on the black masks and cowls of the intruders.
SIXTEEN.
Dalroi made it back to the great wall while there was still enough light to give him bearings. He turned away from the door through which he had come and headed into the darkness. Shortly he ran down the earth ramp and on to the gla.s.sy basic strata. The light failed completely and only the occasional touch of his fingers on the concrete gave him his bearings.
He was careful. If he lost contact with the wall there was a reasonable certainty that he could wander forever on the black plain and never find anything but darkness and the black, flat floor. He was playing a hunch that somewhere on the perimeter of Failway Two there was another door, one at which he would not be expected. Against him were the facts that there need not be another door, and even if there was he could easily miss it with his fingertips.
He remembered the infra-red goggles in his pocket and snapped them on. Very, very faintly the wall stood out in contrast to the gla.s.sy plain and enabled him to speed his progress. He stopped abruptly when he saw the light.
It was no ordinary light, but a form of dark-lamp with a pencil beam. Approaching cautiously he saw the chain of reflectors on rafts some fifty yards out, a typical beam-trap for those who walked in the darkness.
From this he knew both that there was a door close by and that he was probably expected. The goggles enabled him to pa.s.s the beam trap without springing the alarm, and the door was easily opened. He entered, half expecting a more malicious trap, but found none. Apparently, complete reliance was placed on the alarm, and this he had avoided.
He found himself in a tunnel built through the great outer wall of Failway Two. It was similar to the firstthrough which he had pa.s.sed to find the field of cepi. At the other end was a hall corresponding to the one where the giant generators had been, but this one was concerned with building. Prefabricated palaces and panoramas, constructed with amazing imagination and realism, stood awaiting the craftsmen's final touch. Everything from furniture down to the daintiest bowl was here a.s.sembled and matched for atmosphere and authenticity before being introduced into the pleasure world beyond. This was the property department of Failway Two.
The scale of the project was staggering. Fully a whole new town of oriental wonder being a.s.sembled in a way no Prince of Orient could possibly have imagined. At this moment the lights were low and n.o.body was about, as if there was a lull between working s.h.i.+fts. Dalroi moved swiftly between flights of marble steps and gilded minarets towards where he judged the pleasure-ground to be.
Another door, and he was back in the world of make-believe, a furtive figure slinking in the corner of bazaar and alley in the dim twilight of a mock-oriental evening. The shock of Gormalu's unofficial night seemed to have been forgotten by the throng in the plazas. The cafes, dancing rooms and temples of love, were doing good business. Outwardly everything was running as normal but the tenseness in the Failway staff betrayed the scent of manhunt. Dalroi realised he needed a disguise if he was to remain long undetected.
A lone figure in a deserted alley gave him an idea. He closed swiftly and struck once, dragging the limp figure into a doorway. Before he could begin the exchange of clothes there was a yell from somewhere overhead, some witness to the a.s.sault. Briefly a siren sounded an alarm and men came running. Dalroi cursed and decided to get out fast. He headed up the alley away from the running feet, skidded round a corner and scattered a row of bystanders, adding to the rising confusion.
He had turned into a main thoroughfare, and the pavements were crowded. He plunged through crowds of amazed pleasure seekers, scattering them like skittles by the sheer force of his powerful shoulders. At the next intersection he nearly fell into a trap. Security men had been alerted and waited with drawn guns.
He saw them in time to dive into an open door and up a flight of stairs to a balcony. The balcony ran round to the back of the house and from there he leaped down through ornamental trellis entwined with creeper and decorated with lanterns, stumbled through a luminescent fishpond and was away over the walls like a breath of wind.
Only luck had saved him from the first screaming bullets, but it was stamina and desperation which enabled him to clear the closing mantrap. The walks were suddenly alive with running men. Whether or not they knew his ident.i.ty, Failway was taking no chances. The bullets were intended to kill and no surrender was offered or made possible. Dalroi escaped the only way he knew; by running further, faster and over obstacles more daunting than his pursuers dared a.s.say. Soon he cleared the more thickly populated zone and broke into the quieter, more select and even more exotic areas which lay beyond.
In a silent street where the scents of luxury were so strong they held almost a life of their own, he paused to regain his breath and to a.n.a.lyse the situation. Time was running out on him. Shrill whistles told of the hunters not very far behind, gathering reinforcements with the pa.s.sing minutes. By this time the whole area would be surrounded and the net would be closing remorselessly. Only a radical rethinking of his tactics could save him.
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