Part 20 (1/2)

He smiled at the members. They smiled back. She nodded at them.

”This is my second transfer this year,” he said to her.

They rode down more escalators, and stepped onto the one leading to the lobby. Three members, two with telecomps, stood talking by the scanner at one of the doors. ”No tricks now,” he said.

They rode down, reflected at a distance in dark-outside gla.s.s. The members kept talking. One of them put his telecomp on the floor.

They stepped off the escalator. ”Wait a minute, Anna,” he said. She stopped and faced him. ”I've got an eyelash in my eye,” he said. ”Do you have a tissue?”

She reached into her pocket and shook her head.

He found one under the gun and took it out and gave it to her. He stood facing the members and held his eye wide open, his other hand in his pocket again. She held the tissue to his eye. She was still trembling. ”It's only an eyelash,” he said. ”Nothing to be nervous about.”

Beyond her the member had picked up his telecomp and the three were shaking hands and kissing. The two with telecomps touched the scanner. Yes, it winked, yes. They went out. The third member came toward them, a man in his twenties.

Chip moved Lilac's hand away. ”That's it,” he said, blinking. ”Thanks, sister.”

”Can I be of help?” the member asked. ”I'm a 101.”

”No, thanks, it was just an eyelash,” Chip said. Lilac moved. Chip looked at her. She put the tissue in her pocket.

The member, glancing at the kit, said, ”Have a good trip.”

”Thanks,” Chip said. ”Good night.”

”Good night,” the member said, smiling at them.

”Good night,” Lilac said.

They went toward the doors and saw in them the reflection of the member stepping onto an upgoing escalator. ”I'm going to lean close to the scanner,” Chip said. ”Touch the side of it, not the plate.”

They went outside. ”Please, Li,” Lilac said, ”for the sake of the Family, let's go back in and go up to the medicenter.”

”Be quiet,” he said.

They turned into the pa.s.sageway between the building and the next one. The darkness grew deeper and he took out his flashlight.

”What are you going to do to me?” she asked.

”Nothing,” he said, ”unless you try to trick me again.”

”Then what do you want me for?” she asked.

He didn't answer.

There was a scanner at the cross-pa.s.sage behind the buildings. Lilac's hand went up; Chip said, ”No!” They pa.s.sed it without touching, and Lilac made a distressed sound and said under her breath, ”Terrible!”

The bikes were leaning against the wall where he had left them. His blanket-wrapped kit was in the basket of one, with cakes and drink containers squeezed in with it. A blanket was draped over the basket of the other; he put Lilac's kit down into it and closed the blanket around it, tucking it snugly. ”Get on,” he said, holding the bike upright for her.

She got on and held the handlebars.

”We'll go straight along between the buildings to the East Road,” he said. ”Don't turn or stop or gear up unless I tell you to.”

He got astride the other bike. He pushed the flashlight down into the side of the basket, with the light s.h.i.+ning out through the mesh at the pavement ahead.

”All right, let's go,” he said.

They pedaled side by side down the straight pa.s.sage that was all darkness except for columns of lesser darkness between buildings, and far above a narrow strip of stars, and far ahead the pale blue spark of a single walkway light.

”Gear up a little,” he said.

They rode faster.

”When are you due for your next treatment?” he asked.

She was silent, and then said, ”Marx eighth.”

Two weeks, he thought. Christ and Wei, why couldn't it have been tomorrow or the next day? Well, it could have been worse; it could have been four weeks.

”Will I be able to get it?” she asked.

There was no point in disturbing her more than he had already. ”Maybe,” he said. ”We'll see.”

He had intended to go a short distance every day, during the free hour when cyclists would attract no attention. They would go from parkland to parkland, pa.s.sing one city or perhaps two, and make their way by small steps to '12082 on Afr's north coast, the city nearest Majorca.

That first day, though, in the parkland north of '14509, he changed his mind. Finding a hiding place was harder than he expected; not until long after sunrise-around eight o'clock, he guessed-were they settled under a rock-ledge canopy fronted by a thicket of saplings whose gaps he had filled with cut branches. Soon after, they heard a copter's hum; it pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed above them while he pointed the gun at Lilac and she sat motionless, watching him, a half-eaten cake in her hands. At midday they heard branches cracking, leaves slas.h.i.+ng, and a voice no more than twenty meters away. It spoke unintelligibly, in the slow flat way one addressed a telephone or a voice-input telecomp.

Either Lilac's desk-drawer message had been found or, more likely, Uni had put together his disappearance, her disappearance, and two missing bicycles. So he changed his mind and decided that having been looked for and missed, they would stay where they were all week and ride on Sunday. They would make a sixty- or seventy-kilometer hop-not directly to the north but to the northeast-then settle and hide for another week. Four or five Sundays would bring them in a curving path to '12082, and each Sunday Lilac would be more herself and less Anna SG, more helpful or at least less anxious to see him ”helped.”

Now, though, she was Anna SG. He tied and gagged her with blanket strips and slept with the gun at his hand till the sun went down. In the middle of the night he tied and gagged her again, and carried away his bike. He came back in a few hours with cakes and drinks and two more blankets, towels and toilet paper, a ”wrist.w.a.tch” that had already stopped ticking, and two Francais books. She was lying awake where he had left her, her eyes anxious and pitying. Held captive by a sick member, she suffered his abuses forgivingly. She was sorry for him.

But in daylight she looked at him with revulsion. He touched his cheek and felt two days' stubble. Smiling, slightly embarra.s.sed, he said, ”I haven't had a treatment in almost a year.”

She lowered her head and put a hand over her eyes. ”You've made yourself into an animal,” she said.

”That's what we are, really,” he said. ”Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei made us into something dead and unnatural.”

She turned away when he began to shave, but she glanced over her shoulder, glanced again, and then turned and watched distastefully. ”Don't you cut your skin?” she asked.

”I did in the beginning,” he said, pressing taut his cheek and working the razor easily, watching it in the side of his flashlight propped on a stone. ”I had to keep my hand at my face for days.”

”Do you always use tea?” she asked.

He laughed. ”No,” he said. ”It's a subst.i.tute for water. Tonight I'm going to go looking for a pond or a stream.”

”How often do you-do that?” she asked.

”Every day,” he said. ”I missed yesterday. It's a nuisance, but it's only for a few more weeks. At least I hope so.”

”What do you mean?” she said.