Part 19 (1/2)

Finally, Truck said: ”You don't know that Pater was right. You don't even know what he meant Neither of us do. Tm not even sure he did.**

Himation shrugged. ”No,” he admitted.

Truck s.h.i.+vered. He couldn't control his hands: Independent, they moved gently over the Device, taking its thready, secret pulse. ”Himation, I want to go with you,” he whispered almost in audibly. He jumped to his feet. ”Please. You owe me that. You're using me, Pater was using me, just like the rest of them-!”

But Himation had turned away, and pretended not to hear-whether out of consideration or embarra.s.sment, Truck couldn't decide.

Midnight on the German Strip. All real life had fled this place with the Rat Bomb wars. Hard frost and a lunar desperation lay on the land from Liibeck south to Plauen. Coburg and Marburg, Dresden and Magdeburg-white ruins under a cold sky; Hanover and Hamburg, names on acres of rust and concrete, old weapon pads, interconnecting pits and craters. Somewhere through it ran an old, lost frontier.

Beneath a bright acidic moon, John Truck stood with Himation the anarchist on the lower slopes of the Brocken. In the shadow of the mountain-confirmation of an old despair-lay Atalanta in Catydon, The northeast wind, full of ice particles and the smell of the cold gray Baltic brine, whipped Himation's cloak out like a flag.

”This is as close as I can get you to Gottingen.” The wind boomed over the bare rock above, stole his voice, and howled off with it to the frozen nightmare of Thiiringen.

”What the h.e.l.l am I supposed to do there?”

The Centaur! Device 189.

”There are people, at least You couldn't have expected me to put her down at Albion.”

Truck blew on his cupped hands. ”No.” He set his back to the wind-he would let it blow him along: when had he ever done anything else?-and hunched his shoulders, looking along the valley. ”I'd better go before I freeze to death.”

Nothing moved down there in the wind. Boulders or buildings, everything was covered with verglos and frozen snow.

”Look,” said Himation, holding out his hand, ”I'm sorry if this seems hard-”

Truck laughed bitterly. ”It's hard,” he said. ”And it's no good me saying that I don't blame you, because I do. But”-he grinned-”I'd do the same myself.” He touched the anarchist's hand briefly and walked quickly away, before he was tempted to say anything more. He'd gone about ten paces when Himation called ”Wait!”

He went back.

Himation had taken off his cloak and hat. He was thin and hollow-chested, younger than Truck had imagined, perhaps nineteen or twenty. His great shock of red hair and dead white face made an astonis.h.i.+ng contact with his bright blue eyes. s.h.i.+vering and jogging from one foot to the other, he bundled the clothes up and held them out ”It's b.l.o.o.d.y bitter out here-and I shan't need them any more.”

He looked suddenly diffident and boyish.

Truck took them from him. ”You don't look much like your father,” he said.

Himation smiled uncertainly. ”My father? Oh, Pater.” He laughed, ”Did he tell you he was my father?”

Truck shrugged.”It doesn't matter.” He held up the bundle. ”Will these do tricks for me?”

”Who knows?”

Himation smiled shyly. He reached out and plucked 190.

a green carnation from behind Truck's ear. Td better have this back. Good-by, Captain.”

He made off toward his s.h.i.+p-stooped, lean, full of energy, as if he'd been newly released from some prison. A flurry of snow whirled round him, like the prop to an illusion.

”Tell them to look for me in Andromeda,” he called.

He raised his hand. A flower fell from it and was s.n.a.t.c.hed away by the wind.

Truck slung the cloak around him, b.u.t.toned its collar, and pulled down his hat. He retrieved the Centauri Device from a small puddle it had melted for itself in the snow, and went into the darkness of the valley, alone. Behind him, he heard Atalanta in Calydon lift into the air.

” ”The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.' ”

He didn't dare look back.

Perhaps four hours later, exhausted and covered with snow, he blundered into an IWG early warning post somewhere in the derelict suburbs of Gottingen.

”I've come to give myself up,” he said, and peered be-musedly into the twilight of the operations room, the skin of his face smarting in the sudden warmth.

Thin, unnatural faces squinted back at him through a haze of tobacco smoke, underlighted by the backwash of green light from plotboard and ultrasonic map: red-eyed, eerie and frightened, like underground animals blinking up from burrows- After a month in one of those places, waiting for the war-to start an operator begins to see things up on the empty slopes of the Vogelsburg, where nothing has stirred for over three centuries; he imagines ma.s.sive troop movements among the drowned stormceUars of Braunshweig and Salgitzer; he discovers an intruder in every silent fall of powdered mortar in a vacant city. He wears five keys chained to his neck-used in a proper sequence, they will kill the world.

The Centauri Device 191.

After two months, he can hardly remember in which order to avoid using them- Halfway through the graveyard s.h.i.+ft, tired and sick among a litter of disposable plastic cups, all they saw was a faceless, threatening figure in a dark cloak, snow swirling bejiind it; and under its left arm an indistinct, s.h.i.+fty object that somehow chafed at their irritated eyes. All they heard it declare, in a m.u.f.fled, deadly voice, was: ”I've come-”

A Chambers gun spluttered in the gloom.

Shadows hurled themselves over the walls, jerky and panic-stricken.

”You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!” screamed John Truck, and clutched at himself in astonishment.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed his own gun from his boot and dived behind a radar module.

It was a short exchange. At twenty-five or less, pho-tophobic and with the ulcers of a sour responsibility eating at their insides, they were already old men. He killed them all, lay for a minute behind the console, whimpering. When he came out, he saw that some of them were clutching their keys, while others simply stared relieved at the low ceiling, blood on their rolled-up s.h.i.+rtsleeves-each one thankful, perhaps, that it was only his own death and not the world's.

Truck moaned. He was seeing in halftones. ”You should have given me a chance,”

he murmured, supporting himself against the doorjamb.

Outside, the wind was gusting up to Force Eight There was a small VTOL pad behind the buflding. Halfway to it, he collapsed, lay there surprised under the sickening slow sweep of the ultrasound antennae and examined his wound.

The bolt had eaten its way into his ribs, low down on the right side. The fire had gone out, but something was leaking from a fist-sized hole.”Oh G.o.d,” he prayed. ”Oh, Christ”

He leaned on one elbow in the frozen slush and retched with fear. He couldn't feel anything down there, no pain, nothing. He wiped his mouth, looked 192 The Centauri Device up. A single aircraft was on the pad. He hauled himself laboriously toward it, hissing and gasping every time his right side touched the ground, out of horror that he'd get something in the wound.

He hadn't once let go of the thing under his armpit was warm enough now to give him comfort in the wild night

FIFTEEN.

The Last Anarchist It was 6 A.M. Christmas morning in Carter's Snort when John Truck brought the stolen VTOL into the abandoned rocket-mail field at Renfield Street. Snow was on the ground, Sauchihall was full of crepe paper streaming in the wind; in warm entrances and fuggy hallways, the port ladies were singing carols to their customers.