Part 21 (1/2)
Far down the tunnel, the darkness had opened like a fist to let light out. Two Lilliputian figures were climbing over a box. He watched as they got down from the box and started trotting.
He was tired and desperate, but so were they. He climbed over the box, got down on the other side, and trotted. Sooner or later, he would pa.s.s SCC workers. If he had been alone, he would, probably, be reported. The workers would a.s.sume, however, that the two organics had reported to HQ that they were chasing the criminal. Those who asked the two officers if they wanted help would be told that none was needed. The immers did not want other organics involved.
When he saw an envelope of light in the darkness ahead, he forced himself to run faster, and to climb over the boxes more DAY WOR LI).
vigorously. Fortunately, there were only three td get over before he got to the light. This came from an office in a recess at the intersection of north-south and east-west belts.
He leaped out when he approached the steps and grabbed the railing. His chest heaving, breath sawing, he ran up the steps. The light accompanying him would merge with the light from the office windows. But that would not keep the pursuers from seeing him leave the belt.
He went past the windows. A man was sitting at a desk and watching a strip show while he drank from an unlabeled bottle.
If there was another worker around, he or she could be in the toilet or sleeping in the back room. Caird did not hesitate to take his chances. He ran around the corner, through the door, and at the man behind the desk. The man had just put the bottle down when Caird charged in, and he did not see Caird until he was almost on him. The man rose from the chair, saying, ”What the. . . ?” Caird grabbed the bottle by the neck and brought it down on the man's forehead. He just wanted to stun him, not severely injure or kill him. The man fell backward over the chair and sprawled out, his eyes closed and his mouth hanging open. Whiskey fumes rose from it.
Caird glanced at the half-closed door to the back room. A woman's head and the cot on which she lay were visible. Her mouth was open, and she was snoring as heavily as the unconscious man. He a.s.sumed that she had also been drinking the bootleg whiskey.
The man on the floor groaned, and his eyelids fluttered. Caird groaned, too, though not for the same reason. He had to make sure that the man was unconscious for at least five minutes.
Gritting his teeth, disliking what he had to do, Caird lifted the man, propped him against the desk, and hit him on the jaw with the bottle. The man fell over on his side.
Caird dragged the body by the feet through the doorway. Forty feet eastward was one of the huge mechanical arms that removed boxes from one belt to another. He dropped the man's legs and switched the controls on the panel at its base to MANUAL. He slipped his hand into a metal-mesh glove and moved it as he wished the arm and its ”fingers” to move.
The man, his waist gripped by the ”fingers,” his body arched, head and arms and legs dangling, was placed in front of a box on the east-going belt.
Caird brought the arm back to the upright position-it would not do for the immers to notice it sticking out over the belts-and he ran back to the office. By then, his heavy breathing had become light. He went back into the office and got behind the door of the back room. The woman was still snoring. Caird pushed the door so that it was an inch open, and he turned the back room light off. He put his shoulderbag on the floor and took out the screwdriver and hammer.
A few seconds later, he heard the rasping breathing of the two men. Through the opening, he saw one enter the office, gun in hand, stop and look around. The other walked past the windows and out of sight. The first man waited until his partner came back.
”He's on the east belt,” the second man said. ”I saw his light.”
”Where in h.e.l.l're the workers?” the man who had entered first said. His thick eyebrows made his face even tougher-looking.
The second man had a very short and upturned nose. He looked like a picture of the ancient extinct bulldog. Pointing at the open whiskey bottle which Caird had put back on the desk, he said, ”They're probably pa.s.sed out in the back room.”
”I'd sure like to turn those slobs in!” Eyebrows said.
Bulldog walked to the fountain and drank deeply. Still gasping, he straightened up. ”Drink up. We can't just stand here while he's riding away from us. He can see there's no light following him. He'll be resting.”
Eyebrows drank deeply, too. When he had his fill, he wiped the sweat from his eyes with his arm and said, ”You think we should call in for help?”
”I sure wish we could,” Bulldog said. ”But it's too risky. We got to get that son of a b.i.t.c.h soon.”
”What happens if we don't?”
Bulldog looked disgustedly at Eyebrows. ”You know what'll happen.”
”If I could just get in range!”
”You won't standing here. Come on.”
As soon as they left, Caird went to the fountain, which he had been too pressed to use before then. He drank more sparingly than the immers, though he wanted more. Before going out of the door, he got down on his knees and stuck his head out just far enough to see his pursuers. Who were now the pursued. They were not trotting, just walking fast. They a.s.sumed that, since they could not see Caird, he was hidden behind a box. Undoubtedly, they were hoping that he was so exhausted that he would rest long enough for them to catch up with him.
He had to take the chance that they might look back. He rose and ran from the door, the screwdriver and the handle of the hammer in his belt. He went up the steps to the walkway over the east-west belts, climbed over the railing, and dropped onto a box. He got down quickly from it and crouched between two boxes. Now, if they looked back, they would think that his light was theirs unless they noticed that their light was much longer than it should be. He prayed that they would not.
When he stuck his head up over the edge of the box, he saw them climbing over a box. He waited until they had gotten off it and then went over his box. He ran while they walked. He overtook them when they were going over another box. His hammer and screwdriver were in his hands when he slid off the edge of the box.
Just as he came up behind the man in the rear, Eyebrows, the man started to turn his head to look behind him. Caird brought the hammer down on the side of his head harder than he had intended. He dropped the hammer and the screwdriver, not caring how much noise he made now. Bulldog, on getting ready to slide off the box, had turned his head when he heard the thud of the hammer. Caird caught Eyebrows' body with one hand. With the other, he s.n.a.t.c.hed Eyebrows' weapon from his holster.
”Hold it!” Caird said, and he let Eyebrows fall. The gun was set for full power. Bulldog knew 'that.
”I don't want to kill you,” Caird said, ”though I should. You were going to kill me.”
(”Take them out, anyway,” Repp said. ”They're vermin, and a dead enemy is one less enemy.”) (”Don't!” Isharashvili cried.) ”Your left hand up in the air. High. OK. Now, slowly, very slowly, ease the gun out with the right hand. Drop it on the box by you. Turn your head away; don't look at me. Hold it until I tell you different.”
Bulldog's neck quivered, but he looked straight ahead. After a slight hesitation, he took the b.u.t.t of the weapon by two fingers and placed it on the box by him. His right hand joined the left one above his head.
”Now slide off the box and walk about twenty feet away. Keep your hands high. Don't turn around. I know how to use this. I'm a crack shot.”
Bulldog obeyed. Caird got swiftly onto the box and stuck the gun into his shoulderbag. He got down off the box, walked to Bulldog, reversed the weapon, and struck the man hard on the crown of his head. Bulldog crumpled.
(”Don't!” Isharashvili cried again.) ”Go back where you came from,” Caird muttered. He removed the ID disc-star from Bulldog's neck and put it in his shoulderbag. He might be able to use it, though he doubted it. He rolled the body onto the west-going belt and climbed back over the box. After putting Eyebrows' ID in the bag, Caird rolled the body onto the west-going belt. Since there might be a use for the hammer and screwdriver, he placed them in the bag. It was bulging and was very heavy, but he did not plan to carry it for some time. He stood watching the light and the two unconscious men in it for a minute. Then he lay down. He did not think he had closed his eyes, but a man shouting at him woke him up.
The man's eyes were level with the belt. Caird shouted, ”Surprise inspection! You should be glad I found you awake!”
Caird sat up and grinned at him until the man turned and walked into the office. Caird did not have time to worry about what the worker meant to do. He had to change belts soon. If he kept going much longer, he would be under the East River and on his way to Brooklyn.
By the time that he had gotten to his goal, he had switched belts nine times. A few times, he had been forced to travel for a while in the opposite direction. He had stolen a worker's lunch. He had gotten off four times to drink from a fountain and had twice had to go down an access ladder to the lower level. He had washed off the tissue from his cheek wound and the dirt from his face and hands.
When he got out of an elevator in an access tube, he was tired. The events of today and the six days before, the tension, the uncertainty, the battles, the running, and the warring voices within him had punished him. He had been stretched to his outer limits on a rack and squeezed to his inner limits in a compacter.
Nevertheless, when he stepped out into Central Park near the Alice in Wonderland statue, he at once felt stronger and more hopeful. Alice, after falling down a hole, had survived her many perils. He hoped that there was no mirror he had to pa.s.s through in his future.
He planned to hole up somewhere in the park over night. As a ranger, that is, drawing on Isharashvili's memory, he knew several good hiding places. Tomorrow, he would try for the wilds of New Jersey. The great forest that covered most of the state's eastern part sheltered some outlaws. They might accept him. If he was rejected, he would starve. He knew nothing of noncity survival. Even if he was taken in, he would live hunted and harried.
At least, he would be living. Someday, he might get back into a city and there insert a new ID into the data bank. That idea, at the moment, tasted like he imagined c.o.c.kroach droppings would taste.
The sight of Central Park cleansed him of such thoughts. Amazingly, the storm had pa.s.sed and was now only low black clouds in the west. The air was exhilarating; the wind, a mere five miles an hour. The world looked as it always does after a good rain. It seemed to have been remade by G.o.d to His better liking. A male cardinal's Toowheert-Toowheert----Toowheert- Twock-Twock-Twock-Twock rang from an oak branch. A squirrel was scold-barking from an Osage orange tree branch at a big black cat that had braved the wet gra.s.s.
The clear sky also meant that the satellites had their eyes o Central Park.
This did not bother Caird. He walked along a winding, uj and-down flower-lined path past bushes and trees, past statue of Frodo and Smaug, Lenin, the Cowardly Lion and Dorothi Gandhi, Don Quixote, Spinoza, Rip van Winkle, Woody Allen and John Henry. He went by a few people who had taken she ter from the storm and were out again. So far, no rangers or oi ganics, but they would be somewhere near.
After going for several hundred feet on a path covered by ir terlocking tree branches, he left it. He plunged into an are that was not off-limits to the public but was seldom venture into. It stood out like a green thumb, a patch of bright an poisonous-looking vegetation. The stone statues of the animal crouching in the very thick ranks of fronds and huge el phant's-ear plants looked slightly misshapen. He was walkin in a landscaper's reproduction of an Amazon jungle by the am cient French painter Henri Rousseau. Yellow eyes framed i spotted faces gleamed from behind heavy nightmarish bushe: A proboscis monkey, resembling a politician whom the lanc scaper disliked, stared down foolishly from a branch.
Caird pushed through the forbidding growth, struggled ur hill, skirted a black-painted granite G.o.d, squat, ma.s.siv crouching on frog legs, its half-human, half-jaguar face snarl ing, and came to the ridge of the hill. He crossed into the veg tation on the other side, descending abruptly into a land c pines and birches. The statues here were of folk-tale monsters c the far north, baba-yagas, cern.o.bogs, chudo-yudos, hiisis, kosF cheis, lyes.h.i.+es, and vesht.i.tzes. At the bottom of the hill, h walked, ankle-deep in mud, around a swamp from which prc truded the heads of rusalkas, female water-spirits with lon wavy green hair.
This was a fenced area the public could visit only dunn guided tours. Between the fence and a creek flowing under into the swamp was a gap of two feet. He got down on his knee in the water, pushed the fence up, and, bent over, went beneath the fence. Trees growing thickly along the creek banks s.h.i.+elded him from the sky-eyes.
Another half-mile would get him to a small cave well-hidden by bushes near the foot of a hill.