Logan's Run (3 page)

Logan studied Doyle’s photo.

The runner was a big man, his own size, dark hair, strong memorable face with a wide jaw, straight nose. Slight scar above the right eye. Logan would know Doyle when he found him.

He unclipped the small black Follower scope from his belt and tuned in to Doyle’s flower pattern. Then he returned to the alert room.

A new light on the board: the upper concourse of the complex.

Francis was at Logan’s elbow. “This is no ordinary runner,” he said. “I’ve been tracking him on the board. He’s got a destination—and he’s not making any mistakes. Call me if you need me. That’s what backup’s for.”

Logan nodded tightly. He snugged his Gun into its tunic holster, checked the scope on his Follower and left the room.

The hunt began.

Logan got off the belt at the main concourse as his quarry emerged from a public riser. Doyle saw the black tunic and dipped into a crowd. Logan stuck with him as the crowd thinned. He was still heading east—toward Arcade.

He’d be hard to track in the vast pleasure center. Logan moved to head him off, but the runner reversed direction and caught a slide. Good. The man was moving downward again. Let him run.

Logan watched Doyle’s progress on the Follower, represented by a tiny alarm trail of flashing light dots.

Time to give him another nudge.

At Morningside Heights and Pavilion he picked up Doyle again. The man must know about the maze scanners, Logan thought; the dispatcher was correct in this. Doyle had passed up a dozen chances to go underground. He was swinging east again making another bid for Arcade.

Logan showed himself in the crowd-surge. There’s nothing to equal the flash of a black tunic to instill panic in a runner. And panic would kill him. Panic and a homer. Logan moved up a level, to place himself between the runner and Arcade.

Doyle didn’t panic.

He was smart. This was no frightened psychotic who’d come unhinged the moment his hand blacked. He’d dodged and shifted like a chess player, calculating each move. He stayed in crowds; he didn’t let himself get locked in on a single level, but stayed close to the main lifts which offered him mobility.

Logan felt a reluctant admiration for this man. Doyle could have made a fine DS operative. He had the instincts and grace of a hunter. He seemed aware of the DS limitations and exploited the knowledge.

Enough of this, Logan warned himself. Let’s get on with the job. Fill up with coldness and hate. Build the image of a jackal, a warped coward running from justice. Weak, spineless, selfish. Living beyond his time.

Chase, capture and
kill
.

Logan watched the Follower as one of the tiny light dots neared his position. Doyle should come out of the lift—now.

The man stepped into view.

Logan brought up the Gun. He caught a white, shocked face in the sights. It would be an easy shot, a clean kill. In that moment Doyle saw his danger. He tried to back into the lift.

Logan had him. Before Doyle could take cover the heat-sensing element in the homer would seek him out and destroy him. Logan’s finger curled on the trigger. He hesitated.

That brief hesitation cost him the shot. Doyle was in the lift, headed down.

Logan swore tensely. What had gone wrong? Why hadn’t he Gunned the man?

On the scope he watched the dot descend two levels and head south. Once again Logan moved to cut the runner off. He dropped three levels, circled to the foot of the slope ramp, waiting. This time he would not miss.

When Doyle appeared he was holding a human shield. A girl, ten or eleven. Struggling in Doyle’s arms, she reacted in terror as she saw the DS man.

Logan flipped the chamber to tangler and fired the charge. Doyle flung the girl forward into it. The blast of silver threads enveloped her, clouding over her upper body in a tight webbing. Already Doyle was running again.

A paravane was cruising the area and Logan alerted it. The police would bring the delicate equipment needed to soften and dissolve the threads without harming the girl. Logan put her out of his mind.

The dot was ahead.

The main thoroughfare was thick with citizens. Among them, moving away, was Doyle. No good trying to fire a homer in this press of bodies. Too dangerous. There was always the chance that an onlooker would step in front of the charge and divert its course. To a homer, seeking a normal 98.6( in body temperature, one man was like another. Logan would have to be certain of his shot. The only sure way to take out a runner in a packed crowd was to walk directly up to him, jam the Gun in his stomach and fire. But Doyle was too fast to allow this.

The hunt continued.

Doyle was veering east again. Making another try for Arcade. Logan moved quickly to intercept him, riding an express belt to the east edge of the concourse. This should do it; Doyle would walk right into his Gun.

But he didn’t. Something was wrong. It had been a feint. The dot was going down through the complex —heading west. Toward Cathedral.

Bad. In Cathedral he could lose Doyle forever, and that wasn’t going to happen. Logan put in a call to backup.

“He tricked me, and I went for it,” he told Francis. “It’s up to you to cut him off at the stone bridge into Cathedral. I’ll meet you there.”

Francis didn’t waste time with a reply.

He clicked off.

Cathedral: a festering sore in the side of Greater Los Angeles, an area of rubble and dust and burned-out buildings, a place of shadow and pollution, of stealth and sudden death. Cubscout territory. If Doyle cleared the bridge the cubs would take him. The kill would be theirs—and that was bad for the record.

Logan was well aware of Cathedral’s blood history. Of the runners who never came out. Of the muggings. Of the unchecked violence. Even the police avoided Cathedral. With good reason. They’d sent in a cleanup squad the previous summer to tame the cubs. Logan had known some of the men in that squad: Sanson and Bradley and Wilson 9, all good officers. They’d walked into the jaws of the crocodile and the jaws had closed. None of the squad survived.

You didn’t take chances in Cathedral.

The express belt broke down at River Level, and Logan was forced to take a walkway to Sutton and use the out ramp. These transit breaks had been occuring more and more frequently of late. And since the Thinker was self-repairing, or
supposed
to be, there was nothing anyone could do about the situation.

When Logan reached the east side of the long stone bridge which fed into Cathedral he found Francis slumped against the spillwall.

“Chopped me from behind,” he said, rubbing his head. “Your runner’s tough.”

Logan scanned the area. The scope indicated that Doyle was very near. A shadow on the bridge. Logan raised his Gun for a shot, but couldn’t get a clear view of the man.

Doyle kept under the stone parapet, scuttling crab like across the span, keeping the thick masonry between himself and the Gun.

“He’s over,” said Francis.

The runner had cleared the end of the bridge and ducked behind the tumbled ruins of a warehouse. But within seconds he reappeared, retreating from a tide of moving colors, quick shapes.

“Cubs!” breathed Logan.

He studied the cubscouts. There was something odd and fragmented about their movements as they converged on Doyle. Then he realized what he was seeing. He heard Francis swear softly. “They’re on Muscle.”

The small figures moved in a continual blur of motion, daring and flitting like earthbound dragonflies.

Where do they get the stuff? Logan wondered. Muscle had been outlawed since the Little War. Originally developed for armed combat, the drug was designed to speed up reactions. It increased a man’s strength tenfold, giving him ample time to deal with an enemy. But its action was too violent to control; it forced the heart to do a day’s work in minutes. A man lived impossibly fast with Muscle in his bloodstream. Only the very young could use it.

Logan felt the flesh on his scalp tighten as he watched the incredibly swift boy-shapes attack the runner. Under Muscle a stick in a fist becomes a steel hammer—and the swarming cubs were cutting Doyle to pieces. He was on the ground, hands outstretched to ward off the cubs, but they were killing him. They were all around him in a rippling, weaving circle; and each wet, bone-shattering blow brought Doyle closer to death.

Logan and Francis were crouched behind a wall of rubble facing the action in the clearing ahead of them.

“We’ll try vapor,” said Francis. “Plug up.”

They inserted nose filters. Francis flipped the Gun to V, braced the weapon against the top of the wall, fired.

The gas charge took immediate effect, driving the cubs back in a broken wave. Doyle lay huddled and unmoving in the center of the clearing. “Let’s check him,” said Logan. “I can handle it. You cover me.”

Before Francis could reach the runner the cubs regrouped to cut him off. They backed the DS man into a shallow pocket of stone to one side of the open ground. A second wave came for Logan.

He fired a nitro into the group, and three of the cubs were torn about by the blast. This stopped them long enough for Logan to reach Doyle.

The man’s face was a mosaic of blood and bone-ends; his mouth moved convulsively. A word. The runner was repeating a word.

Logan leaned closer to catch the broken whisper: “Sanctuary.”

Logan tensed. The runner’s head fell back loosely; his fingers uncurled. A small glittering object fell from his left hand. A punchkey. Logan pocketed it.

The flat, dry crack of a ripper. Francis was effectively dealing with his attackers. He came into the clearing and stepped quickly to Doyle.

“Alive?” he asked.

“Dead,” said Logan.

Francis stared sourly down at the unbreathing man, obviously disappointed, cheated of a prize. Then slowly he raised his Gun and fired a blister charge into the body.

The dead runner flamed and danced into sudden ash.

“Let’s go,” said Francis.

On the way back to headquarters, riding beside Francis in the shuttle, Logan kept his right fist closed against his side. He didn’t want to see the flower in his palm.

It was blinking.

He cat-prowls the corridors.

He stops in front of the Gunwall. Logan’s Gun is still not there. He paces, waits.

He hears a guarded whisper not meant for his ears: “Old Francis is on to something,” says a voice.

“They say the cubs cheated him out of a runner.”

“That isn’t it. He’s on to something.”

He doesn’t react to this.

He shadow-glides the gray halls.

He is a violence, contained.

He moves back to the Gunwall, stares, moves away.

He checks the time: 7:30.

Fact: Logan has not returned with his Gun.

Fact: Logan is on Lastday.

He instructs the techs to rig a Gun trace, tuned to Logan’s weapon. When the Gun is fired it will register its location on the board.

He sits, face illuminated by ghost lights from the glowing circuits. He waits.

EVENING…

When Logan walked into his living unit young Abe Lincoln was there, splitting logs in the center of the room. Logan automatically punched a wall stud and the president was sucked, hissing, back into the Tri-Dim.

He stripped, bathed, changed to grays and dialed a meal and a Scotch. Sipping the iced drink, Logan stared at his palm, at the blinking crystal flower.

Lastday. Twenty-four hours in which to live. Then his flower would go black and it would be time to turn himself in for Sleep.

Twenty-four hours.

Logan picked up the silver punchkey from the bed.

Runners say
please
; runners say
help
; runners say
mercy
, runners say
don’t
. 

Doyle had said
Sanctuary
.

And Logan held a key which might lead to it, to a goal never proved to exist, to a place which could not exist. Not in this world. Not for a runner in 2116.

But what if Sanctuary were a reality? A place where runners were safe from the Gun. What if he, Logan 3, could find it and destroy it in the last twenty four hours of his life? His existence would be justified; he’d be a world hero; his life would end in glory.

It would be a risk worth taking. And the key to the quest lay in his hand.

Do it.

Logan walked to the communideck. The silver key slid easily into the slot. Inside the flat housing, tiny indentations in the stamped- metal made electrical connections. The wallscreen lightened.

A girl in vented peekaboos regarded Logan. She was perhaps sixteen, with dead, flat eyes. Her body was slim-breasted and angular. “Call back later,” she said. “I’m going out.”

“I’m calling
now
,” said Logan.

“Have you got a name?”

“I’ve got a name.” He let it rest at that.

A spark of interest in the flat eyes. “But you’ve keeping it to yourself.”

“There’s no sanctuary in passing out random identities,” said Logan, leaning slightly on the word sanctuary.

Her gaze did not flicker.

This didn’t feel right. Not right at all. The runner could have been babbling. Maybe he was acting on a false lead.

“Who gave you my key?” the girl asked.

“A friend.”

“I’m going out.”

“You said that.”

“To a party. I’m expected.”

“I could meet you there,” said Logan.

She studied him speculatively.

“Halstead complex. West wing. Fourth level. Living unit 2582. Got that?” Logan nodded.

“I really shouldn’t be inviting strangers,” she said. “If you’re.not up to the party I’ll be to blame.” “I’m up to it,” said Logan, “and anything else.” He kept his face impassive.

“We’ll see.”

She said one last thing before she blacked. “I’m Lilith 4. I think you’ll find me.. .helpful.” The screen died.

Logan let out a breath. It sounded like a word. The word it sounded like was “Sanctuary.”