Manalone (9 page)

It was Raper’s contact who had been killed by a Service laser, and Raper’s office which had been opened by a bomb. Possibly the MIPS could not be sure just how much the reporter knew, whereas they could be reasonably sure of the limits of Manalone’s knowledge.

‘Interesting questions, Manalone. How much is one permitted to know before your name gets included on the murder list? How close can you get to the answer before they decide you’re an embarrassment? And do some subjects carry more weight than others? If so, which … gravity, values, archaeology, security, obstetrics or teapots?’

After concealing
the gun, Maurine had left him and returned to her work as Vickers’ secretary, carrying on as though the incident had not occurred. In the circumstances Manalone saw no reason to do otherwise than to get on with his own job. This he did. In the corridor later that day they passed each other almost without acknowledgment except the strong light of challenge which flared when their eyes met.

Both left this encounter smiling slightly, but Manalone’s smile grew a little chill on wondering what sort of a report she would make on him and what sort of reaction it might provoke. He was not such a fool as to imagine that Maurine would play down the events of the day for any personal reasons. Like her character, the by-play between them extended down through many levels and was not likely to be complicated by ordinary sentiment.

Instead of going home that evening he took an autram to a location slightly out of town and then walked the back-streets in a circuitous route to his destination. Although he checked and re-checked frequently he could find no sign that he was being followed. He finally entered a bar which he knew had a window overlooking the front of the Hover-rail Terminal. A table at the window gave him a vantage point from which he hoped to be able to identify Paul Raper on his way to the raft.

Manalone knew it was going to be a lengthy visit. If Raper took this route at all he would probably use a brief disguise and make the journey after dark. As daylight faded and the artificial illumination became correspondingly brighter and more monochromatic, so the difficulties of identification increased. Raper would almost certainly be moving where the commuter traffic was densest, carried if possible in the centre of a crowd, and he would be visible from the window for a few seconds at most. Manalone’s prognosis for the success of the operation was low, but at least he had to try.

The peak commuter traffic came and went without any sign of the reporter, though there were several periods when the crush had been such that he could have got through without being noticed. Having missed a night’s sleep and also his tea, Manalone’s measured ingestion of alcohol was having an unduly heavy effect upon his awareness, and he became increasingly introspective and less attentive as the hours passed.

‘Concentrate,
damn you, Manalone! How long have you known Maurine? Nearly three years. For three years before you knew the problem existed she’s been watching you, encouraging you to talk. And that flabby male ego of yours has been lapping it up and responding. Question: was she put there to watch everyone at the Mills, or has she been concentrating on you?’

Illogically, his shabby male ego insisted that he had been getting the majority of her attention. Even Adam Vickers, for whom she worked directly, had scarcely been subjected to her intense personal probing. Thinking back, Manalone remembered that she had first been offered to himself for secretarial duties. He had declined, preferring to work directly with the autotype and autosec systems rather than have the distractions of a female in his office. In so doing he had lost a status symbol but retained the right to be completely non-communicative when he felt like it, which was often.

‘But she’s been watching you, Manalone, all that time. And subconsciously you knew it. That’s why you always met her on the defensive. And you always knew she wore a gun because it reflected on the polished floor. It intrigued you, but you never dared to ask her why she wore it. But the point is not that she has been watching, but why she has been watching. Could she have known that one day you would start picking up the wrong threads?’

This was a reasonable possibility. He was a compulsive problem solver, and the computing complex at the Mills gave him an information and computation facility which was probably second to none in the country. Statistically it was only a matter of time before he would have come across some peculiarity which would have caused him to discover the problems for himself. All that Raper had done was to catalyse an already viable reaction …

He stopped in midthought, his attention suddenly snared by the sight of Paul Raper, undisguised, stepping briskly from the Terminal. Within seconds Manalone was out of the bar and following at a fast walk, not daring to run lest he attracted too much attention.

‘Paul!’

Raper could
not have heard him. He had turned inland into the quieter streets which Manalone had shown him on their escape from Cain’s.

‘Paul!’

As the reporter turned a corner he was momentarily lost to Manalone’s view. Manalone hurried to the corner, then stopped, suddenly disconcerted not to be able to see Raper’s back hurrying away down the sidestreet.

‘Paul!’

The cry came in a shock of fright and apprehension as he almost fell over the prostrate body on the pavement. He bent to touch it, but recoiled in horror, looking at the wide wound which had burned away half of Raper’s forehead. In his agony he noticed something white which had fallen into the gutter beside the body. It was an envelope which presumably Paul had been carrying. As Manalone bent and picked it up, he heard and saw the shadows coming out of the doorways. An animal panic overwhelmed him, and unthinkingly he turned and ran. Paul Raper was dead from a head wound made by a heavy duty laser – and Manalone knew he was in the self-same trap.

He ran through
the streets and alleys with his heart pounding and his eyes alert for any sign of the dark figures closing in from the darkness. Strangely, they did not appear to be trying to follow him. Finally emerging into the bright lights of the High Street, he was forced to slow his pace to avoid attracting attention, and he paused now and deliberately searched behind him for any who might be following.

He could detect nobody. In some curious way he had known that they would not come. Maurine van Holt had warned him that he would not be allowed to get away with open defiance, and now he was sure this was true. But their approach to him would certainly be more subtle. They would first have to investigate the truth of his computer-bank deposition before they dared to make an overt move against him. But that would not prevent them exerting psychological pressures. Tonight’s event was one of these. It had all the unreality of a stage play, a drama much larger than life, with the moral heavily underscored. It was a set piece.

Paul Raper’s death had been carefully devised as a warning and a punishment. If Manalone was regarded as clever, then the manipulator behind the scenes was a genius. With one burst of laser fire, Manalone had been isolated from whatever contact Raper had with others who might be aware of the conspiracy, and robbed of the only person with whom he could sensibly discuss the subject. He had also been robbed of one of the very few he could call a friend.

‘Isolation, Manalone – that’s the situation they’ve designed for you. Isolation and a good fright. Well, they’ve succeeded in both. My God they have! The question is: was Paul killed because of you, or would they have killed him anyway?’

The memory of Raper’s face with its forehead burned away, came back to him. He retched into the gutter.

‘But if they think that’ll stop you, they’re due for second thoughts. You’ve been isolated all your life, Manalone. Which makes you something of an expert at talking to yourself.’

Nevertheless,
the situation did affect him greatly. Coupled with the shock and grief of Raper’s death was the loss of all the information and ideas the reporter had represented. To him, Paul Raper had been a window looking on to the rest of the world. Now that window had become irrevocably blank.

He became aware that he was shivering violently, presumably both from reactive shock and lack of food. Finding a downtown caf́, he ordered bread and soup, because that was the only thing he felt his stomach was strong enough to retain. The food lined his stomach and improved his spirits considerably. When he had finished he felt almost ready to go home and face Sandra. It was going to be a rough interview. She had always predicted a violent end for Paul Raper, and being proved right was not going to make her any easier to deal with.

When he arrived home Sandra met him in the hallspace. Her face was already shocked.

‘I’ve just seen the newscast about Paul’s death. I suppose you’ve heard?’

Manalone nodded. ‘I’ve heard – but I’m surprised they made a news item of it.’ The unexpectedness of the announcement made him reel.

‘It was only the local news broadcast, but they had picture coverage as well. Knowing Paul, it quite turned me up. If they’re going to show accidents they might at least have the decency not to use colour. All that blood …’

A cold clamp gripped Manalone’s stomach. ‘All what blood?’ Inside his brain was locked the mental image of Raper’s wound. Laser inflicted … charred and cauterized … but relatively unblooded.

She caught the scent of alcohol on his breath, and chilled suddenly.

‘You’ve been drinking again, damn you!’

‘Yes,’ said Manalone. ‘It helps to keep me sane. What did they say about Paul, San?’

‘I was saying, all that blood …’

‘All what blood?’
Manalone felt the panic making his voice rise. He had underestimated the MIPS’s ability to deal out terror as a form of punishment.

‘Paul’s blood on the truck and on the road. Don’t you listen to a damn word I’m saying? While you’ve been avoiding me in some stinking bar, Paul smashed a Company manu-drive auto on the motorway. Somehow he managed to force it through the crash barrier on the central reservation and met an autofreight truck on the opposite lane. They got him out of the wreckage with a small spoon and a jar.’

‘Are you certain it was Paul?’

‘To hell I’m sure. What’s the matter with you, Manalone? They just gave it out on the newscast not ten minutes back. Said he was coming to see you on urgent business. They’d have checked their facts before they put them on the air, so it’s no use your arguing.’

‘I’m not doubting you. I just want to know when it happened.’

‘A little while ago, I guess. They screened it live, so they’d had time to get the cameras there. I don’t see why the time’s so important. Anyway, how did you know about Paul if you hadn’t seen the news?’

Manalone felt the coldness in his stomach extend to his spine. ‘Somebody told me. Didn’t say how – just that Paul was dead.’

Cursing the effect of the alcohol which inhibited his thinking, he moved towards the door, re-buttoning his cloak. Sandra caught hold of his arm.

‘You’re not going out again, surely?’

‘I’ve got to check on Paul. See if there’s anything I can do.’ The lie faded in his throat. More truthfully he needed a long, quiet time in which to think.

‘There’s nothing you can’t do by autophone – at least to start with. Manalone, is there something else you haven’t told me?’ Her voice was accusing.

He moved to open the door. ‘It isn’t that simple, San.’

She rounded on him furiously. ‘You’re telling me it isn’t that simple. Nothing about you is ever bloody simple!’

‘I have to go.’ He forced the door open against the resistance of her slim, white hands; avoiding looking at her face, fearing to meet the mixed anger and anguish which peered out at him from behind her pallid brow. From experience he knew that even his complete capitulation at this point could not save him from an eternity of critical reproaches which would pursue him across the pillows into the small of the night.

The warm
wooden door offered an attractive insulant against the psychological stresses she was creating in him. He needed both time and freedom in order to think. Somehow he managed to get the door closed between them, and leaned against it, slightly surprised at his own audacity. In the darkness outside it had started to rain again. The tactile sensation of the raindrops on the painted texture of the wood brought him a welcome touch of reality. Here was a sensation completely without emotional content, and his mind clung to it hungrily, needing a psychologically sterile base for objective thinking.

Paul was dead. He had died with his forehead burned away, in a gutter at Manalone’s feet. He had apparently also died a little later in a car crash – a fact publicized with all the emotional weight of immediacy and eye-witnesses that only sophisticated electronic reporting could provide. The timing and condition of the first mode of Paul’s death did not preclude his body’s participation in the second. But Manalone was staggered by the magnitude of the organization which had transformed a Security execution into an apparent accident with a potential audience of fifty million. And, as ever, the question was not how – but why?

Having left home with these matters burning in his mind, Manalone found himself suddenly at a loss for a destination. It was well past midnight, and nearly all the bars were closed, yet the autumn chill which inhabited the rain made it necessary for him to find some place of shelter. Cain’s club was the only true night-cell in the district, and although its attractions had dimmed somewhat, the bright warmth of Cain’s cellars stood like a mental beacon in the inhospitable darkness. Against his better judgment, he decided he had nowhere better to go.

‘
After all, Manalone – if you speak to no one there’s nothing you can give away. Not even if they do have your favourite corner bugged. And even if you did have someone to talk to – you don’t have anything to say. No answers, only questions. Questions about a problem that doesn’t even seem to exist. Questions the MIPS anticipated you’d ask – three years before you
thought to ask them. With that degree of foresight, how much else do they know about you that you don’t even know yourself?’