Night Walk (12 page)
Authors: Bob Shaw
Tallon smiled wryly. The bit about rape was particularly good, coming from
Amanda. He fell asleep and managed to doze most of the day, only coming
fully awake when low growls from Seymour announced that people were
moving around outside. Nobody came into the shed, and after a while
Tallon stopped thinking about what he would do if they did. Winfield's
philosophy that a man had to do his best with the present and leave the
future to itself was not especially attractive to Tallon, but it was
the only one that worked in the present circumstances.
At dusk he gathered up Seymour and the pack and cautiously opened the
door. As he was about to step out a large plum-colored limousine swept
up the short driveway and rolled to a halt outside the main house.
A thickly built young man got out, with his jacket slung over his arm,
and waved to someone in the house who was beyond Tallon's field of vision.
The young man walked toward the front entrance, stopped at a bed of pale
blue song-flowers, and knelt down to remove a weed. At his touch
the flowers began a sweet, sad humming that was clearly audible in
the dark confines of the shed.
The song-flowers were a native variety that fed on insects, using the
plaintive humming sound to attract or lull their prey. Tallon had never
liked them. He listened impassively for a moment, holding Seymour's eye
to the narrow opening of the door. The heavy-set man discovered several
more weeds and uprooted them; then, muttering furiously, he came toward
the shed. Tallon slipped the automatic out of his pocket, reversed it
in his hand, and stood waiting as the crunching footsteps reached the
other side of the door.
This was exactly the sort of thing he had hoped to avoid. His training
was such that he could beat most any man in physical combat; but having
his eyes tucked under one arm was going to make a big difference.
He tensed himself as the door latch moved.
"Gilbert," a woman's voice called from the house. "Change your clothes
if you're going to start gardening. You promised."
The man hesitated for two or three seconds before turning and moving away
toward the house. As soon as the man was inside the house Tallon slipped
out of the shed and hit the road again.
He kept it up for four days, traveling a short distance by night and hiding
out during daylight, but the deterioration in the eyeset's performance
was becoming more noticeable. By the end of the fourth night, the picture
he was getting was so faint that he would almost have been better off
with the sonar torch. His name had gradually faded from the newscasts,
and so far he had not seen a single member of the E.L.S.P. or even of
the civil police. He decided to begin traveling in daylight again.
Tallon walked for three more days, not daring to try hitching a ride.
He now had plenty of money, but the risk of eating in restaurants or even
at lunch counters seemed too great, so he lived on the bread and the
protein preserves he'd taken from The Persian Cat, and by drinking water
from the ornamental fountains along the way.
Seeing it from the point of view of a pedestrian, Tallon was aware, as never
before, of Emm Luther's desperate need for land. The density of population
was not particularly high, but it was completely uniform -- the residential
developments, interspersed with commercial and industrial centers went on
without end, filling every square mile of level land the continent had
to offer. Only where uplands merged into actual, hostile mountainsides
did the waves of neat, prefabricated buildings fall back in defeat. Some
attempt was made at agriculture in the high borderland areas, but the
planet's real farming space was the ocean.
Tallon had covered almost one hundred miles before realizing that he
was going to be able to see only poorly for perhaps two more days and
would then be blind again -- with 700 miles still to go.
The only faint ray of hope was that the Block would know he was out of
the Pavilion. All members of the network would be on the lookout for him,
but the organization had never been strong on Emm Luther. New Wittenburg
was the planet's only entrance point, and the E.L.S.P. automatically put
tracers on every Earthsider who took up residence. It was quite possible
that at that very moment good agents were being caught as they broke
their covers in order to try to intercept Tallon. He decided to keep on
the road for one more day and head for the railway again.
The next day passed without incident. Tallon was aware that none of the
newscasts had given an adequate description of the eyeset, although
Amanda must have been able to furnish one. He figured there was some
kind of censorship at work, perhaps to avoid an official scandal over
the fact that dangerous political prisoners had been given facilities to
manufacture highly sophisticated artificial eyes. He sensed that Helen
Juste might be in trouble; but the main thing, as far as Tallon was
concerned, was that the general public had no idea what they were looking
for. Anybody interested enough to look for someone using a "radarlike
device" might reasonably expect to see a man with a black box and rotating
antenna on his head. As it was, spectacles were a fairly common sight,
never having been fully supplanted by contact lenses; and Tallon in his
dusty, anonymous uniform blended into most backgrounds. His unremarkable
appearance had been one of his major assets in the service of the Block.
The following day was slightly colder, and there was a little rain, the
first Tallon had seen since his arrest. His route had never taken him far
from the coastal railway system, and now he began walking toward the ocean
again. The dullness of the day was magnified by the somber images produced
in the failing eyeset, and TalIon hurried to make the most of the measured
amount of light left to him. Late in the afternoon he caught a glimpse
of the ocean, and shortly afterward saw the glint of railway tracks.
Slanting north again to where he guessed the next railway station to
be, Tallon found himself approaching the first really big industrial
development he had seen on his journey. Behind a high perimeter fence
the sawtooth roofs of the factory receded into the gathering dusk for
almost a mile before terminating in the banked glowing windows of a
design and administration block. The roar of powerful air-conditioning
machinery reached Tallon as he walked by the fence, puzzled at the
contrast between this huge plant and the typical family business setup
prevailing on Emm Luther. Several dark green trucks passed, slowing down
to go through a lighted and patrolled entrance a hundred yards ahead,
and Tallon glimpsed the book-and-star emblems that marked them as the
property of the government.
Tallon now began to understand. The immense, noisy complex was one of
the factors that had put him in his present situation. It was part of
the chain of government factories that was draining the planet of its
technological cream in a massive production program for interstellar
probes.
Here were built parts for the fantastically expensive robot ships that
were launched from Emm Luther at the rate of one every fifty-five seconds,
year in, year out. More than half a million probes a year -- as many as
were produced by Earth itself -- were triggered into open-ended jumps and
the consequent lonely destinies of flicker-transits. The planet had bled
itself white in the effort, but the gamble had paid off with a new world.
Now the factories were swinging over to the crash production of everything
needed to make Aitch Muhlenberg a going concern before Earth found a
foothold. The land area of the new world was still secret, but if Emm Luther
could put in two settlers, with support material, for every square mile
before any other power found its way there, then by interstellar law the
whole planet would be hers. Ironically, the law had been promulgated
mainly by Earth, but that had been in earlier days, when the mother
world had not foreseen the emancipation of her children.
The police cruiser was moving slowly, almost sleepily, when it passed Tallon.
There were two uniformed officers in front and two plainclothesmen in back.
They were smoking cigarettes with a peaceful concentration, getting ready
to go off duty, and Tallon could tell they were sorry they had seen him
by the reluctant way in which the cruiser stopped. They even hesitated
before they got out and began walking back to him -- four small-town cops
who could see their evening meals growing cold if this dusty stranger
turned out to be the man they had been told to look for.
Tallon was sorry too. He looked down the long featureless road, then
ducked his head and ran for the factory entrance. It was about twenty
yards in front of him, so he had to run toward the police for a few
seconds. They walked a little faster, glancing at each other, then gave
startled shouts as Tallon cut through the entrance and loped across the
tarmac apron leading to the nearest building. Hampered by the pack and
the struggling dog, Tallon could only lumber along, and was surprised when
he reached the lofty doors safely. Squeezing through the narrow opening,
he looked back toward the gate and saw that the factory security men
had belatedly come alert and were arguing with the police.
Inside the vast hangarlike room rows of storage racks held yellow plastic
drums, hermetically sealed transit packages for electronic units. Tallon
ran down an aisle, turned into one of the narrower transverse passages,
and climbed into a rack, nestling down among the cylinders. As far as he
could tell, there had been nobody in the room when he'd entered. He took
out the automatic and cuddled the butt in his hand, suddenly conscious
of how useless it was to a man with his particular handicap. It was
doubtful if he would be able to persuade Seymour to look down the sights
long enough to let him draw a decent bead on an elephant.
As the hammering in his heart eased off he reviewed his position. Nobody
had come into the building yet, but that was probably because they were
spreading out around it. The longer he waited, the less chance he'd have
of getting out. Tallon dropped down from the rack and ran toward the end
opposite to where he had come in. It was almost dark, but he could see
that the walls of the building consisted of overlapping sliding-door
systems throughout. Each of the huge doors had a standard-size door in
it, which meant he could get out anywhere -- provided he picked an exit
that did not have someone waiting outside it.
Almost three-fourths of the way along the building he crossed to one of
the small doors, hesitated a second, and slowly edged it open. There was
a flat, vicious crack, and something hot plowed its way across his shoulders.
Tallon leaped back from the door, which now had a circular, metal-tongued
hole in it. Seymour was yelping loudly with fright and scrabbling at
Tallon's ribs while outside the raucous cries of startled seabirds
drowned the gun's echoes.
Wrong door, Tallon thought belatedly. He ran to the end of the building
and grabbed a door handle, but did not pull it open. The unseen person
who had fired at him would probably expect him to try again at the gable
doors. He could now be waiting outside this very door. Tallon continued
across the end of the building to another door, but he realized that his
opponents would figure out that move as well. He could go back to the
first door, but valuable seconds were racing by while he played guessing
games; reinforcements were coming up, and everything was on their side.
He couldn't even see to shoot at them because he had to use the eyes of --
Of course!
Tallon's fingers flickered over the eyeset's selector studs. At the
fifth attempt he was outside, flying in the darkling air, while down
below him the dimly seen figures of two men moved along the many-doored
gable. His spiraling flight took him higher . . . a glimpse along one side
. . . more figures running . . . a dizzy, sweeping descent . . . another
side of the same building . . . small trucks parked close to the wall,
but no men in sight . . .
Tallon reselected Seymour's eyes, oriented himself, and ran for the nearer
wall. He burst out of a door, ran between two empty trucks, crossed a
roadway, and went into a building like the one he had left. There were
more lines of storage racks here, but this hangar was brightly lighted and
stacker trucks were whining their way down several of the aisles. Tallon
forced himself to walk slowly across the building. None of the truck drivers
seemed to notice him, and he got to the other side and out into the cool
evening air without any difficulty.
The next building was as deserted as the first. When he emerged from it
Tallon judged that he was far enough from the center of activity to abandon
cover. He went down the separating alley, moving away from the front
boundary of the industrial complex. At the corner, the failing eyeset
provided him with a misty view of scattered small buildings, stockyards,
cranes, pylons, lights. To the northwest, the curving snouts of two
furnaces reared up into the indigo sky. Factory whistles were hooting,
great doors were slamming shut, cars with bright headlights were streaming
toward the entrances.
Tallon realized he had been lucky to have the sprawling industrial
nightmare close by when he had to run. He was aware of a warm stream
of blood trickling down his back; and he realized that his legs were
folding under him, and that he was on the verge of blindness.
The obvious thing to do now, Tallon thought, is to give myself up --
except that I've given up giving myself up.
He angled off across the factory area, staggering a little, leaning
against walls when walking became too difficult. Tallon knew he would
present a ludicrous picture to anyone who looked at him, but two things
were in his favor: in big state-owned projects the employees tend to
see only what concerns their own work, and at the end of a shift they
see even less.
An hour or two went by; then he found himself in the vicinity of the giant
furnace stacks. Aware that he would have to lie down very soon, he picked
his way across treacherously sliding piles of fuel and reached the rear
of the furnaces, seeking a place of warmth. The fence marking the rear
perimeter of the area loomed up above a jungle of climbing weeds. Tallon
guessed he was about as far as he could get from the searching policemen
and security guards, and he looked for a place to rest.
Amanda. He fell asleep and managed to doze most of the day, only coming
fully awake when low growls from Seymour announced that people were
moving around outside. Nobody came into the shed, and after a while
Tallon stopped thinking about what he would do if they did. Winfield's
philosophy that a man had to do his best with the present and leave the
future to itself was not especially attractive to Tallon, but it was
the only one that worked in the present circumstances.
At dusk he gathered up Seymour and the pack and cautiously opened the
door. As he was about to step out a large plum-colored limousine swept
up the short driveway and rolled to a halt outside the main house.
A thickly built young man got out, with his jacket slung over his arm,
and waved to someone in the house who was beyond Tallon's field of vision.
The young man walked toward the front entrance, stopped at a bed of pale
blue song-flowers, and knelt down to remove a weed. At his touch
the flowers began a sweet, sad humming that was clearly audible in
the dark confines of the shed.
The song-flowers were a native variety that fed on insects, using the
plaintive humming sound to attract or lull their prey. Tallon had never
liked them. He listened impassively for a moment, holding Seymour's eye
to the narrow opening of the door. The heavy-set man discovered several
more weeds and uprooted them; then, muttering furiously, he came toward
the shed. Tallon slipped the automatic out of his pocket, reversed it
in his hand, and stood waiting as the crunching footsteps reached the
other side of the door.
This was exactly the sort of thing he had hoped to avoid. His training
was such that he could beat most any man in physical combat; but having
his eyes tucked under one arm was going to make a big difference.
He tensed himself as the door latch moved.
"Gilbert," a woman's voice called from the house. "Change your clothes
if you're going to start gardening. You promised."
The man hesitated for two or three seconds before turning and moving away
toward the house. As soon as the man was inside the house Tallon slipped
out of the shed and hit the road again.
He kept it up for four days, traveling a short distance by night and hiding
out during daylight, but the deterioration in the eyeset's performance
was becoming more noticeable. By the end of the fourth night, the picture
he was getting was so faint that he would almost have been better off
with the sonar torch. His name had gradually faded from the newscasts,
and so far he had not seen a single member of the E.L.S.P. or even of
the civil police. He decided to begin traveling in daylight again.
Tallon walked for three more days, not daring to try hitching a ride.
He now had plenty of money, but the risk of eating in restaurants or even
at lunch counters seemed too great, so he lived on the bread and the
protein preserves he'd taken from The Persian Cat, and by drinking water
from the ornamental fountains along the way.
Seeing it from the point of view of a pedestrian, Tallon was aware, as never
before, of Emm Luther's desperate need for land. The density of population
was not particularly high, but it was completely uniform -- the residential
developments, interspersed with commercial and industrial centers went on
without end, filling every square mile of level land the continent had
to offer. Only where uplands merged into actual, hostile mountainsides
did the waves of neat, prefabricated buildings fall back in defeat. Some
attempt was made at agriculture in the high borderland areas, but the
planet's real farming space was the ocean.
Tallon had covered almost one hundred miles before realizing that he
was going to be able to see only poorly for perhaps two more days and
would then be blind again -- with 700 miles still to go.
The only faint ray of hope was that the Block would know he was out of
the Pavilion. All members of the network would be on the lookout for him,
but the organization had never been strong on Emm Luther. New Wittenburg
was the planet's only entrance point, and the E.L.S.P. automatically put
tracers on every Earthsider who took up residence. It was quite possible
that at that very moment good agents were being caught as they broke
their covers in order to try to intercept Tallon. He decided to keep on
the road for one more day and head for the railway again.
The next day passed without incident. Tallon was aware that none of the
newscasts had given an adequate description of the eyeset, although
Amanda must have been able to furnish one. He figured there was some
kind of censorship at work, perhaps to avoid an official scandal over
the fact that dangerous political prisoners had been given facilities to
manufacture highly sophisticated artificial eyes. He sensed that Helen
Juste might be in trouble; but the main thing, as far as Tallon was
concerned, was that the general public had no idea what they were looking
for. Anybody interested enough to look for someone using a "radarlike
device" might reasonably expect to see a man with a black box and rotating
antenna on his head. As it was, spectacles were a fairly common sight,
never having been fully supplanted by contact lenses; and Tallon in his
dusty, anonymous uniform blended into most backgrounds. His unremarkable
appearance had been one of his major assets in the service of the Block.
The following day was slightly colder, and there was a little rain, the
first Tallon had seen since his arrest. His route had never taken him far
from the coastal railway system, and now he began walking toward the ocean
again. The dullness of the day was magnified by the somber images produced
in the failing eyeset, and TalIon hurried to make the most of the measured
amount of light left to him. Late in the afternoon he caught a glimpse
of the ocean, and shortly afterward saw the glint of railway tracks.
Slanting north again to where he guessed the next railway station to
be, Tallon found himself approaching the first really big industrial
development he had seen on his journey. Behind a high perimeter fence
the sawtooth roofs of the factory receded into the gathering dusk for
almost a mile before terminating in the banked glowing windows of a
design and administration block. The roar of powerful air-conditioning
machinery reached Tallon as he walked by the fence, puzzled at the
contrast between this huge plant and the typical family business setup
prevailing on Emm Luther. Several dark green trucks passed, slowing down
to go through a lighted and patrolled entrance a hundred yards ahead,
and Tallon glimpsed the book-and-star emblems that marked them as the
property of the government.
Tallon now began to understand. The immense, noisy complex was one of
the factors that had put him in his present situation. It was part of
the chain of government factories that was draining the planet of its
technological cream in a massive production program for interstellar
probes.
Here were built parts for the fantastically expensive robot ships that
were launched from Emm Luther at the rate of one every fifty-five seconds,
year in, year out. More than half a million probes a year -- as many as
were produced by Earth itself -- were triggered into open-ended jumps and
the consequent lonely destinies of flicker-transits. The planet had bled
itself white in the effort, but the gamble had paid off with a new world.
Now the factories were swinging over to the crash production of everything
needed to make Aitch Muhlenberg a going concern before Earth found a
foothold. The land area of the new world was still secret, but if Emm Luther
could put in two settlers, with support material, for every square mile
before any other power found its way there, then by interstellar law the
whole planet would be hers. Ironically, the law had been promulgated
mainly by Earth, but that had been in earlier days, when the mother
world had not foreseen the emancipation of her children.
The police cruiser was moving slowly, almost sleepily, when it passed Tallon.
There were two uniformed officers in front and two plainclothesmen in back.
They were smoking cigarettes with a peaceful concentration, getting ready
to go off duty, and Tallon could tell they were sorry they had seen him
by the reluctant way in which the cruiser stopped. They even hesitated
before they got out and began walking back to him -- four small-town cops
who could see their evening meals growing cold if this dusty stranger
turned out to be the man they had been told to look for.
Tallon was sorry too. He looked down the long featureless road, then
ducked his head and ran for the factory entrance. It was about twenty
yards in front of him, so he had to run toward the police for a few
seconds. They walked a little faster, glancing at each other, then gave
startled shouts as Tallon cut through the entrance and loped across the
tarmac apron leading to the nearest building. Hampered by the pack and
the struggling dog, Tallon could only lumber along, and was surprised when
he reached the lofty doors safely. Squeezing through the narrow opening,
he looked back toward the gate and saw that the factory security men
had belatedly come alert and were arguing with the police.
Inside the vast hangarlike room rows of storage racks held yellow plastic
drums, hermetically sealed transit packages for electronic units. Tallon
ran down an aisle, turned into one of the narrower transverse passages,
and climbed into a rack, nestling down among the cylinders. As far as he
could tell, there had been nobody in the room when he'd entered. He took
out the automatic and cuddled the butt in his hand, suddenly conscious
of how useless it was to a man with his particular handicap. It was
doubtful if he would be able to persuade Seymour to look down the sights
long enough to let him draw a decent bead on an elephant.
As the hammering in his heart eased off he reviewed his position. Nobody
had come into the building yet, but that was probably because they were
spreading out around it. The longer he waited, the less chance he'd have
of getting out. Tallon dropped down from the rack and ran toward the end
opposite to where he had come in. It was almost dark, but he could see
that the walls of the building consisted of overlapping sliding-door
systems throughout. Each of the huge doors had a standard-size door in
it, which meant he could get out anywhere -- provided he picked an exit
that did not have someone waiting outside it.
Almost three-fourths of the way along the building he crossed to one of
the small doors, hesitated a second, and slowly edged it open. There was
a flat, vicious crack, and something hot plowed its way across his shoulders.
Tallon leaped back from the door, which now had a circular, metal-tongued
hole in it. Seymour was yelping loudly with fright and scrabbling at
Tallon's ribs while outside the raucous cries of startled seabirds
drowned the gun's echoes.
Wrong door, Tallon thought belatedly. He ran to the end of the building
and grabbed a door handle, but did not pull it open. The unseen person
who had fired at him would probably expect him to try again at the gable
doors. He could now be waiting outside this very door. Tallon continued
across the end of the building to another door, but he realized that his
opponents would figure out that move as well. He could go back to the
first door, but valuable seconds were racing by while he played guessing
games; reinforcements were coming up, and everything was on their side.
He couldn't even see to shoot at them because he had to use the eyes of --
Of course!
Tallon's fingers flickered over the eyeset's selector studs. At the
fifth attempt he was outside, flying in the darkling air, while down
below him the dimly seen figures of two men moved along the many-doored
gable. His spiraling flight took him higher . . . a glimpse along one side
. . . more figures running . . . a dizzy, sweeping descent . . . another
side of the same building . . . small trucks parked close to the wall,
but no men in sight . . .
Tallon reselected Seymour's eyes, oriented himself, and ran for the nearer
wall. He burst out of a door, ran between two empty trucks, crossed a
roadway, and went into a building like the one he had left. There were
more lines of storage racks here, but this hangar was brightly lighted and
stacker trucks were whining their way down several of the aisles. Tallon
forced himself to walk slowly across the building. None of the truck drivers
seemed to notice him, and he got to the other side and out into the cool
evening air without any difficulty.
The next building was as deserted as the first. When he emerged from it
Tallon judged that he was far enough from the center of activity to abandon
cover. He went down the separating alley, moving away from the front
boundary of the industrial complex. At the corner, the failing eyeset
provided him with a misty view of scattered small buildings, stockyards,
cranes, pylons, lights. To the northwest, the curving snouts of two
furnaces reared up into the indigo sky. Factory whistles were hooting,
great doors were slamming shut, cars with bright headlights were streaming
toward the entrances.
Tallon realized he had been lucky to have the sprawling industrial
nightmare close by when he had to run. He was aware of a warm stream
of blood trickling down his back; and he realized that his legs were
folding under him, and that he was on the verge of blindness.
The obvious thing to do now, Tallon thought, is to give myself up --
except that I've given up giving myself up.
He angled off across the factory area, staggering a little, leaning
against walls when walking became too difficult. Tallon knew he would
present a ludicrous picture to anyone who looked at him, but two things
were in his favor: in big state-owned projects the employees tend to
see only what concerns their own work, and at the end of a shift they
see even less.
An hour or two went by; then he found himself in the vicinity of the giant
furnace stacks. Aware that he would have to lie down very soon, he picked
his way across treacherously sliding piles of fuel and reached the rear
of the furnaces, seeking a place of warmth. The fence marking the rear
perimeter of the area loomed up above a jungle of climbing weeds. Tallon
guessed he was about as far as he could get from the searching policemen
and security guards, and he looked for a place to rest.
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