“I think you belong to an organization that sent you out here as a sort of recruiting agent. And an agent for an underground railroad. If somebody like me comes along, you send him on to… I don’t know where or what.”
“Very good,” Locks said. “I’m not going to tell you any more about that just now. You won’t be informed until the last possible moment in case…”
“I should get caught before you can carry out your plans?”
“Exactly.”
Locks rose and stretched. “Yes. See you. Oh, you won’t, of course, talk about this to anyone else?”
“Of course.”
“Meanwhile, if I can get back to the data bank office, I’ll try to find out why you’re wanted so badly. If, that is, I think I won’t trigger off any monitor alarms.”
“I’d sure like to know,” Duncan said.
Stiff from sitting, Duncan began exercising again. He was balancing himself on his hands and doing pushups when he saw the blazing eye of a torch down the tunnel. He was upside-down when the light stopped. Crossant’s whine came from behind the glare.
“For God’s sake, Duncan, what are you doing?”
“Certainly not balancing an eel on my nose,” he said. He lowered himself until his nose almost touched the floor, then propelled himself upward with his arms, bent his legs, landed and straightened up. Wiping the sweat off his face with his arm, he said, “And what are you doing here?”
Dong’s high-pitched voice said, “Locks told us to get you to help us. We have to bring in some supplies from the cavern.”
The light moved closer. He saw something dark and blurry lash out from behind the light, and the light blinked out along with his mind.
He woke up confused, gasping and choking, whirled around in darkness, and, as his senses cleared, he realized he was in water. He swam desperately, not knowing if he was going up or down or horizontally. Something hard struck him in the left ribs. The agony made him choke even more. But he was able finally to cry out just before he was dragged or hurled under the water again. So…he had awakened on the surface. Of what? Whatever the kind of stream, the icy water numbed him and made him sluggish.
Despite this, he strove to make his arms and legs move, and he then was above water and gulping air. Not for long. Something knocked on the back of his head, driving him under, causing him to gasp and to take in water. His flailing hands felt hardness above him. Stone. For the first time, he knew that he was in an underground stream and that it was now speeding through a narrow tunnel. His shoulder scraped against rock, something seized him and spun him around, and then, blessed relief, his head rose into air again.
That lasted for a few seconds, perhaps. Violently, he hit stone once more, this time on the right ribs, and he was submerged. He tried to swim upward, hoping that the river would have passed through the tunnel or borne him into a chamber with air above the surface of the water. His hand felt rough stone just before he was sucked down. This time, he had run out of air and hope. A bell clanged in his head; streaks of light seemed to shoot before his eyes; his throat had caved in on itself; he was going to die in a very few seconds.
Abruptly, both air and light were his. He fell out into brightness, burst with the waters from a hole, tried to straighten out so that he would not strike the foaming boiling pool below him in a belly-flop, but failed. The impact of water hurt, and his lungs, which he had thought emptied, whooshed air out. Nevertheless, he rose and swam toward the high bank that had appeared on his right. Carried by the current toward a rapids, he managed to seize the root of a tree projecting from the eroded mud bank and clung to it. Pain and cold had made him as weak as a newborn. The world waiting for him, however, was that of the dead.
While he clung to the root, he looked at the hole from which he had been launched. It was about twenty feet above the pool and near the base of a seventy-foot-high limestone cliff. Beyond that rose the slopes of higher hills, though how far away he could not tell. The stream was hemmed in by clay banks; the forest angled upward sharply. Many of the trees were growing out at a forty-five-degree angle. These, he supposed, were the products of the biolabs.
Wherever he was, he was not near the entrance into which the padre had led him.
He looked the other way. The current a few yards away had carved out a small bay in the bank. The force of the creek was less there, and the bank was about two feet high. Perhaps… He let go of the root and swam as fast as he could, not fast at all, to the tiny bay. It took him some time to drag himself up the bank. Several times, the mud loosened in his grip, and he slid back. Panting, too tired to move all the way over the edge of the bank, his feet in the water, he lay in this bent and perilous position for a long while. When his breathing was close to normal, he clawed the rest of the way, pulling his legs up onto the ground. While he rested again, he thought of Dong and Crossant and why they had done this to him.
They were mean-spirited, and they certainly had not liked him. Those were not reasons strong enough to make them murder him. Murder? Crossant had knocked him out and could have broken his skull in with the club if he had wished to do so. Instead, they had dragged him into the cavern complex and pushed him into the underground creek. They must have known that the stream did not go far before it reached the outside. They had counted on his drowning, on the water finishing their dirty work. His floating corpse would be seen by a satellite or by the organics. The hunt would be called off, and the band would be safe, for a while, anyway.
No. His scenario was not quite faithful to reality. Locks would wonder if Duncan had deserted the band. He would become suspicious of Dong and Crossant since he would know that they had gone into the tunnel. He would doubt that Duncan, knowing that he was going back to civilization soon, would have run off and so abandoned the only hope he had to get away from the miserable underground existence. Locks would subject the two to the truth mist.
Knowing of this possibility, they would not have returned to the band. They had gone back into the tunnel complex to hide for a while and wait until enough time had gone by for Duncan’s body to be found. Then they would take refuge in the forest.
Or did they intend to come out as soon as possible, let themselves be captured by the ganks and ask for amnesty after having told their story? They might get it, even though they would have to go to a rehabilitation center. After all, they had eliminated Duncan and betrayed the rest of the band. Of course, the organics would despise them as traitors, but Dong and Crossant were used to being despised and, perhaps, thrived on it. Maybe they had done this to him because they had not done anything despicable for a while and needed spiritual nourishment.
He laughed weakly at that thought and wondered if he was getting delirious. However, delirium was usually accompanied by a fever, and he was very cold. He wished he could crawl into a patch of sunlight coming through the branches and warm himself there. The thought that a satellite might detect him kept him in the shade.
He rolled over, shaking, and hugged himself. The wet clothes were keeping him cold. He should take them off. No, he was too tired. His body heat would dry them off. By the time the sun had gone a few degrees—it was now halfway between zenith and set—he would be comfortable and would have regained some of his strength.
Then what?
The woods were quiet except for the far-off cawing of crows and a squirrel angrily chattering at something, probably the crows. After a minute, a large black fly buzzed close to his head. Duncan swatted at it; it zoomed away. A half-hour passed. He closed his eyes and wondered if he would be safe if he slept for a while. His head ached badly where the club had struck him. His ribs pained him, and the back of his left hand hurt where skin had been scraped off. The cold and the danger had numbed him to the injuries. Now that he was becoming dry and warm, he was suffering too much to sleep. Despite which, he was getting drowsy.
At that realization, he forced himself to sit up, groaning from the pain of his battered ribs. Maybe he had a concussion. If that was so,
he had better get up and walk. He did not want to die in his sleep.
He started to get to his feet but stopped in a crouch. The voices of Crossant and Dong were coming faintly from somewhere.
8
From behind a bush, Duncan watched the two. They were about sixty feet away, half-obscured by tree trunks, sitting with their backs against a giant dead oak. By their legs were two large packs. No doubt they had picked these up from some cache on their way out. That meant that they might have been planning their flight for a long time. That they talked loudly might indicate that they did not care if the organics did find them. Indeed, they might hope they would.
Though he could hear the voices, he could not make out the words. He crawled to the left, out of their sight, and circled. Moving slowly, half-bent, he got to a bush close behind the couple. He could not see them, but his ears caught everything.
Dong was talking shrilly. “No, I say we look for him. He can’t have been carried too far by the creek. We find him, and we stay with the body until we’re picked up.”
Crossant whined, “That might take too long. For all we know, he’s been swept far away. Or…well…he could’ve been snagged in the cave. His body might not come out for a long time, if ever. I think it’s smart to push on until we’re seen. We don’t have to have the body as evidence. One spray of mist, and they’ll know we’re not lying.”
“I want to see the son of a bitch dead,” Dong said.
“God, you’re vicious!”
“Look who’s talking! Who hit him with a club?”
“Yeah! And who talked me into doing this?”
“Oh, shut up! Anyway, what’s the difference who did what? We’re both in it.”
“Deep as it comes,” Crossant said. “We’re in it up to our necks. Which are going to be wrung if they come after us. I say we get the hell out of here.”
The they, Duncan understood, was not the organics but the outlaws.
The two continued quarreling while Duncan crawled on and around until he was in a position to see them from the front. His eyes widened when he saw the huge hole in the tree a few feet above their heads. That was the entrance through the hollow trunk to a tunnel. The entrance they had used as an exit.
All he had to do now was to wait until they left. Then he would go to the band and warn it. However, Dong and Crossant might be picked up soon. That would bring the organics quickly down on the outlaws. The two should be stopped. How? He was weaponless and weak. They had big knives in sheaths attached to their belts, and they might have proton guns in the packs.
A few moments later, a crashing sound nearby brought both to their feet. Their hands dived into the packs and came out clutching the butts of pistols. At the end of a six-inch barrel was a globe of shimmering white metal.
Dong’s voice came faintly to Duncan. “If it’s the organics, they’ll shoot if they see the guns.”
“There’re bears and other dangerous animals here,” Crossant said, his voice even shakier than hers.
Presently, the cause of the noise appeared. It was a four-legged beast about six feet high, appearing at first sight to be a pygmy elephant. Its curving tusks, however, identified it as a forest mastodon, descended from the product of a bioengineering laboratory. A thousand obyears ago, using mastodon fossil cells as templates, the engineers had grown six hundred of these and released them in some of the forest reserves. It was one of these, soon joined by a dozen others, that faced the two humans.
“Don’t panic,” Dong said. “They won’t attack unless they feel threatened. Just stand still.”
She spoke so quietly that Duncan could barely hear her. Crossant said something out of the side of his mouth too low for Duncan to understand.
He was by now working his way back toward the oak. The mastodons might have glimpsed him or they might just have been wary of human beings. Whatever the cause, their leader trumpeted shrilly, turned, and went smashing through the bushes toward the south. The others, also trumpeting, trotted after her. Under cover of the noise, Duncan ran through the vegetation. By the time that the last of the hairy gray beasts had disappeared, he was standing behind the oak. In his left hand was a branch, a thick piece of dead wood.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Crossant said. “Some of them might’ve had implanted monitors.”
“So what?” Dong shrilled. “We want to be found, don’t we?”
“Well, I’m not so sure now,” the man said. “It’s going to be pretty rough for a while. And I was just thinking that maybe they’ll decide we can’t be rehabbed. You want to end up in the warehouse?”
“Coward! Snivelbrain!” Dong shouted. “Oh, why couldn’t I have tied up with a real man?”
“Yeah, and you’re a real woman. Let me tell you, bitch—”
Duncan came swiftly around the tree and struck Crossant, who was leaning over to pick up his pack, on the head. Dong had turned away, apparently in disgust at Crossant. One hand was clenched; the other held a gun. She whirled at the sound of the blow and Crossant’s grunt. She paled, her eyes wide, and that second of hesitation was long enough for Duncan to strike her wrist hard with the club. The gun fell, and she ran, an arm dangling, into the woods. Duncan started after her, then stopped. He was not up to a short chase, let alone a long one. He picked up her weapon, adjusted it to extreme long range by rotating a dial just ahead of the trigger, waited until Dong appeared between two trees, and squeezed on the trigger. A violet beam spat. It touched the back of her right thigh, and she crumpled. At this distance, the charge had probably not penetrated deeply. She was up and hopping on one foot but stopped when he shot again. This, hitting where he had aimed, burned a piece of bark from a tree trunk close to her. He shouted, and she stopped, turned, her face white and twisted, then sat down on the earth.
Crossant groaned and started to get to his feet. Duncan hit him on the head again, though not as hard as the first time. After putting Crossant’s proton gun and knife in his belt, Duncan walked to Dong. She sat there, silent, her features crumpled with hate and pain. He threw the stick in front of her.
“Use it for a cane.”
When they got back to the tree, Crossant was regaining consciousness. His skin, already pale, became even whiter when he realized what had happened.
“Back from the dead,” Duncan said cheerily. He took one of the packs, got some bread, cheese, and a can of self-warming soup out, and a spoon. While he ate, one hand near the gun, he did not speak. Crossant broke the silence by pleading that Mika had talked him into doing what he had never wanted to do. Duncan told him to shut up. After finishing the meal and restoring the spoon and empty can to the pack, he said, “Now we go back.”
He waved the gun. “You two first. Don’t try anything. I’ll shoot both of you if just one makes a false move. Or a true move, for that matter.”
“They’ll kill us,” Crossant said.
“Not when there’s a stoner handy,” Duncan said, grinning savagely. “I heard enough to know that Locks doesn’t believe in killing except as a last resort. You’ll end up stored with the others in the warehouse. Who knows? You might get lucky. Maybe somebody’ll find you two, three hundred years from now and destone you.”
“That’s the same as killing us,” Crossant said, and he groaned.
“Take your choice.”
Weeping, begging, the two put on the backpacks. Duncan handed the man a torch and told him to lead into the hole.
“I’ll follow with my torch,” Duncan said. “Remember, I’ll shoot both of you if either one of you tries something. Now, lead on. Downwind.”
Crossant wiped his nose with his sleeve and turned to climb into the entrance. Both he and Dong screamed. For a second, Duncan was confused. Then he saw the bearded face of Padre Cob in the hole, looking like a bear just awakened from hibernation.
“Ho, ho, ho!” the padre boomed. “By Saint Nicholas, what goodies do we have here?”
He climbed ponderously out. He was still dressed in the monk’
s robe, but he carried a proton gun with a barrel a foot and a half long and a large charge chamber. “I thought you might have taken this route,” he said to Crossant. To Duncan, he said, “You look as if you’d been chased through the ten hells of Ti-yu. What happened?”
Duncan told him. The padre said, “You’re a very lucky man, William. I hope your good fortune rubs off on all of us. Except for these vermin, who are, alas, human, and must be treated as such.”
“What does that mean?” Duncan said.
“It means they won’t be shot. They’ll get a chance to be rescued someday.”
It took forty-five minutes to get to the room at the bottom of the shaft. Duncan was surprised to find that it was empty.
“Except for those looking for you, they all went back up there,” the padre said. “The latest shipment has been stored, and the airship has departed. All’s clear. For the time being, anyway.”
Two hours passed before the search parties could be notified that the missing were found and all had returned. There was another delay when Crossant and Dong insisted that Duncan was lying. The truth was, they said, that Duncan had tried to desert and they had followed him. He had managed to sneak up on them and overpower them. They only gained a little time. Locks told them that he would use the mist on all three. Crossant acknowledged then that Duncan’s story was not a lie.
“You’re pathetic,” Locks said. He signaled to the men appointed to carry out the sentence. They seized the two, and forced each, screaming and struggling, into a cylinder. Duncan was glad that the children had been taken away. Even he, the victim, was sick at what had to be done.
The doors were shut, and the padre pushed two buttons on the panel of a console. A second later, the doors were opened. Crossant and Dong, harder than rock now, fell outward, their fists raised before them, frozen in the act of striking against the door windows. They were dragged to the shaft and pushed over the edge. Four men went down the shaft to drag the two into a tunnel.