On the Run

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Now, to add to this, he became suddenly and painfully conscious of the eyes of Toy upon him. He could not turn his head and see those eyes; but he felt them boring like twin scalpels probing the buzzing wasp's nest of his brain. The pressure rose intolerably within him and he knew, suddenly, that unless he found some avenue of escape for it, soon, the tension would become too much for him and he would speak or move, would jump to his feet and run from the room.

  Desperately, he searched within himself for some final source of strength. For Ellen, he thought, I've got to—for Ellen. And then he found, in the thought of Ellen herself, what he was looking for. It rose up before him like a vision of cool water to his feverish soul, and he sank down into it, gratefully.

  For it was for Ellen, of course. Out of the harsh and senseless tangle of a paradoxical world with its Unstabs, its Police, its Societies, its problems large and small, the fact of his love and his longing for his wife rose as one clear and simple truth. Whatever else might be right or wrong, this was right. It was right that he should want her. It was wrong that she should have been taken away from him. And it was right that he go after her, by any means, by all means, until he found her. Whatever else he might do that was wrong, this that he did, was right. Ellen . . . Ellen . . . and the little, bittersweet memories of her came back, a touch in the darkness, beside him in the night time, a distant, half-heard bustle of movement elsewhere in their apartment as he worked, and drew him into them, away from the room and Toy and the clock and everything. . . .

  "Kil."

  Kil came back with a start and sat up.

  "What—" he said. "The fifteen minutes up?"

  "Forty minutes are up," answered Toy. There was a curious look on his face, a strange look of mixed sympathy and interest. "I'd have liked to wait longer; but we've got Dekko to consider. Before we go back, though, is there anything you might like to tell me?"

  "No," said Kil, slowly. "No, I don't think so."

  "Maybe I'm wrong," said Toy, "but I get the impression that you may be one.of those few lucky people who've found something worth fighting for. It's what I've looked for all my life and never found," His voice had gone bitter again. "It's impossible to cut yourself on the sharp edge of existence nowadays. If I could just find something like you—well, never mind. But if you ever need help that I could give, you might ask me for it, if you feel like it. And I might even give it."

  "Thanks," Kil looked at him.

  Toy grunted, and got up, and led the way back to the other room. Dekko was waiting there for them; and he looked at Kil curiously as they appeared. Toy went across to a cabinet in the wall and took from it a wrist band.

  "Let's see your Key," he said. Kil gave it to him; and the yellow faced man's large fingers deftly detached it from its old wrist band and pinched it into the new one he had taken from the cabinet. He held it close to the Key on his own wrist and lifted both to Kil's ear together. A tiny, high-pitched hum could be heard coming from both instruments.

  "That's it," he gave the Key back to Kil, who slipped it back on his wrist. "That's our identification. Any two Keys of Guild members brought together will hum like that. Also, before they hum, there's a vibration you'll feel in the skin of your wrist, so that you can make identification without attracting undue attention, if you want."

  "I'm a member now?" asked Kil.

  "You're a member," said Toy. "Anything else?"

  "Yes," spoke up Dekko. "We want an in to one of the big Societies. How about Black Panther?"

  Toy sighed.

  "So that's why you've come to me." He nodded, almost as if to himself. "There's a branch of the Black Panther meeting tonight."

  Kil looked at him curiously.

  "Do you belong?" he asked.

  "No, but my wife does. She's a very useful woman." There was a hint of something like sadness in the giant's voice. "You'll have to wait until dark. Then she'll take you." He looked at Dekko oddly. "Sometimes I wonder about you," he said.

  "Every man to his own trade, Chief," said Dekko, unperturbed.

  "Yes—" Toy nodded. "Go out the way you came in. She'll take care of you."

  And so they left him.

  Toy's wife found them a room in the building and suggested that they rest until evening. Shortly after nightfall, she came for them and led them out to a garage. The cool coastal air blew about them as they got into a small personal flyer and the roof above them rumbled back to reveal the stars. As soon as they were in, Toy's wife closed the transparent canopy of the flyer, and opaqued it, taking a pair of depolarizing glasses from the flyers glove compartment to insure her own vision, and putting them on.

  "Sorry about this," she smiled at Kil below the twin darknesses of the lenses. "Until you're accepted, the route to the meeting place has to be secret. We'll be there in about fifteen minutes."

  They took off; and a quarter of an hour later the flyer came down with a soft thump, to roll for some little distance along a smooth surface. Then the womah stopped it and opened the canopy.

  "Here we are, all out," she said.

  She took his hand to lead him, and Kil felt a tingle travel through his spine. From that moment on, he remembered nothing of his initiation into the Panthers, except for the vague feeling of having been wandering through a jungle. . . . Slowly the jungle faded about him. He came back to himself, standing in the draped and shadowy corner of a large room where people moved languidly about. Some sort of cocktail party seemed to be in progress. He crossed the room and got a drink, which he took thirstily. Then he went in search of Dekko, or Toy's wife.

  Toy's wife was nowhere to be found, but he discovered Dekko in conversation with a thickset, gray-haired man in black tunic and kilt.

  "I don't know," the gray-haired man was saying. "Nobody in the Duluth area at the moment that I know personally. It doesn't matter, I can give you two a visa, so they know you've been checked here recently, sir." He broke off, turning to Kil, as Kil came up.

  "That's him," said Dekko.

  "Oh yes; Jacques Shriner, Mr. Bruner." The gray-haired man offered his hand, beaming out of a plump and ruddy face. "If you two'11 come back to the office, I'll make out the visas."

  He turned and led the way across the room to a small door. Facing his Key into the cup, he let them in and carefully closed the door behind them. They found themselves in a small business room furnished with a desk and microfile cabinet. Shriner went across to the desk and produced a couple of small, plastic disks, which he made out with their names and the date, signing each with his own name and thumbprint.

  "Not that you need these—your arm marks are sufficient," he said, lifting his own arm, and Kil saw on it scratches like those of a cat, and suddenly felt the sting of scratches on his own arm. "But just in case—"

  "Thanks," said Dekko.

  "Not at all," replied Shriner. "Enjoy yourselves in Duluth. He beamed them out of his office.

  They crossed the room again to a further door that Dekko appeared to know about. It let them into a small, circular hallway where a bored-looking attendant stood. From this hallway, several exits led in different directions.

  "Which one, Chief?" asked Dekko.

  "Any one," replied the attendant. He was dressed in conventional dark slacks and a dramatically slashed tunic with a hoop collar, but there was an unusual glassiness about his appearance that drew Kil's attention. It was something just on the edge of visibility, like an almost perfectly transparent soap-bubble sort of film, just above the surface of his limbs and body. Then he turned so that Kil saw a heavy gasgun hanging at his side; and suddenly Kil recognized the glassiness as body armor of the magnetic shield type. He was confirmed in this recognition as the attendant waddled a few steps forward. The metal mesh supporting the shield under his clothing must be cruelly heavy.

  Dekko, however, appeared to pay no attention to the attendant and his illegal equipment; but turned and vanished down the nearest tunnel entrance. Kil followed. A short distance on they passed through a do
or and into a sort of cave that ascended steeply.

  "What's all this about Duluth?" asked Kil, when they had gone some ways up the cave.

  "Close to the top," answered Dekko. "Like any business, you got to know what the competition's doing. It's Stick headquarters, so headquarters of everything else isn't far off. For us, that means the O.T.L."

  The cave had leveled off now. They went on a short distance, opened a final door and stepped out on a strip of shelving pebbly beach. Overhead, gulls swooped, crying; the early morning sun washed the ocean shore in white light. For a minute Kil felt shock to discover that his period of hypnosis had lasted so long. Then this feeling was lost forever in something greater that crept over and buried it like an avalanche on some solitary mountain climber—for he saw the sea.

  Water—water. Water and Ellen—Ellen as she had been the night she had gone away; and the ocean then stretching wide and silver-dark to the horizon. Like a man in a dream, Kil turned and took one step toward the curling waves.

  "Kil! Kil!" And then Dekko had him by the arm, holding him back. For-a moment he began a half-convulsive struggle to free himself. Then the spell snapped and he turned his back on the wide sea.

  And Dekko drew him away.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  They took the noon rocket back to Duluth and found themselves a set of rooms in an unclassified hotel outside the Slums. That night they went to the Northern Star, Duluth's largest entertainment center. Kil had already gone out during the afternoon to draw from his account and replenish his dwindling cash reserves. He drew three thousand for himself and an additional thousand for Dekko. It occurred to him that the little humpback was still unpaid; and probably, therefore, in need of cash himself.

  This could hardly have been the case. When he got back to the hotel, he found that Dekko had spent what could only have been a sizable amount on some evening clothes. These were not throwaways of plastic like their ordinary, daily dress, but trousers, tunic and short jacket of pressed silk. Their color was a heavy yellow, shot with black; a startling combination. And not only that, but the jacket was squared and stiffened with a high, hooped collar and boxed shoulders that all but disguised the fact of his hump.

  Kil stared.

  Dekko smiled. It was a different expression from his former grin, tight-lipped and a little sardonic.

  "We're working a different territory from here on," he said. "I got you an outfit, too."

  Kil followed his pointing finger and went to a closet recess. On the wire, he saw a kilt and tunic also of silk, scarlet tunic and scarlet and black checkerboard design, pleated kilt. A silver weapon belt holding a little dress gun and a silver-handle poniard went with it. A fourragère looped from one shoulder of the tunic, and a heavy ring, with a square-cut emerald hung by a thread from the wire.

  Kil scowled blackly.

  "You expect me to wear this?" he demanded. "I'll look like a damned pruce."

  Dekko shook with silent laughter.

  "Put it on," he said. "And get the dye out of your hair."

  Growling, Kil got into the rig. When it was on, complete to the emerald ring on the index finger of his left hand, he examined himself in the mirror. The effect was not as bad as he had expected. He was undeniably overdressed, but a certain sort of genius seemed to have guided Dekko in his selections. Kil looked not so much affected as dissipated, in a dark and reckless way. His own harsh features took the curse off the prettiness of the costume.

  "I still don't see why this—how much did it all cost?" he asked.

  "Seven hundred and eighty for both," replied Dekko. "You can pay me." He looked at Kil. "Know anything about using a gun or a knife?"

  "No."

  "Good. Then you won't be tempted." Dekko accepted the money for the clothes and his own month's stipend. "Keep it on you now that you've got it on. I want you to get used to it."

  They wore their new clothes down to dinner. It was not as bad as Kil had expected. People stared at him, but not with the accompanying snickers he had expected. By eleven that night, when they got to the Northern Star, four hours wear and as many drinks had him all but reconciled to the figure he cut. He and Dekko paused at the edge of a crowded dance floor and Dekko consulted a waiter.

  "All right, we got a table," he said, turning back to Kil.

  Kil allowed himself to be drawn over to a table on the far edge of the dance floor. They sat down.

  "Now what?" he looked at Dekko.

  "We wait. Put your arm on the table, out in sight."

  He had already done so himself. The white lines of his own scars were almost invisible in the shifting lights of the dance floor. Kil sighed and followed suit. His scratches, now scabbed over, stood out blackly against the tan skin. Dekko ordered drinks and they sat, sipping.

  Before them the crowd swirled as dancing couples went by. Kil sat stiffly, expecting momentarily that some one of the spinning, weaving swarm before him would stop and speak. But it was not from the dance floor before them that recognition finally came, but from behind them. Abruptly, Kil felt a soft, warm breath on his cheek and slim fingertips reached around his shoulder to stroke gently the scratches.

  "Oooh," sighed a soft voice. "Panther."

  Kil turned to look up into the flushed, pretty face of a dark-haired girl in a brief green gown. Her shadowed eyes glistened with a strange excitement and the scent of perfumed wine was on her breath. Slowly, she lifted her arm, sliding it around his chest until he, looking down, saw the faint white scars of healed scratches also on her skin.

  "Will you be there tonight?" she asked, softly.

  Dekko said nothing; and after a second Kil realized it was up to him to ask.

  "Where?"

  "The Hill—at one this morning. Come to the cave beyond the pool in the jungle."

  "The cave—"

  "I'll wait for you—at the cave—panther—" Her hand slid back and away from across his chest. She slipped out of sight and into the crowd.

  Kil, looking over across the table at Dekko, caught the little man's smile.

  "All right," Kil said, harshly. "She said the Hill. How do we find out where that is?"

  "I know," said Dekko.

  Dekko did know. A little over an hour later they caught an air-cab to the older area of the city, up on the hillside above Duluth. The cab set them down in front of an ancient building, sealed up and with the appearance of having been shut for some time.

  "How do we get in?" Kil wanted to know.

  Dekko did not answer. He was prowling along the side of the building. After a momentary hesitation, Kil followed him. The small man was testing the plastic seals of the ground floor windows as he went—apparently without success. But as Kil passed a window Dekko had already tested, the faintest of whispers came to his ears.

  "What is real?"

  Kil stopped.

  "Only," he said, the words coming to him from some dim memory, "the jungle is real."

  "Brother, come in."

  "DekkoI" called Kil, softly.

  Dekko turned and came back. The plastic seal was already swinging inward, and they stepped through the opening into darkness.

  "Arms," said the voice.

  A single shaft of white light stabbed down out of nowhere. There was no perceptible diffusion; merely one small area of brilliance, and all the rest in darkness. They extended their arms into the fight and revealed their scars. The light winked out.

  "Enter into the jungle."

  It was the same illusion over again, and this time Kil could have thrown off the suggestion, but instead he allowed himself to slip part way under. For a while he roamed the jungle. . . . When a certain time had gone by, he pulled himself back to reality.

  Again, as he came out of it, Kil found himself in the atmosphere of something like a polite cocktail party. The only differences from last time were that the place was larger and the guests more numerous. He threaded his way among them, indifferent except for one moment when, passing a curtained alcove, he caught
sight of the dark haired girl who had spoken to him at the Northern Star. She sat on a divan, leaning back with her eyes closed, obviously still under the hypnosis; and there was a look of loneliness and waiting on her face. A feel of guilt and shame touched Kil; he turned quickly away.

  Finally, he found Dekko. The little man was seated all by himself in a corner, holding a drink. His eyes flickered with shrewd alertness as Kil came up.

  "Got it!" he said, as Kil sat down beside him.

  "Got what?"

  For answer, Dekko pointed through the shifting crowd to a tall, tanned girl with auburn hair.

  "O.T.L.," he said, briefly.

  Kil stared in surprise. Of all things, he had not expected a girl. And she was beautiful. Just how beautiful became apparent in a moment when, swinging around to talk to someone else, her full face came into their line of vision. It was a face as flawless as the body to which it belonged, slim-featured and serene.

  "Her name's Melee Alain," Dekko spoke softly in Kil's ear. "She's the one I dressed you up for."

  "Dressed me—"

  "Sure. What kind of bait do you think I'd make?" and Dekko rocked for a second with his silent laughter. "She's our wire to the O.T.L. She knows where they meet and she can invite us to wherever it is. That's what you've got to get her to do."

  "I do?" said Kil. "I'm no good at that sort of thing."

  "You've got to be. It won't be hard as you think. Listen, she's a Class Two."

  "Class Two?" Kil stared. "That girl? Criminally Unstab?"

  "That's right. She's as much a Crim as those two of Ace's. She's got tangled circuits up top. That'll help us."

  "How can anything like that help?" Kil was staring at the beautiful face in horror and disbelief.

  "She likes men. But she likes men who're different. The oddballs. The unusuals. I'd be good as a hunchback, but I happen to know she's already had a hunchback. You, now, she's never met anything like you before."

  "What do you mean?" Kil was half-angry.