On the Run

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Kil awoke suddenly and sat up on the edge of his bed. Through the unopaqued window of the room to which Melee had brought him the night before, the morning sunlight streamed and lit up his undressed condition and the rumpled state of the bed. There was sweat on his forehead and a clutching, all-obsessive feeling that something was terribly wrong. What had happened? But nothing came to him, only the empty, scooped-out feeling of something drastic that had taken place. He jumped to his feet and took three quick strides to stand in front of a mirror across the room. His own image looked back at him as lean and uncompromising as ever. Foolishly, he felt his arms and legs and the nerves in them reacted to his fingers' pressure in honest fashion. His body reported all well. Only a slight soreness behind one ear, where he might have hit his head in falling after he was drugged, and a slight headache, lopsided in that area, interrupted the general sense of physical well-being. But he felt hollow inside.

  He walked over to a closet set in the wall and, opening it, found clothes—the ones he had worn the night before as well as several plastic throwaway outfits that looked to be his size. Out of automatic instincts and habits of cleanliness, he reached for one of these latter, but an odd repugnance made him draw his hand back and he dressed instead in his tunic and kilt of the previous day.

  Dressed, he tried his door and found it unlocked. He stepped through it and out into the corridor. Some thirty feet along this corridor, he came on a door ajar, about where he remembered the study to have been. He went in.

  It was not the study.after all, but a larger room, a lounge of some sort with a wall-wide window beside which sat a breakfast table as yet uncleared. Melee stood by the table, looking out at the trees and the grounds of the lakeward side of the resort. From this height, the blue windings of the lake could be seen beyond the tops of the trees. A small breeze blew from it, through the wall-window, which had been rolled back, and the soft, clean air of morning came to Kil's nostrils.

  At the sight of her, standing with her back to him, a deep feeling of desire stirred unexpectedly in Kil and he went forward until he stood at her side.

  "Morning," he said.

  She turned slowly to face him. On her lips was an echo of the triumphant smile of the night before, but it faded as she regarded him, changing into something eager and half-fearful.

  "Kiss me," she said.

  Kil put his arms around her and drew her to him. He kissed her, feeling the hot coal of desire that was new within him burst suddenly into blazing heat. Abruptly, she wrenched away from him.

  "Damn you!" she cried. "Oh, damn you!"

  Her fists were clenched and her face was screwed up in pain. When he moved toward her again, she evaded him.

  "What is this?" demanded Kil, sharply.

  "It's not you!" She beat with her fists on the back of a chair. "It's not you! I thought I wouldn't mind, but I do. I do!"

  "What do you mean?"

  She faced him.

  "I said I'd make you kiss me." Her eyes glittered with tears. "And I have. But now I don't want it that way—that way—"

  "What way?", said Kil, staring at her.

  "Via," said a soft voice behind him, "the hypno route."

  Kil turned to see Mali standing in an open doorway leading to an adjoining room, a scanner in his hand. As Kil watched, Mali came all the way into the room, shutting the door behind him. He put down the reel on a coffee table and pressed a button. The other door closed and the window slid noiselessly back into position, sealing the room.

  "Melee jumped the gun," said Mali, coming up to him. In the bright morning light, the head of the O.T.L. looked young and diffident, like a polite schoolboy. "She didn't wait for the checks on your story to come through. They have now, by the way. You're quite a truthful man. But as I say, she saw to it that you were conditioned last night." He turned to look at Melee, but she stayed rigid, her back to both men.

  "Conditioned!" said Kil.

  "Yes, and there's something strange about it, too," continued Mali, in the same casual tone from which his voice never varied. Almost, he could have been discussing the weather planned that week for the district. "You took the commands readily enough. You've probably noticed that your reactions toward Melee are considerably greater now than any you may have toward your wife. Or any other woman for that matter. And you'll also discover a comparable loyalty to the O.T.L. as a group and to me, myself, as an individual. But the search didn't work out at all well."

  "The search!"

  Kil felt the cold fingers of horror crawling down his spine. Hypnotic search was a highly tricky, rigidly restricted psychiatric technique used on the dangerously disturbed Unstab, or proved violator of the world peace. "You had the guts to—illegally—and you tell me about it!"

  "It's quite safe," replied Mali, with a gentle wave of his hand. "Your loyalty won't permit you to give me away. Will it?" He smiled; and Kil, feeling the emotions surging within him, discovered that this was only too true. "I can talk as freely in front of you as I could in front of—a dog, say. Though that's putting it a little harshly."

  Kil stared at him, realizing with an empty horror that he could not even hate the man.

  "Yes," said Mali, reaching for a bunch of grapes that still lay in the fruit bowl in the center of the breakfast table. "But to get back to the subject—want a grape? No? The search uncovered nothing; just as if there had been nothing to uncover. And I know differently. Don't I? Does your new loyalty have any suggestions that might help me with this problem?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about," said Kil, numbly. He sat down heavily. Mali gazed at him, curiously.

  "To a certain extent, that's probably correct," he said, agreeably, eating grapes one by one from the bunch. "You fill a rather odd position, Kil, whether you know it or not. For some reason—by some accident or design—you've become the focal point of our struggle at the present moment."

  "What struggle?"

  "What struggle?" repeated Mali. "Why, the same struggle that's been going on since the world began: to see who's going to be the one to control things. There's at least two—and I think three—of us busy at it right now. And you're in the middle. It's sort of as if you were a chess piece being manipulated in turn by three opposing players, all of them hidden from each other. We all try to figure out from what you do just who it was made you do it, and what his reasons were for exactly that move."

  Kil shook his head disbelievingly.

  "Oh, yes," said Mali. "Yes indeed, Kil. The two most important men in the world today are McElroy and myself. It wasn't just chance that led you first to him and then to me. It couldn't be. I'm the most powerful individual on Earth and McEIroy is the—most elusive, certainly. Yet you trot from him to me with no more difficulty than going from one store to another. How did you manage that? Can you tell me?"

  Kil felt the compulsion on him to answer.

  "Dekko," he said reluctantly.

  "Hmm," said Mali, holding the grapes forgotten in one hand, "as far as that goes, I'm pretty sure that Dekko of yours belongs to McEIroy. He's another mystery. But a minor one. You're the big one, you and—" he broke off suddenly, staring out the window. After a moment, he turned back to Kil.

  "What do you know about The Project?" he demanded. "And Sub-E?"

  Kil lifted his head in amazement.

  "Nothing," he said.

  "And yet," said Mali, looking at him closely, "your wife's certainly a member and knows all about it."

  Kil felt a sudden small stir of excitement in him.

  "A member? What—?" he said.

  "Exactly. What?" Mali leaned toward him, his eyes oddly compelling. "The Project's an organization that has something called Sub-E. And Sub-E is maybe the secret of their ability to do things that are physically impossible, like hiding from myself and the Police, on this Earth where there's no place to hide. Does that jog your memory? Answer me!"

  "Don't the Police know?"

  "No. The Police do not know. Any more than I know.
And I have to know. I could crush the Police like that, tomorrow, Kil," and Mali closed his hand before Kil's face, "and they know it. But they know I don't dare try it as long as this question mark exists, this other power that may have a weapon in it's Sub-E that I can't match. Now answer me, does this, all this, make you remember anything?"

  "No," said Kil.

  Mali drew a deep breath and straightened up. His eyes went away from Kil and focused on the middle distance as his attention turned inward. Kil saw a valuable moment slipping away from him.

  "I don't believe you," he said.

  Mali's attention came back with a jerk.

  "Don't believe what?" he said.

  "What you said about being able to crush' the Police."

  Mali smiled at him. He became conscious of the grapes still in his hand and threw them down on the table.

  "There's only six million of them, Kil," he said. "And the world is sick of them, and Files, and a Key on every wrist. Your little group of A. Stabs are the exception, and there's nothing wonderful in that. Under almost any system there's bound to be found some people who are suited to it. What it boils down to is we've been living in a temporary state of emergency for a hundred years. The wonder is that it hasn't cracked before now."

  "War!" said Kil. He pronounced the word with the deep, almost instinctive intonation of shock and horror typical in a man of his time.

  "No such thing," replied Mali, swiftly. "Skirmishes, maybe, but only to help along the shift in balance of power. The organized Societies are inevitably bound to follow a situation of Police control and supplant it."

  "Why?"

  "Because," said Mali, quite earnestly, "they offer man what Files has taken away from him: a social structure, a solid social structure to build his own life inside."

  Kil shook his head, not knowing exactly why he was disagreeing, but disagreeing reflexively.

  "Believe me," said Mali, looking at him. "Files was a mistake. They thought then that man couldn't go on living and developing with the threat of atomic annihilation constantly hanging over him. They forgot that men have built on the sides of a volcano before. More important than the volcano is the building. We all need it—something solid to tie to—a place to He down. And that's what none of us have now, under Files and the Police, all four billions of us, wanderers over the face of the globe."

  For a moment, Mali's easy voice rang with a true note of idealism.

  "So that's why you do these things?" said Kil.

  Mali laughed and slipped back into his customary manner.

  "No," he said. "In my case, conviction followed conversion. No, Kil, you probably think I've got delusions of grandeur, a Napoleon, an Alexander complex. It's a lot more prosaic than that. I just happen to be capable and started, out wanting little things. Then as I got those, I wanted bigger and bigger things, more and more, until now. . . ."

  "Until now you want the world."

  "Why not?" asked Mali.

  Kil shook his head, again, stubbornly.

  "Why not just ignore the Project?" he said.

  "Because," answered Mali, quietly, "they seem to be capable of doing all sorts of impossible things; and not the least of these is the fact that they seem to be already free of Files. They don't wear Keys—" he checked himself suddenly, his eyes pouncing on Kil. "What is it?"

  "Nothing," said Kil, hastily.

  "Must I appeal to your new sense of loyalty for an answer?"

  "The—" the words struggled from Kil's throat, "the old man had no Key."

  "The old man who took your wife off with him?" Mali considered Kil, no longer smiling. "Now why, I wonder, didn't that come out under the Search. The Project may have—" He let the words trail off. Abruptly, he turned.

  "Keep thinking, Kil," he said. "Somewhere in you there's enough information buried in five years of association with your wife to tell us where the Project hides itself. We'll get it eventually. If you think of anything more that might be useful to me, come and find me. Meanwhile, stay on the grounds."

  He walked out through the door, and was gone.

  Kil stared after him for a short moment; and then turned to Melee. She had also turned and was facing him with one of her strange, unreadable expressions.

  "Let's go for a walk," she said. "Come on, Kil. We'll go down by the lake and get away from this place and everything."

  He nodded, scarcely listening. His mind was whirling with thoughts of Ellen and the old man who had worn no Key on his wrist.

  Almost in a daze, he followed Melee, as she once more opened the window and stepped through it to the turf below. Side by side and saying nothing, they cut across to the gravel path slanting downhill from the lodge, and followed it around its curve past the row of cabins.

  They passed the cabin in which Kil and Dekko had been lodged the day before. The ghost of that yesterday seemed more than twenty-four hours old as Kil looked at it. Almost it seemed as if it might have been weeks back that he and Dekko had rested here, waiting for night so that they could go up to spy on the Lodge. Thinking of the little man reminded Kil.

  "What happened to Dekko?" he asked Melee.

  "He hasn't been caught yet," she answered absently, walking along with her eyes fixed on the path. A momentary concern and sympathy for the slight hunchback stirred briefly in Kil's mind and was drowned immediately by his conditioning.

  They passed the other cabins and drew level with the one that housed Anton Bolievsky. As before, the old man that looked so young was sitting cross-legged in the doorway.

  "Good morning," he said, as they came up. Kil stopped. Melee continued on as if she had not heard.

  "Hello," said Kil.

  They looked at each other.

  "Your particular aura of purposefulness," said Anton, "seems dimmed, but not extinguished. You are a very fortunate young man."

  "What do you mean?" asked Kil.

  "Merely trying to put into words a feeling I get," replied the other. "You remember our talk yesterday?"

  "Of course."

  "It made me think. Did it make you think?"

  "Kil!" called Melee, impatiently, from the bend in the path where it headed into the belt of trees that hid the lake.

  "I—I've got to go," said Kil. "Maybe we can get together for a talk, later."

  "Yes," said Anton.

  Kil turned and hurried off, wondering at himself. Melee had already gone on again down the path and disappeared into the woods. He hurried ahead, caught a glimpse of her silver tunic through the green branches, and increased his pace. The path wound about, now that it was among the trees, and she was nowhere to be seen. Twenty yards further on, however, he came suddenly around a sharp turn and literally ran into her. She was standing with her back to him, staring out over the lake; but as they collided, she turned swiftly and clung to him. And he saw with astonishment that she was crying, silently and fiercely. "Melee—" he said.

  "Oh, Kil," she moaned. "Why do I do these things? Why?"

  But then her words were lost to him; for, even as he put his arms instinctively around her, he looked over her shoulder and saw the lake. Water . . . water . . . for the third time a body of water spread before him. And as it had been before, when he looked out McElroy's window on Lake Superior, and when he came up from the meeting place of the Panthers and faced the Pacific, the world weaved around him. And the deep and crying need for Ellen, only Ellen, rose irresistibly within him. Stronger . . . stronger . . . stronger by far than the time before, which had been stronger than the first time, stronger than any hypnotic condition that ever had been or could be, it called him. Ellen . . . Ellen . . . Ellen. . . .

  Dimly, he was conscious of a flash of silver tunic before his eyes and a woman's scream. And then he was free and running, running, running. . . .

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The first few hours were blurred. After that, when he at last came fully to himself again, he was riding down an ancient highway in an all-purpose bug, its squashy flotons humming merril
y as it buzzed along at somewhere around a hundred and ten kilometers an hour. The driver was a wiry old botanical technician whose love for his bug was unbounded and voluble.

  "I've carted her all over the world with me. Trade her in, says the home office. Trade, hell, I told them. I got nothing else that belongs to me, on the go all the time. Hortense, she's mine. I had her in India and up and down the Andes in South A. Up and down the Sierra Madres, too. That wasn't bad. It's timber that stops you. Trees so thick you can't see through-going to Duluth, you said?"

  "What? Oh—. Yes. . . ." said Kil.

  "Thought that's what you said. My folks come from Duluth, originally. Well, not Duluth proper—around Two Harbors. Of course I don't remember it myself, but I recall my grandfather telling me about how the lampreys came in there and spoiled the fishing, just about cleaned out all the lake trout. Ever see a picture of a lamprey? The way he described them—"

  Kil leaned back against the foam cushions of the bug, letting the words flow around him and nodding whenever it seemed expedient. His mind felt exhausted, drained of feeling. He tried to force it to concentrate on his situation, to think about the future, but the effort .was beyond him at the moment. He gave up, rocking with the cab of the bug and half-listening.

  "—world going to hell. Just another old crank talking, you'll probably say. But I know. I'm off away from people four—six months at a stretch. Always on the move. Wouldn't make any difference to me if I had a Key or not. Love the work, be doing it anyway. And its just like anything where you don't see someone for a long time. You notice the differences. And I've seen them."

  "Seen them?" murmured Kil.

  "Seen them—hell, yes." I've seen them! Jittery, wall-stupid, jumping from city to city as if their tails were on fire—hey boy, you're going to sleep, sit up—and not knowing Sunday from shaving lotion about anything you can't get by pressing a button. Last time I was down below Chilpancingo, I saw an orchid, a cattleya—one of the common ones, but I took a fancy to it and sealed it in some transparent plastic. Happened a month or so later I was in Mexico—Mexico City, that is—I brought Hortense into a parts place to get the floater rollers degummed. Man in charge happened to see the cattleya. Regular native type, too. 'Migawd,' he said— or something to that effect—'What've you got here? Something valuable? Because if it is, you better let me lock it up while the rollers are being cleaned.' Something valuable! Lock it up! His great-grandmother would have known what it was, all right."