On the Run

by Gordon R. Dickson

  There had been a breeze from the mainland, from the hills of Kowloon, that day in Hong Kong, when he had first seen Ellen. She had been standing on the balcony of the Hotel Royal and she . . .. . . The sights and sounds and smells of memory rose like incense in the back of Kil's mind. Silently, he tiptoed his conscious attention out of the room of his past, leaving it to work its wonders in its own way; and closed the door upon it.

  He looked up. The more recent memory of the bar front he had seen on his first trip to this Unstab district clicked sharply into identification with the bar front coming at him, down the street. He waited until the roadway brought him opposite, then stepped off on the departure rollers to the side, walked across the short strip of unmoving cement, and pressed his Key into the door cup.

  It opened; and he entered.

  The bar had not changed. Nor the people inside it. Individual faces were different, but the collective face was the same. As Kil came in, most of the drinkers glanced up; but this time, only momentarily. Dekko's lessons had been effective upon Kil. The faces returned to their glasses and the pause in the conversation was buried and forgotten in a fresh wave of murmuring voices.

  There was a new bartender behind the bar. Kil walked up to him. Neatly, out of one compartment in his ordered memory vault, Kil selected slang terms necessary to the occasion.

  "Yeah, Chief?" said the bartender as he came up. "What?"

  He was a man of average height with slightly lumpy features. Almost insolently at ease, he leaned on the bar.

  "Dosker me someone," said Kil. He reached in his pocket for a roll of dollars, tore off five of them and slid them across the bar. "The name is Dekko."

  The bartender rolled the strip of soft metal tabs up into a tight cylinder and stuck it in his tunic pocket.

  "Just Dekko?" he said. "No nut to that bolt?"

  "Dekko," said Kil.

  The bartender moved a little down the bar and fiddled with something underneath. "Not on," he said, after a moment. "Any other towns you want to dosker? Give you five for twenty."

  "No," Kil shook his head. "He'll be showing. How much for a local look?"

  "How long a look?"

  "For the next week—seven days."

  "Fifty for the spotter, twenty-five for the contact, and twenty-five for me. And the Ace'll take twenty per cent. One-deuce-and-big-O."

  Kil took out a roll of twenties and tore off a hundred and twenty dollars worth. The bartender gathered them in.

  "Who's Ace now?" Kil asked.

  "Garby. Been on three days."

  Kil felt a small relief. He had been bracing himself against contact with the Ace he had run from before, even though Dekko had told him that such men very seldom stayed in one area even the full length of the time allowed them by their classification. He turned as the bartender leaned down behind the bar and in a low voice put out the call for Dekko that Kil had just paid for. Kil felt satisfaction. Inside of a few minutes all the public places in the Unstab area would be notified that there was a reward for spotting the little man and notifying Kil of his whereabouts.

  He turned back to the bar again.

  "Coffee," he said to the bartender. The lumpy features showed amazement.

  "You mean a stim?"

  "Just coffee," repeated Kil. The bartender stared for a second, but then turned and dialed his selector. After a second, there was delivery beneath the bar and he lifted a cup and thermopot up in front of Kil.

  Kil paid and, taking the two items, walked back to a table in one of the dark little recesses along the further wall. He sat down.

  He poured his coffee black, ignoring the cream and sugar bulges on the container's side. Sipping at the dark, hot liquid, he set himself to think.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  "Well, do us, riggers! Looks like we hit the doby prize!"

  Kil came back to himself with a start and looked up. Three men had just come in the door of the bar and were staring at him. Two of them were Unstabs he had never seen before, but the third was the tall, blond, drunken boy who had yelled "Big S!" at Kil the time before in this bar.

  Only now the boy was sober.

  He came toward Kil, the two behind him, following. He reached Kil's table and leaned on it with both hands.

  "Hello S." he said. His eyes, blue and bright and small in comparison with the rest of his otherwise goodlooking face, carefully scanned Kil, clothes and expression. "Or are you still S., Juby?"

  Silently, Kil tilted the Key on his wrist so that the other could read the classification on its face.

  "Two!" said the boy. "Well, Two! Big S. into Two goes once. I suppose you think that makes you one of us riggers, don't you?"

  Kil still said nothing. His mind was working swiftly and calmly, but a hot coal was fanning itself into burning anger inside him.

  "Well, it don't!" said the boy, thrusting out his jaw and pushing his face so close to Kil that Kil could see the white, curling hair in his nostrils. "You're still S. to me, Juby. And you know what we do to S.'s down here. We shake them out."

  "Juby," said the boy. "Juby, I'm talking to you. And I want an answer."

  Kil threw the coffee in the boy's face; and followed that with the cup itself at one of the two others. He flipped the table in front of him, over against them and jumped to his feet. Then, taking advantage of the confusion, he threw himself at them.

  He punched low, feeling a thrill of savage satisfaction as his fist sank into the blond boy's groin. Kicking out blindly, he connected with the ankle of one of the others; and that one went down, abruptly, hitting his head on the floor with an ugly, thick, cracking sound. I've killed him, thought Kil without emotion, seeing the man sprawl limply and lie still. But then he had no more time to think, because the third man was on top of him.

  The third man was small and hard. He literally tried to climb up Kil's tall body, chopping viciously with the side of his right hand as he did so. Kil, all fear lost now in the pure white flame of battle, wrenched him free and swung wildly at his face. The fist missed, but his elbow did not, and the man went down, blood spurting from nose and mouth.

  Staggering, with a tingling elbow, Kil felt a sudden heavy blow low on the back of his head, which drove him forward, tottering, until a nearby table blocked his progress and kept him from falling forward on his face. He rolled to the right, just as the heavy body of the blond boy drove past him and crashed into the table where Kil had been. Kil swung with all his strength at the averted jaw of the boy, but the blow missed and skidded off the other's shoulder as he turned to face Kil.

  Kil threw himself forward, head low. He butted the blond boy high on the chest and they both crashed to the floor, rolling over and over among the chair and table legs, both struggling to get their arms free to fight and at the same time keep their opponent's arms imprisoned. Kil could feel the blond boy's legs trying for a scissors grip around his waist. A fragment from a near-forgotten history of flatboating on the Mississippi nearly three hundred years before came to him. Bite his ear, he thought. And with grim relish, he did. The blond boy screamed like a hurt animal and by mutual consent they rolled apart and staggered to their feet.

  The blond boy was frantically pawing through his clothing. Abruptly, he stopped and ran across to the man who had knocked himself out on the floor. Flinging his hand into the recumbent one's tunic, he pulled out a thin cylinder about fifteen centimeters long, which suddenly, in his hand, sprouted a narrow, wavy-edged blade three times its own length. With this weapon, longer than his own forearm, he advanced on Kil.

  There was a soft ringing from behind the bar. So incongruous was it in that tense atmosphere that for a moment, everything halted. Kil even tunned his head to look; and the blond boy's face swung momentarily and inquiringly in the same direction.

  The bartender was nodding his head and listening to something inaudible from below the bar. He looked up suddenly at the blond boy.

  "Clab it!" he said. "He's dyked."

  The blond boy breathed
heavily through his nostrils and swung back to Kil.

  "Clab you!" he threw over his shoulder at the bartender. Beside him, the man with the smashed nose was helping the man who had knocked himself unconscious to his feet. The blond boy glanced at them.

  "Cover me," he said.

  "I tell you he's dyked!" shouted the bartender.

  The blond boy fumbled in his tunic and this time found a twin to the cylinder which had sprouted a knife blade in his hand. He tossed it back in the direction of his two friends. "Hold 'em. I'm going to viv this Juby even if he's been dyked by Ace himself.

  "The man with the smashed nose produced his own cylinder and extended its blade. The other man, looking rather sick, picked up the one from the floor and extended it. They moved in to stand with their backs to the blond boy, facing outward to the crowd with their blades ready. The blond boy looked at Kil and grinned in a white, unnatural way, moving the tip of his blade in small, slow circles.

  "Ever been vived, Juby?" he said. "Well, now's your time to learn."

  "Do me!" cried the bartender in exasperation. He swung furiously about to look up and down the bar. "Singles! Where's a Singles? Pull that dyke for me. It's worth a hundred."

  A slim little middle-aged man at the end of the bar slid off his seat, patting his lips dry with a napkin.

  "I'm a Singles," he said. From under his chair he drew a slim, limber-looking, highly polished cane about five-sixths of a meter in length. It looked rather like the sort of swagger stick affected by ornate dressers, with evening clothes. With mincing steps, he approached the three men holding knives and stopped a little more than his own length from them.

  "All right viv-boys," he said. "Fun's done."

  The two friends of the blond boy stirred uneasily.

  "Hey, Fabe," the man with the smashed nose said to him, "let's slip. It's not worth the fun."

  The blond boy, however, had turned slowly to face the middle-aged man; and his face still held that unnaturally white look.

  "What's loose in your guts?" he said to his friend. "There's three of us."

  "But there's no room, Fabe," said the third man.

  "Do me!" murmured the blond. "Who needs room?" He snarled suddenly at the other two. "Who do you want to take—him with me, or me by yourselves?"

  Reluctantly, the other two turned toward the little man. As if this had been a signal, the stick in the little man's hand suddenly blurred into a spinning fan of motion as he twirled it in a humming circle whose center was his wrist. Like a gauzy blur of motion, it floated beside him, in front of him, flatly over his head. Quite calmly, he walked forward and the three men with knives jumped to meet him.

  What followed was too fast for Kil to see in detail. There was a series of sharp, cracking sounds and one of the knife men broke and ran for the door, while the other screamed hoarsely and staggered across the room with his hands pressed to his face and blood seeping from between the fingers.

  "I'm blind!" he screamed. "I'm blind!"

  He collapsed sobbing in a corner. No one paid any attention to him. The blond boy lay still on the floor, face down. Hardly able to believe it was all over, Kil walked slowly forward.

  "Thanks," he said to the middle-aged man, who shrugged.

  "A job," he answered. He was wiping the metal ferule at the end of his stick, with a handkerchief. "You got the hundred, or do I get it from Drinks?"

  Kil reached in his pocket for the money; and, after he had handed it over, turned his attention to the blond boy.

  "I'd better get that knife of his while he's out," he said, stooping over.

  The Singles stopped him with the end of his cane.

  "What for?" he asked. With his foot, he rolled the blond boy over indifferently. The blue eyes were still wide open. They would never close themselves now. The whole right temple above them was caved in as if by a small, blunt hatchet.

  Kil stared at the slim, almost toy-like stick in the man's hand with horrified amazement. The man smiled agreeably.

  "It's not the single-stick," he said. "It's what you do with it. Any Juby can use a knife." He turned and walked back to the bar. Kil followed him. The bartender leaned across and spoke to Kil.

  "Why didn't you call help earlier?" he said. "If I'd known you were willing to pay, I could've tagged Singles for you right away. From the way you talked, I figured you could take care of yourself."

  Kil shrugged. Reaction was setting in and he felt too shaky to venture an argument."

  "You got dyked by Uncle George," went on the bartender. "Somebody wants to see you."

  Kil blinked.

  "Uncle George? Who wants to see me?"

  "How'd I know who want's to see you?" said the bartender. "Uncle George's a dyker—a bond dyker. Somebody got in touch with him and got you dyked for five thousand worth of trouble money. That's enough to buy you out of anything but a small scale war in this district. You go to your hotel. Uncle George'll meet you there."

  Still somewhat dazed, Kil turned away and went slowly to the door and out into the street. He took the roadway toward his hotel.

  He reached the hotel without incident. The glass front door opened to his Key and the lobby was deserted. He crossed to the desk. The human clerk was off duty and the simulacrum behind the counter informed him that there had been no messages, or anyone to see him. It stood, a very fine, dapper imitation of a man; but Kil could see, without leaning too far over the counter, the cable that protruded from the desk and attached to its ankle, the cable connecting it with the automation brain of the hotel. For some reason, although he had seen this sort of thing thousands of times before in his lifetime, it was subtly disturbing tonight to realize the falsity and inhumanity of the imitation before him. And there came back to him, suddenly, something he had heard casually a long time ago: that Unstabs were said to have an unreasoning dislike of automation and anything connected with it. And he wondered for a second if this were symptomatic of some new decay in himself. Then he put the notion from his mind.

  The disk elevator was at its ceaseless motion at one end of the lobby. He stepped aboard one of the disks and let it carry him up. At his floor he got off and went down the empty hallway to his room. The door was closed and he faced his Key into the cup. It swung open and he entered.

  And stopped.

  Across from him, seated in one of the room's armchairs, was a strangely familiar figure. He had seen it once before slumped over a table in the bar he had just left, on a certain occasion as he was following the tall Unstab named Birb out the door to meet Ace. It was the figure of a paunchy man on the brink of old age. He was swathed in heavy tunic, slacks and cape, and his face had a red, doughy consistency as he smiled at Kil.

  "You're Uncle George?" asked Kil, all but sure of his visitor, but brought to caution by the experience he had just passed.

  Uncle George opened his mouth and laughed.

  "Sometimes," he answered, "but not always."

  And the voice was the voice of Dekko.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Kil stared at him. The disguise was so good he found himself doubting his ears.

  "Dekko?" he said, at last, wonderingly.

  "Me," said the voice of Dekko, as sharp and wise as ever and coming with incongruous effect from the soft aging-man's face. The wrinkled hands went up under the double chin, fumbled and pulled. The whole face seemed to crumple and pull upward; and Dekko skinned off an amazing flesh-tight mask that varied from tissue thinness in spots to thicknesses of an inch or-more in others. "Sit, Kil, while I seal this place."

  He got up and moved quickly across the room to the door. He produced what seemed to be a small duplicate of the clock-like mechanism Kil had seen on the inner surface of the door to Mali's study, and pressed it against the crack between door and jamb, where it stuck.

  "That'll scramble anything," he said with satisfaction. "And there's no loopers. I checked. Find yourself a chair, like I said, Kil. We got some talking to do."

  Kil dropped in
to a chair. Dekko came back and sat down opposite him.

  "How'd you get away?" Kil asked.

  "This," Dekko poked his finger at the mask. "It never pays to run, Kil. It's always better to stand still and look like something else. I made it over the fence and changed in a ditch. Then walked, not ran to the nearest Terminal. So now it's Uncle George until the pressure goes down."

  A note of wryness in the last words make Kil look more closely at him.

  "I got you into something more than you bargained for, didn't I?"

  "Yes and no," Dekko smiled. "I'd always wanted to take a crack at the O.T.L.—oh, found out what it means, by the way. Organizational Tacticians' League. That's a mouthful to mean nothing, isn't it? Yeah, I always wanted to try them. Nobody's fault they turned out tougher than I thought."

  "But now," Kil looked at him steadily, "you've come around to tell me you can't have anything more to do with me."

  "No," Dekko shook his head. "Can't abandon a client. Ruin my business reputation. Just got to figure a way to get Mali off our necks besides finding your wife, that's all."

  "Mali told me he thought you might be one of McElroy's men," said Kil, bluntly.

  Dekko grinned merrily.

  "Maybe I am, Kil, maybe I am." His voice and face were perfectly opaque to any clues hidden behind them. "Now don't try to fish me. I won't do you any good, to start with. And to finish, I got my own reasons for what I do. All you got to know is that I'm on your side."

  "What can you do for me now?" said Kil.

  "I can keep you alive," retorted the little man. "How close were you to being viv meat less than an hour ago?"

  Kil nodded.

  "That's right—thanks."

  "Nothing. Now let's forget it and get down to business."