The rest of his words were covered by the sound of the blowers as Hal drove off. He watched the four of them in the truck's viewscreen until trees and bushes blocked them from sight; after which he closed the rear doors of the truck and drove with all safe speed to the road.
Bootless and carefully choosing where to set their feet, and with the driver as the only one who had seen the route they had followed from the supply point, the best speed the four could make through the woods on foot would take them at least a couple of hours to find their way back to the highway. After that, they would still have to choose between trying to walk in what was left of their socks, thirty or forty kilometers of this highway down to where it intersected with a more trafficked road; or finding their way back to the supply point and waiting there to be rescued.
In two hours it would be dark and their feet would be very sore. They would almost certainly choose to wait at the supply point. In any case, it would be several hours after dark before their return would be overdue enough to be noticed at the motor pool to which the truck belonged; and the first assumption there would be that, through accident or design, they were simply delayed and would be in by morning. It would probably not be until full morning of the next day that attempts would be made to check on them. Meanwhile, since Barbage would have assumed that by now this point had been abandoned, no one from his pursuit team would be likely to check on it.
So, it should be tomorrow before anyone learned that this truck was in the hands of Hal. He had at least the next ten hours in which to drive, with only the problem of avoiding a routine check on his credentials or his purpose for being on the road with a Militia vehicle.
Just before he turned onto the highway, Hal stopped to replace his own clothes with the driver's uniform. The driver had been both tall and heavy, so that the jacket was only a little tight in the shoulders, though the pants were enormous around Hal's waist; but even the other man's height had not been enough to provide sleeves and pantlegs that were other than obviously, almost ridiculously, short on Hal. Still, wearing the uniform and the cap—which fortunately was only a little loose on his head—and sitting mostly hidden in the cab of the truck, Hal could pass a casual inspection as a Militiaman.
Dressed, he keyed-on the truck's reference screen for a small-scale map of the general area between his present location and Ahruma. The map showed the city at a distance of something over two hundred and ten kilometers, with a spiderweb of roadways multiplying and thickening toward its center.
Somewhere on the city's south outskirts was one of the local people that Rukh's Command had been scheduled to contact, when at last it reached the city, a woman named Athalia McNaughton, who had a small business selling used farm equipment. She might be able to help him—if he could reach her. There would be the truck to dispose of and its contents to hide; and, while he had with him the identification and credit papers he had carried ever since leaving Earth, he would need information on how to use them safely. The only hope of escaping Bleys now lay in getting off Harmony.
Ahruma, he knew, because of its Core Tap and spaceship refitting yards, had a commercial spaceport even larger than that of Citadel, the city at which he had first set foot on Harmony; but any spaceport could be a dangerous place for him to try arranging passage unless he knew where to go and who to see when he got to the terminal.
If she could help, the odds were with him. She could have no idea that he was approaching her without Rukh's approval and orders. It might be a week or more before word of the splitting up of the Command could reach Ahruma partisans. On the other hand, his name and description would be known to her, as one of the Warriors under Rukh's leadership.
He clicked off the reference screen, punched on the trip clock, and having picked his route to the city, drove out onto the highway and turned right.
He drove for half an hour before he ran into any sign of other traffic. By that time he had covered over forty kilometers and was on a double-lane Way headed generally in the direction of Ahruma. The load which had been a full one for nine donkeys was a light one for the truck; and the vehicle hummed along at the legal military speed limit of eighty kilometers an hour. Without problems, he could probably expect to reach the city in about three hours.
Darkness closed in about him as he drove; and as the countryside surrounding the Ways he travelled on became more inhabited, artificial lighting blossomed to challenge it on either side of his route. Seated alone in the cab above the blowers, their breathy roar tuned down by the truck's soundproofing to a steady, soft humming, and with the illumination of the instrument panel softly glowing at him below the dimness of the windshield, his alertness began to yield to the lack of that emotional pressure which had kept him keyed up earlier. His body and mind relaxed; and, as it did so, his awareness of the fever, the headache, the cough and the fatigue that rode him like vampires became more and more acute.
For the first time he was able to measure the depths of his own exhaustion and illness; and what he found alarmed him. He would need to be at full alertness, and at something like full strength, from the time he parted company with Athalia McNaughton until he was safely aboard the ship taking him to some other world. The partisans in Ahruma might not know that he had left the Command; but it could not be more than twelve hours before the local Militia would; since he had dealt with the men he had captured so as to make it clear that his hijacking of their truck had been a solitary action.
It might be the better part of wisdom to see if Athalia could provide him with a few hours safe sleep at her place, before he tried the spaceport. He should be relatively safe until dawn. On the other hand, if he could use these same late night hours to get to the spaceport and buy his passage unsuspected, they were probably better utilized that way. Once aboard an interstellar ship, he could sleep as much as he wished.
Mind and body were becoming very heavy. He had to force his gaze to focus on the polished ribbon of the Way, that seemed to roll endlessly out of darkness before his forelights as he went. He debated tapping his overdrive reflex, once more—and once more put it from him. It would be easy and tempting to do, but wasteful of energy in the long run; and his energy was draining fast. He clicked on the reference screen again, and studied the maze of roads before him on the edge of the city. He had been eating up the distance on the open Way; but that sort of travel was reaching its end. Now came the time in which he would have to feel his way through fringe areas of the city by roadsign and map alone, to the front door of Athalia. This close to his goal he could not risk stopping to ask for directions from someone who might later identify him.
The night became one continuing blur of dimly-lit intersection and street signs. He took refuge in focusing down as he had days earlier when he had needed to think effectively toward a decision through the fog of sickness and fatigue; and his vision cleared somewhat. His reflexes were slower, and he slowed the truck accordingly, driving as circumspectly as he dared without drawing attention to a military driver who seemed to be exercising unnatural caution. Time, which had been in generous supply, began to run short. He checked the trip clock and saw that he had been driving now for nearly six hours. The glowing figures of the clock at which he stared made only academic sense to him. Subjectively, the time in the cab seemed to have been, at once, endless and no more than a handful of minutes.
He found himself at last guiding the vehicle down a narrow, fused earth road into the wilderness of a dark suburb, half small farms, half ramshackle cottages or small businesses. There was no light in the buildings he passed until he came to what looked like an abandoned warehouse, with a remarkably tall and new-looking highwire fence about it, and an invisibly large stretch of ground behind it. In one corner window at the front of the building, a window was illuminated.
Hal stopped the truck and got creakily out of it. He walked to the closed and locked pipe-metal gates of the fence and stared through it. The lighted window was uncurtained; but the distance was too great to see if anyone
was visible behind it. He looked about the gate for some kind of communicator or bell to announce his presence and found none.
As he stood there, there was the sound of a snarling bark and two dark canine forms rushed the other side of the gate, setting up a savage noise at him. He stared. Like horses, dogs were not usually able to reproduce on Harmony, particularly dogs as large as these. A pair like this would be more likely to have been raised from test-tube embryos of Earth stock, imported by spaceship—and their purchase would have represented a very large expense for a business as small and poor as this one looked. He waited. Perhaps the barking would raise the attention of someone inside.
But no one came, and time—his time, limited as his strength was now limited—was going. He considered getting back into the truck and simply driving it through the locked gates. But that would hardly be the way to begin an appeal to the sympathy and help of Athalia McNaughton, if this was indeed her address. Instead, he sat down cross-legged on his side of the gate and began to croon to the two dogs in a soft, quavering falsetto.
The dogs continued to bark savagely—for a while. Then, gradually, intervals came in their clamor; gradually the volume of their barks lessened and became interspersed with whines. Finally, they fell entirely silent.
Hal continued to croon, as if they were not there.
The dogs whimpered more often, moving about uneasily. First one, then the other, sat down on its haunches. After several minutes, one of them raised its muzzle to the still-dark sky and moaned lightly. The moan continued and increased, developing into a full howl. After a second, the other dog also lifted its muzzle and howled softly.
Hal crooned.
The howling of the dogs rose in volume. Shortly, they were matching voices with him, almost harmonizing, seated on their haunches on the other side of the gates. Time went by; and, suddenly, a crack opened in the dark front wall of the building, next to the window, spilling white, actinic light in a fan of illumination out toward the fence. The dogs fell silent.
A dark, trousered figure occulted the brilliant, newly-appeared opening and advanced across the yard toward the gate, carrying a light in one hand and something short and thick in the other. As it got close, the light being carried centered on Hal's face and blinded him. His available vision became one blare of light. It approached and stopped, close enough that he could have grabbed it, if the bars of the gate had not been between him and the approaching individual.
"Who're you?" The voice was a woman's, but deep-toned.
Hal pulled himself slowly and heavily to his feet. On the other side of the fence, the dogs also rose from their sitting positions, approached the gate and stuck black noses between its pipes, licking their jaws selfconsciously with occasional whines.
"Howard Immanuelson," he said, hearing his own voice echo, hoarse and heavy in the darkness, "from the Command of Rukh Tamani."
The light stayed steady on him.
"Name me five people who're with that Command," said the voice. "Five besides Rukh Tamani."
"Jason Rowe, Heidrik Falt, Tallan, Joralmon Troy… Amos Paja."
The light did not move away from his eyes.
"None of these are the Lieutenant of that Command," said the voice. "Name him."
"I'm co-Lieutenant, with Heidrik Falt," said Hal. "Both of us, acting only. James Child-of-God is dead."
For a moment the light held steady. Then it moved away from him to the truck behind him, leaving him lost with expanded pupils in the darkness.
"And this?" The voice came after a moment, unchanged.
"Something I need your help with," Hal said. "The truck has to be gotten rid of. Its load is something else. You see—"
"Never mind." There was a sound of the gate being unlocked. "Bring it in."
He turned around, eyes gradually adjusting to the night, fumbled his way to the cab of the vehicle and into it, up behind its controls. Without turning on its forelights again, he drove through the now-open gates to halt just outside the building. When he got down from the cab again, the two dogs pressed shyly forward against him, their noses sniffing at his pants' legs and crotch.
"Back," said the voice; and the two animals retreated slightly. "Come on inside where I can get a better look at you."
Within, his vision gradually adjusted to the brightly-lit room behind the window that seemed to be half office, half living room—impeccably neat, but somehow without the forbidding, don't-touch quality that often accompanied such neatness. They stood and examined each other. She was mid-thirties, or possibly a good deal older, straight-backed, wide-shouldered, handsomely strong-boned of face, with heavy, wavy hair, cut short and so rich a brown as to be almost black. Under that darkness of hair, her skin was cream-colored, reminding Hal of a face on a cameo ring he had fallen in love with, once, when he had been very young. Her eyes were also brown and wide-set, her mouth wide and thin-lipped. To only a slightly lesser extent—although they were in no way similar otherwise—she had the devastatingly direct gaze Hal had seen in Rukh; but, unlike Rukh, the challenge of her presence was almost entirely physical.
"You're sick," she said, looking at him now. "Sit down."
He looked about, found an overstuffed chair behind him and dropped heavily into it.
"You say James is dead?" She was still standing over him.
He nodded.
"We've had Militia right behind us for nearly a week and a half now," he said, "and there's been some kind of pulmonary disease we've all caught. James got to the point where he couldn't keep up. He insisted on making a rearguard action by himself to give the Command time to change its route. I helped him set up in a position…"
The words Child-of-God had given him to pass on to Rukh and the Command came back to him; and he repeated them now for this woman.
She stood for a moment after he had finished, not saying anything. Her eyes had darkened, although there was no other change in her expression.
"I loved him," she said at last.
"So did Rukh," Hal said.
"Rukh was like his grandchild," she said. "I loved him."
The darkness went from her eyes.
"You're Athalia McNaughton?" he asked.
"Yes." She glanced out the window. "What's in the truck?"
"Bags of fertilizer—and other makings for the explosive Rukh planned to use to sabotage the Core Tap. Can you hide it?"
"Not here," she said, "but I can find a place."
"The truck needs to disappear," he said. "Can you—"
She laughed, dryly. Her laugh, like her voice, was deep-toned.
"That's easier. Its metal can be cut up and sold in pieces. The rest of it can be burned." Her gaze came back to him. "What about you?"
"I've got to get off-planet," he said. "I've got credit vouchers and personal papers—everything that's necessary. I just need someone to tell me how to go about buying passage at the spaceport here."
"Real vouchers? Real papers?"
"Real vouchers. The papers are real, too—they just belonged to someone else, once."
"Let me see them."
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out the long, lengthwise-folded travel wallet with its contents. She took them from his hand almost brusquely and began to go through them.
"Good," she said. "Nothing here to connect you with anyone in Ahruma. No one official's seen these since you left Citadel?"
"No," he said.
"Even better." She passed the papers back. "I can't do anything for you directly; but I can send you to someone who's probably—probably, note—safe to buy from. He's not so safe you can trust him with what you've been doing since you joined Rukh."
"I understand." He stowed the envelope with its papers once again in the inside pocket. "Can I get to him at this time of night?"
She stared at him so directly her gaze was almost brutal.
"You could," she said. "But you're ten paces from collapsing. Wait until morning. Meanwhile, I can give you some thing
s to knock down that infection and make sure you sleep."
"Nothing to make me sleep—" The words were an instinctive reflex out of the years of Walter the InTeacher's guidance. "What sort of medication were you thinking of for the infection?"
"Just immuno-stimulants," she said. "Don't worry. Nothing that does any more than promote your production of antibodies."
She half-turned to leave, then turned back.
"What did you do to my dogs?" she asked.
He frowned at her, almost too exhausted to think.
"Nothing… I mean, I don't know," he said. "I just talked to them. You can do it with any animal if you really mean it. Just keep making sounds with your mouth like the sounds they make and concentrate on meaning what you want to tell them. I just tried to say I was no enemy."
"Can you do it with people?"
"No, it doesn't work with people," he smiled a little out of his exhaustion. After a second, he added— "It's a pity."
"Yes, it's a pity," she said. She turned away fully. "Stay where you are. I'll get things for you."
Chapter Thirty-one
He woke suddenly, conscience gripping him sharply for some reason he could not at the moment recall. Then it exploded in him that he had let himself be talked into sleeping rather than continuing on his feet to whoever it was could sell him passage off Harmony.
For a moment, half-awake, he lay on whatever bed he had been given, feeling stripped and naked, as lonely and lost as he had felt in that moment four and a half years before, when he had turned away from the shadows on his terrace and the physical remains of Walter, of Malachi and Obadiah. In this moment between unconsciousness and full awareness, he was once again a child and as alone as he had ever been; and under the massive pressure of the weariness and feverishness that held him, the overwhelming urge in him was to curl up, to bury his head under the covers once more and retreat from the universe into the warm and eternal moment he had just left.
But, far off, like a strident voice barely heard, a sense of urgency spoke against further sleep. Late… already late… said his mind; and the urgency pulled him like a heavy fish out of deep water back to full awareness. He sat up staring into darkness, finally made out a faint line of something like illumination below eye level and two or three meters from him, and identified it as light coming faintly beneath a closed door.
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