“Oh, it is easy, rf she has an organization loyal to her,” Svoboda said. “I can imagine any number of ruses. For ex- ample, let a woman who resembles her come to the house. Inside, they exchange clothes, and Macandal walks out. After dark that should work. Her people will hide her until she can reach a refuge she surely prepared beforehand.”
“Hm, bow shall we and she get in touch later, if we don’t know each other’s locations or aliases?” Wanderer asked.
“She must have told her comrade Aliyat what the possibilities are.”
“How can Aliyat tell us? In fact, why are we wasting air on this chatter, when she’s a prisoner and the cops will shortly have the clues to her nature? Didn’t Macandal point that out to you, Hanno?”
“No,” the other man said. “It hadn’t occurred to her. She was shocked, bewildered, harassed, grieved, exhausted. I’m amazed she could think straight at all. Since I wanted her to make her exit, I refrained from bringing the question up. Besides, the Aliyat matter is not entirely hopeless.”
“Chto?” Svoboda cried. “What do you mean?”
“The truth won’t come out overnight,” Hanno reminded them. “Possibly it never would. I’m not certain that copies of prints from those obscure police files of decades ago ever got to Washington. If they did, or if the investigators get the idea of making a search, that’ll take time. And then, if an identity is found—well, Thomas Jefferson, who was as en-tightened a man as ever lived, once said he could more readily believe that some Yankee professors had lied than that stones fell from the sky. It would be scientifically more respectable to assume there’d been a mixup in the records than that a human being could stay young for fifty or a hundred years.”
Svoboda scowled. “Possession of her would not allow that assumption, I think. And she might decide that telling everything will be to her profit.”
“She might very well,” Hanno agreed, remembering. “Oh, a thousand things could go wrong, from our viewpoint. Let’s see if we can’t take corrective action. For that purpose, and for more obvious reasons, we’ll decamp tonight.”
“The gate is watched, you tell me,” Svoboda said glumly. “How, I do not know. I have not noticed a parked car or men standing on that rural road.”
“Why should you? A battery-powered miniature TV camera in the brush opposite will serve. The road dead-ends at the lake, you may recall. Bound anywhere else, you head hi the opposite direction and pass the Willows Lodge. No doubt two or three persons checked in a little while ago and spend more time in their cabin than is usual for vacationers.”
“You can glorify modern technology as much as you want,” Wanderer growled. “Me, more and more I feel the walls closing in.”
“How shall we evade them?” Svoboda asked. Dread and despair had yielded to keenness.
Hanno grinned. “Every fox has two holes to his burrow. Let’s pack what we’ll need. I keep plenty of cash on hand, together with traveler’s checks, credit cards, assorted ID not made out to Tannahill. I’ll hand the servants a plausible story, which’ll contain a red herring. Tonight— A panel at the rear of the fence swings aside without touching off the alarm, if you know what to do. It gives on the woods, and the village is three miles beyond that. There’s a man there, lives alone, grumpy old bachelor type, who likes my magazine except he complains it’s too leftish. I always try to cultivate somebody, whenever I maintain a base for any span of time, somebody I can rely on to do me an occasional favor and not mention it to anyone else. He’ll drive us to where we can get a bus or train. We’ll probably be smart to switch conveyances en route, but we’ll still be in New York tomorrow.”
14
The hospital building might well be a hundred years old, brick dark with grime, windows not lately washed. The modernization inside was minimal. This was for the poor, the indigent, the victims of accident and violence. Its neighbors were as drab. The traffic that rumbled and screeched about them was mostly commercial and industrial. The air was foul with its fumes.
A taxi drew up at the curb. Hanno passed the driver a twenty-dollar bill. “Wait here,” he directed. “We’re fetching a friend. She’ll be pretty weak, needs to get home right away.”
“I’ll hafta circle the block if ya take too long,” the driver warned.
“Circle it fast, then, and park again whenever you see a chance. This is worth a nice tip.”
The driver looked dubious, understandable considering the institution. Svoboda ostentatiously jotted down his name and number. Hanno followed her out and closed the door. He carried a parcel, she an overnight bag. “Remember, now, this will only work if we behave as though we owned the accounts receivable office,” he muttered.
“ You remember I have been a sharpshooter and slipped through the Iron Curtain,” she answered haughtily.
“Uh, sorry, that was a stupid thing for me to say. I’m distracted. Ah, there he is.” Hanno inclined his head hi the direction of Wanderer. Shabbily clad, hat pulled low, the Indian slouched along the sidewalk tike one with nothing better to do.
Hanno and Svoboda entered a gloomy lobby. A uniformed guard cast them an incurious glance. Even these patients sometimes got visitors. Reconnoitering yesterday, they had ascertained that no police guard was on Rosa Do-nau. She had automatically been taken here and it was deemed unsafe to transfer her to a better hospital when the word came that money was available to pay for that. Therefore this place’s security ought to suffice.
Hanno sought a men’s room. It was unoccupied, but he entered a stall to be cautious. Opening his parcel, he unfolded a smock coat and donned it. He’d acquired it, plus a lot of other stuff, at a medical supply firm. It wasn’t quite identical with what the orderlies wore, but should get by if nobody had cause to look closely. Outfits faded or stained were more the rule than the exception. He dropped the wrapping in a trash can and rejoined Svoboda. They took an elevator upward.
They had learned yesterday that Rosa Donau was on the seventh floor. The receptionist had told them she could only have very brief visits, and remarked on how many people came, anxiously inquiring.
Two women had been on hand when Hanno and Svoboda walked into the ward. They had brought flowers, which they could probably HI afford. Hanno smiled at them, went to the bedside, bent over the victim. She lay white, hollow-cheeked, shallowly breathing. He would not have recognized her had he not seen the pictures his detectives took for him. Indeed, without the hunch than this was she, he might well never have known her by those snapshots. It had been a long, long time. He hoped that her Romaic Greek was no rustier than his. After all, he supposed, she’d mostly been in the Levant before coming to America. “Aliyat, my friend and I believe we can smuggle you out. Do you want that? Otherwise you’ll lose your liberty forever, you know. I have money. I can give you the freedom of the world. Do you want to escape?”
She lay mute for a moment that stretched, before she barely nodded.
“Well, do you think you can walk a short distance and make it look natural? A hundred meters, perhaps. We’ll help you, but if you fall, we’ll have to leave you and flee.”
A ghost of color tinged her skin. “Yes,” she whispered, unthinkingly in English.
“Tomorrow afternoon, then. Make sure you have no callers. Tell these people you feel worse and need a few days undisturbed. Ask them to spread the word. Husband your strength.”
He straightened, to meet the stares of the women from Unity. “I wasn’t aware she’s in this serious a condition,” he told them. “Otfterwise I’d have let her know beforehand my wife and I were coming.”
“You from out of town?” asked one.
“Yes. We hadn’t seen her for quite a while, but we read about the, uhr incident, and since we’re of her nationality and had business in New York anyway—Well, I am sorry. We’d better go, Olga. We’ll see you later, Rosa, when you’re more recovered. Take care.” He and Svoboda patted the limp hands. They left.
A walk around the seventh-floor halls, a quick peek into the
ward as they went by, revealed no sign of a trap. If Aliyat didn’t actually wish to leave, with the hazards and pains that meant, she could help herself by spilling the truth and ratting on Hanno. He had gambled on her distrust of authority being too ingrained, after her many centuries, or at least on her having the shrewdness to foresee that confession would close out every other choice.
This entire operation was a gamble. If it failed, and he and Svoboda could not make a getaway— He mustn’t let worry dull his wits and sap his energy.
“Damn,” he said. “No wheelchair. Let’s try the next floor down.”
They got lucky there. Wheelchairs, gurneys, and the like commonly stood unattended in the corridors. He took what he wanted and pushed it briskly to the elevator. A nurse glanced at him, parted her lips, half shrugged and hurried onward. The staff was overworked, underpaid, and doubtless had considerable turnover on that account. Svoboda trailed him at a discreet distance, pretending to look for a room number.
Back on seven, they proceeded to Aliyat’s ward. Speed was now the key to everything. Svoboda entered first. If a nurse or doctor was present, they’d have to continue prowling around, biding their chance. She stepped back to the doorway and beckoned. His heart bumped. He went in past her.
The dingy room held a double row of beds, most occupied. Some patients watched the televisions above either row, some dozed, some were vegetables, a few looked at tiie newcomer, but dully. None questioned him. Hanno hadn’t expected they would. An environment like this was ghastly deadening. Aliyat too had fallen asleep. She blinked her eyes open when he touched her shoulder. Abruptly he did know her again, the ferret alertness that she had dissembled until too late for him, last time around.
He beamed. “All right, Ms. Donau, let’s go for those lab tests, shall we?” be said. She nodded and visibly braced herself. Oh, she knew this would hurt. He kept old sailor skills, such as carrying loads carefully, and while his body wasn’t that of any Hercules, its wiriness had never flagged. He bent his knees, took hold, swung her from bed to chair. Her arms crept about his neck. He felt a brief, roguish flirt of fingers in his hair. He also heard the sharply indrawn breath.
Svoboda had kept aside, and continued to do so while he wheeled Aliyat to the elevator. She took it together with them. Yesterday he and she had found what they wanted on the second floor, minimizing the distance Aliyat must go on her feet. It was another gamble that the hydrotherapy bath would be vacant, but a fairly safe bet at this time of day.
Hanno took Aliyat in, told her in a few words what came next, and left. Somebody else was walking by. Hanno went the opposite way, his expression preoccupied. Svoboda dawdled until she could slip in unobserved, carrying her overnight bag.
Again Hanno took shelter in a men’s room and spent an agreed-on ten minutes by his watch, seated on a toilet and contemplating graffiti. They were uniformly vulgar and semi-literate. I should raise the tone of this joint, he decided. Anything to keep from fretting. He undipped a pen, located a clear space, and printed carefully: “ x n + y” = z° has no integral solution for all n greater than two. I have found a marvelous proof of this theorem, but there is not room in this stall to write it down.”
Time. He left his smock behind and returned to the bath. Svoboda was just emerging; splendid girl. Aliyat leaned on her, no longer in a hospital gown but a dress, stockings, shoes, a lightweight coat that covered the bulges of bandages. Svoboda had kept the bag. Hanno joined them and lent his support. “How’re you doing?” he asked in English.
Air (and blood?) rattled. “I’ll make it,” Aliyat gasped, “but—oh, shit—no, never mind.” Her weight pulled at him. She minced along, unevenly, now and then staggering. Sweat studded her face and reeked in his nostrils. He had seen corpses less blue-pale.
Nevertheless she moved. And it was as though she gained a bit of strength thereby, until you could almost say she walked. That’s the wild card in my hand, Hanno thought. The vitality of the immortal. No normal human could do this so soon after such a wounding.
But she won’t be able to, either, unless she draws on whatever wellsprings are her own.
In the downbound elevator, she sagged. Hanno and Svoboda upheld her. “You must be firm and walk straight,” the Ukrainian said. “It is only for a little way. Then you can rest. Then you will be free.”
Aliyat peeled lips back from teeth. “There’s ... a dance ... hi the old dame ... yet.”
When they emerged in the lobby, she didn’t exactly stride, but you’d have to look hard to notice how much help she needed. Hanno’s eyes flickered back and forth. Where the hell— Yes, yonder sat the Indian, on the split and peeling plastic of a settee, thumbing through a decrepit magazine.
Wanderer saw them, lurched to his feet, reeled against a man passing by. “Hey,” he shouted, “why’n’chu look where ya going?” with an obscenity added for good measure.
“There’s the front door,” Hanno murmured in Aliyat’s ear. “Hup, two, three, four.”
Wanderer’s altercation loudened on his right. It caught everybody’s attention. A couple of guards pushed toward him. Hanno hoped he wouldn’t overdo it. The idea was to provide two or three minutes’ distraction without getting arrested, merely expelled— Trouble with Wanderer, he’s a gentleman by instinct, he doesn’t have the talent for acting a belligerent drunk. He does have brains, however, and tact.
Into the open. Dusty though it was, sunlight momentarily dazzled. The taxi stood at the curb. Hermes, god of travelers, merchants, and thieves, thanks.
Hanno helped Aliyat in. She slumped bonelessly and struggled for breath. Svoboda took her other side. Hanno gave an address. The cab started off. As it wove its way through congestion and squawks, Aliyat’s weight swayed to and fro. Svoboda felt beneath her coat, nodded pinch-lipped, took a towel from the bag and held it in place, more or less concealed. To blot up blood, Hanno knew; the injury was hemorrhaging.
“Say, that lady all right?” the driver asked. “Looks to me like they shouldn’t of let her go.”
“Schartz-Metterklume syndrome,” Hanno explained. “She does need to get home and to bed as fast as you can make it.”
“Yeah,” Aliyat rasped. “Cmon and see me tomorrow, big boy.”
The driver widened his mouth and rolled his eyes, but pushed on. At the destination, Hanno redeemed his promise of a lavish tip. It should buy silence, did pursuit guess that a taxi had been involved. Not that the story would help the police much, by that time.
“Around the corner,” Svoboda told Aliyat. “Half a block.”
Red dripped onto the sidewalk. Nobody else seemed to notice, or if they did, they chose not to get involved. Hanno had counted on that.
A small moving van stood in a parking garage. Hanno had rented it yesterday, contracting to turn it in at Pocatello, Idaho. Its bulk screened from casual glances how her companions lifted Aliyat into the body of it. A foam mattress and bedding waited, together with what medical supplies one could readily buy. Hanno and Svoboda peeled her clothes off. They washed her, applied an antibiotic, dressed the wound anew, made her as comfortable as they could.
“I think she will recover,” Svoboda said.
“Damn straight I will,” Aliyat mumbled.
“Leave us,” Svoboda ordered Hanno. “I will care for her.”
The Phoenician obeyed. She’d been a soldier, who knew first aid; she’d been a veterinarian, and humans aren’t vastly unlike their kindred. He closed the tail doors on them and settled himself to wait in the cab. At least he could indulge in a pipe of tobacco now, and a slight case of the shakes.
Before long, Wanderer arrived. Hanno had rarely seen him this joyful. “Whoopee ti-yi-yo,” he warbled.
“Maybe I better take the first stretch at the wheel,” Hanno said: The van growled to life. He paid the parking fee and set forth westward.
15
It was natural that Mr. and Mrs. Tu would arrange a picnic for their guests, the people they’d met in the cities, but the kids were di
sappointed that they weren’t invited too. These seemed like real interesting folks, in spite of not saying much about themselves. First was convalescent Miss Adler, whom the Tus met in Pocatello and drove here; she was mending so fast that her trouble couldn’t have been too bad. The rest had to stay at the hotel hi town but spent their days on the ranch: Mr. and Mrs. Tazurin, Mr. Langford, who admitted he was an Indian, and black Miss Edmonds, all different from each other and from everybody else.
Well, probably they wanted to be alone and talk about plans, like maybe for enlarging the house, making room for more fosterlings. They did act pretty solemn, nice enough but not like vacationers. Mostly they, including the Tus, strolled off by twos and threes, gone for hours.
On the brow of a hill that commanded a wide and beautiful view, Tu Shan had long since assembled a redwood table and benches. The party parked their cars nearby and got out. For a while they stood silent, looking. Halfway up the eastern sky, the sun made a few clouds as brilliant as the western snowpeaks. Between stretched a thousand greens, range, cropland, trees along the lazily shining river. A pair of hawks wheeled aloft, their wings edged with gold. A breeze mildened the air. It murmured and smelled of ripeness.
“Let’s talk before we unload the eats,” Hanno proposed. That was unnecessary, having been understood, but it got things started. Humans were apt to put off making difficult decisions, and immortals especially so. “I hope we can finish in time to relax and enjoy ourselves, but if need be we’ll wrangle till sundown. That’s the deadline, agreed?”
He sat down. Svoboda joined him on his right, Wanderer on the left. Opposite them were benched Tu Shan, Asagao, Aliyat, and she whose name among them remained Corinne Macandal. Yes, Hanno thought, in spite of having tried to get well acquainted and become a fellowship, we still un-noticingly divide up according to the partnerships we had.
None would have accepted a chairman, but one person had to take the initiative andWhe was the senior. “Let me summarize the agenda,” he said. “I can’t tell you anything new or unobvious. However, maybe I can save us further repetition.
The Boat of a Million Years Page 44
