On the Run (Mankind on the Run)

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Kil slammed his hand down furiously on the arm of his chair and, jumping to his feet, strode toward the door.

  "Wait—wait—" cried the detective, running after him "Wait a minute. Maybe I can help you some other way."

  Kil checked and swung about. "What way?"

  "I could give you some advice—some directions." A small cunningness crept into the thin man's eyes. "Of course I'd have to charge for it."

  Kil's hands twitched. He had a sudden, almost uncontrollable desire to pick the other man up and break him open in search of some solid answer. He controlled himself.

  "All right," he said. "What is it?"

  "One thousand; in advance."

  "One thou—" Abruptly Kil came to a belated recognition of the sort of man he was dealing with. "I'll give you a hundred," he said. "Two hundred."

  "All right, two hundred," said Kil, harshly. He watched as Marsk ran to the desk and punched a stud for a facsimile draft. Kil walked over and made it out for two hundred units. Marks triumphantly punched the stud again, and the facsimile disappeared, flashed instantaneously to Central Banking, to be deducted from Kil's account.

  "Now talk," said Kil.

  "All right I will." Marsk's voice was defensive. "You don't think I was thinking of holding back anything? I may be Class C, but I'm still Stab. The truth is, not even the big agencies can help you. Oh, they might, but the odds are against it. Even the ones with agencies and operatives in most of the larger spots can't really cover all the transportation centers; and that's where you do your locating when you want to find somebody."

  "You charged me two hundred to tell me this?" Kil could feel the deep, slow kindling of his rage beginning to burn inside him.

  "No, no—that's just part of it. I just wanted to let you know the agencies couldn't do it. But maybe there's some people who can—" Marsk broke off suddenly and his eyes roamed jerkily about the room.

  "What is it?" demanded Kil.

  "A looper—nothing—" murmured Marsk. His voice picked up strength again. "I was going to say—the Unstabs."

  "The Unstabs!"

  "Yes—not so loud," Marsk rubbed his hands together and then dried the palms of them on his kilt with a soothing motion. "I'm Class C. I don't have anything to do with them. But you learn things in this business. You go see a man called the Ace King."

  "The Ace King?" Kil stared at the detective. "Who's he?"

  "I don't know who he'll be. It's a title, not a name. It'll depend on who's in town at the moment. Hell be either a King or a Crim, though."

  Kil regarded him suspiciously.

  "What is this, double talk?" He leaned forward. "Kings, and Crims?"

  Marsk laughed high in his nose, a whinnying sound. "That's the way they talk," he said. "They've got names for themselves, for the three classes. Kings for Class One—

  What three classes?"

  Marsk stared at him, uncertain whether to laugh or be astonished.

  "You know—the three classes—just like our three Stab classes. You know about them?"

  "How should I know?" said Kil, harshly. "I don't have anything to do with Unstabs."

  "Class One, Two, and Three," Marsk said, still looking uncertainly at him. "Class One is on three week permit. They're top, like our Class A's—like you with six months. They call themselves Kings. Then there's Class Two, on two-week. They're middle, like our three month Class B's. Call themselves Crims. Then the last are one-weeks. Like our C's. They're called Potes."

  "Why?"

  "Why—?" Marsk floundered, at a loss.

  "Why're they called—what they're called? How'd they get these names?"

  "Why, King—I don't know. Because they're top, I suppose," said Marsk. "Oh, I see what you mean. Well, Class Ones are those who've rated just under the stability line on the yearly checks. They're perfectly decent, most of them." He looked at Kil half-challengingly. "Most of them lead perfectly regular lives, unless they get a bad stroke of luck, or something. The Class Two's are those who've shown bad Stab ratings and either a criminal record or criminal tendency. That'd be where their name Crim comes from, of course. Then the Threes, the Potes—" again Marsk made his jerky-eye reconnoiter of his office. "What about them?"

  "The Potes are potentials," said Marsk. When Kil still looked blank, the thin man made an angry gesture with one hand. "Potential dangers to the world peace! You know!"

  "No," replied Kil, bluntly.

  "They're the ones who could—who could build a CH bomb or find somebody else who could build one, or locate Files and wreck it . . ."

  "What do you mean, locate Files?" interrupted Kil. "Files is right here at Police Headquarters."

  "Is it? Oh, is it?" There was a momentary flash of weak anger from the thin man. "You class A's are all the same. You're on top of the world, so you never wonder about it. Well, for your information, here at World Police Headquarters is one place Files isn't. It's been hunted for plenty of times, believe me, in the last hundred years. And it's not here. Nobody knows where it is, except maybe some of the top men in the Police."

  Kil had the highly trained memory of the typical mnemonic engineer. He went back through it to his secondary school classes in Civics.

  "Five square miles," he said, "of computer, power plant, record space, integrators and power lines. You don't hide that in your kilt pocket."

  "Then you tell me where it is!" Marsk's eyes were bright. "Why if I could find that out, I could be rich tomorrow. I—" he checked himself. "You go see the Ace King, like I said."

  "I still don't understand it," said Kil, stubbornly. "Why Ace King?"

  "Because he's the top—the head man!" cried Marsk. "There's only one in each Slum. He runs everything."

  "They have to move like everybody else, I suppose," said Kil. "What if another comes along while he's there?"

  "Then one goes, or one gets closed up.

  Closed up?"

  "That's what the Unstabs say," Marsk gave a little, twitching smile. "It means they kill him. Don't look so shocked. That's why they're Unstab. What do you suppose started that riot in the Tokyo Slum yesterday—or don't you listen to the news?"

  Kil shook his head and returned grimly to the important point.

  "Anyway, this man can help me?"

  "If he wants to," said Marsk. "An Ace King can do anything —except locate Files." He looked earnestly at Kil. "I'll throw in some free advice. Keep your mouth shut as much as possible while you're down there. And hold onto your temper with both hands. The Police crack down on them if they hurt one of us; but you're Stab, and they hate Stabs, particularly Class A. Just don't give them an excuse to get rough, and you ought to do all right."

  "Thanks," said Kil, getting up. "I'll remember."

  "That's all right," Marsk rose with him. "I'm Stab, too. After all, they aren't our kind of people; though some of them aren't too bad. But we Stabs have to stick together, after all." He followed Kil to the door. "Just go into any bar or night club down there and ask the bartender for the Ace King. And then sit down someplace where you'll be sort of out of the way until he sends for you."

  Kil nodded. And went out.

  "Good luck!" said the voice of Marsk as the door closed between them.

  It was not hard to get to the Unstab Area, the Slum, which was, in fact, nothing more than an unmarked and arbitrary number of blocks, south of the city terminal. Riding in on one of the roadways and shivering a little in the sudden dullness of the night breeze, Kil wondered why he had never been to one before. There had been no particular reason to go; but on the other hand, for a Stab, there was never any reason to go. Neither Unstab people, nor Unstab amusements would be liable to hold any particular attraction for a Class A. Still, there was nothing of the ghetto about the area. The Stabs and the Police had not gotten together to force the Unstabs into these small pockets within the community. It had been the Unstabs themselves who had chosen to huddle off away from the rest. The remainder of the world was just as open to them as it was to
the Stabs; as their Slums were to the Stabs. Yet there was little straying from either section of the social group.

  Of course, it was a known fact that the Unstabs resented Stabs.

  There were no signs marking a boundary. But the minute Kil crossed into Unstab territory, he was made aware of the fact by a number of little things. For one, as he had noticed from his hotel window earlier, patches of dim light and even of actual shadow could suddenly be seen ahead on the heretofore brightly lit street, down which the moving roadway was carrying him. For another, the fixed sidewalks bordering the roadway and extending over to the front of the buildings along the street, began to be peopled by occasional lounging figures, not groups stopping and chatting as they might have elsewhere in the city, but solitary individuals leaning against store fronts and watching those who passed with an air of wariness or calculation. The shops themselves had a dingy air; as if, without being actually unclean, which was almost an impossibility in modern times, they had somehow managed to reflect the strange dustiness and disorder within the minds of those who occupied them. Few people seemed to be about; and yet the public buildings murmured with life behind dark or shielded fronts. Signs in muted colors identified the entertainment spots. And it was into one of these, a bar, that Kil left the safety of the moving roadway to enter.

  To his surprise, and in contrast to the glowing sign out front, the door that opened to his Key revealed a place seemingly dead and all but deserted. As he stood just inside the entrance, blinking in the sudden and unaccustomed gloom, it became slowly apparent that this first impression was a mistake, fostered by darkness and silence. The place was thinly but evenly populated.

  It was also larger than he had thought. To his left a short semi-circle of bar bellied out from the wall. To his right, a closely huddled pack of booths and tables faded off into the obscurity of a further wall that, for some reason, was broken up into little niches and crannies housing single booths in deep shadow. A scattering of dim forms sat here and there at the tables and there was a slim, irregular line of patrons around the bar.

  With all this, it took only a short moment for Kil to understand what had caused him, instinctively, to check his entrance a few feet inside the front door. He had stepped not only into darkness, but also into that same silence, noted earlier, the peculiar pregnancy of which is in itself a warning. And now, in the whole place, there was not a whisper, not a rustle, not a clink.

  They sat or stood, he saw now with clearing eyes, all staring at him. There was a tribal unanimity in their motionlessness, an ancient tribal hostility toward the stranger. They waited, it seemed, for him to make the first move; and he, half-hypnotized by the impact of their numerous eyes, stood fixed and incapable.

  Abruptly the silence was shattered by a wild, drunken whoop. A tall, blond boy of less than twenty, with a mop of unruly hair, staggered clear of the bar and stood facing Kil, half the length of the room between them.

  "Well, big S!" he shouted. "Big S! B . . . ig, dir . . . ty S!"

  Kil did not move. The silence in the rest of the bar continued unbroken. The boy stood weaving, silent now, but not turning back to his drink. Abruptly, the paralysis holding Kil snapped. He turned himself slowly toward the other drinkers watching him from the bar. He went down along it to an open space opposite the bartender and leaned across the bar to face him.

  The bartender said nothing.

  "I'd like," said Kil, "to talk to a man known as the Ace King."

  "A juby rig," said the man to Kil's right, suddenly. "I'll pipe."

  The bartender looked at the man and then back to Kil. His eyes were unfriendly.

  "A stick," he said. His voice was harsh and heavy, coming from a harsh and heavy face.

  "If he is," said the man on Kil's right, "who do you think you're coving with the gabby low?" He turned to Kil, a tall, cadaverous man with a dark Latin-looking face and something sardonic and distant in Iris eyes. "Who sent you, Chief?"

  "Cole Marsk."

  "Never heard of him."

  "He's a private detective. I wanted him to do some work for me," said Kil. "He said he couldn't, but to see a man called the Ace King."

  The tall man turned to the bartender.

  "Spin the dosker, Joel," he said.

  The bartender reached down below the bar and did something with his hands. He watched intently for a moment, then raised his head.

  "Marsk's on," he said. "He's piped before."

  "I'll pipe on then." The tall man turned once more to Kil. "Stay here until I come back for you. Sit at one of the tables there and keep your mouth shut."

  He shoved his drink away and started toward the door.

  "Hey, don't forget my per," yelled the bartender after him. "If it's a juby rig I want my five."

  The tall man laughed derisively.

  "You'll get five in a fist," he threw back over his shoulder without pausing. "Give him a drink and don't poison him. I'm piping this."

  He went out the door. The bartender turned a bitter face back toward Kil.

  "Well, what'll it be, Chief?" He spat the words out. Kil held on to his own temper with an effort.

  "Nothing," he answered. He turned and strode across the room to a table in the shadows. He sat down. Away, at die far end of the bar, the mop-headed boy pivoted unsteadily to face him.

  "Big, dirty, S!"

  "Clab it!" shouted the bartender, turning on the youth. Muttering, the boy twisted back to his drink; and the rest of the customers, as if all actuated by a single circuit, turned likewise, ignoring Kil.

  Kil sat and waited. Occasionally new people came in to the bar and others went out. The clientele changed faces without changing either numbers or types. Kil could have been invisible for all the attention paid him. He sat in stillness, feeling the waiting drain the tension from him, leaving him almost empty. For the moment, the hot coal of his purpose smothered and dimmed under the smoky pall of a dull and heavy apathy. He sat in a timeless vacuum, waiting for the tall man to return. Then, finally, after an interminable time, he came gradually back to conscious awareness, pricked by a faint whisper that was just reaching his ear.

  "Chief ... oh, Chief . . ."

  Kil slowly raised his head and started to twist about to the table behind and to his left, which sat in one of the little wall niches in deepest shadow.

  "No, Chief!" hissed the whisper, urgently. "Don't turn around. Keep looking the way you are. And don't move your lips when you answer."

  Kil complied. He let his head droop as if tired; and with his face half-hidden, whispered back through still lips.

  "Who're you?"

  "Dekko, Chief."

  "Dekko?"

  "Dekko. I called you at the Stick gate yesterday. You remember. "You were climbing into a cab and I asked if you wanted a runny."

  Slowly there swam back into focus in Kil's mind the picture of a narrow face, pointed-chinned and with straight black hair, which had grimaced at him through the window of the cab.

  "You're that little man," said Kil. "Well? What do you want?"

  "Work for you, Chief. You need a runny. I'm a good one." Kil considered the answer for a second. "What's a runny?" he whispered.

  "A runner, Chief. I can run you anywhere. You got a problem. I can help. I got a talent; and I know all the wires."

  "I don't," hissed Kil, exasperatedly, "understand half of what you're saying."

  "That's it. You see, Chief?" The answering whisper was triumphant. "You don't know anything about anything. You're a lost juby in riggertown. If you hadn't been piped to Crown One, they'd be all over you in this place by now. How you going to get done what you got to get done without a runny to slip the wires for you? You'd get shook out every time you turned around until there wasn't nothing to shake out no more and then some Crim would come along and close you up.

  "I don't think so," replied Kil. "I'm just down here to talk to this Ace King man. After that I'll be getting out."

  "That's what you think, Chief. I watch
ed you go into the Sticks and I read you coming out. You got a problem and it goes under the line where the wires are. I know. I tell you—"

  The whisper stopped abruptly, as if the speaker had choked it off in his throat.

  "What do you know—" Kil was beginning, when out of the comer of his eye, he saw the tall, cadaverous man reentering the bar. He watched the other stride toward him until he stood over Kil at the table.

  "All right, Chief," said the tall man. "Come on with me. Ace'll see you and I'm taking you to him."

  Slowly, Kil rose to his feet. The tall man turned and led the way out of the bar. As he stepped away from the tables, Kil turned a little sideways and threw one quick glance back over his shoulder.

  The table in the niche behind him was empty. Several tables down, a fat and drunken old man dozed above his half-finished drink. Otherwise the space surrounding where he had sat was deserted. There was no sign of the little man called Dekko anywhere in the place.

  Chapter four

  The tall man led Kil through several streets and finally down a dark alley to a building's side entrance. Within, there were several doors to be opened by the tall man's Key, and several short hallways to pass before they stepped at last into a long room stripped bare to the basic metal and plastic of its wall, ceiling and floors. The room was empty of furniture except for a desk at its far end, behind which a small man sat staring fixedly at them as they came in, and a chair before it. Behind the little man at the desk, another, younger man, in white tunic and kilt edged in gold, leaned against the opaqued window that filled that end of the room, looking pallid and almost macabre against its blackness.

  "Here he is, Ace," said the tall man.

  "Thank you, Birb. Ono, go stand by the door, will you?" As the man lounging against the window moved forward and around the desk, the man known as the Ace King kept his eyes fixed on Kil. "So this is the man," he said, in a dry, hard voice that had a nearly feminine waspishness to it. "Well, come here and sit down, you."