On the Run (Mankind on the Run)

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Kil strode forward. The room was longer than it seemed. The bare walls and bright, unrelieved lighting gave it a hot, unnaturally clear and sharp appearance, like an hallucination seen in deep fever. As he reached the chair and sat down, Kil saw that the Ace was not sitting behind his desk, after all, but standing; and that he was much smaller than he had at first appeared. He was a square, dry-skinned man in his early fifties, swaddled almost, in long trousers of thick, purple cloth clipped into black boots and a black, turtle-necked long sleeved tunic. His lined face was leathery, his eyes small and hard.

  "What's your name?" said the Ace.

  Kil told him. The Ace stood looking at him.

  "Well?" snapped the little man, at last, "Well? What did you want to see me about?"

  Kil remembered Marsk's advice and took a firm grip on his temper with both hands.

  "I want to find my wife," he answered. "She's disappeared. A private detective named Marsk said you might be able to help me."

  "Oh, he did? Well, I've never even heard of him." The Ace frowned down at his desk and made a minute adjustment in the papers laid out in militarily precise order there. "However, since you're here, I might as well listen. What happened? I suppose you had some little lover's spat."

  Kil felt himself go hot, and his eyes burned. With an effort, he held his voice down, though the words came out before he could stop them.

  "Don't let the situation go to your head," he said. "I'll tell you what you're going to need to know."

  There were a couple of audible breaths from the back of the room and Ace jerked his head up. The expression on his face as he stared at Kil did not change; but he went momentarily and horribly pale. After a short moment, his color came back.

  "Go ahead," he said in a neutral voice.

  Kil told him. In the retelling of it, he regained his calmness; and by the time he was finished he was once more in control of himself. As for Ace, he seemed almost friendly, as if the small passage-at-words had never been.

  "Interesting," he said, when Kil had finished. "A strange story."

  Kil looked sharply at him, to see if there was any further sarcasm in this, but the man's face was clear. "Well?" demanded Kil. "Well-what?

  Can you find her?"

  "Well, now," said the Ace. "That depends." He came around the desk and perched on a corner of it, looking down into Kil's face. "You come here to ask a service, you know," he said, softly. "You come here to see me because none of your Class A, or Class B, or Class C friends can help you."

  "Friends?" echoed Kil. "I want to hire somebody. Can you do it? How much?"

  The Ace stood up again and went back behind the desk. He sat down and it became immediately apparent that the chair to his desk had been abnormally cushioned, because he was nearly as tall seated as he had been standing.

  "How much? Yes, how much?" he said. "That's right, you wouldn't want favors. But I feel generous, you know. There's actually several ways you could pay for my assistance."

  "Check? Cash? It doesn't matter."

  "No, no, you don't understand. Nothing like that. I said several ways, several different kinds of payments.

  Such as?" demanded Kil.

  The Ace put his fingertips on the desk and leaned forward.

  "Perhaps you know something that might be useful to me. It's an axiom of mine that valuable information is like diamonds, often stumbled upon unexpectedly. And since the price for what you want is high . . ." He let his voice trail off.

  "How high?"

  "Quite high. I might even say—by your standards—very high. There's people to be paid all over the world. You see, what we do is pass the word; and everybody in our areas the world over keeps his eyes open. So the price for the one who first discovers your wife has to be enough to make it worth the trouble of his looking. Then the local Ace in the area where she's discovered will want a slightly greater amount and naturally, you pay me the most of all."

  "How much?" said Kil.

  "But I'm just talking about money! Suppose you were able to pay some other way, entirely say, by providing me with information. Let's look on the optimistic side first." He held up two fingers of his right hand. "If you can help me with either one of two questions, we'll find your wife for nothing. I'll pay for it."

  Kil stared at him for a long moment.

  "All right," he said at last. "Ask ahead.".

  "That's nice," said the Ace, leaning back. "That's very agreeable. Now, for question number one. There is a man in whom we're all very interested. Is he a man? I think so. Yes, I think we can take that much for granted. Perhaps, talking to your letter-Class friends you've heard of him. Perhaps even met him. The Commissioner?"

  The last words were said in almost an idle tone, so lightly and so casually that Kil, staring at the short Unstab, had trouble for a moment believing that he had heard correctly. "Who?" he asked.

  "The Commissioner," repeated the Ace, blandly. "I don't know anyone by that title."

  "Now," said the Ace, "I can hardly believe that. He's one of your own people."

  "What do you mean, one of my people?" snapped Kil.

  "What people have you? The Class A's, of course."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," said Kil.

  "All right," the Ace sighed. "I'll be plain about it. You Class A's need the Police to stay where you are—on top of the world. You can't control the Police very well with a new head going in every six months, so you have a secret head man who goes by the title of Commissioner—an unofficial head. I want to know who he is."

  "You're crazy!" said Kil, incredulously.

  "You won't tell me?"

  "I don't know; there is no such man."

  "All right," the Ace's voice had hardened. "It seems you don't want this wife of yours back as much as you say you do. But I'll give you another chance. What do you know about Sub-E?"

  "Sub-E?"

  The Ace sat and stared at him for a long, long moment without speaking.

  "You know," he said at last. "You might just be telling the truth- You might just be the complete fool you seem to be, after all."

  "Now, look!" Kil started up in his chair and felt hard hands slam him down again. He twisted his head to look behind him and saw the tall, cadaverous man, Birb, standing over him.

  "You look," said The Ace, and Kil turned his eyes back to look at him. "You come in here and demand to see me, with your insufferable Class A nose in the air. You say you're going to tell me all I'll need to know—as if you were the one to be giving orders around here. As if I was dirt under your feet because you're Class A and I'm Class One. Never mind the fact that I've got more intelligence than you ever dreamed of having! Never mind that I could buy you and sell you a thousand times over and never even notice the cost! Never mind—" The man's eyes were showing their whites all the way around the pupil and a little moisture flew from his working lips into Kil's face "—that I'm a busy man and your lousy little wife means nothing to me. You came in to see me. So let's talk business. Let's talk money, since you obviously haven't got anything else. How much will it cost to find your wife? How much will it cost in money? Two hundred thousand, that's what it'll cost!"

  Kil blinked at the rigid little man, stunned.

  "Two hundred thousand?" he managed, finally.

  "Two hundred—hundred thousand! That's the price! That's the regular price! If you'd gone to any other Ace but me, they'd have asked you if you had that much money before they bothered to talk to you. But I wanted to be kind. I tried to be decent. I know mnemonic engineers aren't rich; and I tried to think of some way you could pay otherwise."

  "Listen!" said Kil; but the words pouring from the Ace's mouth overwhelmed and flooded over his interruption.

  "But no matter what I did, no matter what I tried, you continued to insult me, to try to take advantage of me! You planned this. You thought you could walk all over me because you're Class A and I'm Class One! You thought maybe you could bully me, scare me into working for you f
or nothing. Well, you've come to the wrong man for that! I've got position and authority. I've got power and I know it. If you'd been halfway decent I'd have found some way to help you. Two hundred thousand is twenty years' income to you, but it's nothing to me. I might even have paid part of it out of my own pocket just to be kind, to help you. But no matter how I tried, how I leaned over backwards to help you, you just trampled on me some more. Well, now you can go to hell! You can go to hell! You and your slut of a wife who's probably off with some other man right this very min—"

  It was a wide desk, but Kil went over it in one jump. His hands closed around the Ace's throat, the desk chair flopped over backwards and they crashed to the floor together, the little man underneath and squalling like a cat. Through a dark blur of rage, Kil was conscious of blows landing on him from behind, of hard hands pulling him away from his enemy; but he held on grimly, until something broke in splintering pain against the back of his head and a black mist closed around him.

  When it cleared a second later, there was water dripping from his face and he was being held upright between Birb and Ono. The Ace was facing him, his turtle-necked tunic torn and his face congested above it.

  "Take him out," he said, breathing hard and speaking softly. "Take him out. Teach him to hit mel"

  The two men dragged Kil away.

  They went back out the route by which Kil had entered, and emerged into the alley. The sudden dimness, after the bright lights of the office and the corridors, was startling. At the far end of the alley the sunbeam-illuminated street was a distant rectangle of white light with black patches of shadow that were doorways pacing off the distance down the side of the building toward it.

  "Hold him, Ono," said Birb.

  There was a subtle shifting of hands and Kil found himself held in a full nelson by Ono, while the cadaverous man moved around to face him.

  "All right, Stab," said Birb.

  It was like the tail end of a bucking log in the rapids of a mountain stream catching him in the stomach. Kil doubled over, gasped for air and began to struggle. Other blows came swiftly and heavily. Body, head, neck, face, groin. There was a drumming in his ears and a haze of pain rose to blind him.

  "Drop him." It was the voice of Birb again; and, although he had not been conscious of falling, Kil felt the hardness of the alley pavement rough against his cheek.

  "Boots, Ono, and I'll—"

  Suddenly, from nowhere, the universe rocked to a soundless flash of light and one of the two men above Kil screamed like a wounded horse. There was a scrambling sound in the alley and a series of long, hoarse gasps. Kil felt arms pulling him to his feet. Blindly he groped, his eyes still seared and sightless from the flash. Hands took his arm and pulled 'him, staggering, along.

  "Can you run, Chief?" asked a voice. "Come on, hang onto me. We got to go fast."

  It was the voice of Dekko.

  Chapter five

  The apartment was just like any apartment in the class of buildings which could be registered in with three weeks or more time to go on your Key; by which piece of evidence, coupled with the fact that by manners and language he was obviously Unstab, Kil came early to the conclusion that Dekko was Class One; by title, at least, the equal of the little man known as the Ace King. The apartment itself consisted of a sleeping room and lounge with lavatory off to one side and a small dining area, furnished with delivery slots, leading from the building's automatic kitchen. There was the usual furniture in the form of tables, beds, chairs, a vision box in each room and a large, wall-sized one-way window in the lounge. The first two days, when it was all Kil could do to drag his aching body on occasional trips between the bed and the lavatory, Kil had spent most of his waking hours lying on one of the beds and watching the bedroom screen. He occupied himself with news broadcasts, mainly, except for the occasions when the discomfort of his battered frame became too insistent a drag on his attention. Then he would switch over to one of the pain-relieving hypnotic patterns and give himself ten minutes of conditioning. The patterns were not too successful. He was a bad hypnotic subject and had known it since grade school. But at the same time he had a slight block against chemical palliatives, hating to surrender any level of his awareness to a drug; and he had turned down Dekko's offer of barbiturates.

  The news broadcasts were the best distraction. He had never really listened to them before, and would not have listened to them now except that music or the regular light entertainment of the boxes left his mind to free to wander— and it wandered in only one direction. Ellen. Her going and her reasons for it had worn a deep, circular rut in his mind, around which he endlessly chased a question mark. The very instinct for self preservation steered him away from it now. And the news broadcasts helped. He was astonished, now that he listened, to discover that there was so much amiss in the world. While there were no big disasters—for which, of course, everyone could thank science—the number of small turbulences and revolts and accidents was so great that they were totalled up in kind and reported as statistics. There were statistics for everything. It seemed all you had to do was choose the appropriate percent of the population to which you belonged; and your individual group trouble was there waiting for you. The only exception seemed to be the Class A's like himself. Not like himself, he corrected the thought in his head.

  He wondered about Dekko, who was gone most of the time. He slipped in and out of the apartment like a sneak thief, making brief appearances to see that nothing was wanting for Kil, and immediately vanishing again. He either had someplace else to sleep, or slept nearly not at all.

  The afternoon of the third day, however, Kil had dragged himself, grunting, from the bed to the lounge, and was sitting there, enjoying his first view of sky and city through the window, when the door to the apartment clicked open and Dekko's voice spoke cheerfully behind him.

  "Hi, Chief. How's it mending?"

  Kil turned his head and watched the small man approach.

  "Better," he said.

  Dekko closed the door behind him and came gliding across the carpet to drop in a chair opposite. He had a curious way of walking, almost on his toes, so that he moved with deceptive swiftness and a seemingly effortless stride. Seated, he was less imposing. His black hair was combed straight back above his abnormally wide forehead and sharp nose. The slight hump in his back thrust his shoulders and neck forward, so that his sharp chin seemed about to dig holes in the scarlet tunic covering his chest. His waist was small, but the forearms and calves that the tunic and kilt left uncovered were corded with surprising muscle. He grinned at Kil.

  "You stood up pretty well to being shook out," he said.

  "Is that what you call it?" grunted Kil.

  "Sometimes," said Dekko, his black eyes bright. "About time we talked things over, Chief."

  Kil stirred restlessly, sending a twinge through his still-stiff middle.

  "Look," he said. "Can we do without the Chief? It makes me feel like something dug up out of a museum. The name's Bruner, or Kil if you like that better."

  "Do me!" said Dekko. His eyes were black, bright, humorous points in his face. "Kil, then; though it's not usual for a runny."

  Kil examined him.

  "Tell me something," he said. "What is usual for a runny? Does a runny usually do the sort of thing you've had to do for me?"

  Dekko went off into a perfectly silent fit of laughter. He sat *in the chair with his thin shoulders shaking. "Do me, no!" he said. "I'm a free-lance.

  I don't get it."

  "Ordinary runnies," explained Dekko, "got to check out with their Ace, wherever they are. A free-lance like me doesn't give a damn for Ace or anybody. That's the difference."

  Kil bent a little toward him in curiosity.

  "How do you get to be a free-lance?"

  Dekko flashed a mouthful of perfectly even teeth.

  "You need something special." He smiled at Kil. "And don't ask me what I got. That's a trade secret. All you need to know is that I can deliver wher
e maybe an ordinary runny can't."

  Kil shook his head and leaned back.

  "I don't think you can, in my case," he said. 'You don't know what I'm up against."

  "Sure. Wife's gone," said Dekko. Kil jerked upright again in surprise. "How did you know?" Dekko held up three fingers.

  "Three people you told your yarn to. I saw you go into the Sticks and I read you for a problem. I saw you come out the Stick gate and you still had the problem, so you told the Sticks and they didn't help. I checked you across the city and into a hotel; I checked you out of the hotel to see a two-bit named Marsk. I checked you into the area to see Ace. That's three. Some Stick, Marks, and Ace. Now you tell me who told me."

  "Marsk," said Kil, without hesitation. "But what's a Stick?

  A Nightstick-a World Cop.

  What's a Nightstick?" Dekko laughed again.

  "The way I heard it," he said. "Once there was cops that carried clubs called nightsticks. Nobody was supposed to stand still on the streets in those days. If you did, some cop with a nightstick'd come up and tell you to move on. Get it now?" He peered at Kil.

  "Oh." said Kil. "You mean this business of the World Police making sure everybody moves on from the area he's in, when his permitted time is up?"

  "That's it: Sticks."

  Kil nodded and went back to his own problem. "What makes you think you can do something for me when nobody else can? And what's your price, anyway? I can't pay two hundred thousand dollars."

  "Who asked it? That's Ace price," said Dekko. "With me you don't pay a price because you're not buying, you're hiring. I cost a thousand a month; and I'm worth it. To answer that first question, though, I don't know whether I can get your wife back or not. But I know stuff nobody else does; and I've got a wire."

  Kil shook his head bewilderedly.

  "I don't understand half what you're saying. What's this wire business?"

  "The Societies. I'm Thieves Guild and a couple of other things. We can try running a wire to the O.T.L. and check through them."