"Seen them?" murmured Kil.
"Seen them—hell, yes." I've seen them! Jittery, wall-stupid, jumping from city to city as if their tails were on fire—hey boy, you're going to sleep, sit up—and not knowing Sunday from shaving lotion about anything you can't get by pressing a button. Last time I was down below Chilpancingo, I saw an orchid, a cattleya—one of the common ones, but I took a fancy to it and sealed it in some transparent plastic. Happened a month or so later I was in Mexico—Mexico City, that is—I brought Hortense into a parts place to get the floater rollers degummed. Man in charge happened to see the cattleya. Regular native type, too. 'Migawd,' he said— or something to that effect—'What've you got here? Something valuable? Because if it is, you better let me lock it up while the rollers are being cleaned.' Something valuable! Lock it up! His great-grandmother would have known what it was, all right."
"Yes." said Kil.
"Everybody walking around like they were in lockstep. Sure, Files, they say, and the Police. Don't you think it, boy. You know with four billion people in the world, we've got more open country than we had fifty years ago? People've hypnoed themselves into believing the world's all city. Free Transportation. They can go anywhere on Earth they want. And where do they go? From hotel Bungo in Bongo-Bongo to hotel Zenobia in Zanesville. And they say—'how nice,' they say, 'This little suite has just the same number of windows that we had in the one in Bongo-Bongo. My, what a nice permanent feeling it does give one.' " The old man's voice, which had soared into a savagely mincing falsetto, dropped back to his ordinary tones again. "Hell, people used to save all their lives just so they could get out and see what the rest of the world looked like. And these—" words failed him.
"No good—no use—" muttered Kil, wearily. "Give up."
"Did I say that?" the old man caught him up sharply. "No such thing! While there's life, there's hope; and don't you forget that. Just that people don't budge until they have to, that's all. Most of them just put off doing something about a bad situation until the last moment. What it needs is someone to come along and yank them out of their plastic and concrete. Take them out and rub their noses in the dirt and open their eyes to the good green earth again. Hell, boy, we still got sunsets and thundershowers. And the Grand Canyon, the Amazon, the Sahara, Mount Everest and the Bering Straits. They haven't torn down the Acropolis or the Pyramids. Just nobody goes to look at them for the same reason that people never stepped across town to look at Grant's Tomb. They could go there anytime they wanted to, so they never got around to it. If I had my way—here's Duluth coming up now, boy. Where do you want me to drop you off?"
Kil roused himself with an effort.
"Oh—the terminal," he said, thickly. "I'll have to reset my Key."
"Whatever you want. Going on up the lake, myself," said the old man. He rolled the bug across the wide expanse of the outcity traffic circle and parking area; and let Kil off at curbside before the doors of the terminal. "Good luck, boy."
"Why—thanks," said Kil. "The same to you."
The botanician laughed.
"I got it already. So long."
He geared the bug and rolled off. Kil turned and entered the door behind him.
A mag ship had just unloaded at the terminal and there were lines in front of all the check stations. Kil stood and waited his turn until he could thrust his Key into a check box. Finally it came, there was an almost soundless click and the figures 182 days, 9 hours, popped into sight on the dial of the Key, that being his authorized six month period minus the five days and fifteen hours he had already spent in Duluth during the previous six months. He was turning away from the check box when he felt a touch on his shoulder. He turned to confront a World Policeman in working uniform.
"Kil Bruner?'" asked the Policeman. "That's right," answered Kil.
"I've got an order for an emergency request stability check on you. Will you come to Headquarters, please?"
Kil stared. The man's words rang in his ears without meaning-
"Request emergency check?" he echoed. "Me?
Yes, Mr. Bruner."
"But I—" Kil scowled. "I haven't done anything to require an emergency check."
"Sorry, sir, all I know about is the order."
Bewildered, Kil followed the Policeman out of the Terminal to a Police aircar. On the way, he became conscious suddenly of glances here and there from people they were passing. Possibly these same people would have stared at anybody they saw in the company of a Policeman; but Kil felt all at once that the eyes of the world were upon him and condemning him, sight unseen.
In the car he asked the Policeman.
"Have they been looking for me long?"
"I wouldn't know, sir," said the Policeman, gazing out the window.
The rest of the ride was a silent one.
The aircar passed in through one of the gates and settled down finally before a long, low building. Kil got out and the Policeman escorted him inside. Within, the building was very like the Complaint Section he had been in previously, except that there was a row of close cubicles facing him instead of open booths. The Policeman led him down the row of cubicles until he came to one with an open door.
"In here," said the Policeman. "You face your Key into the cup in the upper right hand corner of the coder panel."
Kil flushed angrily.
"I know," he snapped. "I've taken my test every year since I was six."
"Yes sir," answered the Policeman, indifferently. Kil went into the cubicle, shutting the door behind him.
He sat down before the bank of keys and held his Key to the cup. Above the coder, on the wall before him, the screen lit up as Files awoke to his presence in the testing room.
"Kil Bruner" the words formed on the screen. "You have been requested to come here for an emergency stability check. The test you are about to take will be evaluated by the circuits designed for that purpose. As soon as the test is concluded, a recommendation will be made both on this screen and on the monitor screen outside if any adjustment in your Class Designation should be made. It will then be up to the Police to act or not on the recommendation as they see fit."
Kil paid little attention. He had read these words yearly for nineteen years. Almost, he could have repeated them from memory, these and the words that followed them.
Before you on the coder are Keys for yes and no answers, multiple choice answers tip to a limit of six choices; and an alphabet keyboard for direct coding. If you wish to answer a question in your own words, use the alphabet keyboard.
There was a slight pause. The screen cleared and then lit up again.
Check begun:
The two words were replaced by the first question.
You are a mnemonics Engineer?
Kil selected a button and pressed it.
"Yes."
Do you like your work? "Yes."
Have you ever preferred any other kind of work? "No."
The questions and answers continued. Kil answered automatically, for these were the standard questions asked in every check. Files was authenticating the data on him that it already had on record. Soon enough, the questions began to break into new territory and narrow down on his present situation.
The Police have taken note recently that you have been occupying yourself in an unusual manner. Have you any explanation for this? Please answer at length, using alphabet keyboard.
Kil moved his fingers down from the yes and no buttons, and typed.
"I've been trying to find my wife."
How did you become separated from your wife?
Kil felt weary. He rubbed a hand slowly across his eyes, and typed.
"Files already has that information."
That is correct. Do you wish to add to or alter your previous account of your wife's disappearance? "No."
You are concerned about your wife's disappearance? "Yes."
Do you consider, flashed the screen, that your search for her is more important than the time and funds you are expe
nding in pursuit of it?
"Yes." Kil jabbed savagely at the button.
'Have you considered the ill effect on your work, of this search? With a sudden sense of shock, Kil remembered the manufactory of coding equipment at Geneva, where he should have arrived ready for work the day following Ellen's disappearance. He had never stopped to think of it; and now, with the time elapsed, they would have found another engineer for their current problem. He set his jaw somewhat grimly. "Yes." he punched. "Yes."
If you were to be informed by authorities that your wife could not be found, would you persist in searching yourself? "Yes."
If you were informed by the World Police that your continuing search was at variance with the general welfare, would you persist?
"Yes."
Do you consider finding your wife to be more important than a possible defiance of the authority of the World Police? "Yes."
Do you consider finding your wife to be of more importance than the preservation of general peace?"
Kil hesitated. The screen flashed again.
Would you persist in searching for your wife if Files were to inform you now that by doing so you were endangering the continuing peace of the world?
Kil stiffened in his chair. This was the question. His hand went out to hover over the no button, then stopped. There was no point in putting it off. Files would keep after him with cross questions. Besides, he was not ashamed of the truth. His finger punched down.
"Yes."
The screen cleared and flashed on another line. Check concluded.
The lights in the cubicle went on. The two words on the screen were replaced by three lines.
Findings of the emergency request Stability check show Kil Bruner, Key 3, 526, 849, 110 to show indications of instability and liable to criminal defiance of authority. Recommend re-classification to Unstab. Class Two.
The screen cleared itself and faded to an unlit grey. Kil rose to his feet and stumbled out.
"Give me your Key," said the Policeman, who had been waiting outside the cubicle.
Kil was too numb to notice that the other no longer said "sir".
Chapter twelve
Kil stood in the terminal to which the Police aircar had returned him. His Key felt strange on his wrist; and he looked at it. Twenty-one days, read the calchronometer. The sight of the numbers brought on something like a feeling of panic. To a man who had been all the days of his life with his Key fastened to him, to be reclassified downward was like dying in a small fashion. A partial death-sentence. He had a feeling, none the less powerful for being illusory, that part of his time to live had been taken from him. He stood, irresolute.
About him, the hurrying crowds of the terminal swarmed and passed. And, gradually as he stood there, the sense of his difference—now—began to take hold of him. Now and then, one of those passing glanced at him curiously; and he shrank, internally, from that same glance, as he had shrunk earlier when the Policeman had escorted him across the floor to the aircar. As before when he had imagined that their looks assumed the fact that he was a hunted criminal, now he felt irrationally convinced that each one looking at him knew that he had been reclassified, knew that he was now Unstab.
And—because he was himself—a harsh and bristling anger rose within him, against them, against the hurrying multitude, against all Stabs. It came home to him then with a shock that this was what it must be that drove the Unstabs away from the Stabs, into the Slum areas, where they would be at least among their own kind. In the Slums, there would be no need to imagine contempt. You were among equals. And, hating himself for doing it, but realizing the necessity with the thought, Kil turned slowly and headed for the moving roadway that would carry him back to the area from which, with Dekko's help, he had escaped only a few days earlier.
From the Terminal, it was not far. In fact, the Terminal all but touched the Slums. Kil rode in and registered in the first hotel he came to. It struck him as he did so, that he was getting low on money again. He tried to remember, offhand, how much remained in his registered account, but the memory would not come to him without effort and he did not want to make the effort. He put the matter aside.
He was deadly tired. His body seemed a heavy, useless burden for his wary will to drag forward. He went directly up to his room after registering and fell asleep, though it was still only mid-afternoon.
He awoke with a start about sunset. The last, thin, red rays of twilight were coming in through the unopaqued window of his bedroom, making it a place of strange rusty, dying light and tricky shadows. For a moment, he could not think what had brought him so suddenly out of sleep, and then became conscious of someone in the room with him.
He turned his head. Someone was sitting in a chair pulled close beside his bed. In the gloom, Kil made out the facial features with difficulty.
It was the old man. The same who had taken Ellen away from him.
"Hello Kil," said the old man.
Kil stared at him. The thought came to him that he should leap out of bed and grab this intruder and hang on to him tightly, hold him as ransom for Ellen's return. But his body seemed asleep and separate from his mind. Even his emotions seemed lulled and slumbering.
"Kil," said the old man, "you can't go on like this."
Kil moved his hps with effort. The words came out like a sigh.
"Why not?"
"You're trying the impossible," said the old man, gently. "You can't ever find us. You only hurt yourself by searching. Look at you, worn out in body and mind, broke from your Class A status to an Unstab classification. Give up, Kil."
"Not," whispered Kil, "until I find Ellen."
"You can't, Kil. Ellen's gone 'where you can never find her. It's like hungering after someone who's dead."
"No!" whispered Kil, stubbornly.
"Yes, Kil. You don't understand. Somehow, a mistake happened. Something went wrong. Somehow you saw Ellen walk off with me. That's the only reason I'm here now. To you, like everyone else there, it should have seemed that she just vanished, suddenly, without a trace."
"What—happened—?"
"We stopped time there for a moment, Kil. Or rather, we speeded it up a great deal for ourselves, alone. You shouldn't have been able to see us go; but you did."
"She—" Kil struggled with the great effort of pushing the words past his lips. "She didn't want to go."
"But Ellen knew she had to. Kil—" the old man put his hand on Kil's shoulder. "Ellen always knew the time had to come when she'd have to leave you. She never really belonged to you completely. Think of her as of something you loved very much that was merely lent to you for a while and then taken back again."
"No," whispered Kil. "We didn't marry that way. It wasn't something temporary."
"It was for Ellen."
"I don't believe you," whispered Kil.
"It was."
"No," Kil struggled to make the thin thread of sound come stronger from his lips, but could not. "And anyway, it wasn't for me. It's too late now to tell me it was supposed to have been temporary. I should've been told at the start."
"Ellen couldn't tell you. The secret wasn't hers to tell."
"What secret? The Project? Sub-E?"
The old man leaned forward suddenly in the dimness.
"What's that?" he said, sharply. "Where did you hear that?"
"Is it?"
"Answer me, Kil!"
"No, you answer me. First. Why should it always be your way? What do I owe you? You took Ellen."
"I didn't take her, Kil. She went of her own free will."
"She didn't want to go." A deep fury stirred slowly and distantly in Kil, held down by the same thing that was sapping his strength.
"She was unhappy at saying good-by to you," said the old man, "but she wanted to go. She knew she had to go.
It's not true."
"Yes," insisted the old man. "It is true, You must believe that, Kil, and stop this hopeless search of yours. You're hurting yourself—and you're hurt
ing Ellen."
"She—knows?"
"Yes," said the old man, grudgingly.
A great and powerful feeling of joy that was somehow separate from that part of him that was being held in thrall, flamed up in Kil.
"Let her come and tell me herself, then," he whispered. "Let her come and tell me to stop trying to find her."
"She can't come."
"You mean you won't let her come."
"She mustn't. She knows she mustn't."
"Because she doesn't dare. Let her come to me and she'd stay with me. Wouldn't she?"
"No," said the old man. "No! For your own sake, Kil, you mustn't believe that. She's gone from you and from this world of yours, I tell you, as surely as if she were dead."
"She's not dead. She's living and I'll find her. Do you hear? I'll find her if I have to take the world apart stick by stick and stone by stone. I'll find her if I have to blow the universe apart and hunt for her among the pieces. Do you hear me? Do you hear me? DO YOU HEAR ME?"
And suddenly, all restraint vanished, Kil was sitting up in the bed and shouting with the full power of his voice. His cries clashed and echoed in the empty room.
And the old man was gone.
Quickly, Kil began to dress. When he was through, he walked to the door of the suite and turned the apartment's sunbeams down and out even as they were waxing against the falling night. He paused a moment, looking into the shadows.
"I love you, Ellen," he said softly.
Then he went out.
It was full evening by the time he stepped out on the street. The lights of the area were on, throwing the sky into a deeper blackness above him. He took the moving roadway toward the part of the area where he had first gone, back in the beginning when he had come looking for the Ace King. And, as he went, he opened a door in his mind that had been some time closed, and set the dusty machinery that he found there, once more to work.
Kil was a mnemonics engineer. His particular field was the formulating of memory systems for specialized jobs; but before he had qualified for this, he had gone through all the necessary elementary and advanced courses in memory training that were prerequisites to the six years study of discriminative techniques in mnemonics. The associative functions and the formulae of procedure were as much a part of him as the muscle training that enabled him to walk surefootedly upon the earth. Now he turned these mental tools to the task of ferreting out the secrets of whatever had taken Ellen from him. Mali had said, that, buried somewhere in the memories of the last five years, when Kil had been married to Ellen, were clues that would lead him to her. Mali could not find these clues, even under hypnotic search. But he, Kil, could find them. If they were there, he could find them. Because it wa§ his mind; and no one could know it like himself. He could not only remember, but having remembered, he could study the memory, discovering in it things he had not noticed the first time, until it was squeezed dry of every elemental drop of information within it.
On the Run (Mankind on the Run) Page 10
