On the Run (Mankind on the Run)

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "What can you do for me now?" said Kil.

  "I can keep you alive," retorted the little man. "How close were you to being viv meat less than an hour ago?"

  Kil nodded.

  "That's right—thanks."

  "Nothing. Now let's forget it and get down to business."

  He hunched forward in the chair. "From what I can scrape up, your wife is hooked into something big. Right?

  Yes," said Kil.

  "It's something called The Project; and something else called Sub-E. Check?"

  Kil nodded. Dekko looked thoughtful.

  "I'll tell you one thing, Kil," he said. "I didn't hear about those two myself until just back a ways—me, who has to know everything for my job's sake. Now just what would you suppose they'd be?"

  Kil shook his head.

  "I don't know." He considered for a moment the possible effect of the information on Dekko, before adding. "Mali wants to make sure it isn't something that can stop him. He's planning to try and take control of Files and the world away from the Police."

  "Oh? What all did he say?" asked Dekko, and Kil told him everything that had been done and said from the moment of his capture until his escape. When he had finished, Dekko twisted his lips humorlessly.

  "That twist," he commented. "He's as bad as his sister. They're both scrambled eggs."

  A memory of something he had seen flashed out of the storehouse of Kil's trained mind.

  "You're wrong about that part of it," he said. "I got a look at his Key. It's class A."

  "Down one for you," replied Dekko, promptly. "Don't you know about that part of it? Mali couldn't run that O.T.L. of his without some way to beat the residence check. In that outfit, they trade Keys."

  Kil stared.

  "Trade Keys? They can't do that."

  "Why not?" said Dekko, "if they got someone willing to trade with them? There's all kinds of kick societies. Some of them trade more'n Keys. But to get back to it here—there's this Project and the O.T.L. wants it. They think they got a wire to it through you to your wife?"

  "Yes," Kil drew a deep breath. "And I think perhaps they're right."

  "She's in it, you mean?"

  "Ellen? Yes—I think so." On sudden impulse, Kil found himself telling Dekko about the latest visit from the old man. When he was finished the little man nodded gravely.

  "It all ties in then," he said. He nodded as if to himself and then looked sharply at Kil. "That brings us to what I've got to tell you. You've got an invitation."

  "Invitation?"

  "To a talk with Mali. No wires. Everything out in the open."

  Kil looked at him in astonishment.

  "How—" he said; and fumbled. "I thought you were hiding out from Mali."

  Dekko laughed silently.

  "Do me, Kill" he said. "Mali didn't have to meet me face to face to let me know this. He just spread the word around where he knew I'd find it."

  "What word?" Kil was still bewildered.

  "The word that he wanted to talk with you. He's made up his mind he can't make you help him unless you want to. So he'd like to try offering you enough to make it worthwhile for you to help him."

  "No!" said Kil, violently. "I'll see him—"

  "Hold on, Kil," Dekko checked him. "Anything wrong with getting him off your neck if it's possible? And he may offer you something you'd want."

  "He can't offer me Ellen. That's all I want."

  "No, but maybe he could offer to help you get her back. That'd be worth something, wouldn't it?"

  "Maybe," said Kil, yielding only slightly.

  "All right. Let's sit back again and add up what we've got. Now, as I see it—" Dekko's dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully, shrewdly, his thin, hungry face contrasting almost ludicrously with the fake paunchiness of his disguised body below it, like a knife blade protruding from a suety lump of fat. "We've got a three way pull for power here. We got the Police trying to hold the lid on, same as always. We got the O.T.L. trying to push the lid off and' climb up on top where the Sticks are now. And we got this Project bunch with plans nobody knows, but something powerful everybody wants, sort of sitting pat in the background. How's that sound to you?"

  "Yes. That's it," said Kil. "At least, that's the way it looks to me, too."

  "Now, your wife's mixed up with this third bunch, this Project. That's clear. And Mali thinks maybe you can find her and by sticking with you, he can locate the Project when you do. All right. Now, two questions. How does Mali think you can find her when you haven't been able to so far?" Dekko stared sharply at Kil.

  "I told you that. He thinks that in the five years we were married I picked up enough information from Ellen without realizing it, to lead us to the Project, or tell us what it is."

  "What do you think?"

  "Maybe," said Kil, grimly. "Anyway I'm trying." He made an attempt to explain something of the mnemonic techniques involved, but they were clearly outside Dekko's sphere of knowledge.

  "Let that part slide," said the little man, at last. "I'll take your word for it. Maybe you can do it. Now, the question is, if that's the situation, is it a good idea to see Mali after all?"

  "I might learn something from him," said Kil. He rubbed his chin. "The hell of it is, right now I don't know. I haven't any idea of what I ought to be looking for in these memories."

  "Nobody else knows either, looks like," said Dekko. "That's true."

  "Well," Dekko got to his feet and slipped the face mask back into position. At once, he seemed again a stranger, and it was hard to believe the familiar voice coming from such a patent unknown. "You catch some rest. It'll take a little while to wire a contact with Mali. I'll see if I can't get him back here by noon tomorrow. All right?"

  Kil nodded and stood up.

  "Don't take any chances you don't have to," he said.

  "Do me!" The pudgy features grinned at him. "You think I lived the last thirty years on luck?"

  Dekko—or Uncle George, rather—went toward the door. Kil followed and opened it for him.

  "Wait—" said Kil, suddenly, as the little man was about to leave. "You said two questions. What's the other?"

  "Oh, that—" Dekko looked up at him. "Just, that if this Sub-E the Project's got is so much a thing as everybody thinks it is, how come the Project hasn't been using it for its own wants before this? Or is it?"

  It was, Kil realized, a good question. A very good question indeed.

  Chapter fifteen

  Kil awoke feeling rested, but puzzled. Dekko's last question of the night before was still swimming annoyingly around in his head. It was something that had not occurred to him at all before; but now it clung to the focal spot of his attention. Why indeed, if this mysterious Project had the power everyone seemed to giving it credit for having, hadn't it taken an active hand in the goings on, before this? Why had the old man only reasoned with him, Kil, instead of taking definite action to stop him? Was it because of Ellen? -

  The more Kil pondered it, the more the unreasoning conviction began to grow on him that the situation as he saw it was only bits and pieces of something much bigger out of sight. Something of which the Police, the O.T.L., the Project, himself, Ellen, Dekko, and all the rest were only parts. He had the feeling of being advanced and withdrawn according to some obscure master plan, by a sort of monster fate. He searched through a strange shadow land of mighty and hidden purposes. Even now, sitting here in this hotel suite, there seemed to come to him a weird sense of contact, of interlocking purpose with people elsewhere, everywhere, in the city, in the world, in the . . .

  In the . . . ? His mind groped into nothingness.

  He was still reaching out for he knew not what, when Dekko arrived. The little man looked at him with sharp curiosity.

  "Morning," he said. "What's on your mind?"

  "I don't know," Kil said slowly. He sat up in the chair and noticed abruptly that Dekko was once more undisguised. "What happened to Uncle George?"

  "I'm part of your deal with
Mali for a talk. Simple enough. Anything new crop up since last night?"

  Kil shook his head. "Mali's coming here to see me, is he?"

  "Any minute—" the doorbell chimed. "Right on the dot. I knew he was just behind me." Dekko got up and went across the room to open the door. Mali came in, followed by Melee. It was a shock to Kil to see her with him. She did not speak to Kil, but looked at him with silent eyes out of a face that was all the more beautiful for its unusual paleness.

  "Hello, Kil," said Mali, cheerfully. He ignored Dekko. "Nice of you to agree to see us."

  "Sit down," said Kil.

  They took chairs. Mali, directly before Kil; Melee, a little back as if she would hold herself outside the sphere of their conversation. Mali smiled.

  "You surprised us all by running off," he said. "How on earth did you manage it? Breaking conditioning like that is supposed to be just about impossible."

  His voice was warm and eager, his face almost admiring. It was as if he was congratulating Kil on some extraordinary and laudable accomplishment, in the spirit of true sportsmanship.

  "I found out I could get away," said Kil, "so I did."' Mali shook his head.

  "It certainly shook things up. I wish I'd known you could do that beforehand."

  "You aren't going to tell me," said Kil, looking straight at him, "that you'd have acted differently?"

  "I might have. I had to try you out, you know. I can apologize if you want. Not that it means much in this affair."

  "No." Kil shifted a little impatiently in his chair. "Well, what's this you wanted to talk to me about?"

  "Dekko didn't tell you?"

  "Suppose you tell me."

  "Of course. Oh, by the way. I just thought I'd ask you about the conditioning. The loyalty to me, for example. How it could be there one minute and then all gone the next. It is—all gone, I suppose?" And Mali's eyes fixed suddenly and unshakably on Kil's.

  As a matter of fact, it was not. Kil suddenly recognized the quicksand into which Mali's casualness had been leading him. At the direct question a remnant of the conditioned emotion threatened to rise within him, but he thrust it violently back.

  "All gone," he said.

  "And—your affection for Melee? All gone?"

  In spite of himself, Kil looked at the girl. She gazed back at him with a look neither of appeal nor command, but of something like sadness. An odd pity stirred inside him and he felt the edge of the quicksand crumbling away under his feet.

  "I don't love her," he said coldly; and Melee's eyes dropped.

  "Yes. Well—" there was now a slight dryness to Mali's tone. "Well, I just thought I'd try that avenue, though I didn't have any real hopes of it leading to anything. Now, to business. I'm willing to cooperate, Kil, if you are."

  "What kind of cooperate?"

  "I mean what I say. I want that Project and I think you're the man to help me get it. Not that I'm convinced it's any real danger to me, but I believe in playing safe. Help me; I'm willing to make it worthwhile for you."

  "Go on," said Kil.

  Mali put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. The personality of the man came through to Kil like a compelling force.

  "The shift in power from the Police to me is inevitable, Project or no Project. As I told you, in the combined Societies, I've got a group of over fifty million adults—that's one out of every eighty humans on the globe. And they each influence up to a half a dozen more outside the Societies. That's an overwhelming minority, the way the world is set up today. So you can take it as a virtual certainty that you and your wife will eventually be living in a world that I control. Now, I can determine whether your life in that world will be pleasant or unpleasant; or whether you'll be allowed to exist in it at all. And I'll guarantee the pleasantness if you'll cooperate."

  He stopped. Kil waited a minute.

  "Is that it?" he said.

  "Except to be specific. What I'm offering you will be equal rights and privileges with any member of the O.T.L., when the time comes. That means the best possible life, once we're in power. And security."

  "And that's it?"

  "That's it." Mali sat back.

  "All right," said Kil. He leaned forward in his turn. "You say it's inevitable that your group takes over. I don't think so."

  Mali spread his hands, wordlessly.

  "In the first place," went on Kil. "You say you've got fifty million people behind you. I'll take your word on that, though just for the sake of argument. What makes you sure you're going to hang on to them? What if you didn't?"

  "Kil, what's to stop me?" asked Mali. "It's not just the Societies. People in general are sick of Files and the Police. Everyone knows that. And I don't need five million, let alone fifty, to overthrow the Police. Only it's going to turn out, after I've done it, that those who belong to my Societies are the favored ones under the new setup. Who won't hop on the bandwagon then?"

  "And what if someone starts building CH bombs with no Police to stop them?"

  Mali laughed.

  "Kil—" he said, gently. "You don't think I'm fool enough to do away with Files and the Police in actuality? No, we just change the names. Put our own personnel in the Police posts. Relax the residence limits a little and say that we can't give up our Keys all at once because Society's geared to them." He laughed again. "You're an amateur at this business, Kil. Don't you know that real revolutions never work? Only the fake ones. Turn the whole world topsy-turvy and everybody gets hurt. But if it's well planned, you can ^make a minor adjustment up at the top levels without disturbing the machinery at all."

  He smiled at Kil.

  "Consider my bandwagon," he said. "I'm considering the Project's," replied Kil.

  Mali sobered all at once.

  "What do you mean by that?" he asked.

  "Just that I think it's pretty sure the Project's got a bandwagon, too," said Kil. "That name of theirs implies action of some kind. And what I've seen of them makes it look like an organization—a pretty successful organization, since you haven't been able to lay your hands on it, with all your fifty millions. Maybe the Project plans to take over the world. Have you thought of that?"

  "Yes," said Mali, slowly. "I thought of it. I was hoping you hadn't."

  "I have," Kil watched him closely. "And as long as there's that possibility, it strikes me I might be better off with them, especially since my wife seems already well connected with them."

  "Yes," Mali's voice was calm. "Maybe you might." He slid a hand into a pocket of his kilt and lay back. "But I don't believe you, Kil. You aren't really considering which is the wisest move for you. You've never actually had any idea of joining me, because actually you're a man of unreasoning prejudices and loyalties, and the fact that your wife belongs to an opposite side outweighs any logic I could show you. So—"

  "A looped" shouted Dekko, suddenly. "Look out! He must have rode in on one of you. Get him!"

  He flung out his arm, indicating a small beetle clinging high on the wall in one corner of the room. At the same time he swept up an ashtray in his other hand and threw it. It smashed squarely on the insect and both dropped.

  "Come on!" cried Dekko, pulling Kil from the chair. "Run!" He yanked Kil in the direction of the door to the hallway of the hotel, through which Mali and Melee were already scrambling. The four of them tumbled out into the hall.

  "There the$ are!" yelped Dekko, as two heads wearing the riot helmets of a World Police raiding squad appeared around one end of the corridor. Mali's hand came out of his tunic pocket with a small gun which spat silver streaks in their direction. There were several loud explosions at the end of the corridor and chunks were blown out of the walls. The two heads ducked back.

  "This way!" hissed Dekko in Kil's ear. Kil hesitated.

  "The elevator!"

  There was the sound of slow, heavy footsteps in a momentary silence, and slowly around the end of the corridor, two new figures came into view. They were a couple of other Police, in laborious movement with gun
s in their hands and the glassy sheen of magnetic shield body armor about them. They almost bumped shoulders as they rounded the corner and blundered hastily apart as the two shields touched for a fraction of a second and arced viciously.

  "Not the elevator! They can cut power. Come on!" And, taking advantage of the reeling Policemen's momentary confusion, Dekko pulled Kil down the corridor at a run in the opposite direction and around the safety of another comer, as Mali and Melee leaped for the elevator.

  They passed the fire escape tube, an old-fashioned staircase set in a cylinder of asbestoid concrete and running vertically through the center of the building. Kil's hand was on the handle of the heavy door that would give entrance to it, but Dekko still pulled him on.

  "Here," he said, a little farther on. He yanked open a small, waist-high door in the wall, revealing two small disk elevators, one rising and one falling, side by side.

  "Delivery," said Dekko. "You take the up. Go up two floors and wait. I'll go down a floor and draw them off to the street. Wait five minutes and then go down the fire stair."

  Kil nodded. He half-jumped, half-wriggled into the next rising disk. The space was adequate, but cramped, and a slight claustrophobia suffocated him as he rose up the dark shaft. A few seconds later a glimmer of light around the edge of a door warned of the floor above. He let it pass; and went one floor higher before getting off.

  On the floor where he emerged, the silence was almost shocking. The carpeted hallway with its softly glowing walls seemed to slumber in a peace unbelievably remote from the recent violence two flights of stairs down. Hurriedly, Kil went along the hall back to the door entering on the fire escape tube. He opened it with caution and stepped through into a different, echoing silence. The slight scrape of his shoe soles on the concrete seemed to shout the news of his presence there. He tiptoed to the stairwell and looked down it, straining his ears.

  For a moment, he saw and heard nothing. And then abruptly—he could not tell whether it had been above or below him—there was a sudden blast of shots and cries, cut off as suddenly as they had begun, as if by the momentary opening and closing of a door. Then silence once more.