His friend said, “Hey—” and started to reach for something in his pocket. I punched him once, hard, on the point of his chin, and he dropped.
I guess they hadn’t been expecting a fight. There were two sets of hooded raingear hanging in the corner, dripping on the carpet. I appropriated the larger set, put it on, and exited by the window. In eighty-eight percent gravity, one story is doable if you’re fussy about landing.
On the sidewalk, I pulled the hood up and kept my head down. There were dropships smoking in the street. A pair of biomechanical men with sidearms drawn entered the building I’d just exited. How long could I elude them and their ilk? I was counting on Laird correcting the quantum errors in the interest of keeping me alive until he could recover me, which is the only way he could remain alive. But it was a gamble. There had been more than a touch of madness in his eyes.
On the path beyond the suburbs of Waukegan a small girl’s voice squealed after me.
I turned around and smiled. “Hey, kid.”
“Hi,” Alice said. “I ran away.”
“What a coincidence.”
“Are you going to see my mom?
“Yeah.”
“Me, too.”
I thought of Delilah out there, certainly awake by now, perhaps on the path to meet us. I thought of hugs and tears, and the tightening web of relationship. I thought of letting her in through the open door in my heart which was really an unsutured wound.
The top-heavy oxygen trees tossed wildly in the wind. Dark clouds scudded overhead, dumping rain below a holographic flicker of summer. The great black gash in the sky was visible, and Alice stared upward, her lips puckered tensely.
“Don’t be afraid,” I said.
“I’m not afraid.
I picked up her little hand. “Me neither, kid,” I said. But I was a liar.
*
We did not encounter Delilah on the path, which was strewn with leaves and wind-ripped branches. I experienced a sinking feeling the deeper into the forest we hiked. Suppose after we left Delilah her body had manifested an allergic reaction to the tranquilizer? She had appeared so . . . lifeless on that bench. I began to dread what we might find at the rest-stop. Cold dread: it’s what you get for caring.
Alice became tired of walking, and besides she couldn’t keep up with me very well.
“We’ll piggyback you,” I said.
“What’s that?”
I shook my head. “Poor ignorant child.” I explained what a piggyback ride was, and she quickly grasped the idea and climbed aboard.
Finally I saw the domed roof of the shelter, like a landed saucer among the wildly thrashing trees. I put Alice down and she immediately started for the shelter, but I grabbed her little arm and said, “Hold up.”
She looked at me and read my anxiety and borrowed some for herself.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Probably nothing, but you wait here for a minute.”
I led her to a young tree and told her to hug it. “So you don’t blow away.” I was genuinely worried about it; some of those gusts were big.
Then I approached the shelter. I didn’t allow myself to hesitate, because I didn’t want Alice to know I was scared. Grab the handle, turn it down, and enter. The lights came up automatically, revealing the empty bench. I breathed out but didn’t relax. The bathroom was empty, too. I tried the com-line but heard only hissing static. Whom did I think I was calling, anyway?
Alice was hugging the tree like a long-lost sister when I came back outside, her face a little white oval with hectic red spots on the cheeks.
“Looks like she flew the coop, kid,” I said, all lighthearted.
“Flew it where?” she said.
I squinted into the relentless wind. Flew it into the dark and wild forest where we’ll never be able to find her, I thought. But that was just me being pessimistic.
“Come on and we’ll find out,” I said.
I crouched for her, but she said, “I can walk now.”
“I know, but I can go faster if I’m carrying you.”
“Okay.”
She hoisted herself onto my back and I stood up. I moved away from the shelter and stood upon the windy path for a moment, which didn’t diverge in the wood and was about equally traveled in both directions. The question was, which direction had Delilah chosen? We certainly would have bumped into her on our way out of Waukegan, if she’d gone that way. Unless she’d wandered from the path and was blundering lost in the forest. My mind threw up the frightening image of her coming awake by herself in the shelter, listening to the wind and rain battering at the walls, maybe the lights flickering in her face, and Delilah all dopey with the drug and fear. In such a state what might she not have done?
But such speculations got me nowhere. I turned toward Bedford Falls and started walking. Fast. After a while I saw the bicycles we’d abandoned when the lights went out. I put Alice down and we climbed on the tandem cycle and took off, making good time at last.
At about the moment we emerged from the Oxygen Forest, George dialed up the sun again. Rainbows occurred in the blowing rain. I leaned over the handlebars and pedaled for town.
Men and women in raingear humped it across the town square. We coasted up to the front of the Bedford Falls Hotel and dismounted and dumped the bike.
Inside it was warm and noisy and smelled like wet clothes. A hearth fire blazed in the lobby. I shouldered some people out of the way and installed Alice by it to warm up and dry out.
A woman about sixty years old was behind the check-in counter. I’d never met her before, but I knew who she was.
“You’re Delilah’s mother,” I said.
“Birth mother, yes,” she said, distracted. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, but some gray wisps had escaped and floated around her face. It gave her a scattered look. Her eyes kept moving over the milling crowd.
“Business is booming,” I observed.
“Half the power grid’s down. People are cold and wet. And frightened. Every room is full, but you’re welcome to huddle in the lobby until things get running again. Are you a friend of Delilah’s?”
“Yes. Have you seen her?”
“Not for a day. She said she was going away with someone. Are you the someone?”
“I was, but now she’s gone away from me, too.”
She looked at me closely for the first time.
“You’re familiar,” she said.
“I’ve got one of those faces.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Alice is with me, she’s over by the fire. Can you keep an eye on her while I go look for Delilah?”
“Alice lives here, Mr. Herrick. Of course I’ll keep her.”
“Mr. Who?”
She tilted her head sideways and smiled. “Don’t worry about me turning you in,” she said. “I believe in you. I’ve studied your Environment.”
Inwardly I groaned and sighed with relief at the same time.
“It’s nice to be believed in,” I said.
“Yes, but remember there are many who don’t believe in you. They believe in Laird Ulin and the Command Authority. And they will turn you in. Happily.”
A swarm of children invaded the lobby, squealing and chasing through the crowd.
“God,” Delilah’s mother said. “I can’t wait till things return to normal and we can stuff these kids back in school. I guess they can’t all be little angels, like Alice.”
School. A light bulb appeared over my head, for anyone who could see such things.
“Speaking of school,” I said, “Do you know where I can find the principal?”
“Gerry Rozsonits? I have no idea. He has living quarters attached to the school itself, of course. But I doubt if he’s there with no electricity. You’re not thinking Delilah’s with him?”
“Why not?”
She pushed the errant hair out of her face. “Gerry is a little extreme when it comes to my daughter.”
“Ex
treme in what way?”
“In unacceptable ways, Mr. Herrick. Delilah plays it down, but I know Gerry is obsessed with her. I’ve thought about bringing it up with the town council. It’s the kind of thing that can’t really be tolerated. It happens, of course. We’re all human on Infinity. At least in The County we are.”
“What could the Council do?”
“Encourage him to move to a different town, probably do a direct swap.”
“Suppose he didn’t want to move?”
“In an extreme case the Council could compel him to swap.”
“Tell me how to find the school,” I said.
She did. I thanked her and started to turn, and two guys grabbed me, one on each arm.
“Relax,” one of them said.
I did that. I let my body slump, totally nonresistant. It caught them off-guard and off-balance. Which is something good to take advantage of. I twisted loose of their equivocal grips, elbowed a solar-plexus here, stomped an instep there, and bolted for the door.
Dodging around the back streets of Bedford Falls, I made my way to the elementary school. It was a low-slung building, somewhat out of keeping with the ancient Americana ambience of the town in general.
As I regarded the structure from the playground a strange rippling sensation passed through my stomach. I felt light and dizzy momentarily, then it passed. Definitely George playing with The County’s gravity field. I hooked my arm around the monkey bars, anchoring myself, and waited to see what would happen. But there was nothing but the continual, gusty wind.
I walked toward the school. The windows were polarized to black. A kid’s backpack lay abandoned near the front entrance. I felt like I was being watched, and I very well might have been.
I tracked around the building and saw the principal’s residence, a kind of bungalow thing, with black windows, same as the school. I walked up to it and knocked on the door. No answer. I tried the knob, but it was locked.
“Gerry!”
Nothing.
But I knew he was in there. I could practically feel his vibe emanating out of the walls. And Delilah’s, too.
I made my way to the back of the residence and wasted time with another locked door, twisting the knob, pounding on it a little.
I kept scanning the sky for dropships.
Gerry’s electric cart was parked half in and half out of the driveway, suggesting a hasty maybe even panicked arrival. As I was looking at it, fat drops of rain began showering down, and I pulled my hood up.
It was a schizophrenic sky, dumping rain and splitting open with sun bursts at the same time. Clouds scudded like runaway galleons. Maybe Laird couldn’t launch any dropships, until the weather cleared. That was an optimistic thought, but transitory.
I needed to get into the bungalow and find out whether or not Delilah was there.
So I ran at the door and kicked it in.
I sprawled into the kitchen, and came up on my feet, and fell down again. My door-kicking right foot was now attached to a sprained ankle. Damn it.
Footsteps came pounding through the house.
I got up, despite the pain. Gerry appeared in the kitchen. He didn’t look happy. And he was armed.
“Get out!” His face was brick red.
“Where’s Delilah?”
He leveled the weapon at me.
“Get out,” he said, “or I’ll kill you.”
“Kill me? Have you ever killed anyone before, Gerry?”
“I’ll do it.”
“I doubt that.” I’m hell on bluffing. I didn’t know what he’d do. I was focused on Delilah and the time factor.
I stepped toward Gerry, and he backed up a step. The whole thing reminded me of a dance I’d once done with a potentially homicidal Christer back on Earth.
“I’m warning you,” he said.
“I know, I know.”
I took another step. The weapon was trembling in his hand. In the next moments he’d either kill me or start crying. I decided to help him make his decision.
I shuffled incrementally closer. He was backed up against the wall.
“You bastard,” he said.
“Come on, Gerry.”
Suddenly murder appeared in his eyes. Clear as a red light warning.
I struck out with a reverse kick, balancing on my good left foot and making contact with my gimpy right one. The weapon went flying, and a bolt of pain shot up my leg and started a campfire in my groin.
If Gerry had gone for the weapon right then he would have had me; I was doing a flamingo routine on my left foot, holding my right foot and injured ankle off the floor. But Gerry didn’t go for the weapon. He started to cry, and then he slid down to the floor, right hand cradled in his lap, left hand covering his face. I felt sorry for him, almost.
“Where is she?” I asked again.
“She’s sleeping,” he said, and that’s all I could get out of him. She was sleeping.
I went limping through the residence, calling Delilah’s name and receiving silence for an answer. After I checked every room, I began to wonder how whacked Gerry might be. Then I heard a muffled thump directly overhead.
The attic space.
I located a set of pull-down stairs in a back hallway and hauled them down. Someone moaned. I climbed the stairs with maddening slowness, hopping and balancing and hopping again.
Delilah was there.
Tied and gagged: portrait of Gerry’s heartfelt love and devotion. I untied her and held her while she cried, which didn’t go on for long.
“I guess he followed us into the forest then got lost when the sun went out. Later on he found me in the shelter. He kept saying he was going to take care of me and everything was going to be all right. This right after I started coming out of the drug. By then he already had me here. I was too weak to make much of a fuss. I thought he was being nice, or trying to be. Then I remembered things. I started asking him about Alice and you, and he said I didn’t understand. Understand what? I said. It’s just us now he told me. The two of us, the way it was meant to be. That’s when it really hit me. I told him to think again, and that was so dumb of me. I know it was dumb. I should have gone along with what he was saying. He would have calmed down eventually. Don’t you think he would have calmed down, Ellis?”
“Sure.”
“But I got scared,” Delilah said. “Can you believe I got scared of Gerry Rozonits? But there was something in his eyes. Or not in them. And all of a sudden I got so scared.”
The tears came again, welling up from some place deeper. Reaction tears of someone who had been in the grip of a primitive fear.
I gave her as much time as I thought we could afford, then I said, “We better get out of here, Delilah. They’ll be coming for me.”
I stood up awkwardly.
“What happened to your eye and your poor foot?” she asked.
“It’s my poor ankle, actually. And it was a couple of things. First I used it for a battering ram, then it didn’t hurt enough, so I used it to disarm Gerry. Now it hurts plenty. The eye’s a slightly longer story. Let’s save it.”
She helped me hobble downstairs. Gerry was gone, which I took for a good sign. However, the weapon was gone, too, which I took for a bad one.
We paused there at the entry to the kitchen, where I’d left Gerry. I had my left arm around Delilah’s shoulders, and she was supporting quite a bit of my weight. Wind blew through the broken back door. Rain pelted the window, which looked out on a scrap of lawn continually blooming and darkening with rapid shifts of sun and shadow. The rain spots on the floor where I’d kicked my way in gleamed like fish scales in the peekaboo sunshine.
“What’s the matter?” Delilah said.
“Gerry’s the matter,” I said.
There was a weird pressure in my ears. A handful of spaghetti worms squiggled queasily around in my stomach, and my eyes seemed to flip over like lead weights. For a moment, I’d blacked out. Then I felt light and drifty. Then, suddenly, my full body weight r
esumed, and Delilah and I shuffled off-balance.
She said, “What was that?”
“George,” I replied. “My virus. Ulin mutated it and now it’s out of control. What you just felt was, I think, the gravity field going wonky.”
“Dear God.”
“Yeah.”
Outside, we climbed into the electric cart. Delilah took the driver’s seat. She started the motor and swung us out from behind the residence and rolled us at a sedate fifteen kilometers per hour across the playground. We were approaching the swings and monkey bars and stuff when there was a crackling sound followed instantly by a FAAARUMPH! and the cart bucked us out of our seats and flipped over on its side, burning.
I looked frantically for Delilah, saw her, and crawled over. She had a cut on her forehead that looked bad enough for stitches, but she got right up on her feet and appeared otherwise unhurt. I struggled up, too, using the monkey bars.
Gerry stalked toward us, leveling the weapon.
“She doesn’t want you!” he shouted. “She doesn’t want you!”
I tried to shove Delilah away from me but she wouldn’t budge.
“He won’t shoot me,” she said, and wrapped her arms protectively around me.
“He just did shoot you,” I pointed out.
Then the queasy-wormy sensation was back in my guts, only ten times worse. Sweat popped out all over my body. My vision blurred, cleared.
Gerry wavered, then fired, and a very strange thing occurred. The discharge burst into the ground a little in front of him, and he went tumbling into the sky, end-for-end, tumbling up and away into a wild sky of broken black clouds and shimmering rainbows.
chapter fourteen
Turn the wheel. I’ll stand over here and watch. Time is a process, brutal, relentless, etc. Blah.
*
Delilah’s face was deeply etched by pain and age. Her hair was short, iron gray, and the texture of straw. She lay unconscious on our bed, dying, gradually. Alice and I stood over her and conversed in low voices.
Harbinger Page 18
