“Hey! Pinkie!” he said. “Back a bit, or I’ll have to lock you to the bike.”
She was in a state of high excitement, jumping around or darting forward for a better view. Just now the blue car had disappeared behind a copse, and she seemed to think that by getting herself right out onto the skyline, she would somehow be able to see through the trees. Barry was glad to see her so lively. She’d been listless and silent ever since yesterday’s picnic in the field. The cave had been a worse idea than he’d expected, and neither of them had slept much, though he’d managed to make what should have been adequate mattresses from the hay some farmer must have stored there before last winter, and they’d needed to get up before daybreak to get here this early, so no wonder the kid was tired. But she had perked up when Barry had pointed out Ferriby Circle and told her they were reaching the rendezvous, and now she was almost out of control.
When the car emerged from behind the copse, he could hear the burr of its engine and see the shape of the driver in the single seat, though, of course, not yet make out it was Mr. Stott. Hey! Suppose old Freeman … Oh, rubbish. He checked the lane. Still empty. Couple of vans on the main road and in a farmyard beyond the mill a tractor being got out. All clear.
At last the invalid car nosed over the lip of the lane and into the lot. Barry waved to Mr. Stott, signalling him to wheel and park so that the car was out of sight from below but near enough for conversation while Barry kept his eye on the lane. Pinkie skipped beside the car as it circled. The rackety little motor stopped with a sputter, the door swung open, and Pinkie jumped in. The car—little more than a hoked-up motorcycle really—joggled on its springs as she hugged her grandfather around the neck and kissed his scarlet cheeks. He snarled happily at her to leave him alone.
She let herself slither down onto the rough surface and stood jumping up and down. Mr. Stott heaved his body around on his powerful arms and sat glaring at Barry through the open door.
“Bloody near didn’t come,” he said. “Been nothing on the radio. Thought you’d mucked it up.”
“Anyone try to follow you?”
Mr. Stott snorted.
“Think I’d be here?” he said.
“What about watching your house?”
“Who’s to tell? See it from a mile off. You get campers all over the shop this time of year, stupid sods—they’d only have to set up a tent. I thought of that, so I left before it was light. Been half around Derbyshire to get here.”
“That sounds okay then.”
“Your idea is this quack hasn’t gone to the police?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“Course he has.”
“He likes to keep things to himself. And you remember I said in my letter I thought he’d been giving drugs to Pinkie to pep her up for the Harmony Sessions? Suppose he knows I know, and suppose some of that’s illegal—”
“Wanted to ask you about that, young woman.”
Rather reluctantly, Barry thought, Pinkie began to roll up her sleeve. Mr. Stott craned to study the needle marks with the same malevolent-seeming intensity with which he used to peer at some boring little alpine in his garden. Barry’s eye was caught by a movement at the bottom of the lane. He edged sideways for a better view. It was only a tractor—the one he’d seen starting in the farmyard—now coming up the hill with a few bales on a trailer. A shepherd sat on the bales with a dog beside him, a nice peaceful image. Better than that, the tractor would block the lane for a bit.
“That daughter of mine know about this?” barked Mr. Stott.
“We think that’s why he sent her to America,” said Barry.
“Mum wouldn’t like it,” said Pinkie.
“He hasn’t got her completely under his thumb then?” said Mr. Stott. He sounded pleased. Barry realised that though he said he loathed his daughter, and though he was telling the truth, still, in a way he admired her. He actually wanted her to go on being the way she was.
“I tried to get her address, but she’s moving around,” said Barry.
“Silly cow. Got to tell her, though, somehow. Now listen, young man, I’ve found you somewhere to stay. Here.”
Mr. Stott handed him a piece of card, the sort he used for his file index of alpines. All it said was “Elsie Tannick, 19 Palmerston Road, Brant.”
“That’s great,” said Barry. “What do I tell her?”
“Told her already.”
“The truth, you mean? But—”
“She won’t let on. Wanted to marry me, forty-eight years ago, stupid woman. Well out of it, I tell her. Been helping her with her pension, few pounds a week, these nine years. You’ll be all right with her.”
“That’s terrific!” said Barry.
Problems seemed to be solving themselves slap, slap, slap, like a house of cards falling down. No police after them, meeting up here as planned, somewhere safe to hole up …
“Do you know a doctor we can trust?” he said. “If we could prove what Freeman’s been doing to Pinkie …”
“Have to think about that. Now, young woman …”
Barry moved back to the edge of the parking lot to check the progress of the tractor. It was just disappearing behind the copse. Nothing else in the lane. Pinkie was trying to explain about the Harmony Sessions and what she did in them. Better let her get on with it. He walked quickly across the parking lot and up the steep bank to the moor. The whole bleak bowl lay empty, except for his bike on its side near the track. Good old bike, he thought. You’ve done us proud. Sorry I cursed you so to begin with. He trotted back. Everything seemed to be going incredibly smoothly, but he couldn’t relax. Old Bear was stirring, wanted to growl. It had something to do with being so tired and keyed up and then having the pressure ease so suddenly. Bear wasn’t ready for this. He was still sniffing for danger.
Mr. Stott never cleaned his car. In places the dirt was so thick that he could almost have grown alpines on it. As he came back across the lot, Barry noticed (or did Bear notice? If Bear hadn’t been on the prowl, would it have meant anything?) the print of a man’s hand on the curve of the back bodywork, just above the bumper. It was splashed with recent road muck but still clear, so it couldn’t have been put there all that long ago. With a vague prickle of alarm Barry knelt and peered under the car. Eight inches from his nose, wired to a chassis member, he saw a black plastic box, dirt-spattered with spray from the road, but much cleaner than anything else around. He felt around it with his fingers. There seemed to be no cables or pipes connecting it to the machinery of the car. He scrambled out.
“When did you last have anything done to the car?” he said.
Mr. Stott glared up at him.
“Couple of months. Why?”
“Something wired underneath. Something new.”
He darted to where he could see the lane. Still only the tractor, quarter of a mile down. False alarm. Perhaps the gadget—bleeper or whatever it was—wasn’t working; perhaps Mr. Stott had lost his followers despite it, driving around before dawn; perhaps it wasn’t a bleeper anyway, just something to do with the car .
He was still staring at the tractor when the man on the bales shifted his position and laid his hand on the dog’s collar. The gesture spoke, but for a moment Barry didn’t understand it. The man was wearing a flat cap and had a sack draped around his shoulders, but …
It was Sergeant Coyne.
The dog was Norah.
“Pinkie! Quick! Bike!” he shouted.
“What’s up?” said Mr. Stott.
“Tractor coming up the lane. I thought it was only shepherds, but …”
“Off you go. See if I can block them.”
“Right.”
As Barry raced across the cinders, he heard the noisy little engine clatter into life. He caught Pinkie up as they scrambled up the bank.
“Is it Dad?” she asked.
“Couldn’t see who was driving. But it’s Sergeant Coyne. And Norah.”
“Oh.”
He held the bike for her as she climbed into her seat, then mounted, rose onto the pedals, and just managed to get moving on the surface of the track. It was both soft and slippery, desperately hard going and treacherous, too. He seemed to be making barely more than a walking pace, and of course, they were leaving the trail of their tyre prints, clear as clear. On the way over he’d walked the bike beside the track all this last mile. The ground hardened for a few yards, letting him pick up speed before the next soft bit. If he could keep this up … He hadn’t thought of a tractor—go anywhere on that—have to stop and uncouple the trailer—if Mr. Stott could hold them up in the lane a couple of minutes—how fast tractor go over rough ground? Twelve? Bike couldn’t do that, not this bit—over lip, downhill, track harder, twelve easy—yes, get to place where track cut sideways across steep scree—tractor couldn’t take it—topple over—come on, Bear!
The hill silence spread around them, spoiled at the centre by a little knot of noise, the rattle and squeak and groan of the bike as it took the uneven ground, the whispering slither of the tyres, the rasp of breath in his throat. And then, from behind, came the tock of the tractor as it crossed the horizon, that sound of unescapable pursuit he had heard in dream after dream, heard as train wheels, engines of tanks, rotors of chopper, closing, closing. He looked around.
His head seemed to twist on his neck before his mind could order it not to be stupid. He saw nothing before his front wheel wobbled, veered, caught a tussock at the side of the track, and sent the back wheel slithering out sideways. Down they came.
Pinkie shrieked. Barry sprawled clear across the rasping heather, scrambled up, and turned. The bike was on its side, Pinkie half under it. He rushed to pull the bike off her. She shouted. The bike was caught in something, caught somehow around her leg. She’d managed to jam her right leg in between the back wheel and the support of her chair. He lifted the bike more gently and let her ease herself free. She’d lost her glasses.
“You okay?” he gasped.
“Something’s happened to my chair. It went soft. I felt it.”
Barry looked. Yes. The right-hand support, never built for her weight, had buckled at last under the impact of the crash. The chair seat had been forced down onto the mudguard, jamming that against the tyre. Nothing he couldn’t straighten out in five minutes, except that the chair would go again. You can’t do much about once-bent metal …
He turned with a sigh to see where the tractor was. It came jolting across the moor, only a few miles an hour, still with the trailer attached, picking its way. Sergeant Coyne’s head and shoulders projected above the cab. Barry couldn’t see who was driving because the windshield was half misted.
“Leg okay?” he asked calmly.
“Sore,” said Pinkie, and took a hobbling step. “What’s happening?”
“Find your glasses in a sec,” said Barry.
No chance of outrunning them, with Pinkie’s leg. No chance of outrunning them anyway. Coyne was a keep-fit fanatic. Still moving slowly in the strange lull between action and action, Barry bent and took the bike chain from the basket. In a certain kind of Bear fantasy he had sometimes fought off a street gang, swinging the chunky padlock at the end of the chain. He wasn’t planning to use it like that now. He wasn’t planning anything really. It was an almost instinctive move to make Coyne pause, to give him a chance to start arguing his case. He was wrapping the end of the chain around his right palm when Norah hit him.
He saw only the last instants of rush and leap, saw but did not understand the black and tawny blur, the glitter of fangs, the mauve of her tongue. He was still turning, still off balance. She belted the wind out of him as he sprawled.
At once she was on him. Her black lips wrinkled to bare her teeth six inches from his face. Her deep snarl froze him. She raised her head and began to bark, a steady, unhurried signal, telling Sergeant Coyne that she had done her job, caught her prey.
Instinctively, now that her head was up, Barry tried to wriggle sideways, but he’d scarcely twitched a muscle before her jaws were slashing close above his face and the warning growl froze him once more, helpless. Even if his mind had decided it was worth the risk, his body was too frightened to move.
Pinkie came into sight, hobbling forward, arms feeling vaguely toward the noise. Her lips were moving, but Norah’s snarl drowned the words.
“Keep clear!” he managed to croak. “For chrissake, keep clear!”
She was hesitating when Norah swung sideways, still with her front paws on Barry’s chest but slashing at Pinkie with head and shoulders and a deeper and more deadly-sounding snarl. The shift of weight let Barry take a full breath.
“Keep away!” he shouted. “Dangerous! Not the same!”
Pinkie backed off, out of his line of vision. She must have got it. This was something different from two nights ago, when he’d been wearing his uniform, was part of the system Norah was trained to obey. Here he was enemy, and whoever tried to help him was enemy, too.
Norah went back to barking. Barry lay still. It wasn’t over yet.
Her body above him hid Sergeant Coyne’s arrival. The first he knew of it was when the weight left his chest and the snarl slowed to a quiet growl. He sat up. The sergeant’s chest heaved with running, but his leathery face was calm as he bent to pat Norah’s still-bristling hackles.
“There’s a clever girl,” he whispered. “There’s a clever girl.”
He looked at Barry.
“Try anything, lad, and she’ll have you.”
You couldn’t really tell with his strange voice, but he didn’t sound fierce or angry. The Foundation had that sort of effect on people.
“Lost something, Miss Pinkie?” he said.
“My glasses came off.”
“Give us a minute, and we’ll find them.”
Pinkie was several yards from the bike, bent double, patting the ground. She sounded quite ordinary, too, as though nothing special had happened. The tractor stopped twenty yards away. The knock of its engine stilled, and Mr. Freeman climbed down from the cab and strode toward them. He was wearing a long dull green cape, which made him look even larger, even more Moses-like than usual. The early sun glinted off his beard, too gold to be true. It wasn’t true, Barry suddenly realised. He’d dyed it that colour.
For one strange moment Barry seemed to see him quite clearly as two separate people, people whose bodies occupied precisely the same space without the slightest blur of overlap. They wore one cloak; the light wind flapped at its folds. They left one set of footprints on the track as they strode along it. One was a phony, a crook, a chancer, a loony with a dyed beard. The other was a seer, leader, hope of the world. He was—Barry suddenly perceived—at least twenty years older than he looked. Over seventy, perhaps. This didn’t make him weak or pitiful. It made him heroic. He was a fighter against time, against age and death. If all his hopes and schemes came to nothing, he still wouldn’t ask for pity. He didn’t merely look terrific. He was.
It didn’t make any difference. The other one was there, too, just as real. And they were both wrong.
The moment of vision—very like the vision Barry had had of himself a few weeks ago on a rainy morning in this precise place—ended, and he was watching his enemy approach. Mr. Freeman stopped to pat Norah.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” he said. “She did very well. You were right about bringing her. Will you take her back to the tractor now?”
“Miss Pinkie’s gone and dropped her glasses, sir.”
“All right. See if you can find them. You can get up now, Barry, but please remember that Norah is still with us. Come over this way, will you?”
Barry rose. He was trembling—mainly the after-effects of effort and then terror, but also a sudden rush of new tension. The crisis hadn’
t come yet. Mr. Freeman’s attempt to get Sergeant Coyne out of earshot proved that.
“What have you done to Mr. Stott?” he said.
Mr. Freeman was already strolling toward Pinkie, who seemed to have stopped looking for her glasses and was now hobbling off toward the stone circle. She couldn’t have seen it was there. She just seemed to be drifting, like a leaf on water caught in some unseen current.
“Was that who it was?” said Mr. Freeman. “Of course. I should have guessed. A remarkable old gentleman.”
He sounded amused but only slightly interested. Barry’s response was an uprush of pure rage, Bear rage, hot, thrilling, uncontrollable. To be lied to like that, so obviously, out of sheer contempt! Of course, Freeman knew who it was; he’d got here by following the invalid car, hadn’t he? But he couldn’t resist the chance to add to the idea of his own mysterious power, as if he’d turned up because he was all-seeing, a sort of God … The chain and padlock still swung from Barry’s right hand. Three quick steps, a backward and forward whip of the arm, the heavy lock slashing into that neck at maximum impetus, exact on its target between vertebra and vertebra—snap! And the tower of dead flesh which had been his enemy tumbling into the heather like a demolished mill stack. Barry knew, because Bear knew, that it was going to happen just like that. He could not miss. The exact moment had come: Bear’s moment.
Healer Page 14
