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Chapter 1
He breathes deeply.
His eyes are closed.
He knows the final stage to Sanctuary.
EVENING…
Logan reached the maze platform, numb, dull-eyed, one arm around Jessica’s shoulder. She was guiding him, partly supporting him.
She summoned the car.
Logan’s head was down; his breathing was shallow, his face flat chalk. He seemed unaware of his surroundings as the car swept into motion.
“It’s going to be all right,” Jess said, holding him against her, holding him as the Loveroom had held him, talking softly to him. “We’re on the way, to the last stage, to Sanctuary. No one can stop us now. A few minutes more and we can quit running. It’s all over now. It’s all right. Everything’s all right.”
Logan didn’t respond.
The car burned through the deep tunnels.
“Listen—you don’t have to fight yourself any longer. I had to keep Ballard from hurting you because what I said to him was true, about my loving you. It’s not easy to discard a lifetime, but you’ve done it, Logan. You’re free now.”
Slowly he raised his hand, his right hand. The palm flower was blinking faster. It wavered. It went black:
His twenty-four hours were up.
A high, keening alarm-scream rose from the car. No—from something in the car.
“Gun,” said Logan, trancelike. He jerked his head up, blinked rapidly as adrenaline roused him. His voice hardened. “Wild Gun.”
“What does it mean?”
It meant a Gun in the hands of a runner, a man on black. What DS fears most. A Wild Gun. The alarm would spread in widening circles. Police units would converge. Every platform would be covered. An all-out hunt now, with DS on crash alert. The Gun was alive on every board. Dispatchers would be triangulating their position.
Logan punched the control. The car slowed
“What are you doing?”
The car stopped; the hatch opened.
“Out,” said Logan.
They scrambled onto the platform. The Gun was screaming. Citizens scattered at the sound. They were isolated on the open platform. Logan summoned another car.
The Gun screamed.
A black tunic, moving toward them.
Through a bleary-mist, Logan tried to focus on the dark figure. A thick-chested man. Killing eyes. Tight mouth.
The mazecar filled the slot behind Logan. Too late.
The DS man’s Gun came up. Centered. Homered. An instant, frozen in time: A homer never misses anybody.. .can’t get away from a homer.
…a homer.
homer…
homer!
The charge sung toward them.
Logan whipped up the screaming Gun. Fired
Two projectiles moving. Two projectiles seeking heat. Two projectiles in collision.
The double explosion hammered the tunnel walls, rocked the platform, swatted Logan and Jess to the floor.
The DS man was chopped, spilled., Dust sifted from the upper levels.
Logan pulled himself up, stumbled to the waiting car, pitched the screaming Gun inside, punched a destination: Omaha, Nebraska.
The car was gone. The alarm-scream faded, faded, died.
Another car. He hustled Jess aboard. Away.
“What have we gained?” she asked.
“The Gun might throw them off,” he said
“We’re finished, aren’t we?”
No reply.
They began switching cars. On the next platform a mob was milling. A flush-faced woman pointed, “Runners!” The crowd began to converge on them.
Away.
On the next platform, police.
On the next platform a ripper scored the metal flank of their mazecar. “Only fifteen minutes left,” sobbed Jess. “They’ll leave without us.”
They emerged again at the next slot. A DS man was there.
Logan’s thoughts raced. Young. Fresh Gunner. Not more than sixteen. Runners run. They don’t attack. Logan attacked
Sick surprise on the young hunter’s face as he was struck, groaned and dropped. Back into the maze.
“It’s useless, isn’t it?”
“Pittsburgh,” said Logan.
“What?”
“The steel city. No people there. Maybe a chance.”
Molybdenum
Chromium
Vanadium
Iron
Tantalum
Carbon
Aluminum
Nickel
Steel
Pittsburgh.
A great forge, a layering of bucket hoists and winches, of conveyors and gearing, punch presses, stamping machines, benders, shapers, buffers, lathes and tooling. Into its maw flowed coal and ore and electrical impulses; and out flowed uncountable metal products and hardware for a nation.
Pittsburgh: a single, automated machine, controlled by limit switches, thermocouples and programmed circuits. A vibration, a decible assault, a hot-metal stench, buried in a black shrouding of smog, cinders grit and petroleum pollution.
For more than a hundred years no man had lived in Pittsburgh; no man could live in Pittsburgh.
The hatch opened.
An acrid wash of fumed air blinded them, choked them. The area was veiled in black smoke. “Blouse,” said Logan.
Jess shook her head, uncomprehending. The metal din was impossible.
He slipped off his shirt, wadded it, jammed it against his mouth. The girl nodded, did the same. Logan got out, groped for the scanner box. He fisted the glass, shattering it. Now they could head for Steinbeck. No destination check with the box smashed. For the moment DS was blind.
He moved to the callbox to summon another car, but Jess tugged at his arm, pointing behind them. Logan spun. A maze car was in the slot, hatch opening.
Logan grabbed the girl and backed into the pistoning smoke. Their lungs burned, eyes teared and stung. They crouched behind rotating machinery.
A man dismounted from the car. DS. A circular filtermask made his face a mystery. He could be Francis.
The man fell into a fighting crouch and swept the platform with his Gun. Cautiously he advanced into the billowing smoke haze, stopped, bent down, examined the floor of the platform. Logan went cold. There, etched in cinder grime, were their footprints. The DS man straightened and moved toward them.
Logan led Jess deeper into the hammering metal din. He pressed her down, against a casing wall, indicating that she remain there.
The DS man was closer. Francis? Logan couldn’t be sure. In height and build the man resembled him. And he moved with a veteran’s sureness.
Logan stood up, let the operative catch a glimpse of him through the haze, then sprinted for an overhead conveyor. The man gave chase. Logan swung out and over a narrow channel between laboring grinders. He hung there, dropped.
Heat. Intense and deadening. Logan’s hand touched metal; he winced, pulling back. The inferno of noise ate into his nerves. Each breath he took sent flame into his lungs; he could taste the grit between his teeth.
On. Deeper into the vast steel city, with the DS man in his wake.
Logan darted between a stamper and a rising hoist, caught the edge of the hoist and allowed himself to be carried upward.
A nitro charge shuddered the ground below him. The hoist stopped abruptly. Logan swung onto a metal walkway, ran along it. A ripper took out a chunk of the walk ahead of him.
He’s getting my range, thought Logan. He’s good, really good.
Logan clattered down a wind of steps, reached bottom, ran under a screeching cranelift, kept moving. He’d shaken the hunter. But not for long. A weapon. He needed a weapon.
He looked about wildly. Tool crib to his right. He grabbed a metal spanner, adjusted it, removed three large nuts from the face of a tramcart, stripped off a length of flexible cable. He tied the three nuts together—into an improvised bola. It would have to do.
He pulled himself up, onto a
moving belt. The DS man was gliding toward him on another belt, back turned, probing the smoke curtain with his Gun. The belts moved in opposite directions, bearing great packing cases to a mile-distant chute. Logan ducked behind a case, hugged the wood, calculating.
The belts rumbled along at an even five miles an hour: Their intersect point was a gamble, but Logan would take it.
Bessemer sparks showered him from a spill of molten metal fountaining into a huge cradle. Fumes poisoned him. How close was the man? Logan kept his head down behind the crate. He counted to four. Stood up.
The DS operative was just across from him, turning in his direction. Quick! The bola was a blur of rotating steel weights above Logan’s head. The Gun was on him, centering.
Logan released the spinning bola.
The Gun did not fire. It fell from the hand of the black-suited figure as the bola hit, wrapped and stunned the hunter. Arms pinioned to his body by the looped cable, he lost balance. The filtermask was dislodged. Not Francis.
Perhaps he screamed. In the cacaphony of cylinders and gears and pistons Logan could not tell.
The man cartwheeled down, legs wide, was deflected by a catwalk, continued his plunge into a bucket hoist, which caught his body, trundled it forward for a moment, over a pulley crest, then downward, into the chewing maw of the city.
He was gone.
Light was dying in the Florida Keys as Logan and Jess emerged at last from the maze. The western sky was a pale slate color, deepening into dusk; red streaks of cloud veined the horizon. It would be night soon.
Against this sky they saw the warehouses and storage sheds of Cape Steinbeck, spread over a flat expanse of concrete. The area was gray and lifeless.
“Sanctuary?” There was deep disappointment in Jessica’s tone.
Logan swung in a slow, wary circle. No sound. A watching silence. He knew eyes were examining them, weighing them.
They began to walk toward the buildings.
An amplified voice broke the silence. It crackled over the concrete. “Halt! Identify yourselves. The two paused. Logan sighed with exhaustion. In a dead voice he said, Logan 3—1639.” The girl said, “Jessica 6—2298”
“Password?”
“Sanctuary,” said Logan.
“You are entering a minefield. Do not proceed further. A guide will take you through.”
All of the energy had left Logan’s wracked body. He was drugged with fatigue, sore in every muscle; his bones ached, and simple breathing was an effort. He could not move his legs with any precision. He shuffled, stumbled.
“Stand still!” cracked the amplified voice.
Logan stood by Jess, dazedly, as a figure detached itself from one of the shadow-draped buildings and approached them. The man slowed, walked in a weaving pattern across the flat ground.
He came up to them scowling. Hardness was stamped into his features. Hardness was in the line of his shoulders and the set of his head on his thick neck.
“Took you long enough. Now, do exactly what I tell you. There’s less than seven minutes left and no time for talk. We’re on the edge of the minefield. A wrong step will take your legs off. Understood?”
Logan nodded dully.
“Then follow me,” said the man.
Logan’s legs were weighted. They were unyielding things which did not wish to obey him. As he followed the guide he kept losing his balance, righting himself, then almost falling again. If he fell he would be blown to pieces. Walking was impossibly difficult, one of the hardest feats he had ever been called upon to perform. Jess, too, was staggering with exhaustion.
Finally they were clear of the mined area.
They entered a long storage building, passed between high, crated objects.
Logan tried to focus his eyes on the objects. Silvery. Silvery shapes in shimmering white webbing—no, fiber packing. Numerals and letters on the sides: TITAN…STARSCRAPER…FALCONER…
He knew what they were. Missiles. Crated and stacked and abandoned.
Again into the open.
Logan narrowed his eyes. Across an unbroken stretch of tarmac: a tall gantry, supporting a massive gleaming needle.
A passenger rocket!
Logan tried to weave a logical fabric from threads of confused thought. Cape Steinbeck, the space storage center at the tip of the Keys. A dead section. Like Cathedral. Like Molly. Like Washington. All stages on the Sanctuary line. Steinbeck, where the rockets and the missiles were mothballed when space flight was abandoned. Yet they were using a rocket which meant that Sanctuary must be in space. But how? Where? The planets in this solar system would not support life. The stars had never been reached. How?
“Keep moving,” said the guide.
They started toward the waiting rocket. Steam wisped from its lower stage. Frost condensed and evaporated from liquid oxygen and hyrodgen stored inside, ready to be converted into raw power.
Logan felt a darkness sifting down. A darkness within himself; a darkness from the heavy sky above him; and a darkness from a man who wore it. Wore the darkness. Wore black. A tall man, coming. A hunter in the tunic of night. Angerman, the judge and jury.
At last, as Logan knew it had to be. At last—Francis.
A sense of doom and despair settled around him; the feeling was crashing, unsupportable. He had never experienced anything like it.
Jess saw the DS man, choked out a small cry.
Logan pushed her toward the guide. “Take her. Get her aboard. I’ll try to stop him.”
The hard-faced man did not hesitate. He gripped Jessica’s arm, propelled her toward the racket. She fought to free herself. “No, Logan! No!”
He ignored the fright and the urgency and the entreaty and the pain in her voice and he screamed silently, Hear me, Francis. Hear me. I want to TALK to you. There’s so much I have to say to you.
A shudder rippled his body; the ground was sponge rubber; he kept sinking into it, tottering, pushing himself. He slipped to one knee, dragged his body up with clogging slowness. Dark was swimming in at him. He blinked it back.
The DS man was close now. Face set in rigid lines. Eyes cold, flat.
There was so much to say to Francis. That the world was coming apart, that it was dying, this system, this culture. That the Thinker was no longer able to hold it together. A new world would be formed. Living is better than dying, Francis. Dying young is a waste and a shame and a perversion. The young don’t build. They use. The wonders of Man were achieved by the mature, the wise, who lived in this world before we did. There was an Old Lincoln after the young one.
Exhaustion hacked at Logan. His breath rattled in his throat.
Francis filled the sky. The Gun was in his hand.
Can I speak? Can I tell him? Will he listen?
Words. Sound. Logan spoke. Brokenly. In patches.
“World…dying…can’t last…I saw…the dead places…heart of the system is…rotten.There’ll be more..runners…more of them…You can’t stop them…can’t…We…We were wrong, Francis…death no answer…we must…build, not destroy…tired of killing…wrong…tired.I—I… “
A roaring. A great humming roar in Logan’s head. The rocket leaving without him? Let it go, then. Let it find Sanctuary. The roaring pulsed, intensified. And with it, black. A wave of ruining black that took him, filled his mouth and eyes. Black sound. And Francis, black in black. And the Gun…
Someone was speaking. Someone was commanding him to open his eyes.
Francis stood above him. The DS man leaned over, pulled Logan up. The Gun was in its holster, the homer unfired.
Francis began to change. What was this? Am I really conscious? The skin, the very bones of Francis began to change; the face was being stripped away. The nose was altered, the jaw, the line of cheekbone. Francis was…
Francis was Ballard!
“I couldn’t tell you back in Washington,” the tall man said. “I didn’t trust you then. Even when you failed to use the Gun I didn’t trust you. Now I do.”
The logic was suddenly there for Logan. Ballard would need to disguise himself among the young in order to move about in the world. Every few years he’d need a new face, a new disguise. And what better disguise than that of a Sandman?
“I haven’t been able to help too many of you,” Ballard was saying, “because the only runners I can help are those I can reach. My organization is still a small one.”
“But Doyle.. .back in Cathedral?”
“I gave him a key, told him to go for Sanctuary, but you were too quick for us, and the cubs got him.” “Then—it was you, on the steps at Crazy Horse.” Ballard nodded. “I wanted to stop you then.”
“But how, how do you.” Logan tried to frame questions, but his tongue would not function.
“I have only limited access to the Thinker. I control parts of the maze, the dark parts, but I’m learning more each day. The system is dying. The Thinker is dying. Someday you and Jess and the others will be able to come back—to a changed world. A good, strong one. I’m working for that, widening the cracks in the system, doing what I can. There are few I can trust. Mainly I have to work alone.”
“And—Sanctuary?”
Ballard was helping Logan toward the rocket. “Argos,” he said. “The abandoned space station near Mars. It’s a small colony now, still crude, cold, hard to live on. But it’s ours, Logan. Yours now. The jump for Argos is Darkside—on the Moon.”
He drew Logan, stumbling, to the boarding ladder. Jess was there, waiting, tears in her eyes.
Jess… Jess, I love you!
Hands reached for him, gentled him aboard, fastened him into the launch seat. A crisp crackle of voices beginning the countdown. And in the final second, as the port closed, Logan saw Ballard giving last-minute instructions to the hard-faced guide who had led them through the minefield.
The port sealed itself.
A great shuddering noise possessed the rocket. Logan felt himself danced by energies and tremors; Jess was smiling at him; a weight pushed him down. He closed his eyes.
Ballard watched the tide of orange envelop the lower stage of the rocket. The needlecraft poised, rose ponderously, gaining speed as it left Earth. Faster now. A thunder—as it began its long run down the Atlantic Range, safe from the eyes of men.
Logan: A Trilogy Page 13
