by James Gunn
She motioned that he could lie on the floor beside her, but he shook his head. Finally she relented enough to move to the floor beside the bed. By lying on his stomach and letting his arm dangle, Harry relieved the tingling and fell into an uneasy sleep.
He had dreams. There was one in which he was performing a long and difficult lung resection. The microsurgical controls slipped in his sweaty fingers; the laser beam sliced through the aorta. The patient started up on the operating table, the blood spurting from her heart. It was Marna. She began to chase him down long hospital halls.
The overhead lights kept getting farther and farther apart until Harry was running in complete darkness through warm, sticky blood that rose higher and higher until it closed over his head.
Harry woke up, smothering, fighting against something that enveloped him completely, relentlessly. There was a sound of scuffling nearby. Something spat and crackled. Someone cursed.
Harry fought, futilely. Something ripped. Again. Harry caught a glimpse of a grayer darkness, struggled toward it, and came out through a long cut in the taut blanket, which had been pulled under the bed on all four sides.
“Quick!” Christopher said, folding up his pocketknife. He headed for the door, where Pearce was already standing patiently.
Marna picked up a metal leg that had been unscrewed from the desk. Christopher slipped the chair out from under the doorknob and silently opened the door. He led Pearce outside, and Marna followed. Dazedly Harry came after her.
In Cabin 14 someone screamed. Something flashed blue. A body fell. Harry smelled the odor of burning flesh.
Marna ran ahead of them toward the gate. She rested the ferrule of the desk leg on the ground and let the metal bar fall toward the fence. The fence spat blue flame, which ran, crackling, down the desk leg. The leg glowed red and sagged as the metal softened. Then everything went dark, including the neon sign above them and the light at the gate.
“Help me!” Marna panted.
She was trying to lift the gate. Harry put his hands underneath and pulled. The gate moved a foot and stuck.
Up the drive someone yelled hoarsely, without words. Harry strained at the gate. It yielded at last and then rolled up smoothly. He raised his hand to hold it up while Marna got through, and then Pearce and the boy. Harry edged under and let the gate drop.
A moment later the electricity flickered on again. The desk leg melted through and dropped away.
Harry looked back. Coming toward them was a motorized wheelchair. In it was something lumpy and monstrous, a nightmarish menace—until Harry recognized it for what it was: a basket case, a quadruple amputee complicated by a heart condition. An artificial heart-and-lung machine rode on the back of the wheelchair like a second head. Behind galloped a gangling scarecrow creature with hair that flowed out behind. It wore a dress in imitation of a woman. . . .
Harry stood transfixed, watching, fascinated, while the wheelchair stopped beside one of the gun emplacements. Wires reached out from one of the chair arms like Medusan snakes, inserted themselves into control plugs. The machine gun started to chatter. Something plucked at Harry’s sleeve.
The spell was broken. He turned and ran into the darkness.
Half an hour later he was lost. Marna, Pearce, and the boy were gone. All he had left was a tired body, an arm that burned, and a wrist that hurt worse than anything he could remember.
He felt his upper arm. His sleeve was wet. He brought his fingers to his nose. Blood. The bullet had creased him.
He sat disconsolately on the edge of the turnpike, the darkness around him as thick as soot. He looked at the fluorescent dial of his watch. Three-twenty. A couple of hours until sunrise. He sighed and tried to ease the pain in his wrist by rubbing around the bracelet. It seemed to help. In a few minutes it dropped to a tingle.
“Doctor Elliott,” someone said softly.
He turned. Relief and something like joy flooded through his chest. There, outlined against the dim starlight, were Christopher, Marna, and Pearce.
“Well,” Harry said gruffly, “I’m glad you didn’t try to escape.”
“We wouldn’t do that, Doctor Elliott,” Christopher said.
“How did you find me?” Harry asked.
Marna silently held up her arm.
The bracelet. Of course. He had given them too much credit, Harry thought sourly. Marna sought him out because she could not help herself, and Christopher, because he was out here alone with a senile old man to take care of and he needed help.
Although, honesty forced him to admit, it had been he and not Christopher and Pearce who had needed help back there a mile or two. If they had depended on him, their heads would be dangling in the motel’s freezer, waiting to be turned in for the bounty. Or their still-living bodies would be on their way to some organ bank somewhere.
“Christopher,” Harry said to Pearce, “must have been apprenticed to a bad-debt evader.”
Pearce accepted it for what it was: a compliment and an apology. “Dodging the collection agency traps and keeping out of the way of the health inspector,” he whispered, “makes growing up in the city a practical education. . . . You’re hurt.”
Harry started. How did the old man know? Even with eyes, it was too dark to see more than silhouettes. Harry steadied himself. It was an instinct, perhaps. Diagnosticians got it sometimes, he was told, after they had been practicing for years. They could smell disease before the patient lay down on the couch. From the gauges they got only confirmation.
Or maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe the old man smelled the blood with a nose grown keen to compensate for his blindness.
The old man’s fingers were on his arm, surprisingly gentle. Harry pulled his arm away roughly. “It’s only a crease.”
Pearce’s fingers found his arm again. “It’s bleeding. Find some dry grass, Christopher.”
Marna was close. She had made a small, startled movement toward him when Pearce had discovered his wound. Harry could not accept her actions for sympathy; her hate was too tangible. Perhaps she was wondering what she would do if he were to die.
Pearce ripped the sleeve away.
“Here’s the grass, Grampa,” Christopher said.
How did the boy find dry grass in the dark? “You aren’t going to put that on the wound!” Harry said quickly.
“It will stop the bleeding,” Pearce whispered.
“But the germs—”
“Germs can’t hurt you—unless you let them.”
Pearce put the grass on the wound and bound it with the sleeve. “That will be better soon.”
He would take it off, Harry told himself, as soon as they started walking. Somehow, though, it was easier to let it alone now that the harm was done. After that he forgot about it. When they were walking again, Harry found himself beside Marna. “I suppose you got your education dodging health inspectors in the city, too?” he said dryly.
She shook her head. “No. There’s never been much else to do. Ever since I can remember I’ve been trying to escape. I got free once.” Her voice was filled with remembered happiness. “I was free for twenty-four hours, and then they found me.”
“But I thought—” Harry began. “Who are you?”
“Me? I’m the governor’s daughter.”
Harry recoiled. It was not so much the fact, but the bitterness with which she spoke that shocked him.
* * *
Sunrise found them on the turnpike. They had passed the last ruined motel. Now, on either side of the turnpike, were rolling, grassy hills, valleys filled with trees, and the river winding muddily beside them, sometimes so close they could have thrown a stone into it, sometimes turning beyond the hills out of sight.
The day was warm. Above them the sky was blue, with only a trace of fleecy cloud on the western horizon. Occasionally a rabbit would hop across the road in front of them and vanish into the brush on the other side. Once they saw a deer lift its head beside the river and stare at them curiously.
&nbs
p; Harry stared back with hunger in his eyes.
“Doctor Elliott,” Christopher said.
Harry looked at him. In the boy’s soiled hand was an irregular lump of solidified brown sugar. It was speckled with lint and other unidentifiable additions, but at the moment it was the most desirable object Harry could imagine. His mouth watered, and he swallowed hard. “Give it to Pearce and the girl. They’ll need their strength. And you, too.”
“That’s all right,” Christopher said. “I have more.” He held up three other pieces in his other hand. He gave one to Marna and one to Pearce. The old man bit into his with the stubs that served him as teeth.
Harry picked off the largest pieces of foreign matter, and then could restrain his hunger no longer. He couldn’t remember a more satisfying breakfast.
They kept walking, not moving rapidly but steadily. Pearce never complained. He kept his bent old legs tottering forward, and Harry gave up trying to move him faster. They passed a hydroponic farm with an automated canning factory close beside it. No one moved around either building. Only the belts turned, carrying the tanks toward the factory to be harvested, or away from it refilled with nutrients, replanted with new crops.
“We should get something for lunch,” Harry said. It would be theft, but it would be in a good cause. He could get his pardon directly from the governor.
“Too dangerous,” Christopher said.
“Every possible entrance,” Marna said, “is guarded by spy beams and automatic weapons.”
“Christopher will get us a good supper,” Pearce whispered.
They saw a suburban villa on a distant hill, but no one moved around it. They plodded on along the grass-grown double highway toward Lawrence.
Suddenly, Christopher said, “Down! In the ditch beside the road!”
This time Harry moved quickly, without questions. He helped Pearce down the slope—the old man was very light—and threw himself into the ditch beside Marna. A minute later they heard motors race by not far away. After they passed, Harry risked a glance above the top of the ditch. A group of motorcycles dwindled on the road toward the city. “What was that?” Harry asked, shaken.
“Wolf pack!” Marna said, hatred and disgust mingled in her voice.
“But they looked like company police,” Harry said.
“When they grow up they will be company policemen,” Marna said. “Company police are only wolf packs with badges.”
“I thought the wolf packs were made up of escaped citizens,” Harry said.
Marna looked at him scornfully. “Is that what they tell you?”
“A citizen,” Pearce whispered, “is lucky to stay alive when he’s alone. A group of them wouldn’t last a week.”
They got back up on the turnpike and started walking again. Christopher led Pearce nervously. He kept turning to look behind them and glancing from side to side. Soon Harry was edgy, too.
“Down!” Christopher shouted.
Something whistled a moment before Harry was struck a solid blow in the middle of the back as he was throwing himself to the pavement. It knocked him hard to the ground. Marna screamed.
Harry rolled over, wondering if his back was broken. Christopher and Pearce were on the pavement beside him, but Marna was gone.
A rocket blasted a little ahead and above them. Then another. Pearce looked up. A powered glider zoomed toward the sky. Marna was dangling from it, her body twisting and struggling to get free. From a second glider swung empty talons—padded hooks that had closed around Marna and had almost swooped up Harry.
Harry got to his knees, clutching his wrist. It was beginning to send stabs of pain up his arms, like the prelude to a symphony of anguish. The only thing that kept him from falling to the pavement in writhing torment was the black anger that surged through his veins and fought off weakness. He shook his fist at the turning gliders, climbing on smoking jets.
“Doctor Elliott!” Christopher said urgently.
Harry looked toward the voice with blurred eyes. The boy was in the ditch again. So was the old man.
“They’ll be back! Get down!” Christopher said.
“But they’ve got Marna!” Harry said.
“It won’t help if you get killed.”
One glider swooped like a hawk toward a rabbit. The other, carrying Marna, continued to circle as it climbed. Harry rolled toward the ditch. A line of chattering bullets chipped at the pavement where he had been.
“I thought,” he gasped, “they were trying to abduct us.”
“They hunt heads, too,” Christopher said.
“Anything for a thrill,” Pearce whispered.
“I never did anything like that,” Harry moaned. “I never knew anyone who did.”
“You were busy,” Pearce said.
It was true. Since he had been four years old he had been in school constantly, the last part of that time in medical school. He had been home only for a brief day now and then; he scarcely knew his parents anymore. What would he know of the pastimes of young squires? But this—this wolf-pack business! It was a degradation of life that filled him with horror.
The first glider was now a small cross in the sky; Marna, a speck hanging from it. It straightened and glided toward Lawrence. The second followed.
Suddenly Harry began beating the ground with his aching arm. “Why did I dodge? I should have let myself be captured with her. She’ll die.”
“She’s strong,” Pearce whispered, “stronger than you or Christopher, stronger than almost anyone. But sometimes strength is the cruelest thing. Follow her. Get her away.”
Harry looked at the bracelet from which pain lanced up his arm and through his body. Yes, he could follow her. As long as he could move, he could find her. But feet were so slow against glider wings.
“The motorcycles will be coming back,” Christopher said. “The gliders will have radioed them.”
“But how do we capture a motorcycle?” Harry asked. The pain wouldn’t let him think clearly.
Christopher had already pulled up his T-shirt. Around his thin waist was wrapped turn after turn of nylon cord. “Sometimes we fish,” he said. He stretched the cord across the two-lane pavement in the concealment of grass grown tall in a crack. He motioned Harry to lie flat on the other side. “Let them pass, all but the last one,” he said. “Hope that he’s a straggler, far enough behind so that the others won’t notice when we stand up. Wrap the cord around your waist. Get it up where it will catch him around the chest.”
Harry lay beside the pavement. His left arm felt like a swelling balloon, and the balloon was filled with pain. He looked at it once, curiously, but it was still the same size.
After an eternity came the sound of motors, many of them. As the first ones passed, Harry cautiously lifted his head. Yes, there was a straggler. He was about a hundred feet behind the others; he was speeding now to catch up.
The others passed. When the straggler got within twenty feet, Harry jumped up, bracing himself against the impact. Christopher sprang up at the same instant. The young squire had time only to look surprised before he hit the cord. The cord pulled Harry out into the middle of the pavement, his heels skidding. Christopher had wrapped his end around the trunk of a young tree.
The squire smashed into the pavement. The motorcycle slowed and stopped. Beyond, far down the road, the others had not looked back.
Harry untangled himself from the cord and ran to the squire. He was about as old as Harry, and as big. He had a harelip and a withered leg. He was dead. His skull was crushed. Harry closed his eyes. He had seen men die before, but he had never been the cause of it. It was like breaking his Hippocratic oath.
“Some must die,” Pearce whispered. “It is better for the evil to die young.”
Harry stripped quickly and got into the squire’s clothes and goggles. He strapped the pistol onto his hip and turned to Christopher and Pearce. “What about you?”
“We won’t try to escape,” Pearce said.
“I don’t mean
that. Will you be all right?”
Pearce put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Christopher will take care of me. And he will find you after you have rescued Marna.”
The confidence in Pearce’s voice strengthened Harry. He did not pause to question that confidence. He mounted the motorcycle, settled himself into the saddle seat, and turned the throttle. The motorcycle took off violently.
It was tricky, riding on one wheel, but he had had experience on similar vehicles in the subterranean Medical Center thoroughfares.
His arm hurt, but it was not like it had been before when he was helpless. Now it was a guidance system. As he rode, he could feel the pain lessen. That meant he was getting closer to Marna.
* * *
It was night before he found her. The other motorcycles had completely outdistanced him, and he had swept past the side road several miles before the worsening pain warned him. He cruised back and forth before he finally located the curving ramp that led across the cloverleaf ten miles east of Lawrence.
From this a ruined asphalt road turned east, and the pain in Harry’s arm had dropped to an ache. The road ended in an impenetrable thicket. Harry stopped just before he crashed into it. He sat immobile on the seat, thinking.
He hadn’t considered what he was going to do when he found Marna; he had merely taken off in hot pursuit, driven partly by the painful bracelet on his wrist, partly by his concern for Marna and the pain she was feeling as well as her likely fate.
Somehow—he could scarcely trace back the involutions of chance to their source—he had been trapped into leading this pitiful expedition from the Medical Center to the Governor’s mansion. Moment by moment it had threatened his life—and not, unless all his hopes were false, just a few years but eternity. Was he going to throw it away here on a quixotic attempt to rescue a girl from the midst of a pack of cruel young wolves?
