Way of the Pilgrim

by Matt

  "The First Captain has different needs and purposes stemming from his responsibility to govern...." She had been answering him in English and unthinkingly he had slipped also into that language. He switched back to Italian now, to make sure she understood. He repeated his first words, in that language. "... That is, the First Captain may have reasons or purposes for doing many things that even other Aalaag don't understand; and as long as he's First Captain, they don't inquire why he does them or judge his doing of them."

  "Then I could say to the First Captain that I was very interested to see him?" she asked in Italian.

  "No," said Shane. "For two reasons. One, because it's at odds with Aalaag psychology; and two, because he can do what he wants, but that doesn't mean that you can."

  "This beast understands," she said, returning to Aalaag.

  "It's all right," Shane went on, still in Italian, "work's over for the day. I've got a lot to tell you and it's probably better done in Italian. Let's sit down."

  He seated himself deliberately in one of the armchairs, rather than on the couch, and she went to the armchair opposite to sit down facing him. But she passed by him so close she all but brushed against him, and his senses were full of the awareness of her body as she passed. There was a sad ache within him, at having her so close and yet so untouchable.

  "Have you eaten something?" she asked.

  "Yes—yes, I had dinner with Peter," he said. "He told me, by the way, that Anna ten Drinke and Georges Marrotta are here, finally, so I'm going to put on a sort of demonstration I'd had planned for these visiting leaders to see. I told Peter to have them in position before the clock tower of the Parliament buildings, so they can see what happens to the clock there— it's called Big Ben—"

  "I know about it," she said gravely, in Italian. "Someday I'd like to see it, and the Parliament buildings themselves, and other things here."

  "Perhaps we can take a few hours off, after tomorrow night," he said. "The point is, I want these European visitors to see at noon tomorrow what the Pilgrim can do. Then tomorrow night, I'll talk to them all and explain why we need to support this Governor Project here in London, and other projects like it as they're set up; and why at the same time we've got to build a tight, unified working structure that includes all Resistance members."

  "Good," she said. "What am I supposed to do?"

  "Nothing," he said. "I mean I don't want you there at the clock tower. You wait here, and if I'm not back before 2:00 pm or if no one else, like Peter, has shown up by that time with some kind of news about me or how things went, then I want you to get out of this hotel. Don't check out. Don't take anything more than you'd carry if you were just stepping out for an hour or so; but get completely clear of the hotel, fast. Find someone in Peter's local Resistance group and get word from them of how things went at the tower."

  He paused.

  "You understand?"

  She nodded.

  "But what are you going to do at this clock tower?" she asked. Her face had tightened. "What is it that's so dangerous?"

  "I'm not going to do anything, as myself. But the Pilgrim is going to make his mark on the face of the clock there, not only so everybody can see it, but so that everyone there who's watching—as all these visitors of ours should be—can see him as he does it."

  "How will you—how will he get away afterward?"

  "I'll walk away. Peter will meet me and take me to a car that'll be nearby. That's all. There'll be nothing to it." She looked at him penetratingly.

  "Didn't you tell me something about an Aalaag on one of their riding beasts who has a regular post of duty that has him patroling about the Houses of Parliament?"

  "Yes, that's right. There is." Mentally, he snarled at himself for having mentioned it.

  "What if he's there at the time?"

  "I want him there," he said. "I've timed the thing for noon so as to be sure he'll be there. But he won't do anything."

  "He won't?" Disbelief rang like a hammer on an anvil in her voice.

  "No. His primary job is a symbolic one, to establish the supremacy of the Aalaag over the government that still sits in the Houses of Parliament. It's only his secondary duty to enforce any of the Aalaag laws he sees being broken. But there's no Aalaag law against a human coming down from the clock tower and walking off. There'll have been no reason for him or her to look up before he sees me, near the ground, and no reason to see the sign I've marked on the clockface. To anyone with good eyesight, or any kind of binoculars or a telescope, it'll be plain what that sign is, but to anyone just glancing up there it'll look like a small damage or dirty spot on the clockface. However, the Aalaag'll have no need even to look, so he won't; and there'll be no reason to stop me from leaving, so he won't do that either. There's no Aalaag law against a human coming down the tower and walking away, so why should an Aalaag concern himself with a beast who does?"

  "It can't be that easy. It won't be that easy!" she said vehemently. "You're not telling me something."

  "But it is that easy," he said soothingly. "I even have the help of Aalaag technology. Look..."

  He reached into his pockets to pull out the ring device and then the privacy tool. He demonstrated both for her.

  "You see," he said, "I can be both invisible and independent of gravity when I do it. How can there be any problems?"

  She stared at the two things. He let her take them and examine them. Reluctantly she yielded them back to him when he reached for them again.

  "You're still not convinced?" he said.

  "No." She shook her head firmly.

  "Well, you should be," he said, as quietly and calmly as he could. "In most of what we're going to be doing together, you and I, you're going to have to trust me when I say certain things will work. They'll work because that's the way the Aalaag are; and, knowing how they are, I'm as safe doing something like this as I would be climbing a deserted tower out someplace in a wilderness."

  "When you tell me only what you want to tell me," she said, "I can't argue with you, because I don't know what I need to know to argue intelligently."

  The understanding that he was lying to her, by implication if not in outright words, was plain in her eyes as he sat watching her now. But wasn't his whole association with her a lie? The more barriers between them the better, he told himself harshly, and the less likely that in a moment of weakness he might give in and try to reach out to her.

  The next day he was at the Project early and set himself up in the office that had been assigned to him, strewing the desktop with papers and building as complete as possible a picture of being immersed in some large piece of work. Just after eleven in the morning, he waited until there was no sound of anyone coming and going in the corridor outside his door, then took off his shoes, put on his robe and opened the door enough to let him look out.

  The corridor was deserted.

  Carrying his shoes in his right hand, he reached in through a slit in his robe to the left side pocket of the jacket he was wearing underneath, and touched the stud on the privacy tool. Now invisible, he slipped out, into the corridor, heading toward the stairs and the front door.

  His office was on the third floor. He made it to the stairs and down them without a sound and without encountering anyone. An Interior Guard corporal sat at the desk by the front door with the sign-out book open on the table in front of him and a pen handy. But in the relative dimness of the building's interior even the shield's illusion of heat waves in still air was not visible. He did not even glance up as Shane slipped by him.

  At the door, however, Shane was forced to wait. He stepped back into a dimmer corner of the lobby beside the door and composed himself to patience. The minutes slipped by and nothing happened. Then, so suddenly it was almost like an explosion on the quiet of the lobby, came the sound of shoes briskly ascending the steps outside to the door, the door was flung open and a young, blond-headed staff member named Julian Ammerseth came in carrying a large manila envelope under his arm.


  "Back again—," he said cheerfully to the corporal, approaching the desk to sign in; but that was all Shane heard, for he had caught the door from closing with an invisible hand behind the other's back and slipped through to the outside.

  He paused just at the bottom of the outside steps to put his shoes on; but he kept himself invisible until he was well away from the Project headquarters and could find a niche of an alleyway not overlooked by windows, into which he could step long enough to let himself become visible again.

  Visible, he pinched the hood of his robe together and continued down the street on foot until he could hire a cab and have it take him within a few blocks of the Houses of Parliament.

  It was fortunate he had allowed himself some extra time. It took him some minutes to walk around the Parliament buildings until he had found the Aalaag sentry and made sure that he was more or less on his regular schedule, which should put him before the clock tower at noon or shortly thereafter. The actual time of his arrival there could only be guessed at, since the officer—it was a male, this time, Shane noted from the armor shape—would ride to a point, sit there a while, then ride on to another point at which he would pause; and both points and length of pause were apparently chosen at random.

  Having found the alien, he returned to the base of the clock tower. The time was seven minutes to twelve. There was no lack of people going to and fro, or standing and talking to each other in the walks on this side of the tower. He did not see Peter; and the Resistance leaders from the Continent, of course, were unrecognizable to him. He continued around a corner of the tower, hunting for a place where he could safely turn himself invisible. But there was none.

  In desperation, he settled for a moment when none of those around him seemed to be looking in his direction and pushed over the stud of the privacy tool in his left jacket pocket. There was the momentary flash of silver surrounding him, and, invisible, he returned to the tower below the clock, activated the ring device and let its powers lift him slowly up the face of the tower to the clock.

  He had not taken into account the effect of apparently standing in midair on nothing, some stories off the ground. He was not ordinarily affected by heights, but now he had to fight down an irrational feeling of panic that began to rise in him as he himself ascended toward the clockface.

  He reached it and, playing with the ring device, managed to halt himself opposite the hub from which the two hands of the clock were pivoted. He looked down. The Aalaag was nowhere in sight.

  Invisible, suspended in air, he waited and scanned the walks below for some sign of Peter. At just two minutes to twelve, he located him, standing in apparent conversation with a short, round-hatted man at the distance Shane had told him to be beyond the tower.

  Time slowly passed. The minute hand of the clock was so large that by watching it, he could see the slow creep of its tip around the dial. It reached noon and the Aalaag had not yet appeared. It moved on, past five minutes after twelve, past ten minutes after twelve...

  At a little more than fourteen minutes after twelve, the massive figure in shining armor rode its huge, bull-like beast around a corner of the tower, and moved to a position roughly opposite the middle of it before stopping. To Shane's relief, the rider had brought his beast to a halt facing outward, so that he, too, looked away from the clock. Shane reached a perspiration-slippery hand in through the slit on the left side of his robe and turned off his invisibility.

  There was the silver flash and, looking down he saw his robe and shoes against the face of the clock. Within him the urge was overwhelming to make his mark on the clockface and start his descent; but he had calculated beforehand that he would have to hold a visible position where he was for at least sixty seconds, to make sure everyone who should be watching for him had noticed him; and as many others, except the Aalaag, as possible. He hung there, accordingly, with the sweat rolling down his body under the robe and waited for the huge minute hand to move forward one full minute.

  Finally it touched the black mark toward which it had been progressing. Shane reached in under his robe and brought out a stoppered vial of paint and an inch-wide paintbrush. He poured the paint onto the brush and applied the brush end to the clockface beside him, making the sketch of the cloaked figure with staff in hand. Then he put vial and paintbrush back in under the robe, heedless of what the paint would do to the jacket he was wearing, and touched the ring device to let himself begin a slow drift down the face of the tower. Out beyond him, on the ground, he could see faces, a number of faces now, turned up to watch him. At any moment he expected the Aalaag also to turn, to see what was attracting the attention of the humans. He had counted on the Aalaag indifference to beasts to cause this one to ignore the curiosity of the surrounding people, as something beneath the notice of a master.

  But luck was not with him. Before he had reached the ground, the riding beast swung about, on some signal from its rider, and that rider looked up.

  In a second the viewing slit in the silver protective screen over the helmet would be in line with the tower andTie would be discovered. There was no hope the rider would ignore a human descending slowly through the air as Shane was. Humans did not have the technology to make that sort of descent; and it was expressly forbidden for humans to make use of Aalaag tools anywhere but in the Headquarters buildings themselves, and then by special permission. The rider would have to investigate and the first step in any investigation would be rendering Shane paralyzed or unconscious.

  Hastily fumbling under his robe, Shane turned himself back into privacy mode again. There was the familiar silver flash and he was now invisible to the watching humans. But the privacy tool was not perfect in its bending of light around an object. It left a slight shimmer like heat waves in the air where the hidden object was; and the Aalaag would recognize that shimmer immediately for what it was if he looked directly at it, as he was now starting to do, as the riding beast under him completed its turn.

  Shane stopped breathing. But then, without warning, a miracle occurred. The slit of the sentry's helmet tilted upward. He was staring, not at Shane, but at what all the human eyes were fixed upon now that Shane had disappeared—the face of the clock.

  In that moment, Shane reached the ground and made himself once more visible. No one seemed to notice. He began to walk at an unhurried pace directly toward the sentry, who had now put his riding beast in motion and was moving toward the tower to look more closely at the clockface. Whether the eyes behind that slit in the helmet had already identified the mark Shane had drawn as an illegal one, Shane did not know. But he knew that if the Aalaag looked long enough, he could not fail to recognize what was up there.

  Shane and the great pair of alien figures approached each other steadily. They drew level. At any moment, Shane expected to hear the deep Aalaag voice behind him, commanding him to halt; or perhaps he would simply without warning feel the stunning blow of the officer's long arm, on the theory of a sentinel like this that a nonservant human would not understand even a simple order in Aalaag to stop.

  He and the Aalaag passed each other.

  Peter was only about twenty feet away. At the same steady pace, Shane walked toward him; and just before Shane reached him Peter turned and began to move away, walking some ten feet before Shane.

  Shane followed him.

  Behind him he had no idea what was happening. But none of the humans he passed spoke to him or turned toward him, although every one of those he went by in the first minute or so glanced surreptitiously at him. He continued following Peter until they turned a corner and were passed by a group of some four or five men walking in the opposite direction and talking animatedly, who blocked them from the view of those by the tower, but paid no attention to either of them, lost in conversation as they went.

  Peter glanced back over his shoulder briefly, then nodded and beckoned. He sped up, his walk becoming a very fast walk indeed. Shane increased his own pace to keep up. They were moving alongside a street
now, down which mere was a flow of traffic, and a moment later a car pulled to the curb just ahead of them.

  Peter reached it first, opened the door for him and stood aside. Shane ducked in. Peter followed. The door slammed and the car accelerated away from the curb once more. A moment later they were lost in traffic.

  1

  "You can drop me at the Government Unit," said Shane, once the car was well on its way. "I've got to get back as soon as I can. They think I'm there now."

  "Look," said Peter. They were sitting together in the rear seat of the small, private vehicle. An anonymous driver was up front, giving Shane nothing more than a view-of the back of her head. "You can spare another hour, can't you? I told all the visitors we'd meet right after the demonstration. Just so you could say a word or two to them—the real talk from you comes tonight, exactly as you planned."

  Shane glared at him.

  "I can't take the time now," he said. "If someone at the Unit calls for me or goes looking for me—"

  "Just an hour."

  "An hour could be an hour too long."

  "Now, look here," said Peter, "you wouldn't have taken off like this unless you felt pretty safe doing it. An hour's no time at all; and it's important to say a word to these people while they're still in shock from seeing you paint the Pilgrim sign right under the nose of an alien and get away with it."