by Ben Bova
The lights, the lights. He had to get to the lights. They were right behind him. A knife whizzed past his head and clattered on the trash-strewn pavement. Lou’s lungs were in flames, his heartbeat a deafening roar in his ears. Something grabbed at his waist. He swung around and backhanded viciously. A little kid, no more than eight or nine, spurted blood from his nose as his head snapped back from Lou’s blow. He looked afraid and angry and surprised, all at once. Lou grabbed him by the hair and pulled him off, tossed him into the next teenager coming at him, and then sprinted out into the brightly lit avenue.
“Hold it!” roared the leader. “Stop. Don’ cross th’ line.”
Lou stood in the middle of the broad avenue, chest raw and heaving, ears bursting with the hot drumfire of his pulse, legs shaking with fatigue. The kids of the gang bunched together on the sidewalk.
“Good run, funnyman,” said the leader. “Lotsa luck.” Then he raised his hand.
Lou saw a knife in that hand, saw the leader snap it forward in a quick throw, saw the knife fly through the air toward him. He jumped back, toward the far side of the street. The knife hit point first on the blacktopped street and stuck there, quivering. Now the other boys were slowly reaching for their knives, getting ready to throw.
Stumbling, nearly unconscious from exertion, Lou backpedaled and then turned and staggered to the pavement on the other side of the avenue. Back away from the lights into the shadows of a doorway. The kids merely stood on the opposite sidewalk, laughing and standing there, as if waiting for something to happen.
A pair of hands grabbed Lou’s arms. “Whatcha want, pinkey?”
Lou never thought he would do it, but he fainted.
5
Lou woke up. He was in a room, on the floor. A single, naked bulb up in the ceiling glared at him. A half-dozen kids were standing around him. Black kids. Another gang.
He pulled himself up slowly to a sitting position. Every part of his body ached horribly.
The only furniture in the room was an antique wooden school desk and chair, battered and carved with hundreds of initials. On the wall behind the desk was some sort of old poster showing a huge lion leaping through a ring of fire. The top of the poster had been ripped away. Lou could make out the words …EST SHOW ON EARTH, APRIL 15 to 29. It didn’t make any sense to him.
And then he focused on the black man sitting at the desk. He was immense, the biggest man Lou had ever seen. He must have weighed three hundred pounds or more. And he wasn’t fat: just huge, giant muscles on a mountainous frame. He looked completely out of proportion to the rickety desk as he sat squeezed in behind it, looming over it and Lou. The only clothing Lou could see was an open vest. His black skin gleamed in the glare of the overhead lamp. It was hard to tell how old he was he could have been in his early twenties or ten years older.
He was talking to one of the other boys, ignoring Lou’s puzzled stare.
“…only way’s gonna be to give ’im back. Otherwise the peace ’tween us an’ the Peelers gonna get busted wide open.”
“He’s ours,” the other boy answered hotly. “They lost ’im an’ we got ’im. Makes ’im ours, right?”
The boys muttered agreement.
“You want the Peelers comin’ up here after ’im? Ready to fight the whole pack of ’em? Tonight? ’Sides, he ain’t got nothin’ on ’im, he ain’t worth keepin’!”
Lou realized they were talking about him. “Hey, wait a minute—”
“Shuddup, pinkey!” A toe nudged his tender back. Lou winced and closed his mouth.
“Naw, wait,” said the giant, looking down at Lou. “Know where you are, white man?”
Lou shook his head.
Smiling from the desk, “You’re in the secret headquarters of the Top Cats. I am N’Gai Felix Leo, president of the Top Cats, You may call me Felix, for short.” Felix spoke very slowly and carefully, in precise English, for Lou. The way a teacher would speak to a backward child.
“Apparently,” he went on, “you stumbled into our turf when the Peelers were chasing you a little while ago. We are now discussing whether we should give you back to the Peelers or deal with you ourselves.”
“Deal with me?” Lou echoed.
“Kill ya,” snapped a tall, lanky kid.
Felix shook his head and grasped the edges of the desk in his massive hands. “Zonk, whyn’t you keep shut?” he said to the kid who had spoken. Turning back to Lou, “You can’t stay here. You can’t join our gang, for obvious reasons. If we let you go free, the Peelers would take it as an unfriendly gesture and they might start a war with us.”
“Them whitesheets,” Zonk muttered.
“My friends don’t like to admit it,” Felix said, his voice rising ever so slightly, “but we are in no shape for a war against the Peelers. They outnumber us badly, and they can call in a half a dozen other gangs as allies.”
“An’ we c’n get all uptown to come on our side!” Zonk shouted.
“Yeah, an’ turn the whole city into a battleground?” Felix countered. “Been enough o’ that, you fool. We gotta work out somethin’ better… least, ’til we’re strong enough t’stand up t’the Peelers.”
“Look,” said Lou, “all I want is to get to the jetport before the police block it off—”
“Police?” Zonk flashed. “Helmet heads? After your…”
“Not the tac brigades… Federal marshal… and some world government people—”
They all stared at him blankly; none of them had the vaguest idea of what Lou was talking about.
Except for Felix. “Why are they after you?”
Lou shrugged. “They won’t tell me.”
Zonk laughed. “Since when the helmet heads tell you why they crackin’ your skull? They jus’ do it, tha’sall! You find out later in the hospital… if you make it that far!”
“If I don’t get to the jetport before dawn, they’ll probably be waiting for me when I do arrive,” Lou said.
Felix shook his head again. “You’re not getting to JFK either before dawn or after it. We can’t let you go, the Peelers would get sore at us.”
“You’re just a kneeler!” Zonk yelled. “A chicken, scared o’ them damn Peelers!”
Felix’s face went unimaginably hard. His eyes slitted, like a cat’s. Slowly, ponderously, he rose from his chair and stepped out from behind the desk on legs the size of tree trunks. Zonk glanced around at the other boys, then backed away a step.
“We been friends,” Felix said as he advanced like a tide, engulfing the room. His voice was low, menacing. “So I’m gonna give you one chance t’take back that mouth. Now!”
“I… I… I’m sorry,” Zonk stammered. “I got sore—”
“Am I a kneeler?” Felix was towering over the skinny boy, scarcely a centimeter away from him. He seemed to surround Zonk.
“No… no, you ain’t.”
“Am I afraid of anything or anyone on this Earth?”
“No. Nothin’ or nobody.”
Before he could even think of what he was saying, Lou heard his own voice call out, “Then you’re not afraid of helping me get to JFK.”
Everybody froze. The room went absolutely silent. No one even breathed, it seemed to Lou. Least of all Lou himself. He sat there on the floor, the other boys ranged around him staring open-mouthed, with Felix off to one side, back turned as he confronted the petrified Zonk.
Very, very slowly, Felix turned toward Lou. The grimy floorboards squeaked under him. His face was still as flat and hard as the face on the lion in the poster.
“What did you say?”
I’m dead either way, Lou told himself. Aloud, he answered, “If you’re not afraid of anything or anybody, then you’re not afraid of helping me get to the jetport. Tonight. Now.”
Felix stared at Lou for a long moment, grim, unblinking. Then slowly his mouth opened and he began chuckling. The chuckle deepened into a laugh, a strong laugh that shook the room. The other kids started laughing, too.
“You’r
e something, white man… really something, calling me out like that.” Felix roared laughter and went back toward the desk. “You got guts… not much brains, maybe, but plenty guts.” He dropped back on the chair so hard that Lou felt sure it would crack under him.
Felix shook his head, still laughing. “So you’re trying to dare me into helping you. That’s a jolt, a real jolt.”
Lou got to his feet. “Okay, so it’s funny. Either help me or kill me or let me go. Take your pick.”
Waving a heavy hand, Felix said, “Man, you must have some black blood in you someplace. You got guts, all right. Look… if I let you go, you’ll get killed before daybreak, y’know? If I help you, it’ll start a war. But… shoot, baby it’s going to be hard to kill you when you got the guts to dare me.”
He turned to Zonk. “Go get us a car.”
“You gonna…”
“Mari wants t’see JFK,” Felix said to them. “I ain’t seen th’ place myself for years. You ever see it?”
Zonk, wide-eyed, shook his head.
“You ready to fight a war when we get back?”
Zonk nodded. So did the others.
“Okay… get a car. Maybe we’ll stop uptown on our way back, bring down some reinforcements. Show th’ Peelers they gotta think twice ’fore they start a war.”
“Now you’re talkin’,” Zonk said, and he headed for the doorway.
The car was an ancient two-door, crumbling with rust, dented, upholstery ripped, automatic guidance long wrecked, lights defective, radio gone. But it ran. It shook and rattled and whined, but it ran.
They were sputtering down the throughway, air shrilling through ill-fitting windows. Zonk was curled up on the back seat, sleeping. Lou wanted to doze off, too. He ached from his scalp to his bare feet. One foot was throbbing from a cut he had picked up somewhere. But he couldn’t sleep. His insides were still as taut as a scream of terror.
They had gone across a bridge, and now the throughway was elevated. The horizon in front of them was just starting to turn gray. The buildings here seemed to be lower and not as closely bunched as back in Manhattan.
Felix was jammed in behind the wheel. He laughed softly. “Man, some people sure lucky. You got guts all right, but better than that, you got luck.”
Lou looked at him. Somehow, in this flat, cold gray of early morning, Felix seemed different.
“Still haven’t figured it out, have you?” Felix asked him.
“I don’t understand—”
He squirmed around in the too-small bucket seat and glanced over his shoulder at Zonk, who was still sound asleep.
Then he said to Lou, “You think you just talked your way out of being killed by a teen pack? Just like that?” He laughed.
6
Lou stared at Felix, who merely chuckled to himself and said no more. Then the towers and hangars of JFK became visible in the predawn glow. Felix pulled the car off the highway and onto an access road.
“What’s the matter?” Lou asked.
“Better get ourselves prettied up if we expect to get past the gates at the jetport.”
They pulled into the parking lot of an automated, all-night shopping center. Felix woke up Zonk and the three of them walked to the shoppers’ mall. Lou’s foot was throbbing painfully.
The mall doors were locked, but there was a tiny security unit set into the wall beside them. Lou told his credit number to the receiver grille and let the camera photograph him.
“This credit number is from Albuquerque, New Mexico,” said the shopping center computer, impassively. “It will require several moments to check it.”
Felix said, “We’ll wait.”
“If the police are really looking for me,” Lou worried out loud, “they’ll have my credit number and picture pulled from the file and …”
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” the computer said without a trace of regret. “Your credit check is complete. You may enter and purchase whatever you wish, up to a limit of ten thousand dollars.”
Felix beamed. “Just what I’ve always wanted… a friend with a good credit rating.”
The mall and shops were deserted. Felix waved Zonk off to a men’s clothing store and, with his hand firmly on Lou’s arm, headed for a drugstore.
“You’re really limping. Need that foot taken care of.”
“Back in the car,” Lou said as they walked through the open doorway of the drugstore, “what’d you mean… about me talking my way out of being killed?”
Felix laughed again. “Oh that. Well… you’re lucky, but not the way you think. Never wonder why the Top Cats are being led by a guy my age? I’m over thirty, you know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sit down here,” Felix said, “while I get some stuff for that foot.”
Lou sat in the plastic chair and found himself facing a dispenser-wall of medical supplies. Felix walked slowly down the wall, finding what he wanted in the display windows and touching the buttons that sent the goods down into the receiving bin. He came back to Lou’s chair with his hands full of antibiotic sprays and plastic spray bandages.
“Listen,” he said as he squirted a disinfectant over Lou’s blood-crusted foot, “I’m a teacher. Work for the office of Rehabilitation. Trying to hammer some sense into these kids. Only way to do it is to join them, lead them, try to bring them around slowly. I been in there, in the city, for more than a year now. Got them to set up boundaries between turfs. Trying to get them to think of more than sex and wars. I figure it’ll take another ten to twelve years before they start acting as civilized as Stone Age tribes.”
“They don’t know…”
Felix laughed. “Shoot, man, if they knew, I’d be just as dead as you ought to be!” Then his face went grim. “Some of the other teachers have been found out. What happened to them isn’t pretty.”
“But why do you do it?”
Shrugging, “How should I know? Can’t just leave the kids in there by themselves. Too many generations have done that. Every year they get worse off and worse off until they’re where they are now. Somebody’s got to help them. We owe them something. They didn’t turn into savages by themselves. They were pushed. And unless somebody starts pushing from the other direction, those kids are going to keep on killing, keep on dying.”
Lou said, “It’ll take a hundred years before kids like that become civilized.”
“So we’ll work a hundred years,” Felix snapped. “Took more than a hundred years to let the cities fall apart like this. It’s worth a century to rebuild them. Because if we don’t—if we let those kids keep breeding and festering like they’ve been for the past century—pretty soon they’re going to burst out of the cities and overrun everything. The Mongol hordes will seem like a Chinese tea party compared to what they’ll do.”
Lou shuddered.
“But it’s more than that,” Felix went on. “Those kids deserve a chance. They never asked to be born into that jungle. They never got a chance for anything better. And they’ll never know anything better unless some of us get off our rumps and try to help ’em. Those kids are the future, y’know. What good’s all our high and mighty civilization if we lose those kids? What use is all this technology and science if we’re breeding cavemen in the cores of the cities? If we can’t help those kids make their own future better, we don’t have much to look forward to, I can tell you that.”
“You ought to be a Congressman, or a minister,” Lou said.
Felix laughed.
“And all that talk about killing me—”
“Oh, that was real all right,” he said. “I was trying to figure out some way to get your white hide out of there. But I wasn’t coming up with any answers. Looked like I was going to let them take you out—”
“You’d’ve let them?”
Another shrug. “Couldn’t figure out what else to do, until you started talking tough. Gave me the out I needed.”
“Well… thanks, I guess.”
“Don’t mention
it,” Felix replied, grinning.
Within half an hour, Lou was walking with hardly a limp. He showered, shaved, and put on a disposable summer suit and loafers that he picked out at the clothing store. Felix and Zonk had outfitted themselves, too. Felix went in for grander tastes, complete with cape and boots. Zonk leaned toward electric colors and the latest, form-fitted, sprayed-on styles.
“You look almost decent,” Felix said to Lou. “Mouth’s still swollen and you’ve got a nice blue lump coming along over your eye. But you’ll be okay.” •
Felix drove them through the main gates of JFK just as the sun showed itself over the distant skyline. The white-helmeted security guards at the gates eyed the battered old car, but let it pass. Up the sweeping ramp of the once-grand terminal building they went, with Felix steering carefully to avoid potholes.
He stopped in front of the terminal and Lou got out, then ducked his head back in and put his hand in Felix’s huge paw. “Thanks. For everything. And good luck.”
“Nothing to it,” Felix said, grinning. “Hope you make out okay.” Then he turned to Zonk and said, “C’mon up front. Le’see what jet planes look like up close.”
The clattering car drove off. Lou stood there for a moment in the growing light of dawn watching them disappear down the other side of the ramp. Then he turned and went inside the decaying terminal.
The first flight that connected with Albuquerque wasn’t until seven. An hour to wait. His insides fluttering from hunger as much as nerves, Lou went to the autocafeteria and had powdered eggs, reconstituted milk, and a man-made slice of something called protosteak. It tasted like plastic.
No one stopped him or even noticed him as he went to the flight departure lounge, verified his ticket on the jet, went aboard, and took his seat. The plane was ten minutes late getting away from the terminal, and Lou expected each second to see the same Federal marshal come up the aisle and clap a hand on his shoulder.
