Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Looks like nobody’s following us,” George muttered, after he had glanced over his shoulder several times. Traffic on the street they had just left was so light as to be practically non-existent, and at the moment nothing was moving there. The ghosts of fog stalked in from the lake to cut them off from the city behind, and when he looked to the east Art could not see nothing but fog. Now in that direction he could hear a couple of distant radios or recorders blaring out pop music.

  “We should see some people soon,” George told him a low voice. “There are always fishermen. She won’t just be sitting out here utterly isolated.”

  “I was wondering.” He kept wondering too if she would really have the picnic cooler with her. According to George the code message had indicated that she would. Rose had carried her own fetus home—or somewhere—but that had been under emergency conditions. Maybe illegal parturition was always an emergency situation. Maybe normal birth and life were, too.

  Out of the thick fog there loomed abruptly athwart their path a chest-high wall of massive stones, looking at first sight like part of some ancient fortification. Art realized in a moment that just beyond this rampart was the lake. They came up to the seawall and stopped. Four or five more tiers of the gigantic blocks made a rough stair going down to the water, where waves materialized out of fog to lap against their base. It was impossible to see out over the water for more than a few meters.

  “This chaste fog,” George muttered. He checked his watch. “She’s supposed to be waiting right around here somewhere. Look, we’d better separate. You go south and I’ll go north, along the rocks. If you find her, give a whistle.

  If you need help, yell out good and loud and keep on yelling. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

  “How far south do I go?”

  George considered. “I’d say half a kilometer or less and you’ll come to a harbor where a lot of private boats are tied up. Some fishermen will be around there too.” The radio music was coming from that direction. “If you don’t find her between here and the harbor, better turn and come back this way. I’ll go north about the same distance and come back. If we can’t find her we’ll meet again about here.”

  “Right.”

  FRED and Wolf came out of the park to stand beside the seawall amid the drifting billows of fog. There they paused uncertainly. At the moment there was no thin blond girl carrying a container—or anyone else—in sight.

  Fred wished he had been able to find Lewandowski, too, but there was no use wishing. He said: “This must be the place. I guess we better split up. How about if you go that way-and I go this?”

  “All right.” Wolf and his neckpiece showed their double grin. “Watch out, man. They say there’s a lot of apes hang out in these parks.”

  Fred laughed nervously, and with a tentative wave of his hand set off toward the south, walking parallel to the seawall. Wolf watehed’him go. Almost at once he was swallowed by the fog.

  Wolf set out at a deliberate pace in the opposite direction. Despite having been up all night, he felt alert and cheerful. It was fun to have something interesting to do with his time, fun to help out a pal, and there might be some money at the end of it. He didn’t know what the whole thing was all about, except it had something to do with illegal midwifing, but he didn’t really care.

  He knew the moment he saw the girl that she was the one they were looking for. She was a few meters inland from the seawall, waiting amid some carelessly stacked stones left over from its construction. Thin and blond, and doing nothing but waiting, she was sitting on the lowest tier of one of the stacks of stone where she was pretty well sheltered from view. And there was what he had been told to look for—a container of some kind, which turned out to be a white-handled red picnic cooler.

  Her head swung around sharply when she heard the tiny scrape of his sandal on the stone he had mounted in order to see down into her sheltered spot, and at the sight of him she gave a little cry and started to get up. She was wearing a translucent skirt and open Cretan bodice.

  Wolf grinned his knowledge at her and came hopping down the stair of stone to where she was. Conscious of being menacing, he watched her face, enjoying the little series of masks she was trying on, masks of unconcern, of welcome, of defiance, trying to hide the fear inside and keep him off.

  He came right up to the girl and reached out, but not for her. He put his hand instead on the handle of the cooler. Maybe she would be smart and simply let him take it and walk away. But no, when he turned around she jumped at him silently from behind, and he smiled a little because he had been half expecting it.

  But the attack on his face and head was too fierce for him to go on smiling. He had to drop the cooler and use both hands to shove her off. She went down on the grass with a little cry of pain. “Wait!” she called down. “Wait, can’t we talk about this?”

  Wolf could feel the blood trickling down his face from where her nails had raked him. He sighed. This was business, and Fred hadn’t passed along any instructions that the woman was to be beaten up. People who hired this kind of business done usually spelled out just what they wanted, no more, no less. Anyway, Wolf had gotten all the urge to hurt people out of his system during the night. He shook his head, mocking and chiding. “Lady, lady. You know this thing don’t belong to you anyway.” He picked up the cooler again, noticing its unusual weight. And cold. Well, he wasn’t being paid to be curious.

  She got up, pulling her bodice together, hiding her breasts provocatively. “Please,” she called, first quietly, then louder. “Please, it is mine. Isn’t there something you want more?” Wolf gave a tiny laugh and turned, shaking his head. She wasn’t bad, but this was hardly the time or place. He started off again, the heavy cooler pulling at his arm.

  To his utter amazement, she jumped him from behind again, this time screaming as she landed. This time the attack almost brought him down because it was so unexpected. He dropped the picnic cooler on the grass again, once more fended off the clawing fingers from his eyes, and twisted around to get a good grip on the girl’s arms. Without much difficulty he avoided her clumsy attempt to knee him in the balls. This time he gave her a violent shake or-two before he let her fly. This time she went down harder and lay there sobbing. “Lady, you’re pushin’ your luck.”

  Then there was the sound of running feet approaching. A little guy carrying a fishing pole and tackle box dashed out of the fog and into the little arena among the stones, where he came to a sudden stop. A short guy with blond hair and goatee who looked enough like the girl to be her brother. Wolf had fifteen kilos on him easily. He picked up the cooler once more and took a step in the way he wanted to go, scowling, but the little guy only threw down his fishing gear and took a step to stay in front of him.

  “Hey, it’s a quintuplet,” Wolf said easily. “And this one must be the runt of the litter.” Now here came another pair of running feet, and he reached into an inner pocket for his knife, but it was all right after all, it was just going to be a little extra fun, for it was Lohmann who came charging up.

  Lohmann slid to a stop, though, with a look on his face so sick that Wolf had very rarely seen the like before. “George, Rita,” said Lohmann, staring at the other two people there, and speaking in this low, sick voice. “Oh purity. Oh chastity no.”

  “George,” said the girl in a low, fainting voice. “It’s my baby. Stop him.”

  Wolf snarled and held out the knife to make sure little George stayed where he was, and here he came anyway with a skip and a dart. Wolf, good with the knife, aimed at the oncoming flat belly. The body before him twisted away, though, going down very low, and Wolf never saw the upthrusting back-kick coming, only felt his breath driven out of him and his heart stop momentarily as the kick smashed into his ribs and broke them inward. And then he felt his knee with his weight on it break sideways from some terrible impact, with blinding pain, and then he felt a jolt that went all through his head and tore part of the world away and came again and again lik
e a long echo, until the world was gone.

  ART Rodney, puffing and lumbering toward the sounds, saw Fred backing out of the arena among the huge stones.

  “George, I didn’t know,” Fred was saying. “George, I swear.” And then Fred turned and ran, just ran flat out, almost knocking Art down in his passage. Art could still hear the long strides pounding when Fred had vanished inter the fog.

  Advancing again, Art took in the scene with a glance. Knife on the grass, man on the grass.

  George looming over him, looking down and rubbing his knuckles automatically. White-handled red picnic cooler on its side, Rita sitting near it, sitting awkwardly and in pain.

  “Oh, darling, easy,” she said into his ear. “Don’t squeeze me. Oh Art, you didn’t bring the police down on us, did you? The doctor said you wanted me still.”

  “Oh, yes, yes, yes I want you. Never mind about all the rest of it. Let’s get you home.”

  “My baby.” She was pointing at the cooler and he went to set it right side up, as if that could make any difference to what was encapsulated inside. Then he looked over at George, who was prodding the fallen figure with a toe. “What happened?” Art asked. “I got here as fast as I could when I heard a commotion. I thought I just saw Ann’s brother Fred run past me just now.”

  “It was.” George shook his head and seemed to rouse himself. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “And who’s that?” Art moved a little closer to look at the man on the ground. The man’s eyes were open, blankly, above what looked like a fur collar of some sort. His face was scratched and marked with trickles of fresh blood. “Will he be all right if we just leave him?”

  “He’ll be dead,” said George, in a voice that wavered once and came back strong again. “He’s dead right now. Let’s get going.” And he moved and picked up the cooler with one strong hand and helped Rita to her feet with the other. “Art, get our fishpoles and stuff.”

  “Oh. Oh, chastity.” Art looked once more at the dead man and pulled his eyes away. Somehow he picked up all the fishing gear that he and George had carried here and dropped, and then went on after his wife and her brother into the fog. When he caught up, he demanded: “Rita, did that fellow back there hurt you?”

  “No, no, only pushed me down. And my bottom is still sore from the parturition, and I have cramps, but the doctor didn’t have to make any incisions. I can walk, but I’m so tired I don’t know how far.” Now she was clinging to Art’s arm while George walked a little ahead of them carrying the cooler. They moved through the fog toward the sound of Orlando’s voice on several radios.

  “Art. George, if anything happens to me, this is the situation. He’s on the waiting list for a womb, but it may be months. The doctor says the safest place for him in the meantime is the Loyola School of Medicine, cryogenics lab. They seem to have some safe depository. I don’t know where. Loyola’s on the north side of the city, Art. Ask for Gwen or Larry. I said we’d get him there. The doctor said he was afraid he had to flee the city right away or be arrested. Maybe there are worse things than that for us to fear. That man back there was no policeman, but he was after my baby, not after me.”

  Art felt a pang. Rizzo. He patted his wife, hugged her, murmured soothing words.

  “I tell you he was. He would have taken this basket and walked away if George hadn’t stopped him.”

  Art, head throbbing sickly now, stared at George’s back, moving three paces ahead of him through the mist. Over his shoulder George said: “We’ll deliver him where you said, Sis. Hey, what’s his name?” Art stared at the red cooler, seeing instead the dead body they had left behind them on the grass. He and George both.

  “I haven’t talked that over with his Daddy yet. I think George Arthur. Or maybe Arthur George, though Art used to say he didn’t want a junior.”

  They came abruptly to a little rise, and at its top encountered the seawall again. Almost below them, amid thinning drifts of fog, several long piers extended at right angles to the shore. The piers were edged in places with moored pleasure boats and elsewhere occupied by fisherfolk with their poles and nets and buckets. The sun was up now, turning fiercely white above the watery horizon, visible between great lake-borne mounds of the dissipating fog.

  Here a road of recycled plastic gravel ran just inland from the seawall. A few fishermen’s cars were parked along its edge. As the three of them reached the road, they simultaneously saw a police car cruising in the middle distance, a face turned out of its window in their direction. In unison they altered course, and there was another car approaching along the road where it bent inland.

  “Split up,” said George succinctly. He thrust the picnic cooler into Art’s hands and with the same movement took back his own old tackle box. “Rita, take the bait jug,” he added, and in the next instant was gone, sprinting toward the south. Now both police cars were accelerating, but the trio on which they had been closing in were gone three ways at once.

  GEORGE went around a clump of bushes, and back onto the seawall, where he dashed past a group of fishermen. Then he slowed to a trot, and then to a quick walk. He looked back frequently, and cursed. Obviously neither of the cars had come after him, though he was staying near the road to lure them on. But now at last there came a uniformed policeman in pursuit of him on foot.

  “You there, halt!”

  George was purposely deaf to the first yell, figuring they would give at least one more before they started shooting. If they were serious enough to shoot, which they probably weren’t as yet because the dead man could hardly have been found and reported to them so soon.

  He heeded the second, closer shout, and looked around with polite surprise as an athletic policeman of dark brown skin came running up.

  “All right, hands in the air.” ‘“What’s the matter, officer?” He set the tackle box down and put his foot on it and raised his hands.

  He was patted down for weapons. “What’ve you got in there?”

  “Show me a search warrant and you can search me completely.”

  “I’m conducting a weapons search, mister, get your foot off that thing before I shoot it off.”

  George got, moving two steps away and keeping his hands up. The policeman peered into the box and then looked at him ex-pressionlessly. “All right, come along. Bring this box of junk if you want it.”

  The officer sheathed his pistol and took a good grip on George’s right sleeve -just above the elbow with his left hand. With this grip he walked George north again. It must be a technique they taught at the police academy, how to be ready to subdue resistance by the suspect. The grip was not bullying, and yet quite firm enough for business. Not bad for an amateur, not bad.

  Fishermen stared at them as they passed. Now only one police car was in sight, parked, with a scattering of the curious observing it from a little distance. Rita sat alone and composed in the back seat while a man in civvies sat twisted around to face her from the front.

  “Do you know this man?”

  Her eyes turned neutrally to George, waiting for a signal.

  “Of course she knows me. I’m her brother.”

  “George, this gentleman says he’s Detective Simmons.”

  “What were you running off with, George? Empty tackle box, maybe? Don’t you know it’s against the law to interfere with police carrying out their duties?”

  It wasn’t really empty, but too close to empty to be convincing to a fisherman. George held it under his arm and remained silent. The man sighed and informed him that he was under arrest for conspiracy to violate the Population Control laws, and made the little speech detailing his constitutional rights.

  With George and a patrolman in the back, and another uniformed man up front with Detective Simmons, the car began to move, cruising slowly north, going off the plastic road and over grass, following the lakefront. Then they turned and cruised the other way again, and stopped and let out one of the uniformed men, who stood looking over the piers with quick twistings of hi
s head, then walked away, talking on a wrist-radio.

  The man in civvies turned once more. “We’re bringing along your tackle box and your empty bait-bucket, George and Rita, to show the judge what kind of tricks you try to pull. We’re also going to bring that red picnic cooler and the fat man who’s carrying it. We’re going to pick that up in a minute. Why don’t you tell me something about it now, just to show you’re willing to cooperate? Where were you taking it?”

  “My sister and I want to see an attorney before we answer any more questions at all. This sounds like something serious.”

  “What do you think something serious is, George? What were you two and your sister’s husband doing here today? No reason you can’t tell me, if it wasn’t anything wrong.”

  “Let us talk to an attorney,” Rita said. “And then we’ll answer questions.”

  A message was coming in on the car radio. DOA found on the rocks near South Shore Beach. Police number-jargon followed. The two policemen still with the car exchanged looks but did no more. George held his hands down so that the callus pads might not be seen. Sooner or later somebody might make the connection. At the moment he felt no guilt or fear; at the moment he was still steady as a rock. Attorney, attorney, where will I find you? He had a couple of them among his students, but none in criminal law.

  Another radio message was coming, this one on Simmons’ wrist-radio. From the back seat George couldn’t quite make the message out, but abruptly the car was rolling again. It accelerated strongly, turned on its siren for a blast or two, then almost at once screeched rocking to a halt. “That’s Hall,” Simmons in the front seat said, opening his door and getting out.