Zelazny, Roger - Novel 05

by Today We Choose Faces

  I turned my head, trying to be casual about it. One brief glance was sufficient, and I looked away again.

  He was up on the catwalks, moving at a brisk pace, shortcutting us, gaining.

  ... And those bright, bright lights shone upon the blue of his glasses.

  I saved my curses. I had more than half expected him. For a pathological instant, I wished that I were bearing something more potent than a tranquilizer gun. I pushed the thought aside. I took two paces forward, and Glenda immediately followed.

  "Damn it! Don't stand so close to me!" I said.

  "It may be to your advantage that I do."

  "And your disadvantage. Stay away!"

  "In a word: No."

  "All right. I have warned you. That is all I can do. Enjoy your excitement."

  "I am."

  My mind raced ahead. I had been faster than Lange, but perhaps still not fast enough. If not, so be it. Maybe I deserved to die. The fact that I was stronger than Lange had been by himself was no assurance that I was fit enough to survive the present situation. I had at least learned a few things about my pursuer and I intended to learn a few more.

  I checked ahead, seeking some hunk of machinery with crawlspaces, slots, overhangs—a place where I would be a difficult target, but could get off some clear shots myself. Several possibles presented themselves. Then I looked back, trying to estimate his rate of progress.

  "What are you going to do?" Glenda asked me.

  I was beginning to have a funny feeling which I could not quite explain, but I had no time to analyze it.

  "Bleed all over you," I said, "unless you do exactly what I tell you."

  "I am listening."

  "Ahead. To the right. About three hundred yards ... The big gray machine with the black cowl on the near end. See it?"

  "Yes. It's a Langton generator."

  "I am going to head to the left in about a minute. When I do, you remain on the belt for a few more seconds. He will be watching me. Then you will be almost abreast of that thing. Run for it and get in behind it. As soon as I occupy that man overhead, back off and lose yourself in the complex to the rear. Keep an eye on what happens and gauge your actions accordingly. Good luck."

  "No. I'm coming with you."

  Turning my body so that it could not be seen from behind and above, I twisted my hand and pointed the gun.

  "If you try it, I'll trank you and let the belt take you out of here. Don't argue. Do as I say."

  Then I jumped down and dashed for the refuge I had chosen, catching sight of the figure overhead as he hurried toward me, his right arm rising.

  I heard the shot. With him running like that and all, I was not surprised that he missed. I was out of his line of sight before he got off another. I scrambled around the corner of the unit and moved into the channel I had seen, which cut partway through its middle, was interrupted by a three-foot-high hedge of metal and some hanging cables, then seemed to continue unobstructed to its farther end. There appeared to be eight service adits along its way, and a possible side channel. I could see upward through the gaps among struts and cables, and it pleased me that I had guessed correctly: He would have to get awfully close in order to fire successfully through that mess.

  I was only a few paces into it when I heard her.

  "Damn!" I said, turning. "I told you to head for the generator!"

  "I decided not to," she said. "I knew you would not look back once you began running."

  I shrugged, turned away and continued forward. I heard her following. I could see several sections of the catwalk, including a branch that passed above the far end of the machine. According to my calculations, he could be coming into sight any moment now.

  "What should I do to help?" I heard Glenda say.

  "Whatever strikes your fancy," I said. "I resign all responsibility for your welfare. Your death is on your own head."

  I heard a sharp intake of breath and she bit off the beginning of something she had begun to say. I continued to edge forward.

  He could have descended one of the ladders or walkways to the floor and be working his way toward us through the mazes of hardware. Or he could be halted or proceeding along another overhead route. He might be very near. It was futile to listen for footfalls, because of the background noise, because of the vibrations of the machine within which we stood.

  As I drew near the possible side channel, however, a sharp sound did succeed in penetrating everything. It was the ringing of a telephone in some service niche nearby.

  Cursing under my breath and flattening myself against the wall, I resolved to introduce the thing into his alimentary canal from one end or the other at my first opportunity. This time, however, I remained steady. The sound played hell with my nerves, but I succeeded in maintaining control.

  A moment later, I heard the crash of his boots and realized what he had done.

  Somehow aware of the manner in which the ringing would affect me, he obviously carried a repairman's service unit capable of locating and activating phones. He had worked his way to a position above my shelter, buzzed the nearest call box in hope of disconcerting me, and dropped down atop the machine. Only this time I was not biting. Pressing against the housing, I could feel rather than hear his quick steps. He was seeking an opening, looking for a clear shot. Hoping to find me a quivering mass of jelly, I presumed.

  Suddenly, a head, arm and shoulder flashed into view, high up, to my right, about thirty feet down the channel, from behind a juncture of beams.

  Even as I whipped my own weapon upward and squeezed, I heard the sound of his shot and the sound of its ricochet. Then he was gone.

  I backed up. I bumped into Glenda. Without looking, I pushed her toward the niche, snarling something unintelligible and backing in myself. As I crowded back against her, I heard the thud of his boots again and realized that he had leaped across the right-hand channel. I moved my gun to cover what I guessed to be his new position and felt a sudden, insane pleasure at the thought that the phone had stopped ringing.

  Then he appeared, fired again, missed. I got off another shot, too. The next time, I felt, would decide it. He knew my position now.

  I leaned back and aimed upward. It was going to be over the top of the niche this time, I felt it.

  My chances, as I saw them, were not good. Even if I nailed him perfectly, he was going to get off a shot. My concern, along with protecting the girl, centered upon the seriousness of the injuries I would sustain, should I survive. I was going to get him—I knew it, I felt it, I swore it. Even if he put that bullet right through my heart again, my reflexes would snap off a shot and he would be out for a while, up there. I wanted to live, to drag him back to Wing Null with me, to turn his mind inside out and dump its contents on the floor. It would be so wasteful, to die, to leave him vulnerable and not be able to do anything about it.

  “... If I die," I heard myself saying to Glenda, "and leave him unconscious up there," and it was not me that was saying the terrible thing I overheard, I realized, even though the words were coming from my own mouth, "would you be willing to go up and finish him off with his own gun? A bullet through the brain? The heart?"

  "No! I couldn't! I wouldn't!"

  "It would save me a lot of trouble later."

  "Later?" She giggled, half-hysterically. "If you're dead—" Then she shut up, but I could feel her heavy breathing, her tenseness.

  What was he waiting for? Damn him!

  "Come on!" I cried. "This is the last time! Even if you get me, you're dead!"

  Nothing. Still nothing.

  Then I heard Glenda whispering, rapidly, urgently.

  "You are the one. I was right. Listen. It is important. Take me with you to the secret place. I have something for you. It is important—"

  It was also too late. There were three more footfalls and a thud, as he leaped across our channel and fired downward. I felt a searing pain down my chest and ribcage. I fired back, felt that I had hit him.

  White
pants, blue jacket, long brown hair, blue mirror-glasses, he had turned as he jumped, landed in a half-crouched position, left arm thrown high for balance, right extended downward, weapon pointed, clenched teeth showing through a tight, humorless smile.

  "Mr. Black! No!" I heard Glenda scream, as another shot caught me in the shoulder, slamming me back against her.

  The trank gun fell from my hand as my whole right arm became useless. I had hit him, though, I knew that.

  And it was Mr. Black. It was the same man with whom I had sat in the Cocktail Lounge—how long ago? Eliminating the color and length of hair, the different outfit, the glasses, I saw the same jawline, the same ridges and creases ...

  I raised my left hand as he tried to steady his weapon for another shot. Glenda was still screaming as I bit my thumb and glared at him and heard and felt his final shot tear into my guts.

  He fell backward then as I toppled forward, a cloud of ink seeming to rise from my middle and rush to my head.

  The ringing echo of the shot faded, was gone, though I still felt the vibrations of the machine through the wetness, forming and re-forming the words Pull pin seven, and Glenda was crying, "Library! Cubicle 18237! Important! Library! Cubicle 18237 •.."

  Then soft nothing.

  4

  I picked myself up and started running again. Crazy, but I could not help it.

  Good thing that nobody I could see was in any condition to notice.

  Then a knot of live ones appeared, and it was either slow down or become conspicuous—the last thing I wanted to do. I bit my lip, looked in all directions, came to a halt, took several deep breaths.

  Then something of Engel began to take hold, and it was better ...

  Tough. Who would have thought Engel able to acquit himself as well as he had? An aging clarinetist—a quiet, peaceable guy. Now only I/he/we knew what had been inside him, and I already different, never to be quite the same again, still changing, aware of the process like mercury within me, impossible to pin down, heavy, flashing, flowing, providing strength, steadiness ...

  Tough, we were tougher than I had thought. It was just that the engine had had to cough a few times before it began to function smoothly. We were almost to our goal now and I, Paul Karab, was nexus ...

  My flight had begun as a thing unrecommended and perhaps slightly ignoble, but now it had become a mission. I had done the proper thing for the wrong reasons.

  ... Paul Karab, reasonably healthy, thirty-five-year-old Living Room Representative, Wing 1, youngest member of the Household Staff, running scared.

  Now the fright-factor had diminished considerably—just now—now that Engel/Lange was here. Better and better by the moment.

  All of the killings had panicked me, each more than the previous. I had passed out on each occasion and come around in worse shape than before. I had been ready to start running at the time of the meshing, but it had served to stabilize me. Then when Serafis and Davis got it, reason had gone up in smoke. I felt that even my position, with all its safeguards, was not proof against this sort of an attack, an attack that was obviously a well-planned attempt to destroy the entire family. I had not possessed curiosity such as Lange had known, nor anger like Engel's. These would have come later, I was certain, but my panic had submerged these important survival factors. I was ashamed of it, but only for a moment. It had served a useful purpose, and I was no longer the person it had overwhelmed.

  I watched the slow progress of the mourners following the box on the belt. The preacher walked at their head, pacing the coffin, reading the final prayers. From where I stood, I could see the area where the service had been conducted, but various partitions and furnishings prevented my viewing the black door toward which they were headed. The obvious analogy came and nested in my mind with small clucking sounds, dark feathers and haste: The Paul Karab I had known all my life was dead, half the family was dead, our whole way of life might well be sucking its final breaths.

  No.

  I would not permit it.

  My determination surprised me, but there it was. I knew what I was going to do, had to do. Without having made a conscious decision, I just knew. The others might not approve. But then again, considering the circumstances, they might. Anyway, it was my choice to make.

  The Chapel was, as always, a checkerboard of light and darkness. I moved diagonally to my left, passing to the entrance-point to a darkened section. Glancing about, I dropped to the floor and crawled in, not wanting to break the warning beam that would turn on gentle illumination, the odor of incense, relaxing music and lights on the altar. I slipped into a pew and sat sideways, so that I could look back out and keep an eye on the funeral procession. I wanted a cigarette but felt kind of funny about lighting one in there, so I didn't.

  From where I was seated, I could see the black door—gateway to eternity, the underworld, the afterlife, whatever. The belt terminated right before the door, feeding back down around its rollers there. As the mourners advanced, tight-faced, dark-clad, slow, a representative of the funeral director moved forward and pressed out an opening sequence on the plate set into that dark frame.

  Silently, the door swung inward and the casket passed through it, followed by considerable remembrances of artificial flowers—of course I could not be certain of this from where I sat, but that many real flowers would have cost a fortune, a circumstance denied by the smallness of the cortege—and since the track then inclined at an appropriate downward angle and was equipped with rollers, the entire display vanished smoothly from sight. Then the door closed, there were some final words from the clerical-type and the people turned and slowly moved away, talking among themselves or silent, as things had it.

  I watched them go, waited perhaps ten minutes until the area went dim, waited ten more. Then I rose, crossed over, crawled out again.

  Still, silent . . . Even the pall-belt had been turned off. The nearest illuminated area was a good distance away, far enough so that I could not even hear the music.

  I advanced, moved up to the belt. For some reason, I reached out and touched it, trailing my hand along it as I walked beside it toward the wall. Tactile person? I thought of Glenda. What was she doing right now? Where was she? Had she contacted the police, or simply fled? Steady finally, my thoughts moved back to those final moments which they had, till now, but skirted. What had she been saying right there at the end? Not the usual hysterical nonsense one would expect from a young woman in the presence of sudden, violent death. No, it had not seemed that way. She had been repeating an address and telling me how important it was. If this were not a form of hysteria, though, the alternative was disconcerting. What use could a dying man have for the information, unless he happened to be me?

  But she could not have known. There was no way I could think of for her to have known.

  ... Or anyone else, for that matter. Say, Mr. Black

  ... Whom she apparently recognized.

  Going back a bit further, it was somewhat unusual, our meeting the way that we had . . .

  I would have to find out, of course. Anything that might have some bearing on the present unpleasantness was vital.

  ... And her seeming irrational insistence on accompanying me.

  Yes, I would have to pursue the matter. Quite soon.

  I crossed over the belt, moved parallel to it, approached the black door. I had to be on the right side in order to reach the plate.

  I halted when I came to the black door, the route by which the dead depart the House, the only way anyone leaves the House. It was of a light alloy, was about six feet by eight and in the dim light seemed more a blot or a hole than an object. I manipulated the plate and it swung silently inward. More blackness. Even standing where I was, it was difficult to tell that it was now open. Which suited me fine.

  I mounted the belt and stepped through, leaning to the rear to maintain my balance and keeping one hand on the smooth wall. I caught hold of the door then and drew it toward me, pivoting about its advancing ed
ge, and pushed it closed. It would not snap true until I activated the mechanism, but it would do if someone came along during the next few minutes.

  I got down on all fours again and crawled backward down the tunnel. It only runs about forty feet. When I reached the rear wall, I rose, leaning against it, and slid my fingers along its surface, seeking the maintenance box.

  It took only a moment to locate it and slide its coverplate open. When I did, its small interior light came on and I could see what I was doing once again. The unit seldom, if ever, required servicing, and what I did to it then was definitely not in the service manual. There was no reason, anyway, for anyone to fool with the broadcast coordinates that sent the dead on their one-way subway ride among the stars.

  No one but one of us, that is.

  I finished, slid the panel shut and waited. There would be a lapse of fifteen seconds before it functioned. After that, it would reset itself to its old coordinates.

  Somewhere behind and above me, I heard the door click faintly. All right. There was something I was supposed to remember ...

  I was suddenly pitched to the ground. I caught myself with my hands, slipped onto my side and rose to my feet again. Yes, I was supposed to remember that while I was standing on an incline in the tunnel, the surface to which I was transferring was not so canted.

  Then there was light all about me. It was a brief, bright corridor, the walls so brilliant and dazzling that they hurt my eyes. As I shielded my gaze and moved along it, my person was being analyzed at hundreds—perhaps thousands—of levels, by hidden devices which would only permit one person to pass through the door at its end.

  As I neared it, the door slid upward, and I echoed its sigh as I passed through and into Wing Null.

  The feeling of relief, of release, was intense and immediate. I had come home. I was safe. The enemy could not reach me here.

  I followed the curving of the red-carpeted hallway to the left, moving about the hub of the fortress, passing the great sealed vaults of Lab, Comp, Storage and Files. I wondered as I walked concerning the state of mind that had moved some earlier version of myself to give them such prosaic names, considering what they really held. Sardonic, I guess.