He turned and looked back. The stranger had disappeared; he was not on the sidewalk, and he had not come in pursuit. Perhaps he had circled half the block to the alleyway, with a mind toward cutting off Pete's escape at that point. But that seemed unlikely, for it would have been easier to make a direct pursuit.
Then the thing had gone for help. Its false face had been damaged, increasing its risk of discovery by other citizens. It had gone back to get repaired and to send reinforcements.
Back where?
That question froze him. He stood in the shadows, breathing heavily, listening to the night sounds, trying to imagine where the thing had come from. There was only one logical source: the eyeless, toothless creature sitting before the bank of controls, the beast from his dreams.
Cautiously, he continued across the lawn, his indecision broken. He kept to the shrubbery and the shadows by the house and reached a walk that lead to a garage and, then, to the alleyway in the middle of the block. He paused by the wall of the garage and looked both ways down the side street. Finding both directions deserted, he chose to go left, where there were more operable street-lamps. Until he had ascertained a bit more of the change in his circumstances, he did not want to return to the house. The house would be watched.
He walked half a dozen blocks west, along tree shrouded residential streets, then turned south toward the business district where he hoped he might find other people about. None of the stores were open at that hour, though Halberstrom's Restaurant was moderately busy, as it was twenty-four hours a day. He walked across the street to a small park that faced the restaurant and sat down on a slat bench to think.
He could not hope to handle the situation until he knew more about those behind it—which meant that, if possible, he was going to have to try to probe through the mind of that eyeless beast who had plagued his nightmares for these last few weeks. The dark stranger now seemed to be a machine; that would explain the false face, the steel beneath, the lack of mental processes in its own "brain". Opening his psionic curtain, he allowed the minds of those around him to gush in upon him. He sorted them out swiftly, searching for a string of mental images that originated in the alien creature who had controlled the mechanical man.
After several minutes, he found a white, spherical mind approaching his own. It wormed through the layers of his consciousness, looking for a grip. As before, the eyeless creature behind it began to radiate images of rest and sleep.
Frightened, Pete shoved the others out of his consciousness and looked about the small square. Coming down the walk to his right, two identical strangers, dressed in dark clothes and stamped from the same mold as the first one he had incapacitated, waved at him, as if in greeting.
He got up and stepped toward the curb.
Across the street, another of the robots stood before the restaurant, hands in overcoat pockets, watching him. When it knew that it had been seen, it stepped off the curb and started across the road.
Pete rounded the bench and walked briskly into the small park, heading for a windbreak of lilac bushes. When he reached these, he risked a glance backwards. All three of the things had entered the park. In the shelter of the trees, away from the streetlamps, they gave up their pretense of a casual stroll. They ran now, covering the ground between them and their victim.
He ran along the lilac wall until he found a break in it, pushed through, scratching himself on a few scraggly branches, and continued his flight. Now and again he felt them probing along the shell of his mind, trying to determine his destination and what he might do next. He found that he could effectively seal them out behind an imaginary obsidian wall that rose to touch the sky of his mental landscape. At least he had that edge on them.
The east end of the park fell away into a macadamed parking lot behind Gridd's Department Store. He crossed the smooth plain, listening to his feet crack too loudly on the pavement. He was certain they were still behind him; he did not take the time to look.
The pedestrian walkways between Gridd's and the office building next door was only wide enough for two people to pass. When he broke out of the confining walls of the two buildings, he was on a deserted thoroughfare. He paused just long enough to hear them enter the far end of the walkway, then he angled across the four-lane highway as fast as he could move, into the dark mouth of yet another back street.
He could still feel their probing fingers sliding along the shield he had erected to contain his thoughts. Even if they could not gain access to his mind, they could track him merely by maintaining this minimal contact. Unless he could put a great deal of distance between himself and them—or in some other manner break that mental hold—he would never be able to elude them for good.
He followed the alleyway for four blocks until he came out in a small, brick-floored courtyard which was fronted by three warehouses forming the better part of a circle. Three other alleyways lead off in darkness. He chose the one on his right and ran half a block along the green, corrugated metal wall of the warehouse, then up the stairs he found leading to the second floor of the building.
At the top of the iron steps, set in the warehouse wall, was a metal fire door with a nine-inch-square glass window embedded in its center. The glass was double thickness and surely connected to an alarm somewhere. Just the same, he braced himself against the platform rail of the landing and set about kicking the chest-high window to pieces. He finally managed to break it. Glass tinkled on the floor inside, but there was no alarm. He reached through the square, careful of the few jagged shards remaining, found the fire latch on the panel, threw it and pushed the door inward.
The burglar alarm went off then.
He stepped back and looked down the alleyway. The triplets were hurrying along, looking purposeful. They would be on the stairs in a few seconds. Wiping perspiration from his face, he went into the warehouse, despite the alarm, and closed and re-bolted the door.
No lights burned in the warehouse. The moon and distant streetlamps shone through the broken window in the firedoor, but that only seeped a few yards into the room. He moved quickly into the darkness, aware that the longer he stood in the light the longer it would be before his eyes had adjusted to the gloominess in the rest of the building.
He fell over a crate, striking the wooden floor with his shoulder. The pain in his skinned legs and bruised arm was so sharp that he might have lain there for several minutes, rubbing his flesh. But he didn't. He heard the triplets on the stairs, their hard-soled shoes clanging against the iron. Cursing, he got up and stumbled deeper into the dark. He walked with his arms ahead of him, trying to avoid another fall.
Perhaps a hundred feet into the chamber, he came up against the other wall. He could see no more than ten feet ahead, and then only the barest outlines of things. Keeping one hand against the wall, he walked toward the back of the building.
The triplets fumbled with the fire latch, at the door. It snicked open.
He reached the rear wall without encountering stairs. He turned and hurried back the way he had come, following the cold metal toward the front of the warehouse. The alarm had stopped. That was, he knew, only because the police had switched it off from headquarters and were on their way. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad.
"Mr. Mullion."
He almost stopped when he heard the newscaster's voice, but he caught himself and continued to follow the wall.
"We are not here to harm you," the newscaster said.
He walked.
"You won't have the slightest notion of pain, Mr. Mullion. Let us assure you of that."
He reached the front of the room without making a noise that could give him away. He found a railing and emptiness beyond, a discovery which indicated they were on a second-floor storage loft which overlooked the main floor of the warehouse. Somewhere, there had to be a way down.
"Mr. Mullion," one of the triplets said, looming up twenty feet away as Pete followed the smooth railing.
He stopped, his heart racing, but he
felt a break in the rail as he did so. He edged forward a foot or two and felt around with his boot until he discovered a step. In a moment, blood pounding in his temples, he was halfway down toward the lower level, taking two risers at a time, no matter what the danger of a fall. He heard the mechanical man start after him as he set foot on the cement floor.
Outside, the wail of sirens rebounded from the rippled warehouse walls. Would the triplets stay or flee?
"Mr. Mullion, if you will wait there just a moment—"
He didn't bother listening to the rest of it, but moved off through the crated machinery that offered cover.
The eight-fingered being had begun another concerted effort to break down the partition that surrounded Pete's mind. It wanted to surge through, shredding his defenses, and capture him, thereby putting an end to this chase. Fortunately, Pete wanted his freedom even more than the strange creature wanted him captured. For the moment, the stronger of the two desires seemed to be winning out. The assault made him feel dizzy and weak and uncertain. Nevertheless, he managed to maintain his mental sanctity against the onslaught. Hunched to present the smallest target, he fled deeper into the stacks of boxes and barrels.
Three police cars braked noisily in the brick courtyard outside. The sirens died slowly, mournful as they wound down into silence to be replaced by the voices of half a dozen men. Orders were shouted; confirmations were called back. Feet sounded on the bricks. "Up this way!" someone shouted. Distantly, feet found the iron rungs of the old, black fire escape.
The triplets were all on the main floor now, desperately looking for him.
"Mr. Mullion, the police will be here shortly, and they'll arrest you. We have a way out; they won't find us. But you'll have to stay here and be trapped, if you won't help us."
The police had reached the door at the top of the fire escape and were considering unlatching it.
Pete remembered the speed with which that damaged mechanical man had disappeared from the street, earlier in the evening. Too, he remembered how the stranger under the willow tree had vanished so rapidly that night only weeks ago, when he had returned home from his first period of forgetfulness. He had been hoping that the arrival of the police would scare the triplets off. Now he saw that they would stay through the last moment. They were superior machines with superior abilities, many of which they had not, surely, yet displayed.
During one of his quiet dashes along a short, box-walled passageway, as he eluded the triplets, he came to a point where the cement floor sank in all directions to a large, heavy wire drainage grill set over a sewer opening in the floor. All the stock was perched on metal bar frames an inch or two above the cement to let the water drain beneath.
In the second floor loft, the police had gotten the door open and had reached the head of the stairs. They played the beams of three powerful flashlights on the maze of the lower level. They looked unhappy at the prospect of coming down. They called out, waited for a reply, then called out again.
Pete knelt by the wire grill and lifted it out of place. Beyond, the storm drain was easily large enough to accommodate a man. He wondered if it harbored rats and roaches. Then he decided that rats and roaches could be no less pleasant than remaining here to be discovered by the police or the triplets. The former would recommend that he be locked up in some asylum; the latter might just take it in their heads to murder him. Painlessly, of course; they had promised that much.
He laid the grill aside and dropped into the drain. The tile was only damp; no rats or roaches either visible or audible. He reached overhead and replaced the grill. It made a bit of noise sliding in place, but he could do nothing about that.
He had not considered how dark it would be. His fears seemed to drink the darkness and bloom with its nourishment. Although he would have a hard enough time seeing what he was about, he knew the mechanical triplets would see very well in the dark, too well to make it an even battle.
Overhead, someone shouted. The police? Or the triplets?
He heard voices and the shuffle of feet near the drain.
A revolver boomed in the closed warehouse, echoing from the corrugated walls.
Fingers felt along the drainage grill; he could see them, searching for a hold.
He turned, peered into the stinking blackness of the storm drain, bent to avoid any ceiling projections, and hurried forward, giving the rats plenty of warning if they were there.
IX
He was thankful for the recent balmy weather which had given the city clear skies for several days. The runnels were dry, or nearly so, and they presented no hazard more nerve-wracking than occasional patches of slick, wet mud. He fell on a few of these, skinning both knees and both elbows. His clothes were damp in many places and smeared with a rich, black soil; chewing gum wrappers stuck to his trousers; his face was filthy; the left sleeve of his shirt was torn from cuff to elbow. He didn't curse once. Nor did he wish he was out of that place and under an open sky, for all these bothersome details were far more desirable than capture.
His eyes had somewhat adjusted to the gloom, though he could see very little, no more than a few feet. There was no sign of movement behind, no light to show the triplets the way.
He began to walk rather than run any farther. His chest ached; his calves and thighs felt strained and loose. As he walked, he held a hand over his heart, as if clutching it, feeling the beat of it and wishing there were some way to slow the tempo. He took turn after turn in the subterranean network; each twist into a new branch of the drainage system was one more obstacle to anyone who might be trying to follow him.
Ahead, concrete steps, fortified with flagstone insets, led up into more darkness. The city was built on two hills and in the valley between; necessarily, there would have to be different levels in the drains. Weak, blue light, filtering down from above, showed him the way. He climbed the steps, avoiding the soggy clumps of rotting, dead leaves that clung in all the corners of the risers.
At the top of the stairs, he found a landing from which two tunnels bored away in opposite directions. Directly in front of him, in the blank stone wall, there was a heavy, metal door, painted gray with the number 17 stenciled on it in white. A blue safety bulb burned in a wire cage above the door. He crossed to it, tried the handle, and found the door locked.
"Hello in there!" he called without response.
He pounded on the door, sure that he had found a maintenance area of some sort. It was sturdily hinged and reverberated only slightly, despite the force of his knocking.
"Hey, in there!"
Still no answer.
He turned away from it and went back to sit on the first step of the stairway. Instead of thinking about his plight, his mind traveled to thoughts of Della, where it dwelled for long, pleasant minutes.
He tried to picture her, lying in bed yet, warm, curled up, one hand drawn to her mouth, almost as if she would begin sucking her thumb. It was how she always slept; he had little trouble envisioning her.
But he could do better than that. He bored a hole in the obsidian walls around his mental landscape and projected a beam of cognition, seeking her.
Della...
See her: frightened.
She dislikes things that crawl, centipedes, caterpillars, waterbugs, snakes, and she draws away, cold with the fear of being touched by them. She never shows this fear because she doesn't want you to think of her as a typical female, as a ninny afraid of her own shadow. She is terrified of cancer, of tumors that bring death unknown, unsuspected and unwanted. She is frightened of the way you sometimes drive too fast, corner too closely, pass other cars when there is little room to pass. Some nights, she dreams of being killed in the Thunderbird, crushed, canned, bleeding across asphalt paving while ambulence lights flicker and sirens wail and doctors hopelessly try to extricate her from the mass of steel and upholstery and glass . . .
See her: confident.
She is not afraid of people, open and candid, willing to accept everyone. She is self-suf
ficient and knows she can extricate herself from any circumstance, be it embarrassing, dangerous or boring. As long as her adversary is always another human being, she knows she can handle the situation. She is not afraid of being poor, of watching her belongings drain away in some recession or depression or through some catastrophe of nature. She knows that she will always be able to provide for herself. She is not frightened of love-making or the joys of flesh, for she holds no faith in deities who punish for joy or in codes that restrict without reason. She is not frightened of herself, either.
His appetite for exploring her mind, for knowing the innermost of her opinions on every subject, was almost crippling in its intensity, at once both unbearable and deliriously desirable.
Was this what love had always been leading to, what love always should have been, this tasting of her way down inside and finding her both ugly and radiant? Each new bit of datum that he acquired was another link between them. Here, through such deep exploration of her, he was finding a truer, stronger love than he had ever known before. She was becoming so well-known to him that they were one and the same. And one can never hate himself, not actually, not below whatever facade he may erect. She was of himself, and he loved her.
He relived parts of her past, terrors and warmths, parental spankings and Christmas Eves. He studied her dreams of the future.
One by one, he probed the areas of her life, seeking the Della he had only known peripherally before. At times, he was pleased at how close her reality matched the image he had always had of her. Other times, the deviation between his image and herself was so great that he was shocked by his own blindness in all their relationships.
And then, as he prepared to sweep through her childhood again, investigating her memories and attitudes more thoroughly, the white mental sphere intruded, dominating his horizons. It ballooned, testing his mental shields, trying to breach them.
He opened his eyes, shaking off the post-telepathic lethargy that possessed him.
Koontz, Dean - Time Thieves Page 5