Star Science Fiction 4 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Frederik Pohl

  Harry was about to push the button when Christopher said urgently, “Dr. Elliott. Look!” He pointed toward the fence at the right with a stick he had picked up half a mile back.

  “What?” Harry snapped. He was tired and nervous and dirty. He peered into the darkness. “A dead rabbit.”

  “Christopher means the fence is electrified,” Marna said, “and the mat you’re standing on is made out of metal. I don’t think we should go in there.”

  “Nonsense!” Harry said sharply. “Would you rather stay out here at the mercy of whatever roams the night? I’ve stopped at these motels before. There’s nothing wrong with them.”

  Christopher held out his stick. “Maybe you’d better push the button with this.”

  Harry frowned, took the stick, and stepped off the mat. “Oh, all right,” he said ungraciously. At the second try, he pushed the button.

  The frosted glass plate became a television eye. “Who rings?”

  “Four travelers bound for Topeka,” Harry said. He held up the pass in front of the eye. “We can pay.”

  “Welcome,” said the speaker. “Cabins thirteen and fourteen will open when you deposit the correct amount of money. What time do you wish to be awakened?”

  Harry looked at his companions. “Sunrise,” he said.

  “Good night,” said the speaker. “Sleep tight.”

  The gate rolled up. Christopher led Pearce around the Welcome mat and down the driveway beyond. Marna followed. Irritated, Harry jumped over the mat and caught up with them.

  A single line of glass bricks along the edge of the driveway glowed fluorescently to point out the direction they should go. They passed a tank trap and a machine-gun emplacement, but the place was deserted.

  When they reached cabin thirteen, Harry said, “We won’t need the other one. We’ll stay together.” He put three twenty-dollar uranium pieces into the coin slot.

  “Thank you,” the door said. “Come in.”

  As the door opened, Christopher darted inside. The small room held a double bed, a chair, a desk, and a floor lamp. In the corner was a small, partioned bathroom with an enclosed shower, a lavatory, and a toilet. The boy went immediately to the desk, found a plastic menu card, returned to the door. He helped Pearce into the room and then waited by the door until Harry and Marna were inside. He cracked the menu into two pieces. As the door swung shut, he slipped one of the pieces between the door and the jamb. He started back toward Pearce, stumbled against the lamp and knocked it over. It crashed and went out. They were left with only the illumination from the bathroom light.

  “Clumsy little fool!” Harry said sharply.

  Marna was at the desk, writing. She turned and handed the paper to Harry. Impatiently he edged toward the light and looked at it. It said:

  Christopher has broken the eye, but the room is still bugged. We can’t break that without too much suspicion. Can I speak to you outside?

  “That is the most ridiculous-” Harry began.

  “This seems adequate.” Pearce’s voice was noticeably penetrating. “You two can sleep in fourteen.” His blind face was turned intently toward Harry.

  Harry sighed. If he didn’t humor them, he would get ho rest at all. He opened the door and stepped into the night with Marna. The girl moved close to him, put her arms around his neck and her cheek against his. Without his volition, his arms went around her waist. Her lips moved against his ear; a moment later he realized that she was speaking.

  “I do not like you, Dr. Elliott, but I do not want us all killed. Can you afford another cabin?”

  “Of course, but—I’m not going to leave those two alone.”

  “That’s beside the point. Naturally it would be foolish for us not to stick together. Please, now. Ask no questions. When we go in fourteen, take off your jacket and throw it casually over the lamp. I’ll do the rest.”

  Harry let himself be led to the next cabin. He fed the door. It greeted them and let them in. The room was identical with thirteen. Marna slipped a piece of plastic between the door and the jamb as the door closed. She looked at Harry expectantly.

  He shrugged, took off his jacket, and tossed it over the lamp. The room took on a shadowy and sinister appearance. Marna knelt, rolled up a throw rug, and pulled down the covers on the bed. She went to the wall phone, gave it a little tug, and the entire flat vision plate swung out on hinges. She reached into it, grabbed something, and pulled it out. There seemed to be hundreds of turns of copper wire on a spool.

  Marna went to the shower enclosure, unwinding wire as she went. She stood outside the enclosure and fastened one end of the wire to the hot water faucet. Then she strung it around the room like a spider’s web, broke it off, and fastened the free end to the drain in the shower floor. This she threaded through the room close to but not touching the first wire.

  She tiptoed her way out between the wires, picked, up the throw rug, and tossed it on the bed.

  “Well, ‘night,” she said, motioning Harry toward the door and to be careful of the wires. When Harry reached it without mishap, Marna turned off the lamp, removed the jacket, and slipped over to join him.

  She let the door slam behind them and sighed a big sigh.

  “Now you’ve fixed it,” Harry whispered savagely. “Neither of the showers will work, and I’ll have to sleep on the floor.”

  “You wouldn’t want to take a shower anyway,” Marna said. “It would be your last one. They’re wired.” Resentfully, and feeling foolish, Harry returned with Marna to cabin thirteen, where he dumped the boy in with the old man, and aggressively occupied one entire bed for himself.

  Harry couldn’t sleep. First it had been the room, shadowed and silent, and then the harsh breathing of the old man and the softer breaths of Christopher and Marna. As a resident, he was not used to sleeping in the same room with other persons.

  Then his arm had tingled—not much but just enough to keep him awake. He had got out of bed and crawled to where Marna was lying on the floor. She, too, had been awake. Silently he had urged her to share the bed with him, gesturing that he would not touch her, he had no desire to touch her, and if he had, he swore by Hippocrates that he would restrain himself. He only wanted to ease the tingling under the bracelet so that he could go to sleep.

  She motioned that he could lie on the floor beside her, but he shook his head. Finally she relented enough to move to the floor beside the bed. By lying on his stomach and letting his arm dangle, Harry relieved the tingling and fell into an uneasy sleep.

  He had dreams. He was performing a long and difficult lung resection. The microsurgical controls slipped in his sweaty fingers; the scalpel sliced through the aorta. The patient started up on the operating table, the blood spurting from her heart. It was Marna. She began to chase him down long hospital halls.

  The overhead lights kept getting farther and farther apart until Harry was running in complete darkness through warm, sticky blood that kept rising higher and higher until it closed over his head.

  Harry woke up, smothering, fighting against something that enveloped him completely, relentlessly. There was a sound of scuffling nearby. Something spat and crackled. Someone cursed.

  Harry fought, futilely. Something ripped. Again. Harry caught a glimpse of a grayer darkness, struggled toward it, and came out through a long rip in the taut blanket, which had been pulled under the bed on all four sides.

  “Quick!” Christopher said, folding up his pocket knife. He headed for the door where Pearce was already standing patiently.

  Marna picked up a metal leg which had been unscrewed from the desk. Christopher slipped the chair out from under the doorknob and silently opened the door. He led Pearce outside. Marna followed. Dazedly, Harry followed her.

  In cabin fourteen someone screamed. Something flashed blue. A body fell. Harry smelled the odor of burning flesh.

  Marna ran ahead of them toward the gate. She rested the ferule of the desk leg on the ground and let the metal bar fall toward the fence. The f
ence spat blue flame. It ran, crackling, down the leg. The leg glowed redly and sagged. Then everything went dark, including the neon sign above them and the light at the gate.

  “Help me!” Marna panted.

  She was trying to lift the gate. Harry put his hands underneath and lifted. The gate moved a foot and stuck.

  Up the drive someone yelled hoarsely, without words. Harry strained at the gate. It yielded, rolled up silently. Harry put up his hand to hold it while Marna got through and then Pearce and the boy. Harry edged through and let it drop.

  A moment later the electricity flickered on again. The desk leg melted through and dropped away.

  Harry looked back. Coming toward them was a motorized wheelchair. In it was something lumpy and monstrous, a nightmarish menace—until Harry recognized it for what it was: a basket case, a quadruple amputee complicated by a heart condition. An artificial heart-and-lung machine rode on the back of the wheelchair like a second head. Behind galloped a gangling scarecrow creature with hair that flowed out behind. It wore a dress in imitation of a woman. . . .

  Harry stood there watching, fascinated, while the wheelchair stopped beside the gun emplacement. Wires reached out from one of the chair arms like medusan snakes, inserted themselves into control plugs. The machine gun started to chatter. Something plucked at Harry’s sleeve.

  The spell was broken. He turned and ran into the darkness.

  * * * *

  Half an hour later he was lost. Marna, Pearce, and the boy were gone. All he had left was a tired body, an arm that burned, and a wrist that hurt worse than anything he could remember.

  He felt his upper arm. His sleeve was wet. He brought his fingers to his nose. Blood. The bullet had creased him.

  He sat disconsolately on the edge of the turnpike, the darkness as thick as soot around him. He looked at the fluorescent dial of his watch. Three-twenty. A couple of hours until sunrise. He sighed and tried to ease the pain in his wrist by rubbing around the bracelet. It seemed to help. In a few minutes it dropped to a tingle.

  “Dr. Elliott,” someone said softly.

  He turned. Relief and something like joy flooded through his chest. There, outlined against the dim starlight, were Christopher, Marna and Pearce.

  “Well,” Harry said gruffly, “I’m glad you didn’t try to escape.”

  “We wouldn’t do that, Dr. Elliott,” Christopher said.

  “How did you find me?” Harry asked.

  Marna silently held up her arm.

  The bracelet. Of course. He had given them too much credit, Harry thought sourly. Marna sought him out because she could not help herself, and Christopher, because he was out here alone with a senile old man to take care of and he needed help.

  Although, honesty forced him to admit, it had been himself and not Christopher and Pearce who had needed help back there a mile or two. If they had depended on him, their heads would be drying in the motel’s dry-storage room, waiting to be turned in for the bounty. Or their still-living bodies would be on their way to some organ bank somewhere.

  “Christopher,” Harry said to Pearce, “must have been apprenticed to a bad-debt evader.”

  Pearce accepted it for what it was: a compliment and an apology. “Dodging the collection agency traps and keeping out of the way of the health inspector,” he whispered, “make growing up in the city a practical education. You’re hurt.”

  Harry started. How did the old man know? Even with eyes, it was too dark to see more than silhouettes. Harry steadied himself. It was an instinct, perhaps. Diagnosticians got it, sometimes, he was told. After they had been practicing for years. They could smell disease before the patient lay down on the couch. From the gauges they got only confirmation.

  Or maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe the old man smelled the blood with a nose grown keen to compensate for his blindness.

  The old man’s fingers were on his arm, surprisingly gentle. Harry pulled his arm away roughly. “It’s only a crease.”

  The charlatan’s fingers found his arm again. “It’s bleeding. Find some dry grass, Christopher.”

  Marna was close. She had made a small, startled movement toward him when Pearce had discovered his wound. Harry could not accept her actions for sympathy; her hate was too tangible. Perhaps she was wondering what she woulddo if he were to die.

  Pearce ripped the sleeve away.

  “Here’s the grass, Grampa,” Christopher said.

  How did the boy find dry grass in the dark? “You aren’t going to put that on the wound!” Harry said quickly.

  “It will stop the bleeding,” Pearce whispered.

  “But the germs—”

  “Germs can’t hurt you, unless you want them to.”

  He put the grass on the wound and bound it with the sleeve. “That will be better soon.”

  He would take it off, Harry told himself, as soon as they started walking. Somehow, though, it was easier to let it alone now that the harm was done. Then he forgot about it.

  When they started walking again, Harry found himself beside Marna. “I suppose you got your education dodging health inspectors in the city, too?” he said drily.

  She shook her head. “No. There’s never been much else to do. Ever since I can remember I’ve been trying to escape. I got free once.” Her voice was filled with remembered happiness. “I was free for twenty-four hours, and then they found me.”

  “But I thought-” Harry began. “Who are you?”

  “Me? I’m the governor’s daughter.” She said it so bitterly that Harry recoiled.

  * * * *

  Sunrise found them on the turnpike. They had outdistanced the last ruined motel. Now, on either side of the turnpike, were rolling, grassy hills, valleys filled with trees, and the river winding muddily beside them, sometimes so close they could throw a rock into it, sometimes turning beyond the hills out of sight.

  The day was warm. Above them the sky was blue with only a trace of fleecy cloud on the western horizon. Occasionally a rabbit would hop across the road in front of them and vanish into the brush on the other side. Once they saw a deer lift its head beside the river and stare at them curiously.

  Harry stared back with hunger in his eyes.

  “Dr. Elliott,” Christopher said.

  Harry looked at him. In the boy’s soiled hand was an irregular lump of solidified brown sugar. It was speckled with lint and other unidentifiable accretions, but at the moment it was the most desirable object Harry could think of. His mouth watered and he swallowed hard. “Give it to Pearce and the girl. They’ll need their strength. And you, too.”

  “That’s all right,” Christopher said. “I have more.” He held up three other pieces in his left hand. He gave one to Marna and one to Pearce. The old man bit into his with the brown stubs that served him as teeth.

  Harry picked off the largest pieces of foreign matter and then could restrain his hunger no more. Breakfast was unusually satisfying.

  They kept walking, not moving rapidly but steadily. Pearce never complained. He kept his bent old legs tottering forward, and Harry gave up trying to move him faster.

  They passed a hydroponic farm with an automated canning factory close beside it. No one moved around either building. Only the belts turned, carrying the tanks toward the factory to be harvested or away from it refilled with nutrients, replanted with new crops.

  “We should pick up something for lunch,” Harry said. It would be theft but in a good cause. He could get his pardon directly from the governor.

  “Too dangerous,” Christopher said.

  “Every possible entrance,” Marna said, “is guarded by spy beams and automatic weapons.”

  “Christopher will get us a good supper,” Pearce whispered.

  They saw a suburban villa on a distant hill, but there was no one around it. They plodded on along the grass-grown double highway toward Lawrence.

  Suddenly Christopher said, “Down! In the ditch beside the road!”

  This time Harry moved quickl
y, without questions. He helped Pearce down the slope—the old man was very light— and threw himself down into the ditch beside Marna. A minute later motors raced by not far away. As the sound dwindled, Harry risked a glance above the top of the ditch. A group of motorcycles was disappearing on the road toward the city. “What was that?” Harry asked, shaken.

  “Wolfpack!” Marna said, hatred and disgust mingled in her voice.

  “But they looked like company police,” Harry objected.