by Ben Bova
The marshal was awake now, and giving orders again. Lou glared at him, but followed his directions. They went out of the jet, across a few meters of cracked grass-invaded cement, and up into the plastic bubble of the copter. Lou sat down on the back bench behind the empty pilot’s seat. The marshal climbed in heavily and sat beside him, wheezing slightly.
Over the whir of the whizzing rotors and the nasal hum of the electric motor, Lou shouted:
“Just where are you taking me? What’s this all about?”
The marshal shook his head, slammed the canopy hatch shut, and reached between the two front seats to punch a button on the control panel. The motor hummed louder and the copter jerked up off the ground.
By the time the helicopter flashed over the skyline of Manhattan, Lou was furious.
“Why won’t you tell me anything?” he shouted at the marshal, sitting beside him on the back bench. He was leaning back with his burly arms folded across his chest and his sleepy eyes half closed.
“Listen, kid, the phone woke me up at four this morning. I had to race out to the jetport and fly to Albuquerque. I spent half the day waiting for you at that silly glider race. Then I drove to your apartment, and you didn’t show up there. Then I went to your lab. Know what my wife and kids are doing right now? They’re sitting home, wondering whether I’m dead or alive and why we’re not all out on the picnic we planned. Know how many picnics we can afford, on a marshal’s pay? Been planning this one all year—had a spot in the upstate park reserved months ago. Now it’s going to waste while I hotfoot all across the country after you. So don’t ask questions, understand?”
Then he added, “Besides, I don’t know what it’s all about. I just got the word to pick up you up, that’s all.”
In a softer voice, Lou said, “Well, look… I’m sorry about your picnic. I didn’t know— Never had a Federal marshal after me before. But why can’t I call anybody? My friends’ll be worried about me. My girl…”
“I told you, don’t ask questions.” The marshal closed his eyes altogether.
Lou frowned. He started to ask where they were going, then thought better of it. The copter was circling over the East River now, close to the old United Nations buildings. It started to descend toward a landing pad next to the tall graceful tower of marble and glass. In the last, blood-red light of the dying sun, Lou could see that the buildings were stained by nearly a century of soot and grime. The windows were caked with dirt, the once-beautiful marble was cracked and patched.
Two men were standing down on the landing pad, off to one side, away from the downwash of the rotors. As soon as the copter’s wheels touched the blacktop, the cabin hatch popped open.
“Out you go,” said the marshal.
Lou jumped out lightly. The marshal reached over and yanked the door shut before Lou could turn around. The copter’s motor whined, and off it lifted in a spray of dust and grit. Lou pulled his head down and squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, the copter was speeding down the river.
Sun’s down now, Lou thought. He’ll never make it in time for his picnic.
The two men were walking briskly toward Lou, their shoes scuffing the blacktop. One of them was small and slim, Latin-looking. Probably Puerto Rican. The breeze from the river flicked at his black hair. The other somehow looked like a foreigner. His suit wasn’t exactly odd, but it didn’t look exactly right, either. He was big, blond, Nordic-looking.
“Please come with us,” said the Norseman. And sure enough, he had the flat twang of a Scandinavian accent. “It is my duty to inform you that we are both armed, and escape is impossible.”
“Escape from what?” Lou started to feel exasperated again.
“Please,” said the Puerto Rican softly. “It is getting dark. We should not remain outside any longer. This way, please.”
Well, they’re polite enough, at least.
Inside, the UN building looked a little better. The corridor they walked down was clean, at least. But the carpeting was threadbare and faded with a century’s worth of footsteps. They took a spacious elevator car, paneled with peeling wood, up a dozen floors. Then another corridor, and finally into a small room.
“Dr. Kirby!”
Sitting on a sofa at the other side of the little room was Dr. John Kirby of Columbia-Brookhaven University. He was in his mid-fifties—white-haired, nervously thin, pinched face with a bent out-thrust nose that gave him the title “Hawk” behind his back.
“I’m sorry,” Kirby said. “I don’t seem to recall…”
“Louis Christopher,” said Lou, as his two escorts shut the door and left him alone with Dr. Kirby. “We met at the Colorado conference last spring, remember?”
Kirby made a vague gesture with his hands. “There are always so many people at these conferences—”
Lou sat on the sofa beside him. “I gave a paper oh computer modeling for forecasting genetic adjustments. You had a question from the floor about the accuracy of the forecasts. Afterward we had lunch together.”
“Oh yes. The computer fellow. You’re not a geneticist.” Kirby’s eyes still didn’t seem to really recognize Lou.
“Do you have any idea of what this is all about?” Lou asked.
Kirby shook his head. He seemed dazed, out of it. Lou looked around the room. It was comfortable enough: a sofa, two deep contour chairs, a bookshelf full of tape spools, a viewscreen set into the wall. No windows, though. Lou got up and went to the door. Locked.
Turning back to Kirby, he saw that the old man’s face was sunk in his hands. Did they drug him?
“Are you okay?” Lou asked.
“What… oh, yes… I’m all right. Merely… well, frankly, I’m frightened.”
“Of what?”
Kirby fluttered his hands again. “I… I don’t know. I don’t know why we’re here, or what they want to do with us. That’s what frightens me. They won’t let me call my wife or even a lawyer—”
Lou paced the room in a few strides. “They grabbed me at the Institute. They wouldn’t let me call anybody, either. Nobody knows I’m here.” Back to the door he paced. “Why are they doing this? What have we done? What’s it all about?”
Abruptly the door opened. The same two men stood in the corridor. “You will come with us, please.”
Kirby started to stand up. But Lou said, “No I won’t. Not until you tell us what this is all about. You can’t arrest us and push us around like this. I want to talk…”
The Norseman pulled a needle-thin gun from his tunic. It was so small that his hand hid all of it except the slim barrel. But the muzzle looked as big as a cannon to Lou, because it was pointed straight at him.
“Please, Mr. Christopher. We have no desire to use force. You are not technically under arrest, therefore you have no need for a lawyer. However, you are wanted for questioning at government headquarters in Messina. It would be best if you cooperate.”
“Messina? In Sicily?”
The blond nodded.
“But… my family,” Kirby said in a shaky voice.
“They have been informed,” said the Puerto Rican. “No harm will come if you cooperate with us.”
With a shrug, Lou headed into the corridor. The Norseman tucked his gun back inside his tunic. The four of them walked slowly down toward the elevator, their footsteps clicking on the bare plastic floors and echoing off the walls. When they got to the elevator, the Puerto Rican touched the DOWN button and instantly the elevator doors slid open.
This building’s empty except for us! Lou realized.
He stepped into the elevator, then whirled, grabbed the Puerto Rican and hurled him into the Norseman. They went down in a tangle of arms and legs, shouting. Lou punched the DOOR CLOSE button and yelled to Kirby:
“Come on!”
Kirby stood frozen, his jaw hanging open, as the doors started to slide shut. The Norseman was still on the floor, but he had pushed the Puerto Rican off and was reaching for his gun. The doors shut. Lou pushed the GROUND bu
tton and the elevator started down. He could hear somebody pounding on the metal doors at the floor above.
On the ground floor he tried to retrace his steps back to the corridor landing pad outside. He got lost in the corridors, finally saw an EXIT sign, and banged through the doors. It was full night outside, dark and damp-cool, with the ripe acrid smell of the garbage-choked river a sudden shock to Lou’s senses. The city was almost completely dark; only a few lights shone, mostly high up in skyscrapers where people had their own power generators and had barricaded themselves in for the night.
He heard footsteps and flattened himself into the deeper shadows along the wall.
“Shall we turn the lights on?” The Norseman’s voice.
“And attract every gang of pack rats on the East Side?” the Puerto Rican answered. “You don’t know this city very well. He’ll never live out the night alone. Either he’ll come begging at our doors inside an hour, or he’ll be dead. No one can get through a night on these streets alone.”
“My orders are to bring them to Messina unharmed,” said the Norseman.
“You want to search for him? Out there? You’ll be killed, too.”
They said no more. Lou could sense the Norseman shaking his head, not satisfied, but not willing to risk his own skin against the city streets. Lou heard a door click shut. He slid along the wall carefully and found the door he had come through. It was locked from the inside.
He turned away and looked at the city again with new understanding. He was alone in the city.
And the night had just begun.
4
Lou hunkered down on his heels, resting his back against the rough wall, and tried to think. He could bang on the door until they came and got him. Then he’d be safe enough. The Norseman might jab him with a sleeping drug, but probably nothing worse. Then they’d take him to Messina. But why.’ And where was Bonnie? Had they taken her, too?
And why should he let them pull him around by the nose, Lou asked himself with mounting anger. They had no right to take him here. Who do they think they’re pushing around, a frail old professor like Kirby?
But—out here alone in the city! Lou remembered his high school days in Maryland, when the best way to show you had guts was to sneak into the city at night. Of course, you always went with your friends, never less than a dozen guys. And now that he thought about it, Lou realized that despite their loud claims of bravery they never went deeper than a few blocks into the outskirts of Baltimore. Then back to the friendly hills of Hagerstown, as fast as their cars could take them. And still John Milford had been killed on that one trip. Lou remembered tripping over his mutilated body as he ran for his car that night. It still made him shiver.
And this was New York, the heart of it at that! The closest place to civilization and safety was the old JFK jetport, out on Long Island someplace.
If l can get to the jetport in one piece, Lou reasoned, I can get back to Albuquerque. Maybe Bonnie’s waiting for me there.
But how to get to the jetport?
As he sat there wondering, Lou heard the distant whisper of a turbocar. He paid no attention to it at first, but gradually it grew louder and louder. A car! In the city, at night. Can I get it to stop for me?
No doubt of it, the whine of the turbine was much closer, coming this way. Lou got up and walked across the blacktopped courtyard, heading for the sound. Far off to his left he saw a glimmer of light. Moving toward him! He ran to the railing that bordered the courtyard. There was a sunken roadway beyond the railing, and down below Lou could see the lights of the approaching car. The roadbed was patched and rough, but apparently some cars still used it.
Lou leaned over the railing and tried to wave at the speeding turbocar. It roared right past him, making his ears pop with the scream of its engine echoing off the walls of the sunken throughway. A puff of hot, grit-laden, kerosene-smelling air blew into his face.
Maybe if I get down to the road I can get somebody to stop and pick me up.
In the darkness left by the passing car, Lou could barely make out a pedestrian bridge spanning the road, down at the end of the courtyard. He trotted to it. A wire screen fence blocked access to it, but Lou scrambled over it like a kid sneaking into a playground after it had been closed for the night.
He crossed the bridge and found himself on the sidewalk of an empty city street. There’s got to be a stairway down to the road someplace along here, he told himself. He started walking along the street. In the darkness, he stumbled over a bottle and sent it clattering across the pavement. The noise made the city’s silence seem more ominous. Lou got up and went on, keeping his eyes on the roadway. The city seemed deserted. But Lou realized that there were people all around him, by the tens of millions. Most of them were barricaded in for the night, terrified of those who roamed the dark. And the rest…
Another car raced by, coming up the other way. Lou didn’t bother waving. The driver couldn’t see him from down on the road. Besides, Lou was beginning to understand that no driver in his right mind would stop to pick up anybody in the heart of the city. It was enough of a chance to drive through the East Side. If the car should break down or have an accident…
Maybe if they see I’m wearing a flight suit, Lou tried to convince himself, they’d stop for me.
“Goin’ somep’ace?”
The voice was like a knife through him. Lou jerked around, startled. A scrawny kid, dressed in rags, was grinning toothily at him.
“Coin’ somep’ace?” he repeated.
“Uh… I’m lost. I’m trying to find my way—”
Another voice called from the darkness across the street, “Whatcha got, Pimple?”
“Buck in a funny suit, sez he’s losted.”
A trio of kids stepped out of the shadows and crossed to where Lou stood, frozen.
“Funny suit,” said the one in the middle, the shortest of them all. None of them came up to Lou’s shoulder. They were all wearing rags, barefoot, gaunt, scrawny, with the hard, hungry look of starving old men set into the faces of children.
The one in the middle seemed to be the leader. He eyed Lou carefully, then asked, “Got a pass?”
“What?”
“Yer on Peeler turf. Got a pass t’go through?”
“Well… no…”
The leader broke into a cackling laugh. “Humpin” right you ain’t! Nobody gets a pass, ’cept from me, and I don’t give ’em!” All four of them laughed.
Then the leader asked, “How much skin on ya?”
“I don’t understand…”
“Skin, leaves, pages, paper, bread--”
“Oh, you mean money,” Lou realized. He shook his head. “Nothing. I don’t carry…”
Something exploded in the small of his back. Lou sagged down to his knees, pain screaming through him. The leader stepped up in front of him. Lou had to look up now to see into his hard, glittering eyes.
“I…”
Smiling, the leader rocked back deliberately and then swung his fist into Lou’s mouth. One of the other boys kicked Lou in the chest and he toppled over backward gasping for breath, his mouth suddenly filled with blood, tiny bright lights flashing in his eyes.
He felt their hands on him, ripping open the zips of his suit, tearing at the fabric. They rolled him over, face down on the filthy sidewalk. They pulled off his boots.
They were talking among themselves now, muttering and giggling. Lou’s mouth felt numb and puffy. His back and ribs flamed with pain when he tried to move, but he forced his breathing back to normal, fought his way back up to a crouching position.
“Honest buck, ain’t cha?” the leader said, grinning. “No skin, tol’truth. But boots is somethin’ ta howl for. Big fer me, but I’ll stuff ’em with paper or somethin’.”
Lou stayed in his crouch and rubbed at the fast-caking blood on his chin. The four boys were ranged in a half-circle around him, looking very big now as they stood over him.
“Okay,” said the leader. “How we
gonna get rid of ’im?” The kid on Lou’s left flicked a knife open and started giggling.
Lou uncoiled and slammed straight into the leader, bowling him over, and raced away. He pounded down the darkened street, rounded a corner, and ran as fast as he could, blindly, away from them. Something sharp bit into one bare foot but Lou kept going, heart pounding, sweat pouring all over him. “A hunt, a hunt!” he heard someone shouting from behind him.
And then the leader’s unmistakable voice, “Peelers! A hunt!” Other voices shouted up ahead, and from a side street too. Lou pulled up short. There was an alley to his right. Dead end, most likely. He walked, slowly and quietly now, past the alley and toward the corner of the street up ahead. He could feel himself trembling. The pain was buried now beneath the fear. From down the street he heard the scrabbling sounds of barefooted kids walking swiftly toward him.
“Try that alley,” somebody said, half a block behind him in the darkness.
Lou turned the corner and started running again. He lost track of time. Minutes and hours blurred together. Lou only knew that he was running, hunted like a rare gazelle—or more like a meat animal being chased by a pack of wolves. Whenever he stopped, he heard their voices behind him, off to the side, ahead, out of the shadows, everywhere.
He tried to get into the buildings, but the doors were locked.
Many of them sealed with heavy metal screens. Some were electrified, and Lou picked up a handful of burned fingers before he stopped trying the darkened doorways.
“Hey, head ’im off… don’t let ’im get across the avenya!”
Lou looked up ahead. There were lights glowing a few blocks up the street. One of the main avenues, still lighted? Lights meant civilization, and civilization meant safety. Lou started running toward the lights.
“Hey, there he goes! Get “im!”
Feet were pounding behind him, getting closer. From around a corner, two boys appeared, knives in hand. Lou swerved out into the middle of the street. When they raced to meet him, he cut back again in his best touch-football style. One of the boys slipped trying to reach him, and Lou planted a running kick on the other one’s midsection so hard that the kid bounced halfway across the street.