At last, unable to hold still any longer, he walked around into the shrubs at the front of the house. He looked up into the glassed porch, but saw nothing beyond the normal quota of sun furniture. The lawn was empty, rolling serenely down to the GT at the foot of the walk. He examined the arrangement of the car's hood latch in his mind so there would be no fumbling once he was exposed, out there where the killer could spot him at a casual glance. When he was satisfied he had thought of everything, he stood, half bent to make himself as small a target as possible, ran to the car, and got the keys from under the hood. He went around to the driver's door, his fingers shaking but generally pleased at the way things were going. He unlocked the door, started to open it- and happened to look inside.
The intruder was sitting in the passenger's seat, his brass-tipped finger pointed directly at Salsbury
In a surprisingly short time, he had come from near exhaustion and thick mental weariness where thoughts took forever to transverse his mind to full physical and mental alert. It was as if he had been trained to consciously draw upon his body's reserves of strength, as if he had been taught how to unlock the storeroom doors of his adrenalin supply. The moment he recognized the killer sitting in his car, the storeroom turned into a fountain, pumping adrenalin out his ears. His body seemed to move from one plane of activity to a higher one where he lived faster and more completely. He jerked upright to shield his face, heard the harsh, brittle shattering of glass and felt bright slivers sting through his pajama tops and into his chest. Then he fell and rolled to keep away from further blasts, came up against the hedges and onto his knees.
The killer was getting out of the car.
Salsbury did not know whether the stranger thought his little trick had worked or not, but he wasn't waiting around to find out. Staying by the hedges, praying fervently the shadows made it difficult for the killer to see him, he rounded the corner of the house and ran. He crossed the lawn, bare feet slipping now and again in the spring dew, went into the orchard, pulled to a stop under the first of the trees, and paused to catch his breath.
When he looked back the way he had come, he saw the killer standing behind the house, looking down the darkened landscape toward the trees and, it seemed, directly at Salsbury himself. Abruptly, Victor started to move again, for the last thing he saw was the killer starting after him at a brisk walk, almost a run.
He ran forward through the trees, no longer certain where he was going or what he would do when he got there. The ground underfoot was stonier than it had been, and he felt the sharper pieces cutting into him. The pain was a distant thing, however, something that nagged him like a forgotten errand or residual guilt. Much more immediate was his fear.
His breath came like liquid fire, burning his lungs, setting all his insides ablaze. His stomach was a glowing coal. There was a bellows in his head that kept providing a draft for the internal flames. Tiny red tongues burned in his feet, and the constant slap of them against the ground did not seem to help dampen the fire.
He burst through the end of the orchard almost as if a gossamer net had been strung as a barrier, stood at the bank that overlooked the winding creek, trying to think, desperately in search of some plan that would salvage what seemed to be beyond reclamation: his life.
He turned once, expecting the worst, expecting the killer to be looming over him, bringing up its brass finger for the last flash, but he could see nothing in the darkness of the apple trees. He held his breath so there would be no noise for the enemy to hear, picked up the crash of the other man's feet as he made his way through the brush. He found he had to breathe again and that, no matter how hard he tried, he could not draw breath quietly.
In desperation, he came up with a plan of sorts, the only thing that might work. He scrambled down the embankment and worked his way out on the ledge that led to the cave where he had found the three trunks and where he had slept for two weeks. Halfway along it, he stopped and looked overhead. There were rocks, roots, and branches of scrub brush to cling to. It didn't look like the easiest of plans, but it was all he had. He grabbed some protruding rocks and started climbing up.
Three minutes later, gasping, his hands raw from the climb, from skinning them on rocks, burning them on branches, he was perched eight feet above the ledge, only a foot from his head to the top of the embankment. If the killer did either of two things, Salsbury's plan might work. If he did neither, Victor knew his worries would be finished anyway, finished by a sharp, sparkling blade of yellow light
If the killer followed Salsbury's trail perfectly in some mysterious fashion, he would go down the rain cut and onto the ledge. In that case, Victor would drop on him from his higher perch, feet first. Hopefully, both feet ploughing into the stranger's head would weigh any subsequent fight in Victor's favor-and just might crush the man's skull straight away. If, instead, the killer came to the embankment and searched along it, standing near the edge, Victor could reach up with one hand, holding to the rocks with the other, grab an ankle, and attempt to topple his adversary into the creek thirty feet below. There were a lot of sharp, lovely rocks in that creek. And even if the fall did not kill him, it should sure as hell slow him down some.
Victor waited.
In a few moments, he heard the stranger coming out of the trees onto the smoother surface near the bank. He walked to the edge some ten feet to Victor's left and stood looking across the creek to the black wood beyond. Even in the darkness, here away from any light source but the thin moon, his eyes glowed dully.
Salsbury pressed himself flat against the cliff, hoped he looked like a rock. The killer began walking along the embankment, examining the far shore of the creek where several feet of mud would have left a trail of his escaping prey. He stopped a foot to the right of Salsbury's position, making it awkward for the man to reach up and grab his ankles. But he would move away, Salsbury realized, making contact even more difficult. Tensing, holding tightly to a branch with his left hand, Victor reached up quickly to grasp the killer's ankle.
For a moment, all seemed lost. His hand brushed the stranger's leg too lightly to gain a grip. The man jerked in reflex but moved closer instead of farther away. Salsbury grabbed again, yanked, felt the man's foot going out from under him. He risked a glance up, saw the killer flailing for balance. He pulled harder, almost lost his own hold, and sent the man crashing over the side into the water and rocks below.
Salsbury wasted no time in launching himself up, pulling over the cliff edge and kicking onto level land. He crawled back and looked into the creek. The killer was lying face down in the water, very still. Salsbury laughed; his throat was so dry that the laugh hurt, made] him cough. He sat up, watched the stranger for a few more moments, then started to get up with the idea of going down and examining him to see if he could learn anything. Then he saw the killer was starting to move
His face had been under the water long enough to ensure his death, but here he was kicking again. He rolled onto his back, his flat blue eyes staring up at Victor with malevolent intent.
Salsbury turned and ran back toward the house, his mind swelling like a balloon ready to burst. He wondered how long he could hold onto his sanity in this nightmarish scene where the pursuing monster could not be killed. His only chance now was the gun, still in his room, loaded.
The back door was locked. He screamed at it, rattled it, then knew that was no good.
He started around toward the front of the house, remembering that the intruder must have come out of the house that way to get in the car, then looked down toward the orchard.
The killer was coming.
Fast.
Salsbury had only seconds to spare.
The porch door was open, but the front door was locked.
He fancied he could hear the pounding feet of the killer closing on him.
Grabbing a patio chair, he smashed the window in the door, reached through, unlocked it, and went inside. He took the stairs two at a time, though his legs were ready to buck
le. He glanced down once, saw his pajama top was a bright red and punctured with fragments of the car window. He had a moment of dizziness, stopped to hold the railing and shake away the vertigo that sought to claim him.
Then he heard the killer's feet on the front porch.
As he went by the master bedroom, Intrepid began barking again. Salsbury called out a word of encouragement, went into the other room and picked the pistol and shells up from the nightstand. When he came out into the corridor again, the stranger had just reached the top of the stairs.
He raised the pistol and fired twice. The boom of each discharge slammed against the walls and echoed through the big house as if all the doors were being slammed simultaneously. Two holes appeared in the stranger's chest, and he fell sideways against the railing. His face was still passive, as if he were watching a boring motion picture or contemplating the lint in his navel.
Slowly, he raised his firing arm.
Salsbury emptied the other four slugs into him in quick succession. The impact knocked the stranger backwards. He rolled over and over to the bottom of the steps, six chunks of lead in him.
Salsbury went and looked down on him.
Slowly but surely, the killer started to get up.
Die, damn you! Salsbury shouted hysterically.
The pistol clicked several times before he realized there were no more bullets. By then, the killer was starting back up the steps; he aimed his brass finger at Salsbury. A golden thread of light smashed the railing, threw a cloud of wooden chips into the air.
Salsbury retreated through the corridor to a point where he could not be seen until the killer topped the stairs again. He went down on one knee, fumbled shells out of the box and loaded the pistol again. When his target lumbered off the last riser, he placed six more chunks of metal in his chest.
With the same result as before: nothing.
No blood.
Just little black tunnels in his flesh.
The killer was bringing up his vibrabeam.
Salsbury rolled sideways, clutching gun and ammunition, through the open door of his bedroom, up against the three trunks there. He could hear the killer coming down the hall, lurching somewhat but advancing nonetheless. Frantically, he loaded the pistol, closed the chamber just as the man stumbled into the doorway. There was nowhere to go now. If these six did not bring him down, Salsbury was dead.
The killer opened his mouth, said: Gnnhunhggggg.
He put three shots in the killer's face. For a moment, he thought he had won, for the man stopped, was perfectly still, eyes hardly blue at all, but more of a gray. Then, painfully, the arm with the brass vibrabeam tube rose toward Salsbury.
A premature blast erupted from the end, struck the computer trunk, glanced off without damage.
Gritting his teeth, every cell screaming to every other cell in his body, Salsbury put the last three bullets in the killer, all in his chest again. When that was done, he threw the gun at the man, watched it bounce off the impassive face.
Inexorably, the firing arm continued to raise.
He was going to die. As surely as he had killed Harold Jacobi. But this time, there was an assassin who did not bleed, who was not human. And what would the thing do with him when he was dead? Stuff him in some hole it would dig in the orchard? Let him rot out there to help grow the trees? He had a picture in his mind of this thing, full of eighteen.22 slugs, face half destroyed, chest almost one gaping hole, dragging Victor Salsbury to the orchard and putting him in a grave.
Screaming, mad now with terror, Salsbury leaped, crashed onto the killer, bore him backwards. The other man's skull struck the bedpost, opened in two before he went on to the floor. His head, laid open, was mostly hollow, except for several sets of wires and transisters. While Salsbury pressed him down, the last false life leaked out of the robot and it was still at last.
Robot. No blood. Wires in its face. Salsbury struggled off the inanimate form, his head pumping up and down on his neck like a wooden horse on a brass merry-go-round pole. Up. Down. Up-Down. Pretty music. Up. Down. A computer in a trunk. And he had a dead man's past. Up. Down. Up. Lizard-things lurked in the walls of his cellar. Up. Down. Down. Up. Sucker mouths. Down. Up. Now a robot with intent to kill. Up. Down. Round, round
He found the master bedroom, opened the door, welcomed Intrepid who bounded against him. His dislike for this room had faded now that he had become a victim too-or intended victim. It put him in sympathy with Jacobi. All he wanted was to sleep now. He was so tired. If he could only make his head stop going up and down. He clamped his hands on it and bit his tongue. Vaguely, he was aware that he could hurt himself biting on his tongue, that the next step was to swallow it. But his head did not go up and down any longer. Just down and down and down, down, down
CHAPTER 7
Once, he opened his eyes and saw a faint gray light seeping through the windows and across the floor, playing like soft fingers on his eyes. He thought about getting up, seriously thought about it. That seemed like the proper thing to do. He got his hands under himself and pushed, managed to raise his head a foot off the floor. Then the little strength he had left was gone, carried away by the fingers of gray light. His head fell and he cracked his chin on the floor. There was no more light at all.
He was in a beautifully furnished room of pleasant and airy proportions, waiting for something, though he could not remember what. He paced around, admiring the decorating job, wondering if the Fabulous Bureau had done it, just generally passing time. When he touched the top of a smooth and darkly finished writing desk, the thing opened like a mouth. There were little sharp-edged teeth made of pipe. It slammed shut, trying to chomp off his hand. He retreated from the desk and sat down in a comfortable black chair, sucking the ends of his fingers which the desk had barely nipped. Suddenly bars slid out of the chair arms across his lap, locking him in. Nothing, it seemed, was what it appeared to be. He screamed as the chair began to swallow him.
Someone told him to take it easy, that they were going to get help, get help very soon now He smiled- or at least he tried to smile-and told them that was all very nice and quite thoughtful of them but that the chair was swallowing him and could they please hurry. The black chair. The comfortable one. DO SOMETHING! Then the swirling face that he could not see clearly and the reassuring voice that accompanied it were gone. He was fading back into the room with the vicious chair and the cannibalistic desk.
He didn't want to be in this room. He looked for a way out, found a tall, white door set flush with the walls. As he walked toward it, the desk to his right began flapping its wooden mouth and growling angrily. The chair, taking up the chorus, began thumping around, rattling its sturdy wooden legs against the floor and slowly converging on him. The ends of the legs were carved like animal paws, and Salsbury was certain he saw the toes wriggle. He hurried to the white door, flung it open, and found there was no escape. The door was nothing more than another mouth. He had opened it and stepped slightly into it. Beyond was a pink, wet throat, the heavy nodes of the tonsils hanging like stalactites. The big, black teeth started coming down to cut him in half. Oddly enough, he noticed that their biting match would be perfect. Behind, the chair rattled closer, snarling thickly. He screamed again.
This time when he woke from the room of living furniture, there were two voices. He recognized one as the same that had gotten him to open his eyes earlier. It was soft, concerned, and sweet, the sort one hears in television commercials and over public address systems in some of the more pleasant airline terminals. The new voice was gruff, older, definitely male. It was closer to Salsbury, almost directly over him.
Then he saw the face that matched the second voice: heavy-jowled and wide-mouthed with a ski-slope nose, two velvety black eyes, a heavy, bushy mustache the same gun-metal gray as the thinning head of hair.
I think it's chiefly exhaustion, the man said.
Will he be all right then? the woman asked.
With some rest, yes
.
What about his his chest?
Nothing deep here. I don't see how the deuce he got that. Doesn't make sense.
You've seen the car?
Yes. That still answers nothing.
Will it hurt when you take the slivers out?
It won't hurt me a bit, the man said. When she slapped him playfully, he said, I've never seen you so solicitous of anyone. He chuckled deep in his throat. Especially a man.
You're an old goat, she said.
And you're a young lamb. About time you found yourself another pasture mate. One marriage doesn't mean a thing, dear. This one might not be anything like Henry.
You're insane! she said. Then she said, He isn't.
The man chuckled again. Well, it won't hurt him. I'll just give him a sedative first to make sure. A mild one. He won't feel a thing.
I don't want to have a sedative, Salsbury said, still dazed. His voice sounded as if he had the vocal chords of a frog.
What's that? the man asked.
The woman's face appeared, a truly lovely face that he had seen somewhere before Certainly he just could not remember where. He could not remember much of anything, in fact.
Vic, she said, reaching a hand to touch his face.
Shush, the gruff man said. He's delirious. You can wait to talk to him.
If you give me a sedative, Salsbury said, The door will swallow me up.
No it won't, the gruff one answered. I've muzzled the door.
The chair, then. The chair or the desk will eat me alive!
Not much chance, he said. I've given both of those devils a very strict warning.
Then there was a sudden sharpness in Salsbury's arm, a coolness, a moment of exhilaration, and darkness. It was a quiet, empty darkness this time, without any mystery room or cannibalistic furniture or other horrors. He settled into it, pulled a flap of blackness across him like a blanket, and stopped thinking.
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