"But Pseudo-Cerinthus, inspired by the Shekinah, wrote that, even if the law had been imperfect in the beginning, it was made perfect by the Jews. Their stubbornness in clinging to their law despite all persecutions and misfortunes and their survival despite everything that should have wiped them from the face of Earth proved that they were obeying the perfect law. After this passage, Pseudo-Cerinthus denounced Cerinthus as being in grave error and, indeed, not too bright. He mentions several letters he sent to Cerinthus explaining the error. These have not been found ..
The first rain fell, large but scattered drops. The wind tried to pry Caird's hat loose. Thunder stomped. Lightning raced toward them on many glowing legs.
"What you're saying," Caird said loudly so he could be heard, "is that you broke day just so you could obey the letter of the law?"
"The letter is the soul of the spirit!" Gril cried.
He paused, and he glared.
"Also, there was another reason. It was strong, though not strong enough to have made me a daybreaker if it had not been coupled with my desire to observe, even if only once, only once, the Shabbos as it should be observed.
"I am a human being. I am the son of a species that has always been one with the rhythm of Nature as decreed by God. Countless generations from the beginning of the species have enjoyed the slow unfolding of the seasons, a phenomenon that they took for granted though it was one of God's many gifts. But the New Era.., the New Era! ... they did away with the seasons, man! They've ruined them, shrunk them!
"Spring is an explosion of green, come and gone in a few days! Summer ... summer is a hot flash! Too many summers, I'll get only the searing days and none of the cool! Autumn doesn't slowly change into its beautiful colors! It doesn't slip into one color after the other like a woman trying out clothes! It's green one day and a burst of fully realized colors the next and then it's all dead, dead! And you may miss the snow, God's blanket, entirely!"
"That's true," Caird said. "On the other hand, the racing-by of the seasons can be exhilarating, and think how many more seasons you get to see than if you lived like our ancestors did. There's always something gained when you give up something and vice versa."
"No," Gril said, shaking his head violently, "I want it as God said it should be. I will not ..
Caird did not hear what else he said. He rose swiftly, staring past Gril's shoulder at the patrol car that had appeared from around the corner of the building on the street by the canal. It would be past the underground access tube at' the northwest corner of the park long before he could get to it. He was cut off.
Gril turned his head, looked once, and said, "Perhaps they are headed elsewhere." He sounded calm.
There was another access tube at the northeast corner of the park. He must not run now, though. Wait and see if the car went on.
It was going fast, its headlights spearing the dim light and bouncing off the raindrops. Several feet from the junction of Fifth Avenue and Washington Square North, however, it slowed and then it came to a stop.
Gril had quit talking for a moment. Now. seeing the car, he said, "Our destiny is here." He closed his eyes, and his lips moved.
"Yours, maybe. Not mine," Caird said.
Gril opened his eyes just as the car doors opened. The clouds also opened up, the rain coming down as if it were ambitious to become Niagara Falls. It bent the leaves above the two and dumped a cascade on them. They were soaked and chilled, though the rain was only partly responsible for the coldness.
Two men and a woman got out of the vehicle. The driver came around the front of the car, revealing the green-and-brown uniform in the headlights. His belt held a holster, from which stuck the butt of a gun.
The woman screamed something and ran toward Gril and Caird. The two organics shouted after her. Caird thought that he heard, "Stop!" Lightning struck immediately thereafter, seeming so close that Caird thought that a nearby tree must have been hit. The flash showed him Ruth Zog Dinsdale, his no ... Isharashvili's wife. Her face was distorted; her screeching cut through the rumble of thunder.
Her block building was across the canal almost directly opposite the Tao Towers. He had been reckless to walk so boldly down the street in front of the building. Since he knew that she might look out her window and see him, he should have gone to the back street. But the probability of her seeing him had been low, and he had not been himself. Zurvan had been in no shape to think of such details.
He turned and ran south. Flight toward the access tube he had planned to take was too dangerous. He could be intercepted too easily. There was another tube located at the corner of La Guardia Place and Washington Square South.
Gril called, "Good luck, man!" and said something in an unintelligible language. A Yiddish blessing?
"I need it!" Caird said, and he ran.
Chapter 31
He zigzagged, trying to keep trees between him and his pursuer. A glance behind during a lightning flash had shown his wife standing stilland one organic running after him. Gril was gone. He probably had just walked away. Another glance in the dimness told him that the driver had gone back to the car. Outlined against the streetlight, which had just 'come on, the car was moving eastward toward Washington Square East. Its driver was following organic procedures. While one man chased the fugitive, the other would drive the car to head the fugitive off.
Caird thought that he could get to the tube before the car did. He also had a good head start on the other organic. But he could not outrun the beam from a gun. By the time that he reached the tube, however, he had not been shot at. Or, if he had been, he was not aware of it.
The car was sixty feet away when Caird got to the tube. The man on foot was about a hundred feet back. Caird went around the tube to the side by the street, Washington Square South. The entrance was oblong; the interior, half-lit by the streetlights. He put his hand on a plaque on the back wall six inches above his head. This was a globe with superimposed letters, MSUTS (Manhattan State Underground Transporta tion System). He pressed the M and then the T The seemingly immovable plaque responded to his hand on its lower edge, swinging up to the left. He reached within the exposed recess and felt the two buttons there. Monday's code was left button, one short press, right button, one long press, one short press. He was fortunate that Isharashvili, as a Central Park ranger, knew the code and that enough of the ranger was still in him to remember that.
Having released the locking mechanism on the personhole cover, he bent down, lifted the handle inset in its middle, and pulled. The cover came up, but only because he was heavy enough to register as an adult on the security sensor plate around it.
Light had come on in the tube and from the hole as he had raised the lid. Below the hole was an irradiated plastic ladder inside a plastic framework. He let himself down, stopped, reached up, and pulled the cover down with the handle on its underside. It came down easily, restrained by a hydraulic mechanism from falling. Just before the lid closed, Caird saw the organic's feet. A hoarse voice said, "Stop in the name of the law!"
"Whose law?" Caird muttered.
His pursuers were organics, but they were also immers. There had not been time for them to go to a precinct station and withdraw charged-particle beam weapons. These two must have been in the neighborhood or close to it, and they must have been looking for him. They were lucky-unlucky for him-to be the nearest to Ruth Dinsdale when she had called in. They had brought out the illegal weapons, their own property, from a hidden place in the car, and they meant to use them.
Caird went down the ladder for thirty feet before stepping off onto the rubbery plastic walkway. It extended east and west as far as he could see, which was not more than a hundred feet either way. Whichever way he went, the lights would travel with him and darkness would follow and precede him.
The walkway was bounded on one side by a thick plastic wall and on the other by a guardrail. Beyond it were two goods transportation belts, each fifteen feet wide. At the moment, they were not moving. Beyon
d them, against the wall, were two huge pipes. One was a water main; the other was for sewage.
Because he was both an organic and an immer, Caird had studied the systems. Every three hundred feet the rock wall bore tunnel and belt identification signs and diagrams of the local system. By each was a communication strip. These could also be used to monitor the tunnel. If the men after him took time to call in to an immer at the monitor control center, they could check with the monitor through the tunnel strips. The monitor could tell them exactly where their quarry was.
He did not know if the immers had anybody at the control center. He could not take the chance they might not have one. He had to get to a place where there were no monitors. Though he knew of such a place and was running toward it, he would encounter dangers there of which his pursuers would be only one.
He ran, his feet slapping the walk and his breathing the only sounds. When he looked back, he saw another light following him. The two men were tiny figures inside a worm of light. They were about six hundred feet behind him, too far for effective range of their guns. He had to keep that distance. So far, they had not stopped to call in and they would have if they had someone at the monitor control center.
The tunnel sloped down so gradually that he would not have been aware of it if he had not studied the system. It would pass under the Kropotkin Canal, but, before it got there, he would come to two tunnels crossing this tunnel at right angles. He took the first one and ran north. The belt by the walkway was lower than the previous one and was carrying a few boxes of goods. The belt plates, two microns thick, were not joined but moved silently like a caravan of caterpillars, one behind the other. They slid on the lubricant provided by the continuous strip beneath them and were propelled by magnetic impulses.
Jogging, looking back often to make sure that his pursuers had not broken into a run, Caird kept on until he came to a three-level tunnel intersection. Just off the walkway was a large room cut out of the dirt, rocks, and cement blocks forming the first level under the streets of Manhattan. The room was walled, floored, and ceilinged with thick plastic. He went into it, the lights turning on as he entered. This was a tool and recreation room and toilet for the workers. After looking hurriedly around, he ran to a table and picked up a flashlight, two batteries, a hammer, and a screwdriver with a long thin shaft. He tested the flashlight and put the five artifacts in his shoulderbag. On the way out, he stopped to drink from a fountain.
Coming out of the room, he saw that the two had gained on him. One raised his weapon and fired. Caird ducked even though the movement was useless. The ray struck close to him but did not damage the wall. He jogged faster than before. The two were gaining on him at the rate of about ten feet every ten seconds. He increased his speed so that he could get to the previous six-hundred-foot distance from them.
Beginning to pant now, he ran toward his first goal, a yellow enclosure of uprights circled by two horizontal rails. He was running so fast that he had to stop himself by grabbing the top railing. He went around it and let himself swiftly down another plastic ladder. Just as his head disappeared into the hole, the light above him went out. An angry yell reached him before he was halfway down the ladder.
"You won't go so fast now, you bastards," he muttered. At the foot of the ladder, he groped in the bag and brought out the flashlight. Its ray, poking here and there, showed him what was left of the old transportation belts. This system had been aban doned seven hundred obyears ago when the second great earthquake had struck Manhattan. The plates were thick aluminum alloy, many of them torn off or buckled. The gaps exposed the rusty and dislodged rollers beneath. The system had been obsolete long before it, along with three-fourths of the buildings on the island, had been destroyed by the temblor.
That catastrophe had been terrible, though not as difficult to recover from as the even greater quake of N.E. 498. On this level, however, the quick-drying plastic sprayed thickly to enclose the tunnels had not been as twisted as that on the first level. It was bad enough. Here and there, the plastic had been bent out past its strength to withstand the shock. Dirt had spilled through the cracks, and seepage had brought more dirt through. The flashlight showed no complete blockage trapping him. Not in this area.
The light had come on above him. The two were getting closer. He hesitated. He could get away as fast as possible from here or he could wait and try to knock out or kill the first one to come down the ladder. To do that, he would have to retreat beyond the range of their flashlights while they played the beams from the entrance above. Then he must run in after the first man began the descent, and somehow ... No. If he threw the hammer, it might miss or only slightly hurt the immer. Both men would have their guns in their hands, and the one above would be directing his flashlight into the area below.
Just as he decided not to attack, the expected light beam came down through the entrance hole past the ladder. Caird turned and walked swiftly away, hoping that he was going in the right direction for him. There was enough light from the hole for him to see dimly for some distance ahead of him, though he had rough footing. The walkway was buckled and bent, and once he almost stepped into a gap.
Knowing that the man to first come down would stop on the ladder and explore the area with his light, Caird stepped up his pace. He did look back once. Seeing the beam dart around, he got down behind a pile of wet dirt that had fallen through a hole in the wall. He was just in time. The light played on the mound and then went away.
Caird's second goal, if he remembered correctly, was about four hundred feet away. He got up and stumbled on, feeling his way by the walkway railing, walking crouched over, afraid that he would fall. And then he did tumble, sprawling forward when he stepped onto a part of the walkway that was not there. He repressed a shout and shot his arms out and across to avoid injury if he struck something. He landed unhurt in a small hole. He did not get up at once because the beam shot above him. If he had been upright, he would have been caught in it.
The tunnel amplified sounds. He heard one of the men say, in a low tone, "Where'd he go so fast? We shouldn't split up!"
"You're talking too ... " the other man said. His voice died down so that Caird could hear only a muttering.
"Too loud," Caird finished for him. They would probably stay together and explore the areas in both directions for a hundred or so yards. Watching from the edge of the broken walkway, he saw them turn away from him. He breathed easier. He crawled back onto the runway and continued on hands and knees. When a beam flashed near him, he flattened out. They would be turning from time to time to try to catch him with the beam.
They also would be looking at the numerous piles of dirt. It would not take them long to know that he had not gone in the direction they had taken. Though he might jump over some of the dirt, he would eventually step in some. Blundering through the darkness, he could not avoid leaving prints.
Which meant that, when they came back this way, they would see his tracks.
As fast as he could crawl, he followed the walkway. He had estimated that he must be very close to his goal. A few more yards, and he would be there. He was near to the wall so that he would not miss it. Once he got down it, he could use his light. For a while, at least.
Groaning softly, he stopped crawling. Something had driven into his face just below the right cheekbone. It came loose when he jerked his head back, and his cheek burned. He put his hand to it and felt blood flowing. Cursing, though softly, he slipped off his shoulderbag, opened it, felt around, and came out with some tissue paper. After sticking it on the wound, he felt carefully around until he got hold of the thing that had gouged his face. It was the broken end of a pipe or a railing.
He put the shoulderbag back on and slid between the wall and the pipe. The walkway twisted so that he tended to slide into the wall. Wriggling, he got by the railing. He had to stand up then because he kept sliding back. His feet slipped out from under him, but his wildly flailing hand grabbed a railing.
He crouched
down at the peak of the bent walkway and slid down on his feet into the next upward slope. Just beyond it, he bumped his head against another railing. He cursed at the pain, then smiled. His hands told him that he had found his second goal.
It had been a protective enclosure around the entrance to the next level down. It was, however, squeezed in at the top. He had to take off the bag and drop it into the entrance hole before he could get his body into the narrow aperture. For a tense few seconds, it threatened to hold him.
Just as he scraped through, feeling that the skin on his ribs had come off, he was speared by light. The men shouted. He dropped and caught hold of the edge of the entrance. His feet groped for and found the ladder rungs. He scrambled down the ladder, which was twisted and at a slant. Halfway down, he had to let his feet dangle while he gripped the junction of the uprights and the rungs. He wished that he had taken the flashlight out of the bag so that he could see how far the end of the ladder was above the ground. Then his feet touched the earth, and he let loose. After groping around, he found the bag. The flashlight in his hand, he turned it on.
The place looked just as he remembered it. He had never been here, but, three Wednesdays ago, he had seen a strip show about it. This was Wednesday's allotted share of the early New Era archaeological dig. It was mostly the old sewage and water and power systems, not very interesting. He went forward on the dirt past bent and broken mains and pipes and snapped cables. The beam shone on the quick-drying plastic the archaeologists had sprayed to keep the walls and ceiling of dirt and debris from falling in. He walked fifty feet and found another safety enclosure around the entrance hole to the level below. This was new and had been put in by the archaeologists.
The old goods transportation and water-sewage level had been filled with dirt and cement and stone blocks and other debris after the second great earthquake. Because the ocean waters were rising as a result of the melting of polar ice, the authorities wanted the ground level to be higher. The present underground system had been built on top of the old one.
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