When the two men had reached the ground, Caird turned and sped toward the next bank. He tried to run as softly as he could because the cavern amplified sounds. He did not turn his light on until he was beyond the paleness shed by the cage lights. He kept the flashlight at belly level and directed straight ahead. There were many blocks of earth and artifacts between him and his pursuers. These, he hoped, would prevent them from seeing his light. When the light struck an obstacle, he turned it off and detoured, letting his memory carry him past the blocks and objects for a few steps. After which he turned the light on.
Though he had rested a minute and had drunk from a fountain by the elevators, he was still tired. The air seemed to thicken. It was dead, rising from dead earth and dead things. It suggested slowness, sluggishness, and an eventual motionlessness. The half-mile to the bank seemed to stretch to a mile and a half. Just as he arrived, panting and sweating heavily, he was surrounded by light.
He groaned. The immers had found the switch to turn on all the illumination in the cavern.
Had they seen him?
That was answered quickly. Here they came running, their guns in their hands. They were so far away that they looked small, but they would become large sooner than he wanted.
He jabbed the OVERRIDE, the number-one cage, and the DOWN and the LL buttons. He had been wrong in trying to fool them. He should have taken the elevator at the first bank. He would gain nothing by attempting to beat them to the next bank, another half-mile away. He would have to wait until the cage here got to the bottom. But would they be here before then? Or, if he did get into the cage and its door shut before they got to it, could they stop his cage?
They could. Not only could the cage be stopped at any level but a control also permitted it to be halted halfway between levels. Which, of course, it would be. They would trap him and then leisurely take him.
He could run and try to hide. That would only put off the end.
Though the immers were getting closer, they were slowing down. Their faces were agonized with the strain of pushing their dead legs and heaving lungs to the limit of speed. Within a minute or so, though, they would be shooting at him at the same time as they ran.
The elevator doors opened.
Caird jumped into the cage, turned, and punched the UP button and then the button for the third level, the next one above. He might get to it before the immers realized that they could stop him. Trying for any floor above that was suicidal. Trying for the next level might be suicidal, too.
The doors were closing when a ray struck the edge of one. The metal hissed and pooled, but the door closed, and the cage moved up.
Four seconds later, the cage stopped. The doors began sliding back. He grabbed their edges and pushed. He fell out through the narrow opening. The doors opened all the way and then slid back shut. Total darkness closed in on him. Somewhere on this level was a panel with a button to turn on all the lights in this area. He had been lucky that the immers had not found it when he was escaping from them. He did not have time to look for one now. Using the flashlight to light the floor before him, he ran.
They would expect him to take the next bank of elevators. But which bank? The one to the east or the one to the west? And which level would he go to?
If he had breath to spare, he would have laughed. One would have to go back to the first bank and the other would have to run on to the eastern bank. Both would then go to the top level, the transportation system tunnel just below the street. From the cages there, they would head toward each other, expecting, hoping, anyway, to catch him between them.
But what if one of them took the elevator in the middle? He could go to the same level as Caird, and he could see Caird’s flashlight. He would go after him while his quarry was running again as fast as he could to beat the other immer striving for the western bank. Then they would know that Caird was heading for the ladder down which he had come.
He stopped, breathing hard, his heart thudding. Some of his tiredness was lost in a surge of delight. His flashlight had shone on another ladder.
He went up that and had no trouble with a bent enclosure. He was in the tunnel of the old transportation system. He walked as swiftly as he could, too fatigued to run anymore, until he came to the first ladder down which he had sunk into the buried and ancient darkness. At the top of the ladder, he raised his head until his eyes were just above the edge of the hole. The light would not come until he had emerged to his waist.
As far as he could see, there was darkness.
When he climbed out, light blooming around him, he found that the belts, which had been inactive, were now moving. A large green plastic box moved swiftly from the blackness, through the light he had caused, and into the blackness. Before he had turned to walk westward, another box was squeezed out by the artificial night. And two more, going eastward, were carried to their destination.
He walked until another westering box approached. He climbed over the railing and jumped onto the belt. The light filled the belt area for a hundred feet in each direction. There was nothing he could do about that, but he could rest. At the same time, he would be going faster than if he walked. He sat down on the cool plate, his back against the box, and watched the east for a sudden glow in the night. It might be caused by workers, but the probability was that it would announce the two killers.
Three minutes later, his box was snatched from him. Aware that it would be, he had risen and leaped to the railing. Here was an intersection where the belt passed beneath a northward belt. The sensors of the pair of mechanical arms stationed here had read the coded plaque on the box, had determined that its route should be changed, and had lifted it and deposited it on a belt in a recess. Caird climbed up a short ladder and got onto the north-going belt. For a moment, he thought about switching to the south-going belt. In a little more than a quarter-mile, he could get onto an east-going belt. The immers would not know where he was because they could not see his light. However, that would be the longer route to his destination. He could take the chance that the immers would not catch up. How would they know when they got to the intersection—if they got to it—that he had taken this belt? They would not know unless they arrived quickly enough to see the light wrapping him like a photonic shroud. He was gambling that he could switch to an east-going belt before then.
His back against another box, he passed quietly under the Kropotkin Canal. Above him was rock, metal, water, fish, and the storm. He was, at the moment, both subterranean and subaqueous. And he was passing from darkness into darkness, his presence birthing new light. In the darkness behind were known terrors. Who knew what unknowns faced him?
(“Corny,” Repp said.)
(“It’s life,” Dunski said.)
(“Clinched, cloistered, and cloyed by clichés,” Tingle said.)
The next voice startled Caird. He had thought that it was gone forever.
(“I was wrong,” Will Isharashvili said. “I’ve wrestled with the ethics of the situation, and I’ve decided that I shouldn’t just give up to avoid violence. What I think—”)
(“My God! Isharashvili rides again!” Repp said.)
(“You can’t keep a good man down,” Dunski said. “And Will is good!”)
(“What I think,” Isharashvili said gently, “is that—”)
“Quiet!” Caird said more loudly than he intended. “Shut up, you fools! They’ve found me! I can’t think with you chattering away at me!”
Far down the tunnel, the darkness had opened like a fist to let light out. Two Lilliputian figures were climbing over a box. He watched as they got down from the box and started trotting.
He was tired and desperate, but so were they. He climbed over the box, got down on the other side, and trotted. Sooner or later, he would pass SCC workers. If he had been alone, he would, probably, be reported. The workers would assume, however, that the two organics had reported to HQ that they were chasing the criminal. Those who asked the two officers if they wanted help would be to
ld that none was needed. The immers did not want other organics involved.
When he saw an envelope of light in the darkness ahead, he forced himself to run faster, and to climb over the boxes more vigorously. Fortunately, there were only three td get over before he got to the light. This came from an office in a recess at the intersection of north-south and east-west belts.
He leaped out when he approached the steps and grabbed the railing. His chest heaving, breath sawing, he ran up the steps. The light accompanying him would merge with the light from the office windows. But that would not keep the pursuers from seeing him leave the belt.
He went past the windows. A man was sitting at a desk and watching a strip show while he drank from an unlabeled bottle.
If there was another worker around, he or she could be in the toilet or sleeping in the back room. Caird did not hesitate to take his chances. He ran around the corner, through the door, and at the man behind the desk. The man had just put the bottle down when Caird charged in, and he did not see Caird until he was almost on him. The man rose from the chair, saying, “What the…?” Caird grabbed the bottle by the neck and brought it down on the man’s forehead. He just wanted to stun him, not severely injure or kill him. The man fell backward over the chair and sprawled out, his eyes closed and his mouth hanging open. Whiskey fumes rose from it.
Caird glanced at the half-closed door to the back room. A woman’s head and the cot on which she lay were visible. Her mouth was open, and she was snoring as heavily as the unconscious man. He assumed that she had also been drinking the bootleg whiskey.
The man on the floor groaned, and his eyelids fluttered. Caird groaned, too, though not for the same reason. He had to make sure that the man was unconscious for at least five minutes.
Gritting his teeth, disliking what he had to do, Caird lifted the man, propped him against the desk, and hit him on the jaw with the bottle. The man fell over on his side.
33.
Caird dragged the body by the feet through the doorway. Forty feet eastward was one of the huge mechanical arms that removed boxes from one belt to another. He dropped the man’s legs and switched the controls on the panel at its base to MANUAL. He slipped his hand into a metal-mesh glove and moved it as he wished the arm and its “fingers” to move.
The man, his waist gripped by the “fingers,” his body arched, head and arms and legs dangling, was placed in front of a box on the east-going belt.
Caird brought the arm back to the upright position—it would not do for the immers to notice it sticking out over the belts—and he ran back to the office. By then, his heavy breathing had become light. He went back into the office and got behind the door of the back room. The woman was still snoring. Caird pushed the door so that it was an inch open, and he turned the back room light off. He put his shoulderbag on the floor and took out the screwdriver and hammer.
A few seconds later, he heard the rasping breathing of the two men. Through the opening, he saw one enter the office, gun in hand, stop and look around. The other walked past the windows and out of sight. The first man waited until his partner came back.
“He’s on the east belt,” the second man said. “I saw his light.”
“Where in hell’re the workers?” the man who had entered first said. His thick eyebrows made his face even tougher-looking.
The second man had a very short and upturned nose. He looked like a picture of the ancient extinct bulldog. Pointing at the open whiskey bottle which Caird had put back on the desk, he said, “They’re probably passed out in the back room.”
“I’d sure like to turn those slobs in!” Eyebrows said.
Bulldog walked to the fountain and drank deeply. Still gasping, he straightened up. “Drink up. We can’t just stand here while he’s riding away from us. He can see there’s no light following him. He’ll be resting.”
Eyebrows drank deeply, too. When he had his fill, he wiped the sweat from his eyes with his arm and said, “You think we should call in for help?”
“I sure wish we could,” Bulldog said. “But it’s too risky. We got to get that son of a bitch soon.”
“What happens if we don’t?”
Bulldog looked disgustedly at Eyebrows. “You know what’ll happen.”
“If I could just get in range!”
“You won’t standing here. Come on.”
As soon as they left, Caird went to the fountain, which he had been too pressed to use before then. He drank more sparingly than the immers, though he wanted more. Before going out of the door, he got down on his knees and stuck his head out just far enough to see his pursuers. Who were now the pursued. They were not trotting, just walking fast. They assumed that, since they could not see Caird, he was hidden behind a box. Undoubtedly, they were hoping that he was so exhausted that he would rest long enough for them to catch up with him.
He had to take the chance that they might look back. He rose and ran from the door, the screwdriver and the handle of the hammer in his belt. He went up the steps to the walkway over the east-west belts, climbed over the railing, and dropped onto a box. He got down quickly from it and crouched between two boxes. Now, if they looked back, they would think that his light was theirs unless they noticed that their light was much longer than it should be. He prayed that they would not.
When he stuck his head up over the edge of the box, he saw them climbing over a box. He waited until they had gotten off it and then went over his box. He ran while they walked. He overtook them when they were going over another box. His hammer and screwdriver were in his hands when he slid off the edge of the box.
Just as he came up behind the man in the rear, Eyebrows, the man started to turn his head to look behind him. Caird brought the hammer down on the side of his head harder than he had intended. He dropped the hammer and the screwdriver, not caring how much noise he made now. Bulldog, on getting ready to slide off the box, had turned his head when he heard the thud of the hammer. Caird caught Eyebrows’ body with one hand. With the other, he snatched Eyebrows’ weapon from his holster.
“Hold it!” Caird said, and he let Eyebrows fall. The gun was set for full power. Bulldog knew that.
“I don’t want to kill you,” Caird said, “though I should. You were going to kill me.”
(“Take them out, anyway,” Repp said. “They’re vermin, and a dead enemy is one less enemy.”)
(“Don’t!” Isharashvili cried.)
“Your left hand up in the air. High. OK. Now, slowly, very slowly, ease the gun out with the right hand. Drop it on the box by you. Turn your head away; don’t look at me. Hold it until I tell you different.”
Bulldog’s neck quivered, but he looked straight ahead. After a slight hesitation, he took the butt of the weapon by two fingers and placed it on the box by him. His right hand joined the left one above his head.
“Now slide off the box and walk about twenty feet away. Keep your hands high. Don’t turn around. I know how to use this. I’m a crack shot.”
Bulldog obeyed. Caird got swiftly onto the box and stuck the gun into his shoulderbag. He got down off the box, walked to Bulldog, reversed the weapon, and struck the man hard on the crown of his head. Bulldog crumpled.
(“Don’t!” Isharashvili cried again.)
“Go back where you came from,” Caird muttered. He removed the ID disc-star from Bulldog’s neck and put it in his shoulderbag. He might be able to use it, though he doubted it. He rolled the body onto the west-going belt and climbed back over the box. After putting Eyebrows’ ID in the bag, Caird rolled the body onto the west-going belt. Since there might be a use for the hammer and screwdriver, he placed them in the bag. It was bulging and was very heavy, but he did not plan to carry it for some time. He stood watching the light and the two unconscious men in it for a minute. Then he lay down. He did not think he had closed his eyes, but a man shouting at him woke him up.
The man’s eyes were level with the belt. Caird shouted, “Surprise inspection! You should be glad I found you awa
ke!”
Caird sat up and grinned at him until the man turned and walked into the office. Caird did not have time to worry about what the worker meant to do. He had to change belts soon. If he kept going much longer, he would be under the East River and on his way to Brooklyn.
By the time that he had gotten to his goal, he had switched belts nine times. A few times, he had been forced to travel for a while in the opposite direction. He had stolen a worker’s lunch. He had gotten off four times to drink from a fountain and had twice had to go down an access ladder to the lower level. He had washed off the tissue from his cheek wound and the dirt from his face and hands.
When he got out of an elevator in an access tube, he was tired. The events of today and the six days before, the tension, the uncertainty, the battles, the running, and the warring voices within him had punished him. He had been stretched to his outer limits on a rack and squeezed to his inner limits in a compacter.
Nevertheless, when he stepped out into Central Park near the Alice in Wonderland statue, he at once felt stronger and more hopeful. Alice, after falling down a hole, had survived her many perils. He hoped that there was no mirror he had to pass through in his future.
He planned to hole up somewhere in the park over night. As a ranger, that is, drawing on Isharashvili’s memory, he knew several good hiding places. Tomorrow, he would try for the wilds of New Jersey. The great forest that covered most of the state’s eastern part sheltered some outlaws. They might accept him. If he was rejected, he would starve. He knew nothing of noncity survival. Even if he was taken in, he would live hunted and harried.
At least, he would be living. Someday, he might get back into a city and there insert a new ID into the data bank. That idea, at the moment, tasted like he imagined cockroach droppings would taste.