He stopped while the waiter put the water and food on the table.
“Anything else, citizens?”
“No, thank you,” Duncan said. When the waiter had left, Duncan leaned across the table and spoke softly. There was not much chance that they could be overheard in this babble of speech and laughter, but the two who had just sat down at the table by them might be carrying narrow channel audio-detectors. They looked harmless, and he thought he could spot organics by their expression, that ghost of power shining from their faces. He could be mistaken, though. Why take a chance?
“I didn’t know you had a lover.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call her a lover,” Cabtab said. “She’s attractive and very interested in my theory and practice of theologically covering all bets and touching all bases. But I really think what attracts her is my large apartment and extra credits, not to mention my near-Samsonian sexual prowess.”
“What’s happened to you?” Duncan said. “No offense, but I’d expected that your big ego would avoid such demeaning self-reproach or self-doubts.”
“I don’t have a big ego!” Cabtab said. “I’m just a realist; I see things as they are. But I’m human. I depend on my environment to keep me physically well. Physically well; mentally well, as the slogan goes. As long as I eat as much as I need, my soul flourishes. But when I’m forced by this picayunish pygmyish society to diet, to lose the sheathing and the armor as necessary to me as a shell to a crab, then I suffer. I also languish, dwindle, shrink. The body loses substance, and so does my soul. Food is my sun. Without a sun, how can I have shadow? The shadow is my soul, and…”
Cabtab had been talking too loudly despite Duncan’s warning gestures and expressions. The couple next to them were undoubtedly listening in. Though Cabtab was not saying anything subversive, he certainly was expressing some rather eccentric ideas. That was not against the law any more than expressing dissatisfaction with the government was illegal. But organics reported everything that might indicate a potential for eccentricity or a malcontent. Cabtab was not in a situation in which he could bear investigation. Nor, for that matter, was he, Duncan.
He gripped the giant’s wrist and said softly, “Eat. We may not have time enough.”
Cabtab shook his head, blinked, and said, “I must learn to be more humble. Perhaps then the Gods will be in a better mood to listen to me.”
Jesus! Duncan thought. In this age, a primitive polytheist!
Through a mouthful of cottage cheese, Cabtab said, “I would apologize if I really thought it was necessary. But I am, above and below all things, a preacher. I find it very hard, you have no idea how hard, to refrain from and pour concrete over my God-given natal desire to tell people the Truth and attempt to sway them toward it.”
“Time to go,” Duncan said. He had been switching his gaze from the adorable Panthea Snick—his chest ached when he looked at her—to Bolebroke and back again.
“She’s going into the P and S.”
Snick had been chattering away with her companions, but she had been keeping an eye on Bolebroke. She got up from her table at the same time that Duncan rose. They walked toward the restroom at a leisurely pace. Before they could reach the entrance, their quarry’s Titian-red hair, arranged in a Tower-of-Babylon coiffure, had vanished. Duncan went down the curving hallway into the big room. Two men were standing by the urinal; a quick look under the batwing doors of the stalls showed that only one had a pair of female legs in it. The doors that Bolebroke had entered were still swinging.
Duncan stood before the urinal and made some comments about the forthcoming election to distract the two men. Snick, not hesitating, withdrawing her sprayer can from her handbag, entered Bolebroke’s stall. If Bolebroke objected, Duncan did not hear her. The two men left, but a third came in. Duncan stood resolutely by the urinal, saying something about prostate trouble to the man. He had to have some excuse to linger there.
Snick did not take long. She stepped out of the stall about sixty seconds later. Duncan sealed up and followed her out.
“How’d it go?” he said.
“I sprayed her face just as she opened her mouth. She passed out immediately. I asked her about the codes, and she gave me the answers as if she was taking an exam.”
“You gave her a hypnotic suggestion to forget the whole incident?”
“Of course! She won’t remember it. She’ll think she fell asleep, if she notices the passage of time. I told her not to notice it.”
“It was just a rhetorical question,” Duncan said. “You don’t have to be so snappish.”
“I’m nervous. But I feel good, excited.”
“Sure. So do I.”
They stopped talking. Snick rejoined her companions. Duncan went to his table. Cabtab said, “It went well?”
“Like castor oil down a goose.”
They finished eating, went to the register, slipped their cards into the slot, and left. That evening, Duncan stopped off at the Snorter, slid onto a stool by Snick, and asked her for the codes she had gotten from Bolebroke. After a few minutes, pretending that he had failed in his hit on Snick, he left. He would have preferred to spend the evening with her and some time in bed before stoning time came. He could not because, other factors aside, he was not to appear to have more than a casual relationship to her.
At ten o’clock, shortly before closing time, he went into Izimoff’s store. The last customer was just leaving. Duncan strode to the counter and asked for the nonprescriptive drug Wild Dreams. When Izimoff, who was sweating even more than usual, handed the bottle to him, Duncan gave him the codes. They would, Duncan supposed, be recorded by some device that Izimoff was wearing as a decoration. Perhaps it was concealed in the Laughing Buddha dangling from a chain around his neck.
Izimoff looked surprised. “I was told you probably wouldn’t have the data until the end of the month, if then.”
“I work fast,” Duncan said.
“Yeah, I guess you do. Meet your supervisor at the Wetmore Gymnasium, that’s in the east block, at 7:00 P.M. tomorrow. The supervisor said I was to pass this on as soon as you gave me the data. The supervisor’s going to be surprised, though.”
“Tell him it went off without a hitch. There’s nothing to worry about. She—he’ll know who she is—isn’t even aware we got the data.”
“I wish I knew what was going on!” Izimoff said.
“So do I,” Duncan said. He picked up the bottle. “Be seeing you.”
“Oh, wait a minute,” Izimoff said. “You ever used those before?”
He pointed at the bottle.
“No.”
“Better read the warning on the label. Sometimes, rarely, but it does happen, you get nightmares instead of pleasant dreams. If that happens, don’t take any more, and be sure to notify me. I have to report such occurrences to the Drug Bureau. They need the data for their statistical summaries.”
“For God’s sake,” Duncan said, “I just bought it so I’d have an excuse to pass the data on. I don’t take nonmedical drugs.”
Izimoff wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “Sure. I’m just nervous.”
“It’s dangerous to be too nervous,” Duncan said. “I don’t mean that all the danger’s from the organics.”
He left while Izimoff stared wide-eyed at him. No doubt Duncan’s words had made him even more anxious. Duncan, however, was only trying to warn him, not to upset him. He felt sorry for Izimoff at the same time that he felt that Izimoff was a misfit.
On the way home, he jogged at a moderate pace, passing or being passed by others. The last buses were in the courseways to take people to their apartments so that they would have plenty of time to get ready for stoning. An organic patrol car, a small green three-wheeled electric vehicle with a topless frame, drove slowly by him. The man and woman in it gave him a quick look. Nothing in that; organics did that to everybody.
Just as he was nearing the door of his apartment and going by a brightly lit store, h
e heard a woman call out across the street.
“Caird! Jeff Caird!”
For two seconds, he failed to recognize the name. Then it drove through him like a car through a barricade. That was the name of one of his personae, the name of the basic person that he had been.
He ducked his head and strove not to break into a run. He stopped before the door and slipped the ID card into the slot.
“Caird!” the woman called out even more loudly.
Duncan turned. The woman was walking across the courseway now. She was in civilian clothes, but her bearing and expression told him that she was a gank. She was almost as tall as he, was slender, and had a long though rather pretty face. One hand was in the folds of her purplish silver-sequined robe.
“Caird!” she said again. “Don’t you remember me? Manhattan? Patroller-Corporal Hatshepsut Andrews Ruiz? Hattie?”
18
Her face rode by in his mind like a duck in a shooting gallery. It rose, flopped over, rose, flopped over. Flashes of her in various places appeared like a holograph beamed at random. Though he did not recall much about her, he remembered enough to know that she knew him well. What was she doing here? Visiting? Immigrated? It did not matter.
He forced a smile. “I’m sorry. You’re mistaken. I’m Andrew Vishnu Beewolf. Do I look like this… Caird?”
Ruiz was not so sure now. She stopped a few paces from him, squinted, and said, “A natural clone. I was shocked when I saw you. I thought for just a minute…you can’t be! Caird’s dead!”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
His heart was beating hard, and his body seemed to be about fifty pounds lighter. If this kept on, he would be floating off the sidewalk.
“You needn’t be. He was a traitor, a subversive. He—”
She stopped, probably because she was revealing more than she should.
She quit smiling and said, “ID, please.”
He looked up and down the courseway. No one else in sight.
“Sure.” Then, “Are you an organic?”
She nodded and reached with the other hand into an inside pocket. Duncan did not give her time to pull the card out. He slammed her on the point of her chin with his fist, lunged after her as she staggered back, and chopped the edge of his hand against the side of her neck. She fell heavily, her head striking the soft and springy courseway.
It took him three seconds to carry her limp body into his apartment. After removing her ID card and her proton-accelerator handgun, he went to his personal closet. He came back with the illegal can of truth mist and spurted a cloud on her face. That would guarantee that she would be unconscious for fifteen minutes. But he had little more than an hour to decide what to do with her.
“Could’ve bluffed it out,” he muttered. “Only she wouldn’t have been satisfied. She would’ve run my card against Caird’s file. And that would be all, brother. Damn it! Why’d I have to run into her?”
Actually, if the encounter had to happen, it was best that it take place as it had. If she had seen him anywhere else, he might not have been able to attack her without causing public attention.
He considered giving her a posthypnotic suggestion to forget the whole incident. But she would awake with a sore jaw and aching neck that would make her more than just suspicious. She would go to a psychicist who would run the passage of time just before, during, and immediately after the unexplained blankness. The psychicist would see to it that she recalled everything, including the tactile and audio data she recorded while knocked out and while under the mist. He could not take that chance. What was he to do with her?
If she disappeared, the organics would investigate. Undoubtedly, she had reported in every half hour, and HQ knew that she was last seen in this area. This area would swarm like a hive next Tuesday. Every citizen here would be questioned. If the organics suspected anybody because of “suspicious behavior,” they would subject that person to the mist. He could lie, but if they really dug into his ID, followed it back to birth—and the bastards sometimes did—they might find something smelly. And there could be only one conclusion to that even more deeper search they would conduct.
It was too late to try to get a message to his supervisor. Besides, he had gotten into this mess, and it was up to him to get out of it. First, find out where and when she had known him. Also, get out of her if she knew anything about him that he did not; that is, about his personae in Manhattan.
Ruiz, now lying on a sofa, her eyes closed, replied promptly to his questions. She had served under him when he had been Detective-Captain Jefferson Cervantes Caird. She did not know what underground organization he had belonged to, but she had been in on the manhunt before he had been exposed and imprisoned. She had also taken part in the hunt after he had escaped. She knew that his corpse had been found in New Jersey. That data had been transmitted to the Manhattan organics officials. She had learned that only because she had been Detective-Major Wallenquist’s lover for a while.
Wallenquist. A broad fat face floated before him. Wallenquist had also been his superior. But that was all that Duncan could remember about him.
What else had the major told her? After some very specific questions designed to get the information out step by step—a person under the mist answered with a minimum of data and had to be interrogated carefully—Duncan knew all that she knew. Unless he had failed to ask the proper questions. Wallenquist had once said something to her about Caird’s longevity. When Ruiz had asked him what he meant, the major had told her not to pursue the subject. Forget what he had said if she cared anything for both of them.
“Was Wallenquist frightened when he told you about Caird’s longevity?” Duncan said.
What in hell did his life span have to do with the organics?
“He was upset,” she replied tonelessly.
“How upset? Frightened? As if he had said something he should not have said?”
“Yes.”
“Wallenquist never referred to Caird’s longevity again?”
“Never.”
“What did you think of that comment and his reaction?”
“Not much. I did not know what he was talking about.”
“Did you ever hear anybody else say anything about it? Did anybody make a comment that reminded you of what Wallenquist said?”
“No.”
“Did you ever hear of, see, or read anything that suggested that Caird might not be dead?”
“No.”
That was that. Now, what to do with her?
It was fifteen minutes to midnight. The wall screens had been flickering bright orange and emitting a soft hooting. They were warning Tuesday that it was time to enter the cylinders. Some people would already have set the controls so that they would be stoned before the time limit. Thus, if he activated the power to his own cylinder, it would be indicated in a data bank. But that would not draw attention.
He could stone her, open a window, and drop her body out of it. At this late hour, probably nobody would notice it. She could lie under the mud under the waters around the tower for a long time. Maybe forever, though he doubted that. The bottom was periodically dredged. When? He would have to find out. The way his luck was going, it would be tomorrow.
When he had only five minutes to go, he decided that he would put off the problem until next week. He dragged Ruiz into the cylinder with him, bent her down at his feet, and waited for the power. After what seemed a long time, unconsciousness came. He had just closed his eyes, or so it seemed, when he opened them again. He looked through the cylinder window to make sure that no one else was in the room. Though there should not have been, he was always careful to make sure. Satisfied that things were as they should be, he pushed the door open. Stepping out over Ruiz, still asleep, he went to a wall screen. He spoke Snick’s number after telling the machine to blank out the video.
Snick, looking very sleepy, responded immediately.
“A.B.,” Duncan said. “You alone?”
“No, I’m
not,” she said. “But he’s in the bathroom. What’s up?”
For a few seconds, Duncan could not reply. Fury seized him and made him speechless. Then he envisioned a hand coated with ice gripping his brain and heart, and he literally cooled down.
“I need you at once,” he said. “Emergency. Can you get away without causing suspicion?”
The sleep had cleared off her face as if it were a film of water under intense heat. “Sorry, can’t,” she said.
“Then I’ll get… Never mind. See you later.”
He cut her off, and, breathing faster than he wanted to, called the padre. Cabtab bellowed, “Who the hell is this? Waking up a man from his vital sleep?”
Which meant that Cabtab had gone directly from the cylinder to his bed.
“Big E,” Duncan said. “Can you get over here at once?”
“Certainly, my man,” the padre said, his voice softer. “Can you tell me…?”
“I can’t,” Duncan said, and he cut off the screen. Ten minutes later, the padre, dripping wet and angry again, showed up.
“Damn automatic courseway sprayers,” he thundered. “Why don’t they clean the streets at midnight when nobody’s abroad instead of waiting until Tuesday has begun? There’s no escaping the sprayers; they shoot from the sides, the ceiling, and the floor!”
“The sanitary corps has to have some fun,” Duncan said. “OK, here’s the situation. I need your muscle, not your brains, to help me.”
He had already restoned Ruiz, hoping that the surge would not be noted at the city power records department. It would be recorded, of course, but it could be overlooked. Or, if seen, the observer might be too lazy or too busy to trace the location of the surge and send somebody to inquire about it. It was chancy, but there was nothing else Duncan could do.