Gauntlet Run: Birth of a Superhero

  “How'd you know it was me?” Henty was sure the Fist had been in darkness all the time.

  “The only person not hunting the Runner must be the Runner. Us Italians just about invented logic.”

  “Hm,” said Henty, not wishing to contradict a benefactor.

  “As you go out on the street, the Watcheye on the right hand corner is broken.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Many people see hope for all of us in what you’re doing.”

  “I’m— uh— flattered.”

  “But you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”

  “Right. I’m only doing it for Petey.”

  “There was a party of cops that ran off with the rest of the crowd after you. They never lock their cars. They’re parked all over the no-parking zone round the front. Good luck.”

  Henty flicked her fingers at the broken Watcheye as she passed it. The no parking-zone held five cars, each with a uniform cap lying ostentatiously underneath the back window. Henty found the keys in the first one she tried but the tank was empty. The second one had the keys and a full tank. Henty drove off with a wave to the waiter, now standing in the front door of his restaurant. He made a sliding and then a turning movement with his hand. Henty took that as meaning she should take the first right, which proved correct. Without passing any traffic lights, she soon came to a sign for Interstate 80; that was of course no guarantee that the Watcheyes at random street corners without traffic control lights didn’t observe and broadcast her passing but she wasn’t too worried about that. She no longer feared the crowds as much as the organized and professional bounty hunters.

  Back on the highway and heading west, her stomach filled with good steak and strawberries and cream and even a glass of wine, Henty burst out in song. She didn’t notice the flames that lit the night sky behind her as the good citizens of Cheyenne expressed their frustration at her escape.

  CHAPTER 50

  By the time Henty phoned The Caring Society to send an ambulance for the man from the Chaser, he was already in hospital, the very place he didn’t want to be. He had finally recovered enough strength to rise and start after Henty. He had paid the farmer’s widow over the odds for a ramshackle truck but she, feeling he had cheated her, had not told him Henty was on the back of a Coke truck.

  So, thinking he'd never find her on the highway with the obsolete truck, he turned back towards the town of North Platte. It was only half the distance to Cheyenne and, if he was quick about finding a new chopper and pilot, he could find Henty before she got too far into Wyoming. Or so he thought. But he was stopped for a vehicle emissions test, the old truck failed the test and then, despite his protestations that he was a vice-president of the Chaser Organ Bank on urgent Caring Society Business, they grabbed him and gave him to the local hospital because he was in such an obviously bad way.

  The hospital enmeshed him in their procedures and wouldn’t let him go until some senior official was roused to make him sign forms absolving them of all responsibility. By then it was midnight and the airport was closed and, when he finally tracked down the chopper operator at home, the man said, “Yeah. I heard about you. You keep losing choppers'n'pilots about the rate of one each per day.” And promptly shut the door in his face.

  The banker knocked up the manager of the local affiliate of the Chaser. He showed him his credentials.

  “Never had the honor of meeting a vice-president before,” the man said cautiously.

  “Yes, yes! I need transport. You got a chopper?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Yes or no!”

  “This isn’t New York, you know. We have a Zuffhausen Flyer converted to a hearse to get us to accidents fast before the competition and the freelance organ chasers.”

  “I’ll take that. Where is it?”

  “Well, look here—”

  “No, you look! Hold me up, and I’ll fire you on the spot.”

  “Okay, okay! You don’t look too good, you know. Do you want me to drive for you?”

  They were at the low slung sports car turned into a morgue­motor. “No.” The banker opened the door and groaned as he folded himself in. He started and gunned the engine. The local manager shouted at him but he pressed the button and wound the window up. He spurted gravel as he took off in a hurry.

  Behind him, the manager said to himself, “Well, I told him those tires are badly worn.” Then he crossed himself.

  The young banker kept his foot in the corner. He was doing three times the speed limit. Every once in a while a siren would start up, then the highway patrol would see it was the Chaser’s car and the siren would wind down. Sometimes they would query him on the radio about the accident and he would lie to them. “Young girl dying in her bed. I want to get there before the relatives sell the body to the jekyll'n'hydes.”

  Out here the speed limit was still an antediluvian 55 milesperhour, so every hour he was on the road, he gained two hours on that damn woman Runner who was ruining his reputation and his career. He hunched forward over the wheel as if willing the Zuffhausen Flyer to go faster still...

  CHAPTER 51

  Henty had set the cruise control to 55 milesperhour. She didn’t want anybody to stop her for any reason whatsoever.

  She was fighting to stay awake. It was boring driving across Wyoming in the middle of the night, requiring a minimum of skill and attention except for crossing the mountains and, on modern roads those weren’t a big deal either. She played the radio very loudly and every fifteen minutes cut in on the police band but there was no excitement out here, only some chat about reinforcements being sent to Cheyenne where the populace was destroying their city to winkle out the Runner. She met a lot of fire engines heading towards Cheyenne.

  If the Watcheyes in the sparse and sparsely populated towns she passed through saw and recorded her passing, nobody was manning the monitors and in the morning, when they played the tapes back, she'd be long gone and the trail would be cold. By now only morons wouldn’t know she was heading across America arrow straight on Interstate 80.

  “Is it time to leave Interstate 80?” Henty asked herself aloud, punching up the route finder.

  A single glance told her the only alternative was US-50 onto which she could turn once past Salt Lake City — but that rejoined Interstate 80 on the far side of Nevada. Henty doubtfully traced some other possible routes with her finger. They were all huge detours. She came back to US-50: it wasn’t too much of a detour and she could bypass Salt Lake City whereas on I/S-80 it was impossible to give Salt Lake City a miss. Having made up her mind, Henty relaxed.

  CHAPTER 52

  The President, trying to appear at once homely and industrious, conducted many of his working meetings at breakfast. As a result, he often ate three breakfasts with different groups of people (which made it no hardship to give up lunch and expect everyone else to work through the lunch break as well). This was the first, early, breakfast. The party around the table consisted of the President, his Chief of Staff — who most thought of as the real government, the Secretary for The Caring Society, the Director of the FBI, and a four-star Air Force general who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The President spoke around a mouthful of waffle and syrup.

  “This woman Runner is running away with the imagination of the nation.”

  There were appreciative chuckles: they thought the President was making small talk and pretty good small talk — for him. The President’s axe-man, whose name was Vaughn, said, “That’s the purpose of this meeting, gentleman. The President is of the opinion—”

  The chuckles stopped dead: schoolchildren caught giggling.

  “That to let her succeed would undermine respect for authority in the nation,” the President said on cue. “Let’s hear first from those who don’t agree with me.”

  The Director of the FBI said, “You’re right, Mr President. To let her reach the Mint would undermine the moral fiber of the nation.”

  “I agree,” said the Cha
irman of the Joint Chiefs. “It would be like rewarding her for wrongdoing, right?”

  “What about you, Alfie?” the President asked around another mouthful of food. The Secretary for The Caring Society was a plump, balding little man; he looked like a prime candidate for henpecking and it was typical of the man that, after attaining high office, he was still called by the diminutive of his name.

  He swallowed hurriedly and nearly choked on the unchewed food. “I dunno, Mr President. Isn’t the idea that the Runner crosses the country under the opprobrium of the nation? Isn’t the idea that, if he survives the punishment the solid citizens meet out to him, he is redeemed by reaching the Mint and receiving a new financial start and a full and unqualified Presidential Pardon?”

  “Huh?” said the Air Force General.

  “You don’t believe that guff, do you?” the Director of the FBI wanted to know incredulously.

  “Hold on,” Vaughn interrupted before they shut Alfie up permanently. “Are you making a case we should let her reach the Mint?”

  “Take your time, Alfie, if you want to think on it,” the President said kindly.

  But Alfie, who had hadn’t reached the top through indolence, had done his homework and knew his answer. “Mr President, our researches tell us the people believe the Gauntlet Run is fixed, either by the Government or, more likely, the Syndicate.”

  “Never mind ‘believe’, the people know the Syndicate nobbles the Runners when it suits the odds,” the Director of the FBI said scornfully. “I don’t need research to tell me what I can hear in any bar.”

  “So,” Alfie said doggedly, “it is our opinion that we should allow just one Runner to reach the Mint.”

  “This one?” Vaughn asked. He too was incredulous.

  In the face of so much hostility, Alfie hesitated.

  “Speak up, man,” the President said impatiently. He had two more breakfasts scheduled.

  “No, not this one,” Alfie said. “One, she’s the first woman Runner. Two, she’s not a regular criminal. And three—”

  “And three, she’s got too much of a following already from people who sympathize with her boy’s illness,” Vaughn ended for him. “So what do you suggest?”

  “Nothing,” Alfie said in what was for him quite a decisive voice. “She won’t make it and we don’t want to get caught interfering. That would just create a martyr and more trouble in the inner cities.”

  Vaughn flipped the cover off a chart on an easel beside his chair. “She’s almost through Wyoming now.” He ran his finger along a red streak across the map.

  “Maybe, instead of zapping her, we should recruit her,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said. “How many get that far?”

  “Not quite one in forty,” Alfie said immediately. “But she hasn’t one chance in a million of getting to the Mint.”

  “And on Monday morning your statisticians were claiming she'd never make it to Chicago,” the Director of FBI said chillingly.

  “You lost your bet, did you?” The President was himself a betting man. He waited for the Director to nod, and then nodded his own head in sympathy. “I don’t care overly much for statisticians myself. Okay. The only point that remains to be decided is who’ll take that woman out and when.”

  CHAPTER 53

  Jimmy Twoshoes was fetched to a meeting with the Chairman of the Commission in the middle of the night like a disobedient pup. The Boss of all the Bosses was an insomniac, a dark, craggy man of about seventy. He was the only man Jimmy Twoshoes still feared. He kissed his Don’s hand, then backed away, with his head still down, to a distance that wouldn’t make the bodyguards in the corners of the room nervous. There was no other chair in the room beside the one the old man sat on but Jimmy Twoshoes didn’t expect to be offered a seat.

  “James,” the Don said just before the silence drove Jimmy Twoshoes from the room screaming his fear. “You have risen far and fast in our organization.”

  “It has been an honor and an education to serve under you, Don Guilio.”

  “You learned well. Now, in the matter of this woman Runner—”

  Jimmy Twoshoes sighed and the sweat started flowing but in relief this time. The Don wasn’t reading his obituary. It was just the Dan’s usual dance of intimidation before coming to the real business for which he summoned Jimmy to audience; it was none the less frightening for being expected. “Taking the son from The Caring Society was rash.”

  He was expected to reply. “We didn’t kidnap him, my Don, he was given to us by The Caring Society with all the paperwork properly filled in.”

  “How can such a thing be?” The Don was shocked.

  “When the care of The Caring Society is exhausted, relatives often pay for patients to be taken care of privately.”

  “And for this we pay taxes,” the old man said bitterly, “What about the surgeon?”

  “Him we had to take,” Jimmy Twoshoes admitted. “But will make a fuss about him.” He risked a joke. “His mother’s not the Runner.”

  Don Guilio seemed not to have noticed the joke. “The actuaries tell me you say this woman will come to her inevitable end in sight of the Mint in San Francisco. How can such a thing be? None of these criminals have ever made it as far as San Francisco.”

  “Because we have not allowed them,” Jimmy Twoshoes said respectfully. That the Don of all people seemed to believe the myth that the Syndicate just let the Runner run and took their losses with their profits, now that was one for the book, though he would of course never be able to tell anyone else. Not if he wanted to live.

  “We are not the only hunters in the field,” the Don said swiftly.

  Jimmy Twoshoes nodded, “That’s why I took her son, to give her motivation. She is also very good, a natural survivor. She looks like a birdbrain but she has the country-smarts.” He realized he was rattling on out of fear and stopped.

  “The actuaries don’t like it,” the Don said when he was certain the other man had stopped talking; it was his policy to let every man talk himself into a cement overcoat: sooner or later they all did just that, to his enormous gratification.

  Jimmy Twoshoes knew that already: they had told him several times and at length but he had shut them up with a look because these “civvy” employees of the Syndicate were afraid of the “line executives” like him. They must have pretty good reasons if their dissatisfaction reached the Don. Suddenly he was sweating so profusely, he had to mop his face with his handkerchief, even knowing that it was a sign of weakness to the old man and the four bodyguards.

  He took his time putting the handkerchief away, then said carefully: “What is it you would like me to do, my Don?”

  “Do?” Don Guilio spread his hands. “No, I don’t want you to do anything. I’m merely an old man trying to keep peace in my family.”

  “So far this Runner has been our most profitable operation ever,” Jimmy Twoshoes said. “This week alone we have taken as much in bets as in all of last year.”

  “The actuaries do not contest that. Jimmy. They give you full credit for that.”

  A cold shiver ran down Jimmy Twoshoes’ back. This was terrible! All this extravagant praise was a sure sign the actuaries were out to get him.

  “But,” continued Don Guilio, “They think that by letting her get so close to the Mint, you are risking all of that and more.”

  “How?” Jimmy Twoshoes asked shortly, then moderated his tone to add, “That’s what they couldn’t make clear to me.”

  “If she makes it to the Mint, we will have to pay odds of millions to one. It will wipe out all the profit we made this week and more besides.” When it came to money, Don Guilio was no innocent and now it showed. “That is how.”

  Jimmy Twoshoes shook his head. “I wish they would stick to their trade and leave me to mine,” he said. “How can I fail to zap one lone woman who’s got to come to a certain place and with whom I already have an arrangement?”

  “You guarantee she will not get into the Mint?”

/>   “I guarantee it,” Jimmy Twoshoes said hotly. Goddamn pen pushers!

  “Don’t be a hothead, Jimmy. We lose nothing if she doesn’t make it across the Golden Gate Bridge and we lose everything if she gets to the Mint.”

  But Jimmy Twoshoes could no longer back out: if he gave in now, his respect would be gone and without that he was already as good as dead. He shook his head.

  Don Guilio seemed to consider issuing a direct order. He considered for a long time but, in the end, merely whispered, “With your life, you guarantee it?”

  “I guarantee it,” Jimmy Twoshoes whispered fiercely.

  CHAPTER 54

  A religion which thinks primarily about the bigger and better future — as do all the political religions from Communism and Nazism up to the at present harmless, because unorganized and powerless forms of Utopianism and Humanism — runs the risk of becoming ruthless, of liquidating people it happens to find inconvenient now for the sake of the people who are going, hypothetically, to be so much better and happier and more intelligent in the year 2000. — Aldous Huxley

  Henty was jubilant. She just had to pass Evanston, in the bottommost southwestern corner of Wyoming, and cross the border into Utah and she would have passed through Wyoming without any trouble at all. Then there was just Utah, Nevada, a bare, almost empty States, and the width of northern California between her and the Mint in San Francisco.

  “Can’t understand why more people don’t try it,” she sang to the tune of the instrumental number playing on the radio.

  Dawn broke. It would be a fine, clear and hot day, the kind of weather she was used to back home.

  “Gee, what was that?” Henty wanted to know but had no answer because the Zuffhausen Flyer was gone too quickly to make out any details. But she was sure she had never seen a car like that before. (She was right — it was the only Zuffhausen Flyer converted into a morguemobile anywhere in the world.)

  In the Flyer, the banker held the mike to his mouth. “So, after the Watcheye spotted her coming through Rawlins, what then?” He was speaking to the main Caring Society computer bank in Washington.