"Ready to go?" he said.
"A while yet," Hal answered.
For a moment he played with the idea of trying to break through the shell of enmity in which the other had encased himself. Then he put the thought aside. The driver was too tense to be reached at this moment. The concern here was not with how much he might fear and dislike Hal but with whether, as not infrequently happened with local volunteers, his nerve might snap with the waiting, causing him to drive off and leave the raiding party stranded. It was to guard against this that Falt had sent Hal back here. The less said between the two of them right now, the better.
They sat, and the minutes crawled by. The driver shifted position from time to time, sighed, rubbed his nose, looked out of the window then back at the instrument panel, and made a dozen other small movements and sounds. Hal sat still and silent, as he had been taught to do under such conditions, deliberately removing a part of his attention from the present moment and reaching out into the abstract universe of the mind. In the present semi-suspended state of consciousness that resulted, it seemed to him that he could almost feel beside him the presence of Rukh, who would now be at the fertilizer area. He felt her as if she was both there, and here with him at the same moment. It was an eerie but powerful sensation; and a poem began to shape itself about it, in the back of his thoughts.
And if it should not be you, after all—
Down the long passage, turning in the hall;
Or slipping at a distance through the light
Of streetlamped corners just within my sight;
I will not then turn back into my room,
Chilled and disheartened wrapped in angry gloom;
But warm myself to think the mind should send
So many shades of you to be my friend …
The poem disturbed him. It was not right, somehow. It was too light and facile, not cast in the way he normally thought or had been taught to think. But at the same time it rang with a sense of something discovered he had not known before. It seemed to echo off things completely removed from his present reality, things half-hidden in corners and cul-de-sacs of personal pain that he had never known and could not now remember—lonelinesses that had no proper part of life as he now knew it. For a moment, something moved far back in his mind; he seemed to feel an echoing, down endless centuries of moments such as this, in all of which he now remembered being isolated and set apart from others. Uneasily, he pushed the memories from him. But they returned, along with barely-registered sensations of pains he did not remember ever feeling, as if he had known them all, and been the one within them all…
The door to the cab opened. Falt looked inside.
"Open the back doors," he said. "We're coming in."
The driver touched a control stud on his instrument panel. Behind them they heard the doors trundle apart. Hal moved back from the cab section into the body of the van to help with the loading of whatever metal the Command had lifted from the unit.
"What are they?" he asked, as heavy, smooth gray ingots began to be passed in to him by those standing on the pavement outside the doors. "What did you bring?"
"High-tin solder," panted Jason, passing in his personal burden. "About forty ingots all told. Not too much to carry, but it ought to convince the authorities this was what we were actually after and the fertilizer warehouse business was the diversion."
Taking and stacking the ingots, Hal put the poem and the ghost memories firmly from him. He was back now in the ordinary universe, where things were as hard and heavy and real as the ingots of solder.
They finished loading and drove off. Falt took over the passenger seat in the cab, but kept Hal there to talk to him as they went.
"I think we ought to head for the foothills, without trying to rendezvous with the rest at the fertilizer warehouse," Falt said. "What do you think?"
"And give up the idea of splitting the metal up among the other trucks, so that if we lose a truck or two, we don't lose it all?"
"That's secondary," said Falt. "You know that. Our whole raid was secondary to the fertilizer raid; and we took longer than Rukh estimated to get things done here. No, the main thing is to get as many of us as possible safely back to the Command. I think the hills are safer."
"A dozen people on foot," Hal said, "won't be able to move very far or fast with all those ingots, once we leave the truck. We've gotten away clear. No one's chasing us; and if the rest of you left those guards tied up right it could be hours before the alarm goes out on what we did. I'd say make the rendezvous."
Falt had been sitting sideways on the seat to look back at Hal, now squatting on the small space of open floor in the cab behind both seats. At Hal's answer, Falt turned his head back to look out the windshield of the truck. They were skimming at good speed above the concrete strip of one of the main routes radiating from the center of the city.
"We must be halfway to the fertilizer warehouse now—isn't that right, driver?" said Hal.
There was a slight pause.
''Almost," said the driver, slowly.
Falt looked over at him.
"You'd rather head for the foothills now?" he asked.
"Yes!" The answer was explosive.
"We don't know what's happened at the fertilizer area," Hal said. "They could need another truck and the help of the extra dozen of us."
Falt blew out a short breath, staring through the windshield again. Then he looked first back at Hal, then at the driver.
"All right," he said. "That's where we'll go."
When they got to the turnoff from the route that was closest to the fertilizer plant, there was a redness to be seen above the skyline of buildings to their left.
"The place could be swarming with Militia already," said the driver.
"Just go there." Falt said.
The driver obeyed. Less than two minutes brought them around the corner of a tall lightless office building and the driver brought the truck to a halt.
Ahead of them was a fenced-in area that looked as if it might encompass several city blocks. Within the fence was one tall, almost windowless cube of a concrete building, and several other long, wide concrete structures with curved roofs like sections of barrels laid lengthwise over the rectangular blocks beneath. One of these was aflame at its far end; and lights and alarm bells within that or other buildings could be heard shrilling in the distance. Beyond two truck-wide gates in the fence, now gaping wide open, the dark shapes of the other van-type trucks the Command had brought stood outlined against the light of the burning structure.
"They're still there," said Hal.
"Go in," said Falt to the driver.
"No," said the driver. "I'm staying here where I can make a run for it. You go in on foot if you want."
Falt drew a sidearm from under his shirt and held the muzzle against the driver's right temple.
"Go in," he said.
The driver started up the truck once more. They drove in. As they got closer to the trucks, a scene of ordered confusion became visible between and about them. Most of the members of the Command were engaged in the carrying of twenty-five kilogram bags of fertilizer on their shoulders, from a stack of them outside the burning building to the vans of individual trucks. The body of a man lay before the firelit front end of one of the trucks; and in the center of the activity stood Rukh, directing it.
Hal and the others left their truck; and, with Falt, Hal came up to Rukh. The rest of their team went unordered to the necessary business of loading sacks of fertilizer into their own truck.
As he and Falt got close to Rukh, Hal saw her for a moment outlined against the red light of the fire. It was as if she stood darkly untouched in the heart of the flames. Then someone passed beyond her with a sack over her shoulder and the illusion was lost. As they came up, she turned, saw them, and spoke without waiting.
"We've got three wounded," she told Falt. "No one killed; and we've chased off the district police for the moment. They'll be back shortly with help,
so I'm going to have you take those three and whatever you've already got loaded and leave for the rendezvous ahead of the rest of us. They're all three in Tallah's truck, right now. Send six of your people to carry them over. How'd you do?"
"No one even hurt," said Falt. "Typical small-city guards. Not like Militia at all. They practically rolled over and put their paws in the air for us."
"Good," said Rukh. "Get moving, then. We've cut alarm communications and some of the local people are helping to contain information on the fact we're here; but I don't estimate more than another fifteen minutes before we've got Militia around our ears. Howard, if for any reason the wounded have to split off from the rest, you're to stay with them."
"Right," said Hal.
Chapter Twenty-four
He and Falt went back to the truck. Falt began reassigning members of their team, as they returned laden, to the job of bringing over the three wounded. Once a sufficient number had been sent, he put the rest as they came in to passing over to other trucks as many of the ingots as could be moved before the three casualties were brought. Five minutes later, they were out of the gates and leaving the red glow behind them; the dark ribbon of the route unwinding before the nose of their truck and the dark shapes of the foothills and further mountains rising on the night horizon under the still starlit sky. The new moon had not yet put in its appearance.
Once more Falt took the cab seat beside the driver. Hal went back into the body of the van to look at the wounded. One was Morelly Walden; and in the dim interior of the van with its single dim, overhead light, the lines and creases in the heavy face appeared deeper; so that he seemed to have aged another ten years at least into the realm of the truly old.
"It's his leg," said Joralmon Troy, looking up from where he sat cross-legged beside Morelly's stretcher, perched on its low, dark pile of fertilizer bags. "When we blew out the door of the warehouse, a big piece got him in the leg and broke it."
"Did they give you anything for the pain?" Hal asked Morelly, reading the deepness of the facial creases.
"No," said Morelly, hoarsely. "No sinful drugs."
Hal hesitated.
"If you like," he said, "there's a way I could massage your forehead and neck to help relieve the pain."
"No," said Morelly, effortfully. "The pain is by God's will. I'll bear it as His Warrior."
Hal touched him gently on the shoulder and went to look at the other two casualties, a woman who had taken a weapon burn in her right shoulder, superficial but painful, and a man who had been needled in the chest. Both these other two were unconscious, under sedation.
"We're low on painkillers," murmured one of the women who was sitting beside the stretchers of these other casualties. "Morelly knows it. He's really not that much of an old prophet."
Hal nodded.
"I thought so," he answered in an equally low voice. He turned and went back toward the cab. All three would have to be carried. That meant that if he and they split off from the others, he would have at least a party of nine under his responsibility. By the time he got to the cab, the route as seen through the windshield had narrowed down until there was room only for four vehicles abreast; and the exits were no longer ramps, but simple turnoffs. Falt had unfolded his copy of Rukh's local map, which had been issued to all the group leaders, and was looking at it in the overhead light of the cab. Ahead, beyond the mountains, the stars were beginning to be lost in a sky paling toward the dawn.
"Look here," said Falt to Hal, as Hal squatted behind his seat. "Standing orders are that any groups with wounded take priority on the safer rendezvous points over any groups without injured. Since we're the only such group—so far, anyway—that moves us from our prearranged point to this one—"
His finger indicated a starred position higher in the foothills than any others marked there.
"We ought to find more than enough donkeys waiting at that point to carry the light load we've got and sling the stretchers between a pair of beasts apiece." He turned from the map to look at the driver. "How long before we get there?"
"Maybe ten, fifteen—" the driver broke off with a grunt. They had just come around a long curve, and he was staring ahead out the windshield. His face had paled, his knuckles gleamed above the steering wheel in the glow from the instrument panel.
Hal and Falt turned to look as he was looking. Ahead—far ahead on the now-straight route—but unmistakable, were lights set up to shine on a barricade closing the road.
"God save us," whispered the driver. "I can't turn back. They've seen us by now…"
"Drive through," said Falt.
"I can't," the driver answered. He was sweating and he had eased off on the thumb-button on the wheel that controlled the throttle. They were slowing gradually, but still approaching the barricade up ahead far too swiftly for anyone's comfort. "They'll have pylons set up beyond the barricade to turn us over if I try it."
He stared at Falt.
"What're they doing out here?" His face turned back over its shoulder to look at Hal. "It's your fault! They don't know anything about the raid—they couldn't! They're out here looking for you—and now they've got us!"
The truck was close enough now so that they could pick out figures in the black uniforms of the Militia on either side of the barricade.
"Go around, then," said Falt.
"The minute I try that, they'll start shooting!" The driver's face was agonized. "God save us! God save us—"
Falt took his sidearm from his shirt again.
"Go around," he said, softly. "It's the only way."
The driver threw a quick glance at the weapon.
"If you shoot me at this speed, we'll all crash," he said bitterly.
Hal put his right hand up with the thumb on one side of the back of the driver's neck, his fingers on the other. He exerted pressure and the driver made a small sound.
"When I snap his spine," said Hal to Falt, "you take the wheel."
"I'll go—I'll go around," husked the driver. Hal released the pressure on the other's neck but kept his fingers in place.
"At the last moment, only," Falt said to the driver. "I'll tell you when to leave the road. Hold steady, now… hold steady… now!"
At the last moment the barricade had seemed to jump at them. The Militia on either side of it had been waving their arms for some time to command the vehicle to a halt.
"Hit it! Up the speed! Hit it—now!" Falt was shouting at the driver.
But the driver had already dug his finger into the throttle button and the truck was off the road and sliding in a tilted curve over the open ground alongside it like a saucer being sailed into a strong wind. Its body rang as power weapons struck the skin of the van with energy bolts that generated explosions of high temperature in the material. The windshield and the window on the driver's side starred suddenly, as if hit by solid birdshot; and the driver cried out, his hands flying up from the wheel. Falt grabbed the wheel and pulled the truck, skittering, back onto the route beyond the barricade and the sharp-pointed pylons anchored in concrete just beyond. His finger pressed down the throttle again, and abruptly they were flying up the route once more, while the barricade, the figures and the pylons behind it dwindled rapidly in the distance.
The driver was huddled against the cab door at his side.
"Where are you hit?" Falt was demanding.
"Oh God!" said the driver. "Oh God—oh God…"
"Howard," said Falt, "take a look at this man, find out where he's hit and lift him over the back of the seat, out of my way, if you can."
Hal stood up, holding to the back of the seat before him and bent over the driver, reaching down to pull him back from the door. A fingernail-sized stain was visible high on the left side of the driver's shirt. Pressing the cloth tight against the man's body as he went, Hal felt for and found wetness on the man's back at a roughly opposite point, then ran his hands over the shirt and the upper areas of the driver's pants, as far as he could reach, bending over the drive
r as he was.
"Are your legs all right?" he asked the driver.
"Oh, God…"
Hal put his hand gently once more on the man's neck.
"Yes—yes," the driver almost yelped. "They're all right! My legs are all right!"
"You got a single needle through your left shoulder, high up," Hal told him. "It's nothing serious. Now…"
He massaged the back of the other's neck.
"Now, I'm going to help you up over the back of your seat. I want you to do as much as you can to get over, yourself. Come on, now…"
He reached down with both hands and put them under the driver's armpits. He lifted. The driver scrambled upwards with both arms and legs. Abruptly he screamed and tried to slide back down into the seat again; but Hal held him and half-pulled, half-lifted him over the back of the seat by sheer force. The driver screamed again as the back of his knees bumped over the back of the seat.
"My leg! My leg—oh, God!"
But Hal, with the other already on the floor on his back behind the seats, was checking a stain on the outside of the other's left leg, just above the knee.
"Looks like you've got a needle through the leg, too," he said. "Can you bend it?"
The driver tried and did, but screamed a third time.
"Looks like that one could be more serious," said Hal. "The needle's hit something in there."
He felt under the leg.
"And it looks as if it's still in there."
"Oh God—"
"He's faking," said Falt clearly. "There's no way it could be hurting him that much."
Hal put a hand over the man's mouth.
"You've got a choice," he said quietly in the other's ear. "Now I know and you know how that leg of yours hurts. But we also both know it only hurts when you move it; and that you should move it as little as possible. Neither wound is going to kill you. So, lie still; and either you keep quiet or I'll have to make sure you're quiet because you're unconscious. Do you understand?"