Logan's Run (17 page)

"Tell him," urged Jess. "Convince him. Tell Ballard that you're a runner, just as I am."

"But I'm not," said Logan flatly. "I guess I never was. Ballard was right in trying to kill me."

All of the warmth drained out of Jessica's face: She blinked, as from a physical blow.

"Sit down," said Logan. "Both of you"

Jess was shaking her head slowly, unwilling to believe what she was seeing. Ballard took her arm and they sat down on the wet stone steps.

"I'm going to kill you," said Logan. "I've
got
to kill you."

Near them the great cat lay sprawled in a heap of soaked gold and black. Flies and gnats and ants had already gathered to contest the corpse. They crawled into its gaping mouth, over the ivory teeth, cloaking the tongue that lolled flaccidly, scummed the unblinking yellow eyes.

Logan said, "There's one thing I'd like to know." His glance flicked to Ballard's right hand, to the red flower that glowed there. "I've seen fakes, but nothing like yours. Tattoo artists, surgeons, chemists— they've all tried to duplicate the flower, but it's tamper-proof. Yet you've lived two lifetimes and that flower is real. How? How have you gone on living?"

"One day at a time," said Ballard with the trace of a smile.

Logan leveled the Gun.

"I'll tell you," said Ballard. "It won't make any difference if you know."

Logan could not look directly at Jess, couldn't meet her eyes.

"I'm a statistical freak," said Ballard. "When I was born something went wrong in the nursery. The Hourglass malfunctioned, and the crystal it placed in my palm was imperfect. I didn't know this until I became twenty-one and my hand failed to blink. The flower stayed red, and I lived on while others died . . ."

"I don't need to hear any more," said Logan. He stepped to the edge of the steps, cupped his lips and shouted, "Francis!" The cry echoed off into the jungle to be smothered by heat and darkness. Logan called again. "Francis,
this
way! Here!"

He waited. Francis did not appear.

Ballard turned to Jess. "He's a DS man. It's his life. It's what he was trained for." He kept his voice low as Logan scanned the jungle. "There's one consolation. He'll never find the others, the runners in Sanctuary."

Jess looked intently at him. "Then—there really
is
a Sanctuary, a place where people can grow old, have families, raise their own children?"

"There is."

Logan shouted again, received no answer. He walked over to them.

"I know I could never make you tell me where Sanctuary is," he said to Ballard. "But after you're dead, the line will be broken."

Ballard said nothing.

Logan brought up the Gun, set on homer. The single charge would kill them both at this range. "Goodbye Jess," he said softly. "I have to do this."

Logan pulled the trigger.

His hand was stone; the trigger finger would not move. He tried to fire, could feel muscles lock in conflict in the hand. His face went gray; the hand would not obey him. He saw Jessica's face and only Jessica's face. It was a white oval against the dark building, her eyes filled with pain and accusation.

Logan slumped back against the wall, slid down it loosely. He was making sounds. But not words. The Gun dangled limply in his hand.

Ballard stood up with Jess beside him. He took the girl aside, keeping an eye on Logan. The DS man was blind to their words and movements.

"I
knew
he could never do it," said Jess, watching Logan with pity. "You can trust him now."

"Not at all," said Ballard.

"But . . . why? After what he's—"

"Logan is a man in torment. He's in a near-trance at this point, babbling, totally exhausted. Inwardly he's torn. Half of him wants to run, escape, live. The other half wants to destroy me and you, to crush the Sanctuary line and justify his entire existence. Right now I couldn't tell you which half will win." Ballard paused. "You'll have to go the rest of the way alone."

"But I love him," protested the girl. "You can't ask me to abandon him now."

"Alone," said Ballard sharply. "Listen to me. The final stage is Cape Steinbeck and"—he checked the time—"you've only twenty-eight minutes to get there. If you fail to make it they'll leave without you. Don't argue. You'll find a mazecar at the platform just below Capitol Hill. Now go. I'll take care of Logan."

He turned from Jess, back to the hunched figure.

The blow which knocked him unconscious was totally unexpected.

He breathes deeply.

His eyes are closed.

He knows the final stage to Sanctuary.

EVENING . . .

Logan reached the maze platform, numb, dull-eyed, one arm around Jessica's shoulder. She was guiding him, partly supporting him.

She summoned the car.

Logan's head was down; his breathing was shallow, his face flat chalk. He seemed unaware of his surroundings as the car swept into motion.

"It's going to be all right," Jess said, holding him against her, holding him as the Loveroom had held him, talking softly to him. "We're on the way, to the last stage, to Sanctuary. No one can stop us now. A few minutes more and we can quit running. It's all over now. It's all right. Everything's all right."

Logan didn't respond.

The car burned through the deep tunnels.

"Listen—you don't have to fight yourself any longer. I had to keep Ballard from hurting you because what I said to him was true, about my loving you. It's not easy to discard a lifetime, but you've done it, Logan. You're free now."

Slowly he raised his hand, his right hand. The palm flower was blinking faster.

It wavered.

It went black.

His twenty-four hours were up.

A high, keening alarm-scream rose from the car. No—from something
in
the car.

"Gun," said Logan, trancelike. He jerked his head up, blinked rapidly as adrenaline roused him. His voice hardened. "Wild Gun."

"What does it mean?"

It meant a Gun in the hands of a runner, a man on black. What DS fears most. A Wild Gun. The alarm would spread in widening circles. Police units would converge. Every platform would be covered. An all-out hunt now, with DS on crash alert. The Gun was alive on every board. Dispatchers would be triangulating their position.

Logan punched the control. The car slowed

"What are you doing?"

The car stopped; the hatch opened.

"Out," said Logan.

They scrambled onto the platform. The Gun was screaming. Citizens scattered at the sound. They were isolated on the open platform. Logan summoned another car.

The Gun screamed.

A black tunic, moving toward them.

Through a bleary-mist, Logan tried to focus on the dark figure. A thick-chested man. Killing eyes. Tight mouth.

The mazecar filled the slot behind Logan.

Too late.

The DS man's Gun came up. Centered. Homered.

An instant, frozen in time:
A homer never misses anybody . . . can't get away from a homer
.

. . . a homer.

homer . . .

homer!

The charge sung toward them.

Logan whipped up the screaming Gun. Fired

Two projectiles moving. Two projectiles seeking heat. Two projectiles in collision.

The double explosion hammered the tunnel walls, rocked the platform, swatted Logan and Jess to the floor.

The DS man was chopped, spilled.

Dust sifted from the upper levels.

Logan pulled himself up, stumbled to the waiting car, pitched the screaming Gun inside, punched a destination: Omaha, Nebraska.

The car was gone. The alarm-scream faded, faded, died.

Another car. He hustled Jess aboard. Away.

"What have we gained?" she asked.

"The Gun might throw them off," he said

"We're finished, aren't we?"

No reply.

They began switching cars. On the next platform a mob was milling. A flush-faced woman pointed, "Runners!" The crowd began to converge on them.

Away.

On the next platform, police.

On the next platform a ripper scored the metal flank of their mazecar.

"Only fifteen minutes left," sobbed Jess. "They'll leave without us."

They emerged again at the next slot. A DS man was there.

Logan's thoughts raced. Young. Fresh Gunner. Not more than sixteen. Runners run. They don't attack.

Logan attacked.

Sick surprise on the young hunter's face as he was struck, groaned and dropped.

Back into the maze.

"It's useless, isn't it?"

"Pittsburgh," said Logan.

"What?"

"The steel city. No people there. Maybe a chance."

Molybdenum

Chromium

Vanadium

Iron

Tantalum

Carbon

Aluminum

Nickel

Steel

Pittsburgh
.

A great forge, a layering of bucket hoists and winches, of conveyors and gearing, punch presses, stamping machines, benders, shapers, buffers, lathes and tooling. Into its maw flowed coal and ore and electrical impulses; and out flowed uncountable metal products and hardware for a nation.

Pittsburgh: a single, automated machine, controlled by limit switches, thermocouples and programmed circuits. A vibration, a decible assault, a hot-metal stench, buried in a black shrouding of smog, cinders grit and petroleum pollution.

For more than a hundred years no man had lived in Pittsburgh; no man
could
live in Pittsburgh.

The hatch opened.

An acrid wash of fumed air blinded them, choked them. The area was veiled in black smoke.

"Blouse," said Logan.

Jess shook her head, uncomprehending. The metal din was impossible.

He slipped off his shirt, wadded it, jammed it against his mouth. The girl nodded, did the same.

Logan got out, groped for the scanner box. He fisted the glass, shattering it. Now they could head for Steinbeck. No destination check with the box smashed. For the moment DS was blind.

He moved to the callbox to summon another car, but Jess tugged at his arm, pointing behind them. Logan spun. A maze car was in the slot, hatch opening.

Logan grabbed the girl and backed into the pistoning smoke. Their lungs burned, eyes teared and stung. They crouched behind rotating machinery.

A man dismounted from the car. DS. A circular filtermask made his face a mystery.

He could be Francis.

The man fell into a fighting crouch and swept the platform with his Gun. Cautiously he advanced into the billowing smoke haze, stopped, bent down, examined the floor of the platform. Logan went cold. There, etched in cinder grime, were their footprints. The DS man straightened and moved toward them.

Logan led Jess deeper into the hammering metal din. He pressed her down, against a casing wall, indicating that she remain there.

The DS man was closer. Francis? Logan couldn't be sure. In height and build the man resembled him. And he moved with a veteran's sureness.

Logan stood up, let the operative catch a glimpse of him through the haze, then sprinted for an overhead conveyor. The man gave chase. Logan swung out and over a narrow channel between laboring grinders. He hung there, dropped.

Heat. Intense and deadening. Logan's hand touched metal; he winced, pulling back. The inferno of noise ate into his nerves. Each breath he took sent flame into his lungs; he could taste the grit between his teeth.

On. Deeper into the vast steel city, with the DS man in his wake.

Logan darted between a stamper and a rising hoist, caught the edge of the hoist and allowed himself to be carried upward.

A nitro charge shuddered the ground below him. The hoist stopped abruptly. Logan swung onto a metal walkway, ran along it. A ripper took out a chunk of the walk ahead of him.

He's getting my range, thought Logan. He's good, really good.

Logan clattered down a wind of steps, reached bottom, ran under a screeching cranelift, kept moving.

He'd shaken the hunter. But not for long.

A weapon. He needed a weapon . . .

He looked about wildly. Tool crib to his right. He grabbed a metal spanner, adjusted it, removed three large nuts from the face of a tramcart, stripped off a length of flexible cable. He tied the three nuts together—into an improvised bola. It would have to do.

He pulled himself up, onto a moving belt. The DS man was gliding toward him on another belt, back turned, probing the smoke curtain with his Gun. The belts moved in opposite directions, bearing great packing cases to a mile-distant chute. Logan ducked behind a case, hugged the wood, calculating.

The belts rumbled along at an even five miles an hour: Their intersect point was a gamble, but Logan would take it.

Bessemer sparks showered him from a spill of molten metal fountaining into a huge cradle. Fumes poisoned him. How close was the man? Logan kept his head down behind the crate. He counted to four. Stood up.

The DS operative was just across from him, turning in his direction. Quick!

The bola was a blur of rotating steel weights above Logan's head.

The Gun was on him, centering.