Logan's Run (2 page)

Now the dark figure, in black, stood over her, but she did not look up. She didn't beg because begging was useless.

Instead she remade the world.

She was not here, outlawed and condemned, shamed and terrified; she was in Sanctuary—on a wide, wind-lazy meadow beside a cool stream of silver—a world in which time did not exist.

Then why was her hand scrabbling under her torn clothing for the vibroknife she'd hidden there? Why the urgency to plunge the buzzing steel through breast and rib into her heart? Why?

She saw the Gun come up.

The homer!

She saw the moonlight dazzle off the dark-blue barrel.

The homer!

She saw the pale, tight-set face of the Sandman, and saw his eyes above the Gun, as his fingers whitened on the trigger.

The homer!

There was a soft explosion.

That was the last thing she heard.

And the last thing she felt was raw, blinding agony, as the homer struck, burned, ripped and unraveled her.

Logan was tired, but the little man kept talking.

"You know how it is, citizen." he said "Nobody feels like he's done it
all
. All the traveling, all the girls, all the living. I'm no different from anybody else. I'd like to live to be twenty-five, thirty . . . but it just isn't going to happen. And I can accept that. I've got no regrets. None to linger on, I mean. I've lived a good life. I've had my share and nobody can say that Sawyer is a whiner."

He was talking compulsively. As long as he talked he didn't have to think. Logan had seen a lot of them on Lastday, talking away the final hours.

"You know what I'm going to do?" asked the man, whose palm-flower was blinking red, then black, then red. He didn't wait for a reply. He went on in a rapid voice, telling Logan exactly what he was going to do.

Logan had changed to grays back in DS Headquarters, and he wondered if the man would be talking to him if he were in his black tunic. No doubt he would Sawyer was obviously the type who went through life unworried about Deep Sleep men and Guns. Which was proper. He was a good citizen, and good citizens made a stable world.

"—and then I'm going over to the Castlemont Glasshouse and get myself three of the youngest, prettiest girls in the stagroom. One will be blond. You know, with deep-blue eyes and blue-white hair. Then I'll get one with short black hair and one with golden-brown skin. Three beauties. I hear they'll do anything for you when you're on Lastday."

The man looked at his palm. The flower bloomed red, then black, then red. "Did you ever wonder if the Thinker makes mistakes, the same as people do? Because it doesn't seem like I've turned twenty-one. It really doesn't. It seems I turned fourteen maybe five years ago. That would make me just nineteen." He said this without conviction. "I remember the day, when my flower changed and I was fourteen. I was in Japan, and it was the first time I'd visited Fujiyama. Wonderful mountain! Inspiring! Ever see it?"

Logan nodded. He'd seen it.

"I sure remember the day. Couldn't have been more than five years ago—maybe six. Do you think the machine could make that kind of mistake?"

Logan didn't want to remember how many years had passed since
he'd
been fourteen. Of late he had tried not to think about this. His flower was still a steady red, but . . .

"No," said Sawyer, answering his own question. "The machine wouldn't make that kind of a mistake." He was silent for a long moment; then, in a quiet voice, he said, "I suppose I'm scared." His flower blinked red, black, red, black.

"Most people are," said Logan.

"But not
this
scared," said the man. He swallowed, raised a hand. "Don't get me wrong, citizen. I'm no coward. I'm not going to run. I have my pride. The system is right, I know that. World can only support so much life. Got to be a way to keep the population down . . . I've been loyal and I won't change now."

The two sat quietly as the rumbling belt carried them up through the threemile complex.

At last the man spoke again: "Do you really believe that a homer is—is as
terrible
as they say it is?

"Yes," said Logan. "I believe it."

"What gets me is the way it
finds
a runner. Once it's fired at him, I mean. The way it homes in on the body heat. They say it burns out your whole nervous system. Every nerve in your body."

Logan didn't answer.

The little man's face was gray. A muscle leaped in his cheek. He swallowed. "God," he said.

Sawyer drew in a deep breath. A spot of color returned to his face. "Of course it's necessary. Without the DS men and homers there'd be a lot more runners. We couldn't have that. Runner deserves what he gets, if you ask me. I mean, he doesn't
have
to run. A Sleepshop isn't so bad, is it? We toured one when I was twelve, me and a friend of mine. In Paris. Clean and nice. It isn't so bad"

Logan thought of the Sleepshops with their gaily painted interiors, the attendants in soft pastel robes, the electronically augmented angel choirs, the skin spray of Hallucinogen, which wiped away a confused look of suffering and replaced it with a fixed and joyful smile. He thought of the quiet, dimlit grave room lined with aluminum shelving, and of the neat rows of steelfoil canisters marked with the names and numbers of men.

"No," said Logan. "It isn't so bad."

Sawyer was talking again. "Sometimes, though, I wonder about those DS men. I could never do it, what they have to do. Not that I'm defending runners. Not scum. I don't defend scum. But I just wonder how a man can fire a homer into—"

"I get off here," said Logan.

He left the belt.

Logan was annoyed at his action. He didn't live in this part of the complex. His unit was almost a mile beyond, but the man's constant chatter had frayed his patience. He knew this section, of course. A year ago he'd hunted a man here. Runner named Nathan. He closed off the memory.

Idly he began walking the covered thoroughfare.

Ahead was the Jewel Building. Logan paused to survey the vast mural which gave the structure its name—a climbing mosaic composed of tiny bits of fireglass brilliantly arranged to commemorate the Burning of Washington. Orange, purple and raw red flames jeweled halfway up the façade; bodies flamed; buildings smoked and tumbled. Yet the awesome masterwork was flawed, incomplete. Stark, gaping areas broke the pattern. Only the famed muralist Roebler 7 could handle the corrosive fireglass, and when he had accepted Sleep his secret died with him. The project would never be finished.

Directly beneath the mural, a man with a sign. Logan registered shock. The man was about fifteen with rounded, girlish features and large, soulful eyes. A silver fringe of beard silked his chin, and his hair was worn shoulder-length. The sign around his neck said:
RUN!

He sat, image-still, in the middle of the walkway. Several angry citizens circled him. One of them spat on the bearded man.

"Filth!"

"Scum!"

"Coward!"

The man smiled patiently at his tormentors. He handed each of them a thin scripsheet from a stack in his lap.

"This is disgusting," said a fat woman, balling the scrip in her hand. "Unlawful."

As Logan approached, the man held out one of the sheets. He accepted it.

REJECT SLEEP! RUN

IF THERE ARE ENOUGH RUNNERS

THERE WON'T BE ENOUGH HOMERS.

THERE WON'T BE ENOUGH DS MEN

IT IS WRITTEN THAT THE LIFE

SPAN OF MAN IS THREE SCORE

YEARS AND TEN, SEVENTY YEARS!

DON'T SETTLE FOR TWENTY-ONE.

RUN! REJECT SLEEP!

A police paravane settled soundlessly at the edge of the walkway. Logan watched the two lemon-tunicked officers dismount and advance on the bearded man. He did not try to run. They led him away.

The paravane lifted back into the evening sky.

A woman next to Logan clucked her tongue. "That's the third maniac they've arrested this month. You'd think they were organized. It's frightening."

A girl in green mistsilks eased out of a doorway and fell into step beside Logan. He ignored her. The darkness had deepened and the sky was splashed with emerging stars. An air-freshener hummed. Logan stopped to watch the Tri-Dim Report.

The proscenium of the TD Newsbuilding brightened. A familiar 300-foot figure took solid form; he smiled warmly down at the crowd. The tri-dimensional newsman was dressed in Lifeleather trimfits. His giant eyes were clear and guileless.

"Evening, Citizens," he boomed. "This is Madison 24 with the latest news. Trouble in the maze tonight. A gypsy gang war on an express platform near Stafford Heights resulted in two deaths. Fourteen individuals were injured, including three gypsies. Police are investigating and there
will
be arrests:" The immense figure paused for dramatic effect, then continued. "The triple slayer, Harry 7, was apprehended earlier today in the Trancas complex. His friends were invited to see him off in the Hellcar. But not
one
person showed up. Not one." The giant face nodded sternly. "Does that tell you something, citizens? It tells me something. Yes, indeed. It tells me that we are a proud, law-loving people, ashamed of runners and killers and that we are—"

Logan stopped listening. He became aware of the girl at his side.

"You're not happy," the girl in green said. "I can always tell. I have a gift for knowing, for sensing unhappiness." Her eyes shone with a fierce intensity. "I sympathize with unhappy men."

She placed a soft hand on his waist and pressed lightly. He shook off the hand.

Logan walked away, lengthening his stride.

"I could make you happy," called the girl. Her voice drifted after him faintly: "—make you happy."

Happy. Logan turned the word over in his mind. Restlessness gnawed at him.
You can't buy happiness
. But of course, you could.

The hallucimill on Roeburt was one of the city's largest. The drugs, administered by trained professionals, were nonaddictive. Logan had tried several and found that LF produced the happiest effects—Lysergic Foam, an extension of the old LSD formula developed more than a century and a half ago. It required sixty seconds to run a man's bloodstream. After that: expanded consciousness. Synthetic bliss.

"LF," Logan told the man in white.

"Dosage?"

"Standard."

"Follow me, please."

Logan was taken to the blueroom: a small, padded chamber with a table, a chair and a blue floor. And nothing else.

A woman was coming out of the room. Her face was papery, her eyes still partially glazed.

Logan took the drug flask handed him, swallowed the contents. "Have a good lift," the man in white said as he closed the door.

Logan sat down in the chair, keeping his eyes closed for a full minute, allowing the LF to work itself into his blood. Then he relaxed, opened his eyes.

A terrible illumination fired the room, and Logan knew it was going to be a bad lift.

Window, he thought, got to reach the window. It was open when he reached it and he fell out of the window, dropping down rapidly into the heart of the threemile complex.

A short, squat man caught him.

"You were running," the man said "That's fine."

"No, I was falling. There's a big difference." It was important that he be understood. "I fell from a window.
Fell
."

Logan twisted away, began to run.

He ran through hissing firegalleries. The world smelled of dream dust, and a million voices were dirging the coda to "Black Flower."

The short, squat man dropped him with a blow.

"Again," said the man, crouched.

But Logan had the Gun. He didn't need to take any more of this damned punishment!

He pulled the trigger.

And the world exploded

On the way out the attendant grinned at Logan. "You were really lifted. Like another?"

"No, thanks," said Logan, and left the building.

He didn't feel any better.

On the upper level he slowed. A group of youngsters approached him, their palms glowing like blue fireflies in the soft dark. As they passed, Logan heard snatches of heated argument.

"The Reddies don't remember
we've
got rights, too."

"They just better begin to—"

Echoes of the Little War.

Logan moved on, toward the play of colored lights on the glasshouse ahead. The big dome was frosted in white, and interior images were indistinct. A contortion of naked, massed bodies formed a high, arched entrance, and the steps leading inside were illumined from below.

PLEASURE
gleamed a step.

SATISFACTION
gleamed another.

RARE DELIGHTS
gleamed a third.

Logan entered.

"Your pleasure is our pleasure, sir," a flax-haired girl said to him mechanically. She was seated at a flow desk and wore red satin transpants.

Logan placed his right palm flat to the desk. An inaudible click: the desk would bill him for the visit.

He walked into the stagroom.

It was awash in sexuality. Here were beach girls from Mexico and California, Japanese maidens with shy eyes, Italian girls with mooned bodies, pert Irish lads, slim exotics from Calcutta, cool Englishwomen and full-figured French girls. All here because they were lonely or bored or oversexed; because they were looking for someone new or escaping from someone old—or for no reason at all except that the glasshouse was here to be used and it was a time for mingling and touching in a shadow search for love.
You never find the people that you go to meet in dreams . . .

A girl with a blue palm swayed toward Logan; she was Eurasian and, at thirteen, a year away from womanhood. "I'm adept," she said. "You'll find me skilled beyond any others."

Logan ignored her, gesturing to an older girl with red hair flowing along her back. She was swan-white with deep-lashed eyes of coral. "You," he said.

The girl glided in his direction, the thin silk of her gown clouding behind her. "Not me," she laughed, linking arms with a blue-gold blonde.