Read Zelazny, Roger - Novel 05 Online
Authors: Today We Choose Faces
Then he appeared, fired again, missed. I got
off another shot, too. The next time, I felt, would decide it. He knew my
position now.
I leaned back and aimed upward. It was going
to be over the top of the niche this time, I felt it.
My chances, as I saw them, were not good. Even
if I nailed him perfectly, he was going to get off a shot. My concern, along
with protecting the girl, centered upon the seriousness of the injuries I would
sustain, should I survive. I was going to get him—I knew it, I felt it, I swore
it. Even if he put that bullet right through my heart again, my reflexes would
snap off a shot and he would be out for a while, up there. I wanted to live, to
drag him back to Wing Null with me, to turn his mind inside out and dump its
contents on the floor. It would be so wasteful, to die, to leave him vulnerable
and not be able to do anything about it.
“... If I die," I heard myself saying to
Glenda, "and leave him unconscious up there," and it was not me that
was saying the terrible thing I overheard, I realized, even though the words
were coming from my own mouth, "would you be willing to go up and finish
him off with his own gun? A bullet through the brain? The heart?"
"No! I couldn't! I wouldn't!"
"It would save me a lot of trouble
later."
"Later?" She giggled,
half-hysterically. "If you're dead—" Then she shut up, but I could
feel her heavy breathing, her tenseness.
What was he waiting for? Damn him!
"Come on!" I cried. "This is
the last time! Even if you get me, you're dead!"
Nothing. Still nothing.
Then I heard Glenda whispering, rapidly,
urgently.
"You are the one. I was right. Listen. It
is important. Take me with you to the secret place. I have something for you.
It is important—"
It was also too late. There were three more
footfalls and a thud, as he leaped across our channel and fired downward. I
felt a searing pain down my chest and ribcage. I fired back, felt that I had
hit him.
White pants, blue jacket, long brown hair,
blue mirror-glasses, he had turned as he jumped, landed in a half-crouched
position, left arm thrown high for balance, right extended downward, weapon
pointed, clenched teeth showing through a tight, humorless smile.
"Mr. Black! No!" I heard Glenda
scream, as another shot caught me in the shoulder, slamming me back against
her.
The trank gun fell from my hand as my whole
right arm became useless. I had hit him, though, I knew that.
And it was Mr. Black. It was the same man with
whom I had sat in the Cocktail Lounge—how long ago? Eliminating the color and
length of hair, the different outfit, the glasses, I saw the same jawline, the
same ridges and creases ...
I raised my left hand as he tried to steady
his weapon for another shot. Glenda was still screaming as I bit my thumb and
glared at him and heard and felt his final shot tear into my guts.
He fell backward then as I toppled forward, a
cloud of ink seeming to rise from my middle and rush to my head.
The ringing echo of the shot faded, was gone,
though I still felt the vibrations of the machine through the wetness, forming
and re-forming the words Pull pin seven, and Glenda was crying, "Library!
Cubicle 18237! Important! Library! Cubicle 18237 •.."
Then soft nothing.
I picked myself up and started running again.
Crazy, but I could not help it.
Good thing that nobody I could see was in any
condition to notice.
Then a knot of live ones appeared, and it was
either slow down or become conspicuous—the last thing I wanted to do. I bit my
lip, looked in all directions, came to a halt, took several deep breaths.
Then something of Engel began to take hold,
and it was better ...
Tough. Who would have thought Engel able to
acquit himself as well as he had? An aging clarinetist—a quiet, peaceable guy.
Now only I/he/we knew what had been inside him, and I already different, never
to be quite the same again, still changing, aware of the process like mercury
within me, impossible to pin down, heavy, flashing, flowing, providing
strength, steadiness ...
Tough, we were tougher than I had thought. It
was just that the engine had had to cough a few times before it began to
function smoothly. We were almost to our goal now and I, Paul Karab, was nexus
...
My flight had begun as a thing unrecommended
and perhaps slightly ignoble, but now it had become a mission. I had done the
proper thing for the wrong reasons.
... Paul Karab, reasonably healthy,
thirty-five-year-old Living Room Representative, Wing 1, youngest member of the
Household Staff, running scared.
Now the fright-factor had diminished
considerably—just now—now that Engel/Lange was here. Better and better by the
moment.
All of the killings had panicked me, each more
than the previous. I had passed out on each occasion and come around in worse
shape than before. I had been ready to start running at the time of the
meshing, but it had served to stabilize me. Then when Serafis and Davis got it,
reason had gone up in smoke. I felt that even my position, with all its
safeguards, was not proof against this sort of an attack, an attack that was
obviously a well-planned attempt to destroy the entire family. I had not
possessed curiosity such as Lange had known, nor anger like Engel's. These
would have come later, I was certain, but my panic had submerged these
important survival factors. I was ashamed of it, but only for a moment. It had
served a useful purpose, and I was no longer the person it had overwhelmed.
I watched the slow progress of the mourners
following the box on the belt. The preacher walked at their head, pacing the
coffin, reading the final prayers. From where I stood, I could see the area
where the service had been conducted, but various partitions and furnishings
prevented my viewing the black door toward which they were headed. The obvious
analogy came and nested in my mind with small clucking sounds, dark feathers
and haste: The Paul Karab I had known all my life was dead, half the family was
dead, our whole way of life might well be sucking its final breaths.
No.
I would not permit it.
My determination surprised me, but there it
was. I knew what I was going to do, had to do. Without having made a conscious
decision, I just knew. The others might not approve. But then again,
considering the circumstances, they might. Anyway, it was my choice to make.
The Chapel was, as always, a checkerboard of
light and darkness. I moved diagonally to my left, passing to the
entrance-point to a darkened section. Glancing about, I dropped to the floor
and crawled in, not wanting to break the warning beam that would turn on gentle
illumination, the odor of incense, relaxing music and lights on the altar. I
slipped into a pew and sat sideways, so that I could look back out and keep an
eye on the funeral procession. I wanted a cigarette but felt kind of funny
about lighting one in there, so I didn't.
From where I was seated, I could see the black
door—gateway to eternity, the underworld, the afterlife, whatever. The belt
terminated right before the door, feeding back down around its rollers there.
As the mourners advanced, tight-faced, dark-clad, slow, a representative of the
funeral director moved forward and pressed out an opening sequence on the plate
set into that dark frame.
Silently, the door swung inward and the casket
passed through it, followed by considerable remembrances of artificial
flowers—of course I could not be certain of this from where I sat, but that
many real flowers would have cost a fortune, a circumstance denied by the
smallness of the cortege—and since the track then inclined at an appropriate
downward angle and was equipped with rollers, the entire display vanished
smoothly from sight. Then the door closed, there were some final words from the
clerical-type and the people turned and slowly moved away, talking among
themselves or silent, as things had it.
I watched them go, waited perhaps ten minutes
until the area went dim, waited ten more. Then I rose, crossed over, crawled out
again.
Still, silent . . . Even the pall-belt had
been turned off. The nearest illuminated area was a good distance away, far
enough so that I could not even hear the music.
I advanced, moved up to the belt. For some
reason, I reached out and touched it, trailing my hand along it as I walked
beside it toward the wall. Tactile person? I thought of Glenda. What was she
doing right now? Where was she? Had she contacted the police, or simply fled?
Steady finally, my thoughts moved back to those final moments which they had,
till now, but skirted. What had she been saying right there at the end? Not the
usual hysterical nonsense one would expect from a young woman in the presence
of sudden, violent death. No, it had not seemed that way. She had been repeating
an address and telling me how important it was. If this were not a form of
hysteria, though, the alternative was disconcerting. What use could a dying man
have for the information, unless he happened to be me?
But she could not have known. There was no way
I could think of for her to have known.
... Or anyone else, for that matter. Say, Mr.
Black
... Whom she apparently recognized.
Going back a bit further, it was somewhat
unusual, our meeting the way that we had . . .
I would have to find out, of course. Anything
that might have some bearing on the present unpleasantness was vital.
... And her seeming irrational insistence on
accompanying me.
Yes, I would have to pursue the matter. Quite
soon.
I crossed over the belt, moved parallel to it,
approached the black door. I had to be on the right side in order to reach the
plate.
I halted when I came to the black door, the
route by which the dead depart the House, the only way anyone leaves the House.
It was of a light alloy, was about six feet by eight and in the dim light
seemed more a blot or a hole than an object. I manipulated the plate and it
swung silently inward. More blackness. Even standing where I was, it was
difficult to tell that it was now open. Which suited me fine.
I mounted the belt and stepped through,
leaning to the rear to maintain my balance and keeping one hand on the smooth
wall. I caught hold of the door then and drew it toward me, pivoting about its
advancing edge, and pushed it closed. It would not snap true until I activated
the mechanism, but it would do if someone came along during the next few
minutes.
I got down on all fours again and crawled
backward down the tunnel. It only runs about forty feet. When I reached the
rear wall, I rose, leaning against it, and slid my fingers along its surface,
seeking the maintenance box.
It took only a moment to locate it and slide
its coverplate open. When I did, its small interior light came on and I could
see what I was doing once again. The unit seldom, if ever, required servicing,
and what I did to it then was definitely not in the service manual. There was
no reason, anyway, for anyone to fool with the broadcast coordinates that sent
the dead on their one-way subway ride among the stars.
No one but one of us, that is.
I finished, slid the panel shut and waited.
There would be a lapse of fifteen seconds before it functioned. After that, it
would reset itself to its old coordinates.
Somewhere behind and above me, I heard the
door click faintly. All right. There was something I was supposed to remember
...
I was suddenly pitched to the ground. I caught
myself with my hands, slipped onto my side and rose to my feet again. Yes, I
was supposed to remember that while I was standing on an incline in the tunnel,
the surface to which I was transferring was not so canted.
Then there was light all about me. It was a
brief, bright corridor, the walls so brilliant and dazzling that they hurt my
eyes. As I shielded my gaze and moved along it, my person was being analyzed at
hundreds—perhaps thousands—of levels, by hidden devices which would only permit
one person to pass through the door at its end.
As I neared it, the door slid upward, and I
echoed its sigh as I passed through and into Wing Null.
The feeling of relief, of release, was intense
and immediate. I had come home. I was safe. The enemy could not reach me here.
I followed the curving of the red-carpeted
hallway to the left, moving about the hub of the fortress, passing the great
sealed vaults of Lab, Comp, Storage and Files. I wondered as I walked
concerning the state of mind that had moved some earlier version of myself to
give them such prosaic names, considering what they really held. Sardonic, I
guess.
I continued on by them all and entered the
study or lounge that eventually occurred on my right. The lights came on as I
did so and I extinguished them with a slap, the illumination from the hallway
being sufficient. It was a small room, light-walled, dark-carpeted, containing
a desk, two easy chairs, a couch with end tables, a glassed-in bookcase.
Everything was just as I remembered it.
I crossed over to the far, blank wall,
switched on the control in the chair rail and transpared it.
It was night outside, and a fat, orange moon
hung above the white, stone hills about half a mile to my left, giving them the
appearance of half a jawbone filled with fractured teeth. Near to hand, the
rocks were dark and slick, giving the appearance of having been rained upon
recently. There was a flock of pale, retreating clouds in the distance and a
bright profusion of stars overhead. An indicator off to my right showed me that
the temperature out there was a little over 13° C. I backed away, turned an
easy chair to face the panorama and seated myself.
Still staring, I located a cigarette, lit it,
smoked. 93
No matter how urgent the situation was, I had
to have this moment, this cigarette, this view of the outside, before I took
the next step. I had to be in a tranquil state of mind before I could proceed.
It would make a difference.