“No—” considered Fader. “No, not unless you took to the hills and hid. Then you’d be all right, as long as you steered clear of the Angels. But it would be pretty slim pickin’s, living off the country. If you really want to go off and be a hermit you’d do better to try it on the Outside, where there aren’t so many objections to it.”
“No”—MacKinnon’s backbone stiffened at once—”no, I’ll never do that. I’ll never submit to psychological reorientation just to have a chance to be let alone. If I could go back to where I was before a couple of months ago, before I was arrested, it might be all right to go off to the Rockies, or look up an abandoned farm somewhere. But with that diagnosis staring me in the face—after being told I wasn’t fit for human society until I had had my emotions retailored to fit a cautious little pattern, I couldn’t face it. Not if it meant going to a sanitarium—”
“I see,” agreed Fader, nodding, “you want to go to Coventry, but you don’t want the Barrier to shut you off from the rest of the world.”
“No, that’s not quite fair— Well, maybe, in a way. Say, you don’t think I’m not fit to associate with, do you?”
“You look all right to me,” Magee reassured him with a grin, “but I’m in Coventry, too, remember. Maybe I’m no judge.”
“You don’t talk as if you liked it. Why’re you here?”
Magee held up a gently admonishing finger. “Tut! Tut! That is the one question you must never ask a man here. You must assume that he came here because he knew how swell everything is here.”
“Still—you don’t seem to like it.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I do like it; it has flavor. Its little incongruities are a source of innocent merriment. And any time they turn on the heat I can always go back through the gate and rest up for a while in a nice quiet hospital, until things quiet down.”
MacKinnon was puzzled again. “Turn on the heat? Do they supply too hot weather here?”
“Huh? Oh, I didn’t mean weather control—there isn’t any of that here except what leaks over from Outside. I was just using an old figure of speech.”
“What does it mean?”
Magee smiled to himself. “You’ll find out.”
After supper—bread, stew in a metal dish, a small apple —Magee introduced MacKinnon to the mysteries of cribbage. Fortunately MacKinnon had no cash to lose. Presently Magee put the cards down without shuffling them. “Dave,” he said, “are you enjoying the hospitality offered by this institution?”
“Hardly. Why?”
“I suggest that we check out.”
“A good idea, but how?”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking about. Do you suppose you could take another poke on that battered phiz of yours in a good cause?”
MacKinnon cautiously fingered his face. “I suppose so— if necessary. It can’t do me much more harm, anyhow.”
“That’s mother’s little man! Now listen. This guard. Lefty, in addition to being kind o’ unbright, is sensitive about his looks. When they turn out the lights, you—”
“Let me out of here! Let me out of here!” MacKinnon beat on the bars and screamed. No answer came. He renewed the racket, his voice a hysterical falsetto. Lefty arrived to investigate, grumbling.
“What the hell’s eating on you?” he demanded, peering through the bars.
MacKinnon changed to tearful petition. “Oh, Lefty, please let me out of here. Please! I can’t stand the dark. It’s dark in here—please don’t leave me alone.” He flung himself, sobbing, on the bars.
The guard cursed to himself. “Another slug-nutty. Listen, you—shut up and go to sleep or I’ll come in there and give you something to yelp for!” He started to leave.
MacKinnon changed instantly to the vindictive, unpredictable anger of the irresponsible. “You big, ugly baboon! You rat-faced idiot! Where’d ja get that nose?”
Lefty turned back, fury in his face. He started to speak. MacKinnon cut him short. “Yah! Yah! Yah!” he gloated. “Lefty’s mother was scared by a warthog—”
The guard swung at the spot where MacKinnon’s face was pressed between the bars of the door. MacKinnon ducked and grabbed simultaneously. Off balance at meeting no resistance, the guard rocked forward, thrusting his forearm between the bars. MacKinnon’s fingers slid along his arm and got a firm purchase on Lefty’s wrist.
He threw himself backward, dragging the guard with him, until Lefty was jammed up against the outside of the barred door, with one arm inside, to the wrist of which MacKinnon clung as if welded.
The yell which formed in Lefty’s throat miscarried; Magee had already acted. Out of the darkness, silent as death, his slim hands had snaked between the bars and embedded themselves in the guard’s fleshy neck. Lefty heaved and almost broke free, but MacKinnon threw his weight to the right and twisted the arm he gripped in an agonizing, bone-breaking leverage.
It seemed to MacKinnon that they remained thus, like some grotesque game of statues, for an endless period. His pulse pounded in his ears until he feared that it must be heard by others and bring rescue to Lefty.
Magee spoke at last: “That’s enough,” he whispered. “Go through his pockets.”
He made an awkward job of it, for his hands were numb and trembling from the strain, and it was anything but convenient to work between the bars. But the keys were there, in the last pocket he tried. He passed them to Magee, who loosed the guard and accepted them.
Magee made a quick job of it. The door swung open with a distressing creak. Dave stepped over Lefty’s body, but Magee kneeled down, unhooked a truncheon from the guard’s belt and cracked him behind the ear with it.
MacKinnon paused. “Did you kill him?” he asked.
“Cripes, no,” Magee answered softly. “Lefty is a friend of mine. Let’s go.”
They hurried down the dimly lighted passageway between the cells toward the door leading to the administrative offices—their only outlet. Lefty had carelessly left it ajar, and light shone through the crack, but as they silently approached it they heard ponderous footsteps from the far side. Dave looked hurriedly for cover, but the best he could manage was to slink back into the corner formed by the cell block and the wall. He glanced around for Magee, but he had disappeared completely.
The door swung open; a man stepped through, paused, and looked around. MacKinnon saw that he was carrying a black light and wearing its complement—rectifying spectacles. He realized then that the darkness gave him no cover. The black light swung his way; he tensed to spring—
He heard a dull clunk! The guard sighed, swayed gently, then collapsed into a loose pile. Magee stood over him, poised on the balls of his feet, and surveyed his work while caressing the business end of the truncheon with the cupped fingers of his left hand.
“That will do,” he decided. “Shall we go, Dave?”
Magee eased through the door without waiting for an answer. MacKinnon was close behind him. The lighted corridor led away to the right and ended in a large double door to the street. On the left wall, near the street door, a smaller office door stood open.
Magee drew MacKinnon to him. “It’s a cinch,” he whispered. “There’ll be nobody in there now but the desk sergeant. We get past him, then out that door and into the ozone—” He motioned Dave to keep behind him and crept silently up to the office door. After drawing a small mirror from a pocket in his belt, he lay down on the floor, placed his head near the door frame and cautiously extended the tiny mirror an inch or two past the edge.
Apparently he was satisfied with the reconnaissance the improvised periscope afforded him, for he drew himself back onto his knees and turned his head so that MacKinnon could see the words shaped by his silent lips. “It’s all right,” he breathed, “there is only—”