An older Jesus Pietro thought he knew.
His thoughts were wandering far, blurred with impending sleep. Jesus Pietro turned on his side, drowsily comfortable.
... Rabbit?
Why not? From the woods.
Jesus Pietro turned on his other side.
... What was a rabbit doing in the trapped woods?
What was anything bigger than a field mouse doing in the woods?
What was a rabbit doing on Alpha Plateau? What would it eat?
Jesus Pietro cursed and reached for the phone. To Master Sergeant Watts he said, "Take an order. Tomorrow I want the woods searched thoroughly and then deloused. If they find anything as big as a rat, I want to know about it."
"Yes, sir."
"That alarm tonight. What sector?"
"Let me see. Where the-ah. Sector six, sir."
"Six? That's nowhere near the woods."
"No, sir."
And that was that. "Good night, Master Sergeant," said Jesus Pietro, and hung up. Tomorrow they'd search the woods. Implementation was becoming decidedly slack, Jesus Pietro decided. He'd have to do something about it.
The wall slanted outward, twelve feet of concrete crosslaced with barbed wire. The gate slanted too, at the same angle, perhaps twelve degrees from vertical. Solid cast-iron it was, built to slide into the concrete wall, which was twelve feet thick. The gate was closed. Lights from inside lit the upper edges of wall and gate, and tinged the sky above.
Matt stood under the wall, looking up. He couldn't climb over. If they saw him, they'd open the gate for him ... but they mustn't see him.
They hadn't yet. The train of logic had worked. If something that glows in the dark stops glowing when it's been in the dark too long, hang it near a light. If a car goes up when it's rightside up, it'll go down fast when it's upside down. If the cops see you when you're hiding, but don't when you're not, they'll ignore you completely when you walk up the middle of a lighted road.
But logic ended here.
Whatever had helped him wasn't helping him now.
Matt turned his back on the wall. He stood beneath the overhanging iron gate, his eyes following the straight line of the road to where its lights ended. Most of the houses were dark now. The land was black all the way to the starry horizon. On his right the stars were blurred along that line, and Matt knew he was seeing the top of the void mist.
The impulse that came then was one he never managed to explain, even to himself.
He cleared his throat. "Something is helping me," he said in an almost normal voice. "I know that. I need help to get through this gate. I have to get into the Hospital."
Noises came from inside the wall, the faintest of sounds: regular footsteps, distant voices. They were the business of the Hospital and had nothing to do with Matt.
Outside the wall nothing changed.
"Get me in there," he pleaded, to himself or to something outside himself. He didn't know which. He knew nothing.
On the Plateau there was no religion.
But suddenly Matt knew that there was just one way to get inside. He stepped off the access road and began hunting. Presently he found a discarded chunk of concrete, dirty and uneven. He carried it back and began pounding it against the iron gate.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANGI A head appeared on the wall. "Stop that, you half-witted excuse for a colonist bastard!"
"Let me in."
The head remained. "You are a colonist."
"Right."
"Don't move! Don't you move a muscle!" The man fumbled with something on the other side of the wall. Both hands appeared, one holding a gun, the other a telephone receiver. "Hello? Hello? Answer the phone, dammit! ... Watts? Hobart. A fool of a colonist just came walking up to the gate and started pounding on it. Yes, a real colonist! What do I do with him? .... All right, I'll ask."
The head looked down. "You want to walk or be carried?"
"I'll walk," said Matt.
"He says he'll walk. Why should he get his choice? ... Oh. I guess it's easier at that. Sorry, Watts, I'm a little shook. This never happened to me before."
The gateman hung up. His head and gun continued to peer down at Matt. After a moment the gate slid back into the wall.
"Come on through," said the gateman. "Fold your hands behind your neck."
Matt did. A gatehouse had been built against the wall on the inside. The gateman came down a short flight of steps. "Stay ahead of me," he ordered. "Start walking. That's the front entrance, where all the lights are. See? Walk toward that."
It would have been hard to miss the front entrance. The great square bronze door topped a flight of broad, shallow steps flanked by Doric pillars. The steps and the pillars were either marble or some plastic substitute.
"Stop looking back at me," snapped the gateman. His voice shook.
When they reached the door, the gateman produced a whistle and blew into it. There was no sound, but the door opened. Matt went through.
Once inside, the gateman seemed to relax. "What were you doing out there?" he asked.
Matt's fear was returning. He was here. These corridors were the Hospital. He hadn't thought past this moment. Deliberately so; for if he had, he would have ran. The walls around him were concrete, with a few metal grilles at floor level and four rows of fluorescent tubing in the ceiling. There were doors, all closed. An unfamiliar odor tinged the air, or a combination of odors.
"I said, "What were--"
"Find out at the trial!"
"Don't bite my head off. What trial? I found you on Alpha Plateau. That makes you guilty. They'll put you in the vivarium till they need you, and then they'll pour antifreeze in you and cart you away. You'll never wake up." It sounded as if the gateman was smacking his lips.
Matt's head jerked around, with the terror showing in his eyes. The gateman jumped back at the sudden move. His gun steadied. It was a mercy-bullet pistol, with a tiny aperture in the nose and a C02 cartridge doubling as a handle. For a frozen moment Matt knew he was about to shoot.
They'd carry his unconscious body to the vivarium, whatever that was. He wouldn't wake up there. They'd take him apart while he was sleeping. His last living moment dragged out and out....
The gun lowered. Matt shrank back from the gateman's expression. The gateman had gone mad. His wild eyes looked about him in horror, at the walls, at the doors, at the mercy-bullet gun in his hand, at everything but Matt Abruptly he turned and ran.
Matt heard his wail drifting back. "Mist Demons I'm supposed to be on the gate!"
At one-thirty another officer came to relieve Polly's guard.
The newcomer's uniform was not as well pressed, but he himself seemed in better condition. His muscles were gymnasium muscles, and he was casually alert at one-thirty in the morning. He waited until the long-headed man had gone, then moved to inspect the dials along the edge of Polly's coffin.
He was more thorough than the other. He moved methodically down the line, in no hurry, jotting the settings in a notebook. Then he opened two big clamps at two corners of the coffin and swung the lid back, careful not to jar it.
The figure within did not move. She was wrapped like a mummy, a mummy with a snout, in soft swaddling cloth. The snout was a bulge over her mouth and nose, the mouth pads and the arrangements for breathing. There were similar protrusions over her ears. Her arms were crossed at her waist, straitjacket fashion.