Laney didn't answer for a long time. Matt didn't press her. Finally she said, "Matt, there's something I'd better tell you."
Again he didn't press her.
"As soon as we get through the Wall--if we get through the wall--I'm going to the vivarium. You don't have to come along, but I've got to go."
"Won't that be the first thing they expect?"
"Probably."
"Then we'd better not. Let's hunt down Polly first. We ought to keep the noise down as long as possible. Once your Sons of Earth come charging out, assuming we get that far, those doors will drop right away. In fact, if we--" At this point he glanced over at her and stopped.
Laney was looking straight ahead. Her face was hard and masklike. So was her voice, deliberately hard.
"That's why I'm telling you now. I'm going to the vivarium. That's why I'm here." She seemed about to break off ; then she went on in a rush. "That's why I'm here, because the Sons of Earth are in there and I'm one of them. Not because you need me, but because they need me. I need you to get me in. Otherwise I'd be trying it alone."
"I see," said Matt. He was about to go on, but-no, he couldn't say that. He'd leave himself wide open to be slapped down, and in this, mood Laney would do it. Instead he said, "What about Polly's big secret?"
"Millard Parlette knows it too. He seemed eager to talk. If he isn't, Lydia will get it out of him anyway."
"So you don't need Polly anymore."
"That's right. And if you've got the idea I'm here for love of you, you can forget that too. I'm not trying to be boorish, Matt, or cruel either. I just want you to know where you stand. Otherwise you'll be counting on me to make intelligent decisions.
"You're transportation, Matt. We need each other to get in. Once we're inside I'll go straight to the vivarium, and you can do, whatever you have to to stay alive."
For some time they walked in silence, arm in arm, a crew couple strolling home along a distance too short to use a car. Other crew appeared from time to time. Mostly they walked quickly, bent against the wind, and they ignored Matt and Laney and each other in their hurry to get out of the cold. Once a good dozen men and women, varying from merely high to falling-down drunk, poured into the street ahead of them, marched four houses down, and began banging on the door. Matt and Laney watched as the door opened and the partygoers poured in. And suddenly Matt felt intensely lonely. He gripped Laney's arm a little tighter, and they went on.
The brick walk swung away to the left, and they followed it around. Now there were no houses on the right. Just trees, high and thick, screening the Hospital from view. The barren defense perimeter must be just the other side.
"Now what?"
"We follow it," said Laney. "I think we ought to go in along the trapped forest."
She waited for him to ask why, but he didn't. She told him anyway. "The Sons of Earth have been planning an attack on the Hospital for decades. We've been waiting for the right time, and it never came. One of the things we planned was to go in along the edge of the trapped woods. The woods themselves are so full of clever widgets that the guards on that side probably never notice it."
"You hope."
"You bet."
"What do you know about the Hospital defenses?"
"Well, you ran into most of them last night". A good thing you had the sense to stay out of the trapped woods, There are two electric-eye rings. You saw the wall; guns and spotlights all over it. Castro probably put extra men on it tonight, and we can bet he closed off the access road. Usually they leave it open, but it's easy enough to close the electric-eye ring and shut off power to the gate."
"And inside the wall?"
"Guards. Matt, we've been assuming that all these men will be badly trained. The Hospital's never been under direct attack. We're outnumbered--"
"Yes, we are, aren't we?"
"But we'll be dealing with guards who don't really believe there's anything to guard against."
"What about traps? We can't fight machinery."
"Practically none in the Hospital--at least, not usually. There are things Castro could set up in an emergency. In the slowboats there could be anything; we just don't know. But we won't be going near the slowboats. Then there are those damn vibrating doors."
Matt nodded, a swift vicious jerk of his chin.
"Those doors surprised us all. We should have been warned."
"By who?"
"Never you mind. Stop a second... Right. This is the place. We go through here."
"Laney.
"Yah? There are pressure wires in the dirt. Step on the roots only as we go through."
"What happened Friday night?"
She turned back to look at his face, trying to read what he meant. She said, "I happened to think you needed me."
Matt nodded slowly. "You happened to think right."
"Okay. That's what I'm there for. The Sons of Earth are mostly, men. Sometimes they get horribly depressed. Always planning, never actually fighting, never winning when they do, and always wondering if they aren't doing just what Implementation wants. They can't even brag except to each other, because not all the colonists are on our side. Then, sometimes, I can make them feel like men again."
"I think I need my ego boosted about now."
"What you need right now, brother, is a good scare. Just keep thinking scared, and you'll be all right. We go through here--"
"I just thought of something."
"What's that?"
"If we'd stayed here this afternoon, we'd have saved all this trouble."
"Will you come on? And don't forget to step on the roots".
CHAPTER 10
PARLETTE'S HAND
DARKNESS COVERED most of Mount Lookitthat.
The crew never knew it. The lights of Alpha Plateau burned undimmed. Even in the houses along the Alpha-Beta cliff, with a view across Beta Plateau toward the distant, clustered town lights of Gamma and Iota, tonight that view was blanked by fog; and who was to know that the clustered lights were dark?
In the colonist regions there was fear and fury, but it couldn't touch Alpha Plateau.
No real danger threatened. On Gamma and Iota there were no hospitals where patients might die in dark operating theaters. No cars would crash without street lights. Spoiling meat in butcher shop freezers would cause no famine; there were the fruit and nut forests, the crops, the herds.
But there was fear and fury. Was something wrong, up there where all power originated? Or was it a prank, a punishment, an experiment-some deliberate act of Implementation?
You couldn't travel without lights. Most people stayed where they were, wherever they were. They bedded down where they could; for colonists it was near bedtime anyway. And they waited for the lights to come back.
They would give no trouble, Jesus Pietro thought. If danger came tonight, it would not come from down there.
Equally certain, the Sons of Earth would attack, though they only numbered five. Harry Kane would not leave most of his men to die. Whatever he could do, he would do it, regardless of risk.
And Major Chin's fugitive had escaped, was loose two miles from the Hospital, wearing a police uniform. And because he had escaped, because he was alone, because no man had seen him clearly--it had to be Matt Keller.
Five dossiers to match five, fugitives. Harry Kane and Jayhawk Hood: These were old friends, the most dangerous of the Sons of Earth. Elaine Mattson and Lydia Hancock and Matthew Keller: These he had come to know by heart during the long hours following the break this afternoon. He could have recognized any of them a mile away or told them their life stories.