"S-s-sir," the man mumbled, pressing an electrokey against the slot. The door slid back. Bailey stepped through and was in a dark passage. Dim lights went up at his first step. He tried doors; the third opened on a white-walled room where half a dozen stewards lounged around a long table.
"As you were," Bailey barked as the startled servants scrambled to their feet. "Remain in this room until told to leave. You-" He stabbed with his finger at a thick-shouldered, frowning fellow with red pips on his collar who appeared to be about to speak. "Lead the way to the prefect's office!"
"Me?" the man gaped, taken aback.
"You!" Bailey strode across to the door, flicked it open. The big man lumbered past him. Bailey stepped out behind him, looked both ways; the corridor was empty. He struck once with the edge of his hand, caught the man as he collapsed. Swiftly, he checked the man's pockets, turned up a flat card to which half a dozen keys were attached. He covered the distance to the next intersection at a run, slowed to a walk rounding the corner. Two men came toward him, one an indignant-looking chap with the waxed-and-polished look Bailey had come to expect of Crusters past their first youth. The other was a small, quick-eyed man, in plain dark clothes, as out of place here in Blue Level territory as a cockroach on a silver tray. As he started past, the latter turned and put out a restraining hand. Bailey spoke first:
"What the hell are you doing standing here gossiping?" he snapped. "We're here on business, remember? What are you doing about the dead man in the cross-corridor?" He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction from which he had come, turned his attention to the other man, who gaped; his mouth open.
"Sir, I'll have to insist that you go along now to the lift foyer," Bailey said briskly. "If you please, sir." He made an impatient motion. The man made a gobbling noise and set off at a rapid walk. Bailey followed without looking back.
They passed half a dozen grim-faced plainclothes Peacemen; none gave them more than a glance. As they came into the circular silver-and-rose chamber where Bailey had first arrived, he halted his companion with a word. Clusters of uniformed Peacemen were grouped here and there throughout the room. Bailey pointed to a shoulder-tabbed officer.
"Tell the adjutant the snarfitar is bonfrect," he ordered. As the Cruster stiffened and opened his mouth to protest, Bailey forestalled him: "We're counting on you, sir. You and I between us will make this pinch. And whatever you do, don't look at me."
"The… snarfitar is bonfrect?" the man queried.
"Exactly; and the doolfroon have taken over the ignort."
"Doolfroon's taken over the ignort." The man hurried away, mumbling. Bailey watched the officer turn as the messenger came up; he waited until the sound of raised voices told him the message had been delivered. Then he strolled behind a group of Peacemen as they stared toward the disturbance, tried keys until one opened the lift doors, stepped into a silver-filigree decorated, white leather upholstered car, and punched the top key.
26
Bailey changed cars three times at intermediate levels, each time under the eyes of guards alert for a man descending, before he reached the tower suite. He stepped out into a mirror-walled ante-room rugged in soft gray. A wide white and silver door stood at one side. It opened at a touch. Across the room a square-faced man with carelessly combed black hair looked up with a faintly puzzled expression.
"Are you Micael Drans?" Bailey heard himself ask.
"Yes…"
Bailey made a smooth motion and the gun he had bought in another lifetime, six hours earlier, was in his hand. He raised it to point squarely at the forehead of the man behind the desk. His finger moved to the firing stud A side door burst open. A girl stood there, wide-eyed, white-gowned, elegant. In a single step she was between them, shielding the victim with her slim body. A gun in her jeweled hand was aimed at Bailey's chest.
"No, William Bailey!" she cried. "Drans mustn't die!"
27
"I remember you," Bailey said. His voice sounded blurred in his ears; the room, the girl, the man sitting rigid behind the desk had taken on a dream-like quality. "You're the girl who helped me. I never learned your name."
"Throw the gun away, William," she said urgently.
Bailey trembled, sick with the hunger of his need to shoot, restrained by the impossibility of killing the girl. "I can't," he groaned. "I have to kill him!"
"Why?" the girl demanded.
"The voice," he said, remembering. "In the Euthanasia Center, it told me how to control my circulation to keep the drug from paralyzing my heart, how to make my legs work enough to carry me out through the service door. It told me to come here, shoot Micael Drans! I have to kill him! Stand aside! I'll kill you if I have to!"
"William," the girl's voice was low, urgent. "Micael Drans is more important than you can dream-than even he dreams." She spoke over her shoulder to the waiting and watching man. "Micael-something very important has happened within the last few hours." It was a statement, not a question. Drans nodded slowly. "Yes." He seemed calm, merely puzzled.
"A message," the girl said. "A message from very far away."
A look of incredulity came over Drans' face. "How could you know of that, Aliea?"
"The message is genuine," the girl said in an intense voice. "Believe it, Micael!" Bailey listened, feeling the sweat trickling down the side of his face. His heart thudded dully.
"I think I understand part of it, William," the girl went on. "You received a part-but I received the rest! You knew what-and I knew why. I made my way here-just as you did. I didn't understand, then-but now I do! And you must, too!"
"I have to kill him-"
"I can shoot first, William," she said steadily. "You're confused, under terrible stress. I'm not. You must try to understand. Perhaps…" She broke off. "William, close your eyes. Concentrate. Let me try to reach you…!"
Like an automaton, he followed instructions. Blackness. Swirling light. Out of the darkness, a shape that hovered, a complex structure of light that was not light, a structure incomplete, needing him to complete it. He moved toward it, sensing how the ragged surfaces of his own being reached out to meet and merge with its opposite Light blossomed like a sudden dawn. All barriers fell. Her mind lay open to him.
Now come, William, her voice spoke in his brain. I'll lead you… He followed along a dark path that plunged down, down, through terrible emptiness…
And emerged into-somewhere. He was aware of the compound ego-matrix that was himself, Bailey/Aliea; saw all the foreshortened perspective of his narrow life, her pinched, love-starved existence. And saw the presence that had reached out, touched him/her. And abruptly, he/she was that other presence.
28
He lay in darkness, suffering. Not the mere physical pain of the wasted, ancient body; that was nothing. But the ceaseless, relentless pain of the knowledge of failure, the bitterness of vain regret for the irretrievable blunder of long ago.
Then, out of despair, a concept born of anguish; the long struggle, probing back down along the closed corridor along which he had come, searching, searching; and at last the first hint of success, the renewed striving, the moment of contact with the feeble, flickering life-mote that glowed so faint and far away:
WILLIAM BAILEY! LISTEN TO ME! YOU MUST NOT DIE! THERE IS THAT WHICH MUST BE DONE, AND ONLY YOU CAN DO IT! LISTEN: THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST DO…"
The girl still stood, aiming the weapon at his heart. Tears ran down her face, but the gun did not waver.
"It was the voice," Bailey said. "You and I were… linked. We… touched him, were him. He's the one who made me live, sent me here. Who was he? What was he?"