The tank brightened to a warm yellow.
She turned to locate the rat, choked, and dropped the glow lamp. It fell to the floor, making shadows dance on the walls, was still, unbroken.
"Hello," said Relemar the Hunter.
He walked slowly forward from the rear of the room.
He was smiling. Or trying to.
This time, she did not suppress the scream
It was ninety-four minutes before dawn of that day.
David stood in the center of the book shop, looking around at the hundreds of cartridges. Now and then, he withdrew one from its rack and looked at the tide and author. If he was intrigued, he would put the earpiece in his good right ear and touch the tab for a summation of the volume and a few critical comments. If it sounded good, he dropped it in the plastic bag he carried and went on, looking for something to balance what he had just selected. If he had just taken a cartridge of poetry, he made certain his next acquisition was a novel of sheer adventure. Then something in the nonfiction line. Then something humorous. Then a heavy novel.
He was delighted. Here was all the art he wanted-for nothing. That had always been the problem with art before: it had cost. And he had not had enough to spend on it. No matter how much he earned or what he scrimped from other necessities, he could not buy all he wanted. Now the cartridges were free for the taking. Who was to stop him? Certainly not the owner. The naoli had finished him off long ago, had disposed of his corpse in a sanitary fashion. The naoli were quite fastidious.
When he had gathered all he needed-which was all that interested him-he slung the heavy bag over his shoulder and went into the street. He moved quickly to the alleys and the walkways between the building mazes which were ideal for secretive travel now that their lights did not burn and their police monitor eyes did not see. He wound through the great city, breathing in the cold air, enjoying the specters of his frosted breath, until he arrived at the train yards.
Bluebolt stood on the side track where he had left her, long and shiny, as magnificent as ever. He stood in the yard, admiring her lines and speculating dreamily on the journey ahead. What better way to cross the continent? A luxurious form of travel he could never have afforded. Bluebolt was a private train-or had been before the war — and would have cost several million to construct.
He climbed up the stairs, palmed open the door into the engineer's cabin. The lights of the computer board winked softly blue and green. He took his books through into the second car, which was the living room, deposited the bag of them beside a luxurious simulated leather chair. Stacked other places in the room were the other provisions he would need.
He nodded with approval, smiled, and went back to the cabin, whistling. He slipped into the comfortable command chair before the thick plexiglas window and took a moment to enjoy the silent power of the great engine.
If the handiwork of man had all been as smooth and pure as, the Bluebolt, Earth never would have fallen. She would not have deserved to fall. He looked out the window again at the dark yard and the glimpses of the captured city that he could see. It all looked shabby and corrupt next to Bluebolt. It was the creation of Man the Capitalist.
Capitalism was fine. As long as man used it. But when the system had become so big that it guided the destiny of society rather than society regulating it, then capitalism had become dangerous. The interest of capitalism rampant had led to the serious air pollution crisis decades ago. It had led to the population crisis too (more babies meant more buyers). It had ground out plastic, imitation streets and cities like this one. In the early days of war, no attempt had been made to find out why the naoli wanted to fight, because a war used products. Selling products was the name of the game. When it was obvious the naoli were winning, there was too much hatred to start the talks that should have been initiated immediately. So the senseless war had been waged-and lost deservedly.
Bluebolt was a capitalist's toy, which proved the system could produce quality. But the man who had built this had been a rare bird indeed: in command of his money instead of a servant to it.
David swung the programming board around and looked at the typewriter keys. He thought for a moment, then punched out:
CALIFORNIA. SHORTEST ROUTE.
The computer gurgled, buzzed, and chimed three times. It said: "Destination acknowledged. Route established. Proceeding on command."
He typed:
PROCEED.
Laboriously, the Bluebolt built speed, pulling out of the darkened yards, faster and faster, until it was barreling past the empty city, moving quietly on polished rails and its almost frictionless, rollamite processed wheels. David fought an urge to pull the silver cord of the train whistle. He wished to make as unspectacular a departure as possible.
Eventually, he was torn between two desires. He wanted to watch the landscape flash by, wanted to see the dawn from his command chair. Yet he felt like some time with a cartridge. At last, he went back and brought an adventure novel up front to plug in his ear. The sound and the visions came-the sound deep in his ear, the visions behind his eyeballs. Whenever he could no longer contain himself, he stopped the sound and the pictures and watched the Bluebolt gobble rails toward California and the Haven
It was forty-nine minutes before dawn of that day.
Soon, the Hunter would rise.
And dress in the hides of a hunter.
And make his prayers and set forth to do vengeance
Chapter Six
Hulann's overmind had to wait only a few moments for his organic brain to come to life. When he was fully alert once again, he was immediately conscious of the cold. For a naoli to feel such a sharp sensation of temperature, the situation had to be drastic.
As it was.
He had been flung free of the shuttlecraft, slid along the snowy mountainside, scraping even his tough naoli hide raw in places. He came to a rest in a deep drift sloping into a row of seven, thick-boled pines. He was looking out of a depression in the drift now, up the well his body had made by falling in. His body heat had melted the crystals, and the severe cold had re-frozen them. He was coated in ice that kept melting the re-freezing. The bitterness was worst on the torn patches where he would have bled if the blood had not been frozen solid.
Even a naoli could not survive for long in a situation such as this. He pushed up, stumbled erect, and wearily slapped and kicked his way free of the drift. He stood in the early morning air, half an hour before dawn, scanning the darkness for a sign of Leo or the shuttle.
He could see neither.
Indeed, much of what he could see was blurred by the great clouds of ghostly vapor spouting from his four nostrils, especially from the lower, secondary set which, when operative, did the greatest amount of respiratory work. He was annoyed at this, yet he could not close the secondary nostrils without operating on a semi-dormant level. And he presently needed to move as fast and wisely as possible.
He looked up the side of the mountain, but he could not see the top. A combination of darkness and shifting snow kept his range of vision down to thirty feet. How far down the slope had they come, then? At what point had he been thrown free of the shuttlecraft? Had the car gone to the bottom of the mountain, or had it too come to a stop only part way down? Was Leo alive-or dead? Or dying?
He felt a rising panic at the last few questions. If Leo were dead or dying, then what purpose was there? If Leo were dead or beyond Hulann's help, then this entire flight, and the crime which had given it genesis, was without meaning. He might just as well turn himself in. The point was lost. The symbol had evaporated.