The car suddenly lurched under me, back and forth, back and forth, a rapid, violent shaking. Willy Boy was jostled out of his seat.
The pressure in my chest eased. Abruptly, the door opened.
I half-crawled, half-rolled out of the car onto the platform and began to scramble away. The only safety from Matthews’ attacks, I remembered, lay in distance. If I could get more than a stone’s throw away from Willy Boy, he couldn’t kill me, not with his mind alone.
I practically threw myself to my feet. I swayed, recovered and took a step, halted again, as a wave of dizziness came and went. The man who had been waiting on the platform still had a look of surprise on his face. Old Willy Boy wasn’t supposed to let them get away. Behind me, I could still hear the car lurching back and forth, as the man recovered and came at me.
He aimed a kick, and my body responded before my memory did. I had some skill here that I had not recalled.
My arm, fist clenched, moved in a scooping block that caught his leg and broke his balance, sending him toppling backward, rolling to the side and right off the edge of the platform. He fell onto the track, where a single large rail stood up from a narrow roadbed.
Turning, I saw Matthews being shaken from his feet within the lurching car. Booze and age had slowed his reflexes. As he struggled to rise once more he was toppled again, but this time nearer to the doors. Now he tried crawling. He was almost to them. He was partway through…
With a vicious crash the doors slammed shut on him. Their edges were padded, but they had closed hard and they remained closed, clamping him in place.
Immediately then, the car ceased its shaking. It accelerated rapidly and I heard a scream from below, where the other man had fallen. I did not look down. It had been a very final thing—the unmistakable crunching sound of the car’s impact upon a body, the abrupt termination of the scream, a certain smell…
And back, back off to my left now as I turned, I could still see Matthews’ head protruding from between the doors of the receding car, his face dark and contorted, his mouth working but no words coming out.
A moment of nausea came and went. I looked all around me. The monorail’s roadbed seemed the handiest route for flight. I jumped down upon it, far past the thing that lay unmoving beside the track, my eyes averted. Then I turned and began running in the direction opposite that which the car had taken.
Something had helped me, I knew that. What or how, though, I had no time to speculate. I wanted to put as much distance as I could between myself and that platform in the shortest time possible. I ran, my breath coming hard into my lungs, my heart pounding.
This went on for what could have been several minutes. I don’t know. Then I felt the ground vibrating beneath my feet. My first thought was that a big plane was taking off or landing somewhere nearby, masked by the surrounding structures. But it grew stronger and acquired an above-ground accompaniment that I couldn’t mistake. Another monorail car was coming toward me.
A moment later it came into view, rounding a corner up ahead. Inside, I could see the passengers, pulling emergency switches or cords to which the vehicle was not apparently responding. None of them were yet looking in my direction.
I was about to leap from the track to get out of the way when the car suddenly began braking. There was no platform in sight, but it came to a halt and the door opened. I ran forward and climbed in.
The doors snapped shut behind me and the car jerked into motion again, this time heading back in the direction from which it had come.
I grabbed hold of one of the hanging loops and stood panting. Everyone in the car turned to stare at me. I felt a crazy, lightheaded desire to laugh.
“Just a test run,” I muttered. “Getting ready for the Pope’s visit.”
They continued to stare, but shortly a platform came into sight, thronged with people. The car halted there in good order and the doors opened.
I stepped out and passed among the others, running a hand through my hair, adjusting my apparel, brushing away dust, before I gave way to tremblings. I had a strong desire then to fling myself onto a nearby bench. But a death-trap had just been sprung, wheel turning upon wheel, rods dancing, delicate balances shifting, all to crush me; and someone or something had reached out and realigned a gear-setting, jogged a balance, reset the final closure in my favor, burying all discomfort beneath the triumph of survival. It would be discourteous to ruin all that by collapsing now. I kept going.
Chapter 7
got into the first of a line of cabs waiting outside the terminal, and I told the driver to take me into town. I half-expected to hear sirens at any moment, and I sat tensely much of the way in, staring out of the window, at other cars, at trees, at buildings, at signs along the road. The sun was working its way into the west, but there was still plenty of daylight remaining. I had to get out of town, had to put a lot of distance between me and this part of the country in a hurry, had to find a place to hole up, think this thing through, formulate a plan. Couldn’t think now, though; something could happen at any minute. Had to keep my wits handy. I was certain that this cab ride would eventually be traced, which was why I was heading into town. I hoped to confuse the trail.
I had her drop me on a busy, random, downtown corner. I walked until I came to a bus stop. I stood there watching people and pigeons. I got into the first bus that came along and rode it for a long while in a roughly northwesterly direction. When it took a turn to the south I got off at the next stop and began walking again, to the north and the west.
I rode two more buses and walked a lot before I reached a suburban area. Then I tried sticking out my thumb to passing motorists. I had a feeling of having done it before, years earlier, back when I was in school. Yes, I’d wanted to go home for the semester break my first year, and I didn’t want to spend the money. I remembered that it had gotten pretty cold and windy between rides. Smile a little. That sometimes seems to help…
…A number of required general courses and my Computer Science major requirement. I’d done pretty well. It had been a bit lonely at first, but I’d a few friends now—like Sammy, who used to call me “Mumbles”—and I was anxious to get home and talk about everything. Mumbles? I hadn’t thought of that nickname in years. Sammy was in my Comp. Sci. section, a little dark-eyed guy with a warped sense of humor. I’d had a habit of muttering when I was working with computers. Actually, I used to talk to them—give them names and all. He never knew that. He just heard me at it and started calling me Mumbles. We became pretty good friends as time went on. I wondered where he was now? Be nice to call him someday and see whether he remembers me…
Actually, I hadn’t started talking to the machines in college. It went back to my parents’ business when I was much younger. I used to play games with the computers. I started talking to them then, I guess. Outside of that one experience when I was about seven, though, I hadn’t gotten much in the way of personal responses from them. But I’d always had a feeling that if I tried hard enough—
A car slowed down. An older man in a lightweight business suit pulled over.
“How far you going?” he asked.
“Pittsburgh, actually,” I said.
“Well, I’m just going home to Norristown,” he said, “but I can drop you at the Turnpike, if you like.”
“Great.”
I got in.
He didn’t seem to be looking for conversation, so I leaned back and tried to continue my reverie. It had been broken, though, and nothing new seemed willing to surface. All right. I no longer felt as harried as I had in the cab. Maybe I could think a little more clearly now about my present situation. Then I might be able to initiate some action of my own instead of merely running, reacting.