"I am a human being. I am the son of a species that has always been one with the rhythm of Nature as decreed by God. Countless generations from the beginning of the species have enjoyed the slow unfolding of the seasons, a phenomenon that they took for granted though it was one of God's many gifts. But the New Era.., the New Era! ... they did away with the seasons, man! They've ruined them, shrunk them!
"Spring is an explosion of green, come and gone in a few days! Summer ... summer is a hot flash! Too many summers, I'll get only the searing days and none of the cool! Autumn doesn't slowly change into its beautiful colors! It doesn't slip into one color after the other like a woman trying out clothes! It's green one day and a burst of fully realized colors the next and then it's all dead, dead! And you may miss the snow, God's blanket, entirely!"
"That's true," Caird said. "On the other hand, the racing-by of the seasons can be exhilarating, and think how many more seasons you get to see than if you lived like our ancestors did. There's always something gained when you give up something and vice versa."
"No," Gril said, shaking his head violently, "I want it as God said it should be. I will not ..
Caird did not hear what else he said. He rose swiftly, staring past Gril's shoulder at the patrol car that had appeared from around the corner of the building on the street by the canal. It would be past the underground access tube at' the northwest corner of the park long before he could get to it. He was cut off.
Gril turned his head, looked once, and said, "Perhaps they are headed elsewhere." He sounded calm.
There was another access tube at the northeast corner of the park. He must not run now, though. Wait and see if the car went on.
It was going fast, its headlights spearing the dim light and bouncing off the raindrops. Several feet from the junction of Fifth Avenue and Washington Square North, however, it slowed and then it came to a stop.
Gril had quit talking for a moment. Now. seeing the car, he said, "Our destiny is here." He closed his eyes, and his lips moved.
"Yours, maybe. Not mine," Caird said.
Gril opened his eyes just as the car doors opened. The clouds also opened up, the rain coming down as if it were ambitious to become Niagara Falls. It bent the leaves above the two and dumped a cascade on them. They were soaked and chilled, though the rain was only partly responsible for the coldness.
Two men and a woman got out of the vehicle. The driver came around the front of the car, revealing the green-and-brown uniform in the headlights. His belt held a holster, from which stuck the butt of a gun.
The woman screamed something and ran toward Gril and Caird. The two organics shouted after her. Caird thought that he heard, "Stop!" Lightning struck immediately thereafter, seeming so close that Caird thought that a nearby tree must have been hit. The flash showed him Ruth Zog Dinsdale, his no ... Isharashvili's wife. Her face was distorted; her screeching cut through the rumble of thunder.
Her block building was across the canal almost directly opposite the Tao Towers. He had been reckless to walk so boldly down the street in front of the building. Since he knew that she might look out her window and see him, he should have gone to the back street. But the probability of her seeing him had been low, and he had not been himself. Zurvan had been in no shape to think of such details.
He turned and ran south. Flight toward the access tube he had planned to take was too dangerous. He could be intercepted too easily. There was another tube located at the corner of La Guardia Place and Washington Square South.
Gril called, "Good luck, man!" and said something in an unintelligible language. A Yiddish blessing?
"I need it!" Caird said, and he ran.
Chapter 31
He zigzagged, trying to keep trees between him and his pursuer. A glance behind during a lightning flash had shown his wife standing stilland one organic running after him. Gril was gone. He probably had just walked away. Another glance in the dimness told him that the driver had gone back to the car. Outlined against the streetlight, which had just 'come on, the car was moving eastward toward Washington Square East. Its driver was following organic procedures. While one man chased the fugitive, the other would drive the car to head the fugitive off.
Caird thought that he could get to the tube before the car did. He also had a good head start on the other organic. But he could not outrun the beam from a gun. By the time that he reached the tube, however, he had not been shot at. Or, if he had been, he was not aware of it.
The car was sixty feet away when Caird got to the tube. The man on foot was about a hundred feet back. Caird went around the tube to the side by the street, Washington Square South. The entrance was oblong; the interior, half-lit by the streetlights. He put his hand on a plaque on the back wall six inches above his head. This was a globe with superimposed letters, MSUTS (Manhattan State Underground Transporta tion System). He pressed the M and then the T The seemingly immovable plaque responded to his hand on its lower edge, swinging up to the left. He reached within the exposed recess and felt the two buttons there. Monday's code was left button, one short press, right button, one long press, one short press. He was fortunate that Isharashvili, as a Central Park ranger, knew the code and that enough of the ranger was still in him to remember that.
Having released the locking mechanism on the personhole cover, he bent down, lifted the handle inset in its middle, and pulled. The cover came up, but only because he was heavy enough to register as an adult on the security sensor plate around it.
Light had come on in the tube and from the hole as he had raised the lid. Below the hole was an irradiated plastic ladder inside a plastic framework. He let himself down, stopped, reached up, and pulled the cover down with the handle on its underside. It came down easily, restrained by a hydraulic mechanism from falling. Just before the lid closed, Caird saw the organic's feet. A hoarse voice said, "Stop in the name of the law!"
"Whose law?" Caird muttered.
His pursuers were organics, but they were also immers. There had not been time for them to go to a precinct station and withdraw charged-particle beam weapons. These two must have been in the neighborhood or close to it, and they must have been looking for him. They were lucky-unlucky for him-to be the nearest to Ruth Dinsdale when she had called in. They had brought out the illegal weapons, their own property, from a hidden place in the car, and they meant to use them.
Caird went down the ladder for thirty feet before stepping off onto the rubbery plastic walkway. It extended east and west as far as he could see, which was not more than a hundred feet either way. Whichever way he went, the lights would travel with him and darkness would follow and precede him.
The walkway was bounded on one side by a thick plastic wall and on the other by a guardrail. Beyond it were two goods transportation belts, each fifteen feet wide. At the moment, they were not moving. Beyond them, against the wall, were two huge pipes. One was a water main; the other was for sewage.
Because he was both an organic and an immer, Caird had studied the systems. Every three hundred feet the rock wall bore tunnel and belt identification signs and diagrams of the local system. By each was a communication strip. These could also be used to monitor the tunnel. If the men after him took time to call in to an immer at the monitor control center, they could check with the monitor through the tunnel strips. The monitor could tell them exactly where their quarry was.
He did not know if the immers had anybody at the control center. He could not take the chance they might not have one. He had to get to a place where there were no monitors. Though he knew of such a place and was running toward it, he would encounter dangers there of which his pursuers would be only one.