“Move away from him, girl,” the big man said. “No need to hurt you too.”
But Ellen clung more tightly to Peter Lucas.
He depressed the copper strip against the terminal.
The big man was very close to him, reaching for Ellen.
The beam touched the joint of the massive elbow and the forearm dangled limply. The big man did not cry out. Peter swept the beam across the middle of him. The heavy shirt parted and thick drops hung from the parted edge. The white flesh quivered and slid and puffs of gas made a rancid stench. When the beam touched the other elbow, the gun clattered to the stone floor.
Where the puffs of pinkish gas had erupted, Peter could see into the man, see a gleam of rib, the veined substance of a lung, see an edge of the strong heart, throbbing steadily.
The big man’s mouth twisted into a smile. He said, “It looks like you might be the new—”
His eyes glazed and he went down as suddenly as though his feet had been kicked out from under him.
Peter turned in time to see the flickering silver of a thrown knife. He moved violently away from it, swept it with the beam and it continued to splash against the inside of the stone arch, to run in silver drops to the damp floor.
The girl who sang began to laugh. She stood with her throat taut, her face uplifted, her mouth a down-curved slit. The sound stopped. They went out into the night.
Peter aimed the device at the others. They lifted their hands. He made a small gesture and they followed the first two. The unconscious man on the floor was the only one left, the only one left who was alive.
Peter dragged him to the stairs, pulled him up a dozen stairs to the landing. He left him there.
“Get back,” he said. They went down again, across from the staircase. He used the beam to cut a half circle over the arch. He cut it again and again until he heard the shift of stone. The stone crashed down, choking the staircase, blocking the exit, blowing out the wicks of the oil lamps.
They found the lamps and lighted them and put them on the wooden table. The rock had covered the body of Thomas.
They sat at the table and they looked into each other’s eyes and there was no need for words, for explanations, for empty sounds. Everything that could be said was said, and when he covered her hand with his it was a pledge and a dedication stronger than anything that had happened in their lives.
They sat alone in a stone room under the dead city and it was very clear to both of them that what little remained of life would have meaning and purpose and beauty.
Chapter Four
No Exit
Lucas awoke. The air was stale and the room had a darkness so intense that he felt as though he were in an ancient tomb.
He wondered what had awakened him. He listened. He heard it again, a distant thud which sent vibrations through the stone of the floor.
He found Ellen’s flash, squinted at the intense beam. Her face, a fragile oval faintly lighted by the reflection, was like the face of a sleeping child.
He touched her shoulder and she made a warm sound, a soft murmur deep in her throat. Out of the depths of sleep she had awakened with his name on her lips.
Then the fear came. He lit the lamp that was near them. Her mouth was tight and she pushed a strand of the golden hair away from her forehead with the back of her hand.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“Blasting, I think. They know we’re down here. I shouldn’t have let those others go. They were caught and made to talk.”
The thud was louder and more rock fell from above the place where the doorway had been, dust sifting down to drift in winking motes in the flashlight beam.
“What will we do?” she said, and he could hear the quaver in her voice.
“We’re two flights below ground level, Ellen. We can cut our way out with this gimmick, if the ground is solid enough so that the tunnel won’t collapse.”
They stood up and she clung to him, touched his throat with her lips.
He said, “You should have had a nice meek worker to supervise, darling. And then after your five years you could have—”
She stopped his lips with her fingertips. “Shh, Lucas. This way is better, no matter what happens.”
With the next resounding crash, they could clearly hear the outside debris falling back to earth. He turned, focused the small device on the wall opposite where the doorway had been, the flashlight in his left hand.
The stone ran fluidly and puffed into gas. He made the cut large, and, as he had expected, a large section of the wall collapsed. When the dust of fracture cleared away, he saw that it was possible to climb over the rubble to the face of the dark earth beyond.
He held her arm as they clambered up, ducking low to get through the wide low space. He focused the device on the earth from short range. The earth melted into a liquid and ran back toward the rocks and the gases choked them.
He found that he could eliminate much of the gas by using the device in intermittent bursts, giving the liquified earth time to run down.
He angled the tunnel up at a forty-five degree slant. Once, as they were about to move into a new portion of the tunnel, the roof collapsed, a large clod striking him heavily in the shoulder, forcing him to his knees. But instinctively he had shielded the tiny device in his hand.
He estimated that in cutting up through twenty feet at a forty-five degree angle the tunnel would have to be nearly thirty feet in length and he counted his paces as he followed the cut of the beam.
When he heard a distant shout from behind, he turned and undercut the ceiling of the shaft so that it fell, blocking the tunnel.
Ellen was subdued and, he thought, remarkably well under control.
When he estimated that the distance was right, he focused the beam almost straight up, pulling the device out of the way of the liquid, then holding the flashlight in its place and looking up.
He saw a circular area no bigger than his fist where dim light seemed to filter in. He cut the tunnel rapidly ahead, recklessly allowing the liquid to run over his feet and ankles.
He made a hole up into the daylight, cut a notch for his feet, stepped up and cautiously looked out. It was dawn in the dead city, the air sharp with ozone, the sun disc edging over the far hill that was sawtoothed with the minaretted buildings of the New City.
In the distance, beyond the corner of the building they had left he could see two men standing, not looking in his direction. Fifty feet away was a jumble of small buildings falling into decay, a tangled confusion which might mean safety.
Leaning down, he said to Ellen, “This has got to be fast. I’ll jump up, pull you up and then run as fast as you can with me toward the right.”
She nodded, her eyes wide.
He wiggled up out of the hole and, as she came up onto the step, he reached down, got her wrist and pulled her up.
He heard the shouts, and his throat tightened with fear. As she got her feet under her, he saw that another group had come from the other direction and they were cut off from the tangle of buildings.
They came toward him at a dead run. No shots were fired. With deadly certainty he cut them down. More appeared. They wore the police uniform. He could see that they were hesitant and frightened, but they came on.
As they reached the place where the others had fallen, he cut them clown, feeling a sting of nausea in his throat.
From the other direction came a running group, at least fifteen men from the guard details of the Bureau and the World Administration Building.
They ran silently, but in a matter of moments they lay on the ground, calling out with fear and pain and surprise.
One of them had come within ten feet of them. He lay on his side, his clenched fists held to his mouth, and he cried like a child.