“Gee, I didn’t know you were a telepath.” Dar flopped down on a very hard bunk.
“I didn’t know you were,” Sam retorted. “Now that we’ve established that, shall we try to make sense out of the situation?”
“What’s to make sense of?” Dar shrugged. “Somebody’s spreading nasty lies about us. Probably Rat-Face. Does that make any more sense out of it?”
“Some,” Sam insisted. “That gets him official help in trying to get us locked up, which keeps the resignation from getting to BOA, while he waits for Bhelabher to change his mind.”
Dar snorted. “Bhelabher? He’ll wait for a century. The Honorable won’t change his mind as long as Shacklar’s right next to him.”
Sam shrugged. “So Rat-Face is doomed to failure. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know that—so he still gets in our way.”
“So the telepath who just landed on the planet, and for whom the police are searching, is supposed to be one of us, huh?”
Sam nodded. “Looks like it—which explains why we’ve seen so many of their shoestring police.”
“Well, what they don’t get done, the House of Houses does.” Dar scratched behind his ear. “It’s almost as though this planet has two governments, one inside the cities, and one out.”
“Somewhat like our noble interstellar government,” Sam said acidly. “There’s the official government, and there’s the LORDS.”
“Can’t stand long, can it?” Dar stretched. “Well! That leaves us two real simple problems—one, to get out of here; and two, clearing our names.”
“I don’t know what to do about two,” Sam said, “but about one …” She stared off into space, eyes losing focus.
Dar frowned. What was she doing? He was just about to ask, when Sam turned and smiled brightly. “Nope, don’t hear a murmur. Now, let’s see …” She stood up, went to the door, knelt down, reached around to the front, and pressed her ear against the back of the lock. “One nice thing about a low-metal planet is the lack of modern devices.”
“What’re you …?”
“Sh!” she hissed fiercely, and Dar shut up. She punched buttons and turned a dial for a few minutes, muttering, “No … no, the other way … there, that’s right … there … there!” Triumphantly, she shoved on the door and, slowly, with a soft rumble, it slid to the side. She stepped out.
Dar stared.
Then he darted out after her. “Where did you …?”
“Whisper,” she hissed. “Sound carries in these tunnels!”
Dar put his lips against her ear and murmured, “Where did you learn to do that?”
“You pick up a lot in a government office,” she whispered back, “especially if you want a look at your own personnel file. Come on, let’s go!”
She led off, padding silently down the dark tunnel. Dar could remember that they had to turn left as they came out of the cell, but after that, he was as lost as Handsel and Gretel without the bread crumbs. But Sam wasn’t in doubt for a moment; she paused at the corridor’s end (he bumped into her. It was so dark, that was the only way he knew she’d stopped), listened a moment, then darted to her right, hauling Dar after her. They went on for what seemed a half-hour, but must’ve been all of five minutes; then he bumped into her again. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Sh!” she answered; then, “All clear. Come on.”
Halfway down the next midnight passage, she stopped suddenly. Then she was pushing him back frantically, and shoving him into a cross-corridor. They went down it for a few steps; then she yanked on his arm, stopping him, and froze. He could tell she froze because he could see her in the first ragtag of light that hit the far wall from a handlamp. Dar froze too, plastered against the wall like a tapestry.
“Whut’ja expect?” A lean, scarred man in faded coveralls, hands handcuffed behind him, slouched forward in front of two toughs in business tunics. “A’ter all, he wint for me with a knife!”
“Y’ c’n tell Sard about it in th’ mornin’.” One tough prodded him. “Git along, now.”
The scarred one snarled, and they passed across the end of the corridor. The reflection from the handlamp wavered over the wall to Sam’s right, and was gone. Dar held his breath till their footsteps had faded away, then let it out in a gusty sigh. Instantly, Sam’s finger pressed over his lips, then was gone, and she was tugging on his hand again.
They turned right at the end of the corridor, and went on.
So it went, for what seemed the better part of a day. Dar was amazed at the sharpness of her hearing. Twice she pushed them into hiding in time for someone passing by to miss them, when Dar hadn’t heard the faintest sound until after they were in hiding. And she never led him past an occupied cell. How could she figure out where to go?
Then, finally, she dropped down to kneel; Dar almost fell over her, but he groped back just in time. He wondered what she was doing until he heard a very faint click. Then, slowly, a slit of light appeared, and widened into a narrow rectangle that widened to a door. They stepped out into a starlit night; the door slid quietly shut behind that.
“How did you manage that?” Dar whispered. “The Labyrinth couldn’t’ve been worse!”
“This was nothing,” she snorted. “You should’ve seen the government building where I used to work. Come on!”
She set out at a long, catlike stride that Dar had to stretch to keep up with. They’d come out of the side of a hillock; as they rounded it, they saw nothing but a level plain, broken by the occasional outcrop, stretching away into the distance. At its limit, a feeble gleam marked Haskerville.
“Just like the early days,” Dar sighed, “when the Wolmen still thought we were enemies and I had to be ready to hide, fast, whenever I went out trading!”
“Oh.” Sam eyed him sideways. “You’ve been on the run in open country before?”
Dar nodded. “The main principle is to stay away from the roads, and stay near whatever cover there is. And, of course, if something moves, you hit the ground fast, and worry later about whether it’s dangerous or good to eat. Here, I’ll show you some of the fine points.”
He moved off through the long grass without a breath of sound. Sam shook her head and sighed, then went after him.
As the sky lightened with false dawn, Dar started to sneak across the last yard that separated dirt track from paved Haskerville street.
Sam caught his shoulder. “Act nonchantly, gnappie. You go sneaking around like that, the first citizen who spots you’ll blow the whistle.”
Dar turned back. “So who’s going to be awake to see me?”
“Agreed. So why sneak?”
Dar sighed and gave up.
So they strolled into town like a couple of late-night revelers returning to their hotel rooms.
“Any idea where we’re going?” Dar asked. “With the authorities and the Underground after us, we’re kinda short on hideouts.”
“A point,” Sam admitted. “In this town, I wouldn’t even trust a cheap hotel… What’s that?”
Dar stopped, turning his head from side to side, and saw nothing. He strained his ears, but all he heard was a hiss of wind.
“Over there.” Sam pointed towards a shopfront a block to her left. “Come on.”
She set off toward the shop. After the episode in the jail-tunnels, Dar wasn’t about to dispute her hearing. He followed.
They had come into a shabbier section of Haskerville. The houses were big, but they were simple frame dwellings—no half-timbering and stucco—and looked somewhat infirm. Most of them were overdue for a coat of paint—the older part of town, at a guess, built before the planet had enough surplus to worry about aesthetics in architecture.
Someone came out of the shopfront they were heading for, and turned down the street away from them. He/she was bald, and wore a gray, loose coverall.
“I think,” Sam said, with a catch to her voice, “we’ve struck paydirt.”
Dar could see her point—and now he could hear the trace she’d picked up: a low mutter of conversation, underscored by the ripple of a string instrument and a flute.