“Ray!” Blaine shouted. “What kind of a ghost is it?”
There was no answer. The loudspeaker was silent, and he was alone in the grey room.
14
322 West 19th Street, the address Ray Melhill had given him, was a small, dilapidated brownstone near the docks. Blaine climbed the steps and pressed the ground-floor buzzer marked Edward J. Franchel Enterprises. The door was opened by a large, balding man in shirtsleeves.
“Mr. Franchel?” Blaine asked.
“That's me,” the balding man said, with a resolutely cheerful smile. “Right this way, sir.”
He led Blaine into an apartment pungent with the odor of boiled cabbage. The front half of the apartment was arranged as an office, with a paper-cluttered desk, a dusty filing cabinet and several stiff-backed chairs. Past it, Blaine could see a gloomy living room. From the inner recesses of the apartment a solido was blaring out a daytime show.
“Please excuse the appearance,” Franchel said, motioning Blaine to a chair. “I'm moving into a regular office uptown just as soon as I find time. The orders have been coming in so fast and furious… Now sir, what can I do for you?”
“I'm looking for a job,” Blaine said.
“Hell,” said Franchel, “I thought you were a customer.” He turned in the direction of the blaring solido and shouted, “Alice, will you turn that goddamned thing down?” He waited until the volume had receded somewhat, then turned back to Blaine. “Brother, if business doesn't pick up soon I'm going back to running a suicide booth at Coney. A job, huh?”
“That's right. Ray Melhill told me to try you.”
Franchel's expression brightened. “How's Ray doing?”
“He's dead.”
“Shame,” Franchel said. “He was a good lad, though always a bit wild. He worked for me a couple times when the space pilots were on strike. Want a drink?”
Blaine nodded, Franchel went to the filing cabinet and removed a bottle of rye whiskey labelled “Moonjuice.” He found two shot glasses and filled them with a practiced flourish.
“Here's to old Ray,” Franchel said. “I suppose he got himself boxed?”
“Boxed and crated,” Blaine said. “I just spoke to him at the Spiritual Switchboard.”
“Then he made Threshold!” Franchel said admiringly. “Friend, we should only have his luck. So you want a job? Well, maybe I can fix it. Stand up.”
He walked around Blaine, touched his biceps and ran a hand over his ridged shoulder muscles. He stood in front of Blaine, nodding to himself with downcast eyes, then feinted a quick blow at his face. Blaine's right hand came up instantly, in time to block the punch.
“Good build, good reflexes,” Franchel said. “I think you'll do. Know anything about weapons?”
“Not much,” Blaine said, wondering what kind of job he was getting into. “Just — ah — antiques. Garands, Winchesters, Colts.”
“No kidding?” Franchel said. “You know, I always wanted to collect antique recoil arms. But no projectile or beam weapons are allowed on this hunt. What else you got?”
“I can handle a rifle with bayonet,” Blaine said, thinking how his basic-training sergeant would have roared at that overstatement.
“You can? Lunges and parries and all? Well I'll be damned, I thought bayonetry was a lost art. You’re the first I've seen in fifteen years. Friend, you’re hired.”
Franchel went to his desk, scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to Blaine.
“You go to that address tomorrow for your briefing. You'll be paid standard hunter's salary, two hundred dollars plus fifty a day for every working day. Have you got your own weapons and equipment? Well, I'll pick the stuff up for you, but it's deducted from your pay. And I take ten percent off the top. OK?”
“Sure,” Blaine said. “Could you explain a little more about the hunt?”
“Nothing to explain. It's just a standard hunt. But don't go around talking about it. I'm not sure if hunts are still legal. I wish Congress would straighten out the Suicide and Permitted Murder Acts once and for all. A man doesn't know where he's at any more.”
“Yeah,” Blaine agreed.
“They'll probably discuss the legal aspects at the briefing,” Franchel said. “The hunters will be there, and the Quarry will tell you all you need to know. Say hello to Ray for me if you speak to him again. Tell him I'm sorry he got killed.”
“I'll tell him,” Blaine said. He decided not to ask any more questions for fear his ignorance might cost him the job. Whatever hunting involved, he and his body could surely handle it. And a job, any job, was as necessary now for his self-respect as for his dwindling wallet.
He thanked Franchel and left.
That evening he ate dinner in an inexpensive diner, and bought several magazines. He was elated at the knowledge of having found work, and sure that he was going to make a place for himself in this age.
His high spirits were dampened slightly when he glimpsed, on the way back to his hotel, a man standing in an alley watching him. The man had a white face and placid Buddha eyes, and his rough clothes hung on him like rags on a scarecrow.
It was the zombie.
Blaine hurried on to his hotel, refusing to anticipate trouble. After all, if a cat can look at a king, a zombie can look at a man, and where's the harm?
This reasoning didn't prevent him from having nightmares until dawn.
Early the next day, Blaine walked to 42nd Street and Park Avenue, to catch a bus to the briefing. While waiting, he noticed a disturbance on the other side of 42nd Street.
A man had stopped short in the middle of the busy pavement. He was laughing to himself, and people were beginning to edge away from him. He as in his fifties, Blaine judged, dressed in quiet tweeds, bespectacled, and a little overweight. He carried a small briefcase and looked like ten million other businessmen.
Abruptly he stopped laughing. He unzipped his briefcase and removed from it two long, slightly curved daggers. He flung the briefcase away, and followed it with his glasses.
“Berserker!” someone cried.
The man plunged into the crowd, both daggers flashing. People started screaming, and the crowd scattered before him.
“Berserker, berserker!”
“Call the flathats!”
“Watch out, berserker!”
One man was down, clutching his torn shoulder and swearing. The berserker's face was fiery red now, and spittle came from his mouth. He waded deeper into the dense crowd, and people knocked each other down in their efforts to escape. A woman shrieked as she was pushed off balance, and her armload of parcels scattered across the pavement.
The berserker swiped at her left-handed, missed, and plunged deeper into the crowd.
Blue-uniformed police appeared, six or eight of them, sidearms out. “Everybody down!” they shouted. “Flatten! Everybody down!”
All traffic had stopped. The people in the berserker's path flung themselves to the pavement. On Blaine's side of the street, people were also getting down.
A freckled girl of perhaps twelve tugged at Blaine's arm, “Come on, Mister, get down! You wanna get beamed?”
Blaine lay down beside her. The berserker had turned and was running back toward the policemen, screaming wordlessly and waving his knives.
Three of the policemen fired at once, their weapons throwing a pale yellowish beam which flared red when it struck the berserker. He screamed as his clothing began to smoulder, turned, and tried to escape.
A beam caught him square in the back. He flung both knives at the policemen and collapsed.
An ambulance dropped down with whirring blades and quickly loaded the berserker and his victims. The policemen began breaking up the crowd that had gathered around them.