Munching the candy, he moved a little farther inland, with the intention of walking until he was perhaps half a mile from the town, and then trying to get some rest; but an unexpected occurrence forced him to change his plans. Ariadne II went to sleep. Tallon flicked the bird with his finger a few times, and she opened her eyes for a couple of seconds, but closed them again, plunging him into darkness. He felt annoyed, but this soon passed when he considered what she had been through on his behalf. In all probability any Earthside species of bird would have died from over-adrenalation long before this.
He lay down and tried to sleep. Although he was almost as far south as it was possible to go on Emm Luther and still remain on dry land, winter was just beginning to blend into spring and the night was cold. A long time went by before he achieved unconsciousness, and then he had dreams — of talking to Winfield, of dancing with Helen Juste, of flying up and up into the coppery light of dawn with the long-shadowed land falling away below. This last was very vivid. There was a tiny figure of a man in a dark green uniform lying down there on the grass. Tallon moved, clutching frantically for support.
He was flying!
Horizons of sea and land rotated sickeningly, and there was nothing under him but air.
His fingers sank into wiry grass. He became aware of the pressure of the hard ground against his back, and came fully awake. The visions of wheeling land and sea persisted, but now he knew what was causing them. Ariadne II had worked herself free and had escaped while she had the chance. The pictures grayed out as she passed beyond the range of the eyeset.
Her loss presented him with another problem — finding new eyes and using them to get hold of some food. He had to get something solid to eat in a hurry. The candy had given his blood sugar a temporary boost, but the overstimulatjon of the pancreas, which always accompanies the intake of neat carbohydrate, had flooded his system with sugar~amnihilating insulin. The result was that his blood sugar had dropped even farther below the fasting level, and now he could hardly stand without his knees buckling. He wished the doctor had thought enough about the nutrition problems of a blind man on the run to have included milk solids or some other convenient form of protein in the escape kit. But that was not getting him any closer to the space terminal at New Wittenburg.
Tallon put the eyeset on “search and hold” and picked up seabirds cruising over the water near the shore. He got more aerial views of the ocean dressed in its early morning grays, the tousled hillside, and his own dark green figure. This was good enough to let him continue walking north. It was still very early in the morning, and he reached the outskirts of the town just as the place was coming awake. He was able to switch to the eyes of men driving to work at dawn. None of them seemed to pay attention to him.
For a while Tallon was content to walk free along the quiet thoroughfares, marveling at how Earth-like his surroundings were. The big northern city of Testament, where he had spent most of his time while on Emm Luther, had a character of its own that was unlike anything on Earth; but small towns were small towns no matter where you went in the galaxy. The neat bungalows, sleeping in the morning stillness, were the same as those he had seen on half a dozen worlds; and the children’s tricycles, lying on the front lawns, were painted red, because human children the galaxy over liked them that way.
Why should a man choose one planet and say, this one I will put above all others? If be survived the psychic disembowelment of the flicker-transits and arrived on yet another miraculous green orb, why shouldn’t that be enough? Why carry with him the paraphernalia of political allegiances, doctrinal conflicts, imperialism, the Block? And yet Winfield had been blown to bits, and Sam Tallon was still carrying the location of a brand-new planet embedded in his brain.
He found a diner and spent a tenth of his money on a huge platter of fish steaks and sea greens, which he washed down with four cups of coffee. Neither the elderly waitress who served him, nor the one other customer — whose eyes Tallon was using — glanced at him twice. He reckoned he could have been taken for anything from a TV repairman to an employee of an obscure section of the local utilities complex.
Out in the street again he bought a pack of cigarettes from a vendor and walked along casually, smoking, pretending to look into store windows any time he lost sight of himself. More people were about, and he found it relatively easy to skip to fresh eyes and spot himself quickly from the new viewpoint. He discovered that very few people had perfect eyesight. The eyes he borrowed as he crossed the town were often nearsighted or farsighted, astigmatic or color blind, and he was mildly surprised to find that the people with the most defective vision were often the ones who did not wear glasses.
Many of the large downtown buildings were fronted with 3-D screens displaying shifting color patterns keyed to the tonal patterns of current music. There was no advertising, but a video newscast was put on every fifteen minutes or so. Tallon was too concerned with the second-by-second problems of negotiating crowds and crossing streets to pay much attention to the news, but his attention was suddenly gripped by a huge picture of a dovelike bird perched on a man’s finger. A piece of string dangled from one of its legs. Tallon was sure it was Ariadne II. He strained to hear the commentary.
… arrived back at the Government Detention Center early this morning. It is believed the two sightless detainees were carrying the bird with them, and its return is another indication thai they perished in the swamp. Earlier reports that the two men had obtained radarlike devices to take the place of normal eyes have since been denied by a spokesman for the Center.
And now, passing from the local scene to the galactic situation, the Moderator’s delegates to the prematurely ended- top-level conference on Akkab will arrive at the New Wittenburg space terminal this afternoon. It is understood …
Tallon moved on, frowning. It was good to know that he was presumed dead and therefore wouldn’t be hunted, but the newscast had stirred up in his mind the mystery of Helen Juste. Was she in trouble with the prison board for her unorthodoxy? Had she seen the trouble coming and tried to avoid it by ordering the confiscation of the eyesets? Why had she let them go so far in the first place?
A sign attached to the façade of the central post office confirmed Tallon’s guess that he was in the town of Sirocco. His hazy memory of Lutheran geography told him that Sirocco was on the continuous railway that circled the whole continent, performing the function of air services on other worlds. Winfield’s plan had been to travel at night and on foot, which had been reasonable enough, considering the limitations of the sonar torch; but Tallon could actually see. And apart from what appeared to be a rather heavy pair of spectacles, he looked much like any other citizen of Emm Luther. If he took the train he could be back in New Wittenburg in little more than a day. Once there, he would be faced with the difficulty of making contact with an agent, but it would be better to face the problem sooner than later. The alternative to the train was to start walking and run all the risks of having to live by stealing food, sleeping in sheds and barns, and in general acting in a highly suspicious manner. He decided to take the train.
As he walked he passed the time by practicing lip reading, an ability taught by the Block, and one for which he had never found much practical use. The recurring close-ups of faces of persons talking without the accompanying sound effects presented a challenge to Tallon. He wanted to find out what they were saying.
Tallon had often heard of the continuous railway, and in his cover job as an agent for Earth-made drafting systems he had even used it for shipping goods, but he had never seen it.