“I know you do, Sam,” she said caressingly. “How do you think I noticed you so quickly when you came into the restaurant? I don’t know who was the most on edge that day — you or Ethel. Cat people aren’t so easily fooled.”
“You mean,” Tallon muttered, “it takes one to spot one.”
Amanda had given him a cold, level stare at that, and when she finally brought him the wire-haired terrier she hinted she could not be responsible for its safety in the presence of her cats. Tallon had accepted the dog gratefully, and revealing a latent weakness for puns, christened it Seymour. Since then, the number one stud on the eyeset had been permanently allocated to the dog.
The eyeset had fascinated Amanda. She had gone as far as she could with him in understanding its design principles, and had even tried it out for herself, making him do without it for hours while she explored the world of her cat family. When she closed her eyes the set worked quite well for her, except that she occasionally lost the picture through not having metal plugs in her corneas to act as focusing referents. Tallon had been forced to sit, helplessly blind, as she lay on the floor wearing the eyeset. He heard the whispering sounds as her long body coiled and uncoiled ecstatically on the thick carpets, tiny cat noises issuing from her slim throat. And all he could do was clench his fist and press the knuckles hard against his teeth… .
The bedroom door opened and he heard Amanda come in.
“Sleeping already, darling?”
“Not yet. I’m working on it, though.”
Tallon listened to the faint crackling of static electricity in her clothing as she undressed. If only she would let one night go by without the intolerable demands of love where love did not exist, the relationship might be bearable. She was more intense, more insistent than ever since he had begun his nightly return to blindness. He guessed it was because his helplessness without the eyeset satisfied some psychological need in her.
“Darling, have you that filthy dog beside you again?”
“Seymour isn’t filthy.”
“If you say so, darling; but should he be on our bed?”
Tallon sighed as he set the dog on the floor. “I like having Seymour around. Don’t I have any privileges around this place?”
“What privileges had you in the Center, darling?”
Point taken, Tallon thought. How had he done it? How, out of a million or more inhabitants in the city of Sweetwell, had he unerringly picked out Amanda Weisner? But then, he reflected somberly, Sam Tallon had always found the Amandas everywhere he went. How had he started out as a physicist and ended up working for the Block? How, out of all the safe jobs that were available, had he selected the one that placed him so precisely in the wrong place at the wrong time?
The night was very warm, as spring had come early to the southern end of the long continent. As the hours went by Tallon tried to free himself from the physical duel with Amanda by letting his mind drift upward, through ceiling and roof, to where he would be able to see the slow wheeling of alien constellations. Out in the alley behind the restaurant the big cats prowled and pounced, just as their ancestors on Earth had always done, telling each other wailing cat myths to explain the absence of the moon, which had gilded their eyes for a thousand centuries.
Occasionally there were sharper cries as male and female came together savagely, obeying an instinct older than the moon and as universal as matter. Tallon slowly realized that, time after time, Amanda’s body was responding to the ferocious outbursts, and he felt his mind borne away on powerful tides of disgust. If he walked out on her she would go to the police — of that he was certain. He could kill her, except for the fact that her daily employees in the restaurant would notice her absence within a matter of hours. And yet he had to consider the possibility that she could soon grow bored with him and turn him over no matter what he did.
Moving restlessly in the darkness, Tallon brushed Amanda’s face with his hand and touched the smoothness of plastic, the edges of tiny projections. Immediately both their bodies were stilled.
“What was that?” He kept his voice low to mask the cold dawning in his mind.
“What was what, darling? You mean my silly old glasses? I had forgotten I was wearing them.”
Tallon considered the words for a moment, pretending to relax, then he snatched the eyeset from her face and put it to his own. He got one glimpse of the night jungle through which the big cats moved, before the eyeset was torn away from him again.
Mewing with rage, Amanda attacked, using nails and teeth as naturally and efficiently as would one. of her cats. Tallon was handicapped both by his blindness and by his alarm at the thought of accidentally smashing the eyeset, which had dropped on the bed beside them.
Stoically enduring the tearing of his skin, he groped for the eyeset and placed it safely under the bed. He then subdued Amanda by holding her throat with his left hand and driving slow, rhythmic punches into her face with his right. Even when she had gone limp he kept hitting her, seeking revenge for things he barely understood.
Ten minutes later Tallon opened the front door of The Persian Cat and stepped out onto the street. He walked quickly, with the freshly filled pack bumping solidly against his back and Seymour wriggling sleepily under his arm. There were about five hours of darkness left in which he could travel northward, but he had a feeling the hunt would start long before daylight.
twelve
Tallon was clearing the outskirts of the city when he heard the lonely clattering of a single helicopter. Its navigation lights drifted across the sky, high up in the predawn grayness. In a technology that had learned to negate gravity itself, the helicopter was a crude contraption, but it was still the most efficient vertical-takeoff machine ever devised, and it was unlikely to go out of use as long as some men had to run and others had to hunt them like eagles.
Holding Seymour’s head upright, Tallon watched the solitary light drift out of sight beyond the northern horizon. Amanda had wasted no time, he thought. Now that any glimmer of hope of not being reported to the police was gone he began looking for a safe place to wait out the coming day. He was walking on a second-class motorway, lined on one side with native trees and on the other with stunted palms grown in the higher gravity of Emm Luther from imported seeds. At that time of the morning traffic was limited to infrequent private automobiles, traveling fast, trailing turbulent wakes of dust and dried leaves.
Tallon kept close to the trees, hiding each time he saw headlights, and scanned the quiet buildings for a likely place to sleep. As he left Sweetwell behind, the neat garden factories were gradually replaced by small flat-blocks, and then by private houses in the higher income class. The tailored lawns shone in the light from the motorway. Several times as he walked, his view of his surroundings seemed to dim slightly, and he whispered fiercely to Seymour, urging the terrier to alertness. But in the end he had to admit to himself that the fault was in the eyeset. He fingered the tiny slide controlling the gain and was shocked to discover it was almost up against the end of its slot. It looked as though the damage he had done to the power unit was progressive in effect, in which case …
Tallon dismissed the thought and concentrated on finding a place to spend the day. Lights were beginning to appear in windows as he opened the door of a shrub-covered shed behind one of the larger dwellings. The darkness in the shed was filled with the nostalgic odor of dry earth, garden tools, and machine oil. Tallon settled down in a corner, with Seymour, and sorted out some of his new possessions. He had Amanda Weisner’s gold-plated automatic, enough food for several days, a roll of bills, and a radio. Later in the day as he lay in his private universe of blackness, with the eyeset switched off, he was able to pick up the first newcasts.