"Independents who feel entitled to be supported." Dallen was deliberately supercilious. "That's a serious contradiction in terms, young Derek."
"We don't want to be supported. We made a contribution too, but nobody… We just want… We…" Overwhelmed by incoherence, Beaumont paused and his laboured breathing was easily audible through the partition.
"And all I want is that combination," Dallen said. "Your time's running out."
He made his voice hard and certain, consciously striking out against the ambivalence he usually felt when forced to think about Earth's recent past. Cona, as a professional historian, had the sort of mind which could cope with vast areas of complexity, confusion and conflict, whereas he yearned for a dawn-time simplicity which was never forthcoming. In the early years of the migrations, for example, nobody had planned actually to abandon the cities of the home world and let them sink into decay. There had been too big an investment in time. Mankind's very soul lingered in the masonry of the great conurbations, and hundreds of them — from York to New York, Paris to Peking — had been designated as cultural shrines, places to which Earth's children would return from time to time and reaffirm their humanity.
But the thinking had been wrong, bound by outdated parameters.
There had once been an age in which romantics could see men as natural wanderers, compelled to voyage from one stellar beacon to the next until they ran out of space or time — but there were no stars in the night skies of Orbitsville. Generations had come and gone without ever having their spirits troubled by the sight of distant suns. Orbitsville provided all the lebensraum they and their descendants would ever need; Earth was remote and increasingly irrelevant, and there were better things to do with money than the propping up of ruins for forgotten cities. Madison, former administration centre for the evacuation of seven states, was one of the very few museum cities to remain viable, and even there funding and time were growing desperately short.
The thought of dwindling reserves of time prompted Dallen to look again at his watch. "I can't risk babysitting here any longer," he called out. "See you around!"
"You can't bluff me, Dallen."
"Wouldn't dream of trying." Dallen walked towards the front of the store, resisting the temptation to tread noisily on the dusty grey timbers of the floor. The slightest hint of overacting on his part was likely to strengthen Beaumont's resolve. As he dodged the insubstantial stalactites of cobwebs the conviction that he had made a mistake grew more intense and more unmanning. He decided to wait at the outer door for two minutes before dragging his prisoner out to safety, but new doubts had begun to gnaw at his confidence. What if Beaumont genuinely did not know the fuse combination or even the precise timer setting? What sort of justification could he give to others, to himself, if the bomb exploded and sent a blizzard of glass daggers through the pedestrians in 1990 Street?
On reaching the front door he leaned against the frame, pressing his forehead into his arm, and began the familiar exercise of catechising the stranger he had become. What are you doing here? How long will it be before you — personally and deliberately — kill one of these sad, Earth-limited gawks? Why don't you pack in the sad, Earth-limited little job and take Cona and Mikel back to Orbitsville where you all belong?
The last question was one which had confronted him with increasing frequency in recent months. It had never failed to produce feelings of anger and frustration, the helplessness which conies when a mind which likes answers is faced with the unanswerable, but all at once — standing there in the mouldered silence of the store — he realised that the difficulty lay within himself and always had done. The question was childishly simple, provided he faced up to and acknowledged the fact that he had made a mistake in coming to Earth. It was so easy. He — Carry Dallen, the man who was always right — had made a stupid mistake!
Aware that he was rushing psychological processes which could not be rushed, that he was bound to suffer reactions later, he posed the crucial question again and saw that it had become redundant. There was nothing under this or any other sun to prevent his taking his family home. They could be on their way within a week. Dallen, experiencing a sense of relief and release which was almost post-orgasmic, looked down at his hands and found they were trembling.
"Let's get the hell out of here," he whispered, turning towards the rear of the store.
"For Chris'sake, Dallen, come back!" The voice from the office enclosure was virtually unrecognisable, a high-pitched whine of panic. "This thing's set for 11.20! What time is it now?"
Dallen looked at his watch and saw there were four minutes in hand. At another time he would have walked slowly and silently back to the office, turning the screw on his prisoner to show him that life was easier on the right side of the law, but that kind of thinking now seemed petty. Earth-limited, was the term he had just invented. I don't want to be Eartb-limited any longer.
He ran to the rear office, shouldered open the door and looked down at Beaumont, who was still unable to move. The silver obscenity of the bomb was projecting from his crotch. Suppressing a pang of shame Dallen retrieved the cylinder and fingered the fuse combination rings.
"You're going to be bastardin’ sorry about this, you bastard," Beaumont ground out, his eyes white crescents of hatred.
"My watch might be slow," Dallen said pointedly. "Do you want out of here, or would you rather stay and…?"
"Six-seven-nine-two-seven-nine."
"That must be a prime number." Dallen began aligning the digits with the datum mark. "Get it? Fuse — primer — prime?"
"Hurry up, for…"
"There we go!" Dallen withdrew the fuse and tossed it into a corner. "Thanks for your cooperation, Derek."
He left the office, walked along a short corridor to the rear of the premises and opened a heavy door whose hinges made snapping sounds as they broke bonds of rust. An unmarked car was waiting in the alley outside, its smooth haunches scattering oily needles of sunlight, and two young officers in uniform — Tandy and Ibbetson — were standing beside it. Dallen smiled as he saw the apprehension on their faces.
"Have a bomb," he said, slapping the cylinder into Ibbetson's palm. "It's okay — it's safe — and there's a character called Derek Beaumont to go with it. You'll find him resting inside, first door on the right."
"I wish you wouldn't do things like this," Ibbetson mumbled. His voice faded as he went through the door, turning his footballer's shoulders to facilitate entry, and lumbered along the corridor.
Vie Tandy, slate-jawed and meticulously neat, moved closer to Dallen. "Would you talk with Jim Mellor? He's going crazy back there trying to reach you."
"He always does. Every time I get into a pocket of bad reception he…" Dallen broke off as he noticed Tandy's expression, oddly wooden and reserved. "Anything wrong?"
"All I heard is Jim wants you to contact him." Avoiding Dallen's gaze, Tandy tried to by-pass him and enter the building.
"Don't try that sort of thing on me," Dallen snapped, gripping the other man's upper arm. "Out with it!"
Tandy, now looking embarrassed, said, "I… I think something might have happened to your wife and boy."
Dallen stepped back from him, bemusedly shaking his head, filled with a sense that his surroundings and the blue dome of atmosphere and the universe beyond were imploding upon him.
Chapter 4