From his vantage point high on the speeding machine, Stirling could see the full spread of the He and the random scattering of the other robots. He kept watching to the north, across the bare brown strips, and was surprised to note that a good five minutes had passed before one of the yellow structures, which had been tilling close to the He’s lateral axis, suddenly moved off in the direction of the village. Allowing two minutes turnaround time, he was going to have a lead of some fourteen minutes. He thought about the unexpected bonus for a moment before remembering that, in the absence of growing crops to be damaged, the villagers could summon a robot only by means of the flood-alarm system. It would have taken them some time to transport water to the end of a strip.
When he had manually tripped the relay which would ensure that the machine would travel right to the end of the strip, Stirling climbed around to the forward side of the beam and sat watching the transit area expand ahead of him. Beyond the He’s western rim, blue vistas of distance opened up, and Stirling’s wind-watered eyes picked out the ordered verticalities of the coastal conurbation standing out through the haze like a cut-out stage prop. The sun was setting redly in the shady immensities beyond the towers, and already the automobiles on the lower street levels were using their lights. Looking at the flickering points of brilliance, Stirling felt a suddenly intensified yearning to be back there, snug and tight in his own slot in civilization. I can make it, he thought in wonderment, I could be back home tonight. He felt an icy focus of anxiety grow in his stomach: after almost half a year in Heaven, it all seemed too good to be true.
At the end of the strip, the humming, vibrating machine slowed down and covered the last hundred yards at walking pace, while its baffled logic circuits exchanged arguments at the speed of light, Stirling waited his chance and sprang onto the raised transit area. Immediately, he was hit by the lower temperature; but he put his head down and began to run. The elevator terminal was almost five miles away to the north, and there was not time to coddle protesting lungs.
As he ran, Stirling discovered there were irregularities in the He’s shell field which permitted the ambient subzero temperatures outside to encroach a short distance at some points. This was the first evidence he had found of maintenance failure, and he wondered if the Food Technology Authority was beginning to win its battle against the lies. The shell field generators would be expensive to replace, and perhaps the East Coast administration had been forced to curtail its spending.
Although the shield itself was invisible under normal conditions, the areas where it was weakest were easily identifiable by the thick coating of frost which lay over everything, and by the raw pain which tore his lungs and throat each time he passed through. Stirling ran on steadily, amazed at the sheer efficiency of his body now that it was unhampered by its former blanket of fat. In each new sector he entered, a bright red scarecrow sprang into life and pursued him with flailing arms and a fusillade of loud reports; but he had learned that they moved on their own track system and for that reason were easily avoided.
He kept glancing back over his right shoulder, waiting to see a robot traveling westwards at speed. As the minutes went by and the lighted gantries of the elevator head became visible far in front, Stirling began to relax. He had begun to feel more confident the last time too—just before the sky fell in on him— but this time he had figured many more of the angles. The distance he had run, coupled with the effect of the thinner air near the shell failures, began to tell on him, and he felt his legs slow down of their own accord. Stirling tried forcing them to move faster; but after all, a wheedling voice told him, he was further ahead than he had dared hope to be.
When he finally saw a robot speeding out of the dusk that was gathering in the east, Stirling realized that, once again, he had underestimated the villagers. The robot was in the wrong place! He had been glancing backwards for signs of pursuit; but this machine, which was perhaps five miles out from the transit area, was thundering along a strip which ended half-a-mile ahead of him.
As geysers of dismay and anger fountained through his system, Stirling called upon suddenly available reserves of energy and discovered what it was like really to run. He experienced the sensation as a hunted animal experiences it. Skimming along over the frosted tracks, he saw that the robot was moving along a strip devoted to winter wheat. Somebody in the village had decided not to use the slower flood-alarm method of summoning a robot, and had run along the He’s eastern margin to the area where crops were still growing. That way they had saved a lot of time and—great cymbals of panic crashed in Stirling’s ears—would be only a matter of yards behind their quarry when they leapt out, fresh and eager, onto the transit area.
He tried to run faster, but his body had reached realms of exhaustion in which adrenalin was unable to perform its ancient duties. Beyond the reach of biological expedients, only human will kept Stirling’s arms and legs pumping in the desperate rhythms of flight. He heard his breath come and go in guttural shouts; his mouth filled with salt froth; and the horizons rocked uncontrollably about him. The distance between himself and the robot closed rapidly; he glimpsed dark figures poised along the beam; then he was past the point of intersection, with only seconds to spare. Shouts rang out close behind him as the ragged skirmishers sprang from their fantastic chariot.
There’s a fourth of a mile to go yet before you reach the monitor cameras at the elevator head. You’ll never make it— give up now before you burst your heart.
The voice in his head seemed to be that of a friend who genuinely loved him, but Stirling ignored it. He tried to find some miraculous loophole in the laws of body chemistry which would allow him to go faster, but knew at last that he had failed. A short spear skipped past him like a furious reptile; then something had chopped across his ankles. He fell forward, rolling and slithering, as his precious momentum squandered itself.
Stirling sensed, rather than saw, the villagers overtake him. Rough hands turned him over… . Dark figures loomed against the sky. … A knife was raised and began its downward curve… .
“Leave that man alone!”
Stirling barely heard the voice amid the roar of the blood torrents in his own system, but he saw the villagers freeze into black statues. He turned his head towards the voice and saw men running from the direction of the elevator head.
Men in the white uniforms of the Food Technology Authority.
Chapter Eleven
Jepson Lomax was a pale round-faced man, with liver-colored lips and clammy hands which he rubbed continually with a lime handkerchief. Each time he touched his desk, condensation left a ghostly handprint which slowly shrank to nothing as its moisture evaporated into the air of his office. He threw Stirling’s press card into a wire tray and walked to the window. He moved like a much bigger and older man.
“Fantastic view, isn’t it? All that open space. I’ve been on F.T.A. ocean processing stations most of my working life; so I’m used to distant horizons. That’s one of the reasons I got this job. But it’s not the same at sea. It isn’t the same as looking at wide open land.” Lomax waved at the view beyond his window. “Nothing’s the same as that.”
Stirling nodded slowly. Beyond the double glazing, the broad acres of Heaven vapored introspectively in the morning sun like ruled strips tapering into hazy distance. To Stirling, it all looked strangely unreal. He was still trying to find his mental feet in the new situation, and nothing seemed quite solid or real any longer. Especially this prefabricated office building which had been erected at the elevator head and peopled by comfortable, smoothly shaven F.T.A. executives in white uniforms.