Jacob snorted his disgust but not without a twinge. Not too long ago that drive had been a daily part of him. He could understand the pain that waiting caused the small artificial personality that demanded instant gratification.
Minutes passed. He watched the door silently. Even in his full awareness he began to get impatient. It took a serious effort of will to keep his hand off the door latch.
The latch started to turn. Jacob stepped back with his hands at his sides.
The glassy bubble of a spacesuit helmet poked through the opening as the door swung outward. LaRoque looked to the left and then to the right. His teeth made a hissing shape when he saw Jacob. The door swung wide and the man came forward with a bar of plastic bracing material in his hand.
Jacob held up a hand. “Stop, LaRoque! I want to talk to you. You can’t get away anyway.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Demwa. Run!” LaRoque’s voice twanged nervously from a speaker on his chest He flexed the plastic cudgel menacingly.
Jacob shook his head. “Sorry. I jimmied the airlock down the hall before waiting here. You’ll find it a long walk in a spacesuit to the next one.”
LaRoque’s face twisted. “Why?! I did nothing! Particularly to you!”
“We’ll see about that. Meanwhile, let’s talk. There isn’t much time.”
“I’ll talk!” LaRoque screamed. “I’ll talk with this!” He came forward with the bar, swinging.
Jacob dropped into a deflection stance and tried to raise both hands to seize LaRoque’s wrist. But he’d forgotten about the numb left shoulder. His left hand just fluttered weakly, halfway to its assigned position. The right shot out to block and got a piece of the bar coming around instead. Desperately, he fell forward and tucked his head in as the club whistled inches above.
The roll, at least, was perfect. The lesser gravity helped as he came up and around effortlessly in a crouch. But his right hand was numb now, as he automatically shut off the pain from an ugly bruise. In his suit LaRoque swiveled more lightly than Jacob expected. What was it that Kepler said about LaRoque having been an astronaut? No time. Here he comes again.
The bar came down in a vicious overhead cut. LaRoque held it in a two-handed kendo grip; easy to block if only Jacob had his hands. Jacob dove under the cut and buried his. head in LaRoque’s midriff. He kept driving forward until together they slammed into the corridor wall. LaRoque said “Oof!” and dropped the bar.
Jacob kicked it away and jumped back.
“Stop this, LaRoque!” He gulped for breath. “I just want to talk to you… Nobody has enough evidence to convict you of anything, so why run? There’s no place to run to anyway!”
LaRoque shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry, Demwa.” The affected accent was completely gone. He lunged forward, arms outstretched.
Jacob hopped backward until the distance was right, counting-slowly. At the count of five his eyelids fell and locked into slits. For an instant Jacob Demwa was whole. He dropped back and traced a geodesic in his mind from the toe of his shoe to his opponent’s chin. The toe followed the arc In a snap that seemed to expand to minutes. The impact felt feather soft.
LaRoque rose into the air. In his plentitude, Jacob Demwa watched the space-suited figure fly backward in slow motion. He empathized, and it was he, it seemed, who went horizontal in midair and then drifted down in shame and hurt until the hard floor slammed into his back through the utility pack.
— Then the trance ended and he was loosening LaRoque’s helmet… pulling it off and helping him to sit up against the wall. LaRoque was crying softly.
Jacob noticed a package attached to LaRoque’s waist. He cut the attachment and started to unwrap it, pushing LaRoque’s hands aside when he resisted. •
“So,” Jacob pursed his lips. “You didn’t try to use the stunner on me because the camera was too valuable. Why, I wonder? I might find out if we play this thing back.
“Come on, LaRoque,” he rose and pulled the man to his feet. “We’re going to stop where there’s a readout machine. That is unless you have something to say first?”
LaRoque shook his head. He followed meekly with Jacob’s hand on his arm.
At the main corridor, as Jacob was about to turn to the photo lab, a posse led by Dwayne Kepler found them. Even in the reduced gravity the scientist leaned heavily on the arm of a med-aid.
“Aha! You caught him! Wonderful! This proves everything I said! The man was fleeing a righteous punishment! He’s a murderer!”
“We’ll see about that,” Jacob said. “The only thing this adventure proves is that he got scared. Even a Citizen can be violent when he panics. The thing I’d like to know is where he thought he was going. There’s nothing out there but blasted rock! Maybe you should have some men go out and search the area around the base to be sure.” Kepler laughed.
“I don’t think he was going anywhere. Probationers never do know where they’re going. They act on basic instinct. He simply wanted to get out of an enclosed place, like any hunted animal.”
LaRoque’s face remained blank. But Jacob felt his arm tense when a surface search was mentioned, then relax when Kepler shrugged the idea aside.
“Then you’re giving up the idea of an adult-murder,” Jacob said to Kepler as they turned toward the elevators. Kepler walked slowly.
“On what motive? Poor Jeff never harmed a fly! A decent, god-fearing chimpanzee! Besides, there hasn’t been a murder by a Citizen in the System for ten years! They’re about as common as gold meteors!”
Jacob had his doubts about that. The statistics were more a comment on police methods than anything else. But he remained silent.
By the elevators Kepler spoke briefly into a wall communicator. Several more men arrived almost immediately and took LaRoque from Jacob.
“Did you find the camera, by the way?” Kepler asked.
Jacob dissembled briefly. For a moment he considered hiding it and then pretending to discover it later.
“Ma camera a votre oncle!” LaRoque cried. He thrust out a hand and reached for Jacob’s back pocket. The crewmen pulled him back. Another came forward and held out his hand. Jacob reluctantly handed over the camera.
“What did he say?” Kepler asked. “What language was that?”
Jacob shrugged. An elevator came and more people spilled out, including Martine and deSilva.
“It was just a curse,” he said. “I don’t think he approves of your ancestry.”
Kepler laughed out loud.
13. UNDER THE SUN
To Jacob the Communications Dome seemed like a bubble stuck in tar. All around the hemisphere of glass and stasis, the surface of Mercury gave off a dull, lambent shine. The liquid quality of the reflected sunlight enhanced the feeling of being inside a crystal ball that was trapped in mire, unable to escape into the cleanliness of space.
In the near distance, the rocks themselves looked strange. Unusual minerals formed in that heat and under constant bombardment of particles from the solar wind. The eye puzzled without quite knowing why, at powders and odd crystal shapes. And there were-puddles as well. One shied away from thinking about those.
And something else near the horizon demanded attention.
The Sun. It was very dim, cut down by the powerful screens. But the whitish yellow ball seemed like a golden dandelion near enough to touch, an incandescent coin. Dark sunspots ran in clusters, fanning north-and south-eastward, away from the equator. The surface had a fineness of texture that just escaped focus.