"You still look like a queer-stomper," Richards said evenly.
The small smile faded. Donahue stared at him with sudden, empty dislike for a moment, and then went forward again.
Richards turned back to the Free-Vee screen. He found that his pulse rate had remained perfectly steady. He had no shortness of breath, no rubber legs. Death had become a normality.
"Are you there, Mr. Richards?" Killian asked.
"Yes I am."
"The problem has been handled?"
"Yes. "
"Good. Let me get back to what I was saying."
"Go ahead."
Killian sighed at his tone. "I was saying that our knowledge of your bluff makes your position worse, but makes our credibility better. Do you see why?"
"Yes," Richards said detachedly. "It means you could have blown this bird out of the sky anytime. Or you could have had Holloway set the plane down at will. McCone would have bumped me. "
"Exactly. Do you believe we know you are bluffing?"
"No. But you're better than McCone. Using your planted houseboy was a fine stroke. "
Killian laughed. "Oh, Richards. You are such a peach. Such a rare, iridescent bird. " And yet again it sounded forced, tense, pressured. It came to Richards that Killian was holding information which he wanted badly not to tell.
"If you really had it, you would have pulled the string when McCone put the gun to your head. You knew he was going to kill you. Yet you sat there. "
Richards knew it was over, knew that they knew. A smile cracked his features. Killian would appreciate that. He was a man of a sharp and sardonic turn of mind. Make them pay to see the hole card, then.
"I'm not buying any of this. If you push me, everything goes bang."
"And you wouldn't be the man you are if you didn't spin it out to the very end. Mr. Donahue?"
"Yes, sir. " Donahue's cool, efficient, emotionless voice came over the voicecom and out of the Free-Vee almost simultaneously.
"Please go back and remove Mrs. Williams's pocketbook from Mr. Richards's pocket. You're not to harm him in any way."
"Yes, sir. " Richards was eerily reminded of the plastipunch that had stenciled his original ID card at Games headquarters. Clitter-clitter-clitter.
Donahue reappeared and walked toward Richards. His face was smooth and cold and empty. Programmed. The word leaped into Richards's mind.
"Stand right there, pretty boy," Richards remarked, shifting the hand in his coat pocket slightly. "The Man there is safe on the ground. You're the one that's going to the moon. "
He thought the steady stride might have faltered for just a second and the eyes seemed to have winced the tiniest uncertain bit, and then he came on again. He might have been promenading on the Cote d'Azur . . . or approaching a gibbering homosexual cowering at the end of a blind alley.
Briefly Richards considered grabbing the parachute and fleeing. Hopeless. Flee? Where? The men's bathroom at the far end of the third class was the end of the line.
"See you in hell," he said softly, and made a pulling gesture in his pocket. This time the reaction was a little better. Donahue made a grunting noise and threw his hands up to protect his face in an instinctive gesture as old as man himself. He lowered them, still in the land of the living looking embarrassed and very angry.
Richards took Amelia Williams's pocketbook out of his muddy, torn coat pocket and threw it. It struck Donahue's chest and plopped at his feet like a dead bird. Richards's hand was slimed with sweat. Lying on his knee again, it looked strange and white and foreign. Donahue picked up the bag, looked in it perfunctorily, and handed it to Amelia. Richards felt a stupid sort of sadness at its passage. In a way, it was like losing an old friend. "Boom," he said softly.
Minus 014 and COUNTING
"Your boy is very good," Richards said tiredly, when Donahue had retreated again. "I got him to flinch, but I was hoping he'd pee his pants." He was beginning to notice an odd doubling of his vision. It came and went. He checked his side gingerly. It was clotting reluctantly for the second time. "What now?" he asked. "Do you set up cameras at the airport so everyone can watch the desperado get it?"
"Now the deal," Killian said softly. His face was dark, unreadable. Whatever he had been holding back was now just below the surface. Richards knew it. And suddenly he was filled with dread again. He wanted to reach out and turn the Free-Vee off. Not hear it anymore. He felt his insides begin a slow and terrible quaking-an actual, literal quaking. But he could not turn it off. Of course not. It was, after all, Free.
"Get thee behind me, Satan," he said thickly.
"What?" Killian looked startled.
"Nothing. Make your point."
Killian did not speak. He looked down at his hands. He looked up again. Richards felt an unknown chamber of his mind groan with psychic presentiment. It seemed to him that the ghosts of the poor and the nameless, of the drunks sleeping in alleys, were calling his name.
"McCone is played out," Killian said softly. "You know it because you did it. Cracked him like a soft-shelled egg. We want you to take his place."
Richards, who thought he had passed the point of all shock, found his mouth hanging open in utter, dazed incredulity. It was a lie. Had to be. Yet-Amelia had her purse back now. There was no reason for them to lie or offer false illusions. He was hurt and alone. Both McCone and Donahue were armed. One bullet administered just above the left ear would put a neat end to him with no fuss, no muss, or bother.
Conclusion: Killian was telling God's truth.
"You're nuts," he muttered.
"No. You're the best runner we've ever had. And the best runner knows the best places to look. Open your eyes a little and you'll see that The Running Man is designed for something besides pleasuring the masses and getting rid of dangerous people. Richards, the Network is always in the market for fresh new talent. We have to be. "
Richards tried to speak, could say nothing. The dread was still in him, widening, heightening, thickening.
"There's never been a Chief Hunter with a family, " he finally said. "You ought to know why. The possibilities for extortion-"
"Ben," Killian said with infinite gentleness, "your wife and daughter are dead. They've been dead for over ten days. "
Minus 013 and COUNTING
Dan Killian was talking, had been perhaps for some time, but Richards heard him only distantly, distorted by an odd echo effect in his mind. It was like being trapped in a very deep well and hearing someone call down. His mind had gone midnight dark, and the darkness served as the background for a kind of scrapbook slide show. An old Kodak of Sheila wiggling in the halls of Trades High with a loose-leaf binder under her arm. Micro skirts had just come back into fashion then. A freeze-frame of the two of them sitting at the end of the Bay Pier (Admission: Free), backs to the camera, looking out at the water. Hands linked. Sepia-toned photo of a young man in an ill-fitting suit and a young woman in her mother's best dress-specially taken up-standing before a J. P. with a large wart on his nose. They had giggled at that wart on their wedding night. Stark black and white action photo of a sweating, bare-chested man wearing a lead apron and working heavy engine gear-levers in a huge, vaultlike underground chamber lit with arc lamps. Soft-toned color photo (soft to blur the stark, peeling surroundings) of a woman with a big belly standing at a window and looking out, ragged curtain held aside, watching for her man to come up the street. The light is a soft cat's paw on her cheek. Last picture: another old-timey Kodak of a thin fellow holding a tiny scrap of a baby high over his head in a curious mixture of triumph and love, his face split by a huge winning grin. The pictures began to flash by faster and faster, whirling, not bringing any sense of grief and love and loss, not yet, no, bringing only a cool Novocain numbness.