The policeman at the main entrance was in his mid-twenties—old enough to have acquired breadth of shoulder and an air of having seen all there was to see; young enough to have retained a peachy smoothness of complexion. His tobacco-coloured uniform was neatly pressed and its multi-hued roundels, reminiscent of historic astronauts’ badges, glowed like jewelry. He stared down at Hargate with amused incredulity.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “There’s just no way you could get in to see detainee Barron without a special permit.”
“I’m very glad to hear that—the Centre’s finest would be falling down on the job if it allowed just anybody to walk in off the street and have access to dangerous criminals.” Hargate surveyed the bronzed glass foyer of the International Condominium’s police headquarters and nodded his approval. “Now, my reason for wanting to go inside is that I want to obtain one of those special permits you mentioned—so all you have to do is direct me to the appropriate room. Right?”
“Maybe. What’s your name?”
“Dennis R. Hargate.”
“And where are you from, Mr Hargate?”
“Until yesterday I was from up there.” Hargate pointed one finger skywards. “I’m a drop-out from Aristotle.”
“I see,” the policeman said doubtfully. “What’s your business with Barron?”
Hargate, in spite of having resolved to keep his tongue in check, grew impatient. He had been totally unable to sleep during the night, had left the hostel without breakfast and had spent more than an hour searching for and reaching the police building. Now he was beginning to feel tired and ill.
“I just want to visit with him,” he said. “He’s allowed visitors, isn’t he?”
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
“In that case, why don’t we stop wasting each other’s time?” Hargate moved his drive control and tried to surge towards the inner doors, but the policeman—with an embarrassed glance towards several passers-by—caught the chair’s left armrest and slewed it round, forcing him to stop.
That was the beginning of a public argument which eventually involved Hargate with another policeman, two sergeants and several plain-clothes officers of indeterminate rank, and which got him no further than a cramped office adjoining the entrance hall. As his frustration increased he began to feel flickers of pain in his chest, but he prolonged the scene—capitalising on the reluctance of the others to crack down hard on a cripple—until an entirely new symptom of his illness made itself apparent. At first his perceived world of giants simply appeared more crowded and confusing than usual, then came the jolting realisation that he was experiencing double vision. It was a classic symptom of MPN, one which Doctor Foerster had predicted, but its effect on Hargate was powerfully disconcerting. He was being attacked from within his own head. He lapsed into an abrupt silence while he groped in his pockets for the box of Enka-B tablets he had been neglecting to use.
One of the sergeants hunkered down in front of him. “Say, do you feel all right?”
“Why do you ask?” Hargate queried blandly, guessing that his features now had the additional asymmetry of a squint. “Don’t I look all right?”
It was when the sergeant turned away with a troubled expression, unexpectedly reminding Hargate of his mother when he had thrown verbal acid in her face, that he knew he wanted to go home. The notion of talking to Phil Barren, beguiling in its time, was ill-considered and pointless. What had he been hoping would come of it? An exclusive club for people who saw other people vanish in peculiar circumstances?
Hargate sat with his head down, trying to draw the calmness of pranayama from the air, only distantly aware that there were several newcomers in the small office. And when he found that one of them was Doctor Costick, presumably answering a summons from the police, he knew that his plans for the immediate future were complete.
He had done all that could be expected of him. He had tried the bold experiment of living a normal life in a frail travesty of a man’s body. He had even ventured into space, something of which only a microscopic fraction of the human race could boast, and through no fault of his own the dice had fallen badly, denying him everything that Aristotle had promised. There was nothing more that he or anybody else could do. It was now time for him to get rid of the pain and discomfort, the hopelessness and sheer indignity of being Denny Hargate.
“Good morning, doctor,” he said, smiling. “I don’t know what was wrong with my memory yesterday—I’ve just thought of the perfect place for me to stay in Carsewell.”
The fact that he was allowed to leave for the north that day was, Hargate realised, an indication of the vast overload being placed on all the Cape’s facilities by the emergency evacuation of the Aristotle colony. Throughout his entire stay the four operational shuttles had been living up to their generic name, the sound of their launchings creating an edgy vulcanic background to the lesser human activities on the ground. The Condominium was heavily populated by journalists of all kinds whose interest had been morbidly stimulated by the fact that the abandonment of Aristotle, the retreat from Lagrange, was probably the last big story concerning space flight. Hargate only escaped predatory reporters by virtue of not matching their preconceptions about how an astronaut ought to look.
His journey to the north took almost two days, a succession of starts and stops in transporter modules which clung for a while to the traction cables of huge nuclear prime movers and released their hold when a change of direction was needed. The gradual deterioration of the weather was appropriate to Hargate’s mood, and he was almost gratified by his first sight of snow, grey-white tatters which littered the passing landscapes like discarded newspapers. By the time he reached Carsewell the snow covering was complete and the coldness of the early morning air shocked him with each invasion of his lungs. He could imagine their tissue already beginning to wither, to succumb, path-finding for the rest of his body.
The other passengers who had descended from the same module quickly dispersed, leaving Hargate alone on the platform with the single large case which held all his belongings. Force of habit caused him to ponder for a moment on how to get the case to the baggage lockers unaided, then he remembered there was no need. He was abdicating from such responsibilities. Feeling oddly guilty, he engaged the wheelchair’s drive and rolled away towards the station’s exit, abandoning the case to its shabby isolation.
Carsewell was in the middle of the slight lull that always followed the morning rush, but he had difficulty in hiring a taxi. Several drivers, deciding that his chair would cause more inconvenience than the fare was worth, ignored his signals, and more than ten minutes elapsed before he was picked up. By that time the cold had penetrated his coat and the rug that covered his legs. The paralysis and debility affecting most of his body precluded shivering, the natural defence against low temperatures, with the result that he quickly began to feel numb.
“Where to?” the taxi driver said as the vehicle pulled away from Warren Station with some sputtering from its ageing electric motor.
It occurred to Hargate that his batteries would be unable to cope with the rising ground on the direct route to Cotter’s Edge, that he would need to approach it from the eastern side. “Do you know the Reigh place?”
“I only work on addresses, friend. You tell me the address and I’ll get you there.”
“Just west of Greenways—I’ll direct you,” Hargate said mildly. Under normal circumstances the other man’s brusqueness would have inspired a vigorously unpleasant retort, but that too was something for which there was no longer any need. There was no point in fighting battles after the war itself had been lost. He stared quietly and abstractedly at familiar scenery until the taxi had neared the crest of the low hills which bounded the city and was travelling along the perimeter of the Reigh farm.