“Why don’t you answer me?” Igan asked.
“Leave him alone,” Harvey said. “We’ve griefs of our own. Haven’t you any feelings?”
“He sees it and does not believe,” Igan said.
“How could they?” Lizbeth whispered.
“Self-preservation,” Boumour rumbled. “A trait our friend Svengaard doesn’t seem to have. Perhaps it was cut out of him.”
Svengaard stared at the rolling green cloud. So silent and stealthy it was. The great reach of darkness where once there had been light and life filled him with a raw awareness of his own mortality. He thought of friends down there—the hospital staff—embryos, his playmate-wife.
All destroyed.
Svengaard felt emptied, incapable of any emotion—even grief. He could only question, What was their purpose?
“Into the cab with him,” Glisson said. “On the floor in the rear.”
Ungentle hands lifted Svengaard—he identified Boumour and Glisson. The driver’s unemotional quality confused Svengaard. He had never before encountered quite that abstract detachment in a human being.
They pushed him onto the floor of the van’s cab. The sharp edge of a seat brace dug into his side. Feet came in around him. Someone put a foot on his stomach, recoiled. The turbines came alive. A door was slammed. They glided into motion.
Svengaard sank into a kind of stupor.
Lizbeth seated above him heaved a deep sigh. Hearing it, Svengaard was roused to a feeling of compassion for her, his first emotion since the shock of seeing the megalopolis die.
Why did they do it? he asked himself. Why?
In the darkness, Lizbeth gripped Harvey’s hand. She could see in an occasional patch of moonglow the outline of Glisson directly ahead of her. The Cyborg’s minimal movement, the sense of power in every action, filled her with growing disquiet. The scar of her operation itched. She wanted to scratch, but feared calling attention to herself. The Courier Service had been a long time building its own organization, deceiving both the Cyborgs and the Optimen. They’d done it partly through self-effacement. Now, in her fear, she sank back into that treatment.
Through their hands, Harvey signaled, “Boumour and Igan, I read them now. They’re new Cyborgs. Probably just a first linkage with implanted computers. They’re just learning the price, shedding their normal human emotional reactions, learning to counterfeit emotion.”
She absorbed this, seeing them through Harvey’s deduction. He often read people better than she did. She re-read what she had seen of the two surgeons.
“Do you read it?” he signaled.
“You’re right. Yes.”
“It means a total break with Central. They can never go back.”
“That explains Seatac,” she signaled. She began to tremble.
“And we can’t trust them,” Harvey said. He pressed her close, soothing her.
The van labored up through the foothills skirting open meadows, following ancient tracks, an occasional stream-bed. Shortly before dawn, it swerved left down a firebreak and into a stand of pines and cedars, squeezed its way through a narrow lane there with its blowers kicking up a heavy cloud of forest duff behind. Glisson pulled to a stop behind an old building, moss on its sides, small curtained windows. Pseudo-ducks with a weedy patina and grass-grown signs that they hadn’t been animated in years, made a short file near the building—pale moon-figures in the light of a single bulb high up under the building’s eaves.
Turbines whined to silence. They could hear then the hum of machinery and looking toward the sound saw the dull silver outline of a ventilator tower among the trees.
A door at the corner of the building opened. A heavy-headed man with a big jaw, stoop-shouldered, emerged blowing his nose into a red handkerchief. He looked old, his face a mask of subservience.
Glisson said, “It’s the sign. All is safe here… for the moment.” He slipped out, approached the old man, coughed.
“A lot of sickness around these days,” the old man said. His voice was as ancient as his face, wheezing, slurring the consonants.
“You’re not the only one with troubles,” Glisson said.
The old man straightened, shed the stooped look and subservient manner. “S’pose you’re wanting a hidey hole,” he said. “Don’t know if it’s safe here. Don’t even know if I oughta hide you.”
“I will give the orders here,” Glisson said. “You will obey.”
The old man studied Glisson a moment, then a look of anger washed over his face. “You damn’ Cyborgs!” he said.
“Hold your tongue,” Glisson said, his voice flat. “We need food, a safe place to spend the day. I shall require your help in hiding this van. You must know the surrounding terrain. And you will arrange other transportation for us.”
“Best cut it up and bury it,” the old man said, his voice surly. “Been a hornet’s nest stirred up. Guess you know that.”
“We know,” Glisson said. He turned, beckoned to the van. “Come along. Bring Svengaard.”
Presently, the others joined him. Boumour and Igan supported Svengaard between them. The bindings on Svengaard’s feet had been released, but he appeared barely able to stand. Lizbeth walked with the bent-over care that said she wasn’t sure her incision had healed despite the enzymic speed-up medication.
“We will lodge here during daylight,” Glisson said. “This man will direct you to quarters.”
“What word from Seatac?” Igan asked.
Glisson looked at the old man, said, “Answer.”
The oldster shrugged. “Courier through here couple of hours ago. Said no survivors.”
“Any report on a Dr. Potter?” Svengaard croaked.
Glisson whirled, stared at Svengaard.
“Dunno,” the old man said. “What route he take?”
Igan cleared his throat, glanced at Glisson, then at the old man. “Potter? I believe he was in the group coming out by the power tubes.”
The old man flicked a glance at the ventilator tower growing more distinct among the trees by the second as daylight crept across the mountains. “Nobody come through the tubes,” he said. “They shut off the ventilators and flooded the tubes with that gas first thing.” He looked at Igan, “Ventilators been going again for about three hours.”
Glisson studied Svengaard, asked, “Why are you interested in Potter?”
Svengaard remained silent.
“Answer me!” Glisson ordered.
Svengaard tried to swallow. His throat ached. He felt driven into a corner. Glisson’s words enraged him. Without warning, Svengaard lurched forward dragging Igan and Boumour, lashed out at Glisson with a foot.
The Cyborg dodged with a blurring movement, caught the foot, jerked Svengaard from the two surgeons, whirled, swung Svengaard wide and released him. Svengaard landed on his back, skidded across the ground, stopped. Before he could move, Glisson was standing over him. Svengaard lay there sobbing.
“Why are you interested in Potter?” Glisson demanded.
“Go away, go away, go away!” Svengaard sobbed.
Glisson straightened, looked around at Igan and Boumour. “You understand this?”
Igan shrugged. “It’s emotion.”
“Perhaps a shock reaction,” Boumour said.
Through their hands, Harvey signaled Lizbeth, “He’s been in shock, but this mean’s he’s coming out of it. These are medical people! Can’t they read anything?”
“Glisson reads it,” she answered. “He was testing them.”
Glisson turned around, looked squarely at Harvey. The bold understanding in the Cyborg’s eyes shot a pang of fear through Harvey.