The rattletrap pickup truck stood in the moonlit farmyard. There were no lights in the house that stood gaunt upon the hilltop. The road from the farmyard ran down a long, steep hill to join the main road a half mile or so away.
There would be no ignition key, of course, but one could cross the wires, then shove the truck until it started coasting down the hill. Once it was going, throw it into gear and the motor would crank over and start up.
“Someone will catch us, Alden,” Kitty told him. “There is no more certain way for someone to find out about us. Stealing a truck…”
“It’s only twenty miles,” said Alden. “That’s what the signpost said. And we can be there before there is too much fuss.”
“But it would be safer walking and hiding.”
“There is no time,” he said.
For he remembered now. It had all come back to him—the machine that he had built in the dining room. A machine that was like a second body, that was like a suit to wear. It was a two-way schoolhouse, or maybe a two-way laboratory, for when he was inside of it he learned of that other life and it learned of him.
It had taken years to build it, years to understand how to assemble the components that those others, or that other, had provided. All the components had been small and there had been thousands of them. He had held out his hand and thought hard of yellow leaves falling in the blue haze of autumn air and there had been another piece of that strange machine put into his hand.
And now it stood, untenanted, in that faded, dusky room and they would be wondering what had happened to him.
“Come on,” he said to Kitty, sharply. “There is no use in waiting.”
“There might be a dog. There might be a…”
“We will have to chance it.”
He ducked out of the clump of trees and ran swiftly across the moonlit barnyard to the truck. He reached it and wrenched at the hood and the hood would not come up.
Kitty screamed, just once, more a warning scream than fright, and he spun around. The shape stood not more than a dozen feet away, with the moonlight glinting off its metal and the Medic Disciplinary symbol engraved upon its chest.
Alden backed against the truck and stood there, staring at the robot, knowing that the truck had been no more than bait. And thinking how well the medics must know the human race to set that sort of trap—knowing not only the working of the human body but the human mind as well
Kitty said: “If you’d not been slowed up. If you’d not carried me…”
“It would have made no difference,” Alden told her. “They probably had us spotted almost from the first and were tracking us.”
“Young man,” the robot said, “you are entirely right. I have been waiting for you. I must admit,” the robot said, “that I have some admiration for you. You are the only ones who ever crossed the swamp. There were some who tried, but they never made it.”
So this was how it ended, Alden told himself, with some bitterness, but not as much, perhaps, as he should have felt. For there had been, he thought, nothing but a feeble hope from the first beginning. He had been walking toward defeat, he knew, with every step he’d taken—and into a hopelessness that even he admitted.
If only he had been able to reach the house in Willow Bend, that much he had hoped for, that much would have satisfied him. To reach it and let those others know he had not deserted.
“So what happens now?” he asked the robot. “Is it back to Limbo?”
The robot never had a chance to answer. There was a sudden rush of running feet, pounding across the farmyard.
The robot swung around and there was something streaking in the moonlight that the robot tried to duck, but couldn’t.
Alden sprang in a low and powerful dive, aiming for the robot’s knees. His shoulder struck on metal and the flying rock clanged against the breastplate of the metal man. Alden felt the robot, already thrown off balance by the rock, topple at the impact of his shoulder.
The robot crashed heavily to the earth and Alden, sprawling on the ground, fought upright to his feet.
“Kitty!” he shouted.
But Kitty, he saw, was busy.
She was kneeling beside the fallen robot, who was struggling to get up and in her hand she held the thrown rock, with her hand raised above the robot’s skull. The rock came down and the skull rang like a bell—and rang again and yet again.
The robot ceased its struggling and lay still, but Kitty kept on pounding at the skull.
“Kitty, that’s enough,” said another voice.
Alden turned to face the voice.
“Eric!” he cried. “But we left you back there.”
“I know,” said Eric. “You thought I had run back to Limbo. I found where you had tracked me.”
“But you are here. You threw the rock.”
Eric shrugged. “I got to be myself again. At first I didn’t know where I was or who I was or anything at all. And then I remembered all of it. I had to make a choice then. There really wasn’t any choice. There was nothing back in Limbo. I tried to catch up with you, but you moved too fast.”
“I killed him,” Kitty announced, defiantly. “I don’t care. I meant to kill him.”
“Not killed,” said Eric. “There’ll be others coming soon. He can be repaired.”
“Give me a hand with the hood on this truck,” said Alden. “We have to get out of here.”
Eric parked the rattletrap back of the house and Alden got out.
“Come along now,” he said.
The back door was unlocked, just as he had left it. He went into the kitchen and switched on the ceiling light.
Through the door that opened into the dining room, he could see the shadowy framework of the structure he had built.
“We can’t stay here too long,” said Eric. “They know we have the truck. More than likely they’ll guess where we were headed.”
Alden did not answer. For there was no answer. There was no place they could go.
Wherever they might go, they would be hunted down, for no one could be allowed to flaunt the medic statutes and defy the medic justice. There was no one in the world who would dare to help them.
He had run from Limbo to reach this place—although he had not known at the time what he was running to. It was not Limbo he had run from; rather, he had run to reach the machine that stood in the dining room just beyond this kitchen.
He went into the room and snapped on the light and the strange mechanism stood glittering in the center of the room.
It was a man-size cage and there was just room for him to stand inside of it. And he must let them know that he was back again.
He stepped into the space that had been meant to hold him and the outer framework and its mysterious attachments seemed to fold themselves about him.
He stood in the proper place and shut his eyes and thought of falling yellow leaves. He made himself into the boy again who had sat beneath the tree and it was not his mind, but the little boy mind that sensed the goldenness and blue, that smelled the wine of autumn air and the warmth of autumn sun.
He wrapped himself in autumn and the long ago and he waited for the answer, but there was no answer.
He waited and the goldenness slid from him and the air was no longer wine-like and there was no warm sunlight, but a biting wind that blew off some black sea of utter nothingness.
He knew—he knew and yet he’d not admit it. He stood stubbornly and wan, with his feet still in the proper place, and waited.
But even stubbornness wore thin and he knew that they were gone and that there was no use of waiting, for they would not be back. Slowly he turned and walked out of the cage.
He had been away too long.
As he stepped out of the cage, he saw the vial upon the floor and stooped to pick it up. He had sipped from it, he remembered, that day (how long ago?) when he had stepped back into the room after long hours in the cage.