They turned from watching him. Chip took out his map.
“Shit,” Jack said.
Chip said nothing. He looked at the map.
Buzz rubbed his leg and took his hand from it abruptly.
Jack tore bits of grass from the ground. Ria, sitting close to him, watched him. “What’s your suggestion,” Jack said, “if they are checking bracelets?”
Chip looked up from the map and, after a moment, said, “Well go back a little way and cut east and by-pass them.”
Jack tore up more grass and then threw it down. “Come on,” he said to Ria, and stood up. She sprang up beside him, bright-eyed.
“Where are you going?” Chip said.
“Where we planned to go,” Jack said, looking down at him. “The parkland near the tunnel. We’ll wait for you until it gets light.”
“Sit down, you two,” Karl said.
Chip said, “You’ll go with all of us when I say we’ll go. You agreed to that at the beginning.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Jack said. “I don’t like taking orders from you any more than I like taking them from Uni.”
“You’re going to ruin everything,” Buzz said.
Ria said, “You are! Stopping, turning back, by-passing—if you’re going to do a thing, do it!”
“Sit down and wait till Dover gets back,” Chip said.
Jack smiled. “You want to make me?” he said. “Right out here in front of the Family?” He nodded to Ria and they picked up their bikes and steadied the kits in the baskets.
Chip got up, putting the map in his pocket. “We can’t break the group in two this way,” he said. “Stop and think for a minute, will you, Jack? How will we know if—”
“You’re the stopper-and-thinker,” Jack said. “I’m the one who’s going to walk down that tunnel.” He turned and pushed his bike away. Ria pushed hers along with him. They went toward the path.
Chip took a step after them and stopped, his jaw tight, his hands fisted. He wanted to shout at them, to take his gun out and force them back—but there were cyclists passing, members on the grass nearby.
“There’s nothing you can do, Chip,” Karl said, and Buzz said, “The brother-fighters.”
At the edge of the path Jack and Ria mounted their bikes. Jack waved. “So long!” he called. “See you in the lounge at TV!” Ria waved too and they pedaled away.
Buzz and Karl waved after them.
Chip snatched up his kit from his bike and slung it on his shoulder. He took another kit and tossed it in Buzz’s lap. “Karl, you stay here,” he said. “Buzz, come on with me.”
He went into the woods and realized he had moved quickly, angrily, abnormally, but thought Fight it! He went up the slope in the direction Dover had taken. God DAMN them!
Buzz caught up with him. “Christ and Wei,” he said, “don’t throw the kits!”
“God damn them!” Chip said. “The first time I saw them I knew they were no good! But I shut my eyes because I was so fighting—God damn me!” he said. “It’s my fault. Mine.”
“Maybe there’s no bracelet check and they’ll be waiting in the parkland,” Buzz said.
Yellow flickered among the trees ahead: Dover coming down. He stopped, then saw them and came on. “You’re right,” he said. “Doctors on the ground, doctors in the air—”
“Jack and Ria have gone on,” Chip said.
Dover looked at him wide-eyed and said, “Didn’t you stop them?”
“How?” Chip said. He caught Dover’s arm and turned him around. “Show us the way,” he said.
Dover led them quickly up the slope through the trees. “They’ll never get through,” he said. “There’s a whole medicenter, and barriers to prevent the bikes from turning.”
They came out of the trees onto an incline of rock, Buzz last and hurrying. Dover said, “Get down or we’ll be seen.”
They dropped to their stomachs and crawled up the incline to its rim. Beyond lay the city, ’00013, its white slabs standing clean and bright in the sunlight, its interweaving rails glittering, its border of roadways flashing with cars. The river curved before it and continued to the north, blue and slender, with sightseeing boats drifting slowly and a long line of barges passing under bridges.
Below, they looked into a rock-walled half bowl whose floor was a semicircular plaza where the bike path branched; it came down from the north around the power station, and half of it turned, passed over the car-rushing road, and bridged to the city, while the other half went on across the plaza and followed the river’s curving eastern bank with the road coming up to rejoin it. Before it branched, barriers channeled the oncoming cyclists into three lines, each of them passing before a group of red-cross-coveralled members standing beside a short unusual-looking scanner. Three members in antigrav gear hovered face-down in the air, one over each group. Two cars and a copter were in the nearer part of the plaza, and more members in red-crossed coveralls stood by the line of cyclists who were leaving the city, hurrying them along when they slowed to look at the ones who were touching the scanners.
“Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei,” Buzz said.
Chip, while he looked, pulled his kit open at his side. “They must be in the line somewhere,” he said. He found his binoculars and put them to his eyes and focused them.
“They are,” Dover said. “See the kits in the baskets?”
Chip swept the line and found Jack and Ria; they were pedaling slowly, side by side in wood-barriered lanes. Jack was looking ahead and his lips were moving. Ria nodded. They were steering with their left hands only; their right hands were in their pockets.
Chip passed the binoculars to Dover and turned to his kit.
“We’ve got to help them get through,” he said. “If they make it over the bridge they may be able to lose themselves in the city.”
“They’re going to shoot when they get to the scanners,” Dover said.
Chip gave Buzz a blue-handled bomb and said, “Take off the tape and pull when I tell you. Try to get it near the copter; two birds with one net.”
“Do it before they start shooting,” Dover said.
Chip took the binoculars back from him and looked through them and found Jack and Ria again. He scanned the lines ahead of them; about fifteen bikes were between them and the groups at the scanners.
“Do they have bullets or L-beams?” Dover asked.
“Bullets,” Chip said. “Don’t worry, I’ll time it right.” He watched the lines of slow-moving bikes, gauging their speed.
“They’ll probably shoot anyway,” Buzz said. “Just for fun. Did you see that look in Ria’s eyes?”
“Get ready,” Chip said. He watched until Jack and Ria were five bikes from the scanners. “Pull,” he said.
Buzz pulled the handle and threw the bomb underhanded to the side. It hit stone, tumbled downward, bounded off a projection, and landed near the side of the copter. “Get back,” Chip said. He took another look through the binoculars, at Jack and Ria two bikes from the scanners looking tense but confident, and slipped back between Buzz and Dover. “They look as if they’re going to a party,” he said.
They waited, their cheeks on stone, and the explosion roared and the incline shuddered. Metal crashed and grated below. There was silence, and the bomb’s bitter smell; and then voices, murmuring and rising louder. “Those two!” someone shouted.
They edged forward to the rim.
Two bikes were racing onto the bridge. All the others had stopped, their riders standing one-footed, facing toward the copter—tipped to its side below and smoking—and turning now toward the two bikes speeding and the red-cross-coveralled members running after them. The three members in the air veered and flew toward the bridge.