“Come on,” Kirby said. “There isn’t much time.”
He scrambled down the exit ramp, turning to take Vanna Marshak’s hand and help her the last few steps. They hurried across the rooftop landing area to the gravshaft, stepped in, dropped to ground level in a dizzying five-second plunge. Local police were waiting in the street. They had three teardrops.
“He’s a block from the Vorster place, Freeman Kirby,” one of the policeman said. “The esper’s been dragging him around for half an hour, but he’s dead set on going there.”
“What does he want there?” Kirby asked.
“He wants the reactor. He says he’s going to take it back to Mars and put it to some worthwhile use,”
Vanna gasped at the blasphemy. Kirby shrugged, sat back, watched the streets flashing by. The teardrop halted. Kirby saw the Martian across the street.
The girl who was with him was sultry, full-bodied, lush-looking. She had one arm thrust through his, and she was close to Weiner’s side, cooing in his ear. Weiner laughed harshly and turned to her, pulled her close, then pushed her away. She clutched at him again. It was quite a scene, Kirby thought. The street had been cleared. Local police and a couple of Ridblom’s men were watching grimly from the sidelines.
Kirby went forward and gestured to the girl. She sensed instantly who he was, withdrew her arm from Weiner, and stepped away. The Martian swung around.
“Found me, did you?”
“I didn’t want you to do anything you’d regret later on?
“Very loyal of you, Kirby. Well, as long as you’re here, you can be my accomplice. I’m on my way to the Vorster place. They’re wasting good fissionables in those reactors. You distract the priest, and I’m going to grab the blue blinker, and we’ll all live happily ever after. Just don’t let him shock you. That isn’t fun.”
“Nat—”
“Are you with me or aren’t you, pal?” Weiner pointed toward the chapel, diagonally across the street a block away, in a building almost as shabby as the one in Manhattan. He started toward it.
Kirby glanced uncertainly at Vanna. Then he crossed the street behind Weiner. He realized that the altered girl was following, too.
Just as Weiner reached the entrance to the Vorster place, Vanna dashed forward and cut in front of him.
“Wait,” she said. “Don’t go in there to make trouble.”
“Get out of my way, you phony-faced bitch!”
‘Please,” she said softly. “You’re a troubled man. You aren’t in harmony with yourself, let alone with the world around you. Come inside with me, and let me show you how to pray. There’s much for you to gain in there. If you’d only open your mind, open your heart—instead of standing there so smug in your hatred, in your drunken unwillingness to see—”
Weiner hit her.
It was a backhand slap across the face. Surgical alteration jobs are fragile, and they aren’t meant to be slapped. Vanna fell to her knees, whimpering, and pressed her hands over her face. She still blocked the Martian’s way. Weiner drew his foot back as though he were going to kick her, and that was when Reynolds Kirby forgot he was paid to be a diplomat.
Kirby strode forward, caught Weiner by the elbow, swung him around. The Martian was off balance. He clawed at Kirby for support. Kirby struck his hand down, brought a fist up, landed it solidly in Weiner’s muscular belly. Weiner made a small oofing sound and began to rock backward. Kirby had not struck a human being in anger in thirty years, and he did not realize until that moment what a savage pleasure there could be in something so primordial. Adrenalin flooded his body. He hit Weiner again, just below the heart. The Martian, looking very surprised, sagged and went over backward, sprawling in the street.
“Get up,” Kirby said, almost dizzy with rage.
Vanna plucked at his sleeve. “Don’t hit him again,” she murmured. Her metallic lips looked crumpled. Her cheeks glistened with tears. “Please don’t hit him any more.”
Weiner remained where he was, shaking his head vaguely. A new figure came forward: a small leathery-faced man, in late middle age. The Martian consul. Kirby felt his belly churn with apprehension.
The consul said, “I’m terribly sorry, Freeman Kirby. He’s really been running amok, hasn’t he? Well, we’ll take jurisdiction now. What he needs is to have some of his own people tell him what a fool he’s been.”
Kirby stammered, “It was my fault. I lost sight of him. He shouldn’t be blamed. He—”
“We understand perfectly, Freeman Kirby.” The consul smiled benignly, gestured, nodded as three aides came forward and gathered the fallen Weiner into their arms.
Very suddenly the street was empty. Kirby stood, drained and stupefied, in front of the Vorster chapel, and Vanna was with him, and all the others were gone, Weiner vanishing like an ogre in a bad dream. It had not, Kirby thought, been a very successful evening. But now it was over.
Home, now.
An hour and a half would see him in Tortola. A quick, lonely swim in the warm ocean—then half an hour in the Nothing Chamber tomorrow. No, an hour, Kirby decided. It would take that much to undo this night’s damage. An hour of disassociation, an hour of drifting on the amniotic tide, sheltered, warm, unbothered by the pressures of the world, an hour of blissful if cowardly escape. Fine. Wonderful.
Vanna said, “Will you come in now?”
“Into the chapel?”
“Yes. Please.”
“It’s late. I’ll get you back to New York right away. We’ll pay for any repairs that—that your face will need. The copter’s waiting.”
“Let it wait,” Vanna said. “Come inside.”
“I want to get home.”
“Home can wait, too. Give me two hours with you, Ron. Just sit and listen to what they have to say in there. Come to the altar with me. You don’t have to do anything but listen. It’ll relax you, I promise that”
Kirby stared at her distorted, artificial face. Beneath the grotesque eyelids were real eyes—shining, imploring. Why was she so eager? Did they pay a finder’s fee of salvation for every lost soul dragged into the Blue Fire? Or could it be, Kirby wondered, that she really and truly believed, that her heart and soul were bound up in this movement that she was sincere in her conviction that the followers of Vorst would live through eternity, would live to see men ride to the distant stars?
He was so very tired.
He wondered how the security officers of the Secretariat would regard it if a high official like himself began to dabble in Vorsterism.
He wondered, too, if he had any career at all left to salvage, after tonight’s fiasco with the Martian. What was there to lose? He could rest for a while. His head was splitting. Perhaps some esper in there would massage his frontal lobes for a while. Espers tended to be drawn to the Vorster chapels, didn’t they?
The place seemed to have a pull. He had made his job his religion, but was that really good enough now, he asked himself? Perhaps it was time to unbend, time to shed the mask of aloofness, time to find out what it was that the multitudes were buying so eagerly in these chapels. Or perhaps it was just time to give in and let himself be pulled under by the tide of the new creed. The sign over the door said: