Two: The Guardsmen, despite their immense power, were as ignorant as the Consumers. That was logical, even if it made the Guard less efficient in dealing with people like Bass—and such cases must be rare; no “demon” had crossed the wall into Glenbrook in the memory of any man living. A secret like this one must be well kept, or it could never have been kept at all.
Less efficient… .
That was the clue, Bass realized, with sudden, mounting excitement. Less efficient how—and why?
The obvious answer was: because they were afraid of him. But a moment’s thought was enough to show him that it was no answer at all. Certainly they were afraid … just as a lion-hunter might be afraid of a lion. They were courageous, trained men, proud of their hereditary calling, hardened to violence. If he attacked them, if he made a single threatening gesture, they might be terrified, but they would shoot him just the same.
What else?
Abruptly Bass found himself remembering the way they had acted after his capture—not one of them had approached him nearer than two yards until he was in the car; and after that, the one Guardsman who shared the rear seat with him had kept as far away as he could get. Caution, or—necessary inefficiency?
Not caution.
They could have manacled his hands behind his back. They could have knocked him unconscious, tied his arms and legs with enough wire to hold an elephant. They could have searched him for weapons and evidence.
Ail of these would have been reasonable and proper things to do; they had not done one ; and why? Because every act involved touching him or his clothing—his Glenbrook clothing; his hat for instance, with its label, “GP,” woven into the fabric.
And that, Bass realized, remembering a certain red-plastic bag, would have been impossible.
His heart was beating painfully fast. If he could somehow manage to touch all three of them with some article of his clothing—swiftly, and simultaneously—then shock might delay their reaction for the second he would need to leap past the man with the gas-gun, reach the unlocked right-hand door and get away.
They turned another corner, heading eastward again, up another hill. The crowd-noises grew louder.
There were two things wrong with that program, Bass thought frenziedly. One: Was the right-hand door really unlocked ? He thought so—he couldn’t believe he had failed to notice anything so important, and it made a distorted kind of sense: one rear door had to be left unlocked so that the men in the other car could get at him if he overpowered the four in this one. But if he was wrong—
Two: The three Guardsmen would have to be immobilized at the same instant—an obvious impossibility. Even they would allow him time to disrobe at leisure and select his weapons, he didn’t have three arms… .
The thought ended as they topped the rise and headed into a blast of sound. At the end of the next block a kaleidoscope mass of singing, shouting, screaming humanity filled the street solidly.
Bass swallowed hard. The cars would have to slow down to get through the crowd, he told himself numbly, and the Guardsmen’s attention would be divided. It wasn’t much help, but it was all he was likely to get.
There was no more time for deliberation. Within seconds, he would have to act.
THE lead car’s siren groaned tentatively, then burst into a full-throated scream; after a moment the other three joined it. As the lead car nosed into the crowd, Bass saw that the one to his right was falling back.
Then they were in the crowd, that had parted sluggishly to let the first car through, then flowed together again, and now, with equal slowness, was opening the lane once more. Flushed, staring faces bobbed past the windows; raised arms flourished a forest of crazily tilted banners; mouths gaped wetly. The din was no longer even perceptible as sound. Bass felt it as a heavy, maddening vibration submerged by the sirens’ howling.
Tension plucked fiendishly at his nerves. It was the same with the Guardsmen; their bodies were unnaturally rigid, eyes glittering fixedly through their masks, lips taut and bloodless. An intolerable pressure was building, building… .
Bass moved. His body was already tilting forward and to the right, his thigh-muscles bunching to take his weight, as his right hand darted up to his cap, seized it and swept it in the same motion at the full length of his arm straight across the faces of the two gunmen in the front seat.
Time froze. Bass saw the two gun-muzzles belch flame, and felt a clublike blow in his right side that spun him around, half-erect, facing the third man. A sudden expanding haze of grayness blurred his vision for an instant, but he saw the third man’s face, teeth gleaming in the startled mouth, before the flung cap eclipsed it. Then he was hurling himself at the door, his fist slamming the catch. The door melted away in front of him and he tumbled out onto the street.
A blast of sound struck him; and a blur of color; and a dizzying wave of pain. Coughing and retching, vainly trying to keep his balance, he lurched forward into the crowd. He caromed off one dimly-seen body and into another; his fingers caught a handful of fabric and clutched it desperately for an instant until momentum sent him staggering in a new direction.
Behind him a flat, echoing roar cut across the bedlam. A chorus of screams rocketed up: screams of genuine fear and agony, not hysteria.
Bass kept going blindly, clutching at .the packed bodies that impeded him, forcing them apart, swinging himself around them. The pain in his side was no more than a dull, distant ache, but his eyes were swimming with tears, and his coughing choked him so that he could hardly breathe.
Something struck him a stunning blow on the forehead and he fell, scraping his fingernails down a fiat, rough surface that could only be a brick wall. He lay there, head ringing, his mind stupidly fumbling the tiny circle of his weariness and his pain, until some remembered urgency drove him to his feet again. He leaned against the wall, straining for breath, until nausea bent him double and he vomited.
When he straightened, wiping the tears out of his eyes, his head was clearer and he could see again. He had been hit twice, he realized; once with a gas pellet, once with a solid projectile. But he had been moving too fast to get more than a whiff of the gas, and the wound in his side must be a slight one; he had barely felt it. He had been lucky….
But he had to keep moving, or his luck would run out.
The crowd swirled around him: men in peaked hats and women in square ones ; fringed and beaded capes, green, rose, orange, lavender … flushed shiny faces and blind eyes … a banner swayed past, and he caught the letters “VE NOT, WANT” ; his mind supplied the rest of the familiar motto: “Save not, want not.”
NOW suddenly he knew what his crowd was. It hadn’t occurred to him before, although he should have known from the sound alone—he’d had enough else to think about, Infinite knew, and besides that, there was no Founder’s Day this month. But this could be nothing else than the procession that climaxed a Founder’s Day celebration—the disorganized, miles-long rout that followed the procession, rather. Every able-bodied man and woman in the district would be here, shouting drunk on sacramental wines, sermons, singing, dancing, mock-fights and exhortation—the only release they had, the only time they could let themselves go, year after year, as long as they lived.
He moved up the street away from the intersection, keeping as close to the wall as he could. So long as he stayed well buried in the crowd, he thought, he was reasonably safe. If he staggered, so did the celebrants: if he stared wildly, so did they; if his clothing was stained and disordered, so was theirs. But his hatlessness could betray him….