He remedied that by plucking a hat from the nearest male head. Before the man had time to turn, Bass was out of sight in the crowd. He thought he heard a dismayed shout rise up behind him, but in the clamor he couldn’t be sure.
He couldn’t, of course, stay in the crowd forever; he had to get out before the Guard set up a cordon around the whole area and trapped him. Neither could he afford to risk leaving the crowd at either of the nearest intersections. Almost certainly the Guard had had time to post men there. But there was another way.
This was a business district. Some of the ground-floor shops might still be staffed—dispensing sacramental wine and liquor, trademark-pendants and other holy articles—but the majority would be deserted, and, of course, unlocked. Only the Guard needed locks in a world where angels enforced the law.
There was a metal signboard, fastened just above the bobbing heads of the crowd; steeply angled from his viewpoint, but almost legible. S, T, A— He circled toward it, and in another moment was able to make out the rest.
STAMFORD BOOK OUTLET. Underneath, in smaller lettering, U/M LICENSE NO. 8402331.
A book shop—perfect. Who would buy a book on a Founder’s Day? Bass edged around a wild-haired woman who stood swaying and singing to herself in the doorway, turned the knob and slipped into the shadowed interior.
Light from the street penetrated only as far as the first row of tables. Bass paused a moment beyond that point, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Beside him, gold-lettered titles gleamed up at him from a table-load of stacked, identical books. The many-times-repeated phrase caught his attention as he was about to move on:
“… With Security and Abundance For All …”
He stared at it incredulously. An identically-titled book was on sale in Glenbrook, had been for years ; it was required reading in the schools. The binding was different, of course, and—he bent closer—the authors’ names. That settled it: a coincidence. But—
He wavered and gave in. Common sense told him that every second of unnecessary delay was dangerous; but he couldn’t leave that question unanswered behind him. He snatched up one of the volumes and shoved it, with some difficulty, into the wide pocket on the inside of his stolen cape.
Near the low doorway at the rear o the shop, another title gleamed at him from a shelf: POCKET ATLAS OF THE WORLD. His fingers twitched for it, but he shook his head and plunged on. through the curtain, into an unlighted back room.
The simplest decisions, he thought dizzily, as he groped his way between a table and a mass of piled books, seemed to have become unaccountably difficult. He had a curious disembodied feeling, and his mind kept drifting stubbornly off into fantasy: a swift glimpse of Gloria, flushed and beautiful ; Dean Horrock’s blunt, palsied fingers, tamping tobacco into his pipe; his father’s heavy, black-browed face, seen more distinctly than he had remembered it for years.
He realized that his wound must be more serious than he had thought; and that, if this went on, his recapture was certain. But it didn’t seem to matter.
HE WAS in a hallway, clearly enough—he had been following a wall in the same direction interminably — but he had no idea how he had got there or which way he ought to go next. His mind was lucid but still very detached; a cool, tenuous cloud of intelligence withdrawn into a corner of his skull; if it hadn’t been for the knot of pain in his side, he would have been able to ignore his bodily sensations altogether.
He stopped in the darkness and tried to orient himself. Which way had he turned when he’d first got into the hallway? The knowledge simply wasn’t there. Blankness, from the time he was halfway across the room behind the bookshop until a few moments ago.
A new, fiercer spasm of pain …
When he could think again, he pushed himself away from the wall and moved forward cautiously, hands outstretched. The first thing to do was to make sure he was in a corridor. He might have been walking around and around a room, endlessly following four walls that he couldn’t distinguish from one.
Four steps, and his fingers touched smother wall. He moved to the right, feeling his way. Three steps, and a moulding slid under his fingers. Beyond it was a narrow vertical opening, with a faint current of air breathing through it. He groped for the doorknob, found it.
Dim gray light from two windows struck his eyes when he opened the door. There were three small desks, their varnish glinting faintly; filing cabinets, swivel chairs, a curling glossy-paper calendar on the wall. There didn’t seem to be any exit. Puzzled, he moved forward.
The gray light tuned yellowish as he advanced until, a few paces from the windows, two incandescent globes rose into view. Streetlights. He was on the second floor; sometime during that blank period he must have stumbled onto a stairway and, senselessly, climbed it.
At any rate, he was on the right side of the building. Peering down warily from the side of a window, he could see that the street beneath was utterly deserted. A sheet of newspaper, turning and twisting like a live thing, swam halfway up across the face of the building opposite, then dived abruptly out of sight.
… Something was wrong. There was elusive, indefinable menace in what he saw in the deserted street, or the vacant windows of the building across the way, or in the brooding, angular shapes of chimney-pots and wind-vanes dimly outlined against the sky.
Was that it, the sky? How long had he been unconscious?
He stared at it. No; it hadn’t darkened perceptibly since he’d last seen it. His blackout, probably, had lasted only a few minutes—just long enough to reach the stairway, climb it, and wander a few yards down the second-floor corridor.
But his heart was thudding painfully against his ribs, moments later, as he descended the ink-black staircase toward the street.
He groped his way along the hall, through a cluttered back room, into a larger chamber and a glare of light from the street-lamps outside., Along two walls of the room stood rows of belt-driven machinery; in the center was a long, low table that bore rows and heaps and windrows of shoes.
Bass hesitated a moment, thinking, I could easily find a pair to fit me, and it would be worth the delay, because— But it wouldn’t, he knew. If his face, or his gait or his physique didn’t betray him, his shoes wouldn’t. He was stalling deliberately, afraid to go out into that lighted, empty street.
Keeping in shadow as much as he could, he edged forward to the doorway. He stared through the grimy pane: Nothing. No one on the street in either direction, as far as he could see; no movement but the tumbling dance of paper scraps along the gutter. No one in the shadowed doorways across the street.
The brass doorknob was slick against his sweaty palm. He eased it around, opened the door inchmeal. Wind fluttered through the opening, bringing a muted echo of the noise from the next street. Grinding his teeth, Bass stepped out onto the sidewalk.
Nothing.
Nothing but fear, so thick he could almost taste it.
He was wounded, he told himself; wounded and tired and sick. That was the reason he felt like this, it had to be. And in any case, nothing could be more dangerous than going back, unless it was standing here like a fool, waiting for the Guard to come and find him.
He moved forward, one step, two, three. With each step the sense of danger grew stronger. In spite of himself he came to a halt, staring around him. The vacant, windy street—the darkened windows—above him, the broken silhouette of wind-vanes and chimney-pots….