He looked down at the empty yard, then sat on the windowsill and swung his legs over.
Below him the door slammed and a red-uniformed man stepped out onto awl Walk. He glanced up, nodded, and spoke into the instrument in his hand, “He’s here, Harry. In the second-floor front.” Bass, with his legs half drawn inside the window again, heard brisk footsteps crossing the room below.
“Stay where y’are,” the man outside said pleasantly.
Desperately, Bass glanced up. The roof was just above him, an iron-gray blur against the sky. He gathered his legs under him, eased his head and shoulders out and stood up precariously, facing the house, fingers gripping the underside of the raised window. He shifted one hand to the top of the sash, leaned backward and reached up, with his free hand. His fingers closed over the rough, dry edges of the shingles. He gripped them convulsively, brought up his other hand to catch the roof, and swung out into space.
“Hurry it,” said the man below, urgently. Inside, the bedroom door was flung open with a crash.
With a lurch that nearly tore loose his grip on the roof-edge, Bass got one stockinged foot over the top, then his knee.
“Hell,” said the man below. There was a ping, and something shattered against the house-wall under Bass’s head. White vapor swirled around his face for an instant, blinding him; then the wind had whirled it away. Suddenly dizzy, with a gigantic effort he hoisted himself up and over.
He was lying halfway down the shallow pitch of the roof ; it was rolling vertiginously under him, and he felt as if he were going to be sick again.
A voice drifted up to him: “Gas didn’ work, too much wind, Harry. Better go up after him.”
A hand appeared on the roof-edge, then another. Bass flung himself at them dizzily, seized the fingers, pried them away from the room.
“Look out below,” said a resigned voice; then the fingers disappeared. Bass heard a thud.
He stood up carefully, hair flying in the wind, bending his knees to keep his balance on the slope. Across the ridge of the roof, the sky was one gigantic gold wild-pink glare.
In the other direction was the roof of the adjoining house. The gap between the two looked to be no more than four feet.
“Bass,” called a voice. One of the Guardsmen had backed into view down the lawn. “C’mon down, boy. We won’t hurt you.”
Bass moved down to the edge of the roof. Another gas-capsule burst at his feet, but the vapor whipped away instantly. He gathered himself and leaped across, clutching frantically as he landed to keep from slipping off the edge. He scrambled up again with his palms full of splinters and climbed to the ridge.
ONE Guardsman, limping, was heading around the corner of the first rouse; the other was still on the front lawn. Bass turned, straddling the center line, and moved back until he was out of sight from either direction before he clambered down the opposite slope.
One of the Guardsmen was standing between the houses, looking up at him. Be reasonable, will ya?” he said. Bass jumped across to the next roof.
It was harder to keep from sliding off this time, and harder to get up, but he managed it. He was very tired, and his mind was sluggish, but he knew they could never catch him. He would keep on walking across these roofs forever, if necessary, and by that time the whole city would have burned down. Then they would have to go away and leave him alone.
Here he was at the ridge again. “Bass,” called the Guardsman’s voice from somewhere to his left. “Lissen to me, Bass! Can ya hear me? It’s important, Bass! Lissen, we’ll make a deal ‘th ya—you come down, and we’ll leave ya family alone! Y’understand?”
His family … Bass’s mind snapped to clarity for a moment. How did they know who his family was? How did they know his name? Bewildered, he turned and walked a few steps toward the front of the house.
… But how did he know the Guard would keep its word to a “demon”? And anyhow, curse it, these weren’t Glenbrook Guardsmen. It didn’t make any sense. If they were Stamford Guardsmen, how could they hurt his family in Glenbrook? And if they weren’t, how did they know his name?
Too late, he heard the roaring swell up behind him and felt the wind suddenly blowing straight down along his body. Flailing his arms desperately to keep his balance, he turned to see a metal-andglass monster looming over him—a copter, its undercarriage almost brushing the ridge.
He had just time to see the head framed in the open doorway, the white hair, whipping wildly, orange-tinted in the glare. The face, contorted in a fearful scowl, was that of His Excellency, the Archdeputy Laudermilk.
“Hang on!” shouted the old man. Then the undercarriage touched Bass’s chest; he clutched it automatically as he felt himself being shoved backwards; and then he was dangling while the roof moved out from under him and the street gently rose.
When his feet touched, the Guardsman was there to seize his arms and hustle him into the copter’s open doorway. Bass made no resistance.
Someone closed the door and pushed him into a seat, and the copter rose again.
“Now,” said Laudermilk severely, “do you see how much trouble you’ve caused?”
Bass stared down through the copter’s transparent wall. They were cruising high over Stamford’s business district; he could see the fire from one end to the other. It stretched in a blazing arc halfway down the slope, the flames shooting forward at an acute angle, five-times the height of the buildings, sparks fountaining upward as if from a battery of titanic Roman candles. But it had not reached the wall at either end.
At the west end, the nearer one, Bass could see that the streets were clogged by streams of cars and people moving out of the danger area. Here and there, clumps of tiny green fire-engines were playing threads of water against the buildings in the fire’s path.
Bass could not see much of what was going on in the center, there was too much smoke. But he saw the white clouds that came billowing up out of the sepia: first one, then two together, then a whole row. Buildings were being dynamited to clear a firebreak.
That in itself, it occurred to Bass, must mean that most of the crowds had been evacuated already.
“The people in Glenbrook,” he said bitterly, “will see the red light and the smoke, and hear the explosions, and tell each other the demons are having a party.”
“Yes,” Laudermilk agreed, “and the Stamford people will think the demons in Glenbrook caused the fire. What did you expect?”
“It doesn’t matter what I expected,” Bass said.
“No, it doesn’t, unfortunately. You see, Arthur, it wouldn’t have done any good even if you had succeeded … yes, I know what you wanted to do. You wanted to drive the two peoples together, and make them see the truth about each other. As it is, I’m afraid you’ve only managed to remind the authorities once more what a dangerous thing a possessed man can be … and you’ve killed a few people, no doubt, not to speak of the property damage.”
“I’m not sorry I did it,” said Bass.
“No, neither am I, as a matter of fact,” Laudermilk said good-humoredly. “If you hadn’t, we might never have found you. That would have been a great pity.”
HE WASN’T making sense, Bass thought confusedly. They’d had him surrounded—his setting the fire had only helped them capture him a little sooner, that was all.
“Are you wounded?” Laudermilk asked abruptly. Fingers , probed under his shirts, rolling them back, turning him gently to examine the other side. “That’s not too bad—it went straight through. Hold still.” Something cool and gelatinous was smeared over the painful area; then an adhesive bandage, tight around his ribs.