Night Walk (5 page)
Authors: Bob Shaw
As he listened, Tallon felt a growing respect for the old doctor,
who seemed genuinely incapable of accepting defeat. They reached the
rehabilitation center and stopped at the entrance.
"Just one thing before we go in, son. I want you to promise not to say
anything to Ed about the real reason why I want the torch built. If he
guessed, he would quit work on it immediately -- to save me from myself,
as the saying goes."
Tallon said, "All right, but I want you to make me one promise in return.
If you really do have an escape plan, don't include me in it. If I ever
decide to commit suicide I'll pick an easier way."
They went up a flight of stairs and into the workshop. Tallon identified
it at once by the familiar smell of hot solder and stale cigarette smoke,
a smell that had not changed since his student days.
"Are you there, Ed?" The echoes from Winfieid's voice suggested the
workshop was quite small. "I've brought a visitor."
"I
know
you've brought a visitor," a thin, irritable voice said from
close by. "I can see him, can't I? You've been blind so long you've begun
to think nobody else can see." The voice faded into barely audible swearing.
Winfield gave his booming laugh and whispered to Tallon, "Ed was born
on this planet, but he was very active in the old Unionist movement at
one time and didn't have enough sense to quit when the Lutherians took
over. He was arrested by Kreuger and suffered an unfortunate accident to
his heels while trying to get free. There are quite a few of Kreuger's
prizes hopping about the Pavilion like birds."
"And my ears are all right, too," Hogarth's voice warned.
"Ed, this is Sam Tallon -- the man who almost finished Cherkassky.
He's an electronics expert, so perhaps you'll get my torch working now."
"I have a degree in electronics," Tallon said. "That isn't the same as
being an expert."
"But you'll be able to get the bugs out of a simple frequency-reducer
circuit," Winfield said. "Here, feel this."
He drew Tallon over to a bench and placed his hands on a complicated
metal and plastic object about three feet square.
"Is that it?" Tallon explored the massive circuitry with his fingers.
"What good is this thing to you? I thought you were talking about
something you could carry in one hand."
"It's a model," Hogarth snapped impatiently, "twenty times the size of
the real instrument. That lets the doctor feel out what he thinks he's
doing, and I reproduce it in proper size. It's a good idea, except it
doesn't work."
"It'll work now," Winfield said confidently. "What do you say, son?"
Tallon thought it over. Winfield seemed to be a crazy old coot, and in
all probability Hogarth was another, but in the brief time he had spent
with them, he had almost forgotten about being blind. "I'll help," he said.
"Have you materials to build two prototypes?"
Winfield squeezed his hand excitedly. "Don't worry about that part, son.
Helen will see we get all the parts we need."
"Helen?"
"Yes. Helen Juste. She's head of the rehabilitation center."
"And she doesn't object to your building this thing?"
"Object!" Winfield roared. "It was mainly her idea. She's been behind the
scheme from the start."
Tallon shook his head in disbelief. "Isn't that a strange thing for a senior
government officer to do? Why should she risk appearing before the doctrinal
synod just to help you?"
"There you go again, son -- letting your concern for petty detail hinder
the grand scheme. How should I know why she does it? Perhaps she likes my
eyes; Dr. Heck tells me they're a rather pretty shade of blue. Of course
he's prejudiced, since he made them himself."
Both Winfield and Hogarth laughed extravagantly. Tallon put his hands
on the blocky shape of the frequency-reducer model, where he could feel
sunlight warming his skin. All his preconceived notions had been wrong.
The life of a blind man was proving to be neither dull nor simple.
six
Tallon positioned the sonar torch carefully on his forehead, slipped the
earpiece into his right ear, and switched on. He stood up, moved his
head about experimentally, and began to walk. He was suddenly aware of
how much he had gotten used to feeling his way with a cane.
The range of the torch was set for five yards, which meant anything beyond
that distance would produce no echo. As he advanced he moved his head
first horizontally, then vertically. The latter movement produced a tone
that could be compared to an inverted vee as the sonar beam, now touching
the ground, approached his feet and receded again.
Tallon forced himself to walk smoothly and steadily, giving all his attention
to the rising and falling electronic tone. He had covered about ten yards
when he began to pick up a tiny
blip
near the top of each vertical scan.
Still walking, but more slowly now, he concentrated on the upper part
of the sweep. The
blip
crept higher up the tonal scale with each
appearance, and finally Tallon was able to convert it into a shrill
steady note by inclining his head slightly downward.
He put his hand out and touched a metal bar suspended just below eye level.
"Wonderful! That's really wonderful!" The woman's voice sounded young and
fresh, and it took him by surprise. He turned toward it self-consciously,
wondering how he looked in sloppy prison clothing, with a plastic box
strapped to his forehead, then was surprised at his reaction. Apparently
his male ego still considered itself in the running, undaunted by plastic
buttons in place of eyes. In the sonar he picked up the slightly discordant
tone produced by a human being.
"Miss Juste?"
"Yes. Dr. Winfield and Ed told me you were making excellent progress with
the sonar, but I didn't realize you had got so far with it. I'm glad I came
to see for myself."
"The work passes the time," Tallon smiled uncertainly. He felt strangely
uneasy, as though he had almost remembered something important, then
let it slip away. Perhaps this would be as good a time as any to start
probing her motives.
"It's very good of you to let us do this sort of thing in view of the . . .
climate of official opinion."
There was silence for a few seconds, then Tallon heard the familiar sound
of Winfield's cane and Hogarth's crutches approaching across the concrete
apron they were using for the sonar trials.
"Well, Miss Juste," Winfield said, "what did you think of that?"
"I'm very impressed. I was just saying so to Detainee Tallon. Is any more
work needed on an instrument that operates so well?"
Tallon noticed her use of the word Detainee in his case, in contrast to her
informal way of referring to Winfield and Hogarth. He kept the sonar beam
on her, silently cursing its shortcomings. As far as the beam was concerned,
there was no significant difference between a crane driver and a showgirl.
He felt the first stirrings of an idea.
"The preliminary tests are just about completed," Winfield announced proudly.
"Sam and I will be wearing the sonars permanently from now on to gain
experience with them. It will take a few weeks to sort out the best range
selection and settle on the optimum beam width."
"I see. Well, let me know how you get on."
"Of course, Miss Juste. Thank you for all your kindness."
Tallon heard her firm light steps move away; then he turned to Winfield.
Distinguishing between Winfield and Hogarth with the beam was easy,
because the doctor stood head and shoulders above his crippled companion.
To demonstrate his increasing mastery over the sonar, Tallon touched Winfield
accurately on the shoulder.
"You know, Logan, you could be making a mistake in not providing in your
grand scheme for an analysis of Miss Juste's motivation. She doesn't
strike me as the sort of girl who does things without a reason."
"There he goes," Hogarth grumbled. "Knows more about Miss Juste than we do,
and he's never even seen her. This boy must have been a mean card player
when he had eyes."
Tallon grinned. At first he had been disconcerted by the Hogarth's constant
and uninhibited references to his blindness; then he had realized that
they were good for his sense of proportion and were uttered for that
very reason.
In the afternoon Tallon and Winfield went for a walk using their sonars
for guidance. They confined themselves to circuits of an unused tennis
court, which was out of bounds to all but disabled prisoners. No guards
questioned them about the boxes strapped to their foreheads, and Tallon
guessed Helen Juste had given instructions for them to be left alone.
He had noticed, too, that none of the medical staff had spoken to them
about the sonar project. He asked Winfield how much influence the woman
had in the administration of the Pavilion.
"I'm not sure," Winfield replied. "I've heard she's related to the Moderator
himself. I've been told that the rehabilitation center was her own idea,
and that the Moderator pulled strings to get it set up. Occupational therapy
isn't good doctrine, you know. The synod recommends prayer and fasting
for intransigents such as us."
"But would the Moderator stretch the rules that far?"
"Son, you take everything too literally. A few years in practical politics
would have done you a world of good. Listen, if the head of a government
orders his people to cut down on liquor because their drunkenness is
ruining the country's economy, it doesn't mean he's going to drink less
himself. Nor would he expect his relatives and friends to change their
drinking habits. That's human nature."
"You make it all sound so simple," Tallon said impatiently. He decided to
broach the idea that had come to him during his talk with Helen Juste.
"Are you still working on your grand plan to break out of the Pavilion?"
"Son, if I can't die on Earth, I may not die at all. Are you coming with me?"
"I've told you how I feel about that, but maybe I can help you."
"How?"
"Do you think Miss Juste would get us a couple of television cameras?
The peanut-size jobs used for bugging people's apartments? They probably
have them all over the prison."
Winfield stopped walking and sank his fingers into Talion's arm.
"Do you mean what I think you mean?"
"Yes, why not? We both have our optic nerves intact. It's only a matter of
converting the camera output to the right sort of signal and feeding it
into the nerve endings. It's a common technique on Earth."
"But wouldn't it involve surgery? I doubt if -- "
"No surgery needed if we beam the signal accurately through the eye. The
fact that we have plastic skins on our eyes could help, because we could
insert a simple X and Y plate arrangement in the plastic to keep the beam
aimed at the nerve ending, regardless of eye movements."
Winfield began to tremble with excitement. "If I could see again, and
with the preparations I've made for the swamp, I'd be walking down the
main street in Natchitoches inside a year. I
know
it." His normally
powerful voice sounded strangely small.
"Well, that's the grand plan," Tallon said. "Now we have to consider some
of those petty details of mine. We'll need the cameras and a range of
microminiature components. And we'll have to have access to the appropriate
journals and an auto-reader -- you'll absorb the physiological data;
I'll do the semiconductor research."
"But who will build the units? Ed knows nothing about that sort of work."
"That's another detail. You'll have to ask Miss Juste for the use of
an assembly robot -- Grade 2 at least -- programmed for microminiature
electronics. They probably have one in their maintenance lab."
"But, my God, Sam! Those things cost over half a million."
"Ask her anyway. She'll arrange it for you. Remember, she likes the color
of your eyes."
Tallon stood for a moment, face turned toward the hot white sun of Emm
Luther, experiencing a rare moment of certitude.
A week later two guards dragged the assembly robot into the center's workshop
on a negative-gravity sled.
Tallon had spent most of the week practicing with his sonar and, between
times, trying to understand what had happened to him the first day he had
spoken to Helen Juste. A psychic explosion, a violent upheaval in his
subconscious -- and for no reason at all. He ruled out all the vaguely
para-normal phenomena sometimes associated with romantic love, partly out
of natural skepticism, partly because he had never even seen her. Hogarth
had described her as a spindly redhead with orange eyes, so she did not
seem the sort of woman who might have a deeply disturbing effect on him
or on any other man. And even had she been a raven-haired myth-woman,
there was no real explanation for the abrupt shift in his perception by
which he had
known
she would let them have the equipment. As he lay
in his cell each night, awaiting the pale light of dreams, he returned
to the problem again and again, trying to wrest some significance from it.
But once the robot was installed and the work of writing its program begun,
Tallon found himself with nothing on his mind but the project. Winfield
and he spent weeks in which every waking hour, apart from mealtimes and
the compulsory prayer sessions, was spent in the prison library, listening
to auto-readers. Most of the available journals were out of date, because
their importation from Earth bad never been encouraged by the Lutheran
government and, in recent years, had been practically banned by Earth.
The latter move was a sign of the deterioration in relations between the
two since the brand-new planet of Aitch Mühlenberg had dropped into Emm
Luther's lap; but the information was there just the same.
As he worked on it Tallon felt his mind sink through the layers the
years had superimposed on his personality. A younger Sam Tallon emerged,
one who had been determined to carve out a career in domain physics,
until some unremembered event had diverted him into world-hopping, and
then finally to the Block and all it represented. The contentment Tallon
experienced was so profound, he began to suspect that a subconscious drive
toward it had been his real motivation for initiating the artificial-eye
project -- not the desire to regain his own sight - or help Winfield,
but a powerful need to re-create himself as he was . . .
who seemed genuinely incapable of accepting defeat. They reached the
rehabilitation center and stopped at the entrance.
"Just one thing before we go in, son. I want you to promise not to say
anything to Ed about the real reason why I want the torch built. If he
guessed, he would quit work on it immediately -- to save me from myself,
as the saying goes."
Tallon said, "All right, but I want you to make me one promise in return.
If you really do have an escape plan, don't include me in it. If I ever
decide to commit suicide I'll pick an easier way."
They went up a flight of stairs and into the workshop. Tallon identified
it at once by the familiar smell of hot solder and stale cigarette smoke,
a smell that had not changed since his student days.
"Are you there, Ed?" The echoes from Winfieid's voice suggested the
workshop was quite small. "I've brought a visitor."
"I
know
you've brought a visitor," a thin, irritable voice said from
close by. "I can see him, can't I? You've been blind so long you've begun
to think nobody else can see." The voice faded into barely audible swearing.
Winfield gave his booming laugh and whispered to Tallon, "Ed was born
on this planet, but he was very active in the old Unionist movement at
one time and didn't have enough sense to quit when the Lutherians took
over. He was arrested by Kreuger and suffered an unfortunate accident to
his heels while trying to get free. There are quite a few of Kreuger's
prizes hopping about the Pavilion like birds."
"And my ears are all right, too," Hogarth's voice warned.
"Ed, this is Sam Tallon -- the man who almost finished Cherkassky.
He's an electronics expert, so perhaps you'll get my torch working now."
"I have a degree in electronics," Tallon said. "That isn't the same as
being an expert."
"But you'll be able to get the bugs out of a simple frequency-reducer
circuit," Winfield said. "Here, feel this."
He drew Tallon over to a bench and placed his hands on a complicated
metal and plastic object about three feet square.
"Is that it?" Tallon explored the massive circuitry with his fingers.
"What good is this thing to you? I thought you were talking about
something you could carry in one hand."
"It's a model," Hogarth snapped impatiently, "twenty times the size of
the real instrument. That lets the doctor feel out what he thinks he's
doing, and I reproduce it in proper size. It's a good idea, except it
doesn't work."
"It'll work now," Winfield said confidently. "What do you say, son?"
Tallon thought it over. Winfield seemed to be a crazy old coot, and in
all probability Hogarth was another, but in the brief time he had spent
with them, he had almost forgotten about being blind. "I'll help," he said.
"Have you materials to build two prototypes?"
Winfield squeezed his hand excitedly. "Don't worry about that part, son.
Helen will see we get all the parts we need."
"Helen?"
"Yes. Helen Juste. She's head of the rehabilitation center."
"And she doesn't object to your building this thing?"
"Object!" Winfield roared. "It was mainly her idea. She's been behind the
scheme from the start."
Tallon shook his head in disbelief. "Isn't that a strange thing for a senior
government officer to do? Why should she risk appearing before the doctrinal
synod just to help you?"
"There you go again, son -- letting your concern for petty detail hinder
the grand scheme. How should I know why she does it? Perhaps she likes my
eyes; Dr. Heck tells me they're a rather pretty shade of blue. Of course
he's prejudiced, since he made them himself."
Both Winfield and Hogarth laughed extravagantly. Tallon put his hands
on the blocky shape of the frequency-reducer model, where he could feel
sunlight warming his skin. All his preconceived notions had been wrong.
The life of a blind man was proving to be neither dull nor simple.
six
Tallon positioned the sonar torch carefully on his forehead, slipped the
earpiece into his right ear, and switched on. He stood up, moved his
head about experimentally, and began to walk. He was suddenly aware of
how much he had gotten used to feeling his way with a cane.
The range of the torch was set for five yards, which meant anything beyond
that distance would produce no echo. As he advanced he moved his head
first horizontally, then vertically. The latter movement produced a tone
that could be compared to an inverted vee as the sonar beam, now touching
the ground, approached his feet and receded again.
Tallon forced himself to walk smoothly and steadily, giving all his attention
to the rising and falling electronic tone. He had covered about ten yards
when he began to pick up a tiny
blip
near the top of each vertical scan.
Still walking, but more slowly now, he concentrated on the upper part
of the sweep. The
blip
crept higher up the tonal scale with each
appearance, and finally Tallon was able to convert it into a shrill
steady note by inclining his head slightly downward.
He put his hand out and touched a metal bar suspended just below eye level.
"Wonderful! That's really wonderful!" The woman's voice sounded young and
fresh, and it took him by surprise. He turned toward it self-consciously,
wondering how he looked in sloppy prison clothing, with a plastic box
strapped to his forehead, then was surprised at his reaction. Apparently
his male ego still considered itself in the running, undaunted by plastic
buttons in place of eyes. In the sonar he picked up the slightly discordant
tone produced by a human being.
"Miss Juste?"
"Yes. Dr. Winfield and Ed told me you were making excellent progress with
the sonar, but I didn't realize you had got so far with it. I'm glad I came
to see for myself."
"The work passes the time," Tallon smiled uncertainly. He felt strangely
uneasy, as though he had almost remembered something important, then
let it slip away. Perhaps this would be as good a time as any to start
probing her motives.
"It's very good of you to let us do this sort of thing in view of the . . .
climate of official opinion."
There was silence for a few seconds, then Tallon heard the familiar sound
of Winfield's cane and Hogarth's crutches approaching across the concrete
apron they were using for the sonar trials.
"Well, Miss Juste," Winfield said, "what did you think of that?"
"I'm very impressed. I was just saying so to Detainee Tallon. Is any more
work needed on an instrument that operates so well?"
Tallon noticed her use of the word Detainee in his case, in contrast to her
informal way of referring to Winfield and Hogarth. He kept the sonar beam
on her, silently cursing its shortcomings. As far as the beam was concerned,
there was no significant difference between a crane driver and a showgirl.
He felt the first stirrings of an idea.
"The preliminary tests are just about completed," Winfield announced proudly.
"Sam and I will be wearing the sonars permanently from now on to gain
experience with them. It will take a few weeks to sort out the best range
selection and settle on the optimum beam width."
"I see. Well, let me know how you get on."
"Of course, Miss Juste. Thank you for all your kindness."
Tallon heard her firm light steps move away; then he turned to Winfield.
Distinguishing between Winfield and Hogarth with the beam was easy,
because the doctor stood head and shoulders above his crippled companion.
To demonstrate his increasing mastery over the sonar, Tallon touched Winfield
accurately on the shoulder.
"You know, Logan, you could be making a mistake in not providing in your
grand scheme for an analysis of Miss Juste's motivation. She doesn't
strike me as the sort of girl who does things without a reason."
"There he goes," Hogarth grumbled. "Knows more about Miss Juste than we do,
and he's never even seen her. This boy must have been a mean card player
when he had eyes."
Tallon grinned. At first he had been disconcerted by the Hogarth's constant
and uninhibited references to his blindness; then he had realized that
they were good for his sense of proportion and were uttered for that
very reason.
In the afternoon Tallon and Winfield went for a walk using their sonars
for guidance. They confined themselves to circuits of an unused tennis
court, which was out of bounds to all but disabled prisoners. No guards
questioned them about the boxes strapped to their foreheads, and Tallon
guessed Helen Juste had given instructions for them to be left alone.
He had noticed, too, that none of the medical staff had spoken to them
about the sonar project. He asked Winfield how much influence the woman
had in the administration of the Pavilion.
"I'm not sure," Winfield replied. "I've heard she's related to the Moderator
himself. I've been told that the rehabilitation center was her own idea,
and that the Moderator pulled strings to get it set up. Occupational therapy
isn't good doctrine, you know. The synod recommends prayer and fasting
for intransigents such as us."
"But would the Moderator stretch the rules that far?"
"Son, you take everything too literally. A few years in practical politics
would have done you a world of good. Listen, if the head of a government
orders his people to cut down on liquor because their drunkenness is
ruining the country's economy, it doesn't mean he's going to drink less
himself. Nor would he expect his relatives and friends to change their
drinking habits. That's human nature."
"You make it all sound so simple," Tallon said impatiently. He decided to
broach the idea that had come to him during his talk with Helen Juste.
"Are you still working on your grand plan to break out of the Pavilion?"
"Son, if I can't die on Earth, I may not die at all. Are you coming with me?"
"I've told you how I feel about that, but maybe I can help you."
"How?"
"Do you think Miss Juste would get us a couple of television cameras?
The peanut-size jobs used for bugging people's apartments? They probably
have them all over the prison."
Winfield stopped walking and sank his fingers into Talion's arm.
"Do you mean what I think you mean?"
"Yes, why not? We both have our optic nerves intact. It's only a matter of
converting the camera output to the right sort of signal and feeding it
into the nerve endings. It's a common technique on Earth."
"But wouldn't it involve surgery? I doubt if -- "
"No surgery needed if we beam the signal accurately through the eye. The
fact that we have plastic skins on our eyes could help, because we could
insert a simple X and Y plate arrangement in the plastic to keep the beam
aimed at the nerve ending, regardless of eye movements."
Winfield began to tremble with excitement. "If I could see again, and
with the preparations I've made for the swamp, I'd be walking down the
main street in Natchitoches inside a year. I
know
it." His normally
powerful voice sounded strangely small.
"Well, that's the grand plan," Tallon said. "Now we have to consider some
of those petty details of mine. We'll need the cameras and a range of
microminiature components. And we'll have to have access to the appropriate
journals and an auto-reader -- you'll absorb the physiological data;
I'll do the semiconductor research."
"But who will build the units? Ed knows nothing about that sort of work."
"That's another detail. You'll have to ask Miss Juste for the use of
an assembly robot -- Grade 2 at least -- programmed for microminiature
electronics. They probably have one in their maintenance lab."
"But, my God, Sam! Those things cost over half a million."
"Ask her anyway. She'll arrange it for you. Remember, she likes the color
of your eyes."
Tallon stood for a moment, face turned toward the hot white sun of Emm
Luther, experiencing a rare moment of certitude.
A week later two guards dragged the assembly robot into the center's workshop
on a negative-gravity sled.
Tallon had spent most of the week practicing with his sonar and, between
times, trying to understand what had happened to him the first day he had
spoken to Helen Juste. A psychic explosion, a violent upheaval in his
subconscious -- and for no reason at all. He ruled out all the vaguely
para-normal phenomena sometimes associated with romantic love, partly out
of natural skepticism, partly because he had never even seen her. Hogarth
had described her as a spindly redhead with orange eyes, so she did not
seem the sort of woman who might have a deeply disturbing effect on him
or on any other man. And even had she been a raven-haired myth-woman,
there was no real explanation for the abrupt shift in his perception by
which he had
known
she would let them have the equipment. As he lay
in his cell each night, awaiting the pale light of dreams, he returned
to the problem again and again, trying to wrest some significance from it.
But once the robot was installed and the work of writing its program begun,
Tallon found himself with nothing on his mind but the project. Winfield
and he spent weeks in which every waking hour, apart from mealtimes and
the compulsory prayer sessions, was spent in the prison library, listening
to auto-readers. Most of the available journals were out of date, because
their importation from Earth bad never been encouraged by the Lutheran
government and, in recent years, had been practically banned by Earth.
The latter move was a sign of the deterioration in relations between the
two since the brand-new planet of Aitch Mühlenberg had dropped into Emm
Luther's lap; but the information was there just the same.
As he worked on it Tallon felt his mind sink through the layers the
years had superimposed on his personality. A younger Sam Tallon emerged,
one who had been determined to carve out a career in domain physics,
until some unremembered event had diverted him into world-hopping, and
then finally to the Block and all it represented. The contentment Tallon
experienced was so profound, he began to suspect that a subconscious drive
toward it had been his real motivation for initiating the artificial-eye
project -- not the desire to regain his own sight - or help Winfield,
but a powerful need to re-create himself as he was . . .
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