Night Walk (7 page)
Authors: Bob Shaw
At the entrance to the mess hall a certain amount of jostling was going
on where the groups converged, and the host caught up with him. Tallon
found himself staring at the back of his own head from a distance of a
few inches. Although disconcerting, the very proximity made it easier
for Tallon to steer himself through the inner door and to an empty seat
at one of the long tables. His host went farther up the hall and sat
down, facing in a direction that excluded Tallon from the man's field
of vision. Fingering the eyeset frame, Tallon cleared the memory unit,
switched to the minimum range of six feet, and let the "search and hold"
start over again. There was a momentary haze of light as the eyeset
picked up several signals at once before singling out one of them. Again
he was lucky: This time he was looking through the eyes of the man at
the opposite side of the table.
By the time the turret-shaped serving robot moved along the table's
central slot to dispense breakfasts, Tallon's stomach was knotted with
tension. He ate the full meal, however; he felt he had earned it.
Tallon and Winfield, both wearing eyesets, stood at attention as Helen Juste
walked into the workshop. Hogarth, being crippled, was not obliged to do
anything more than look respectful, but he raised himself as high as his
crutches would allow.
Helen Juste smiled at Hogarth and motioned to him to sit down. Tallon,
who was tuned in on Hogarth, also received the smile, and he responded
instinctively before remembering it had not been directed at him. He
saw what Hogarth meant when he'd described her as a spindly redhead
with orange eyes, and at the same time he marveled at how any man could
have dismissed the phenomenon of Helen Juste with such a phrase. She
was slim, not spindly, and everything was in proportion, giving her
sleekly economical lines that would have thrilled a star-class designer
of humanoid robots. Her hair was a rich coppery brown, and her eyes
were the color -- Tallon sought an exact comparison -- of aged whiskey
in fire-lit crystal. He found himself whispering one word over and over
again -- yes, yes, yes. . . .
She stayed for almost an hour, showing intense interest in the eyesets,
questioning Winfield closely about their operation and performance. The
doctor protested several times that his was not the brain behind the
eyesets, but although she glanced at Tallon on those occasions, she did
not speak to him. Tallon found himself rather pleased at this, satisfied
at having been placed in a special category.
As she was leaving she asked Winfield if they were finished with the
assembly robot.
"I'm not sure," Winfield said. "I expect the maintenance shop staff
want it back in a hurry, but we've done almost no field work with the
eyesets. There might be minor modifications needed; in fact, Detainee
Tallon is not really satisfied with the basic concept. I think he wants
to try again with a camera-based system."
Helen Juste looked doubtful. "Well, as you know, I've been trying to
introduce to the prison board the idea that they might have special
responsibilities to those detainees who have suffered disablement. But
there's a limit to how much I can do in this direction." She hesitated.
"I'm going on leave in three days; the equipment must be returned by then."
Winfield gave a military-style salute. "We sincerely thank you, Miss Juste."
She went out, and Tallon thought her eyes flickered once, speculatively,
in his direction, but Hogarth's gaze was already turning away so Tallon
could not be sure. He was depressed by her reminder that there was a world
outside the Pavilion, and that she still belonged to it.
"I thought she was going to stay all day," Hogarth complained bitterly,
lighting his pipe. "I can't stand that skinny dame coming into my shop."
Tallon snorted. "You still have your eyes, Ed, but you don't know how
to use them."
"Well spoken, son," Winfield boomed. "Did you notice he hardly looked
at her legs once? The first time in eight years I get a chance to look
at a woman, and the old goat in charge of the eyes keeps staring out
the window!"
Tallon smiled, but he noticed he was seeing nothing but a close-up of
Hogarth's pipe, with one gnarled finger pressing the gray ash down into
the blackened bowl. He got an impression the little man was worried. "What
is it, Ed?"
"Did either of you lady-killers go to the recreation block today to hear
the newscast?"
"No."
"Well, you should've. The negotiations between Emm Luther and Earth
over the new planet have broken down. The Earthside delegates finally
realized the Moderator is prepared to stall forever, and they walked
out of the conference. It looks like we'll soon be in the middle of the
first interstellar war the empire has ever seen."
Tallon put one hand on his temple; he had been forcing himself to forget
all about the Block and the bead-sized capsule that nourished a fragment
of his own brain. The thought that the little sphere of gray tissue
could be equated with the green-blue immensity of a fertile world was
insupportable. "That's bad," he said quietly.
"There's more. The grapevine has it definite about Cherkassky.
He's coming here next week."
Tallon continued to speak calmly in spite of the sudden hammering in
his chest. "Doc, we haven't really tested our new eyes yet. I think we
ought to try a long walk."
"You mean a really long walk?"
Tallon nodded soberly. It was a thousand miles to New Wittenburg and
eighty thousand portals back to Earth.
eight
Cronin, the bird man, looked up at them with growing suspicion in his
red-rimmed eyes. "No," he said. "I've no owls, or hawks, or any birds
like that. I tell you, we don't have enough small vermin this far south
to attract them. Why do you have to have a hunting bird?"
"We don't," Tallon replied quickly. "We'll take two of those brown ones
that look like doves. Just so long as they're tame enough to stay with
us and not fly off."
He had wanted predatory birds because their eye positions corresponded
roughly to a human's, which meant it would be easier to get used to their
form of vision. It would be good to have a vision center close to his
own body, but Tallon was not happy about the idea of apparently seeing
out of each side of his head. The main thing, however, was to get hold
of some usable optical system in a hurry.
"Well, I don't know about all this." The bird man looked sharply at Tallon.
"Say, aren't you Tallon? I thought you were blind or something."
"I am -- almost. That's why I want the birds. They'd be a bit like
guide dogs."
"Mmmm, I don't know. You guys don't look like bird-lovers to me. Birds are
sensitive, you know."
Winfield coughed impatiently. "We'll give you four cartons of cigarettes
for each. I understand that's twice the standard rate."
Detainee Cronin shrugged and lifted two of the dovelike native birds
from the little wire-mesh aviary he had built on the southern end of
the peninsula. He tied short lengths of cord to the legs of the docile,
quivering birds and handed them over.
"If you want them to sit on your shoulders, tie them to your epaulettes
for a couple of days till they get used to you."
Tallon thanked him, and they hurried away with the birds. Near the crumbling
walls of the original Pavilion gardens they stopped and transferred the
birds to their shoulders. When Tallon selected his bird's visual signals
on a proximity basis, he felt as though the top had been lifted from his
head, letting the light pour in. The bird's widely spaced eyes provided
Tallon with a brilliant 360-degree view of land, sea, and sky. This vision,
which enabled the bird to spot hunters and other enemies, gave Tallon
a feeling of being hunted. It was difficult to get used to having his
own ear looming up on one side of his field of vision, but there was
the consolation that nobody could take him by surprise.
They walked to the eastern side of the peninsula, where the ground rose to
a low cliff, giving them a view out across the tideless, planet-spanning
ocean. Tallon' was entranced by the sensation of airy spaciousness and
freedom. He felt that -- if he could only remember how -- he could take
a deep breath and soar upward over the sunlit curve of the world.
Winfield pointed northward. Beyond the Pavilion's crenelated rooftops,
shimmering in the afternoon light, was a wall of mist. Clustered at its
base were blooms, brilliant red beacons that were visible from more than
a mile away.
"That's the swamp. There's about four miles of it before you reach the
mainland proper."
"Wouldn't it be easier to swim along one side?"
"You'd have to swim out to sea for a mile or more to get round the stuff
that grows out from the swamp; and the air patrols would spot you right off.
No -- the only way is straight up the center. There's one big advantage
about going through the swamp: We'll be presumed dead within a few hours,
and they won't search very hard on the far side. In fact, I think all
they'll do is make a daily check on the magazines of the rattler rifles
to see if there's any record of us having been picked off."
"Rattler rifles?"
"Yes. Did I forget to mention them?" Winfield chuckled mirthlessly.
The northern edge of the swamp was an irregular line extending six miles
across the peninsula. The improbability of any prisoner ever reaching it
had persuaded the Pavilion's security consultants to forego the trouble
and expense of manned patrols along the boundary. Instead, a chain of
forty pylons, equipped with robot rifles, had been erected. Each rifle
had two widely spaced heat-sensitive cups, like those on a rattlesnake's
head, which enabled it to train itself and fire at any warm-blooded being
coming into range. They fired heat-seeking missiles, an inch in diameter,
equipped with tiny pulse motors that gave them a constant velocity of
seven thousand feet a second. The rifles had rarely gone into action
against humans, but their effectiveness had been demonstrated in other
ways. Within a week of their installation every warm-blooded animal
indigenous to the swamp had been blasted into crimson ooze and bone
fragments.
"If the rifles are that good," Tallon said, "how do we get by them?
How do we even get near them?"
"Come along and I'll show you."
They crossed the peninsula south of the Pavilion and walked along
the western shore until the prison buildings were behind them and the
ice-green mists of the swamp swirled into the sky close ahead. A simple
log palisade, topped with barbed wire, marked the limits of the Pavilion
grounds; beyond it, the sculptured convolutions of the swamp mist hung
motionless in the air. Tallon had not been that close before and had
not realized how utterly inimical the swamp really was. Stray currents
of air brought him wisps of its breath -- clammy cold, and heavy with
a stink that caused an unpleasant surge in his belly.
"Rich, isn't it? We aren't likely to overeat in there," Winfield said,
with an almost proprietary pride. "Now don't point or do anything
suspicious, in case they're watching us from the tower, but have a look
at the palisade close to that white rock. Do you see where I mean?"
Tallon nodded.
"That part is hollow, full of a kind of wood-boring worm. The maintenance
team goes right round the palisade twice a year, spraying it with a penetrant
insecticide to keep the worms down. I come along first and paint that area
with ordinary wood sealer to keep the insecticide out. There are a couple
of million worms in there who must think of me as God."
"Nice work; but wouldn't it have been easier to go over the top?"
"For you, yes. I'm not built for climbing. Eight years ago I made it
and no more, and my shadow has increased considerably since then."
"You were going to tell me about the rifles."
"Yes. See those creepers with the deep red flowers, right at the edge of
the swamp? Those are
dringo
plants. The leaves are over a quarter of
an inch thick, and they're tough enough to take sewing together. We'll
bring needles and thread and make screens to get us past the rifles."
"You're sure they're good insulators?" Tallon asked doubtfully.
"They have to be. A species of leaping scorpion that can't stand temperature
variations lives under those leaves. They get pretty mad when you pluck
their cover away. But don't worry; we'll be protected."
"That's the other thing I was going to ask you about."
"It's all in the plan, son. Close to that same white rock there's a small
fissure in the ground. It was one of the places I could find without any
trouble, even when I couldn't see. That's where the escape kits are hidden."
"Kits plural?"
"Yes. I was going to go it alone, if necessary; but I knew I'd have
a better chance with a partner who could at least see where we were
going. One thing you'll find about me, son -- I'm strictly practical."
"Doc," Tallon said wonderingly, "I love you."
The principal items in Winfield's escape kits were two large squares of
thin tough plastic. He had stolen them from the Pavilion's receiving bay,
where they had been used to cover bulk deliveries of food. His idea
was to make a hole in the center, just big enough for a man's head,
put it on, and working from the inside, seal the edges together with
adhesive. Although crude, the envelopes provided a membrane area large
enough to support a man's weight on the quagmire. In several years
of steady filching, Winfield had accumulated a supply of antibiotics
and specifics to fight any swamp fever and insect poison likely to
be encountered. He even had a hypodermic syringe, two guard uniforms,
and a small amount of money.
"The only thing I hadn't allowed for years ago," Winfield added,
"is that our eyes will be traveling separately. I don't know how our
feathered friends will make out in the swamp. Not too well, I'm afraid."
Tallon stroked the bird on his shoulder. "They'll have to have suits,
too. If we go back to the workshop now, we can make up two small cages
and cover them with transparent plastic. After that we should be ready
to go whenever you say."
"I say tonight, then. There's no point in hanging around. I've wasted
too much time, too many years in this place already, and I have a feeling
that time's getting short for all of us."
on where the groups converged, and the host caught up with him. Tallon
found himself staring at the back of his own head from a distance of a
few inches. Although disconcerting, the very proximity made it easier
for Tallon to steer himself through the inner door and to an empty seat
at one of the long tables. His host went farther up the hall and sat
down, facing in a direction that excluded Tallon from the man's field
of vision. Fingering the eyeset frame, Tallon cleared the memory unit,
switched to the minimum range of six feet, and let the "search and hold"
start over again. There was a momentary haze of light as the eyeset
picked up several signals at once before singling out one of them. Again
he was lucky: This time he was looking through the eyes of the man at
the opposite side of the table.
By the time the turret-shaped serving robot moved along the table's
central slot to dispense breakfasts, Tallon's stomach was knotted with
tension. He ate the full meal, however; he felt he had earned it.
Tallon and Winfield, both wearing eyesets, stood at attention as Helen Juste
walked into the workshop. Hogarth, being crippled, was not obliged to do
anything more than look respectful, but he raised himself as high as his
crutches would allow.
Helen Juste smiled at Hogarth and motioned to him to sit down. Tallon,
who was tuned in on Hogarth, also received the smile, and he responded
instinctively before remembering it had not been directed at him. He
saw what Hogarth meant when he'd described her as a spindly redhead
with orange eyes, and at the same time he marveled at how any man could
have dismissed the phenomenon of Helen Juste with such a phrase. She
was slim, not spindly, and everything was in proportion, giving her
sleekly economical lines that would have thrilled a star-class designer
of humanoid robots. Her hair was a rich coppery brown, and her eyes
were the color -- Tallon sought an exact comparison -- of aged whiskey
in fire-lit crystal. He found himself whispering one word over and over
again -- yes, yes, yes. . . .
She stayed for almost an hour, showing intense interest in the eyesets,
questioning Winfield closely about their operation and performance. The
doctor protested several times that his was not the brain behind the
eyesets, but although she glanced at Tallon on those occasions, she did
not speak to him. Tallon found himself rather pleased at this, satisfied
at having been placed in a special category.
As she was leaving she asked Winfield if they were finished with the
assembly robot.
"I'm not sure," Winfield said. "I expect the maintenance shop staff
want it back in a hurry, but we've done almost no field work with the
eyesets. There might be minor modifications needed; in fact, Detainee
Tallon is not really satisfied with the basic concept. I think he wants
to try again with a camera-based system."
Helen Juste looked doubtful. "Well, as you know, I've been trying to
introduce to the prison board the idea that they might have special
responsibilities to those detainees who have suffered disablement. But
there's a limit to how much I can do in this direction." She hesitated.
"I'm going on leave in three days; the equipment must be returned by then."
Winfield gave a military-style salute. "We sincerely thank you, Miss Juste."
She went out, and Tallon thought her eyes flickered once, speculatively,
in his direction, but Hogarth's gaze was already turning away so Tallon
could not be sure. He was depressed by her reminder that there was a world
outside the Pavilion, and that she still belonged to it.
"I thought she was going to stay all day," Hogarth complained bitterly,
lighting his pipe. "I can't stand that skinny dame coming into my shop."
Tallon snorted. "You still have your eyes, Ed, but you don't know how
to use them."
"Well spoken, son," Winfield boomed. "Did you notice he hardly looked
at her legs once? The first time in eight years I get a chance to look
at a woman, and the old goat in charge of the eyes keeps staring out
the window!"
Tallon smiled, but he noticed he was seeing nothing but a close-up of
Hogarth's pipe, with one gnarled finger pressing the gray ash down into
the blackened bowl. He got an impression the little man was worried. "What
is it, Ed?"
"Did either of you lady-killers go to the recreation block today to hear
the newscast?"
"No."
"Well, you should've. The negotiations between Emm Luther and Earth
over the new planet have broken down. The Earthside delegates finally
realized the Moderator is prepared to stall forever, and they walked
out of the conference. It looks like we'll soon be in the middle of the
first interstellar war the empire has ever seen."
Tallon put one hand on his temple; he had been forcing himself to forget
all about the Block and the bead-sized capsule that nourished a fragment
of his own brain. The thought that the little sphere of gray tissue
could be equated with the green-blue immensity of a fertile world was
insupportable. "That's bad," he said quietly.
"There's more. The grapevine has it definite about Cherkassky.
He's coming here next week."
Tallon continued to speak calmly in spite of the sudden hammering in
his chest. "Doc, we haven't really tested our new eyes yet. I think we
ought to try a long walk."
"You mean a really long walk?"
Tallon nodded soberly. It was a thousand miles to New Wittenburg and
eighty thousand portals back to Earth.
eight
Cronin, the bird man, looked up at them with growing suspicion in his
red-rimmed eyes. "No," he said. "I've no owls, or hawks, or any birds
like that. I tell you, we don't have enough small vermin this far south
to attract them. Why do you have to have a hunting bird?"
"We don't," Tallon replied quickly. "We'll take two of those brown ones
that look like doves. Just so long as they're tame enough to stay with
us and not fly off."
He had wanted predatory birds because their eye positions corresponded
roughly to a human's, which meant it would be easier to get used to their
form of vision. It would be good to have a vision center close to his
own body, but Tallon was not happy about the idea of apparently seeing
out of each side of his head. The main thing, however, was to get hold
of some usable optical system in a hurry.
"Well, I don't know about all this." The bird man looked sharply at Tallon.
"Say, aren't you Tallon? I thought you were blind or something."
"I am -- almost. That's why I want the birds. They'd be a bit like
guide dogs."
"Mmmm, I don't know. You guys don't look like bird-lovers to me. Birds are
sensitive, you know."
Winfield coughed impatiently. "We'll give you four cartons of cigarettes
for each. I understand that's twice the standard rate."
Detainee Cronin shrugged and lifted two of the dovelike native birds
from the little wire-mesh aviary he had built on the southern end of
the peninsula. He tied short lengths of cord to the legs of the docile,
quivering birds and handed them over.
"If you want them to sit on your shoulders, tie them to your epaulettes
for a couple of days till they get used to you."
Tallon thanked him, and they hurried away with the birds. Near the crumbling
walls of the original Pavilion gardens they stopped and transferred the
birds to their shoulders. When Tallon selected his bird's visual signals
on a proximity basis, he felt as though the top had been lifted from his
head, letting the light pour in. The bird's widely spaced eyes provided
Tallon with a brilliant 360-degree view of land, sea, and sky. This vision,
which enabled the bird to spot hunters and other enemies, gave Tallon
a feeling of being hunted. It was difficult to get used to having his
own ear looming up on one side of his field of vision, but there was
the consolation that nobody could take him by surprise.
They walked to the eastern side of the peninsula, where the ground rose to
a low cliff, giving them a view out across the tideless, planet-spanning
ocean. Tallon' was entranced by the sensation of airy spaciousness and
freedom. He felt that -- if he could only remember how -- he could take
a deep breath and soar upward over the sunlit curve of the world.
Winfield pointed northward. Beyond the Pavilion's crenelated rooftops,
shimmering in the afternoon light, was a wall of mist. Clustered at its
base were blooms, brilliant red beacons that were visible from more than
a mile away.
"That's the swamp. There's about four miles of it before you reach the
mainland proper."
"Wouldn't it be easier to swim along one side?"
"You'd have to swim out to sea for a mile or more to get round the stuff
that grows out from the swamp; and the air patrols would spot you right off.
No -- the only way is straight up the center. There's one big advantage
about going through the swamp: We'll be presumed dead within a few hours,
and they won't search very hard on the far side. In fact, I think all
they'll do is make a daily check on the magazines of the rattler rifles
to see if there's any record of us having been picked off."
"Rattler rifles?"
"Yes. Did I forget to mention them?" Winfield chuckled mirthlessly.
The northern edge of the swamp was an irregular line extending six miles
across the peninsula. The improbability of any prisoner ever reaching it
had persuaded the Pavilion's security consultants to forego the trouble
and expense of manned patrols along the boundary. Instead, a chain of
forty pylons, equipped with robot rifles, had been erected. Each rifle
had two widely spaced heat-sensitive cups, like those on a rattlesnake's
head, which enabled it to train itself and fire at any warm-blooded being
coming into range. They fired heat-seeking missiles, an inch in diameter,
equipped with tiny pulse motors that gave them a constant velocity of
seven thousand feet a second. The rifles had rarely gone into action
against humans, but their effectiveness had been demonstrated in other
ways. Within a week of their installation every warm-blooded animal
indigenous to the swamp had been blasted into crimson ooze and bone
fragments.
"If the rifles are that good," Tallon said, "how do we get by them?
How do we even get near them?"
"Come along and I'll show you."
They crossed the peninsula south of the Pavilion and walked along
the western shore until the prison buildings were behind them and the
ice-green mists of the swamp swirled into the sky close ahead. A simple
log palisade, topped with barbed wire, marked the limits of the Pavilion
grounds; beyond it, the sculptured convolutions of the swamp mist hung
motionless in the air. Tallon had not been that close before and had
not realized how utterly inimical the swamp really was. Stray currents
of air brought him wisps of its breath -- clammy cold, and heavy with
a stink that caused an unpleasant surge in his belly.
"Rich, isn't it? We aren't likely to overeat in there," Winfield said,
with an almost proprietary pride. "Now don't point or do anything
suspicious, in case they're watching us from the tower, but have a look
at the palisade close to that white rock. Do you see where I mean?"
Tallon nodded.
"That part is hollow, full of a kind of wood-boring worm. The maintenance
team goes right round the palisade twice a year, spraying it with a penetrant
insecticide to keep the worms down. I come along first and paint that area
with ordinary wood sealer to keep the insecticide out. There are a couple
of million worms in there who must think of me as God."
"Nice work; but wouldn't it have been easier to go over the top?"
"For you, yes. I'm not built for climbing. Eight years ago I made it
and no more, and my shadow has increased considerably since then."
"You were going to tell me about the rifles."
"Yes. See those creepers with the deep red flowers, right at the edge of
the swamp? Those are
dringo
plants. The leaves are over a quarter of
an inch thick, and they're tough enough to take sewing together. We'll
bring needles and thread and make screens to get us past the rifles."
"You're sure they're good insulators?" Tallon asked doubtfully.
"They have to be. A species of leaping scorpion that can't stand temperature
variations lives under those leaves. They get pretty mad when you pluck
their cover away. But don't worry; we'll be protected."
"That's the other thing I was going to ask you about."
"It's all in the plan, son. Close to that same white rock there's a small
fissure in the ground. It was one of the places I could find without any
trouble, even when I couldn't see. That's where the escape kits are hidden."
"Kits plural?"
"Yes. I was going to go it alone, if necessary; but I knew I'd have
a better chance with a partner who could at least see where we were
going. One thing you'll find about me, son -- I'm strictly practical."
"Doc," Tallon said wonderingly, "I love you."
The principal items in Winfield's escape kits were two large squares of
thin tough plastic. He had stolen them from the Pavilion's receiving bay,
where they had been used to cover bulk deliveries of food. His idea
was to make a hole in the center, just big enough for a man's head,
put it on, and working from the inside, seal the edges together with
adhesive. Although crude, the envelopes provided a membrane area large
enough to support a man's weight on the quagmire. In several years
of steady filching, Winfield had accumulated a supply of antibiotics
and specifics to fight any swamp fever and insect poison likely to
be encountered. He even had a hypodermic syringe, two guard uniforms,
and a small amount of money.
"The only thing I hadn't allowed for years ago," Winfield added,
"is that our eyes will be traveling separately. I don't know how our
feathered friends will make out in the swamp. Not too well, I'm afraid."
Tallon stroked the bird on his shoulder. "They'll have to have suits,
too. If we go back to the workshop now, we can make up two small cages
and cover them with transparent plastic. After that we should be ready
to go whenever you say."
"I say tonight, then. There's no point in hanging around. I've wasted
too much time, too many years in this place already, and I have a feeling
that time's getting short for all of us."
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