Death Qualified (61 page)

    "Breathe, Barbara," Clive said softly.

    "Don't just wait for me. I like it when you run. Run, Barbara."

    His voice was farther away; she was certain it was farther away, that he was talking to her cap. She looked around in desperation; the trees were not as big now, and there was the beginning of underbrush. She was coming to the edge of the woods. The light was fading, twilight and fog settling over the forest. Already the tree trunks and shadows merged and looked like a solid wall. But in the open, she would be clearly visible.

    "I said move, damn you!" Clive said then, clearly, too loud.

    She was shaken by the sound of a shot. She raced to the nearest underbrush and threw herself at it. He shot again.

    At her cap, she realized, when he began to laugh.

    "Hey, Barbara, good trick! Really good thinking." He shot again.

    "Problem is, Barbara, you've run out of woods to hide in."

    I know, she thought despairingly. I know. She kept her face down, her hands under her, not to let anything pale show in the shadows. Soon it would be too dark for him to see her; if she could be a shadow among shadows until then.. ..

    "Clive, knock it off."

    Barbara gasped. Mike! She lifted her head to look for him.

    "Stay away from him!" she yelled. "I was thinking," Mike said easily, in a conversational tone, "Lucas must have scared the hell out of you."

    "You, too," Clive said, and fired again.

    "I didn't come looking for you, Dinesen. But you, too."

    "Yes, it must have been a shock. What did he do, ap pear and vanish, take a giant step to the edge of the clearing Must have scared you pretty bad."

    Clive shot again.

    "Like this, I suppose," Mike said.

    "Goddamn you! Damn you!" Clive screamed, and shot again.

    "Over here," Mike said.

    "Let's walk, Clive. This way.

    Go on to the house, Barbara, now."

    "Like him," Clive whispered.

    "You're like him! Devils He fired the rifle again.

    Mike's voice kept moving, Barbara thought in terror.

    She drew herself up to her knees to look out over the top of the brush she had landed in. She saw Clive aiming, saw Mike disappear behind a tree. Beyond him the trees were a solid mass of darkness where wisps of fog curled and retracted, rose and fell. Clive spun around, facing her for a second, then away, and shot again. His face was livid with fear and insanity.

    Barbara got up and ran across the clearing to Doc's house. She was trying to punch in the numbers of Frank's phone when he appeared and took the telephone from her hand. He held her at arm's length examining her, then drew her in close in a hard embrace. The sheriff was be side him.

    "Where is he? Are you hurt?" LeMans asked.

    "He's in the woods, over there! Mike's in there!"

    "We've got him," LeMans said grimly.

    "I radioed for help as soon as we heard the first shot. There's no place he can go."

    "Mike's in there!" she screamed at him.

    "Well, it's getting dark. If he can stay out of sight just a little longer...." There was another shot from the woods. Then a car pulled in at the house; 'the state police had arrived.

    They had a bullhorn and lights, and many men who milled about for a time. Barbara sat unmoving. No more shots came from the woods. No sound at all came out of the woods.

    "We'll go in from all three sides," LeMans told her father.

    "We'll bring them both out."

    She shook her head.

    "Mike took him out on the fog and let him drop off in the middle of the river. And Mike just kept going, laughing. He was laughing." Her voice came out thick and strangled, as if she were fighting her own insane laughter, or sobs. She clamped her lips together.

    LeMans looked at her father and said, "You'd better take her home. I'll come around when it's over."

    "Yes," Frank said heavily.

    "We'll go. Come on, Bobby.

    Come along. We'll go clean up those cuts and scratches."

    She went with him without protest. It didn't matter where she was.

    Later, she sat in the living room. Now and then she shivered until Frank brought down a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. He put a drink on the table by her chair and then sat down opposite her.

    Still later, the sheriff came back and talked to Frank in low tones in the foyer. She could hear every word. They had found blood. They had found dive's rifle, about fifteen feet from the edge of the cliff; they must have fought there, must have gone over the cliff together, down into the river. It was too dark and too foggy to continue the search tonight. They would resume in the morning. They would bring in skin divers in the morning. She did not move.

    In the little house Nell said, "Aren't you kids tired of that game yet?"

    Travis shrugged in that gesture that was wrenching to her every time she saw it; she turned away. Tawna stood at the door.

    "Come on, Nell. Leave them to it. They had hamburgers and stuff. If they get hungry, they can come up to the big house." The two women left Travis and Celsy at the computer.

    "Let's see what's on this other program," he said. They had killed the dragon, rescued the princess, escaped the alien spaceship. He keyed in a command and the screen cleared, then a brilliant Mandelbrot filled it again, all electric blue, silver, flaming pink.

    "Rad!" Celsy said softly.

    "What is this?"

    "More of Mike's Mandelbrot stuff, I guess. The disks turned up, so I copied them. I haven't checked it out yet.

    Let's watch."

    Barbara stood in her room. Since she wasn't hungry, she must have eaten. Since she was in her room, it must be bedtime. Since the house was deathly silent, Frank must have gone to bed already.

    "The door didn't close," she whispered to herself.

    "Not all the way. He was mistaken about that. It was a swinging door after all." She nodded and mechanically began to undress. Then, in her warmest robe, she stood at the window.

    The world was utterly black and silent out there. The river was silent, revealing nothing. She dragged a chair to the window and sat down staring at the blackness, just as if she could see through it, and she tried to recapture every word, every glance, every touch from the first day that she had seen him in his running clothes.

    In her room in the big house, Celsy was at her window, also. She reached out tentatively, curled her fingers in the air, as if about a physical object, and she laughed without making a sound. In his room in the little house, Travis was reaching out, laughing soundlessly.

    The fog had become visible again, a luminous, motionless world of fog pressed against her window. An illusion,

    Barbara thought; not fog at all, but a cold steel wall. A butterfly flapped its wings and the wall had parted for Mike, but it was still there, unyielding, invisible, and real.

    She groped in her jeans for the yellow paper she had folded and jammed down into her pocket, thinking, "There was a young lady of law...." She found the sheet of paper and smoothed it out, and then she opened her window wide and breathed in deeply. As if her breath were a signal, a murmur stirred high in the fir trees. The wind was starting to blow. Now she could smell the air filtered through the millions of fir needles. Soporific, she thought. Finally she went to bed, put the yellow paper under her pillow, and she wept, and, weeping, fell asleep.

    About the Author kate wilhelm received her first Nebula Award in 1968 for her story "The Planners" and her latest Nebula in 1988 for "Forever Yours, Anna." She has also been honored with a Hugo Award (for her novel Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang), a Prix Apollo Award, and a Jupiter Award. Her most recent works include a fantasy novel, Cambio Bay, a mystery entitled Sweet, Sweet Poison, and Children of the Wind, a collection of five novellas. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, she lives in Eugene, Oregon, with her husband, noted writer and critic Damon Knight.

    The End