Logan's Run (6 page)

He kicked the back door open and found himself in a dank warren of intersecting hallways. The moaning cry of the firegalleries drifted up to him, mixed with the baked desert smell of dreamdust from the halluciomills.

Something iced out of the gray half-darkness, knocking the Gun from his grasp. A glacier numbness chilled his arm from hand to elbow.

Popsickle!

Logan spun into a fighting crouch to face the dim white figure coming at him with the refrigerated police billy held at waist level. Doc, in for the kill.

One blow to the chest and Logan's body would be a sea of ice crystals, freezing heart action, stopping the breath in his throat. The Gun lay on the floor rimed with frost.

He kept his eyes locked on the short smoke-colored stick in Doc's practiced hand. The popsickle slashed air as Doc lunged past him. Logan twisted and fell to one knee in the classic Omnite attack position. His left elbow drove into Doc's groin. With a soundless, choked scream, Doc slammed the wall, bouncing off into Logan's knee, which caught him with a killing spinal blow.

Logan swore bitterly, stripping the dead man's pockets. I should have handled this without killing him, he thought. Now where's the next key? Has the girl got it? And where is she? Probably hidden somewhere in the Arcade labyrinth.

Logan retrieved the moist Gun, straightening to a sound in the next room. He moved carefully to the door, easing it open.

Holly was inside, against the far wall, a medical knife poised at her breast. Her terror-glazed eyes were fixed on the Gun. As Logan advanced toward her she drove the blade into her chest.

The world ended abruptly for Holly 13.

Logan put away his weapon.

"Doyle . . . Doyle . . . is that you?" A drugged voice.

Logan stepped through an alum-mesh curtain. The cramped room reeked of anesthetic. A dark-haired girl, nude to the waist, was rising groggily from a pneumocot.

She blinked dreamily at Logan. "It's me—
Jessica
," she said; her fingers tentatively explored the new planes of her face.

A runner, thought Logan. Her hand is blinking. But why does she think I'm Doyle? And did she get the—

"Key. Do you have a punchkey?" he asked.

"Doyle . . . you don't look like my brother anymore. You don't even
sound
the same. They've changed us."

So that was it: the girl was Doyle's sister. He must have told her to meet him here.

"Listen," said Logan, "do you have the next key?"

She was fully awake now, slipping into her blouse. He saw her remove a silver object from one pocket. Logan took it from her. A mazekey.

"Did Doc give you any instructions?"

"Yes. He told me—us—to use a branch tunnel under Arcade. I know where it is."

"All right then. Let's go."

He followed her to a slideway. The plunged down into jeweled darkness.

At the off ramp he took her hand. They ran along the maze platform.

The maze. A million miles of tunnel, a veining of expressways serving the continents, interlinking Chicago with New York, Detroit with New Alaska, London with Lower Australia—a multitude of black-steel beetles burrowing the subterranean depths at fantastic speeds.

Logan stabbed the mazekey into a callbox at the edge of the platform.

A distant brass-humming along the tunnels, a rocketing rush of deep-earth winds; the mazecar blazed out of darkness and socked into the boarding slot.

They climbed in. The hatch slid closed. The seats locked.

"Destination?" asked the car.

Jessica said, "Sanctuary."

The mazecar surged into fluid motion.

As the beetle rushed, Logan's thoughts rushed with it. Sanctuary. It seemed too easy; you got into a mazecar and said a word and the obedient piece of machinery carried you—
where?

And the girl, Jessica? How would he deal with her?

The car slowed, hissed to a stop. The hatch opened.

Jessica didn't move. "They can change the color of a man's eyes but they can't change the man inside. You're not my brother."

"He's dead," Logan told her.

The girl's mouth tightened. "You killed him."

"No—but I saw him die. He gave me his key. He—wanted me to have it."

For a moment her face was still; then she began to sob quietly.

What do you say? How do you say I'm sorry? A Sandman doesn't feel sorry. He does what he has to.

"Look," he said. "Your brother's dead and we're alive. And if we want to stay alive we'll have to keep moving. It's just that simple."

"Exit, please," said the car.

They stepped out and the machine whipped away.

The maze platform was lifeless. Dusty yellow sunlight speared down from a jagged hole in the tunnel ceiling. Loose metal tiles lay in disordered heaps where they had sloughed from the walls. Exposed masonry jutted through cracked anodized flooring.

On the rusting section of tunnel wall a weathered poster clung, edges peeling. On it a running silhouette was overprinted with harsh letters: SHAME. Directly under this a vandal had chalked RUNNERS STINK!

A bent sign angled over the platform: CATHEDRAL.

And what now? Logan asked himself. Is this Sanctuary? A shorted-out section of city swarming with renegade cubs . . .

"Listen!" Jess warned.

A distant singing. A faint rising and falling refrain, echoing from an upper level.

Logan ducked Jess into a wedge of shadow. They waited.

A high, childish treble, coming closer.

"Cubs!" said Logan. His eyes strained the darkness.

A small figure in a tattered blue garment walked into the circle of sun on the platform. A little girl of five. She was dragging something behind her. The child's face was grimed and hair-tangled; her scabbed legs were thin. She wore no shoes.

She stopped singing. "Don't be afraid," she said. "I'm Mary-Mary 2."

Logan stepped from the shadow. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, he told me to meet you."

"Who did?"

The little girl's eyes saucered. "Why, the old, old man, of course."

Jessica gripped the child's shoulder. "What old, old man?"

"His hair is black and white, all mixed together," she told them. "And he has deep places in his face and he looks so wise. He's the oldest man in the world."

"Ballard!"

The little girl took a silver key from a torn pocket. "He told me to give you this."

Logan palmed the key. "Do we use it now?"

"This many," she said solemnly, raising her tiny hands, all ten fingers spread. In the center of her right palm a yellow flower glowed softly.

"Ten o'clock," said Jess.

Logan checked a wallchron above them. "Twelve minutes."

Jessica looked deeply into the waif's eyes. "Where do you live, Mary-Mary?"

She smiled. "Here," she said.

"Why aren't you in a nursery?"

"I'm very smart," said Mary-Mary.

"But don't you get hungry?"

"You can catch things to eat."

She opened the frayed cloth bag at her feet and proudly held out an old-fashioned rat trap. Jessica paled.

"I
never
go upstairs," continued Mary-Mary. "The bad people are there and they chase you. Goodbye now! You're a nice old lady."

The child looked disdainfully at Logan and walked off into the tunnels.

"I don't think she likes me," he said.

"She shouldn't be here," said Jess. "Alone in a place like this. She should be in a nursery with other children."

"She seems to be self-sufficient."

"A nursery would protect her."

"As it protected you?"

"Of course. No child under seven belongs on her own. I was happy in the nursery." Jess sat down on the platform edge with Logan. "No, no I wasn't happy." Her voice trembled. "I accepted everything then, without questioning but I was never happy there."

Logan let the girl talk; he wanted to know more about her, wanted to understand her.

"Why should every child be taken from its parents at birth? Why should a brother and sister be separated for seven years?" She studied Logan's face. "When did
you
begin to doubt, to question Sleep? I'd like to know."

"I can't recall just when. I'd heard the stories, of course."

"Of Ballard?"

"Yes. And the rest of it."

"About the Sanctuary line. Oh, how I wanted to believe those stories when I first heard them as a little girl." Her eyes grew hard again. "Do you ever wonder what your mother was like, who she was, what she felt, how she looked? Do you think she'd be ashamed of what you've become?"

"She may have been a runner, too," said Logan evasively. "I'll never know what she was."

Jess frowned angrily. "I think you should. I think children
should
know their mothers and be loved by them. Little Mary-Mary should have a mother to love her. A machine can never love you . . . only people can love people."

"Where did you work before you ran?" he asked her.

"I was a fashion tech at Lifeleather trim. Three hours a day, three days a week. I hated it."

"Then why did you stay there?"

"Because it was a job. What can anyone really
work
at? You can paint or write poetry or go on pairup. You can glassdance or firewalk in the Arcades." Her voice was scornful. "You can breed roses or collect stones or compose for the Tri-Dims. But there's no meaning to any of it. I just—"

A scream from the tunnels.

"That was Mary-Mary!" Jess lunged forward, but Logan restrained her.

"Wait," he said. "Here she comes."

The child ran out of the darkness into Jessica's arms. "The
bad
people! Bad, bad, bad!"

A howling group of cubscouts burst from the tunnel mouth to surround them. A strutting, feral-faced thirteen-year-old headed the pack. From the waist up he was dressed in the bloodstained uniform of a DS man. Below the ripped black tunic he wore sweat-darkened skintights. "Here now and look what Charmin' Billy led you to." He smirked. "The little rat-trapper and two stinkin' runners."

Mary-Mary stomped her foot. "You go on away!" she demanded. "This is
my
place. Go back upstairs!"

Charming Billy ignored her. "Going to have us a time, we are!"

Logan measured the pack with his eyes. He could summon the car in another five minutes.
How do you buy five minutes?
He'd take out the blocky cub to his right first and then go for Charming Billy if nothing else worked. He eased Jess and the child behind him.

Logan looked at Billy. "I feel sorry for you, boy."

Confusion. The pack watched their leader.

"For me? Better feel sorry for yourself, Runner!"

"No—for
you
, Billy. How old are you?"

Billy's eyes slitted. He didn't reply.

"Twelve? Thirteen? Now me, I'm as old as you can get." Logan slowly exposed his blinking timeflower. "And you—your days are running out. How long can you last, Billy?"

One minute gone.

"Two years? A year? Six months?" he pointed to the blue flower glowing in Billy's palm. "What happens when you go to red?"

"Got me a Sandman once, I did! They said I'd never get him, but I cut him up good, I did. Make the rules as I go. Cubs do what
I
say. Always have. Always will. I got Cathedral and I'll never let go!"

"No cubs at fourteen, Billy. Ever heard of a cub with a red flower? You'll leave Cathedral then, Billy, when you're on red, because they won't let an adult stay here. The young ones. They'll gut-rip you if you stay, so you'll cross the river. And then, almost before you know it, Billy, you're twenty-one and your hand is blinking. And you'll die like a sheep."

Two minutes gone.

"Not me, I won't!" Billy shouted. "I'll—"

"—run!" snapped Logan. "Isn't that
just
what you'll do? Run as I'm running. As she's running."

"Shut up! Shut up your damn mouth! I ain't no stinkin' runner!"

"We're the same kind, Billy. You're just like us. Help us, Billy. Don't fight us."

The blocky cub cut in. "Let him suck Muscle. That'll shut his mouth. Let's us watch him shake himself to death!"

The anger and frustration drained from Charming Billy's face. He smiled.

Logan tensed. The talking was done.

Three minutes gone.

Drugpads materialized. The cubs squeezed the pads, inhaled the Muscle. They shimmered into kaleidoscopic blurs, into weaving color patterns. Here. There. They were everywhere.

Logan fell back into a fighting crouch, but before he could strike a blow he was caught, dragged and slammed against the wall.

Screaming, Mary-Mary broke from Jessica and ran off down the tunnels.

A staccato burst of words; the blocky cub's voice, "GivehimsomeMuscle!"

"Shakehimtodeath!"

"Killhim!"

A drugpad danced the air in front of Logan's face.

Four minutes gone.

Logan held his breath. The fumes enveloped him; if he breathed . . . He felt the Gun pressing into his thigh. The
Gun
.

Despite revealing himself to Jess, he'd have to use the Gun.

He wrenched his arms loose, dropped to the floor, rolled free of the weaving shapes, drew and fired.

The nitro charge exploded into the pack. Fragmented bodies littered the platform.

Five minutes!

Logan quickly pocketed a drugpad and key-punched the callbox.

Jess stared at him with revulsion. "Sandman! You're a Sandman!"

A mazecar swooped out of the depths.

"In!"

Jessica hesitated. Logan pushed the girl inside, leaped after her. Before the hatch could engage a black shimmer filled the space.