He found a diner and spent a tenth of his money on a huge platter of
fish steaks and sea greens, which he washed down with four cups of
coffee. Neither the elderly waitress who served him, nor the one other
customer -- whose eyes Tallon was using -- glanced at him twice. He
reckoned he could have been taken for anything from a TV repairman to
an employee of an obscure section of the local utilities complex.
Out in the street again he bought a pack of cigarettes from a vendor
and walked along casually, smoking, pretending to look into store
windows any time he lost sight of himself. More people were about,
and he found it relatively easy to skip to fresh eyes and spot himself
quickly from the new viewpoint. He discovered that very few people had
perfect eyesight. The eyes he borrowed as he crossed the town were often
nearsighted or farsighted, astigmatic or color blind, and he was mildly
surprised to find that the people with the most defective vision were
often the ones who did not wear glasses.
Many of the large downtown buildings were fronted with 3-D screens
displaying shifting color patterns keyed to the tonal patterns of current
music. There was no advertising, but a video newscast was put on every
fifteen minutes or so. Tallon was too concerned with the second-by-second
problems of negotiating crowds and crossing streets to pay much attention
to the news, but his attention was suddenly gripped by a huge picture
of a dovelike bird perched on a man's finger. A piece of string dangled
from one of its legs. Tallon was sure it was Ariadne II. He strained to
hear the commentary.
. . . arrived back at the Government Detention Center early this
morning. It is believed the two sightless detainees were carrying
the bird with them, and its return is another indication thai they
perished in the swamp. Earlier reports that the two men had obtained
radarlike devices to take the place of normal eyes have since been
denied by a spokesman for the Center.
And now, passing from the local scene to the galactic situation, the
Moderator's delegates to the prematurely ended- top-level conference
on Akkab will arrive at the New Wittenburg space terminal this
afternoon. It is understood . . .
Tallon moved on, frowning. It was good to know that he was presumed
dead and therefore wouldn't be hunted, but the newscast had stirred
up in his mind the mystery of Helen Juste. Was she in trouble with the
prison board for her unorthodoxy? Had she seen the trouble coming and
tried to avoid it by ordering the confiscation of the eyesets? Why had
she let them go so far in the first place?
A sign attached to the façade of the central post office confirmed
Tallon's guess that he was in the town of Sirocco. His hazy memory of
Lutheran geography told him that Sirocco was on the continuous railway
that circled the whole continent, performing the function of air services
on other worlds. Winfield's plan had been to travel at night and on
foot, which had been reasonable enough, considering the limitations
of the sonar torch; but Tallon could actually see. And apart from what
appeared to be a rather heavy pair of spectacles, he looked much like
any other citizen of Emm Luther. If he took the train he could be back
in New Wittenburg in little more than a day. Once there, he would be
faced with the difficulty of making contact with an agent, but it would
be better to face the problem sooner than later. The alternative to the
train was to start walking and run all the risks of having to live by
stealing food, sleeping in sheds and barns, and in general acting in a
highly suspicious manner. He decided to take the train.
As he walked he passed the time by practicing lip reading, an ability
taught by the Block, and one for which he had never found much practical
use. The recurring close-ups of faces of persons talking without the
accompanying sound effects presented a challenge to Tallon. He wanted
to find out what they were saying.
Tallon had often heard of the continuous railway, and in his cover job as
an agent for Earth-made drafting systems he had even used it for shipping
goods, but he had never seen it.
Arriving at the station, be saw a slow-moving line of carriages going by
the long single platform and assumed he had got there just as a train
was moving off or stopping. The railway operated on a universal fare
system, so there were no formalities over tickets. A machine proyided
him with a simple square of plastic entitling him to travel anywhere on
the southern section for one day. He worked through knots of people and
piles of freight onto the platform and stood waiting for the quietly
drifting carriages to either speed up or finally come to a halt. Five
minutes passed before he realized that neither of these things was going
to happen; the railway really was continuous!
Tallon flicked the eyeset controls several times until he picked up a
better view of the station and the system. The composite picture he built
up showed an endless line of freight and passenger cars curving into the
station from the east and vanishing to the north. None of the cars had
an engine or any visible controls, yet they were moving quickly beyond
the station and slowing down to about three miles an hour as they came
alongside the platform. This puzzled him, till he saw that what be had
taken to be a third rail was, in fact, a rotating screw mounted centrally
between the wheel-bearing rails. It was then be began to appreciate the
beauty of the system.
The cars needed no engines because their power came from the central screw,
which was turned at a constant speed by small magnetic motors spaced about
every half mile. Each car was attached to what amounted to an ordinary nut,
which was pulled along by the action of the spinning screw. The cars needed
no controls because their forward speed was governed by a device whose
simplicity pleased the engineer in Tallon: where they approached the
station, the pitch of the threads on the central screw was greatly reduced.
This had the effect of automatically slowing them down to walking pace.
Momentarily bemused by his admiration for Emm Luther's practical engineering,
Tallon blended with a group of teen-age students who were waiting for the
next passenger car to come by. He was looking through the eyes of a station
official standing behind the group. As the car came close he moved toward
it with the chattering students, then discovered he had overlooked an
important feature of the continuous railway. The edge of the platform
was a slideway moving at the same speed as the train, to let people get
on and off safely.
Tallon's right foot moved out from under him as he surged forward with
the students, and he lurched sideways, completely off balance. There were
startled protests as he grabbed for support and then fell awkwardly into
the carriage, hitting the side of his head on the door frame.
Apologizing profusely, he dropped into an empty seat, hoping he had not
been so conspicuous as to make anyone look closely at him. His right ear
was throbbing hotly, but the pain was a secondary consideration. The blow
from the door post had fallen directly on the part of the eyeset's frame
that concealed the miniature power pack, and Tallon thought he had
experienced a brief grayout at the moment of impact. He was still
receiving vision from the station official back on the platform, so he
reselected on proximity, and got one of the students who had sat down
on the opposite side of the compartment. After a moment Tallon relaxed;
the eyeset seemed to be undamaged, and the other passengers apparently
had forgotten his spectacular entrance.
The carriage gradually gathered speed until it was doing a smooth forty
miles an hour in almost complete silence. The route northward kept close
to the ocean. Occasionally the mountains on the other side receded to a
distance of up to ten miles, but usually they were crowding in, limiting
the living space, creating the pressures that were being felt back on Earth.
The ribbon of flatland was a continuous suburban development, with commercial
centers every few miles. A break in the continental spine became visible
after half an hour, and another similiar train, going in the opposite
direction, slid into place beside the one on which Tallon was traveling.
He saw that at top speed the few feet of space that separated the cars
at a station multiplied in the same ratio as the cars' speed, so that
they were quite widely strung out.
The students got out at one of the urban ganglia, but there was a continuous
supply of other passengers to keep him provided with borrowed eyes.
He noticed the women were more attractively dressed and more sophisticated
than was usual in the colder north where the austere influence of
Reformation, the governmental seat, was stronger. Some of the girls were
wearing the new visi-perfumes, which surrounded them in pastel-tinted
clouds of fragrance.
Once he used the eyes of a young woman who, judging by the way Tallon
kept seeing himself in the center of his field of vision, was showing
some interest in him. He flicked to another pair of eyes a few seats
away and got a look at the woman. After noting that she had a bronzed,
blond attractiveness Tallon, with the comfortable feeling of successful
cheating, went back to her eyes to find out just how much she was
interested by the number of times she looked at him.
Soothed by the movement of the carriage, the sun-lit warmth, the very
presence of women, Tallon felt the first stirrings of sexuality that he
had experienced in a long, long time. How good it would be, he thought
drowsily, to be living normally again, to be swimming with the warm currents
of life, to have a woman with red hair and whiskey-colored eyes. . . .
Tallon turned off his eyeset, and slept. He awoke to the persistent chiming
of the public address system, and switched on the eyeset again. A man's voice
announced that the carriage was about to reach the city of Sweetwell,
the northernmost point of the section, and would then be swinging to
the east. Any passengers who wished to continue traveling north would
have to get off and cross the Vajda Strait on the ferry. They would be
able to board the central section train on the other side.
Tallon had forgotten that the bottom of the continent was separated from
the rest by a narrow incursion of the sea. He began to swear silently,
and was immediately astonished at the change in his attitude a few hours
of comfort and safety had brought about. Last night he had been prepared
to crawl to New Wittenburg on his hands and knees if necessary; today
he was annoyed at having to change trains on the journey.
He stretched, and seeing himself perform the familiar action, realized
that the blond girl was still opposite him and still showing interest.
He turned his face until he seemed to be looking directly into his own
eyes and smiled his best smile. The picture of himself looking pale and
haggard, perhaps romantically so, remained for a few seconds before the
girl's gaze slid away to the passing buildings outside the train.
He guessed she had smiled back at him for a moment, and he was warmed.
Tallon stood up as the platform came alongside; the man nearest the
compartment door slid it open. The girl rose at the same time, and he
knew she was smiling at him again. Outside, the platform was drifting by,
and it was now imperative for Tallon to get off without falling. He had
automatically motioned the girl to go ahead of him, then remembered that
if she did he would be out of her field of vision.
"Sorry, miss," he muttered regretfully, and elbowed past her to the door.
She gasped, but his sudden rudeness had the useful effect of fixing her
gaze firmly on his back. He got down onto the slideway and stepped safely
on to the stationary platform. The girl continued to shoot angry glances
at him when she was off the train, and until she was out of range he used
her attention to guide him to the waiting ferry. It was about noon and the
day was brilliantly clear. He was hungry again and decided to treat himself
to a huge meal on the far side of the Strait, regardless of the cost.
At his present rate of progress his money would be more than adequate.
The ferry turned out to be a primitive but fast ground effect machine,
capable of crossing the mile-wide Strait in a couple of minutes. Tallon
found the short trip exhilarating. The characteristic yawing ride of the
hovercraft, the roar of the turbines, white spray flying on each side,
the jostling of the other travelers in the stand-up passenger saloon --
all combined to produce a cheerful vacation mood. The vessel waltzed up
its ramp and into the dock. Tallon strolled through the group of people
waiting to embark, and began looking for a good restaurant. There was
a diner attached to the rail terminal complex, but it looked slightly
squalid, and he had no doubt it would charge high prices for indifferent
food.
He walked up sloping streets toward the center of city still enjoying
the sense of freedom. Sweetwell was a bustling city with a suggestion
of provincial France in its sophisticated little stores and sidewalk
cafes. He would have enjoyed eating in the sunlight, but decided not to
throw away all caution -- his picture was bound to have been included in
the newscasts and there was always the chance that somebody might look
too closely at him and start wondering. Accordingly he picked a quiet
restaurant, with a Gothic sign identifying it as The Persian Cat.
The only other customers were two pairs of middle-aged women sipping coffee
and smoking, with shopping bags on the floor at their feet. Tallon flicked
the eyeset, got behind the eyes of one of the women, and saw himself walk
in and sit down at a vacant table. The tables were of real wood and were
covered with what seemed to be genuine linen. Two large gray cats padded
about among the chair legs. Tallon, who was not a cat enthusiast, shifted
uneasily and wished one of the other customers would look at a menu.
The food, when he finally got it, was quite good. The steak had been
processed so well that Tallon could not detect the taste of fish at
all, and he guessed it would cost him plenty. He ate quickly, suddenly
impatient to be back on the train, gulped the coffee, and reached for
his money.
Other books
All Due Respect Issue #2 by
Laukkanen, Owen, Siddall, David, DeWildt, CS, Beetner, Eric, Rubas, Joseph, Sweeny, Liam, Adlerberg, Scott