Authors: Bob Shaw
Night Walk (11 page)
His wallet was gone.
Tallon searched his other pockets mechanically, knowing all the while
that his wallet had been stolen, probably during the jostling ride across
the Strait. The ferry was an obvious hunting ground for pickpockets,
and Tallon swore at his own carelessness. The situation was serious,
for he was now in trouble with the restaurant and could not buy a train
ticket later.
Toying with the dregs of his coffee, Tallon decided that if he was going
to start stealing money The Persian Cat was as good a place as any to do
it. It seemed to have only one afternoon waitress, who spent long periods
out in the kitchen, leaving the cash desk near the door unattended. It was
a foolishly trusting thing to do, he thought; almost as foolish as not
holding on to your wallet in a crowd.
Two of the middle-aged shoppers were still in the restaurant. Waiting
for them to leave, Tallon motioned to one of the gray cats and lured it
over to him. He lifted the heavy animal onto his lap, trying to tickle
it behind the ears, and adjusted the eyeset to put him behind its great
yellow eyes.
Tallon feared the other two customers were going to stay until somebody
else came in and ruined his chance, but they finally gathered up the
shopping and rang for their check. To Tallon's surprise it was not the
waitress who had served him who emerged from the screen at the rear;
it was instead a tall brunette of about thirty, wearing black-rimmed
glasses and an expensively tailored business suit. He decided she was
either the manager or the owner.
One her way back from the cash desk the brunette stopped at his table.
He raised the almost empty coffee cup to his lips.
"Can I get you anything more?"
Tallon shook his head. "Nothing, thanks. I'm enjoying your excellent coffee."
"I see you like my cats."
"Love them," Tallon lied. "Beautiful creatures. This is a particularly
fine cat. What's his name?"
"His name is Ethel."
Tallon smirked desperately, wondering if real cat lovers were supposed
to be able to tell toms from tabbies at a glance. He concentrated on
stroking Ethel's head, and the brunette, after giving him a suspicious
look, moved off toward the screen. The little encounter had filled Tallon
with a sense of uneasiness, and he decided to waste no more time. He held
the cat up and rotated it, making sure the restaurant was deserted,
then walked quickly to the desk. The old-fashioned cash register was
bound to make a noise when he operated it, so Tallon edged the door
open slightly in preparation for a quick escape. He pressed a key on
the register and feverishly scooped a handful of bills from the drawer.
"Detainee Samuel Tallon," a woman's voice said softly behind him.
Tallon spun, with the cat under his arm, and saw the expensively dressed
brunette. Her eyes, behind the black-rimmed glasses, had a hard speculative
glint in them. She was aiming a gold-plated automatic pistol squarely at
his chest.
eleven
Tallon lay on the bed, in utter blackness, listening to night sounds
and waiting for Amanda Weisner to come for him.
Beside him on the scented silks his dog, Seymour, snuffled and growled
in his sleep, stirring slightly from time to time. Tallon stroked the
terrier's rough hair, feeling the warmth in the compact little body,
and was glad he had insisted on having the dog in spite of Amanda's
objections. He reached for his cigarettes, then changed his mind. There
was something unsatisfactory about a cigarette unless he could actually
see the smoke and the tiny red ash. He could have wakened Seymour to
borrow his eyes, but that seemed inconsiderate.
Apart from Seymour's feelings, there were practical reasons for not
using the eyeset at night. The original suggestion had been Amanda's,
but he had decided to go along with it because it meant a reduced demand
on the power pack. Twice during his first week at The Persian Cat there
had been momentary grayouts similar to the one that had occurred when
he hit his head on the train. There had been no more since he had begun
resting the eyeset, so he considered the nightly return to blindness
worth the inconvenience.
He heard the rear door of the restaurant downstairs open and close again.
That meant Amanda was putting the cats out for the night and would soon
be coming to bed.
Their
bed. Tallon clenched his fist and pressed the
knuckles hard against his teeth.
When he'd seen the pistol that first day he thought his luck was gone;
then when he learned Amanda was not going to turn him over to the E.L.S.P.
he decided it was back again. After he got to know Amanda better he realized
he had been right the first time.
She had square-jawed good looks, in which a slight masculinity was
accentuated by cropped dark hair and heavy spectacles. Her body had a
snaky, economical beauty, but it was Amanda Weisner's mind that fascinated
Tallon. Although there had been frequent sexual encounters during that
first week, he sensed these were unimportant to her. Mentally, however,
she had devoured him.
The question and answer sessions went on for hours, covering every detail
of his previous career, his life in the Pavilion, the escape. Her memory
was extremely good, seemingly capable of filing and cross-indexing each
fact, so that sooner or later every lie and honest error in his answers
was uncovered and pinned down.
Tallon could not understand what was driving her; he only knew as they lay
together talking far into the night that he was once more in a prison.
She never actually threatened him with the police, not in so many words,
but she left no doubt as to his position. In two weeks he had not been
outside the restaurant once, nor even beyond the door of Amanda's flat.
Seymour was the only concession Tallon had won, and that only at the end
of a major clash of wills. She had offered him one of her eight cats to
use as eyes, and had smiled whitely when he said he hated cats.
"I know you do, Sam," she said caressingly. "How do you think I noticed
you so quickly when you came into the restaurant? I don't know who was
the most on edge that day -- you or Ethel. Cat people aren't so easily
fooled."
"You mean," Tallon muttered, "it takes one to spot one."
Amanda had given him a cold, level stare at that, and when she finally
brought him the wire-haired terrier she hinted she could not be responsible
for its safety in the presence of her cats. Tallon had accepted the dog
gratefully, and revealing a latent weakness for puns, christened it Seymour.
Since then, the number one stud on the eyeset had been permanently allocated
to the dog.
The eyeset had fascinated Amanda. She had gone as far as she could with
him in understanding its design principles, and had even tried it out
for herself, making him do without it for hours while she explored the
world of her cat family. When she closed her eyes the set worked quite
well for her, except that she occasionally lost the picture through not
having metal plugs in her corneas to act as focusing referents. Tallon
had been forced to sit, helplessly blind, as she lay on the floor wearing
the eyeset. He heard the whispering sounds as her long body coiled and
uncoiled ecstatically on the thick carpets, tiny cat noises issuing from
her slim throat. And all he could do was clench his fist and press the
knuckles hard against his teeth. . . .
The bedroom door opened and he heard Amanda come in.
"Sleeping already, darling?"
"Not yet. I'm working on it, though."
Tallon listened to the faint crackling of static electricity in her clothing
as she undressed. If only she would let one night go by without the
intolerable demands of love where love did not exist, the relationship
might be bearable. She was more intense, more insistent than ever since he
had begun his nightly return to blindness. He guessed it was because his
helplessness without the eyeset satisfied some psychological need in her.
"Darling, have you that filthy dog beside you again?"
"Seymour isn't filthy."
"If you say so, darling; but should he be on our bed?"
Tallon sighed as he set the dog on the floor. "I like having Seymour around.
Don't I have any privileges around this place?"
"What privileges had you in the Center, darling?"
Point taken, Tallon thought. How had he done it? How, out of a million
or more inhabitants in the city of Sweetwell, had he unerringly picked
out Amanda Weisner? But then, he reflected somberly, Sam Tallon had always
found the Amandas everywhere he went. How had he started out as a physicist
and ended up working for the Block? How, out of all the safe jobs that were
available, had he selected the one that placed him so precisely in the wrong
place at the wrong time?
The night was very warm, as spring had come early to the southern end of
the long continent. As the hours went by Tallon tried to free himself from
the physical duel with Amanda by letting his mind drift upward, through
ceiling and roof, to where he would be able to see the slow wheeling of
alien constellations. Out in the alley behind the restaurant the big cats
prowled and pounced, just as their ancestors on Earth had always done,
telling each other wailing cat myths to explain the absence of the moon,
which had gilded their eyes for a thousand centuries.
Occasionally there were sharper cries as male and female came together
savagely, obeying an instinct older than the moon and as universal as
matter. Tallon slowly realized that, time after time, Amanda's body was
responding to the ferocious outbursts, and he felt his mind borne away
on powerful tides of disgust. If he walked out on her she would go to the
police -- of that he was certain. He could kill her, except for the fact
that her daily employees in the restaurant would notice her absence within
a matter of hours. And yet he had to consider the possibility that she
could soon grow bored with him and turn him over no matter what he did.
Moving restlessly in the darkness, Tallon brushed Amanda's face with his
hand and touched the smoothness of plastic, the edges of tiny projections.
Immediately both their bodies were stilled.
"What was that?" He kept his voice low to mask the cold dawning in his mind.
"What was what, darling? You mean my silly old glasses? I had forgotten
I was wearing them."
Tallon considered the words for a moment, pretending to relax, then he
snatched the eyeset from her face and put it to his own. He got one glimpse
of the night jungle through which the big cats moved, before the eyeset
was torn away from him again.
Mewing with rage, Amanda attacked, using nails and teeth as naturally
and efficiently as would one. of her cats. Tallon was handicapped both
by his blindness and by his alarm at the thought of accidentally smashing
the eyeset, which had dropped on the bed beside them.
Stoically enduring the tearing of his skin, he groped for the eyeset and
placed it safely under the bed. He then subdued Amanda by holding her throat
with his left hand and driving slow, rhythmic punches into her face with his
right. Even when she had gone limp he kept hitting her, seeking revenge for
things he barely understood.
Ten minutes later Tallon opened the front door of The Persian Cat and
stepped out onto the street. He walked quickly, with the freshly filled
pack bumping solidly against his back and Seymour wriggling sleepily
under his arm. There were about five hours of darkness left in which he
could travel northward, but he had a feeling the hunt would start long
before daylight.
twelve
Tallon was clearing the outskirts of the city when he heard the lonely
clattering of a single helicopter. Its navigation lights drifted across
the sky, high up in the predawn grayness. In a technology that had learned
to negate gravity itself, the helicopter was a crude contraption, but
it was still the most efficient vertical-takeoff machine ever devised,
and it was unlikely to go out of use as long as some men had to run and
others had to hunt them like eagles.
Holding Seymour's head upright, Tallon watched the solitary light drift
out of sight beyond the northern horizon. Amanda had wasted no time,
he thought. Now that any glimmer of hope of not being reported to the
police was gone he began looking for a safe place to wait out the coming
day. He was walking on a second-class motorway, lined on one side with
native trees and on the other with stunted palms grown in the higher
gravity of Emm Luther from imported seeds. At that time of the morning
traffic was limited to infrequent private automobiles, traveling fast,
trailing turbulent wakes of dust and dried leaves.
Tallon kept close to the trees, hiding each time he saw headlights,
and scanned the quiet buildings for a likely place to sleep. As he left
Sweetwell behind, the neat garden factories were gradually replaced
by small flat-blocks, and then by private houses in the higher income
class. The tailored lawns shone in the light from the motorway. Several
times as he walked, his view of his surroundings seemed to dim slightly,
and he whispered fiercely to Seymour, urging the terrier to alertness. But
in the end he had to admit to himself that the fault was in the eyeset. He
fingered the tiny slide controlling the gain and was shocked to discover
it was almost up against the end of its slot. It looked as though the
damage he had done to the power unit was progressive in effect, in which
case . . .
Tallon dismissed the thought and concentrated on finding a place to spend
the day. Lights were beginning to appear in windows as he opened the door
of a shrub-covered shed behind one of the larger dwellings. The darkness
in the shed was filled with the nostalgic odor of dry earth, garden tools,
and machine oil. Tallon settled down in a corner, with Seymour, and sorted
out some of his new possessions. He had Amanda Weisner's gold-plated
automatic, enough food for several days, a roll of bills, and a radio.
Later in the day as he lay in his private universe of blackness, with the
eyeset switched off, he was able to pick up the first newcasts.
Detainee Samuel Tallon, he learned, was still alive and had reached
the city of Sweetwell. Tallon, who had been convicted of spying for
imperialist Earth, had forced his way into a Sweetwell restaurant,
had assaulted and raped the proprietress, and had then vanished with
most of her cash. It was now confirmed that, although blind, the escaped
detainee was equipped with a radarlike device that enabled him to see.
He was described as being armed and dangerous.
Tallon searched his other pockets mechanically, knowing all the while
that his wallet had been stolen, probably during the jostling ride across
the Strait. The ferry was an obvious hunting ground for pickpockets,
and Tallon swore at his own carelessness. The situation was serious,
for he was now in trouble with the restaurant and could not buy a train
ticket later.
Toying with the dregs of his coffee, Tallon decided that if he was going
to start stealing money The Persian Cat was as good a place as any to do
it. It seemed to have only one afternoon waitress, who spent long periods
out in the kitchen, leaving the cash desk near the door unattended. It was
a foolishly trusting thing to do, he thought; almost as foolish as not
holding on to your wallet in a crowd.
Two of the middle-aged shoppers were still in the restaurant. Waiting
for them to leave, Tallon motioned to one of the gray cats and lured it
over to him. He lifted the heavy animal onto his lap, trying to tickle
it behind the ears, and adjusted the eyeset to put him behind its great
yellow eyes.
Tallon feared the other two customers were going to stay until somebody
else came in and ruined his chance, but they finally gathered up the
shopping and rang for their check. To Tallon's surprise it was not the
waitress who had served him who emerged from the screen at the rear;
it was instead a tall brunette of about thirty, wearing black-rimmed
glasses and an expensively tailored business suit. He decided she was
either the manager or the owner.
One her way back from the cash desk the brunette stopped at his table.
He raised the almost empty coffee cup to his lips.
"Can I get you anything more?"
Tallon shook his head. "Nothing, thanks. I'm enjoying your excellent coffee."
"I see you like my cats."
"Love them," Tallon lied. "Beautiful creatures. This is a particularly
fine cat. What's his name?"
"His name is Ethel."
Tallon smirked desperately, wondering if real cat lovers were supposed
to be able to tell toms from tabbies at a glance. He concentrated on
stroking Ethel's head, and the brunette, after giving him a suspicious
look, moved off toward the screen. The little encounter had filled Tallon
with a sense of uneasiness, and he decided to waste no more time. He held
the cat up and rotated it, making sure the restaurant was deserted,
then walked quickly to the desk. The old-fashioned cash register was
bound to make a noise when he operated it, so Tallon edged the door
open slightly in preparation for a quick escape. He pressed a key on
the register and feverishly scooped a handful of bills from the drawer.
"Detainee Samuel Tallon," a woman's voice said softly behind him.
Tallon spun, with the cat under his arm, and saw the expensively dressed
brunette. Her eyes, behind the black-rimmed glasses, had a hard speculative
glint in them. She was aiming a gold-plated automatic pistol squarely at
his chest.
eleven
Tallon lay on the bed, in utter blackness, listening to night sounds
and waiting for Amanda Weisner to come for him.
Beside him on the scented silks his dog, Seymour, snuffled and growled
in his sleep, stirring slightly from time to time. Tallon stroked the
terrier's rough hair, feeling the warmth in the compact little body,
and was glad he had insisted on having the dog in spite of Amanda's
objections. He reached for his cigarettes, then changed his mind. There
was something unsatisfactory about a cigarette unless he could actually
see the smoke and the tiny red ash. He could have wakened Seymour to
borrow his eyes, but that seemed inconsiderate.
Apart from Seymour's feelings, there were practical reasons for not
using the eyeset at night. The original suggestion had been Amanda's,
but he had decided to go along with it because it meant a reduced demand
on the power pack. Twice during his first week at The Persian Cat there
had been momentary grayouts similar to the one that had occurred when
he hit his head on the train. There had been no more since he had begun
resting the eyeset, so he considered the nightly return to blindness
worth the inconvenience.
He heard the rear door of the restaurant downstairs open and close again.
That meant Amanda was putting the cats out for the night and would soon
be coming to bed.
Their
bed. Tallon clenched his fist and pressed the
knuckles hard against his teeth.
When he'd seen the pistol that first day he thought his luck was gone;
then when he learned Amanda was not going to turn him over to the E.L.S.P.
he decided it was back again. After he got to know Amanda better he realized
he had been right the first time.
She had square-jawed good looks, in which a slight masculinity was
accentuated by cropped dark hair and heavy spectacles. Her body had a
snaky, economical beauty, but it was Amanda Weisner's mind that fascinated
Tallon. Although there had been frequent sexual encounters during that
first week, he sensed these were unimportant to her. Mentally, however,
she had devoured him.
The question and answer sessions went on for hours, covering every detail
of his previous career, his life in the Pavilion, the escape. Her memory
was extremely good, seemingly capable of filing and cross-indexing each
fact, so that sooner or later every lie and honest error in his answers
was uncovered and pinned down.
Tallon could not understand what was driving her; he only knew as they lay
together talking far into the night that he was once more in a prison.
She never actually threatened him with the police, not in so many words,
but she left no doubt as to his position. In two weeks he had not been
outside the restaurant once, nor even beyond the door of Amanda's flat.
Seymour was the only concession Tallon had won, and that only at the end
of a major clash of wills. She had offered him one of her eight cats to
use as eyes, and had smiled whitely when he said he hated cats.
"I know you do, Sam," she said caressingly. "How do you think I noticed
you so quickly when you came into the restaurant? I don't know who was
the most on edge that day -- you or Ethel. Cat people aren't so easily
fooled."
"You mean," Tallon muttered, "it takes one to spot one."
Amanda had given him a cold, level stare at that, and when she finally
brought him the wire-haired terrier she hinted she could not be responsible
for its safety in the presence of her cats. Tallon had accepted the dog
gratefully, and revealing a latent weakness for puns, christened it Seymour.
Since then, the number one stud on the eyeset had been permanently allocated
to the dog.
The eyeset had fascinated Amanda. She had gone as far as she could with
him in understanding its design principles, and had even tried it out
for herself, making him do without it for hours while she explored the
world of her cat family. When she closed her eyes the set worked quite
well for her, except that she occasionally lost the picture through not
having metal plugs in her corneas to act as focusing referents. Tallon
had been forced to sit, helplessly blind, as she lay on the floor wearing
the eyeset. He heard the whispering sounds as her long body coiled and
uncoiled ecstatically on the thick carpets, tiny cat noises issuing from
her slim throat. And all he could do was clench his fist and press the
knuckles hard against his teeth. . . .
The bedroom door opened and he heard Amanda come in.
"Sleeping already, darling?"
"Not yet. I'm working on it, though."
Tallon listened to the faint crackling of static electricity in her clothing
as she undressed. If only she would let one night go by without the
intolerable demands of love where love did not exist, the relationship
might be bearable. She was more intense, more insistent than ever since he
had begun his nightly return to blindness. He guessed it was because his
helplessness without the eyeset satisfied some psychological need in her.
"Darling, have you that filthy dog beside you again?"
"Seymour isn't filthy."
"If you say so, darling; but should he be on our bed?"
Tallon sighed as he set the dog on the floor. "I like having Seymour around.
Don't I have any privileges around this place?"
"What privileges had you in the Center, darling?"
Point taken, Tallon thought. How had he done it? How, out of a million
or more inhabitants in the city of Sweetwell, had he unerringly picked
out Amanda Weisner? But then, he reflected somberly, Sam Tallon had always
found the Amandas everywhere he went. How had he started out as a physicist
and ended up working for the Block? How, out of all the safe jobs that were
available, had he selected the one that placed him so precisely in the wrong
place at the wrong time?
The night was very warm, as spring had come early to the southern end of
the long continent. As the hours went by Tallon tried to free himself from
the physical duel with Amanda by letting his mind drift upward, through
ceiling and roof, to where he would be able to see the slow wheeling of
alien constellations. Out in the alley behind the restaurant the big cats
prowled and pounced, just as their ancestors on Earth had always done,
telling each other wailing cat myths to explain the absence of the moon,
which had gilded their eyes for a thousand centuries.
Occasionally there were sharper cries as male and female came together
savagely, obeying an instinct older than the moon and as universal as
matter. Tallon slowly realized that, time after time, Amanda's body was
responding to the ferocious outbursts, and he felt his mind borne away
on powerful tides of disgust. If he walked out on her she would go to the
police -- of that he was certain. He could kill her, except for the fact
that her daily employees in the restaurant would notice her absence within
a matter of hours. And yet he had to consider the possibility that she
could soon grow bored with him and turn him over no matter what he did.
Moving restlessly in the darkness, Tallon brushed Amanda's face with his
hand and touched the smoothness of plastic, the edges of tiny projections.
Immediately both their bodies were stilled.
"What was that?" He kept his voice low to mask the cold dawning in his mind.
"What was what, darling? You mean my silly old glasses? I had forgotten
I was wearing them."
Tallon considered the words for a moment, pretending to relax, then he
snatched the eyeset from her face and put it to his own. He got one glimpse
of the night jungle through which the big cats moved, before the eyeset
was torn away from him again.
Mewing with rage, Amanda attacked, using nails and teeth as naturally
and efficiently as would one. of her cats. Tallon was handicapped both
by his blindness and by his alarm at the thought of accidentally smashing
the eyeset, which had dropped on the bed beside them.
Stoically enduring the tearing of his skin, he groped for the eyeset and
placed it safely under the bed. He then subdued Amanda by holding her throat
with his left hand and driving slow, rhythmic punches into her face with his
right. Even when she had gone limp he kept hitting her, seeking revenge for
things he barely understood.
Ten minutes later Tallon opened the front door of The Persian Cat and
stepped out onto the street. He walked quickly, with the freshly filled
pack bumping solidly against his back and Seymour wriggling sleepily
under his arm. There were about five hours of darkness left in which he
could travel northward, but he had a feeling the hunt would start long
before daylight.
twelve
Tallon was clearing the outskirts of the city when he heard the lonely
clattering of a single helicopter. Its navigation lights drifted across
the sky, high up in the predawn grayness. In a technology that had learned
to negate gravity itself, the helicopter was a crude contraption, but
it was still the most efficient vertical-takeoff machine ever devised,
and it was unlikely to go out of use as long as some men had to run and
others had to hunt them like eagles.
Holding Seymour's head upright, Tallon watched the solitary light drift
out of sight beyond the northern horizon. Amanda had wasted no time,
he thought. Now that any glimmer of hope of not being reported to the
police was gone he began looking for a safe place to wait out the coming
day. He was walking on a second-class motorway, lined on one side with
native trees and on the other with stunted palms grown in the higher
gravity of Emm Luther from imported seeds. At that time of the morning
traffic was limited to infrequent private automobiles, traveling fast,
trailing turbulent wakes of dust and dried leaves.
Tallon kept close to the trees, hiding each time he saw headlights,
and scanned the quiet buildings for a likely place to sleep. As he left
Sweetwell behind, the neat garden factories were gradually replaced
by small flat-blocks, and then by private houses in the higher income
class. The tailored lawns shone in the light from the motorway. Several
times as he walked, his view of his surroundings seemed to dim slightly,
and he whispered fiercely to Seymour, urging the terrier to alertness. But
in the end he had to admit to himself that the fault was in the eyeset. He
fingered the tiny slide controlling the gain and was shocked to discover
it was almost up against the end of its slot. It looked as though the
damage he had done to the power unit was progressive in effect, in which
case . . .
Tallon dismissed the thought and concentrated on finding a place to spend
the day. Lights were beginning to appear in windows as he opened the door
of a shrub-covered shed behind one of the larger dwellings. The darkness
in the shed was filled with the nostalgic odor of dry earth, garden tools,
and machine oil. Tallon settled down in a corner, with Seymour, and sorted
out some of his new possessions. He had Amanda Weisner's gold-plated
automatic, enough food for several days, a roll of bills, and a radio.
Later in the day as he lay in his private universe of blackness, with the
eyeset switched off, he was able to pick up the first newcasts.
Detainee Samuel Tallon, he learned, was still alive and had reached
the city of Sweetwell. Tallon, who had been convicted of spying for
imperialist Earth, had forced his way into a Sweetwell restaurant,
had assaulted and raped the proprietress, and had then vanished with
most of her cash. It was now confirmed that, although blind, the escaped
detainee was equipped with a radarlike device that enabled him to see.
He was described as being armed and dangerous.
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