Read This Fortress World Online
Authors: James Gunn
The pebble was deadly. It had killed five people already, five that I could count. If Siller had not been lying about that, too, it had killed many more before it reached the girl. I closed my eyes. The pebble would stay where it was. There had been enough killing.
I opened my eyes and pushed myself away from the wall. I couldn't stay here. Danger was here, close to the Cathedral. I had to find some place to rest, to sleep. It was night. I could be thankful for that.
Curiosity led me down the street toward the Cathedral for one last look at the place I would always think of as my home. Perhaps I would never see it again. I walked briskly toward the intersection.
It was a mistake. The side street was dark, but the intersection was brilliant from the reflection of the night-lit Cathedral. I had stepped out into the street before I noticed a glowing coal floating in the darkness on the other side of the street. It was just the height of a man's face.
A husky voice floated to me. "Get back in the shadows, fool!"
My mind froze, but my body acted. I nodded and stepped back out of the light.
The shout came simultaneously. "You ain't Brand!"
"No, he ain't," said a voice so close behind me I could feel the breath of it in my ear. Something hard pressed into the small of my back.
I seemed to hear Siller's high-pitched voice saying, "Don't get so close! Stay back!" The moment I felt the gun, I twisted, spinning on my left heel. My left arm knocked aside the hand and the gun. The gun spat beside me and chased the darkness with a brief, blue glare. My right fist was coming around, slowly, it seemed, so very slow. But the man's head moved slowly, too, and my fist smashed into flesh and bone. The man grunted and fell back. I didn't wait. I ran.
I was twenty strides away before the first bolt sizzled electrically past my head. I felt my hair lift. There were shouts behind me now and running feet.
"Call Sabatini!…Aim for his legs!…Go that way; cut him off!…"
Chase him, shoot him, catch him, make him tell! Run, legs, run! It's you they're after. Run, legs! They'll cut you off, like they cut off the others. Run while you can or you'll never run again. Run
!
I ran through the dark, deserted streets, and I felt that I had always been running, that I would always be running. I ran hard and the pursuit retreated. I slowed to catch my breath and the running feet behind grew louder. The dark tenements flashed by on either side.
I couldn't lose them on a straight run, but they couldn't catch me, either, as long as I kept running. They couldn't cut me off. And I was afraid of the alleys, narrow and dark and unknown. Unknown to me. The Agents knew them. They knew which went all the way through and which were cul-de-sacs, traps for fools. But they would catch me eventually unless I did something besides run.
I turned a corner and stopped, panting. My gun was in my hand. They were close behind me. I triggered a volley of bolts down the street. The feet stopped and then scuffled cautiously. I crept away.
I got two blocks before the cry was raised again. My harsh breathing had eased; my heart had slowed a little. But the rest had not been as helpful as I had expected. I realized how close to exhaustion I was.
I ran, and even though my body was ready to drop, my mind, strangely, was working coldly, calmly. The dark streets rolled by.
A place to hide, a place to hide.
It was a rhythm of running, a jarring, hopeless rhythm.
Siller would have known where to hide.
The buildings on either side were not quite so run down. The street seemed brighter.
If I only knew these snake-twisted alleys, I could lose the Agents and slip away.
The street was brighter; ahead the sky glowed, a reflection from a better-lighted section of the city.
If they catch me there, I will have no chance, no chance at all.
Blindly I ducked into an alley. It was like diving into a black pool. Faintly, as I fled, I heard a voice calling behind. "He went in there! Split up! Box him in and flush.…" It faded away.
My running foot hit something, something that clanged and started to tip. I felt it moving in the darkness and leaped. My arms closed on smooth, rounded metal. I fell, rolling, the can cradled in my arms.
I set it upright, silently, and felt my way forward. Only a few feet farther on, my hands met a wall. As I felt my way to one side and then the other, I realized that my luck had run out. There was no break in the wall. It met the houses on either side. I had chosen a blind alley.
My breath was a flame in my throat as I looked up. A few feet above my head, the dense darkness of the wall met the lesser dark of the sky. I didn't face the back of a building; it was a wall, with a top to it.
I leaped. My fingers touched the top of the wall and slipped off. I fell back into the alley. I jumped again, desperately. This time my fingers caught and held. For a long time I hung there without power to move, feeling the strength ebbing from my fingers. Then slowly, painfully, I pulled myself up until I got my arms over the top. I rested again.
Cautiously, with great effort, I swung my body over. With the wall conquered, my fingers could no longer hold me. I toppled over the edge into a deep, dark pit.
When I opened my eyes, I was staring into the sky. It was still dark. A strange thread of sound reached my ears. Very distant or very soft, I couldn't tell at first, and then I realized what it was and where I was and what was happening. The sound was close. It was the whisper of shoes on pavement. They were on the other side of the wall, creeping closer.
I stood up, feeling curiously rested. Motionless, silent, I peered through the darkness. I seemed to be in some kind of enclosed court. It was paved, and the ground here was higher than that on the other side of the wall. The top of the wall came just to my shoulders.
The feet were closer now, only two of them. They stopped, just on the other side of the wall. A soft, swishing sound was the brush of palms against the wall. I debated stealing away to another exit, hesitated, fearing the noise, and as I hesitated, decision was taken away from me.
There was a light scuffling on the other side of the wall, a thump, a thin rasp of shoes against the wall, and a slight sigh. Against the grayish blackness of the sky the round blackness of a man's head was outlined. It changed as I looked, bending forward and twisting to pierce the night.
My right hand flashed out and caught his throat so that he couldn't warn the others. He hung there, half over the wall, writhing in my grasp. I could sense his indecision. If he let loose of the wall, all his weight would be suspended from the hand that clutched his throat.
Instinct won. As my hand tightened, he released his hold on the wall and clawed for my wrist and fingers. But already the lack of air had begun to weaken him, and desperation drained his skill. He tore at my hand. I grabbed his wrist with my left hand to help support his weight. He twisted, the cords in his neck swelling in protest. I sensed his eyes bulging in the darkness, his face purpling, thickening. His clawing and began to paw, ineffectually. I leaned backward, pulling. As he came over the wall, he stopped struggling. A limp body fell at my feet.
I knelt beside him, feeling for his heart. It beat strongly. I sighed. There had been enough killing. I stripped off his jacket and shirt. The shirt, thin and silky, tore easily in my hands. With one sleeve I gagged him. The other bound his hands behind him. A wide strip from the body of the shirt tied up his feet.
I could waste no more time. I raised myself to the top of the wall and lowered myself silently into the alley. I made my way out slowly, cautiously. As I drew near the street, the darkness lessened. I stayed in the shadows while I looked up and down the street as far as I could see without exposing myself. It seemed empty. I hesitated for a moment and shrugged. Time was more precious than caution.
No shouts greeted me as I stepped out of the alley. No deadly flashes marked my exit. I walked down the side of the street, hugging the buildings, breathing deeply. It was not ordinary air I drew in; my lungs tingled with the wine of safety. I walked toward the glow ahead. Now it did not spell danger. It meant people who would not know me. It meant light and laughter and life. I was tired of skulking in the lark. I was weary of hiding and hate. And most of all I was sick of death.
A few minutes brought me to the edge of the lights. I heard nothing behind me. The tenements had slowly given way to larger, newer, and more luxurious multiple dwellings. These had been replaced by small shops, but they were dark. The light came from larger places farther on. They were brilliant with glowing signs and colorful, alluring decorations. Into the street from their open doors came bright streamers of light.
I had been right. From these places came the sound of boisterous laughter, free and unrestrained, a clink of glasses, and a murmur of many voices. I stopped and looked around me. A few pedestrians were in the street, some wandering out of one door and into another, some walking purposefully toward some destination.
A uniformed mercenary, his scarlet and gold bright even though disheveled, stepped out of a doorway into the night and blinked at me owlishly. As he made out my black uniform, he straightened, his back stiff, and walked away. A ship, sparkling in the night, drifted down from the sky on slowly turning vanes.
I watched, and it was strange and lovely and wonderful. And I was an alien, apart from it, alone and unwanted.
I moved slowly toward one of the smaller places. It did not seem quite as crowded as the others, and the music that drifted from it was softer and more personal. I stopped in the doorway, blinking in the light. The interior was blurred and indistinct, but I could hear the strumming of a stringed instrument clearly now and the soft music of a low voice…
'The stars are my home
I shall see them no more.
They are lost in the black of the night—'
The voice broke off. The babble of voices stilled. As my eyes grew accustomed to the light, I saw that the men close to me had turned to stare, their faces hard and unfriendly. My gaze drifted to the girl perched on a table at the rear of the place. In her hands she held a wooden instrument with a long neck and a broad body. It had six strings. As our eyes met, her fingers drifted across the strings with a faint, jangling dissonance. Her eyes were blue and deep.
I started. For a moment she had reminded me of—But the girl Siller had called Frieda had light hair. This girl was smaller, too, and not so beautiful—or was it beauty I was thinking of? Certainly she was lovely here with her dark brown hair tumbling around her shoulders, her arched dark eyebrows—one just a little raised and crooked—over surprising blue eyes, her straight, short nose, her vivid, generous red mouth, the smooth flow of her cheek and chin to white shoulders set off by a bright yellow tunic…
No, this was not Frieda, and there was really no resemblance. Except that she seemed as out of place here as Frieda had seemed out of place in the Cathedral. I had known immediately that Frieda was patrician. With this girl, I wasn't so sure. But there was something vital about her, something in her pose, in her slender white hand barely touching the strings of her instrument, in her face, in her eyes. She lived! One could sense it like the warmth from a flame. It radiated from her, perhaps it was responsible for the ring of uniformed men clustered around her, standing or sitting on chairs or on the floor.
She stared at me intently, her eyes narrow with speculation. Her eyes shifted, widening, to inspect the room and her fingers drifted across the strings of her instrument. A wry smile curled her lips as the chord rang low and clear.
'Stars, stars, millions of stars,
Everywhere they shine.
Worlds, worlds, millions of worlds—
Come back, O man of mine.Come back, come back, O man of mine,
Wherever you may roam.
My arms are wider than the stars—
To welcome you back home'
Her arms opened to me. The room rang with laughter.
I could feel my face growing red, my jaw hardening. It was a joke. I didn't understand it, but the others did, and they were laughing at me. I wondered why she had made them laugh at me.
As I wondered, the answer came. I was the only man in the room who was dressed in black. They thought I was an Agent. Tension—I had sensed it subconsciously—had been tightening every nerve in the room. Laughter had been a release.
There were spacemen in black and silver, mercenaries in various sparkling, two tones, although Imperial orange and blue predominated; there were a few women in brilliant, skin-tight tunics and short-skirts, but there were no shadow-black Agents.
Across the room, the girl's arms dropped, urgently, her eyes wide with a mute appeal. She wanted me to leave. She was right, but I couldn't force myself to move. Behind me was the night. I would not go back into it. My face was grim as I met her eyes and slowly, almost imperceptibly, shook my head.
She shrugged and looked down at one of the men sitting on the floor. She spoke to him and forgot me. As quickly as that, she forgot me.
There was an empty booth near the back. I walked toward it, and the noises that had drifted to me when I was outside rose around me now, the talk, loud and soft, the clinking glasses, the music. I sat down, and the room receded until it was a long way off, and I wondered if I would have the strength to get up again.
Reluctantly, a waiter brought me a glass of light wine. I huddled over it. The world revolved around me. It spoke in loud, coarse voices, spinning around my silent, near-mindless eddy at the hub.
—Young? Hell, yes! The younger the better, I say.
—garrison duty. Agh! A few drinks once a month and a broken-down—
—but her old man started cussing, see? And I said, "Look, here, old man, we whipped you. You're nothing, see? I'd just as soon burn you as not, see?" So I slapped him once or twice, and I never heard another word—