Dayworld (14 page)

The expected shrilling from Snick’s whistle did not come. The plainclothes kept their indifferent but subtly watchful attitudes. Unable to curb his curiosity any longer, Tingle peeked around the tree. Castor had vanished around one of the block buildings on West Fourth Street, south of the square. Snick had her back to Tingle, her hands on her hips, her head slightly cocked. He could visualize her look of puzzlement. Why in hell hadn’t she had the conditioned reflex of all organics and pursued the man? Perhaps it was because she was on a mission and she was not going to deviate from it. The running man was no concern of hers.

He groaned. Wrong again. Snick had started trotting south on Thompson Street. Presently, she turned right on West Third Street and was hidden by the building there. She
was
following Castor.

Tingle bit his lip, looked at Gril, who was still playing chess, and stepped out from the shade of the oak. The sun wrapped a smotheringly hot blanket around him, but he felt cold inside himself. What to do? He did not want to run into Snick because he did not want to be associated in her mind with Castor. In any event, he could account for his being here. His apartment building was only a few blocks away.

He did not run, though he walked swiftly. If the organics in the square saw three people, one after the other, start running, they might be curious enough to investigate. On reaching the corner of the building at which Snick had turned on Thompson Street and West Third, he went around it, too. Neither the chased nor the chaser was in sight. When he got to Sullivan Street, he saw Snick, her back to him, going around the building on Bleecker Street. Since there was no one else on the street, he ran after her.

Before getting to Bleecker Street, he slowed down. When he got to the corner building, he stopped and peered around it. Snick, now trotting, was just rounding the corner at MacDou gal Street. Evidently, Castor had gone north. Tingle ran west on Bleecker and stopped at MacDougal. He stuck his head around the corner until Snick had turned left onto Minetta Lane. Meanwhile, he was hoping that none of the neighbors would notice him and his curiosity-arousing behavior.

Reaching Minetta Lane, he paused long enough to make sure that Snick was not in sight. He went west until he came to the house at the end of the block. Tingle hid behind a tree, his head out far enough from the trunk for one eye to see Snick. She was still trotting, her robe sticking to her back with sweat, on the canal road. He waited until she had gone around Jeff Caird’s house on Bleecker before he stepped out from the tree.

Tingle ran. The fishers, pedestrians, and bicyclists on the canal road stared at him. They must have thought he was crazy to run in this heat; they were crazy just to be out in it. Panting, sweat stinging his eyes, he stopped at the corner. Not seeing Snick, he stepped out from the fence onto the sidewalk. There she was. Entering the front of his apartment building. Castor must have gone into it. The main front and back entrances were usually left unlocked during the day. Castor had had no more trouble getting in than Snick was having.

Tingle could not believe that it was just coincidence that the man had gone into that building.

Paz had told him to call every half-hour. He was fifteen minutes late. No time to call now. But, as he started walking, he heard the shrilling from his wristwatch. He turned it off and held it close to his mouth. “Hello.” Then he held the watch close to his ear.

Paz’s voice said, “I was worried. You didn’t ...”

“I know. Call in.”

He sketched what had happened and told Paz that he was going to follow the two into the building.

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“Just now, I don’t know what’s wise.”

“I can get two men down there fast and have them take care of Castor,” Paz said. “You wait outside to make sure that he doesn’t leave.”

“He may be going out the back door,” Tingle said. He was running as he talked and was now alongside the building. “I’m headed that way now.”

He stopped at the corner and looked around it. Castor was not there, which meant that he was still inside the building or that he had run out of the back and out of sight. Tingle did not think that Castor had had time to do that. ‘Moreover, he did not believe that Castor would go out into the open again. He would be waiting for Snick.

While Tingle went up the steps to the back porch, he called Paz and told him the situation.

“I have to go in. I don’t want Snick to get hurt.”

“Why not? She could be as dangerous as Castor. Let him take care of her, then we’ll get him.”

“We don’t know that she’s after me,” Tingle said. “Any way ...”

There was a pause.

“Anyway what?” Paz said sharply.

“If people ... if there are witnesses ... then the organics will be there almost immediately. We don’t want that, right?”

“Are there people around?”

“No one at the moment,” Tingle said.

“I think it’s best you get out of there. Let my people handle this.”

“Is that an order?”

Paz coughed and then said, “No. I’m not there. I don’t know exactly ... I’m not on the spot. You have good judgment, Bob. You go ahead, do what you think the situation demands.”

“Doing,” Tingle said. “I’m going in. Call you later.”

“Yes, but—”

Tingle had turned off the transmitter.

He pulled out his blouse, opened his shoulderbag, took the weapon from the bag, and stuck it into his belt. The bottom of the blouse covered the gun. He walked swiftly but softly down the hall to the wide curving steps leading to the second floor. The huge recreation room was empty, and no sounds from outside or inside reached him. The sweat was drying off his face under the coldness of the air-conditioning, but it seemed to be pouring out from his armpits. He stopped at the foot of the staircase and took his gun from the belt. It was heavy, weighing four pounds, and shaped like an archaic automatic pistol. In addition to the firing button, it bore two dials, one on each side just above the grip. He set its left-hand dial for a tight and narrow beam and the right-hand one for full power for the charged particles.

He started up the stairs slowly, listening intently for any sound from above. Before he got to the top step, he crouched down. He raised his head quickly above the last riser but only far enough so that his eyes were level with the floor of the hall. He held the gun barrel up, its tip just by the lobe of his left ear.

The hall was empty.

He could wait outside the door of 2E until Snick or Castor came out. He did not know that either was in there, but he assumed that they were. He could be wrong. Castor might have fled to a higher floor or he might have gone down the back stairs and on out. Neither seemed likely, or perhaps he wanted Castor to he in his apartment with no way out. Whatever had happened, he had to check out his apartment.

He stopped before his door and bent his knees so that he could look into the insertion hole. He saw nothing except darkness, which meant that Castor had not used his weapon to drill a hole through the code device inside the door. He straightened up and inserted in the hole that tip of his disc-star which would transmit the entry code. He waited a few seconds, then pushed in on the door. It swung easily and noiselessly, stopping short of the inner wall by a foot. The anteroom and the hall beyond were empty.

After going inside, he used the knob on the inside of the door to shut it quietly. He did not want anyone coming through behind him. During the next four minutes, he passed through every room swiftly but quietly, opened closet doors, and even looked under the bed, though he felt foolish doing so.

Then he walked along the stoner cylinders, pausing at each to look carefully at the faces behind the windows. None was Castor’s or Snick’s. That left the two empties, his and his wife’s. He had not gone close enough to look down to find out if anyone was crouching below the windows. He had, however, kept glancing at the cylinders behind him while checking out the others.

No one was in the rooms or on the balcony. Anybody here had to be in the two Wednesday cylinders. If each was occupied, then one person was probably a corpse.

Crouching down so that he would not be seen if Castor dared a peek through the window, Tingle went to the nearest cylinder. Pointing the gun with one hand, he reached out with the other and swiftly pulled the door open. The cylinder was empty. Which meant that the other stoner should also be empty. Unless there were two persons in there and one was dead.

He repeated the procedure and sighed with a mixture of relief and puzzlement. No one there either. Where were they? He was almost certain that they had not left the building.

Frowning, he went out onto the balcony and scanned the neighborhood. Snick and Castor were not in sight. For a moment, he thought of telling Paz what had happened, but he rejected that. What good would it do? His chief could not help him, and he might order him out of the building or tell him to stay in the apartment. The only thing for him to do was to search the places available to him.

He walked to the hall and started down it to search the other rooms. At its far end was the entrance door. It was luck that allowed him to escape the beam that evaporated the code-lock device and shot straight down the hall. The glowing white rod-shape almost touched his left shoulder. A second later, the door swung violently inward.

Tingle did not share all the same reflexes with Caird. He had slowly built up his own characteristics to correspond with his role. Thus, he stood frozen for a second longer than Caird would have done. Caird would have instantly thrown himself down on the floor, his gun held out pointing at the door even while falling. Tingle did recover in time to press the firing button even though he did not know who was coming through the door.

14.

Castor screamed, dropped his weapon, clutched his left upper arm, and was gone. Tingle raced after him and into the hall. The odor of burned flesh and plastic wrapped itself around him. Castor’s head was just disappearing down the back stairs as Tingle came through the door. Tingle ran after him, but, by the time he got to the porch, he had lost Castor. He was tempted to run out and circle the building. The madman might be hiding around the corner or behind a bush or tree in the yard. It might take just a minute to catch and kill him. But what if someone saw him shooting a man? The organics would be here in sixty seconds. And if he searched the neighborhood, he might be caught because someone had seen the wounded Castor and called the organics.

Castor was not going to get far before he attracted attention and was caught or pursued. Tingle did not want to be anywhere near Castor when that happened.

It was possible, however, that Castor had a place nearby into which he could dive like a rat into a hole. Such as, for instance, the tall yellow access tube on the corner of the little park near the canal. This was an entrance to the underground goods-transportation system. If he had gotten down there, he was long gone.

He waited until his hard breathing had softened before he spoke Paz’s codecall into the watch. Paz answered at once. Tingle told him what had happened; Paz cursed. When he was finished with his blasphemies and invective, which included a dozen Hindustani loanwords, he said, “My agents are in your area now. I’ll tell them about this, and I’ll send some more. We have to find Castor
now!”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Tingle muttered. More loudly, he said, “I’m going to look for Snick. I have an idea where she might be. Call you later.”

By law, at least one building in every block had to have four extra stoners. These were mostly used for emergencies such as immediately stoning people who had been injured in the neighborhood streets or for the use of organics who had just made an arrest. Stoning a suspected criminal was a far superior restraining method to handcuffing.

Tingle went to the basement door, nodding at a couple who had just come down the staircase. Fortunately, he had put the gun back under the blouse. Even so, they looked suspiciously at him, though that might be his excited imagination. He walked down the steps into another recreation room. A TV strip was shedding its ghostly light; someone had forgotten to turn it off. Whoever had done it was going to be reprimanded and perhaps fined, if the culprit could be identified. Tingle turned it off.

The emergency cylinders stood in a corner of the utility room. Tingle went by them to a wall panel marked EMER CYL PWR and slid it into the recess. The number-three button was glowing. Tingle punched it, and the light went out. He went to the cylinder marked NO. 3 and opened the door. Snick was slumped down in it, her head against her drawn-up knees. She was gray-blue and hard and cold as metal to the touch. A bruise on her forehead indicated that Castor had knocked her senseless. Or perhaps he had killed her. In any event, he had not had time to mutilate her, if he meant to, as he had Doctor Atlas.

Tingle shut the cylinder door, returned to the control panel, punched the number-three button, and then turned the PWR rheostat to ON. A second later, the rheostat automatically returned to the OFF position. He went to the cylinder, swung the door open, bent down, and put a finger on her jugular. It was pulsing feebly. Good! Or was it good? Alive, she was a danger, though not if she could be hidden away someplace.

After stoning her again, he stood thinking for a moment, then called Paz over his wristwatch. The tiny scrambler in the watch would make the transmission unintelligible to anyone listening in except Paz. The government had the right to tap into any transmission; it had also given its citizens the right to use scramblers, providing them with the illusion of freedom. Put a leash on the dog but make it happy by making the leash a long one.

He told Paz just what had happened.

Paz said, “I’ll send two agents to get her out of the house.”

He said, “I have to know where she’s being taken.”

Paz said sharply, “Why is that?”

“I have to question her, find out what she’s up to. I won’t feel safe until I do so. Not about
her,
I mean. Castor’s another matter.”