The Collection (77 page)

"Who's
we?"
Crag asked.

"A
new political party, Crag, that's going to bring this world-the whole
System-out of the degradation into which it has sunk. It's going to end the
bribery and corruption. It's going to take us back to old-fashioned democracy
by ending the deadlock between the Guilds and the Syndicates. It's going to be
a middle-of-the-road party. 'We're going to bring honest government back and-he
stopped and grinned boyishly. "I didn
^'
t mean to start a
lecture. In which I suppose you aren't interested anyway. We call ourselves the
Cooperationists.
^"

"You're
working under cover?"

"For
the present. Not much longer. In a few months we come into the open, in time to
start gathering support-votes-for the next elections." He made a sudden impatient
gesture. "But I'll tell you all this later, when we're at leisure. Right
now the important thing is your escape.

^"
You'll he taken back to your
cell when I give the signal that we're through talking. I'll put on the record
that you were intransigent and unrepentant and that I am making no modification
of your sentence. Within an hour from your return, arrangements for your escape
will be made and you'll be told what to do."

"Told
how?"

"By
the speaker in your cell. They're on private, tap-proof circuits. A member of
the party has access to them. Simply follow instructions and you'll be free by
seventeen hours."

"And
then? If I still want to earn the million?
^"

^"
Come to my house. It's listed;
you can get the address when you need it. Be there at twenty-two.
^"

"It's
guarded?" Crag asked. He knew that houses of most important political
figures were.

^"
Yes. And I
^'
m not
going to tell the guards to let you in. They're not party members. I think they
^'
re
in the pay of the opposition, but that's all right with me. I use them to allay
suspicion."

^"
How do I get past them,
then?"

Olliver
said, "If you can't do that, without help or advice from me, then you're
not the man I think you are, Crag and you
^'
re not the man I want. But
don't kill unless you have to. I don't like violence, unless it's absolutely
necessary and in a good cause. I don't
like
it even then, but-"

He
glanced at his wrist watch and then reached out and put his fingers on a button
on one side of the bench. He asked, "Agreed?" and as Crag nodded, he
pushed the button.

The
two guards came back in. Oliver said,
^"
Return the prisoner to
his cell."

One
on each side of him, they led him back up the ramp to the floor above and
escorted him all the way to his cell.

The
door clanged. Crag sat down on the bed and tried to puzzle things out. He
wasn't modest enough about his particular talents to wonder why Olliver had
chosen him if he had a dirty job to be done. But he was curious what dirty job
a man like Olliver would have to offer. If there was an honest and fair man in
politics, Olliver was that man. It must be something of overwhelming importance
if Olliver was sacrificing his principles to expediency.

Well,
he, Crag, certainly had nothing to lose, whether he trusted Olliver
^'
s
motives or not. And he thought he trusted them.

He
went back to the window and stood there looking down at the teeming city,
thinking with wonder how greatly his fortunes had changed in the brief space of
an hour and a half. That long ago he
^'
d stood here like this and
wondered whether to batter through the plastic pane and throw himself from the
window. Now he was not only to be free but to have a chance at more money than
he'd ever hoped to see in one sum.

When
an hour was nearly up, he went over and stood by the speaker grille so he would
not miss anything that came over it. One cannot ask questions over a one-way
communicator, and he'd have to get every word the first time.

It
was well that he did. The voice, when it came, was soft-and it was a woman's
voice. From the window he could have heard it, but might have missed part of
the message. "I have just moved the switch that unlocks your cell
door," the voice said.
^"
Leave your cell and walk as you
did on your way to the courtroom. I will meet you at the portal, at the place
where two guards met you before."

The
cell door was unlocked, all right. He went through it and along the corridor.

A
woman waited for him. She was beautiful; not even the severe costume of a
technician could completely conceal the soft, lush curves of her body; not
even the fact that she wore horn-rimmed spectacles and was completely without
makeup could detract from the beauty of her face. Her eyes even through glass,
were the darkest, deepest blue he had ever seen, and her hair-what showed of it
beneath the technician's beret-was burnished copper.

He
stared at her as he came near. And hated her, partly because she was a woman
and partly because she was so beautiful. But mostly because her hair was exactly
the same color as Lea's had been.

She
held out a little metal bar. "Take this,
^"
she told him.
"Put it in your pocket. It's radioactive; without it or without a guard
with you who has one, every portal here is a death-trap."

^"
I know," he said shortly.

A
paper, folded small, was next. "A diagram,
^"
she said,
^"
showing
you a way out along which, if you're lucky, you'll encounter no guards. In case
you do-
^"

A
pocket-size heater was the next offering, but he shook his head at that.
"Don't want it," he told her.
^"
Don't need it.
^"

She
put the gun back into her own pocket without protest, almost as though she had
expected him to refuse it.

^"
One more thing," she said.
"A visitor's badge. It won
^'
t help you on the upper three
levels, but below that, it will keep anyone from asking you questions."

He
took that, and put it on right away.

"Anything
else?"

^"
Only this. Ten yards ahead, to
your right, is a lavatory. Go in there and lock the door. Memorize this diagram
thoroughly and then destroy it. And remember that if you're caught, it will do
no good to tell the truth; your word won
^'
t mean a thing against-you
know whose."

He
smiled grimly.
^"
I won't be caught," he assured her.
^"
I
might he killed, but I won
^'
t be caught."

Their
eyes locked for a second, and then she turned quickly without speaking again
and went through a door behind her.

He
went on along the corridor, through the portal. In the lavatory he memorized
the diagram quickly but thoroughly and then destroyed it. He had nothing to
lose by following orders implicitly.

There
was another portal before he came to the ramp. The radioactive bar she'd given
him prevented whatever deathtrap it concealed from operating.

He
made the twenty-ninth level and the twenty-eighth without having met anyone.
The next one, the twenty-seventh, would be the crucial one; the first of the
three floors of cells and courtrooms. Despite that diagram, he didn't believe
that there wouldn't be at least one guard between that floor and the one below,
the top floor to which elevators went and the public-with visitor's permits-was
allowed.

The
ramp ended at the twenty-seventh floor. He had to go out into the corridor
there, and to another ramp that led to the floor below. He felt sure there
would be a guard at the door that led from the end of that ramp to freedom. And
there was. He walked very quietly down the ramp. There was a sharp turn at the
bottom of it and he peered around the turn cautiously. A guard was sitting
there at the door, all right.

He
smiled grimly. Either Olliver or the woman technician must have known the
guard was there. It was only common sense that there'd be a guard at that
crucial point, in addition to any deathtrap that might be in the door itself.
Olliver didn't want him-unless he was good enough to do at least part of his
own jailbreaking.

And,
of all things, to have offered him a heater-gun. That would really have been
fatal. There, right over the guard's head, was a hemispherical blister on the
wall that could only be a thermocouple, set to give off an alarm at any sharp
increase in temperature. A heater ray, whether fired by or at a guard, would
give an immediate alarm that would alert the whole building and stop the
elevators in their shafts. A fat lot of good that heater would have done him,
and the gorgeous technician who
^'
d offered it to him must have known
that.

Crag
studied the guard. A big, brutish man, the kind who would fire first and ask
questions afterward, despite the visitor's badge Crag wore. And there was a
heater in the guard's hand, lying ready in his lap. With a different type of
man, or even with a ready-to-shoot type with a holstered heater, Crag could
have made the six paces. But, with this guard, he didn't dare risk it.

He
stepped back and quickly unstrapped the twelve-pound hand from his wrist and
held it in his right hand. He stepped into sight, pulling back his right arm as
he did so.

The
guard looked up-Crag hadn't even tried to be silent-and started to raise the
heater. It was almost, but not quite, pointed at Crag when the heavy artificial
hand struck him full in the face. He never pulled the trigger of the heater. He
^'
d
never pull a trigger again.

Crag
walked to him and got his hand back, strapping it on again quickly. He picked
up the guard's heater, deliberately handling it by the barrel to get his
finger-prints on it. They'd know who killed the guard anyway-and he'd rather
have them wonder how he
^'
d taken the guard's own weapon away from him
and bashed his face in with it than have them guess how he
had
killed
the guard. That method of killing was part of his stock in trade. A trade secret.
Whenever he killed with it and there was time afterwards, he left evidence in
the form of some other heavy blunt instrument that the police would think had
been used.

He
went through the door, using the key that had hung from the guard's belt, and whatever
death-trap had been in the portal of it didn't operate. He could thank the girl
technician for that much, anyway. She-or Olliver-had given him a fair break,
knowing that without that radioactive bar, it would have been almost impossible
for him to escape. Yes, they'd given him a fair chance.

Even
if she hadn't told him to get rid of the bar here and now. It would have been
had if he hadn't known that, outside of the sacred precincts, those bars
sometimes worked in reverse and set off alarms in elevators or at the street
entrance. The guards never carried theirs below the twenty-sixth level. So he
got rid of the bar in a waste receptacle by the elevator shafts before he rang
for an elevator. The waste receptacle might conceivably have been booby-trapped
for radioactive bars. But he took a chance because he didn't want to put it
down in plain sight. No alarm went off.

A
few minutes later he was safely on the street, lost in the crowd and reasonably
safe from pursuit.

* * * *

A
clock told him that it was now sixteen o'clock; he had six hours before his
appointment with Olliver. But he wasn't going to wait until twenty-two; the
police might expect him to go to Olliver's house-not for the real reason he was
going there, but to avenge himself on the judge who had sentenced him. As soon
as he was missed, that house would be watched more closely than it was now.
That was only common sense.

He
looked up the address and took an autocab to within two blocks of it. He
scouted on foot and spotted two guards, one at the front and one at the back.
It would have been easy to kill either of them, but that would have defeated
his purpose. It would definitely have focused the search for him on Olliver's
house.

Getting
into the house to hide would be equally dangerous; before they posted
additional guards they'd search thoroughly.

The
house next door was the answer; it was the same height and the roofs were only
ten feet apart. And it wasn't guarded. But he'd better get in now. Later there
might be a cordon around the whole block.

He
took a tiny picklock out of the strap of his artificial hand: a bent wire as
large as a small hairpin but as strong as a steel rod; and let himself in the
door as casually as a returning householder would use his key. There were
sounds at the back of the house, but he drew no attention as he went quietly up
the stairs. He found the way out to the roof but didn
^'
t use it yet.
Instead, he hid himself in the closet of what seemed to be an extra, unused
bedroom.