The Forever Man: A Near-Future Thriller (34 page)

“Never crossed my mind,” Lane replies. He’s beyond fear, in the realm of the absurd, where only humor makes sense.

“There’s no way you could have done all that on a cheap-shit cop’s salary,” Alpha observes. “So who’s footing the bill?”

“You know, I was going to ask you the same thing,” Lane fires back. “You work for the good people up on Mount Tabor?”

Alpha pulls out the knife and tests its blade with his thumb. “I always start with the testicles and work upward. It seems to get the best results.”

“What have you done with my brother?” Lane says in an even voice. “Where is he?”

“You’re missing the point,” Alpha says. “So let’s give you a little help.” He brings the knife forward and cuts the belt off Lane’s pants.

But just as the belt pops loose, both men behind Alpha suddenly topple forward. As Alpha turns to the sound of their heads hitting the dirt, Lane sees the steel shafts protruding from their backs, each with three plastic fins attached. In a silent flash, Alpha leaves his range of vision.

“Mr. Anslow!”

Lane looks up from the bodies to see the short, stooped figure of Sam emerging from the wreckage along with three men wearing armored vests and carrying crossbows. Two of them are the Street Party members he met in the kitchen before he fled out here.

“Sorry to intrude like this,” Sam apologizes as the group approaches. “But it looked like you could use a little assistance.”

One of the men pulls out a knife and saws through the duct tape to free Lane, who is
thirsty and very tired. Sam points in the direction where Alpha disappeared. “It looks like the big fish got away.”

“Yeah. The big fish got away,” Lane echoes wearily. “You wouldn’t have a little water, would you?”

“Yes, I would,” Sam says cheerfully and unslings a canteen from over his shoulder. Behind him, the three men drag the bodies into the shade. Lane now understands the power of a well-designed crossbow as a medium-range weapon. He reaches for the canteen and takes a long series of large gulps.

“Too bad about the belt,” Sam observes, looking at Lane’s waistline. “It would’ve fetched a nice price at market.”

“I think I can live without it.” Lane sits down and leans against the base of the propeller as the three men return from moving the bodies. The one that first spoke to Lane in the kitchen squats down beside him.

“I think it’s pretty clear,” he says. “You’ve got to go.”

“You mean go back to the Inner Section?”

“No. I mean out of Pima.”

“How often does this kind of thing happen?” Lane asks as he walks through the darkness with the two men from the Street Party and Sam.

“Hardly ever,” one of the men answers. “You must be pretty damn special.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Lane says warily as they pass the last row of planes and enter the big square in the center of the Inner Section, where the sky opens wide and pours out a great shower of starlight.

“We need to speak softly now,” Sam whispers. “Voices carry a long way out here.”

Soon they are approaching the central water tower, a great black hulk set against the silky haze of the Milky Way. Its four big legs are criss-crossed by metal bracing, mostly lost in the dark beneath the structure. When they reach the nearest leg, one of the Street Party men goes behind it and reappears with a rope that ends in a grappling hook. He twirls it a few times, and throws it up to the first set of braces, where it makes a loud clang in the stillness of the square.

“I must say I envy you,” Sam says. They watch the man scale the side of the leg and scramble up into the bracing. “It’ll be a grand adventure.”

“To say the least,” adds Lane. The remaining man on the ground is motioning to him, so he gently pats Sam’s small shoulder and shakes his hand. “I won’t forget your help.”

“Good.” Sam beams. “Because I will.” He pats Lane on the back. “Good luck to you.”

Lane walks to where the man is standing and takes the rope. “When you get to the first brace, crawl to your left,” the man instructs. “Then you’ll come to the ladder and it’s straight up from there.”

The climb is tough and taxing, but Lane eventually scrambles onto the metal brace and then carefully inches out to where the ladder begins. Once on it, he turns and sees Sam, a tiny figure on the big stretch of open ground. Lane marvels at his courage in the face of his affliction. Then he starts the long climb up the supporting structure.

He feels a breeze blowing to the southwest when he reaches the body of the water vessel itself, where the rungs are welded onto the metal skin. He turns to look at the view and is startled by the sprawl of city lights from Tucson. Only a mile away, people are strolling the sidewalks, laughing in restaurants, or happily copulating in pale baths of flickering TV light. He turns and continues climbing. Toward the top, the rungs become less vertical and follow the tower’s curve
as it flattens out at the peak.

The rungs terminate in a circular maintenance platform bordered by a small railing. As Lane climbs over the top, he sees one of the men who guided him, and a second man.

“You’re lucky,” the guide from the Street Party says. “The wind’s holding steady. Should be pretty easy.” He points to the southwest, a big patch of empty desert nearly devoid of lights. “See where I’m pointing? That’s your bearing.”

Lane moves to get in a line of sight with the man’s arm. In the blackness, he sees a single light blinking at one-second intervals.

The wind picks up slightly, and the dull crackle of plastic turns Lane’s attention to his escape vehicle. Moored to the railing is a parachute with a standard winglike canopy, the kind used in skydiving; only, this one is dedicated to going up instead of down. The canopy’s underside is filled with a bulbous cluster of black plastic garbage bags, all inflated with gas and bound tightly shut. Each has a length of clothesline that joins to one of two termination points at the end of the harness.

“How much you weigh?” asks the second man, who is filling yet another bag from a tube that extends down into a covered metal washtub.

“One eighty-five,” Lane answers. “So how do you make the gas?”

“It’s hydrogen. We get the metal off the planes and the chemicals from kitchen supplies, and brew it up right here on the spot. Don’t touch the side of the tub. It’s hot.” The man ties off the bag, adds a line to it, and floats it up into the canopy. “There. Given your weight, that should be just about right.”

“Well, let’s get you rigged up,” the guide says as he opens the buckles on the harness.

“How many times have you guys done this?” Lane asks as he slides in and adjusts the straps.

“Twice.”

“How many times did it work?”

“We don’t know. For security reasons, we don’t have access to that information. Same reason we can’t tell you why you’re going out.”

“In case the wrong people get a hold of me. Right?”

“I suppose,” the guide says casually as he hands Lane a flashlight and a paring knife from a kitchen. “Now remember: You get about halfway from here to the light, and you start cutting one balloon loose every five minutes. Every time you do it, you flash your light three times, so your contact on the ground knows where you are. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Okay then, let’s go. Put one foot up on the rail so you can give yourself a boost when I cut you loose.”

As Lane complies, the guide moves into position and prepares to cut a single line that tethers the whole apparatus to the railing. “Ready?”

“Ready.” Lane quells an abrupt urge to call off the whole thing, to return to his sleeping bag in the belly of the plane and count the years rolling by in relative security.

“Good luck.” The guide cuts the rope and ducks back out of the way.

Lane feels a sharp, upward tug on the harness as he shoves off with his feet to clear the railing. A shudder of fear and exhilaration runs through him as he surges toward the sky. A glance down past his dangling legs tells him the wind has already carried him out from over the tower and the square. By the time he reaches the first row of bombers, he has gained considerable altitude. Overhead, the plastic bags rustle gently as they adjust to the stress of his weight.

Ahead, he sees the security perimeter, with the big lights searing into the no-man’s-land, and the towers and fencing beyond. In the foreground, the prison hides in semidarkness, the vague shapes of the dead planes littering the ground.

Passing over the no-man’s-land, he feels vulnerable in the sky glow. Below, the dogs sense his presence. They stream like tiny germs toward a point directly under his path, but he is already too high to be seen from the towers. A few moments later, the perimeter is passed, and he glides over a road flanked by streetlights. He is out.

Lane twists in the harness to check his position. Sure enough, time to start down. He gets out his flashlight and signals toward the blinking light up ahead in the dark of the open desert. Next, he pulls down the line on one of the lower balloons, and cuts it loose.

With almost no lights below, it’s become more difficult to judge his drift and altitude. He frees more balloons at the prescribed intervals. A lone building with a small parking lot appears and gives him a sense of scale. He judges his altitude at about five hundred feet.

But his goal, the blinking light out on the desert, doesn’t seem to be any nearer. Something is wrong.

A few minutes later, he spots the same small building and parking lot off to his left. The wind shifted. He’s drifting in the wrong direction, back toward Tucson. What’s more, the air is warmer, and he seems to be rising slightly. He also seems to be picking up speed.

Fortunately, there is a contingency plan if he fails to make the rendezvous out here on the desert. The guide gave him the name of an intersection in the middle of the city, Elm and Tucson, where he should appear at one-hour intervals until he is contacted.

By now, he is coming over the lights of South Tucson, where streetlights cut long strings of glowing beads into the night. He passes a shopping center. Looking ahead, he sees a brilliant island of floodlights surrounding a pale green rectangle: a stadium of some kind.

Lane realizes that his landing problem may be solved. His present course is taking him
toward the highlands rising up to the mountains behind the city. The ground will gradually rise beneath him to the point where he can make a soft landing.

But then he sees his drift will take him right over the stadium—and right into its brilliant dome of illumination, where a football game is under way. On the thirty-yard line nearest him, a play unfolds, a screen pass. The collective cheer of the crowd pushes through the night air.

Moments later, he is floating directly over the field and realizes he has not only lost altitude, but also the cover of night. Although there is no play on the field right now, a great cheer erupts. A cheer for Lane and his balloon-borne journey.

Soon, the red-and-blue flash of police cars moves along several nearby arterials, all converging on his general position. The synthesized babble of electronic sirens drifts up from below. Lane looks ahead. It’ll be close, but he’s going to make it. He is nearing the highlands, with their meandering roads and numerous canyons, where the police can’t easily follow.

When he’s down to about fifty feet, he sees he will land in a relatively large vacant area next to a low-slung building and several smaller structures.

The thick black shape of a tree canopy takes him by surprise. He lifts up his feet so they won’t drag through the upper branches, but eventually his toes are scraping through the foliage.

The trees end, and he faces a long, black pit. This is it. He cuts loose another balloon. His feet and legs ache with anticipation, and his toes probe for the ground. They hit. Grass. A level carpet of newly mown grass. With his feet on the ground, the remaining balloons try to pull him over, but he quickly wiggles out of the strapping. His shoulders and legs burn where the harness cut into them, but otherwise he is unscathed.

Then it hits him. He’s landed on a fairway in a golf course. He must be near the tee, and through the trunks of nearby trees, he makes out a cluster of lights. Probably the clubhouse. He picks up the pace. Time is precious. If he’s not at the appointed intersection by daylight, he’s in trouble. With prison denims, no money, and the police alerted to a rogue balloonist, the odds of evasion are against him. And right now, he has only the vaguest idea where he is and how to reach the designated street. He can’t walk the roads, and overland travel in the city is impossible. He has to get a vehicle and a map.

When he walks off the first hole and sees the sleek look of the clubhouse, it’s obvious he’s stumbled into a country club. Keeping to the shadows to avoid security cameras and sensors, he circles the main building and finds a cyclone fence and an unlocked gate leading to the maintenance area.

Once inside, he looks across a stretch of packed dirt that ends in a big metal shed. Beside it is an old van parked in a pool of halogen light. There’s no way to approach it without being seen. He’ll just have to hope there are no cameras covering the area. He takes off at a rapid trot across the hundred feet of ground between him and the vehicle.

As he slides into the driver’s seat, he smiles. The key is in the ignition. Someone decided that the truck was too old to be worth stealing, and they were almost right. He twists the ignition key, and the old starter motor emits a deep mutter as it turns over the engine, which reluctantly sputters to life.

With the engine idling roughly, he hops out to check the plates, something only a cop or a crook would think of. Amazingly, they haven’t expired. He jumps back in, drives cautiously through the gate, and heads down a driveway toward the exit. Once on the main road, he cruises through the uplands toward the glittering matrix of downtown. Along the way, he lets himself relax slightly, rolls down the window, and sucks the clean desert air into his lungs. But when he exhales, what comes out is the strange exhaust of Pima.

A two-seater electric sedan pulls over to the curb at Tucson and Elm, and Lane quickly checks up and down the street to see if it’s being followed. At this hour, traffic is light, and no other cars are in sight. After he stashed the van in an alley a few blocks away, he circled the intersection on foot, looking for a trap, but found none.