The Missing Man (v4.1) (7 page)

“I got something important to tell
you,” George said to him. But they didn’t listen.

“It’s a kind of a shame,” the blond
kid said to the others. “He’s so stupid already. I mean, if we just bashed
out his brains he wouldn’t even notice they were gone.”

George faced the leader and sidled another small
step in the direction of the steps and the door, and heard the shuffle of feet
closing in behind him. He stopped moving and they stopped moving. For sure that
door was hiding something. They wanted to keep strangers away from it!
“Look, if you found my watch I lost, and if you give it to me, I’ll tell
you about a thing you ought to know.”

If he talked long and confusingly enough, every
member of the gang would come out on the surface to hear what he was trying to
say. They would all be out in the open. The helicopter was armed for riots; it
could spray sleep gas and get every one of them.

He didn’t even feel the blow. Suddenly he was on
his knees, a purple haze before his eyes. He tried to get up and fell over
sideways, still in the curled-up position. He realized he wasn’t breathing.

Could a back-of-the-neck karate chop knock out
your breathing centers? What had the teacher said? His lungs contracted,
wheezing out more air, unable to let air in. It must have been a solar plexus
jab with a stick. But then how come he hadn’t seen the stick? The purple haze
was turning into spinning black spots. He couldn’t see.

“What was it he wanted to tell us?”

“Ask him.”

“He can’t answer, dummy. He can’t even
grunt. You’ll have to wait.”

“I don’t mind waiting,” said the voice
of the one carrying a chain. George heard the chain whistle and slap into
something, and wondered if it had hit him. Nothing in his body registered
anything but a red burning need for air.

“You don’t want to trespass on our
territory,” said a voice. “We’re just trying to teach you respect.
You stay on the free public sidewalks and don’t go inside other people’s
Kingdoms. Not unless they ask you.” The chain whistled and slapped again.

George tried to breathe, but the effort to
inhale knotted his chest tighter, forcing breath out instead of in.

It is a desperate thing having your lungs
working against you. The knot tightening the lungs held for another second and
then loosened. He drew in a rasping breath of cool air, and another. Air came
in like waves of light, dispelling the blindness and bringing back awareness of
arms and legs. He straightened out from the curled-up knot and lay on his back
breathing deeply and listening to the sounds around him.

The helicopter motor hummed in the distance. The
copter pilot is listening, he thought, but he doesn’t know I’m in trouble.

He heard a clink and a hiss of breath like
someone making an effort. He rolled suddenly over to one side and covered his
face. The chain hit where he had been. He rolled to a crouch with both feet
under him, and for the first time looked at the circle of faces of the teeners
who had beaten and made fun of him when he was pretending to be drunk and
making believe to be Carl Hodges, and had stumbled into this forbidden
territory. He had been retracing Carl Hodges’ actions, but he had not been sure
it was working. He had been near Carl Hodges here, but he had no proof, no
reason to protest when they punished him for violating their boundaries. The
faces were the same. Young but cold, some faces were uncertain about punishing
an adult, but gaining courage from the others. All sizes of teeners in costumes
from many communes, but the fellowship and good nature he was used to seeing in
groups was missing.

“I used to be in a gang like yours
once” he said rapidly to inform the radio listener. “I thought you
wouldn’t jump me. I didn’t come here to get stomped. I just want my antique
watch and to tell you something.”

He finished the sentence with a quick leap to
one side, but the swinging chain swung up and followed, slapped into his skin
and curled a line of dents around ribs, chest and arms. The magnet on the end
clanked and clung against a loop of chain. The owner of the chain yanked hard
on his handle and the metal lumps turned to teeth and bit in and the chain
tightened like rope. George staggered and straightened and stood wrapped up in
biting steel chain.

He stood very still. “Hey,” he said
softly. “That ain’t nice.”

“Tell us about your news.” The circle
of teeners and juvs around him were curious about the message he wanted to
deliver to them.

George said, “A friend of mine was figuring
from my lumps that I got here last time that you’ve got something important you
want me to keep away from. He figures you got the missing computerman. The one
who blew up Brooklyn Dome. There’s a reward out for him.”

A ripple of shock ran through the group
surrounding him but the blond kid did not need time to assimilate the threat.
Without change of expression he made a gesture of command. “Three of you
check the streets. Maybe he brought somebody with him.” Three ran silently
in different directions.

“I’m just doing you a favor telling you
what people say,” George said in stupid tones. “Now you gotta do me a
favor and help me get my watch back.”

” Favor?” screamed the tall,
misproportioned one with the chain. “Favor? You stupid fink, you should
have kept your stupid mouth shut.” He yanked hard on the chain to make its
teeth extend more sharply.

An outraged force had been expanding in George’s
chest. He stood still, looking meek and confused one more second, watching his
captors snarl and hate him for having “told his friend.” Then he bent
forward and butted the chain holder down, rolled over his form to the cement
and rolled rapidly down three small cement steps, unrolling the chain behind
him. He came up on one knee, reaching for the chain as a weapon. It was a
seven-foot chain with a handle at each end. A heavy chain is a terrible weapon
in the hands of a strong man. If it had been behind him at the moment of
impulse, he would have swept it around and forward and cut them down like
grass. He gathered it looped into his hands, eyeing the crowd of oddly dressed
teeners that was his target. His speed was too fast to intercept, his motions
too smooth to look fast. lie threw the chain up into the air behind him, then
arched back with every muscle tight and bent forward with a grunt of effort,
ignoring two clubs that bounced off his shoulders, bringing the chain forward
with a tremendous released surge of force that was rage. The teen gang
scattered and fled and the chain swung its cutting circle through the air where
they had been.

“Dumb punks.” George breathed noisily
with the effort. “Whyncha act like brothers? Can’t let anybody be your
friend. Trying to be smart, not knowing …”

He stopped and let the swinging chain drag along
the ground, slowing. He rippled it in and let it wrap around his arm, with a
short murderous loop of it in his hand. The sun had set and it was growing
darker in the corners and harder to see. George fended off a flung stick by
deflecting it with the chain, then grabbed a club for his other hand. Something
whistled by and clanged against a wall. Probably a knife. The teener leader
would see that George knew too much, and instruct the gang to kill him. The boy
was logical and ruthless and would decide a stranger’s life was less important
to him than the million he hoped to gain from selling the computerman’s
answers.

“Carl Hodges,” George bellowed.
“Ally ally infree. I need help. Computerman Carl Hodges, come out.”
The police riot control man in the circling copter would at last hear a request
for help, and bring his plane in fast. The teeners would only hear him yelling
Carl Hodges’ name and still not be sure the police were near.

The cellar door gave two thumps and a crash and
fell forward off its rusty hinges across the steps. A man fell out on top of it
and scrambled across the door and up the steps without bothering to straighten
from all fours.

At the top he stood up. He was thin and balding,
wiry and a little under average in size, totally unlike George in either shape
or face, but the impression of lifetime familiarity was overwhelming. His own
eyes looked out of the strange face.

George handed him a club from the ground.
“Guard my back. They are going to try to take you alive, I think, but not
me.” He spun slowly, looking and listening, but all was quiet. Teeners
lurked in a distance along the routes George would use if he tried to escape.

George looked back at Carl Hodges and saw the
thin computerman inspecting George’s appearance with a knot of puzzlement
between his brows. Looking at him was like looking into a mirror.

“Hello, me over there,” George said.

“Hello, me over there,” the man said.
“Are you a computerman? When I get back on the job do you want to come
play City Chess with me? Maybe you could get a job in my department.”

“No, buddy, we are us, but I don’t play
City Chess. I’m not like you.”

“Then why—“Carl Hodges ducked a flung
club and it clattered against the cement. Then why do I have this impression of
two people being the same person? he thought.

“We have an empathy link in our guts,”
George said. “I don’t think like you. I just feel what you feel.”

“God help anyone who feels the way I
feel,” Hodges said. “I see some kids advancing on my side.”

“Hold them off. Back to back. All we need
is a little time.” George turned away from him again, and searched the
corners with his eyes, ready for a rush. “About the way you feel. It’s not
all that bad. I’ll get over it.”

“I did it,” Carl Hodges said.
“How do I get over it? I feel … I mean, I have a reason for feeling… I got drunk and the egg hit the fan. How do I get over that?” His
voice was broken by grunts of effort, and things clattered by, deflected,
missing them and hitting walls and cement flooring.

They stood back to back and fended off bricks,
sticks and glittering objects that he hoped were not knives. “We can get
killed if we don’t watch it. That’s one way,” George said. A stick came
through the air and rapped George’s ear as he met it with his club. The
attackers advanced, silhouettes against the dimming view of stone walls.
Another attacker shadow picked up the clattering stick from the ground and
threw it back as he advanced.

“Ouch,” said Carl Hodges.
“Duck.” They both ducked and a flung net went by. “We fight well
together. We must get together and fight another teen gang sometime.
Right?” said his brisk voice. “Ouch, damn.”

George received a rush by the tallest of the
gang, caught at the outstretched staff and yanked the enemy past. He tried to
trip the teener as he hurtled by, but missed and turned to see him neatly
tripped by a stick between the ankles by Carl. The teener went face forward to
the ground and rolled, getting out of range.

“Good pass!” Several new and heavy
blows on head and shoulders reminded George to watch his own side. Dizzied, he
spun, bracing the staff for a pushing blow with both hands, and felt it strike
twice against blurred forms. He reversed it and struck down at an attacker with
a contented growl.

With a heavy thrumming and a push of air the
police helicopter came over a wall, swooping low, like an owl settling over a
nest of mice, and released a white cloud of gas.

George took a deep breath of the clear air
before the cloud reached him. Beside him Carl Hodges took a deep startled
breath of the white cloud and went down as suddenly as if a club blow .had hit.

Still holding his breath, George straddled him
and stood alert, peering through the fog at shapes that seemed to be upright
and moving. Most of the teeners had run away, or gone down flat on the ground.
What were these shapes? Eighteen seconds of holding his breath. Not hard. He
could make two minutes usually. He held his breath and tried to see through the
white clouds around him. The sound of the helicopter circled, in a wider and
wider spiral, laying a cloud of gas to catch all the running mice from the
center of the area to its edges.

The shapes suddenly appeared beside him,
running, and struck with a double push, flinging him back ten feet so that he
skidded on his back on the sandy concrete. He remembered to hold his breath
after one snort of surprise and silently rolled to his feet and charged back.

Carl Hodges’ unconscious form was missing.
George saw movement through the white fog ahead, heard feet scuffing cement and
hollow wood, and he charged in pursuit of the sounds. He half fell, half slid
down the cement steps, across the wooden door on the ground and into a
corridor, and glimpsed motion ahead, and heard a closet door shutting. Holding
his breath, groping, he opened the door, saw broken wall with an opening,
smelled the wet smell of cement and underground drafts, and leaped over a pile
of ancient trash brooms into the opening.

Safe to breathe here. As he took a deep breath a
brilliant flashlight suddenly came on, shining blindingly in his face from only
two feet away. “I have a gun pointed at you,” said the precise voice
of the blond short teener. “Turn left and walk ahead in the directions I
tell you. I could kill you here, and no one would find your body, so try to
keep my good will.”

“Where is Carl Hodges?” George asked,
walking with his hands up. The flashlight threw his shadow ahead of him big and
wavering across the narrow walls.