Of course, this was just the beginning. The trail was long. But time
was hideously short before they began turning Tighe's brain inside
out. And there were wolves along the trail.
For a shivering instant, Simon Dalgetty realized what he had let
himself in for.
It seemed like forever before the Bancroft crowd left. Dalgetty's eyes
followed them out of the bar--four men and the woman. They were all
quiet, mannerly, distinguished-looking, in rich dark slack suits. Even
the hulking bodyguard was probably a college graduate, Third Class.
You wouldn't take them for murderers and kidnappers and the servants
of those who would bring back political gangsterism. But then,
reflected Dalgetty, they probably didn't think of themselves in that
light either.
The enemy--the old and protean enemy, who had been fought down as
Fascist, Nazi, Shintoist, Communist, Atomist, Americanist and God knew
what else for a bloody century--had grown craftier with time. Now he
could fool even himself.
Dalgetty's senses went back to normal. It was a sudden immense relief
to be merely sitting in a dimly-lit booth with a pretty girl, to be no
more than human for a while. But his sense of mission was still dark
within him.
"Sorry I was so long," he said. "Have another drink."
"I just had one." She smiled.
He noticed the $10-figure glowing on the dispenser and fed it two
coins. Then, his nerves still vibrating, he dialed another whiskey for
himself.
"You know those people in the next grotto?" asked Glenna. "I saw you
watching them leave."
"Well, I know Mr. Bancroft by reputation," he said. "He lives here,
doesn't he?"
"He's got a place over on Gull Station," she said, "but he's not here
very much, mostly on the mainland, I guess."
Dalgetty nodded. He had come to Pacific Colony two days before, had
been hanging around in the hope of getting close enough to Bancroft to
pick up a clue. Now he had done so and his findings were worth little.
He had merely confirmed what the Institute already considered highly
probable without getting any new information.
He needed to think over his next move. He drained his drink. "I'd
better jet off," he said.
"We can have dinner in here if you want," said Glenna.
"Thanks, I'm not hungry." That was true enough. The nervous tension
incidental to the use of his powers raised the devil with appetite.
Nor could he be too lavish with his funds. "Maybe later."
"Okay, Joe, I might be seeing you." She smiled. "You're a funny one.
But kind of nice." Her lips brushed his and then she got up and left.
Dalgetty went out the door and punched for a top-side elevator.
It took him past many levels. The tavern was under the station's
caissons near the main anchor cable, looking out into deep water.
Above it were store-houses, machine rooms, kitchens, all the
paraphernalia of modern existence. He stepped out of a kiosk onto an
upper deck, thirty feet above the surface. Nobody else was there and
he walked over to the railing and leaned on it, looking across the
water and savoring loneliness.
Below him the tiers dropped away to the main deck, flowing lines and
curves, broad sheets of clear plastic, animated signs, the grass and
flowerbeds of a small park, people walking swiftly or idly. The huge
gyro-stabilized bulk did not move noticeably to the long Pacific
swell. Pelican Station was the colony's "downtown," its shops and
theaters and restaurants, service and entertainment.
Around it the water was indigo blue in the evening light, streaked
with arabesques of foam, and he could hear waves rumble against the
sheer walls. Overhead the sky was tall with a few clouds in the west
turning aureate. The hovering gulls seemed cast in gold. A haziness in
the darkened east betokened the southern California coastline. He
breathed deeply, letting nerves and muscles and viscera relax,
shutting off his mind and turning for a while into an organism that
merely lived and was glad to live.
Dalgetty's view in all directions was cut off by the other stations,
the rising streamlined hulks which were Pacific Colony. A few airy
flex-strung bridges had been completed to link them, but there was
still an extensive boat traffic. To the south he could see a blackness
on the water that was a sea ranch. His trained memory told him, in
answer to a fleeting question, that according to the latest figures
eighteen-point-three percent of the world's food supply was now being
derived from modified strains of seaweed. The percentage would
increase rapidly, he knew.
Elsewhere were mineral-extracting plants, fishery bases, experimental
and pure-research stations. Below the floating city, digging into the
continental shelf, was the underwater settlement--oil wells to
supplement the industrial synthesizing process, mining, exploration in
tanks to find new resources, a slow growth outward as men learned how
to go deeper into cold and darkness and pressure. It was expensive but
an over-crowded world had little choice.
Venus was already visible, low and pure on the dusking horizon.
Dalgetty breathed the wet pungent sea-air into his lungs and thought
with some pity of the men out there--and on the Moon, on Mars, between
worlds. They were doing a huge and heart-breaking job--but he wondered
if it were bigger and more meaningful than this work here in Earth's
oceans.
Or a few pages of scribbled equations, tossed into a desk drawer at
the Institute. Enough. Dalgetty brought his mind to heel like a
harshly trained dog. He was also here to work.
The forces he must encounter seemed monstrous. He was one man, alone
against he knew not what kind of organization. He had to rescue one
other man before--well, before history was changed and spun off on the
wrong course, the long downward path. He had his knowledge and
abilities but they wouldn't stop a bullet. Nor did they include
education for this kind of warfare. War that was not war, politics
that were not politics but a handful of scrawled equations and a
bookful of slowly gathered data and a brainful of dreams.
Bancroft had Tighe--somewhere. The Institute could not ask the
government for help, even if to a large degree the Institute was the
government. It could, perhaps, send Dalgetty a few men but it had no
goon squads. And time was like a hound on his heels.
* * * * *
The sensitive man turned, suddenly aware of someone else. This was a
middle-aged fellow, gaunt and gray-haired, with an intellectual cast
of feature. He leaned on the rail and said quietly, "Nice evening,
isn't it?"
"Yes," said Dalgetty. "Very nice."
"It gives me a feeling of real accomplishment, this place," said the
stranger.
"How so?" asked Dalgetty, not unwilling to make conversation.
The man looked out over the sea and spoke softly as if to himself.
"I'm fifty years old. I was born during World War Three and grew up
with the famines and the mass insanities that followed. I saw
fighting myself in Asia. I worried about a senselessly expanding
population pressing on senselessly diminished resources. I saw an
America that seemed equally divided between decadence and madness.
"And yet I can stand now and watch a world where we've got a
functioning United Nations, where population increase is leveling off
and democratic government spreading to country after country, where
we're conquering the seas and even going out to other planets. Things
have changed since I was a boy but on the whole it's been for the
better."
"Ah," said Dalgetty, "a kindred spirit. Though I'm afraid it's not
quite that simple."
* * * * *