He refused to think about it.
He walked aimlessly in the grayness of the Venusian day. Different
people from those in the bright new sections of Venicity, quieter,
grimmer, more bewildered. Tough, but not the hardness of the criminal
element. These people had no interest in either making or breaking the
law.
After nightfall, he loitered on the streets for a few hours, watching
faces. When policemen began appearing in greater numbers, he checked
into his room.
It was a grimy, unpleasant place. Considering the comfort it offered,
the rate was exorbitant. Safety, however, if it did afford, and that was
beyond price. He lay down, but couldn't sleep. The room, apparently, was
designed on the acoustical principle of an echo chamber or a drum.
The adjacent room on one side was occupied by a man and woman. The
woman, though, was not a woman. There was a certain pitch to the
laughter that could come only from a robot. The management obviously
offered attractions other than sleep.
The room on the other side was quieter. Somebody coughed twice, somebody
sniffled once. Two of them, decided Jadiver, a man and a woman, both
human. They weren't talking loud or much. He couldn't hear the words,
but the sounds weren't gay.
In the hall, other voices intruded. Jadiver lay still. He could
recognize the way of walking, the tone of voice. Cops. His test period
wasn't lasting as long as he'd hoped.
"What good is it?" grumbled one, down the hall, but Jadiver could hear
distinctly. "We had him dead center and now we've lost him. If I had my
way, we'd have taken him sooner."
* * * * *
Jadiver's reasoning was not so good if the police were this close. He
got up and crept noiselessly toward the door, fully dressed, as he had
to be at all times if he expected to scramble the circuit signal.
The companion of the first policeman was more cheerful. "He's not lost.
We've just mislaid him. We know the direction he's in. Follow the line
and there he is at the end of it."
"Sounds good, but have we got him?"
"We will."
That was the fallacy. He'd scrambled the signal, but he hadn't
eliminated it. He still showed up on the police instrument as a
direction. He could imagine a technician sitting in front of a crazily
wavering screen. The instrument could no longer pick up what he saw
through his eyes, but it hadn't lost him altogether.
Jadiver clutched the tangle gun.
"Better check where we are," said the first officer.
"Going to," answered the second. Jadiver couldn't see, but he could
visualize the pocket instrument. "This is Lieutenant Parder. How close
are we?"
The voice came back, almost inaudible. What he could hear, though, was
disturbing. It sounded like someone he knew, but not Doumya Filone.
"You're off a hundred yards to your left," said the voice. "Also, he's a
mile farther out. Either that or a hundred and fifty miles."
"He's really moving," said the lieutenant. "A hundred and fifty miles is
in the middle of the swamp."
"I know that," said the tantalizing familiar voice. "I can't choose
between outside and inside the city. If he's inside, I want him to move.
That motion, extended a hundred and fifty miles, by simple mathematics
will indicate a distance he couldn't possibly travel in the jungle." The
voice paused. "We'll send a party to check the swamp. You go to the
point a mile farther on. We want him tonight. If we don't get him, we'll
probably have to wait until tomorrow night."
"I'll find him," said the lieutenant. "Report when I get there."
Jadiver could hear footsteps receding down the hall.
He breathed in relief. The makeshift shield hadn't been a total failure.
They knew the direction, but not the distance from some central
location. The scramble had affected the strength of the signal and they
couldn't be sure.
The impromptu visit told him this as well: there was only one instrument
on him. With two, they could work a triangulation, regardless of the
signal strength.
He could hazard a guess as to why they had to get him at night. During
the day, there were radiological disturbances originating in the
atmosphere that made reception of the signals difficult. That meant that
the day was safest for him.
* * * * *
He went back to the bed and lay down, to puzzle over the familiar voice,
to sleep if he could. Sleep didn't come easily. The man and the female
robot had left, but the quiet couple on the other side had been awakened
by the noise in the hall.