"You mean you're afraid even to answer a question?"
"You're damned well told I am. Probably nobody would mind what I might
tell you ... but 'probably' isn't good enough."
Exasperated, Chandler said, "How the devil am I supposed to know what
to do next? So I take all this junk back to my room at Tripler and
solder up the generator--then what?"
"Then Koitska will get in touch with you," Hsi said, not unkindly.
"Play it as it comes to you, Chandler, that's the best advice I can
offer." He hesitated. "Koitska's not the worst of them," he said; and
then, daringly, "and maybe he's not the best, either. Just do whatever
he told you. Keep on doing it until he tells you to do something else.
That's all. I mean, that's all the advice I can give you. Whether it's
going to be enough to satisfy Koitska is something else again."
* * * * *
There is not much to do in a strange town when you have no money.
Chandler's room at what once had been Tripler General Hospital was
free; the bus was free; evidently all the radio parts he could want
were also free. But he did not have the price of a cup of coffee or a
haircut in the pockets of the suntan slacks the desk man at Tripler
had issued him. He wandered around the streets of Honolulu, waiting for
the hour to be up.
At Tripler a doctor had also examined his scar and it was now concealed
under a neat white bandage; he had been fed; he had bathed; he had been
given new clothes. Tripler was a teeming metropolis in itself, a main
building some ten stories high, a scattering of outbuildings connected
to it by covered passages, with thousands of men and women busy about
it. Chandler had spoken to a good many of them in the hour after waking
up and before boarding the bus to Honolulu, and none of them had been
free with information either.
Honolulu had not suffered greatly under the rule of the Exec.
Remembering the shattered stateside cities, Chandler thought that this
one had been spared nearly all the suffering of the rule of the world
by the Exec, whoever they were. Dawdling down King Street, in the
aromatic reek of the fish markets, Chandler could have thought himself
in any port city before the grisly events of that Christmas when the
planet went possessed. Crabs waved sluggishly at him from bins. Great
pink-scaled fish rested on nests of ice, waiting to be sold. Smells of
frying food came from half a dozen restaurants. It was only the people
who were different. There was a solid sprinkling of those who, like
himself, were dressed in insigneless former Army uniforms--obviously
conscripts on Exec errands--and a surprising minority who, from
overheard snatches of conversation, had come from countries other than
the U.S.A. Russian mostly, Chandler guessed; but Russian or U.S.,
wearing suntans or aloha shirts, everyone he saw was marked by the
visible signs of strain. There was no laughter.
Chandler saw a clock within the door of a restaurant; half an hour
still to kill. He turned and wandered up, away from the water, toward
the visible bulk of the hills; and in a moment he saw what made
Honolulu's collective face wear its careworn frown.
It was an open square--perhaps it had once been a war memorial--and in
the center of it was a fenced-off paved area where people seemed to be
resting. It struck Chandler as curious that so many persons should have
decided to take a nap on what surely was an uncomfortable bed of flat
concrete; he approached and saw that they were not resting. Not only
his eyes but his ears conveyed the message--and his nose, too, for the
mild air was fetid with blood and rot.
These were not sleeping men and women. Some were dead; some were
unconscious; all were maimed. The pavement was slimed with their blood.
None had the strength to scream, but several were moaning and even
some of the unconscious ones gasped like the breathing of a man in
diabetic coma. Passersby walked briskly around the metal fence, and if
their glances were curious it was at Chandler they looked, not at the
tortured wrecks before them. He understood that the sight of the dying
men and women was familiar--was painful--and thus was ignored; it was
himself who was the curiosity, for staring at them. He turned and
fled, trying not to vomit.
* * * * *
He was still shaken when he returned to Parts 'n Plenty. The hour
was up but Hsi shook his head. "Not yet. You can sit down over there
if you like." Chandler slumped into the indicated swivel chair and
stared blankly at the wall. This was far worse than anything he had
seen stateside. The random terror of murders and bombs was at least a
momentary thing, and when it was done it was done. This was sustained
torture. He buried his head in his hands and did not look up until he
heard the sound of a door opening.
Hsi, his face somehow different, was manipulating a lever on the
outside of a door while a man inside, becoming visible as the door
opened, was doing the same from within. It looked as though the lock on
the door would not work unless both levers operated; and the man on the
inside, whom Chandler had not seen before, was dressed, oddly, only in
bathing trunks. His face wore the same expression as Hsi's. Chandler
guessed (with practice it was becoming easy!) that both were possessed.
The man inside wheeled out two shopping carts loaded with electronic
equipment of varying kinds, wordlessly received some empty ones from
Hsi; and the door closed on him again.
Hsi tugged the lever down, turned, blinked and said, "All right,
Chandler. Your stuff's here."