He lighted one and handed it to her. "For Christ's sake, Helen, I
gave him more than he had a right to expect. I was too god-damn
noble myself. I was well-milled; I didn't have to leave half of my
holdings in my own name--I could have transferred them all to his. If
I had, then he wouldn't have had the folio to hound me all over this
planet or to other planets, if I'd had the nerve to shut myself up
on a spaceship, knowing he probably would be shut up on it with me."
He smiled. "Of course he won't hurt me; that's the one compensation.
Damage me, and he damages himself."
"But it's your life he saves, too," she reminded him.
"My life wouldn't ever have been in danger if it hadn't been for this
continual persecution--it's driving me out of this dimension! I planned
to start a new life with this body," he pleaded, anxious for belief
and, as a matter of fact, she believed him; almost everybody has good
intentions and there was no reason to except even such a one as Gabriel
Lockard, or whatever he was originally named.
"It was my appearance that got me mixed up," he went on. "Given half a
chance I could have straightened out--gone to Proxima Centauri, maybe,
and then out to one of the frontier planets. Made something of myself
up there. But nobody ever gave me a chance. Now, as long as he follows
me, there's nothing I can do except run and try to hide and know all
the time I can't escape--I'm already in the trap."
"What can he do if you stay and face him?"
"I don't know--that's the hell of it. But he's smart. Somehow he'll
lure me into another game. I don't know how, but that must be what he
has in mind. What else could it be?"
"What else indeed?" Helen asked, smiling up at the ceiling.
* * * * *
The milgot vanished in his fingers and he took another. "It'd take time
for him to arrange any kind of private game set-up, though, and as long
as I keep on the move, he won't be able to create anything. Unless he
runs into a floating zarquil game." He smiled mirthlessly. "And he
couldn't. Too much machinery, I understand.... Lucky he doesn't seem to
have connections, the way I have," Lockard boasted. "I have connections
all over the god-damn planet. Transferred them when I transferred my
holdings."
She got up, seated herself on the vanity bench, and took up a brush,
which she ran absently over the pale hair that shimmered down to her
paler shoulders. "So we keep running all over the planet.... What would
you do if I left you, Gabriel?"
"Kill you," he said without hesitation. "Slowly. Even if I have to put
this precious hulk of mine in jeopardy. And you wouldn't like that.
Neither would your boy friend."
"Stop calling him my--"
"Wait a minute--maybe there is an escape hatch!" His blue eyes
sharpened unbecomingly. "He can't kill me, but there's nothing to stop
my killing him."
"How about the police?" She tried to speak calmly as she passed the
brush up and down, sometimes not even touching her hair. "The body you
have won't be any good to you with them looking for it. And you're not
a professional exterminator, Gabe--you wouldn't be able to get away
with it."
"I can hire somebody else to do the killing. Remember I still have
plenty of foliage. Maybe I didn't leave him exactly half of my
property, but, what the hell, I left him enough."
"How will you recognize him?" she asked, half-turning, fearfully.
"He'll have a new body, you know."
"You'll recognize him, Helen--you said you could." At that moment she
could have wrapped her own hair tightly around her white throat and
strangled herself; she was so appalled by her own witless treachery.
He dragged her to her feet. "Aah, moonbeam, you know I didn't mean to
hurt you. It's just that this whole crazy pattern's driving me out of
this world. Once I get rid of that life-form, you'll see, I'll be a
different man."
As his arms tightened around her, she wondered what it would be like, a
different man in the same body.
V
"What makes you think _I_ would do a thing like that?" the little
lawyer asked apprehensively, not meeting the bland blue eyes of the man
who faced him across the old-fashioned flat-top desk. It was an even
more outmoded office than most, but that did not necessarily indicate
a low professional status; lawyers were great ones for tradition
expressed in terms of out-of-date furniture. As for the dust that lay
all over despite the air-conditioning ... well, that was inescapable,
for Earth was a dusty planet.
"Oh, not you yourself personally, of course," Gabriel Lockard--as the
false one will continue to be called, since the dutchman had another
name at the moment--said. "But you know how to put me in touch with
someone who can."
"Nonsense. I don't know who gave you such libelous information, sir,
but I must ask you to leave my office before I call--"
"It was Pat Ortiz who gave me the information," Lockard said softly.
"He also told me a lot of other interesting things about you, Gorman."