Hunter slid into the car, punched out a destination blindly, and
engaged the flight gear. With the customary roar of power, the car
shot up from the flat. Hunter leaped free. His feet struck the cement.
The lingering trace of paralysis, destroying his normal co-ordination,
made the fall very painful.
Hunter flung himself flat in the shadow of the ornamental shrubs along
the edge of the parking flat. The four police mercenaries sprinted out
of the house and leaped into the police jet. With sirens screaming,
it soared up in pursuit of the empty autojet.
Hunter estimated that he had perhaps thirty minutes before they sent
out a general alarm. A painfully small margin of safety. Where could
he hide that the machines of detection--the skilled, emotionless,
one-track, electronic brains--would not eventually find him? And what
of Ann Saymer? What could he do as a fugitive to save her?
United had planned it all down to the smallest detail. But that was
the way the cartels operated. It was the system Hunter was accustomed
to. He felt neither anger not resentment, simply a determination to
out-plan and out-play the enemy.
If he accepted defeat he would admit frustration, and for Captain Max
Hunter that was impossible. Hadn't he survived a decade of frontier
conflict with an adjustment index of zero-zero? Instead of hopelessly
weighing the odds stacked against him, he counted the advantage which
a single man held in maneuverability and rapid change of pace.
He walked along the museum street, the blaster in his hand. A block
away rose the bulk of a factory building and behind it towered the
monster of center-city, transformed into a fairyland by the glow of
lights on the many levels. Hunter's eye followed the pattern up toward
the top, hidden above the blanket of haze.
The top! Luxury casinos and the castles of the cartels. Werner von
Rausch and his empire of United Researchers. Werner von Rausch, who
gave orders and Ann Saymer disappeared. Werner von Rausch, who gave
new orders and Mrs. Ames lay murdered in her living room.
But behind the facade of his spacefleet and his private army, behind
his police mercenaries, Werner von Rausch was one man--an old man,
Hunter had been told--and a vulnerable target. Hunter weighed his
changes, and the margin of success seemed to be balanced in his favor.
It was not what they would expect him to do. They had framed him for
murder and he should now be running for his life. The hunted turned
hunter. Hunter grinned savagely, enjoying his pun.
* * * * *
He slipped the blaster under his belt, leaving the scarlet jacket open
to his navel so that the loose folds would conceal the outline of the
weapon. He would have no trouble reaching the top level.
The resort casinos, like the mid-city amusement area, were open to any
citizen. Special autojets, with destinations pre-set for the casino
flat, were available in every monorail terminal. Hunter could by-pass
a probe inspection at a regular metro-entry. The nearest terminal,
from the north-coast line, was less than a quarter of a mile away.
As Hunter entered the industrial district he heard the turmoil of an
angry crowd. He came upon them suddenly, swarming at the gates of a
factory close to the terminal.
Eric Young's trouble-makers, he thought with a worried frown, jumping
obediently when the big boss spoke the word. In less than five years
Eric Young had turned the union into a third cartel, more powerful
than Consolidated or United because the commodity Young
controlled--human labor--was essential to the other two.
A third cartel! Suddenly Max Hunter understood why the cartels had to
have Ann's patent at any cost. The absolute control of the human mind!
It was the only weapon which Consolidated or United could use to break
Young's power.
Hunter shouldered his way through the strikers toward the terminal.
Though he wore no U.F.W. disc, he felt no alarm. Eric Young's strike
riots were always well-managed. None of the violence was real and no
one was ever seriously hurt.
But these trouble-makers seemed absurdly well-disciplined. They stood
in drill-team ranks, moving and shouting abuse in perfect unison. Then
Hunter saw their faces, as blank as death masks--and in all their
skulls the still unhealed scalpel wound, as well as an occasional
projecting platinum strand which sometimes caught the reflected light.
Max Hunter felt a chill of terror. He was walking in a human graveyard
of living automatons, responding to the transmission from Ann's
machine. United had lost no time in putting the thing to work. This
was no ordinary strike, but the opening skirmish in the conflict that
would wreck both Consolidated and the Union of Free Workers.
Hunter entered the monorail terminal. It was deserted except for a
woman who stood by the window looking out at the crowd. She was
wearing a demure, pink dress. Her face was plain, and she had used no
cosmetic plasti-skin to make it more striking. Her brown hair,
streaked with a gray which she took no trouble to hide, was pulled
into a bun at the back of her neck.
Surprisingly, Hunter thought she was pretty, perhaps because she was
so different from the eternal, baby-faced adolescent who thronged the
city in a million identical duplications.
Hunter knew he had seen her before. He couldn't remember where. She
shifted her position slightly and the light cast a sharp, angular
shadow on her face. Then he knew.
"Dawn!" he cried.
Startled, she turned to face him with a strange look in her eyes.
"I was hoping you wouldn't recognize me, Captain Hunter," she said.
"What are you doing here--dressed like some dowdy just in from a farm
sector?" he asked, his gaze incredulous.
"We're all of us a mixture of different personalities," she replied.
"I work for an entertainment house, yes. But I also have some of the
qualities of your Ann Saymer. Don't take offense, please. Ann and I
are both interested in the maladjusted. She wants a quick cure. I'm
looking for the cause."
"Here?"
"Wherever there are people who face an emotional crisis--the men who
come to Number thirty-four, or a mob of strikers. I want to know why
we react in the way we do, and what makes up the frustration pattern
that crowds us across the borderline into insanity."
"You sound like a psychiatrist," he said.
"I hold a First, Captain Hunter."
"And you work in an entertainment house?"
"Tell me about yourself, Captain. Have you found Ann yet?"
He looked away quickly.
"No," he said, his face hardening.
"And you still haven't had a chance to use your blaster?"
He directed an appraising glance at her. The question might imply a
great deal. Did she somehow know what had happened at Mrs. Ames'? Did
she know he was a fugitive?
A dozen police mercenaries appeared abruptly at the end of the street.
Since the police had never been used to break a strike, Hunter guessed
that this was Consolidated's answer to Werner von Rausch's new weapon.
The mercenaries drew their blasters and ordered the mob to disperse.
The automatons turned to face them. And as they turned they fell
silent--the cloying, choking silence of the tomb. Like marching
puppets, the mob moved toward the police. Clearly Hunter could hear a
shrill voice ordering them to halt.
Hunter felt a sickening inner horror. How could the mob obey when they
heard nothing but the enslaving grid, and responded to neither fear
nor reason? Still they moved forward, in a robot death march. Whatever
happened, it was a situation Young could turn to his advantage. If the
mercenaries killed unarmed workers, it could be turned into superb
propaganda. And ultimately, by sheer weight of numbers, the
defenseless mob could overwhelm the mercenaries.
White fire leaped from the blasters. The first rank fell, but the mob
marched blindly across the smoking corpses. The mercenaries fired
again. It was slaughter--brutal and pointless--of slaves unaware of
their danger, unable to save themselves.
Without understanding his own motivation--and without caring--Max
Hunter leaped into the sill of the terminal window. There he was in a
position to fire over the heads of the mob. The blast from his weapon
arrowed into the line of police mercenaries.
Three fell in the agony of the flames. The rest, glad for an excuse to
stop the slaughter, turned and fled. Like clockwork things, the mob
turned back and resumed its precision demonstration in front of the
factory.
Hunter slipped white-faced into a terminal bench. His hand trembled as
he jammed the blaster back beneath his belt.
"Why did you do it, Captain?" Dawn asked.
How could he answer her, without saying he had seen the grids in their
skulls? And he wasn't ready to trust Dawn to that extent.
"The people couldn't help themselves," he said ambiguously.
"Because they're in the U.F.W. and Eric Young cracks the whip. Is that
what you mean?"
"They weren't aware of their own danger."
"Miscalculating the risks then? But that's part of the system,
Captain. If you can't fight your way up to the top--"
"Then the system is utterly vicious."
"You don't mean that," she said.
"Why not? We're living in a jungle society. It's nothing but
conflict--conflict on the frontier and conflict here from the time
they put you in the general school."
"Only the children who have the intelligence--"
"But why?" he interrupted fiercely. "Where does it get us?"
"We have a stable society," she told him. "Peace of a sort. Law
enforcement, too, and a chance to build something better when we learn
how."
"Something better?" He laughed as he stood up. "We'll get that when we
pull this hell apart, and not before."
She put her hand on his arm. "No, Captain. It's not realistic to say
that. Over and over again in the past we wrecked civilization because
good-hearted and conscientious people thought there was no other way
to create a finer world. It didn't work, because violence is madness.
This time we have to begin where we are and build rationally. We can,
you know, when we understand what we have to build with."
"What else do we need to know, Dawn? You're falling back on the
typical double-talk of the psychiatrists. With all the application of
physical science that we have--"
"I wasn't thinking of technology, Captain. Civilization isn't
machines. It's people. Our accumulation of knowledge is tremendous,
but essentially it means nothing because we know so little about
ourselves. It's absurd to talk of making something better until we
really know the individual we're making it for."
"Go ahead," he countered angrily. "Pussy-foot around with your
cautious experiments, make sure nobody gets hurt--and you'll all end
up slaves. As for me, I'm going to find Ann and get out while there's
still time."
"Always the same two alternatives," Dawn said wearily. "Pull down the
world, or run away from it. We need the courage to try something
different. We need men who will act like men. I thought, Captain, by
this time--" She looked up into his eyes. "Where are you going?"
"To the top--the casinos." Her abrupt question took him off balance
and almost surprised him into telling the whole truth.
"Top level." She paused, studying his face. "That's logical, of
course. You'll rescue your woman and run away--perhaps to the
frontier, or to a forgotten world too insignificant to be claimed by
either cartel. It all sounds so easy, doesn't it? You have friends in
the service. They'll smuggle you away from Sector West." She hesitated
again. "Running away is insanity, too, Captain. But that is one thing
you still have to learn."