Excalibur And The Atom Part 2

Percival nodded weakly. Guinn could all but see his soul leaving his body. "Who did it? Who, Percival-who?"

"M-m-m..."

"Please, please...try."

"Mugh-gug."

"Mur...murdered. Murdered. Yes, Percival-who did it?"

"M-m-m..."

Guinn put the great head down softly and stood up. He hurt. He hurt away down inside where his roiling anger lived-way under anything he could control.

He hurt enough to measure his wonderment when as a kid with a dog he had run into Percival and his goats; when he used to sit in the cave and hear that great rolling voice tell tales of ancient times, and the G.o.ds men worshipped when the world was younger, when faith had the place that knowledge has now. There were great tales of the future, too, when the reverence now given knowledge will be replaced by understanding.

He hurt enough to measure his delight when Percival would gravely give him his choice of goat's milk or turnip juice to drink, and when the hermit gave him a great white ram's skin for his own. (It lay over the foot of his bed to this day.) He hurt enough to measure his shame when as an enlightened teenager he had been part of a gang that went up to jeer and throw mud at the "nekkid looney." (For Percival lived naked in the warm weather and in goat-skins in the cold, always courteously donning his strip of linen when anyone came by.) They'd taken pictures and had themselves a h.e.l.l of a laugh over it; and Guinn couldn't live with it and went up to apologize, and the hermit greeted him as a friend.

Percival was part of the mountain-part of the world. He was part of a very real world of rocks and flowers, wind and winter and eternal wildness-a world on which chrome and neon and nuclear energy and power politics grew like acne on a great calm face. He had never done harm to a living soul. He had never sought a human being out nor turned one away. He was on the mountain when Guinn was born and he should have been there when Guinn died, because he was part of the eternity that every man should have, somewhere, to turn to when he needs it.

Something died and was born in Guinn as he stood looking down at the great torn face. "Take care of him," he said to the goats. "I'll send somebody up..."

From the cave the kid cried and cried.

"Oh, yes, baby. You've got it just right."

He scooped up a startled nanny and headed for the cave. As he reached the entrance he heard a shot from the woods.

"Sorry, lady," he said. He flung the nanny through the cave-mouth with one fluid sweep of his two arms, hoping against hope that she and the kid would get together, and sprinted for his car.

As he pa.s.sed the place where the Chrysler had been parked there was another shot, and the moan of the Town-and-Country's motor. He pounded up to the station wagon just in time to see the convertible break through the underbrush and disappear into the meadow.

Lynn was gone. Garry lay beside the car. There was a hole in the side of his head and another at the back, and he was very b.l.o.o.d.y.

Guinn was around at all largely because he had the knack of selecting priorities among simultaneous emergencies, and because, having been born with the knack, he'd spent most of his life developing it.

When he knelt beside Garry's body he knew he had feelings about it, but he filed them away for later. The priority he noticed immediately was a smell and a sound; a steady trickle of liquid on dead leaves, and the acrid fumes of gasoline.

He dropped to his belly and looked under the car. A stream of gas the size of a pencil lead was flowing out of the tank. He pulled himself up by a doorhandle, opening the door as he moved, scooped up the rear seat and got a folding bucket from under it, and ran around to shove it under the tank. He felt the hole, a jagged oval rip cut by a .32 or something larger.

"Don't go away," he said to Garry.

He opened the right rear door, pulled at the scarred upholstery. It came off its snap-fasteners with a sound like teeth going into peanut brittle. In the shallow s.p.a.ce between upholstery and the outer panel were row on row of parts, neatly clipped with spring clamps. There were spark plugs, three spare distributor caps, ignition wire and a number of other things that it's better to have and not need than need and not have.

Guinn's hands were a blur. He found what he was looking for: spider-expansion bolts and washers, and a screwdriver. He dove under the car, slipped the bolt through the washer and a gasket, and forced the bolt into the hole in the tank. He spun it with the screwdriver with a palm-on-palm technique he had learned in his wartime stretch in an aircraft factory, until the spider inside spread and the washer seated tightly over the hole. The he wrenched off the tank cap and slopped in the fuel which had been caught in the bucket.

The whole operation had taken somewhat over ninety seconds.

Guinn hurled the bucket, screwdriver and upholstered panel into the back of the station wagon. He lifted Garry swiftly and gently and spread him out on the seat behind the driver's. There were cargo straps. He whipped one around Garry's chest, one around his thighs, and cinched them down. He took one precious moment to touch the youth's head with big, sensitive fingers, feeling carefully between the two holes. He pursed his lips worriedly, slid under the wheel and kicked the motor over. A patient rear fender took yet another wound-stripe as he slithered the car around, caromed off a tree, and headed out. He leaned forward, his hands placed lightly at "ten and two" like a racing driver's. He let the wheel shimmy through his fingers, and he drove.

Two shots. Garry got one. The gas tank got the other. The man who had cut up Percival's face had Lynn. Hadley Guinn was out to get that man.

On the third hairpin turn he craned over the edge as his wheels kicked stones out into s.p.a.ce. Down below him he saw a dust cloud. He let his foot give four more ounces to the accelerator.

On the fourth turn he actually saw the convertible taking the last straightaway into the Spur road. Guinn groaned. He had two more hairpins to negotiate.

Or had he? The road zig-zagged down the mountain face, but that didn't necessarily mean he had to...

This far down the hill, the grade flattened out. From this stretch there was about a four-to-one slope to the road below. From that road the grade was a mere thirty degrees or so.

"So what the h.e.l.l," he growled, and pulled on the wheel.

For an endless second he had strictly a bird's-eye view all across the windshield. Then the front end came swooping downward. There was a nasty crunch as the road shoulder ground into the m.u.f.fler pipe under the car's center of gravity, and then he was off the road, headed down the slope.

There wasn't time to think. There was just time to fight. He locked the brakes when the machine would slide straight, let it roll when it wanted to turn. He diddled the brakes and outguessed the wheel. A small avalanche accompanied him, and a rising cloud of dust joined hands with the growing dusk to make seeing tough.

Then the front wheels. .h.i.t the shallow ditch of the next level of the switchback road. There was a harrowing snap as the b.u.mper bulldozed into the ditch and broke off, and then the car was slanting across the road and down again off the other side. The underside took another blow, though not as severe this time, as the car levered over the edge. And once more the nightmare of rolling too fast and not sliding straight enough.

There was no appreciable ditch at the bottom, and it was a blacktop road. Guinn hauled the wheel over and the rubber screamed as he gunned down the Spur road. Looking across country he could see the convertible streaking along the township highway that would take it across the river and into the city.

Guinn bore down to the floor, and the station wagon laid its ears back and went. With it, it carried an unholy din of sc.r.a.ping metal which suddenly ceased as the m.u.f.fler and exhaust stack tore loose and skittered into the ditch. The car bellowed with an open throat. Guinn nodded grimly. Made to order; he could crowd six or seven miles more per hour out of the old dog without that manifold back pressure. He took the turn into the township road altogether too fast, and had the rear end into and out of the ditch on the far side of the turn. And then he was on the straightaway, and with the convertible a distant beetle ahead of him. He glanced back at the mountain, grinned tightly as he saw the long scar of his tracks straight down its naked face. He'd gotten a half-mile jump on the Chrysler by short-circuiting those two hairpins.

He checked ahead for traffic and then twisted to look back at Garry. The youth lay limp and pale in his straps. The bleeding seemed to have stopped for the time being. Guinn prayed that his probing fingers had been right.

Glancing ahead again, he felt a leap of joy as he saw that he was gaining on the convertible. Traffic was light, happily, and there was nothing between him and the other car. He pulled out the choke lever a tiny fraction and did his best to put his foot through the floorboards. He took his right hand off the wheel, fingered his gun out of its holster and wedged it between his right b.u.t.tock and the seat.

Suddenly he stiffened, peered. The convertible was just about to gain the bridge, which carried the road on its own level as steep banks fell to the water below. And at the other end of the bridge, coming toward them, was the great hulking ma.s.s of a lowboy trailer carrying a fifty-ton power shovel. The bridge was wide enough for two lanes of ordinary traffic, but getting the Chrysler past it was going to be a trick.

He saw a single flicker of the convertible's brake lights, and then its driver apparently decided to bull through. Guinn saw the lowboy tractor lumbering as far over to his side of the bridge as it could, and the trailer reluctantly following. The swelling sides of the shovel's cab bulged far over the center-line of the roadway.

The brake lights flared again. The convertible would clear the tractor and probably the side of the shovel, but the rear end of the trailer was still slightly angled across the road.

The convertible braked, and braked again, and each time a huge bite was taken out of the distance between Guinn and his quarry. He was less than two hundred feet behind when it happened. The Chrysler found its opening and hurtled through. It must have nipped the back corner of the lowboy the lightest of touches, and it was all but sc.r.a.ping the guard rail on the right. In that split second the right-hand door of the Chrysler opened. It was rear-hinged door; the wind flipped it wide. Its edge struck the guard rail and broke it off-and a slim figure in purple rose in the air and arched over the rail.

"Lynn!"

In the same instant he had to wrench his wheel right, then left to get through the same gap, a blessed inch or two wider now as the trailer straightened out on its side of the roadway. It had all happened so fast that the lowboy crew probably saw none of it, except two cars driving too d.a.m.n fast.

Now Guinn really really had a priority to choose. had a priority to choose.

He could go after his man and run him to earth-with the idea that Lynn might be hurt-drowned or crushed-in that wild leap over the rail. Or he could swing right at the end of the bridge, where an underpa.s.s connected with the River Road, and try to save her-knowing that the Chrysler would be miles away.

He peered at the license plate and knew he wouldn't forget it. He realized, too, that with Lynn out of the Chrysler, half his reason for catching it was gone. Of course, catching Percival's murderer was reason enough, but- He cursed, and as he swept off the end of the bridge, pulled right. The convertible arrowed ahead.

Down under the first pier of the bridge, Guinn pulled up. He glanced worriedly at Garry. "You'll just have to wait, son," he murmured. He slipped his gun back in its holster and ran down to the water's edge. His first searching look was upward, at the roadway above. There was no sign of a body on the rail or on the second pier, seventy-five feet or so out in the river. She'd fallen clear, then. And on the upstream side. And then he saw her-the merest glimpse of water-darkened copper blonde hair, the flash of an arm against the brown stone of the pier.

He kicked off his shoes, shoved his gun in one and his wallet in the other, ran down a flight of stone boat-landing steps and plunged into the river.

He swam strongly out to the pier, wondering how he could have been so stupid as to have left his jacket on, figuring what the h.e.l.l, it was a tropical and not very unwieldy; no point wasting it now. He gained the pier almost under the bridge, for the current ran fairly strongly here. He pulled himself up on its platform-like surface, which was only a foot or so above water level, and walked squishily to the upstream end.

She was there, clinging weakly to the stone, breathing in deep gasps. When she saw him she yelped. "Oh!" She took in some water, coughed violently. He knelt and grasped her wrist.

The coughing subsided. "Mr. Guinn..." She pushed her hair back. One side of her face and one shoulder were scarlet. "I didn't...see you come up. I was...just getting my wind back...before I...tried to make...the bank."

"Are you all right?"

"Oh, sure, except I...hit awful hard...I'm-Mr. Guinn, I'm mother naked!"

"That was a smart move."

"It wasn't a move! Strapless dress and no bra and...when I hit I just skinned right out of it! Shoes and all...Even my...Oh, this is awful!"

"I've got news for you," said Guinn, his eyes twinkling. "I've seen the like before."

"I'm terribly sorry about it," she said surprisingly. "But...I got away from him, didn't I?"

"That you did. Don't talk now. Get your wind back and I'll give you a tow in. We've got to get to a hospital, but quick."

"Hospital? I'm-"

"Not you. Garry."

"He's-he's dead!"

"Not him. The slug slipped in under his temple and skinned around his big thick skull and came out over his ear, near the back. Concussion, maybe, but I don't think there's a fracture."

"Oh, come on." She turned immediately sh.o.r.eward with long competent strokes.

Guinn let her get out into the stream and then dove after her, coming up a little ahead. He swam with a side-stroke, watching her. She suddenly coughed again.

"Thought it was too soon," he said. "Float."

"Oh, I'm all-"

"Float," he said. Submissively, she did. He got a hand under her chin and towed her, his long legs supplying a powerful scissor kick, his free hand gathering armloads of distance. Lynn lay back, completely relaxed, filling her lungs gratefully. Again the current carried them downstream a little way and they had to work their way up the stone embankment to the landing.

"Please go ahead," she said. "I'm not prissy, but-"

"Don't fret," he said kindly. He scrambled up the steps and went to where he had left his shoes. Lynn hesitated, then ran up the steps and started toward the car, which was parked out of sight of the riverside roadway under the bridge. She was perhaps halfway there when there was a flash and a roar from the road. A heavy calibre slug nicked a small sapling at Lynn's elbow. She squeaked.

"This way," snapped Guinn. "Jump!"

She ran to him; he motioned her past so that the first bridge pier was between her and the source of the shots. Guinn dropped back to the stone steps, backed down them until he had cover.

It was growing dark as reluctantly as any early summer night will. Guinn's eyes pa.s.sed the car parked on the other side of the River Road twice before he noticed it looming in the shadow of a dogwood tree.

It was the Chrysler.

He took careful aim and snapped two shots at it. There was a distinctly audible gasp, then a moan. Guinn sprinted toward it. A bullet struck the ground at his feet and another tugged at his sleeve. He fired and hit the dirt. Before he could so much as raise his head the starter whinnied, the motor caught, and the car moved off. It turned and sped up the ramp to the bridge level. Guinn fired once more, stood fuming for a moment, and then went back to the girl. She was flattened against the river side of the pier.

"It's okay now," he said. He turned and went to the station wagon. She followed. "Was that my ardent swain?" she asked in a shaken voice.

He got in the car and opened the other door for her. "It was." He took off his jacket, wrung it out over the ground, shook it, and handed it across to her. She put it over her shoulders and climbed in. "He must have had an attack of second thought. Wondered if you had killed yourself or not. Came back to see. You showed up nicely against the dark river. He couldn't see the station wagon, and didn't notice me in this brown suit. It must have been a big surprise to him to get lead thrown back at him. Who is he, anyway?"

"I don't know him, really. His name's Mordi. He came into the-"

"Morty?"

"Mordi. He came into the hash house a few times. Dark. Dresses well. Very quiet." She shuddered. "I'll look out for those quiet ones after this. Steel traps...dynamite sticks...they're nice and quiet, un-til."

He started the motor, backed, turned, and got onto the River Road. She said suddenly, "Mr. Guinn..."

"Mmm?"

She hesitated. Then, "Mind if I take this off again? You'll think I'm terrible, but it's so clammy. And it's warm this evening and somehow it doesn't seem to matter. Though I don't know how I'll ever get out of the car in town."

"Go ahead," said Guinn. "It's getting dark. The pa.s.sing parade will think you're still in that strapless job. You're right-it matters as much as or as little as you let it. When we get to the hospital I'll see if there isn't a nurse's uniform I can swipe for you."

She peeled off the jacket and draped it over the seat between them. She crossed her arms and rubbed her shoulders for a moment, then sat demurely with her hands on her lap.

He said, "You took a h.e.l.l of a chance with that high-dive."

"Not so much," she said. "I used to swim there a lot. The channel's real deep between the bank and that second pier, and I knew that. I noticed the way that car door opened when I was with him this afternoon. I knew it would slam wide open if I just opened it a little and I was waiting my chance. When he had to swing so near the rail to pa.s.s that trailer-that was it. I got my feet under me and dove right off the seat. I used to go off there all the time. It's forty-two feet," she added.

"At about forty-two miles an hour, just then," he said: "Lucky you didn't break your back."