Eye of Cat Part 6

"Could it be a part of that power failure?"

"No, no. They have their own power packs - the same as Walford's place, for that matter."

He shrugged, hoping her hand would slip away.

"I'm afraid I don't know anything about it. Listen, I'm in a hurry -"

"You haven't seen or heard of anything unusual in this area?"

He noted that her recorder was switched on.

"No," he said. "I've got to be going now -"

"It's just a feeling," she said, "but I think you know something about this."

"Lady," he said, "your car is waiting. Go and see for yourself like a good reporter. I wouldn't hang around here, though."

"Why not?"

"Maybe something will happen to this one, too."

"Why should it?"

"How should I know? But if there's something dangerous going on, you want to be in its path?"

She smiled for the first time.

"If there's a story in it, yes."

He pushed coordinates.

"Good luck."

"Not yet," she said, still holding his arm. "Have you been by that way at all?"

"Get out of here," he told her, "in the car, or by one of the other booths. Hurry! This place isn't safe. Don't hang around."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned if I'll let you go now!" she said, reaching toward a penlike device clipped behind her lapel.

"Sorry," he said, and he jerked his arm free and pushed her backward. "Do what I said!" he cried. "Get out!" and the fading began.

When he stepped from a unit in London's Victoria Station, pocketing his strip, he had to restrain himself from running.

He drew the back of his hand across his brow and it came away wet.

He headed for the nearest exit. The light of a gray morning shone through it. He was arrested momentarily by the smell of food from a twenty-four-hour diner. Too near, he decided, and he moved on outside.

He pa.s.sed a line of sightseeing hover-vehicles, another of taxis, their operators nowhere in sight. He continued along the way for a time, turned at random in a vaguely northward direction and left the sidewalk. He followed a footpath among trees leading down what had once been a wide thoroughfare. There were fewer streets now than there had been a hundred or even fifty years before, on the occasions of earlier visits he had made. Some main arteries were kept cropped for freighters and the occasional personal hov- ercraft, some had become malls, some had simply deterio- rated, most had become inner-city wilderness areas, or parks, as he used to call them.

He followed the twisting ways for about half an hour, putting a good distance between himself and the station, as the day continued to lighten about him. m.u.f.fled by the trees, the sounds of the awakening city grew. He bore to his right, moving into the fringe area.

Above, beyond the walkway, he scanned the faces of opened and opening establishments. Farther ahead, beyond an archway, off a courtyard, he glimpsed a cafe's sign. He mounted a stair to the walk and headed in that direction. He was, he judged, somewhere near Piccadilly Circus.

Right at the archway, he froze, overwhelmed by a recur- rence of the feeling that he was being observed. He looked about. There were a number of people on the walk and in the courtyard, several of them as distinctively dressed as him- self for different parts of the world, but none of them seemed to be paying him particular heed, and none seemed large enough to represent the total ma.s.s of his adversary.

Of course, it could be something behind him in the woods....

He did not feel like discarding any sort of warning, even a premonition. So he began walking again, pa.s.sing the arch- '

way. In an alcove near the corner ahead, he could see a trip- box. Giving in to nervousness might be a sign of weakness as well as caution, but there was also much to be said for holding onto as much peace of mind as possible when one was running. He quickened his pace.

As he advanced, he saw that the alcove also contained a police callbox. A jerking of its alarm handle should result in the in-tripping of a bobby within seconds, a setup similar to that in use almost everywhere these days. Not that he could see this as helping him very much if he suddenly discovered Cat at his back. A delaying action, at best. And he would probably be condemning the cop to death by calling him. He moved a little more rapidly.

He saw the head of a coyote - no, it was a small dog - appear around the corner of the alcove, looking in his direction. His sense of urgency grew. He fought but could not resist a desire to look back.

When he did, he felt a sudden wave of dizziness. A large man wearing a black cloak and gla.s.ses was just emerging from among the trees. Billy broke into a run.

He located and withdrew his credit strip as he raced ahead. He turned it to the proper position for immediate insertion into the machine's slot. A wave of fear washed over him, turning quickly to despair. He was suddenly certain that he could not make it in time. He felt a powerful impulse to halt and wait for his pursuer.

Instead, he plunged into the box, thrust the strip into the slot and rapped out a set of coordinates. Turning then, he saw that the man had dropped to all fours and was racing toward him, changing shape as he came. Someone screamed. Overhead, a dirigible was pa.s.sing. The entire tableau grew two-dimensional and began to fade. Good-bye, Piccadilly....

Run, hunter, he heard faintly amid his thoughts. The next time...

He stood in a booth at Victoria Station, shaking. But now it was reaction rather than fear. The fear, the despair, the certainty of doom had vanished at the instant of transport. It was then he realized that Cat must have been projecting these feelings onto him, a slightly more sophisticated version of his old prey-paralysis trick - a thing he had several times felt in its more blatant form years ago. He was startled at the extent to which Cat had developed it since then.

He keyed a chart onto the directory screen and took a new set of coordiaates from it. His pursuer might have caught Victoria Station from his thoughts, and - As he faded, he saw something beginning to take shape two booths up from him, something resembling a tall,

cloaked, less-than-human figure still in the process of widen- ing its shoulders and lengthening its forelimbs.

"d.a.m.n!"

Yes!

Coming through in Madrid... Bright sky through a dirty window. A crowd of commuters. No time...

He keyed the directory, hit more coordinates. He looked about as Madrid began to go away. No sign of an incoming torglind metamorph. He began to sigh. Finished sighing at the Gare du Nord box-section in Paris. He summoned the local directory and tripped again.

Walking. Day brighter yet. From the Tuileries Station.

Safe now. No way for Cat to have followed this time.

Pa.s.sing up the Champs Elysees. Crossing from the fringes of the park over the cyclists' trail and onto the walkway, he smelled the aromas of food from the nearest sidewalk cafe.

He pa.s.sed several before he settled upon one with a vacant table, close to a trip-box, commanding good views in both directions. He seated himself there and ordered a large breakfast. When he had finished he lingered, drinking count- less cups of coffee. Nothing threatening appeared and he felt the flickering beginning of a sense of security. After a time, a feeling of lethargy settled upon him.

Night. It was late morning here, but it was night in the place he had left. He had been a long while without sleep.

He got up and walked again. Should he jump to another city to obscure his trail further? Or had he covered his tracks sufficiently?

He compromised and tripped to the Left Bank. He walked again. He knew that his thinking was foggy. Filled first with the necessities of his flight, his mind was now reduced to slow-motion movement by reaction, by fatigue. It would be easy to obtain a stimulant to restore full alertness, by communication with his medical computer and a request for transmission of a prescription order to a local pharmacist.

But he felt relatively safe now, and he would rather rest and restore his natural energies than proceed by artificial means at this stage of affairs. His body might ultimately prove more important than his mind, his feelings aid his reflexes surer guides than any elaborate plan. Hadn't he already decided that primitive was best against a dangerous telepath? Sleep now, pay later, if need be.

He located a hotel called the St. Jacques near the Univer-

sity. There were several trip-boxes in the neighborhood and one off the lobby. He took a third-floor room there and stretched out on the bed, fully dressed.

For a long while he stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep.

Images of his recent flight came and went. Gradually, how- ever, other images intruded, none of them pieces of recent things. He drifted with them, his breathing slowing, and finally they bore him off.

... Watching Dora before the video console, summoning up swarms of equations, fingers moving across the keyboard as his mother's had across the loom, introducing new varia- bles, weaving the fresh patterns that resulted. He did not understand. But it did not matter. Her hair long and blond, her eyes very pale. He had met her on his return from a long expedition, when the Inst.i.tute had sent him back to school for an update on astrophysical theory and improved naviga- tional techniques. She had taught mathematics there....

The equations turn to sandpaintings and finally to skulls, animal as well as human. Dora is smiling. Dimly he remem- bers that she is dead. Would she still be alive if she had never met him? Probably. But... The screen has become a slot machine now, and the skulls keep turning and stopping, coming up different colors.... The colors line the walls of the canyon through which he walks. Long bands of strata in the roughness to right and left. Strewn at his feet are the skulls and other bones, some of them gray and gnawed, cracked and weathered, others ivory fresh, some of them inset with turquoise, coral and jet. There comes a sound at - his back, but he turns and nothing is there. It comes again, and he turns again, and again there is nothing. The third time it comes, he thinks that he detects a fleeting shadow as he spins around. The fourth time, it is there, waiting. A coyote stands laughing beside a pile of bones. "Come," it says, and it turns away. He follows, and it leads him among the shadows. "Hurry," it says, loping now, and he increases his pace. A long time seems to pa.s.s as they move through hidden places. Dark places. Places of forgetfulness. Dora following. Firelight and dancers. Sounds of rattles and drums. Nightclub through a whiskey haze. The dusty sur- face of Woden IV; the tanklike beasts which dwell there.

Bones underfoot, bones all about. Falling, falling ...

Sounds at his back. His shadow preceding him as he pursues the furry tail of the Trickster. "Where are we going?" he

calls out. "Out and up, out and up," comes the reply. His shadow is suddenly enveloped by that of a larger one, from something just at his back. "Hurry! Out! Up! Hurry!"

Awakening to urgency: day grown dimmer beyond the window. And what was that sound on the stair?

Out and up? Too strong a thing to ignore. He could almost still hear the coyote beyond the window.

He rose and crossed the room, looked out. There was a fire escape. Had he noticed it on checking in? He did not recall.

He raised the window and stepped outside. He did not question the warning. He still seemed to be moving within the dream. It seemed perfectly reasonable that he continue on the course he had been following. The evening air was cool, trail lights illuminated the way below. That damp, pungent smell on the breeze... The Seine?

Up!

He climbed. With some difficulty, he was able to draw himself onto the slanting roof. People were moving along the Rue des Ecoles trail, but no one looked upward. He began moving to his right, toes in a rain gutter, hands sliding along slate. The dreamlike quality persisted. He pa.s.sed chimneys and a dish antenna. He saw a corner ahead. There came a faint, hollow, hammering sound, as of someone pounding on a door, below and to his left. He hurried.

The crashing, splintering sound which followed stirred his imagination but vaguely. There was a booth fairly near now, were he on the ground....

He moved as if following a magic trail, leading toward another fire escape he now had sight of. Even the sounds of pursuit, as a large body pa.s.sed through his hotel window, ringing upon the metal stair, and then reared to scrabble at the roof's edge, seemed but part of some drama of which he was not even an interested spectator, let alone a princ.i.p.al.

He continued to move mechanically, barely aware that his pursuer was addressing him - not with words, but with feel- ings which he would normally, under the circ.u.mstances, have found disquieting.

He glanced back as he took a turn, in time to see the large, oddly shaped figure in black begin to draw itself upward onto the roof. Even when the guttering tore loose beneath its weight and the figure clawed unsuccessfully to gain purchase on the building, he felt no surge of adrenalin. As its down-

ward plunge began, he heard it call: Today luck is with you.

Make the most of it! Tomorrow Its words and movements ceased when it landed in a clump of shrubbery below. And it was only then that he felt as if he were suddenly awakening, realizing that the world actually existed, that his position had been precarious. He drew a deep breath of the night's cold air, swung onto the fire escape and began his descent.

When he reached the ground, the figure was still a dark ma.s.s within the rue's trailside growth. It was making small movements and a wheezing noise, but it seemed unable to rise and continue the pursuit.

It was only after he had hurried into the box, summoned forth new coordinates and encoded them that Billy began to wonder.

DISK III.

COMPUTER FILES PATENT INFRINGEMENT SUIT.

BRG-118, recipient of the 2128 n.o.bel Prize in Medicine, this morning filed suit in the district court in Los Angeles claiming that J & J Pharmaceuticals

SATELLITE THIEF STRIKES AGAIN.

Valuable experimental components were removed from Berga-12 by a person or persons unknown during a power failure now believed to have been induced by

SOLAR REGATTA TO SAIL THURSDAY.

REPORTER FOUND BRUTALLY SLAIN.

In an out-of-the-way trip-box station in upstate New York, reporter Virginia Kalkoff's mangled

Don't know what I'm gonna do...