Anti-Man

XII

His face glared up at me from the screen of the phone. He was grinning. It was not the warm, winning grin that I had seen so many times before, but a twisted, unnatural thing that made me feel cold and afraid. He winked at me, then reached out to a panel below His screen and dropped His receiver into the cradle. The picture blinked off. The call was completed. Numb, I hung up too.

I lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, and the patterns of holes in the acoustical tile. It was possible, if you thought hard enough, to see all sorts of things in those patterns. I could make out the face of an ape in one square. Another, tilted at a slightly different angle, revealed a pair of eyes, staring wide, with a subtle look of uncertainty. Suddenly, I shoved to the edge of the bed and got up. He knew where I was, dammit. He would be coming for me. There was nothing to do but get out of there. Sure, I could not run from Him forever. He would find me sooner or later. But no man likes to die. And, I thought, if I could just gain some time, I might think of something, something to do to get to Him. Maybe it was a false hope, a dream, but it was one I would have to hold on to if I were to keep my sanity

I dressed quickly, threw everything back into my suitcase, and stopped before the door into the corridor, trying to outline a course of action before I plunged on. He had evidently followed my helicar and had known I checked into the Colossus. How He found my room number was a mystery, but it could be worked out by someone determined enough. To lose Him, I would have to change vehicles again and again, move like the pea in that old walnut-shell con-game, move and move until He had no idea where I was.

And then what? I thought. Sit in some sleazy hotel, waiting for the world to end. Watching the streets through my windows, trying to see if the battles between men and androids had begun- yet? That did not particularly excite me. Running was necessary if I were to stay alive to think. But, in the end, what good would thinking do? I had already thought it out, and I had already decided He was unreachable. All right, then. I would lose the android self that now tailed me, then take a trip to Cantwell, go back up to Harry's cabin. I might not be able to do a thing, but it was my only chance.

I stepped into the hallway, expecting a spatter of bullets, hurried to the elevator, dropped. Too fast. By the time we were down ninety floors, my internal parts were frantically trying to crawl back to their proper locations.

Next, I went to the Bubble Drop station on that floor, punched out a midtown destination, and stepped forward, sat down on the chair, and was moving into the departure foyer where a Bubble would be sprayed up around me by the automatic equipment. Another capsule was just leaving the foyer and entering the tube-ways. I slipped in behind it, and barreled after it. A quarter of a mile later, I became aware of the fact that the rider of the other Bubble had turned around in the seat and was looking back. He waved at me. It was the android

He must have been waiting outside my room when I was planning what to do. Or perhaps He had been near me at some other point on my trip to the Bubble Drop station. Somewhere along the line, He had been close enough to read my mind, to pick out my plans. But why hadn't He killed me when He was close? Why wait until now and do it this way? But if He was a sadist, if He was a deranged, antagonistic creature rather than God, He would act just like this. He would be enjoying my terror as we barreled down the tubeways, both of us going for the same departure point. He would know that I would realize He would be waiting for me when I came out of the exit foyer. Waiting to kill me

He wanted to terrorize me. He was succeeding.

I looked behind my Bubble in the wild hope that there was someone behind me who was coming to the same station; but there was only empty space back there. I turned around again, saw that He was still waving. I could not bring myself to wave back, for I could see that twisted grin, that leer that He had shown me over the phone in my hotel room. We had as much as three or four minutes before the high-speed Bubble would pull into the station I had punched for. This gave me no more than two minutes to think of something.

We whizzed through an intersection, and another Bubble whined past my back end on the cross-tube, missing me by inches. If only, I thought, it would have struck me. The computer would have shut down these tubeways and sent help of some sort. And from that impossible wish grew my idea. What if I were to wreck myself? The computer would stop everything just as thoroughly as if another vehicle had struck me.

Perhaps a minute left.

He was still grinning.

I lifted my suitcase, picked a spot on the side of the Bubble to my left, and smashed the hard edge of the case into the shell. There was a resounding thwack! that stung my ears, but the shell held. I drew the case back as far as I could, and let go with as much force as I could muster. The shell cracked, webbed with a hundred lines radiating out from the impact point. The Bubble kept moving. Frantically, I swung, again and again. The last blow made a hole in the shell and spread the cracks out until they covered most of the Bubble. I swung once more, was rewarded with a horrendous crashing sound, as the pieces of the shell fell away to both sides.

The Bubble had shielded me from the compressed-air cylinders under the chair, for the cylinders had been slung so that the plastic was blown above them. Now I could reach them. With the wind whistling over me, pulling my hair straight back behind me, I brought the edge of my battered suitcase down on the cylinders, knocking them awry. I struck again, knocked them off altogether. The seat, sans Bubble and propulsion system, wobbled, collided with a wall, and turned over, spilling me onto the floor of the shaft, my face slashed by the soft wires, the rest of my body protected by my clothes.

His capsule bulleted away, almost out of sight before the computer shut down the air suction in the tunnel, and directed all Bubbles to stop-position through remote control shut-off in their propulsion systems.

"Please stay where you are. If you have been involved in an accident within the tubeways, please remain stationary." The computer's voice was heavy, even, reassuring. "Assistance is already on the way to the point of the accident. Remain where you are."

Disregarding the computer, I grabbed my suitcase and started back along the tunnel, away from His capsule. The going was not easy, for the floor, as well as the walls and ceiling, projected thousands of soft wires which were usually used to monitor the Bubble capsules. I walked carefully, pressing the flat of my foot against the sides of them, and forcing them down before me. As I walked, the ones I had trod down sprang erect again behind. Now and then, one of them would slip out from under my foot, and slide painfully up my pants leg, gouging my shins and calves. I could feel my socks getting damp with blood.

Behind, I heard His Bubble capsule shattering. He had probably formed His hands into mallets. I tried to hurry.

"Someone," the computer said, its voice echoing through the tubeways, "is moving through the tubeways without a capsule. I can pinpoint your location through my sensor cilia. Please sit and wait for the ambulance. It will be there momentarily."

I turned into a branching tubeway that was blocked by a capsule at rest. I moved up beside it, pressed my body sideways against the wires projecting from the wall. I did not do that maneuver smoothly enough, and some of the cilia punched painfully into my back. I tried again, pressed them flat, and slid around the shell of the Bubble. The man inside looked out at me, wide-eyed, and said something that I couldn't hear through the plastic Bubble. I did not ask him to repeat it, but moved in front of his capsule, and hurried, as well as I could, down the tunnel toward the bulk of another car, a hundred feet ahead.

"I detect," the computer said, perhaps a bit more loudly than before, "two distinct movements within the tubeways. There are two individuals moving without benefit of Bubbles. I direct both to cease and desist, and await the arrival of the ambulance."

I stumbled and fell, managed to throw the suitcase up in front of my chest and groin. I wire-punctured my shoulder, and sent a hot pain through my flesh, but I was otherwise unscathed. I stood, blessing my suitcase, and continued toward the next vehicle blocking the tunnel.

"Hey!"

I pretended I did not hear.

"Jacob!"

I could not stop myself. I looked over my shoulder. He was a hundred feet behind, back at the last capsule. He was waving at me. I turned, squeezed against the wires, and moved between the tube wall and the shell of the Bubble. On the other side, I moved more quickly than before, oblivious to what the stray wires were doing to my ankles and calves.

"This is a command to stop," the computer said.

I kept moving, almost a slow run now, and I was certain He had not stopped following me.

"Halt!" the computer boomed. "From preliminary scan of my sensory cilia, neither of you seemed to be wounded. From that same information scan, it is apparent the second of you is in pursuit of the first."

I ran.

"You are both guilty of sabotaging the public transportation system, a crime which is punishable by not less than one and not more than five years in prison."

This was not going to help my case on the other charges I had sustained in my flight with Him to Cant-well. Here was Jacob Kennelmen, probably the most timid, law-abiding citizen in North America, and he was involved in his seventh crime in less than two weeks. Leonard Fenner would have one helluva time explaining to the judge and jury just how basically good a man I was. Even if I did escape Him and this entire mess were settled somehow, I would end up spending some seventy-odd years in a WA prison.

Three hundred feet beyond the second capsule, there was a third blocking the way. As I was squeezing around it, trying to smile at the matronly woman inside who cringed against the far wall, He shouted to me from the other car a hundred yards back. "Jacob!"

"Go to Hell," I said.

"Look what I can do, Jacob."

As I squeezed, I looked back through the wires that partially cut off my vision. He had taken off His shoes, and had formed His feet into large, gray blocks. He trod the wires down without care. His feet were iron-hard, and He could walk almost as fast here as He could on a concrete corridor floor. He moved quickly after me.

I tore around the car, slashing shallow grooves in my left cheek. Ahead, there was a crossways, I moved to it, plunged into the tunnel to my right. Ahead, seven or eight feet, there was another motionless Bubble waiting for the system to become operational again. I slid by it, snagging my clothes on the wires, my hands bleeding now. On the other side, I found another Bubble car only a dozen feet ahead of the last. I moved around it. There was a kid inside, maybe ten or eleven-years-old. He watched me with obvious fascination until I had reached the front of his Bubble.

"Hey!" he called loudly through the plastic. "You crazy?"

"No!" I said, nodding my head. "Being chased."

He looked absolutely elated.

I stood there, panting, and realized I did not have very much more strength in me-not nearly enough to keep up this pace more than another five minutes. As soon as I slowed down, He would gain, and gain fast, if He was hot already gaining now on His hard, reformed feet. Ahead lay another Bubble car, only nine feet away. I was not even sure I could make that. The thought of squeezing around yet another Bubble with the wires gouging me was not at all pleasant. Then I had the idea. It came to me from sheer desperation.

"The authorities have been alerted and will arrive with the ambulance," the computer said. "You are urged to stop and make things easier on yourself. The sentence for sabotaging the public transportation system is no less than one year and-"

I paid no attention to the machine-mind's ramblings. I moved around to the opposite side of the kid's Bubble and dropped to the floor, hunched at the corner next to the tube wall, nestled back in among the wires. Hopefully, when He squeezed by on the other side, He would not see me through the plastic. I should be shielded by the kid's body. Then, when He went on, I could double-back and be rid of Him.

"What are you doing?" the kid asked.

"It's a trick," I said. "Will you help me?"

"Who's the good guy?" he asked.

"The one coming wants to kill me. He is not a policeman."

The kid nodded.

Just then, I heard him coming up behind the kid's capsule, the wires singing as he leaped through them. I tried to huddle even deeper into the wires, did not mind that they prodded me mercilessly. On the other side of the Bubble, He pressed between the plastic and the wall. I could see His dark form.

"Hey!" the kid said, "you chasing a fellow with a suitcase?"

"That's right," He said.

My heart came up into my throat. That rotten kid, I thought.

Then the kid said, "He went up past that Bubble."

He nodded, kept going, did not look back. I slipped past the kid's Bubble, looked in at him and mouthed, "Thanks."

I think he blushed.

I moved back to the crossways and started to turn back to my smashed vehicle when I remembered the police and the ambulance would be there, or soon arriving. They would take me into custody, and I would never get out. I would not be able to go to Cantwell. Even the slim chance I had against Him would be destroyed. I walked into another side passage instead, and plodded along it, moving more slowly than I had when He had been hot on my tail. Now that I could relax a little, I was aware of the pain in my ankles, hands and face. I would have to get out of the system and find someplace to buy bandages and antiseptics.

"You are approaching an exit foyer," the computer said. "Do not proceed further, or I will have to initiate a deterrent until police can arrive at the same foyer."

I kept moving. It was good to know that a foyer lay ahead and that I would reach it before any police could be there. Indeed, I could see the circular-membrane hatch at the end of the tubeway. I walked faster. A few more cuts would not bother me.

Then the computer's deterrent was thrown at me. The wires in that area made perfect conductors for a localized shock. The electricity bounced through me, standing my hair on-end, then flushed away. I had gone down, ramming a wire into my hand. I plucked it free and stood.

"Sabotaging the public transportation system is punishable by no less than one year and no more than-" the computer began.

I ran now, the wires whining and waving about me, gouging me, hurting me. Twenty feet from the diaphragm, another shock hit me. I managed to keep on my feet, but I could barely see. My eyes were watering and stinging, and I was certain I had burst a small vessel on my right eyeball. I felt cold inside my stomach, cold down through my intestines. My bones ached and spurted fire through my body. I put my head down, hugged my suitcase against my chest with both hands in the event I fell forward, and plunged on.

The damned computer shocked me again.

"Halt!" it demanded. "You will not be bothered if you come to a full stop."

I had not fallen this time either. Indeed, the electricity had seemed to shoot up through me and keep me erect. Another shock came, but none of the wires were touching me anywhere except on the bottoms of my feet. I could feel the power humming beneath my shoes, but it did not reach me. Then I was through the membrane, into the exit foyer.

"You are directed to halt," the computer said. It began repeating the sentence for sabotaging the public transportation system.

I moved out of the foyer and into the station platform. There was an open corridor beyond, lined with shops on both sides, a great number of people on the pedways. But no police. I walked out, trying to look as natural as possible, but not succeeding too well, considering my slashed face, torn clothes and limp (my feet felt as if something wicked and sharp-toothed had been chewing on them). I was on the first pedway, the slowest outer one, half a block from the Bubble Drop station and trying to get into the innermost pedway, the other slow-moving belt, when the WA police siren wailed out ahead of me…