Anti-Man

VI

I was standing in the snow bank that the plows had thrown up. I had not yet broken through to the road, and now I dropped quickly until I was snuggled down in a hole that would be invisible to the WA searchers. The sound of the jeep engine grew louder until, finally, I knew it was just beyond the bank. A powerful light swept over the snow as the vehicle moved slowly past. Could they know? Could they already know that I was leaving the park? Had they captured Him and-no, no. This was probably just a routine patrol. They would be looking along the perimeters of the park for any place where the snow bank might be broken, any place where we might have exited behind their backs.

When the engine was sufficiently distant, I stood up and looked after the jeep. It was a heavy, truck-bedded vehicle carrying half a dozen armed WA troops. Then it turned a bend and was out of sight. Quickly, I broke through onto the road, then turned around to look at the hole I had made. It would do no good for them to see this, investigate, and discover the sled. I'd come strolling back, confident about fooling them, and they would be sitting in the trees with their guns ready, grinning with a satisfaction of their own. I set to work scraping snow off the front of the bank and packing it into the exit I had made. When the spot was well enough hidden to pass searchlight inspection, I crossed to the other side of the road, broke through the snow wall there, packed it behind me. Then, paralleling the road, but hidden by the wall of snow, I began walking back toward Cantwell.

When I reached the town proper, the banks of snow along the roads disappeared, for full snow-removal operations were in effect in the city limits. Now I would have to walk in the open, out where I could easily be seen, recognized, and apprehended. Except they did not expect me by myself, but were looking for two men. Also, they would not think to search here in the town where hundreds of WA cops and troops milled.

That was what I hoped, anyway.

Soon, I had a chance to try the theory. Three blocks from the Port, a group of half a dozen uniformed men came out of a low, lighted building and started my way, talking animatedly among themselves.

I hunched my shoulders and lowered my head, even though I still wore the mask. The goggles had seemed too conspicuous for a walk in the city, so I had stuffed them in a jacket pocket. Then, the closer I got to the group, the more I began to think that hunched shoulders and lowered head would draw more attention than a straightforward, shoulders-back approach. I unhunched and raised my head. When we passed, I said hello and they said hello, and we left each other without any nasty physical encounters.

At the edge of the Port area, I stopped to consider what my next move should be. True, they would not expect me to brazen my way up to the desk and buy a ticket on the next rocket out. But that still might be idiotic. Earlier, the Port employees would not have been thinking about Jacob Kennelmen and an android. Now, we would be on their minds. The chances of being recognized were correspondingly higher than they had been the night before. And there wouldn't be just the ticket seller to get by. There would be the crew of the rocket, the other passengers, the debarking officer… No, that was out. What, then?

I thought over the possible methods of transportation: monorail, flivver, copter (which would be grounded tonight.) None of these were particularly appealing. They all involved being around too many people.

Then I had it.

I hurried past the front of the Port building, moving between about fifty WA special troops loitering on the promenade awaiting orders. When I came to the steps down into the taxi docking area, I took them two at a time. I went along the rows of vehicles to the last in the line. It was almost totally blocked from the view of anyone using the lot, and it would afford me more privacy to work. I opened the door on the driver's side and slid in, closing it behind so that the ceiling light went off.

I inspected the controls and the keyboard to be certain that this was no different than the standard auto-taxi I had used for so many years in New York City. On the bottom of the directory chart, I found the instructions I had been hoping for:

I felt like laughing again. One to five years would mean nothing to Jacob Kennelmen on top of what he was going to receive anyway if he were caught. I wrestled my wallet out of the zippered sidepocket on my insulated trousers, took out a poscred bill and dropped it in the payment slot. The keyboard lighted instantly. Slowly, I typed out E-M-E-R-G-E-N-C-Y. There was a click, a series of grumbling sounds, and the buzzer sounded that the car was now a manually operated vehicle. I shifted it into reverse, backed it out of its stall, and left the lot at a reasonable speed. Once on the highway, I turned toward Anchorage. Keeping the taxi at top speed as much as possible, I reached that city a little over two hours later, at eleven-thirty.

I parked on the outskirts at a self-service recharging station for electric cars. There was an automat attached. It was well lighted, but empty. I went in, purchased a synthe-ham sandwich and a carton of chocolate artificial milk, went back to the taxi that I had parked at the edge of the lot. While I ate, I tried to plan the next step. I wanted them to know I was in Anchorage, wanted them to shift their search down here and take the heat off the park. But how to do it? If I moved into someplace where there were a lot of people, I would surely be recognized sooner or later-recognized and trapped.

I had not come all this way to sacrifice myself. Besides, letting them catch me would be utterly foolish. With the right drugs, they would have me babbling everything inside of half an hour, spouting happily where He was at the moment. There must be some other way. A man in a dark blue sedan pulled up before the building at the charging station, plugged in his car, cleaned his windscreen, and drove away. By the time he left, I knew what I was going to do.

Walking to the far end of the station and around the corner, I found the phones. I stepped into the last so that I was not visible from the front of the station and punched out Harry Leach's home number.

There was a little musical set of tones that reminded me of the old-fashioned bells triggered when you opened the door at Harnwockers Book Store back in New York. The tones sounded five times, and I was just beginning to think that Harry was going to fink out on me in my hour of need when the screen rolled once and came back up with his homely, balding head looking out at me.

"My God, Jake!" he said, his eyes going wide.

"Harry, I have to talk fast, so don't try to interrupt me."

"But-" he began.

"You don't have to help if you don't want to. I am not forcing you to-"

"Jake-"

"— do anything you don't want," I said, talking louder and drowning him out. "But I need help. Look, they think we're in that park up at Cantwell. I heard it on the radio. But we're-"

"Jake, don't you realize they are-"

"Shut up! We're really here in Anchorage. I'm at a little self-service recharging place right now. Now what I want-"

"Jake-" he began. It was time to let him tell me what I knew he had been trying to tell me all along. "Jake, this phone is bugged!"

"Damn!" I said, and I slammed the receiver into its cradle, disconnecting myself. Harry blinked off the screen.

I stood there for a moment, content with how well it had gone. I had known, of course, that they would tap Harry's phone. He was my best friend, my father image. It was logical that I should contact him if anyone. The trick had been not to let Harry tell me the bad news until after I had spilled our false position. But I had held him off, had gotten in the bit about Anchorage before he could tell me. The WA boys in the investigation Bureau offices must be frantic at this moment, slapping each other on the back and congratulating each other profusely. We'll have that bastard Kennelmen in hours, boys. He can't get away from us now. We have him cornered in goddamned old Anchorage. Then I remembered that they would have me cornered if I didn't beat it the hell out of there.

I opened the door of the booth, went out and around the front of the building. Across the lot, a local patrol car had pulled up next to the stolen auto-taxi. The cop, in a state uniform, tending toward plumpness, was looking at the yellow letters on the side: Cantwell Port Auto-Taxi Service.

A WA cop would have pegged it for a hot car as soon as he saw it. This fuzz might be more slow-witted, but he would not require more than another few seconds to reach a similar conclusion.

I thought of turning and getting out of there before he turned and saw me. Run, run, move, my mind told me. Or was it my emotional gut again? I forced myself to be calm, then continued across the lot toward the car. "Officer!" I shouted. "Thank God you're here!"

He turned around and looked at me. He was a big, heavy-jowled man. His fur hat was brought down around his ears and snapped under his chin. It gave him the look of a small, arctic animal. He made no sign of going for the pin-gun on his hip, but stood with his arms folded across his chest, waiting for me. I realized I must look rather strange, wearing full outdoor gear in a city like this, but the strangeness did not seem to be enough to set him on edge. After all, I had called to him and said I was glad to see him. A criminal never did that sort of thing.

"What's the matter?" he asked when I reached him.

"Name's Andrews," I said. "I work at the Port Building in Cantwell. Passenger service desk. This fellow came through customs from Region One, going into the North American Economic Grid. Of course, we were going to search his luggage like we always do. He thought different. Pulled a gun. I mean a projectile gun, not a narcodart pistol. Made me leave the terminal with him, illegally took this taxi and-Well, anyway, I got a chance to go for him and-but you don't want the whole story right away. Look here in the back seat and see what you think we ought to do with him."

He turned back to the car, slightly confused but still not suspecting me of anything illegal.

I grasped one hand in the other, clenched my fists to make a solid club, and brought them down on the back of his neck. He staggered forward, tripping over his own feet, and went down on his knees. Unfortunately, the fur cap had absorbed some of the blow, and he was fumbling for his pistol, still conscious, though evidently whoozy. I slammed my hands on his neck again, then a third time. I tried to remember to keep the blows hard enough-without making them so hard they'd crack his spine or snap the bones in his neck. I could see how a man could get carried away with the thrill of striking an enemy, could so very easily apply just a little too much pressure… After the third blow, he pitched forward onto the snow and lay still, snoring.

I stood there for a moment, panting, trying to regain my composure and shake off the seething animal blood-lust that was trying to take control of me. When my heart slowed a little, I took out my pin-gun and put half a dozen darts in his legs. Then I dragged him to his patrol car and was about to get him inside when I had a better thought. I turned, struggled him back to the auto-taxi, got the passenger-side door open, and muscled him onto the back seat. Closing the door, I went around to the driver's side and got in. Just then, another car pulled into the recharging station and the driver climbed out.

I held my breath while he went about his business. It took him one helluva long time, or maybe it only seemed that way. He cleaned his windshield without bothering to plug his battery in first. Then he went inside, got something to eat, and brought it out to the car. He started on it while he plugged in the battery. Twice, he looked our way but made no show of interest and did not appear to be going to approach us. When the battery light flashed a soft blue, he disconnected the leads, closed the panel on the side of the car, and got in, still eating. When he departed, I started the patrol car and drove it around to the phones, then farther, completely behind the building and out of sight.

I left the taxi running and set to work securing him. I took off his uniform jacket and put it on over my arctic coat. Sitting down, behind the wheel of his patrol car, I would look a little more authentic. Then I stripped off his trousers and split them up the crotch. Using the two separated legs, I bound his hands and feet as securely as I could. I closed the taxi door and waited there a moment, making certain I hadn't forgotten anything. The car would not be noticed back here, not until the proprietor of the station made his daily check of the premises. The cop would not freeze, for the taxi had enough power to run until tomorrow afternoon sometime, and the heater would keep him comfortable. Satisfied, I walked out front, back to the patrol car.

It was a luxurious tank, built for speed and reliability, yet not without such comforts as a small refrigerator in the dash for keeping something cold to drink, a little circular heating plate for warming cold coffee. I got down on the floor of the front seat and searched for the wires leading to the communications box to the right of the steering wheel. I found nine of them and spent twenty minutes tracing their connections before I felt confident enough to rip three of them loose. If I had examined the setup carefully enough, the communications box now lacked a visual pickup. That would make it easier to fool any central headquarters that might want to talk with the officer who should be in the patrol car.

I drew the car over to the charging posts and made certain the battery level was up to the top. When the blue light flashed, I disconnected, jumped behind the wheel and swung out of there, back onto the highway, bound for Cantwell, the park, the cabin, and Him.

For the first forty miles, I held the big car at slightly over a hundred, which was nowhere near its top speed, it being a much swifter vehicle than my auto-taxi on the trip down to Anchorage. I could have used the robot mechanism for even greater speed. The highway was eight lanes wide and equipped with auto-guide for robot vehicles. Somehow, I did not feel safe with a computer driving me in these circumstances: a fugitive running directly into the same forces he was trying to get away from. True, the computer system under the hood could have compensated for the slick roadway much more easily than I, could have maintained a speed probably in excess of fifty percent more than I now traveled. There was one drawback that bothered me enough to keep me from relinquishing the car's control. A robot vehicle is attuned to a "siren" carried on all World Authority police wagons. When said siren wails, all robot vehicles in the immediate vicinity will curb and stop, will lock so that manual control cannot be restored. On the other hand, with me driving, even that slim chance of apprehension would disappear, for I would rather kill myself than submit to an easy catch after all that I had gone through.

I was wrestling with the wheel, barreling wildly along, when the first of the WA troops from Cantwell came roaring toward Anchorage on the wild-goose chase I had initiated. There were two buses of them, robot systems hurtling them along at better than a hundred and forty miles an hour. They shot by on the other side of the medial wall and were gone in the night and the snow. From that point on, I passed another WA vehicle every minute or so. I fancied that by the time I reached Cantwell there would be little or no WA force in evidence.

Two hours later, I parked the patrol car on a backstreet in Cantwell, got out and casually strolled away. When I had turned the corner, I stripped off the uniform jacket, balled it up, and stuffed it under the snow. I found the access highway to the park, slipped into the ditch behind the snowbank alongside it and worked back, following the growing value of the fence post numbers. When I found number 878, I clambered over the fence, dropped to the other side, suddenly aware of how tense I had been. My gut relaxed now, and my body shook violently, as if flinging off the suppressed terror that had filled me. I went to the bushes where I had left the sled, uncovered it, dragged it out, and turned it on. Then I was aboard, heading back up the long slopes toward the cabin and its warmth.

Forty minutes later, I brought the sled back through the panel in the wall of the utility shed, coasted it to its parking platform, and shut it down. I was home. Safe. Still free. And with the heat momentarily reflected elsewhere. I closed the twisted shed door, stomped through the driving snow back to the front door, and went inside, stripping away my gear before I could start sweating.

When I was down to my insulated trousers and boots, I walked into the kitchen, found that He was not there. "Hey!" I shouted. "I'm back. It worked."

"Here," He said.

I followed the sound of His voice to the cellar steps. It was somehow different than it had been only six or seven hours ago, thicker, even more difficult to understand. He was halfway down the cellar steps in a painstakingly slow descent, like an elephant trying to negotiate a ladder. He almost filled the narrow stairwell from wall to wall. His head narrowly escaped brushing the ceiling.

"You've grown even more." I said.

"A little." He did not turn to look at me, but moved down another step. His weight settled, making the steps creak and groan, and His great bulk shimmered and trembled.

"Why are you going down there?" I asked.

"The beef."

"You need it already?"

"Yes," He said, taking another step.

"I could have gotten it for you. I could have brought it up in chunks."

"It's better for me to go down. It's more private here. I can change without upsetting you."

"The temperature."

"I won't mind it," He said. "I can adapt."

"But the beef is frozen."

"I can eat it that way," He said.

I stood there, trying to think of another argument. For some reason, I did not want Him to go into the cellar, to continue His changes down there. I guess I had read too many stories about cellars, about dark rooms under the house where sinister things went on.

"I have to ask you for something now," He said, interrupting my search for another argument.

"What?"

"Food," He said. "I am going to need more food, maybe even before morning."

Down another step. Creak, squeak, groan, moan of wood.

"What kind?" I asked.

"Whatever you can bring back."

"Okay." I started to turn.

"Jacob?"

"What?"

"I'm glad it worked. Thanks for the trouble."

"It's my neck as well as yours," I said.

He went down another step into the cellar