Dark of the Woods

VIII

He did feel standing there with the wind whipping his coat tightly against his legs — with the weight of their supplies on his shoulders, with his nerves still unquieted from the near disaster of the snowslide — like doing nothing heroic, like waiting for them and going with them as meekly as they could possibly desire, letting them do to him whatever they wished. But he reminded himself that such thinking was selfish and that “us” should not be ignored in a rush to consider 'the bone-aching exhaustion and the desire for rest and peace that plagued “me.” With so many miles left to go before they would reach Tooth, their chances for survival were slim. How much easier and less painful it would be to die under the guns of the Alliance soldiers than under the sapping wind and cold of Demos's winter.

Intellectually, he was aware that the death wish that now flitted about the back of his mind was a holdover from earlier days, from those dark hours in his childhood when he found rebuff from both parents and turned to his books for solace given second-hand where none of first-hand nature was obtainable. He read books of stories about the supernatural, of demons and devils, angels and spirits. In those days, it seemed as if it would be so much more bearable to be dead, to inhabit the regions of the netherworld creatures where odd and magical things transpired and where there were no great emotional tangles that made you sick deep in your stomach, no fights and scoldings that made you shake like an old man with the ague.

But he was no longer a child.

And there was solace to be had in this world, in the land of the living. If only he could keep both of them alive long enough to enjoy it and strengthen the bond of affection that joined them, he might eventually learn to stand up to adverse conditions without hesitation, without first falling back on the deathwish and the easy way out of a bad position.

“Gun forward!” he directed Proteus. “Fire one!”

The projectile struck the center Sherlock, tearing the delicate and complex machine into thousands of whirling, twisted pieces of junk. Now he had added yet another crime to his string of punishable acts on his record: willfully destroying a major piece of Alliance property. He wondered how many years that carried with it, and he felt an elation rise in him the likes of which he had not felt since he was a boy and had secretly violated one of the many rules his mother or father laid down for him.

The other two detection robots curved away to avoid the same fate, but he shouted for Proteus to track the one on the right and fire when on target. He was rewarded with a flash of green-blue light as the casing of the second Sherlock split and poured forth a long stream of mechanical guts.

He turned to look for the third of the devices, but he could not locate it. “Damn!” he snapped.

“It disappeared between the trunks of those trees, straight ahead,” she said.

“Let's go. It'll have to follow us. Maybe, if we make it move, well get a look at it.”

They struck out for the trees, moving as swiftly as the terrain and the weather permitted. Proteus floated ahead of them, watchful of the deep shadows through which they must pass. Now that the Sherlocks had been identified by Davis as enemies, the protection robot would be constantly alert until the third device had been demolished. It did not withdraw its projectile weapons barrel through its flawless shell but maintained it in firing position as it scanned the woods with all of its senses. It was more likely to have luck finding the Sherlock than it would have had finding a man under the same conditions, for the Alliance detection system would be radiating leaked power plus the traceable sensor emanations of its multiple tracking facilities. By the virtue of the very same instruments it used to keep touch of them, Proteus could keep its position known.

They entered the copse of trees and weaved between the smooth boles, following the path of some mountain deer herd which had passed this way and provided an easier thoroughfare than they had been used to in the last several hours.

“It only takes one of them, doesn't it?” Leah asked, marching along behind him, bent a little to accommodate the weight of the suitcase.

“What?” he asked, not looking back. There wasn't any time to look back now.

“One Sherlock. To let them know where we are.”

“That's right.”

“Then, no matter how fast we walk, no matter how far we go before they can get police on the mountain, they'll still have us pinpointed?”

“Proteus will find it and destroy it, eventually.”

“But until he does, shouldn't we take one of these other trails that cross this one every once and a while? If we moved in the wrong direction, and we make a few thousand feet before Proteus can destroy the Sherlock, then they will be left with the wrong fix on us as their last bit of data. As soon as the Sherlock is finished, we backtrack, pick up this path again, and go the way we really want to go.”

He stopped so suddenly that she almost walked into the back of him, and when he turned around, her face was nearly up against his chest. He kissed her nose, said, “How come you're smarter than me?”

“I'm not.”

“You've proven it a couple of times now.”

“It's just that you've never been in a war. You don't understand about things like this as well as I do. You'll learn.” She said it with such sincerity that he was forced to laugh again, though the situation certainly did not merit mirth.

“There's a cross trail just ahead,” he said. “Left or right?”

“Doesn't matter. Maybe right, since we'll be bearing just slightly to the left when we start down the other side of this mountain.”

“Let's go,” he said, leading the way, taking the right turn and striking off on the false trail. He just hoped Proteus would locate the Sherlock and destroy it in time to let them get back to the right trail and make some distance on it before the blue uniformed boys arrived.

Proteus's plasti-plasma gurgled.

It seemed an interminable time that they walked, though he knew it could not have been more than three or four minutes. But each step away from the trail they intended to regain seemed like a step into a swamp from which there was no egress — a swamp lined, beneath the brackish water, with quicksand. He even fantasized, for a moment, that the Sherlock might be quite aware of their plan and only leading them on long enough for the soldiers to arrive. But that was hogwash, for the Sherlock could not think, not even as much as Proteus. It was a densely packed shell of seeking equipment, nothing more. It was a game machine, a very clever one at that, but not a man.

Still, it would not show itself. At least, not visually. He wished there were some way he could know if Proteus had it spotted. He remembered having often pondered the simplicity of being a machine, of seeing the world in black and white, in quantities of good and bad without shades of gray in the middle. Now he realized a few other values in a machine's existence. There was no fear, no worry. No anxiety— and therefore no urgency. He wished there were some way to make Proteus aware of the value of these ticking seconds that slipped by them so terribly fast.

The projectile weapon made a whoofing noise as Proteus blasted at something almost directly ahead, through the trees. There was an explosion, light and smoke, then silence.

“He got it!” Leah cried.

“Let's see before we celebrate,” he said, rushing forward to the spot where the projectile had struck. There, steaming in the snow, melting hollows in it, were dozens of chunks of the blue-husked Sherlock.

Leah dropped the suitcase and slapped her hands against her bulkily clothed hips, laughing much as he had seen the other Demosian girls laughing when, they had been playing games with the mythical demons in the forest back at the Sanctuary. He was intrigued by the way these people could mix joy and humor with the direst of events, the manner in which they never lost track of the things that should be appreciated in life no matter how many tons of dross and ugliness those nuggets were buried under.

“Fast now,” he urged, turning and pushing past her to lead the way back to the other trail. “They'll be here in moments if they've taken a chance of sending a copter up in this storm.”

They gained the first herd path in two minutes, moving at a trot. When they got there, he insisted taking the suitcase from her was the wisest course, since — for a short period anyway — he could run faster with it than she could and, without it, she would be able to keep up. She did not argue this time, perfectly aware of the urgency involved and the truth of it. She was, just as she said, a good soldier. Had it been better for her to straggle with the luggage, she would have refused; but seeing the wisdom of his suggestion, she complied.

Time passed much too quickly for comfort.

There was no sound but the wind, the rattling of the branches overhead, and the squeak of their feet in the snow.

He estimated their remaining time before the arrival of the troops at a little more than five minutes. He tried counting seconds as they ran, but he lost track so often that he gave it up and concentrated on moving just a few feet per minute faster than they already were.

For a time, it seemed as if they were the only living beings in all the world, two figures in a landscape without purpose and without meaning. All other things were inanimate: cold, snow, sky, earth, stark trees, strangely stilled wind…

It was a tomb planet, a dead world, and they were rodents scurrying through its corridors and chambers in search of some exit that would lead them into life.

The thing which made them run so fast was the knowledge that they might soon cease to be rodents and become two more corpses to inhabit the cells of the tomb.

Then, with the swiftness of a sleepwalker stepping on a nail, the world came awake with a thundering explosion of sound. The sky was filled with the chatter of the blades of an aircraft whose flight pattern was too high for grav plates to be of any use — a staccato barrage like machine guns from some ancient period of man's history. The forest took up the sharp call and threw the clatter of the big engines back at the low clouds.

“Hurry,” Davis said as they reached the edge of the mountain flatland and began to descend another treacherous slope toward the long bowl of the valley through which they would be walking for the next four or five hours, if Leah was not confused about the way to the Tooth.

“Let me have the suitcase,” she said.

“Never mind that.”

“You can't brace yourself with two rucksacks and the suitcase on uneven ground. You know that as well as I do. Now quit arguing and hurry it!”

He set the case down without stopping, merely slowing his pace for a moment, heard her grapple with it, heft it and bring it after him. He worked from tree to tree down the sheet-white land beneath the bare trees, his eyes on the skies that could be seen through the Crosshatch of limbs more often than they were focused on the terrain ahead. She followed.

When they were halfway down, the police copter rushed by overhead, oblivious of them as it sped toward the spot the Sherlock had last pinpointed them. Under its belly was the “A” of the Alliance, ringed with the circle of green worlds that was the government symbol. Then it was gone, and its hoarse voice diminished as it put distance between itself and the very fugitives it was seeking.

“How long until they know?” she asked when they reached the floor of the valley.

“Not long.”

“I thought so.”

“Well,” he said, “we're on the level for a good while. We can make time easy enough.”

“But if they discover we've struck for the valley and decide we're still in it, it'll be no trouble for them to pen us in and use a search party to net us from all sides.”

He leaned against a jutting tower of granite which was encased in ice, took some snow in his mouth and allowed it to melt before swallowing. “That's true enough. But this is the only route, isn't it?”

“The only one we could possibly stand up to.”

“We could give up the fortress idea.”

“And go where?”

He shrugged.

“You take the suitcase a while,” she said. “We're on the level again, and it won't be too hard for you. My arms ache.”

He took the luggage without comment, turned back to the trail and started forward at a very brisk walk. Several hours away, at the other end of the lowland, he could see the pass through which they must go to eventually reach Tooth and the fortress — if there was a fortress. If the Alliance had been too sure of itself to send more Sherlocks along with those police, then he and Leah might make that pass and, perhaps, even Tooth Mountain. If the government was, on the other hand, hedging all corners of their bet, this was the place in which both of them would die…

He found a stream, a seven-foot-wide span of water which was mostly frozen over by a thin crust of ice. It was almost certain that the stream ran down the center of the valley, from one end to another, following a fairly straight line, and it would therefore provide the shortest route to the pass. He paralleled it religiously, walking on its banks most of the time, except for one stretch where it cut deeper into the land and formed small cliffs to either side where thick, thorny brambles grew — their bite unsoothed by the white garb of winter they wore.

They were more than halfway across the depression, within an hour or so of the pass, when Leah grabbed his arm and yanked on it for him to stop. When he turned, she held a finger to her lips and said: “Listen.”

At first, all he could hear was the rush of air in and out of his own lungs and the roar of blood through his temples. Then the thing she wanted him to hear impressed itself above these sounds: a chattering — like copter blades. He tilted his head, searched the air for another piece of the noise, caught it again, closer this time. It was coming fast…

“Quick!” he gasped, grabbing her and pulling her backwards, off the bare earth along the banks of the stream, into the trees and brush.

“The suitcase!” she said.

He had set it down when she stopped him and had forgotten to bring it into concealment with them. It stood on the bank, looking a dozen times larger than it really was, a monument to his stupidity.

He looked anxiously at the gray sky, the falling snow, back the way they had come. There was no sign of the copter, though the noise of its engines and the roar of its blades grew closer and closer. He stood, took a step toward the suitcase, and caught sight of the aircraft coming across the tops of the trees five hundred yards away!

He fell, crashing into the brush, pressing desperately down into the shadows there. He felt thorns prick through his gloves, gouge his cheeks. There was a warm flush on his face, and he knew that he was bleeding a little. That didn't bother him as it once would have. He was no longer thinking about the handsome image he must present to fans. He was thinking, instead, about winning this hard-played game to salvage his life. And hers. His survival instinct had always worked well on an intellectual level, for he had been able to save his sanity from his parents even as a child. But now, in this last day, that instinct was functioning on a physical plane as well; and he was pleased enough of that development to feel a surge of pride and delight as the Alliance copter swept overhead without slowing, without spotting the suitcase.

“Are you all right?” Leah asked.

He got to his knees, pulled a thorn from the edge of his lip, wiped his face, looked at his blood-smeared hand. “It looks worse than it is. I was just lucky not to collect one in the eye.”

“What are they doing?”

He looked to the pass, saw the Alliance copter taking up position at the way between the mountains. Directly beneath the place where it hovered, the ribbon of this stream tumbled down over gray rocks.

“They know we're in the valley,” he said. “They're waiting for us to come out.”

“Then they must have police coming in at the other end.”

He looked back the way they had come, listened. He thought he detected the sound of a second copter, somewhere back along the stream. “Let's go.”

“Where?”

“Through the pass. Maybe we can find some way to sneak past the copter.”

“They'll have men on the ground at that end, won't they?”

“Maybe. But we can't just sit here and wait. And it's easier to go ahead than to double back and try to slip through the search line. They're bound to have hand tracking units, heat sensors. Maybe not anything nearly as sophisticated as Sherlocks, but something good enough to keep us from passing them unnoticed.”

“I'll take the suitcase a while,” she said, pushing past him, through the brush, and grabbing the supplies.

“Maybe we should leave it here.”

“And let them find it so they know we're running scared.”

“They must know that already.”

“And so they're certain we haven't left the valley yet?”

“And they must know that too.”

“I'll carry it anyway,” she said. “Break a trail.”

He moved off, staying beneath the trees now, though maintaining their proximity to the stream so that there was no danger of their getting lost. He kept them out of sight of the copter dancing on the air at the end of the valley, though they caught glimpses of it now and then when they were forced to dash across an open stretch of land where they felt painfully unprotected in the white spotlessness of the virgin snow.

The light was slowly beginning to leave the sky when they were near to the end of the valley. For the last half hour, the land had sloped upward, growing steeper and steeper, and their spirits had lifted with it. There had been no encounter with the searchers and, except for the area of the stream itself, the pass was thickly treed, providing heavy cover for them to slip through the net of their captors, A thousand feet from the brink of the valley and a reprieve from the from the pressure the Alliance had put on them, Davis called a halt so that they might gather energies for the last leg of the assault and so that he could reconnoiter to see if things were going to be as simple as they seemed.

They were not.

He had left Leah and gone only a third of the way up the slope, slipping quietly from tree to tree, when he saw the sentries stationed only a dozen feet down from the top of the ridge. They were stooped so that they could not be silhouetted against the sky, and each of them cradled a rifle across his knees. They peered intently downward, and he realized that, if the valley had not been slightly darker than the top of the ridge in these last minutes of daylight, they would be able to see him as he now saw them. They were no more than five feet apart. If that spacing had been maintained across the entire width of the pass, there must be a hundred and fifty men in the line. Which meant there had been other helicopters involved in the operation and that the men had been brought up from the other side of the pass. It seemed as if the entire mountain range had been blanketed by the Alliance. It pleased him to know that they considered the two of them important game. But he supposed any totalitarian government must go to great extremes to punish each and every violator of its dictums, lest one man who escapes their wrath becomes a symbol of rebellion for the masses.

Carefully, so as to make not the slightest sound or present even the slightest movement to the sentries, he worked his way back through the brush and the snow to Leah. He noticed, as he moved, that the wind had picked up, even though the snow had stopped, and that the disturbances he caused in the landscape were fairly swiftly eradicated by the brisk air.

“Well?” she said when he returned.

“We can't get through.”

“I have bad news too,” she said.

“What?”

“See that clearing half a mile down in the valley?”

He nodded.

“A moment ago, a line of searchers moved through it, each only a few feet away from the other. They must have been in the woods to either side of the clearing with the same distance between them. Every other man carried a short-range heat sensor and was fanning it in front of him.”

He looked at the now empty clearing in the fading light below. “They'll be here in half an hour.”

“Less. They were walking rather fast.”