Exiled from Earth

3

With mounting anger, Lou asked a thousand questions as the marshal took him from the Institute in a black, unmarked turbocar. The marshal answered none of them, replying only:

“My orders are to bring you in. You’ll find out what it’s all about soon enough.”

They drove to a small private airfield as the fat red sun dipped toward the desert horizon. A sleek, twin-engined jet was waiting.

“Now wait a minute!” Lou shouted as the car pulled up beside the plane. “I know my rights. You can’t…”

But the marshal wasn’t listening to any arguments. He slid out from behind the steering wheel of the car and gestured impatiently toward the jet. Lou got out of the car and looked around. In the lengthening shadows of late afternoon, the airfield seemed deserted. There must be somebody in the control tower. But Lou could see no one around the plane, or the hangars, or the smaller planes lined UD neatly on the edge of the taxi apron.

“This is crazy,” he said.

The marshal hitched a thumb toward the jet again. Shrugging, Lou walked to the open hatch and climbed in. No one else was aboard the plane. The four plush seats in the passenger compartment were empty. The flight deck was closed off from view. As soon as the marshal locked the main hatch and they were both strapped into their seats, the jet engines whined to life and the plane took off.

They flew so high that the sun climbed well back into the afternoon sky. Lou watched the jet’s wings slide back for supersonic flight, and then they arrowed eastward with the red sun casting long shadows on the ground, far below. The marshal seemed to be sleeping, so Lou had nothing to do but watch the country slide beneath the plane. They crossed the Rockies, so far below them that they looked more like wrinkles than real mountains. The Mississippi was a tortured gray snake weaving from horizon to horizon. Still the plane streaked on, fast enough to race the sunset.

The sun was still slightly above the horizon when the plane touched down at JFK jetport. Lou had been there once before and recognized it from the air. But their jet taxied to a far corner of the sprawling field, and stopped in front of a waiting helicopter.

The marshal was awake now, and giving orders again. Lou glared at him, but followed his directions. They went out of the jet, across a few meters of cracked grass-invaded cement, and up into the plastic bubble of the copter. Lou sat down on the back bench behind the empty pilot’s seat. The marshal climbed in heavily and sat beside him, wheezing slightly.

Over the whir of the whizzing rotors and the nasal hum of the electric motor, Lou shouted:

“Just where are you taking me? What’s this all about?”

The marshal shook his head, slammed the canopy hatch shut, and reached between the two front seats to punch a button on the control panel. The motor hummed louder and the copter jerked up off the ground.

By the time the helicopter flashed over the skyline of Manhattan, Lou was furious.

“Why won’t you tell me anything?” he shouted at the marshal, sitting beside him on the back bench. He was leaning back with his burly arms folded across his chest and his sleepy eyes half closed.

“Listen, kid, the phone woke me up at four this morning. I had to race out to the jetport and fly to Albuquerque. I spent half the day waiting for you at that silly glider race. Then I drove to your apartment, and you didn’t show up there. Then I went to your lab. Know what my wife and kids are doing right now? They’re sitting home, wondering whether I’m dead or alive and why we’re not all out on the picnic we planned. Know how many picnics we can afford, on a marshal’s pay? Been planning this one all year—had a spot in the upstate park reserved months ago. Now it’s going to waste while I hotfoot all across the country after you. So don’t ask questions, understand?”

Then he added, “Besides, I don’t know what it’s all about. I just got the word to pick up you up, that’s all.”

In a softer voice, Lou said, “Well, look… I’m sorry about your picnic. I didn’t know— Never had a Federal marshal after me before. But why can’t I call anybody? My friends’ll be worried about me. My girl…”

“I told you, don’t ask questions.” The marshal closed his eyes altogether.

Lou frowned. He started to ask where they were going, then thought better of it. The copter was circling over the East River now, close to the old United Nations buildings. It started to descend toward a landing pad next to the tall graceful tower of marble and glass. In the last, blood-red light of the dying sun, Lou could see that the buildings were stained by nearly a century of soot and grime. The windows were caked with dirt, the once-beautiful marble was cracked and patched.

Two men were standing down on the landing pad, off to one side, away from the downwash of the rotors. As soon as the copter’s wheels touched the blacktop, the cabin hatch popped open.

“Out you go,” said the marshal.

Lou jumped out lightly. The marshal reached over and yanked the door shut before Lou could turn around. The copter’s motor whined, and off it lifted in a spray of dust and grit. Lou pulled his head down and squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, the copter was speeding down the river.

Sun’s down now, Lou thought. He’ll never make it in time for his picnic.

The two men were walking briskly toward Lou, their shoes scuffing the blacktop. One of them was small and slim, Latin-looking. Probably Puerto Rican. The breeze from the river flicked at his black hair. The other somehow looked like a foreigner. His suit wasn’t exactly odd, but it didn’t look exactly right, either. He was big, blond, Nordic-looking.

“Please come with us,” said the Norseman. And sure enough, he had the flat twang of a Scandinavian accent. “It is my duty to inform you that we are both armed, and escape is impossible.”

“Escape from what?” Lou started to feel exasperated again.

“Please,” said the Puerto Rican softly. “It is getting dark. We should not remain outside any longer. This way, please.”

Well, they’re polite enough, at least.

Inside, the UN building looked a little better. The corridor they walked down was clean, at least. But the carpeting was threadbare and faded with a century’s worth of footsteps. They took a spacious elevator car, paneled with peeling wood, up a dozen floors. Then another corridor, and finally into a small room.

“Dr. Kirby!”

Sitting on a sofa at the other side of the little room was Dr. John Kirby of Columbia-Brookhaven University. He was in his mid-fifties—white-haired, nervously thin, pinched face with a bent out-thrust nose that gave him the title “Hawk” behind his back.

“I’m sorry,” Kirby said. “I don’t seem to recall…”

“Louis Christopher,” said Lou, as his two escorts shut the door and left him alone with Dr. Kirby. “We met at the Colorado conference last spring, remember?”

Kirby made a vague gesture with his hands. “There are always so many people at these conferences—”

Lou sat on the sofa beside him. “I gave a paper oh computer modeling for forecasting genetic adjustments. You had a question from the floor about the accuracy of the forecasts. Afterward we had lunch together.”

“Oh yes. The computer fellow. You’re not a geneticist.” Kirby’s eyes still didn’t seem to really recognize Lou.

“Do you have any idea of what this is all about?” Lou asked.

Kirby shook his head. He seemed dazed, out of it. Lou looked around the room. It was comfortable enough: a sofa, two deep contour chairs, a bookshelf full of tape spools, a viewscreen set into the wall. No windows, though. Lou got up and went to the door. Locked.

Turning back to Kirby, he saw that the old man’s face was sunk in his hands. Did they drug him?

“Are you okay?” Lou asked.

“What… oh, yes… I’m all right. Merely… well, frankly, I’m frightened.”

“Of what?”

Kirby fluttered his hands again. “I… I don’t know. I don’t know why we’re here, or what they want to do with us. That’s what frightens me. They won’t let me call my wife or even a lawyer—”

Lou paced the room in a few strides. “They grabbed me at the Institute. They wouldn’t let me call anybody, either. Nobody knows I’m here.” Back to the door he paced. “Why are they doing this? What have we done? What’s it all about?”

Abruptly the door opened. The same two men stood in the corridor. “You will come with us, please.”

Kirby started to stand up. But Lou said, “No I won’t. Not until you tell us what this is all about. You can’t arrest us and push us around like this. I want to talk…”

The Norseman pulled a needle-thin gun from his tunic. It was so small that his hand hid all of it except the slim barrel. But the muzzle looked as big as a cannon to Lou, because it was pointed straight at him.

“Please, Mr. Christopher. We have no desire to use force. You are not technically under arrest, therefore you have no need for a lawyer. However, you are wanted for questioning at government headquarters in Messina. It would be best if you cooperate.”

“Messina? In Sicily?”

The blond nodded.

“But… my family,” Kirby said in a shaky voice.

“They have been informed,” said the Puerto Rican. “No harm will come if you cooperate with us.”

With a shrug, Lou headed into the corridor. The Norseman tucked his gun back inside his tunic. The four of them walked slowly down toward the elevator, their footsteps clicking on the bare plastic floors and echoing off the walls. When they got to the elevator, the Puerto Rican touched the DOWN button and instantly the elevator doors slid open.

This building’s empty except for us! Lou realized.

He stepped into the elevator, then whirled, grabbed the Puerto Rican and hurled him into the Norseman. They went down in a tangle of arms and legs, shouting. Lou punched the DOOR CLOSE button and yelled to Kirby:

“Come on!”

Kirby stood frozen, his jaw hanging open, as the doors started to slide shut. The Norseman was still on the floor, but he had pushed the Puerto Rican off and was reaching for his gun. The doors shut. Lou pushed the GROUND button and the elevator started down. He could hear somebody pounding on the metal doors at the floor above.

On the ground floor he tried to retrace his steps back to the corridor landing pad outside. He got lost in the corridors, finally saw an EXIT sign, and banged through the doors. It was full night outside, dark and damp-cool, with the ripe acrid smell of the garbage-choked river a sudden shock to Lou’s senses. The city was almost completely dark; only a few lights shone, mostly high up in skyscrapers where people had their own power generators and had barricaded themselves in for the night.

He heard footsteps and flattened himself into the deeper shadows along the wall.

“Shall we turn the lights on?” The Norseman’s voice.

“And attract every gang of pack rats on the East Side?” the Puerto Rican answered. “You don’t know this city very well. He’ll never live out the night alone. Either he’ll come begging at our doors inside an hour, or he’ll be dead. No one can get through a night on these streets alone.”

“My orders are to bring them to Messina unharmed,” said the Norseman.

“You want to search for him? Out there? You’ll be killed, too.”

They said no more. Lou could sense the Norseman shaking his head, not satisfied, but not willing to risk his own skin against the city streets. Lou heard a door click shut. He slid along the wall carefully and found the door he had come through. It was locked from the inside.

He turned away and looked at the city again with new understanding. He was alone in the city.

And the night had just begun.