Exiled from Earth

6

Lou stared at Felix, who merely chuckled to himself and said no more. Then the towers and hangars of JFK became visible in the predawn glow. Felix pulled the car off the highway and onto an access road.

“What’s the matter?” Lou asked.

“Better get ourselves prettied up if we expect to get past the gates at the jetport.”

They pulled into the parking lot of an automated, all-night shopping center. Felix woke up Zonk and the three of them walked to the shoppers’ mall. Lou’s foot was throbbing painfully.

The mall doors were locked, but there was a tiny security unit set into the wall beside them. Lou told his credit number to the receiver grille and let the camera photograph him.

“This credit number is from Albuquerque, New Mexico,” said the shopping center computer, impassively. “It will require several moments to check it.”

Felix said, “We’ll wait.”

“If the police are really looking for me,” Lou worried out loud, “they’ll have my credit number and picture pulled from the file and …”

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” the computer said without a trace of regret. “Your credit check is complete. You may enter and purchase whatever you wish, up to a limit of ten thousand dollars.”

Felix beamed. “Just what I’ve always wanted… a friend with a good credit rating.”

The mall and shops were deserted. Felix waved Zonk off to a men’s clothing store and, with his hand firmly on Lou’s arm, headed for a drugstore.

“You’re really limping. Need that foot taken care of.”

“Back in the car,” Lou said as they walked through the open doorway of the drugstore, “what’d you mean… about me talking my way out of being killed?”

Felix laughed again. “Oh that. Well… you’re lucky, but not the way you think. Never wonder why the Top Cats are being led by a guy my age? I’m over thirty, you know.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sit down here,” Felix said, “while I get some stuff for that foot.”

Lou sat in the plastic chair and found himself facing a dispenser-wall of medical supplies. Felix walked slowly down the wall, finding what he wanted in the display windows and touching the buttons that sent the goods down into the receiving bin. He came back to Lou’s chair with his hands full of antibiotic sprays and plastic spray bandages.

“Listen,” he said as he squirted a disinfectant over Lou’s blood-crusted foot, “I’m a teacher. Work for the office of Rehabilitation. Trying to hammer some sense into these kids. Only way to do it is to join them, lead them, try to bring them around slowly. I been in there, in the city, for more than a year now. Got them to set up boundaries between turfs. Trying to get them to think of more than sex and wars. I figure it’ll take another ten to twelve years before they start acting as civilized as Stone Age tribes.”

“They don’t know…”

Felix laughed. “Shoot, man, if they knew, I’d be just as dead as you ought to be!” Then his face went grim. “Some of the other teachers have been found out. What happened to them isn’t pretty.”

“But why do you do it?”

Shrugging, “How should I know? Can’t just leave the kids in there by themselves. Too many generations have done that. Every year they get worse off and worse off until they’re where they are now. Somebody’s got to help them. We owe them something. They didn’t turn into savages by themselves. They were pushed. And unless somebody starts pushing from the other direction, those kids are going to keep on killing, keep on dying.”

Lou said, “It’ll take a hundred years before kids like that become civilized.”

“So we’ll work a hundred years,” Felix snapped. “Took more than a hundred years to let the cities fall apart like this. It’s worth a century to rebuild them. Because if we don’t—if we let those kids keep breeding and festering like they’ve been for the past century—pretty soon they’re going to burst out of the cities and overrun everything. The Mongol hordes will seem like a Chinese tea party compared to what they’ll do.”

Lou shuddered.

“But it’s more than that,” Felix went on. “Those kids deserve a chance. They never asked to be born into that jungle. They never got a chance for anything better. And they’ll never know anything better unless some of us get off our rumps and try to help ’em. Those kids are the future, y’know. What good’s all our high and mighty civilization if we lose those kids? What use is all this technology and science if we’re breeding cavemen in the cores of the cities? If we can’t help those kids make their own future better, we don’t have much to look forward to, I can tell you that.”

“You ought to be a Congressman, or a minister,” Lou said.

Felix laughed.

“And all that talk about killing me—”

“Oh, that was real all right,” he said. “I was trying to figure out some way to get your white hide out of there. But I wasn’t coming up with any answers. Looked like I was going to let them take you out—”

“You’d’ve let them?”

Another shrug. “Couldn’t figure out what else to do, until you started talking tough. Gave me the out I needed.”

“Well… thanks, I guess.”

“Don’t mention it,” Felix replied, grinning.

Within half an hour, Lou was walking with hardly a limp. He showered, shaved, and put on a disposable summer suit and loafers that he picked out at the clothing store. Felix and Zonk had outfitted themselves, too. Felix went in for grander tastes, complete with cape and boots. Zonk leaned toward electric colors and the latest, form-fitted, sprayed-on styles.

“You look almost decent,” Felix said to Lou. “Mouth’s still swollen and you’ve got a nice blue lump coming along over your eye. But you’ll be okay.” •

Felix drove them through the main gates of JFK just as the sun showed itself over the distant skyline. The white-helmeted security guards at the gates eyed the battered old car, but let it pass. Up the sweeping ramp of the once-grand terminal building they went, with Felix steering carefully to avoid potholes.

He stopped in front of the terminal and Lou got out, then ducked his head back in and put his hand in Felix’s huge paw. “Thanks. For everything. And good luck.”

“Nothing to it,” Felix said, grinning. “Hope you make out okay.” Then he turned to Zonk and said, “C’mon up front. Le’see what jet planes look like up close.”

The clattering car drove off. Lou stood there for a moment in the growing light of dawn watching them disappear down the other side of the ramp. Then he turned and went inside the decaying terminal.

The first flight that connected with Albuquerque wasn’t until seven. An hour to wait. His insides fluttering from hunger as much as nerves, Lou went to the autocafeteria and had powdered eggs, reconstituted milk, and a man-made slice of something called protosteak. It tasted like plastic.

No one stopped him or even noticed him as he went to the flight departure lounge, verified his ticket on the jet, went aboard, and took his seat. The plane was ten minutes late getting away from the terminal, and Lou expected each second to see the same Federal marshal come up the aisle and clap a hand on his shoulder.

But finally they were airborne. As soon as Lou heard the wheels pull up, he fell asleep.

He woke up with a start when the flaps and wheels went down again. Out the window he could see the familiar flat greenery of the New Mexico irrigated farmlands. Off in the distance, Sandia Peak stuck its rocky brown mass up in the sky.

I wonder if Bonnie’s home. Maybe she never left for Charleston. Then another thought hit him. What if they’re waiting for me when I get off the plane?

The plane landed and taxied up to the terminal. Lou put himself in the middle of the ninety-some people who were getting off and tried to look invisible in the crowd. He stayed in the crowd until he was well into the terminal, then headed straight for the exit, looking over his shoulder a few times to see if anyone was following him. No one. Outside in the blazing sunlight, he wondered if his car was still in the parking lot. Better leave it alone. He waved for a cab, and-one pulled away from its parking stall and glided to the curb where he stood.

Inside, after he firmly shut the cab door, Lou told the autodriver, “Genetics Institute.”

If Bonnie wasn’t picked up by the police, she’ll be at the lab. And Dr. Kaufman and the others… they’ll help me.

The cab drove out away from the city, into the farmlands, along one of the main irrigation lines. For the thousandth time, Lou tried to puzzle out why the police wanted him. The Federal marshal said he was under arrest. The Norseman at the UN building said he wasn’t. But they were going to take him to Messina. Why? Better check with Greg at the Institute and see if he knows a good lawyer.

Finally, Lou could see the familiar white buildings of the Institute. Almost immediately, he could tell that something was wrong.

The place looked deserted. The parking lot was empty. Nobody was walking around outside. Nobody was visible in the big glass-fronted lobby. And as the cab pulled up to the outer fence, the gate did not slide open automatically.

Lou looked at his wristwatch. It was still on Albuquerque time; he hadn’t changed it. It said nine-thirty.

Why is it… wait a minute! What day is it? Sunday or Monday? I took off… it must be Sunday, got to be.

He thumbed the window button down and felt the heat of the outdoors invade the cab. To the gate control box he said, “Code one-five, Christopher. Open up.”

The gate rattled open. The cab drove smoothly up to the lobby door. Just to be safe, Lou gave a phony name and credit number to the cab’s simple-minded computer. It had no camera equipment and therefore no way to check on who its passenger really was.

As the cab drove away, Lou stood squinting in the brilliant sunshine. For a moment, a flash of fear knifed through him.

Even for a Sunday the Institute seemed utterly deserted. Usually there was somebody around.

“Well,” he said to himself in a deliberately loud, firm voice, “I can hide out here until some of the staff shows up tomorrow. Or maybe I’ll call Greg or one of the other guys—”

The main doors into the lobby were locked also, but Lou’s name and code symbol were enough to open them. He stepped into the quiet, cool darkness of the lobby; the sun’s glare was screened out by the polarized windows. He hesitated a moment, then walked through the open doorway and into the building’s main corridor. His footsteps against the plastic flooring and the whisper of the air conditioning were the only sounds he could hear.

First thing to do is call Bonnie, he thought, find out if she’s okay.

His own office was down at the end of the corridor, next to Ramo, the big computer. Suddenly Lou realized, Not even Ramo’s making any noise! Usually, the computer was humming and chattering electronically; it was almost always working on something, even on weekends and late at night.

Lou looked through the glass partition that surrounded Ramo. The computer was silent. No lights flashing on its main board.

“Ramo, you awake?” Lou called.

From a speaker in the ceiling overhead came Ramo’s baritone voice. “Yes, Lou. I’m fine. What can I do for you?” A single row of lights on the main board flickered to life.

Lou breathed a relieved sigh. “You were so quiet I thought somebody had shut you down.”

“All programs are completed at present.” Ramo answered.

“All programs? What about the zygote modeling calculations?”

“That program was temporarily shut down by Dr. Kaufman.”

“Shut down? Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Lou stood there watching the flickering row of lights, uncertain, feeling something like panic forming in the pit of his stomach. He fought it down. “Okay… uh, get Bonnie Sterne on the phone for me, will you? Her home phone.”

“Shall I place the call on your office phone?” Ramo asked.

“No… I’ll be in the cafeteria. Anybody been in today?”

“No one. Except for Big George, of course.”

Shaking his head in puzzlement, Lou went back up the corridor and turned down a side hall to the cafeteria. His head was throbbing with pain, and despite his nap on the plane he felt dead tired. And hungry.

Lou was surprised to see Big George sitting in the cafeteria, eating a huge plate of fruit salad.

Big George was an eight-year-old mountain gorilla, taller than Lou, even in his hunched-over, ground-knuckling posture. No one had weighed him for several months, since he playfully ripped the big scales they had used out of the wall of his special quarters. His face was all ferocity—fanged mouth, low beetling brow, black muzzle, and blacker hair. His arms could reach across the table without his ever getting up from the chair he was sitting on. The plastic chair itself was sagging dangerously under his weight. It was hard to believe that Big George was a gentle, even a timid, animal.

“Who let you in here?” Lou asked from the doorway.

“Let myself in. Uncle Lou,” George whispered. “Got hungry. Nobody here to feed me. Opened the pen gate and came in for food.”

Lou went over to the selector wall and punched buttons for a real steak dinner. “You mean nobody’s been around to feed you since yesterday?”

“Nobody, Uncle Lou.” George stuffed half a cantaloupe into his toothy mouth. Big George was one of the Institute’s great successes. The geneticists had managed to give the gorilla a large measure of intelligence. George tested out to the intelligence level of a human six-year-old. It seemed that he would not go any further. The surgical team that worked with the Institute had altered George’s vocal equipment so that he could speak in a harsh, labored whisper. It was the best they could do.

Lou carried his steaming tray to the end of the table where George was sitting. He was glad of some companionship, but it was best to give George plenty of room. Not that he was dangerous—just sloppy.

Looking up at the ceiling, Lou called, “Hey, where’s that phone call, Ramo?”

“There is no answer,” came the smooth reply.

“She’s not home?”

“Evidently not,” said Ramo.

“What’s her phone say?”

“Nothing. No reply whatsoever. No forwarding number, no request to leave a message.”

Lou stared down at his steak. Suddenly he wasn’t hungry anymore.

“Ramo!” he shouted. “Where is everybody?”

“All of the scientific staff has been taken into custody by Federal marshals,” Ramo said calmly. “Everyone else has been sent home.”

Before it could really register on Lou’s mind, George growled, “Somebody coming in the hallway, Uncle Lou. Strangers.”

“Federal marshals,” Ramo said. “I was programmed to call them when you returned to the Institute.”