Stepsons of Terra

15.

They made the trip back to the spaceport in tight silence. Each man kept a hand atop the teetering stack on the floor of the cab; occasionally, Ewing’s eyes met those of his double, and glanced guiltily away.

Which one of us goes back? he wondered. Which one is really Baird, Ewing? And what becomes of the other?

At the spaceport, Ewing requisitioned a porter-robot and turned the stolen schematics, notes, and model over to it, to be placed aboard the ship. That done, the two men looked strangely at each other. The time had come for departure. Who left?

Ewing scratched his chin uneasily and said, “One of us has to go up to the departure desk and reconfirm his blastoff plans. The other—”

“Yes. I know.”

“How do we decide? Do we flip a coin?” Ewing wanted to know.

“One of us goes back to Laira and Blade. And it looks as if the other—”

There was no need to say it. The dilemma was insoluble. Each Ewing had firmly believed he was the only one still in the time-track, and each still partially believed that it was the other’s duty to yield.

The spaceport lights flickered dizzily. Ewing felt dryness grow in his throat. The time for decision was now. But how to decide?

“Let’s go get a drink,” he suggested.

The entrance to the refreshment booth was congested with a mob of evening travelers hoping to get a last drink down before blasting off. Ewing ordered drinks for both of them and they toasted grimly: “To Baird Ewing—whichever he may be.”

Ewing drank, but the drink did not soothe him. It seemed at that moment that the impasse might last forever, that they would remain on Earth eternally while determining which one of them was to return with Corwin’s salvation and which to remain behind. But an instant later, all that was changed.

The public address system blared: “Attention, please! Your attention! Will everyone kindly remain precisely where he is right at this moment!”

Ewing exchanged a troubled glance with his counterpart. The loud-speaker voice continued, “There is no cause for alarm. It is believed that a dangerous criminal is at large somewhere in the spaceport area. He may be armed. He is six feet two inches in height, with reddish-brown hair, dark eyes, and out-of-fashion clothing. Please remain precisely where you are at this moment while peace officers circulate among you. Have your identification papers ready to be examined on request. That is all.”

A burst of conversation greeted the announcement. The two Ewings huddled into the comer of the room and stared in anguish at each other.

“Someone turned us in,” Ewing said. “Myreck, perhaps. Or the man you burgled. Probably Myreck.”

“It doesn’t matter who turned us in,” the other snapped. “AH that matters is the fact that they’ll be coming around to investigate soon. And when they find two men answering to the description—”

“Myreck must have warned them there were two of us.”

“No. He’d never do that. He doesn’t want to give away the method that brought both of us into existence, does he?” Ewing nodded. “I guess you’re right. But if they find two of us with the same identity papers—with the same identity—they’ll pull us both in. And neither of us will ever get back to Corwin.”

“Suppose they found only one of us?” the other asked. “How? We can’t circulate around the spaceport. And there’s no place to hide in here.”

“I don’t mean that. Suppose one of us voluntarily gave himself up—destroyed his identity papers first, of course, and then made an attempt to escape? In the confusion, the other of us could safely blast off for Corwin.”

Ewing’s eyes narrowed. He had been formulating just such a plan, too. “But which one of us gives himself up? We’re back to the old problem.”

“No, we’re not,” the other said. “I’ll volunteer.”

“No,” Ewing said instantly. “You can’t just volunteer! How could I agree? It’s suicide.” He shook his head. “We don’t have time to argue about it now. There’s only one way to decide.”

He fumbled in his pocket and pulled forth a shining halfcredit piece. He studied it. On one side was engraved a representation of Earth’s sun, with the nine planets orbiting it; on the other, an ornamental 50.

“I’m going to flip it,” he said. “Solar system, you go; denomination, I go. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” said the other tensely.

Ewing mounted the coin on his thumbnail and flicked it upward. He snapped it out of the air with a rapid gesture and slapped it down against the back of his left hand. He lifted the covering hand.

It was denomination. The stylized 50 stared up at him.

He smiled humorlessly. “I guess it’s me,” he said. He pulled his identity papers from his pocket and ripped them into shreds. Then he stared across the table at the white, drawn face of the man who was to become Baird Ewing. “So long. Good luck. And kiss Laira for me when you get back…”

Four Sirian policemen entered the bar and began to filter through the group. One remained stationed near the door; the other three circulated. Ewing rose from his seat; he felt calm now. It was not as if he were really going to die. Which is the real me, anyway? The man who died in the torture chamber, or the one who blew himself up in the energitron booth, or the man sitting back there in the corner of the bar? They’re all Baird Ewing. There’s a continuity of personality. Baird Ewing won’t die—just one of his superfluous Doppelgangers. And it has to be this way.

Icily, Ewing made his way through the startled group sitting at the tables. He was the only figure moving in the bar except for the three circulating police officers, who did not appear to have noticed him yet. He did not look back.

The stun-gun at his hip was only inches from his hand. He jerked it up suddenly and fired at the policeman mounted by the door; the man froze and toppled. The other three policemen whirled.

Ewing heard one of them, “Who are you? What are you doing there? Stand still!”

“I’m the man you’re looking for,” Ewing shouted, in a voice that could have been heard for hundreds of yards. “If you want me, come get me!”

He turned and sprinted out of the refreshment room into the long arcade.

He heard the sound of pursuers almost immediately. He clutched the stun-gun tightly, but did not fire. An energy flare splashed above his head, crumbling a section of the wall. He heard a yell from behind him: “Stop him! There’s the man! Stop himl”

As if summoned magically, five policemen appeared at the upper end of the corridor. Ewing thumbed his stunner and froze two of them; then he cut briskly to the left, passing through an automatic door and entering onto the restricted area of the spacefield itself.

A robot came gliding up to him. “May I see your pass, sir? Humans are not allowed on this portion of the field without a pass.”

In answer, Ewing tilted the stun-gun up and calcified the robot’s neural channels. It crashed heavily as its gyro-control destablized. He turned. The police were converging on him; there were dozens of them.

“You, there! Give yourself up! You can’t hope to escape!”

I know that, Ewing said silently. But I don’t want to be taken alive, either.

He wedged himself flat against a parked fueler and peppered the advancing police with stun-gun beams. They fired cautiously; there was expensive equipment on the field, and they preferred to take their man alive in any event. Ewing waited until the nearest of them was within fifty yards.

“Come get me,” he called. Turning, he began to run across the broad spacefield.

The landing apron extended for two or three miles; he ran easily, lightly, sweeping in broad circles and pausing to fire at his pursuers. He wanted to keep them at a reasonable distance until—

Yes. Now.

Darkness covered the field. Ewing glanced up to see the cause of this sudden eclipse.

A vast ship hung high overhead, descending as if operated by a pulley and string. Its jets were thundering, pouring forth flaming gas as it came down for a landing. Ewing smiled at the sight.

It’ll be quick, he thought.

He heard the yells of astonishment from the police. They were backing off as the great ship dropped toward the landing urea. Ewing ran in a wider circle, trying to compute the orbit of the descending liner.

Like falling into the sun. Hot. Quick.

He saw the place where the ship would land. He felt the sudden warmth; he was in the danger zone now. He ran inward, where the air was frying. For Corwin, he thought. For Laira. And Blade.

“The idiot! He’ll get killed!” someone screamed as if from a great distance. Eddies of flaming gas seemed to wash down over him; he heard the booming roar of the ship. Then brightness exploded all about him, and consciousness and pain departed in a microsecond.

The ship touched down.

In the terminal, the public address system blared: “Attention, please. We thank you very much for your cooperation. The criminal has been discovered and is no longer menacing society. You may resume normal activity. We thank you again for your cooperation during this investigation, and hope you have undergone no inconvenience.”

In the terminal refreshment room, Ewing stared bleakly at the two half-finished drinks on the table—his, and the dead man’s. With a sudden, brusque gesture he poured the other drink into his glass, stirred the two together, and drank the glassful down in eager gulps. He felt the stinging liquor jolt into his stomach.

What are you supposed to say and think and do, he wondered, when a man gives up his life so you can get away? Nothing. You can’t even say “Thanks.” It wouldn’t be in good taste, would it?

He had watched the whole thing from the observation window of the bar. The desperate pursuit, the fox-and-hounds chase, the exchange of shots. He had become sickly aware that a liner was overhead, fixed in its landing orbit, unable to check its fall whether there were one man or a regiment drilling on the field.

Even through the window’s protective glass, the sudden glare had stung his retinas. And throughout his life he would carry with him the image of a tiny man-shaped dot standing unafraid in the bright path of the liner, vanishing suddenly in a torrent of flame.

He rose. He felt very tired, very weary, not at all like a man free at last to return to his home, his wife, his child. His mission was approaching a successful conclusion, but he felt no sense of satisfaction. Too many had given up life or dreams to make his success possible.

He found the departure desk somehow, and pulled forth the papers that the dead man who was himself had filled out earlier in the day. “My ship’s on Blasting Area Eleven,” he told the robot. “I was originally scheduled to leave about 1700 this evening, but I requested cancellation and rescheduling.”

He waited numbly while the robot went through the proper proceedures, gave him new papers to fill out, and finally sent him on through the areaway to the departure track. Another robot met him there and conducted him to the ship.

His ship. Which might have left for Corwin five hours before, with a different pilot.

Ewing shrugged and tried to brush away the cloud of gloom. Had the ship left earlier, with the other Ewing aboard, it would have been to conclude an unsuccessful mission; the delay of five hours made an infinite difference in the general effect.

And it was foolishness to talk of a man dead. Who had died? Baird Ewing? I’m still alive, he thought. So who died?

He entered the ship and glanced around. Everything was ready for a departure. He frowned; the other Ewing had said something about having sent a message back to Corwin presumably telling them he was on his way back empty-handed. He activated the subetheric communicator and beamed a new message, advising them to disregard the one immediately preceding it, saying that a new development had come up and he was on his way back to Corwin with possible salvation.

He culled the central control tower and requested blast-off permission twelve minutes hence. That gave him ample time.

He switched on the autopilot, stripped, and lowered himself into the nutrient bath.

With quick foot-motions he set in motion the suspension mechanism. Needles jabbed his flesh; the temperature began its downward climb. A thin stream of web came from the spinnerettes above him, wrapping him in unbreakable foam that would protect him from the hazards of high-acceleration blast-off.

The drugs dulled his mind. He felt a faint chill as the temperature about him dropped below sixty. It would drop much lower than that, later, when he was asleep. He waited drowsily for sleep to overtake him.

He was only fractionally conscious when blast-off came. He barely realized that the ship had left Earth. Before acceleration ended, he was totally asleep.