This Fortress World (23 page)

I started to climb the steps. I was a fool, and I knew it, but it didn't make any difference. Even if it was a trap, I would walk into it. Even if she hated me, I had to see her again. I could never forget what she had done, but if I could see her and tell her I was sorry for what I had written and it was too bad that it had happened this way and say good-by, maybe I could forget about her, maybe the pain would go away.

I tried the door and it was unbolted, and I opened it and went in, and the dust lay thick on the floor.

"Laurie?" I said. The room echoed emptily.

I took another step into the room, and mine were the only footprints in the dust. "Laurie?" I said again, but without hope.

I walked to the bedroom door and opened it, and I looked in. The bed was unmade. Her dresses hung limply in the clothes rack. On the little table beside the bed was a five-chronor piece. I shut the door and walked to the little kitchen alcove. I opened the cooler. The stench of rotting food poured out into the room. I closed the door quickly.

I looked on the table and on the floor. I got down on my hands and knees to look under the shabby furniture, but there was nothing. Laurie was gone, and there was nothing to show when she had gone or why she had gone or where, but she hadn't taken her clothes with her. She had just walked out, taking the pebble, as if that was all she wanted and when she had it nothing else mattered.

I shut the door gently behind me and walked down the stairs and went around to the front door of the rooms below. I knocked. No one appeared. I knocked again, loudly.

Finally the door swung open, just a crack, and a woman's haggard, unfriendly face peered out. Her small, suspicious, black eyes stared at me. I waited. Suddenly the door started to close. I pressed my foot against it.

"Well?" the woman said sullenly.

"Where's Laurie?" I asked.

"Who's Laurie?"

"The girl upstairs."

"Ain't no girl upstairs."

"I know that. I want to know where she's gone."

"Don't know. Ain't seen her. Ain't seen her for a long time. Her rent's paid. That's all I know."

"I'm a friend of hers."

She cackled suddenly and stopped just as quickly. "That's what they all say." Her voice was hard. "Don't make no difference. I ain't seen her."

"Others have been here?"

"All men. All friends of hers. All kinds. She had a lot of friends. Get your foot out of the door."

"How long has she been gone?"

"Don't know. Go away."

"I'll go away when you tell me how long she's been gone."

There was a long silence. All I could see was her black eyes, slitted.

"Last time I saw her," she said finally, "was the last time you was here."

That straightened me up. The door slammed in my face. I knocked again and again, but there wasn't any sound from behind the door. Finally I gave up and walked away, slowly.

The last time I was here.
Did she know or was it only a lucky, malicious guess? It would be an easy guess, knowing Laurie and my asking for her, and it had succeeded. But somehow I thought she was telling the truth.

Laurie had gone, then, as soon as she had the pebble. That was what she had wanted, and she had taken it and left. With only the clothes she had on. But even with the pebble, she would need clothes.

Unless—the suspicion grew—unless she had been taken away.

I had to know. There was only one way to find out.

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I waited outside the alley. There was a little restaurant across the street where I ate when hunger got too great. I waited until the table by the window was empty, and I ate without looking at my food, without tasting it, so that I could watch the alley. I gave up only in the early hours of the morning, just before the dawn. I retreated then to my warehouse hiding place and tried to sleep, but I could never manage more than an uneasy hour or two. I would wake up, staring into the rustling darkness, and I would creep quickly out of my nest and walk swiftly to the alley, cursing the time I had wasted. The one I was watching for might have come and gone.

And I would wait some more, hollow-eyed and feverish. After three days, he came out. The little one with the dark face and the glittering eyes. He came out of the alley and walked away quickly. I was eating, and I dropped a coin on the table, not caring what it was, and picked up my cap, pulling it down over my forehead as I went out the door.

The Agent took a tortuous path through the city. He stopped in a shop for a moment. He went into a tavern and stayed for fifteen minutes. Once he went into a tenement. I waited and he didn't come out. I thought I had lost him. But after an hour he stepped back into the street. Once more I took up my position behind him.

A few minutes later I noticed that I was being followed.

I made a mental note to go along with "Don't overlook the obvious." This one said: "Don't underestimate the enemy." I hoped that I would have a chance to take the advice to heart. Two black Agents strolled along the street, half a block behind me, and I didn't know whether they had picked me out or whether they were trailing behind only on suspicion.

When I passed the next alley, I turned off. In three giant strides I reached the end of the narrow lane. I leaped, caught the edge of a low roof, and raised myself over the top. From the mouth of the alley to the roof had taken only a few seconds. Now I jumped again, and in another second I was on the two-story building that looked out over the street I had just left.

They marched along beneath me, casually alert, watchful, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I ran along the roof top, jumped to a lower roof, dropped to an alley that paralleled the street, and raced to the end of it. An alley opening was opposite. I crossed the street, ran down the alley, and turned into the alley that met it at right angels. Close to the street along which came the Agents, I waited in the shadows and breathed deeply.

In a moment the little dark one would appear. I would have only a few seconds to do what was necessary.

"Pssst."

The Agent hesitated, glanced back at his men, and stepped into the alley. He never saw me. Before he could move, I pinned his arms behind him, held them with one hand, and ripped the gun out of his jacket with the other.

"Don't say anything!" I whispered. "Don't move! Don't make a noise! Listen, and you won't get hurt."

He waited. I could feel the tension in his thin arms.

"Tell your master—tell Sabatini—that Dane wants to see him. Tell him to come alone to the street of taverns closest to the Slave Cathedral. Tonight. Alone. If he brings anybody else, he won't see Dane. He will wait until somebody brushes past him and says, 'Follow me.' He will follow. At the end of the trip, he will find Dane. If you understand, nod your head." He nodded.

"If Sabatini isn't there tonight, you die tomorrow. You know now how easily it can be done. Now go back to the street, and don't look behind you."

I let him go, with a shove. He stumbled, straightened, and walked quickly on the way he had been going, not turning his head. The back of his neck was an angry red. As I turned and ran down the alley I heard him shout.

Within two winding blocks, I had lost them. I waited for the night.

I watched him for almost an hour. He leaned against the corner of the building with infinite patience. It was a dark corner, but I couldn't mistake the huge nose. I studied the painted motley of the street, and there were no Agents. Nobody loitered except Sabatini. Mercenaries and freedmen came and went, and Sabatini waited. Knowing Sabatini, I sensed something wrong.

"Don't underestimate the enemy," I told myself. And it turned out to be so simple that I almost didn't think of it.

I walked around the corner and found them almost immediately. They waited in the dark to follow Sabatini when he passed them. They waited on the side streets, one on each side. I walked past one of them, and he didn't notice me. From the dark doorway, his eyes gleamed whitely toward the street. I don't think he even saw the fist that hit him. He sighed; I caught him as he collapsed.

The other one was lurking in an alley. I caught him from behind. I clubbed him down with a cobblestone against the base of his skull.

A moment later I brushed past Sabatini, my head averted. Against my shoulder I felt the gun that nestled inside his jacket. "Follow me," I whispered.

I walked on swiftly, down the street I had cleared, not looking back to see if he was following. He had made his preparations. He would follow.

I led the way toward the Cathedral. As the streets grew darker and deserted, I heard his footsteps echoing behind me when I slowed up. I turned off, down a side street, catching a glimpse of him when I turned. He was black and shadowy. It sent shivers down my back.

I waited for him halfway down the block, and he was a long time turning the corner. He was giving his men plenty of time to follow. But he wouldn't expect to see them. They would have orders to slink along in the shadows, staying well back, keeping out of sight.

And he turned, and I began walking again. I went into an alley, and I stopped in the shadows. He stopped at the black mouth, trying to peer in. But this was not the place.

"This way," I whispered.

He waited a moment longer, looking back the way he had come, unobtrusively, and I wouldn't have known what he was looking for if I hadn't seen the others.

Come, Sabatini. Don't be afraid, Sabatini. This isn't the place. You are afraid of nothing, smiling there with your cold eyes, and your desire is great. Come, Sabatini. Follow me.

I walked away, crisply, so that he could hear my footsteps, and I felt his hesitation diminish, and he followed. I swung open the dark door, and I went into the warehouse. I took ten measured paces, swung around, and watched the square of grayer darkness. It blackened. A shadow hesitated there.

"Here," I whispered, and I picked up the cords and held them in my hand. One of the cords had a knot in it. For this was the place.

Slowly, catlike, he stepped through the doorway. The shadow grew darker and less distinguishable. A part of it moved, close to the floor. There was a whisper of sound, and the door slammed, echoing through the night. I couldn't see him any more, but I knew where he was. I could sense him there in the darkness, unwilling to move because the sound would give him away, poised, waiting, his breathing almost stilled.

Gently I pulled the cord with the knot in it. Two lights sprang to life. One of them held Sabatini in a blinding glare. His gun was in his hand, ready, swinging toward the spotlight as he blinked once and slitted his eyes.

"Don't!" I whispered, because a whisper is almost without direction. "Look at the other light!"

He stopped. He stood there motionless, weighing the decision, and slowly his head turned, lifted. He saw the gun, high up in the rafters, pointed toward the spot where he stood. It was the gun I had taken from his man this morning. He saw the cord, trailing away from the trigger through the darkness. He knew what it meant.

"Don't move!" I whispered. "Drop your gun."

His face was immobile. He didn't move a muscle. But I could sense his mind churning. He dropped the gun. It clunked solidly on the floor.

"Kick it away from you."

He kicked it. It slithered into the darkness. I took one step and kicked it farther away, far into the maze of rubbish and boxes where it would never be found. But my eyes never left him, and the cord never slackened in my hand. I waited. I let him wait and wonder. He broke the silence.

"Dane?" he said softly, peering through the screen of light. "I've walked into your trap. You've got the pebble. What else do you want beside revenge?"

"Not revenge," I said, no longer whispering. "The girl."

He frowned. "Frieda? She's dead. You know that."

"Not Frieda. The dark-haired one. The one called Laurie."

"I don't know what you're talking about." His voice was louder. "I haven't got any girls."

"One. Just one. I want her, Sabatini. It's been a long time, but I want her. If you've killed her, you die here. If she's still alive, tell me where to find her, and I'll let you go."

He chuckled. It was unexpectedly loud in the echoing silence. "You always were a fool, Dane. If I had the girl, which I don't, you couldn't trust me to tell you the truth, and I couldn't trust you not to kill me when I had told you something—the truth or something else, anything to let me get away."

"I could tell," I said. It was true. "And you'll have to trust me because you haven't any choice. It's either that or death."

"It should be obvious," he said loudly, "that my inability to tell you anything, even to save my life, is the best proof that I'm telling the truth."

"If," I pointed out, "that argument isn't a subtler and more convincing lie."

"You overestimate me," he said wryly.

The discussion went on for a moment, my voice floating softly out of the darkness to Sabatini in the spot of light. When I spoke Sabatini listened too intently.

"They aren't coming," I said.

He jumped, and relaxed. "You're too clever, Dane. You always have been. From the start. You could rule a world, if you weren't so soft in the guts. We could go far together, you and I. Let's pool our knowledge, Dane. Who knows what we might do together. We might conquer the galaxy. Give me the pebble and what you know about it, and I'll tell you everything I know, and I might even be able to find the girl you want. Or if she's gone—and I swear I haven't got her and I don't know anything about her—I'll get you a dozen who'll make you forget you ever knew her."

He leaned forward eagerly. I let his words filter through my mind, and I knew he was speaking the truth. He meant what he said, but there was something else mixed up with it. And while I was trying to figure it out, he leaped, and that was it, and it was too late.

He came sailing out of the light into the darkness, a shadow swooping at me now, and I dropped the cord. I stepped to one side, smashing at him with my fist as he passed, his eyes blinded by the light while mine were better adjusted, and I knew that I would have to take care of him quickly before we were more evenly matched.