Night Walk

eleven

Tallon lay on the bed, in utter blackness, listening to night sounds and waiting for Amanda Weisner to come for him.

Beside him on the scented silks his dog, Seymour, snuffled and growled in his sleep, stirring slightly from time to time. Tallon stroked the terrier’s rough hair, feeling the warmth in the compact little body, and was glad he had insisted on having the dog in spite of Amanda’s objections. He reached for his cigarettes, then changed his mind. There was something unsatisfactory about a cigarette unless he could actually see the smoke and the tiny red ash. He could have wakened Seymour to borrow his eyes, but that seemed inconsiderate.

Apart from Seymour’s feelings, there were practical reasons for not using the eyeset at night. The original suggestion had been Amanda’s, but he had decided to go along with it because it meant a reduced demand on the power pack. Twice during his first week at The Persian Cat there had been momentary grayouts similar to the one that had occurred when he hit his head on the train. There had been no more since he had begun resting the eyeset, so he considered the nightly return to blindness worth the inconvenience.

He heard the rear door of the restaurant downstairs open and close again. That meant Amanda was putting the cats out for the night and would soon be coming to bed.

Their bed. Tallon clenched his fist and pressed the knuckles hard against his teeth.

When he’d seen the pistol that first day he thought his luck was gone; then when he learned Amanda was not going to turn him over to the E.L.S.P. he decided it was back again. After he got to know Amanda better he realized he had been right the first time.

She had square-jawed good looks, in which a slight masculinity was accentuated by cropped dark hair and heavy spectacles. Her body had a snaky, economical beauty, but it was Amanda Weisner’s mind that fascinated Tallon. Although there had been frequent sexual encounters during that first week, he sensed these were unimportant to her. Mentally, however, she had devoured him.

The question and answer sessions went on for hours, covering every detail of his previous career, his life in the Pavilion, the escape. Her memory was extremely good, seemingly capable of filing and cross-indexing each fact, so that sooner or later every lie and honest error in his answers was uncovered and pinned down.

Tallon could not understand what was driving her; he only knew as they lay together talking far into the night that he was once more in a prison.

She never actually threatened him with the police, not in so many words, but she left no doubt as to his position. In two weeks he had not been outside the restaurant once, nor even beyond the door of Amanda’s flat. Seymour was the only concession Tallon had won, and that only at the end of a major clash of wills. She had offered him one of her eight cats to use as eyes, and had smiled whitely when he said he hated cats.

“I know you do, Sam,” she said caressingly. “How do you think I noticed you so quickly when you came into the restaurant? I don’t know who was the most on edge that day — you or Ethel. Cat people aren’t so easily fooled.”

“You mean,” Tallon muttered, “it takes one to spot one.”

Amanda had given him a cold, level stare at that, and when she finally brought him the wire-haired terrier she hinted she could not be responsible for its safety in the presence of her cats. Tallon had accepted the dog gratefully, and revealing a latent weakness for puns, christened it Seymour. Since then, the number one stud on the eyeset had been permanently allocated to the dog.

The eyeset had fascinated Amanda. She had gone as far as she could with him in understanding its design principles, and had even tried it out for herself, making him do without it for hours while she explored the world of her cat family. When she closed her eyes the set worked quite well for her, except that she occasionally lost the picture through not having metal plugs in her corneas to act as focusing referents. Tallon had been forced to sit, helplessly blind, as she lay on the floor wearing the eyeset. He heard the whispering sounds as her long body coiled and uncoiled ecstatically on the thick carpets, tiny cat noises issuing from her slim throat. And all he could do was clench his fist and press the knuckles hard against his teeth… .

The bedroom door opened and he heard Amanda come in.

“Sleeping already, darling?”

“Not yet. I’m working on it, though.”

Tallon listened to the faint crackling of static electricity in her clothing as she undressed. If only she would let one night go by without the intolerable demands of love where love did not exist, the relationship might be bearable. She was more intense, more insistent than ever since he had begun his nightly return to blindness. He guessed it was because his helplessness without the eyeset satisfied some psychological need in her.

“Darling, have you that filthy dog beside you again?”

“Seymour isn’t filthy.”

“If you say so, darling; but should he be on our bed?”

Tallon sighed as he set the dog on the floor. “I like having Seymour around. Don’t I have any privileges around this place?”

“What privileges had you in the Center, darling?”

Point taken, Tallon thought. How had he done it? How, out of a million or more inhabitants in the city of Sweetwell, had he unerringly picked out Amanda Weisner? But then, he reflected somberly, Sam Tallon had always found the Amandas everywhere he went. How had he started out as a physicist and ended up working for the Block? How, out of all the safe jobs that were available, had he selected the one that placed him so precisely in the wrong place at the wrong time?

The night was very warm, as spring had come early to the southern end of the long continent. As the hours went by Tallon tried to free himself from the physical duel with Amanda by letting his mind drift upward, through ceiling and roof, to where he would be able to see the slow wheeling of alien constellations. Out in the alley behind the restaurant the big cats prowled and pounced, just as their ancestors on Earth had always done, telling each other wailing cat myths to explain the absence of the moon, which had gilded their eyes for a thousand centuries.

Occasionally there were sharper cries as male and female came together savagely, obeying an instinct older than the moon and as universal as matter. Tallon slowly realized that, time after time, Amanda’s body was responding to the ferocious outbursts, and he felt his mind borne away on powerful tides of disgust. If he walked out on her she would go to the police — of that he was certain. He could kill her, except for the fact that her daily employees in the restaurant would notice her absence within a matter of hours. And yet he had to consider the possibility that she could soon grow bored with him and turn him over no matter what he did.

Moving restlessly in the darkness, Tallon brushed Amanda’s face with his hand and touched the smoothness of plastic, the edges of tiny projections. Immediately both their bodies were stilled.

“What was that?” He kept his voice low to mask the cold dawning in his mind.

“What was what, darling? You mean my silly old glasses? I had forgotten I was wearing them.”

Tallon considered the words for a moment, pretending to relax, then he snatched the eyeset from her face and put it to his own. He got one glimpse of the night jungle through which the big cats moved, before the eyeset was torn away from him again.

Mewing with rage, Amanda attacked, using nails and teeth as naturally and efficiently as would one. of her cats. Tallon was handicapped both by his blindness and by his alarm at the thought of accidentally smashing the eyeset, which had dropped on the bed beside them.

Stoically enduring the tearing of his skin, he groped for the eyeset and placed it safely under the bed. He then subdued Amanda by holding her throat with his left hand and driving slow, rhythmic punches into her face with his right. Even when she had gone limp he kept hitting her, seeking revenge for things he barely understood.

Ten minutes later Tallon opened the front door of The Persian Cat and stepped out onto the street. He walked quickly, with the freshly filled pack bumping solidly against his back and Seymour wriggling sleepily under his arm. There were about five hours of darkness left in which he could travel northward, but he had a feeling the hunt would start long before daylight.