Night Walk

thirteen

Ike’s price for acting as a guide was one hundred hours.

The figure shocked Tallon somewhat. In his two years on Emm Luther he had grown used to the radical “fiscal democracy” the government had imposed soon after it came to power in 2168. The original and purest form ordered that for every hour a man worked, regardless of his occupation, he would be paid a monetary unit called “one hour.” These were divided, like the Lutheran clock, into one hundred minutes; the smallest unit was the quarter — one-fourth of a minute, or twenty-five seconds.

When the uprising that had resulted in the ending of Earth’s mandate had died down, the Temporal Moderator had found it necessary to modify the system considerably. Complex factorization clauses had been added, allowing those who effectively increased their contribution to the economy by self-improvement to be paid more than one hour per hour. But the absolute top was a factor of three, which was why there were few large private corporations on Emm Luther — the incentive was limited, as the Moderator intended it to be.

To approach factor three, a man had to have the highest professional qualifications and use them in his job — yet here was a shiftless hobo named Ike demanding what Tallon conservatively estimated as factor ten.

“You know that’s immoral,” Tallon said, wondering if he had that much money. He had forgotten to count the roll of bills he had stolen from The Persian Cat.

“Not as immoral as it would have been had I taken the money while you were sleeping and disappeared with it.”

“Obviously you’ve checked that I have the money. As a matter of interest, how much is in my pack?”

Ike tried to sound embarrassed. “I made it about ninety hours.”

“Then how could I pay you a hundred?”

“Well — there’s the radio.”

Tallon laughed sharply. He supposed he was lucky at that. He was blind, and the wound across his shoulders stiffened his body with agony every time he moved. The four tramps could have rolled him during the night; in fact it was surprising they were prepared to do anything at all in return for his money.

“Why are you willing to help me? Do you know who I am?”

“All I really know about you, brother, is what I can tell from your accent,” Ike said. “You’re from Earth, and so are we. This was a good world till that bunch of Bible- waving hypocrites took it over and made it impossible for a man to get an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work.”

“What was your work?”

“I had no work, brother. Health reasons. But it’s just as well, isn’t it? If I had been working I wouldn’t have got paid for it in good honest solars, would I? Denver here used to sell pieces of the True Cross… .”

“Till they closed down his production plant, I suppose,” Tallon said impatiently. “When can you get me to the Juste estate?”

“Well, we’ll have to hole up here for the rest of the day. We’ll get you through the fence after dark. After that it’s just a matter of walking. We can’t stroll along the boulevards, of course, but we’ll be there before dawn.”

Before dawn, Tallon thought; or, if he was unable to get his eyeset back from Carl Juste, before the final nightfall. He wondered if the man who had it was Helen Juste’s father or brother.

“All right,” he said. “You can take the money.”

“Thank you, brother. I already have.”

At Tallon’s request, Ike allowed him to make the overnight walk with the eyeset switched off to save his last glimmer of sight for whatever he would have to face when he reached the estate. Only Ike and Denver went with him, and each took one of his arms.

As his two companions guided him through a weed-hidden break in the perimeter fence and out to where the quiet avenues began again, Tallon wondered how their breed had survived the centuries without change. The continuous development of civilization seemed not to have touched them; they lived and died in a manner no different from that of vagrants in ancient times. If the human race went on for another million years, perhaps at the end of that time there would still be men like these.

“By the way,” Tallon asked, “what will you do with all that money?”

“Buy food, of course.” Ike sounded surprised.

“And when it’s finished? What then?”

“I’ll live.”

“Without working,” Tallon said. “Wouldn’t it be easier to take a job?”

“Of course it would be easier to take a job, brother, but I’m not going to go against my principles.”

“Principles!” Tallon laughed.

“Yes, principles. It’s bad enough not getting paid in good honest solars, but the crazy system makes it worse.”

“How? It seems like a reasonable idea to me.”

“I’m surprised at you, brother. Factorization itself is a good idea, but they apply it backward.”

“Backward?” Tallon wasn’t sure if Ike was expressing an honest opinion or making a devious joke.

“That’s what I said.” Ike wasn’t kidding. “It happens on Earth, too. Take somebody like a surgeon. That man wants to be a surgeon — he wouldn’t do any other job in the world — and yet he gets paid ten or twenty times as much as some poor guy who is doing work he hates. It isn’t right that somebody like — what do you call the head man on Earth right now?”

“Caldwell Dubois,” Tallon supplied.

“Well, he likes being head man, so why should he get so much more money than somebody who has to mind a machine he hates the sight of? No, brother, there should be a kind of psychological checkup every year on everybody who’s working. When it shows that somebody is starting to like his job, his pay should be cut, and that would provide extra money for another guy who hates his work a bit more than he did the year before.”

“I’ll pass your thoughts on to Caldwell Dubois the next time I see him.”

“We’ve got a real celebrity here,” Denver said. “After he’s had sherry with the Justes he’s going on to dinner with the president of Earth.”

“Talking about your principles,” Tallon said to Ike, “would they allow you to give me back a little money for train fare?”

“Sorry, brother. Principles is principles, but money is money.”

“I thought so.”

Tallon walked on blindly, allowing himself to be shoved unceremoniously into gardens or doorways every time an automobile went by. The two men accepted without question his need to avoid being seen, and they got him to the Juste estate without incident. Tallon wondered if. in spite of what Ike had said, they really did know who he was. It would explain their willingness to help him in this way and also their readiness to take advantage of him.

“Here we are, brother,” Ike said. “This is the main gate. It will be daylight in less than an hour, so don’t try going in there in the dark. The dogs are unfriendly.”

“Thanks for the warning, Ike.”

Tallon released his grip on the bars of the massive steel gate and dropped to the ground. In the gray half-light he saw himself through the eyes of Seymour, who had already wriggled through the bars and waited patiently while Tallon went over the top. The eyeset, completely unused for a day and a half, was giving a faint picture at maximum gain. It had reached the stage at which its useful life could be measured in minutes.

“Come on, boy,” Tallon whispered urgently. Seymour leaped up into his arms, spinning Tallon’s universe around him, but he had become used to the occasional disorientation that was bound to occur when his eyes had four legs, a tail, and the mind of a terrier. Although he had never been interested in animals as pets, Tallon had developed a strong affection for Seymour.

With the dog tucked under his arm and the automatic pistol in his hand, Tallon walked cautiously up a gravel driveway that wound through tumbled banks of dense shrubbery. He lost sight of the gate immediately, and found himself moving thrugh a tunnel of overhanging trees and lush dark foliage. The drive wound back on itself twice before coming to a misty park. There were many trees here too, but Tallon was now able to see a low rambling house on top of a small hill, with a series of ascending terraces.

It was then he heard the dogs howling their deep-throated indignation at his presence in the grounds. The awful sound was followed by a fierce crackling of foliage as they came racing to hind him. To Tallon they sounded as big as horses, and although he had not seen them yet, they seemed to be moving at top speed.

He spun round once on his heels, equivalent to turning the head in a normally sighted person. There was nothing to be gained by running back into the bushes, and the house was at least four hundred yards away and uphill. Some of the trees growing on the terraces had trunks that separated into three or four thick curving branches just above the ground. Tallon ran to the nearest one and scrambled into the narrow cleft.

The dogs — three gray shapes — appeared off to his left, skimming along the edge of the shrubbery. They looked like a local hairless mutation of original wolfhound stock, with huge flat heads carried close to the ground. Their howling grew louder as they saw Tallon.

He began to raise the automatic, but Seymour’s body convulsed in Tallon’s arms at the sight of the large bounding dogs. Before Tallon could adjust his grip the little dog was down on the grass, yelping with fear and scuttling frantically back toward the entrance gates. Tallon shouted desperately as he saw, at one side of Seymour’s vision, one of the gray shapes separate from the others to intercept the terrier. Then Tallon had to think about his own situation, for without the use of Seymour’s eyes he was, literally, easy meat.

His fingers flicked the eyeset controls, reselecting on proximity, and he got behind the eyes of the nearest dog. It was a little like watching a film shot from the nose of a low-flying jet — a tremendous sense of arrowing flight, ground flowing rapidly underneath, stands of tall grass looming up, like hills, and being effortlessly penetrated as though they were green clouds. Up ahead, apparently rocking slightly because of the barreling motion, was a human figure, with a white desperate face, hanging onto the curving arms of a tree.

Tallon forced himself to raise the automatic and move his arm around until, from the viewpoint of the speeding animal, the weapon’s muzzle was a perfect black circle, with equal foreshortening of the barrel. The trick, he thought grimly, is to try to hit myself right between the eyes. He squeezed the trigger and was gratified to feel an unexpectedly powerful kick from the automatic. But, apart from one slight shudder, the shot made no difference to the rapidly expanding image he was receiving from the hound.

He tried again. This time the sound of the shot was followed by a deep bark of pain and surprise. He got images of crazily rotating sky and ground, then a close-up of grassy roots, which swiftly darkened into night. Mentally reeling from the shock of his own vicarious death, Tallon reselected for the next dog. He saw himself in the same tree, but much closer this time — and from the back.

Twisting awkwardly in the confined space of the tree trunks, Tallon fired instinctively and was rewarded by instantaneous blindness. That meant he had made a perfect kill. Wondering at the effectiveness of the little weapon, he ran his fingers over the machined metal and discovered that the muzzle, instead of being a simple circle, was a cluster of six tiny openings. Amanda Weisner apparently took no chances when she chose a weapon. The automatic was the kind that fired six ultra high-velocity slugs at a time, one from the center and five from slightly divergent barrels. At close range the small gold-plated automatic would obliterate a man; at longer distances it was a pocket-sized riot gun.

Not hearing any movement close by, Tallon pressed the number one stud — Seymour’s — and got only blackness. With a pang of grief, he tried the eyeset on “search and hold,” and picked up the third dog. It was moving through the heavy shrubbery quite slowly, and there was redness over the blurred area of snout obtruding in the lower edge of the picture.

Angry now, and with confidence in his armament, Tallon got out of the tree. Moving with noisy carelessness, he picked up his fallen pack and went up the hill in the direction of the house. As he had left the eyeset tuned in on the remaining dog, he was blind as far as his own movements were concerned, and he kept his arms outstretched in case he hit any trees. He could have fished the sonar torch out of the pack, but he was not expecting to get far before seeing himself through the third dog’s eyes. His guess was correct. The dog burst through the close-packed bushes, and Tallon got a dim picture of his own figure trudging toward the house. Once again the ground began to flow underneath in great flying bounds.

He waited until his back filled the picture before he turned, with the flaming automatic jarring his wrist, and put out the lights. That’s for you, Seymour, he thought. For services rendered.

Tallon turned his attention to the problem of getting into the house without Seymour’s aid. Ike had told him Carl Juste lived alone in his semi-mansion, so he was not worried about having to deal with more than one person; but he could not see and the untended wound had turned his shoulders into a rigid area of pain. Besides, the noise made by the gun and the dogs could have alerted Juste. It occurred to Tallon that if Juste was making use of the other eyeset he must have one or more animals of some sort near him.

Tallon put the eyeset back on “search and hold,” but got no picture. He then got out the sonar torch and, with its help, hurried toward the house. Only four or five minutes had elapsed since be climbed the steel gates. As he neared the house he began to get dark, fleeting images; the only recognizable feature was a near-bright oblong area that was a window viewed from inside the house.

He was unable to decide if it was really that dark inside, or if the eyeset was on the point of final failure. Closer still, with his feet on what seemed to be a paved patio, he made out other details. He was looking at a lavishly furnished bedroom, apparently from a point quite high on one of the walls. As he was trying to figure out what sort of creature would provide such an unusual view, another area of the room became relatively clear.

A powerfully built bearded man was sitting up in the bed with his head tilted in the attitude of someone straining to hear. He seemed to be wearing heavy spectacles.

The high-pitched scream of the sonar told Tallon he had almost walked into a wall. He swung left and went along the Wall, hand over hand, looking for a door. In the bedroom the man stood up and took something like a pistol from a drawer. Tallon’s hands found the recess of a window. He swung his pack at it but the tough glass bounced it back at him. Stepping back a few paces, he raised the automatic and blasted the glass out of its frame.

While he was scrambling blindly into the room, his view of the bedroom shifted abruptly, and in a characteristic manner with which Tallon had become familiar. The seeing creature was a bird, possibly a falcon, which had just flown to its master’s shoulder. Tallon saw the bedroom door grow large in his dim vision, and knew Juste was coming to find the intruder. He ran recklessly across the room he was in, wondering how he was going to fare in the weird battle about to take place. Both men were seeing through the same third pair of eyes, so each would see exactly what the other saw. But Juste had two advantages: He had almost no disorientation, because his eyes were perched on his own shoulder; and his eyeset was in good condition.

Tallon considered the possibility of avoiding any kind of a fight. Perhaps if he told Juste who he was and why he was here, they would be able to work something out. He found a door in the room’s inner wall and turned the knob. The picture he was getting as he did so was a view from a landing looking downstairs into a spacious hall with doors on each side, which meant Juste had come out of his bedroom and was waiting for Tallon’s next move.

Tallon eased the door open and saw a dark crack appear at the edge of one of the doors in the hall. As always, he experienced a strange dismay at the feeling of being in two places at once.

“Juste,” he shouted through the opening, “let’s not be stupid. I’m Sam Tallon — the guy who invented that thing you’re wearing. I want to talk to you.”

There was a long silence before Juste answered. “Tallon? What are you doing here?”

“I can explain that. Are we going to talk?”

“All right. Come out of the room.”

Tallon began to open the door wider, then saw he was looking at the dark crack along the barrel of a heavy, blued-steel pistol.

“I thought we agreed not to be stupid, Juste,” he shouted. “I’m wearing an eyeset too. I’m tuned in on your bird, and I’m looking right down the sights of that gun you have in your hand.” Tallon had just become aware of his one slight advantage — the man who had the eyes with him was bound to transmit tactical intelligence to the opposition.

“Very well, Tallon. I’m setting my pistol on the floor and stepping away from it. You can see that, I presume. You leave yours on the floor in there and come out, and we’ll talk.”

“All right.” Tallon set the automatic down and went out into the hall. In the dimness of the picture from his eyeset he saw himself emerge from the doorway. He felt uneasy, not because he suspected Juste would cheat, but because he knew he himself would probably have to cheat to get what he wanted. Halfway to the foot of the stairs he halted, wondering how he could ever separate Juste from the eyeset without violence.

Juste must have given some kind of signal to the bird, but Tallon missed it. Only because he was already familiar with the swooping sensations of bird flight saved Tallon from being numbed by dislocation when the attack came. As his own image ballooned up he dived for the door; he had reached it when the clawing fury descended on his shoulders. Hunching to protect his jugular, Tallon fought through the door, feeling razors slicing cloth and skin. He slammed the door hard, catching the bird between its edge and the jamb, and drove his weight against it. There was a harsh scream, and it was black again.

He discovered one claw was hooked right through the tendons in the back of his left hand. Working in blindness, he took the knife out of the pack and hacked the claw free from the bird. It was still buried in his hand, but that would have to wait. He scanned with the eyeset, got no picture, picked up his automatic, and opened the door again.

“Dark, isn’t it, Juste?” His voice was hoarse as he shouted into the hall. “You should keep more than one bird in the house. We’ll dispense with our talk. I’m going to take those eyes back from you and be on my way.”

“Don’t try to come near me, Tallon.” Juste fired two deafening shots in the confines of the hall, but neither of the slugs came near Tallon.

“Don’t waste your ammunition. You can’t see me, but I can get to you, Juste. I have something Helen didn’t take, and it doesn’t need eyes.”

The pistol roared again, and was followed by the sound of tinkling glass. Guided by the electrical tones of the sonar, Tallon ran for the foot of the stairs and stumbled up them. He reached Juste about halfway up, and they came down hard, fighting. Tallon, sick with fear for the remaining good eyeset, wasted no time on his bigger, stronger, though untrained, opponent. Initiating the rhythms of the Block-developed pressure-feedback combat system, Tallon held nothing back; and before they had reached the floor Juste was a dead weight.

Tallon, who had been cradling the big man’s head during the last part of the fall, took off Juste’s eyeset and exchanged it for his own. All that remained now was to find some more money and food, then get out in a hurry.

Wishing there were some way to test the eyeset for possible damage, he put it on “search and hold” and was amazed when he got a picture. Sharp, strong, and beautifully clear.

A close-up of a heavy polished entrance door swinging open, and beyond it, the frozen tableau of himself crouched over the sprawling form of Carl Juste. Tallon was able to see the shocked expression on his own hunted, blood-streaked face.

” You!” a woman cried out, “what have you done to my brother?”