Orbitsville Departure

Chapter 8

Dallen took the little patrol ship to a height of eight thousand metres — enough to render it invisible from the ground — and drifted in over Cordele from the north. About a third of the built-up area had been destroyed by old fires, but from the air large tracts looked almost as they would have done forty years earlier when the city was being officially deregistered. Only the high proportion of greenery, obliterating the street patterns in some places, hinted at the progressive decay which would eventually erase all obvious signs of habitation. Armies of wood-boring insects were hard at work down there, tidying up the stage for the benefit of future performers.

The map projected on the navigation screen beside Dallen was decades out of date — in the eyes of the Metagov cartographers Cordele no longer existed — but it was adequate for his purpose. He touched a button which activated the snip's scanning system and a bright red dot appeared in the middle of a western suburb. It was standard procedure with the Madison police to radio tag some personal item belonging to detainees, often a belt buckle, and now the coded signal was telling Dallen exactly where he would find the man he was hunting.

He watched the glowing speck long enough to assure himself it was not moving, then swung the ship into a curving path which took it out across the blurry-edged strip of solder which was the Flint River. Twenty kilometres west of the city Dallen made a rapid descent through the heavy water-logged air, watching the atlas-page sweep of territory below him expand to become a sunlit reality clothed with vegetation which moved visibly with changes in the wind. At a height of only a few metres he skimmed eastwards, taking advantage of every irregularity in the terrain to hide his approach to the city. The outer ring of abandoned restaurants, motels and commercial buildings appeared ahead of him, many of the structures completely obscured by kudzu vines. Dallen threaded the ship through them in silence, bringing it as close to his destination as he dared, and grounded by the sheared-off side of a small hill.

He studied the map display for a moment, noting that he was some three kilometres from his target, then took off a print which he folded and put away in his pocket. He was confident that be could go straight to Beaumont without extra guidance, but returning to the ship might not be so simple and he wanted to minimise the risk of getting lost. After checking various pieces of equipment, including his sidearm and quarry finder, he slid the pilot door open and stepped down onto a thick carpet of moss and ground-hugging creepers. Going by the book, he should have retracted the slim tubes of its wing field generators before leaving the ship unattended, but in the interests of a quick getaway he chose not to do so. Nobody was likely to chance upon the ship and in any case the tubes, which were the only vulnerable part, had been freshly coated with repellent paint.

It was a little past noon and a thickly murmurous heat lay over the surroundings, the main elements of which were overgrown shrubs and ruinous single-storey houses. A plastic-skinned microbus stood nearby, contriving to look almost serviceable after more than forty years, except for the tree which had grown up through the engine compartment.

Dallen set off in the direction of the city centre, walking quickly, checking his progress with those street signs which were still legible. The tension that was growing within him manifested itself in his increasing jumpiness. He fought it by refusing to think about what lay ahead, absorbing images of his environment, turning himself into a camera. Concrete light poles had crumbled here and there, doubling over and exposing ferrous brown veins. Some houses which had looked quite intact from a distance were revealed as mere clay overlays erected by termites, the enclosed timbers long since digested. On the window of a store, miraculously still intact, some long-departed humorist had sprayed the words, GONE TO LAUNCH.

Dallen experienced a growing sense of bafflement. Why did people ding on in places like this? He knew there were parts of the world where human labour had again become valuable, where the petty chieftains of the new age — men who could feel their power growing as Orbitsville lost interest in Earth — prevented their slave-subjects from taking the big trip. But it had always been different on the Nor Am continent — so why had a few chosen to remain behind in conditions like this? Question to be taken literally: what on Earth possessed them? Dallen cursed as the words of the old song, the one he had always disliked, paraded behind his eyes…

The sounds of children at play startled him into alertness. He paused and listened to the faint but unmistakable pleasure cries which might have been drifting through a time warp from a previous century. There were seven blocks between him and his target, but he deduced he was reaching the edge of an enclave which possibly was guarded. He moved forward with greater caution, one hand gripping the sidearm concealed in his pocket, and reached an intersection where the pavement had been lifted and fragmented by trees and their roots. A stand of rank grass and weeds provided cover from which he was able to reconnoitre the street ahead.

Vegetation was much in evidence everywhere, obscuring the signs of habitation, but he saw at once that the houses had been deliberately thinned out and that the empty spaces were under cultivation. Although no people were directly visible, he could see a vehicle moving in the distance and from somewhere nearby there came the bleating of a sheep. Sensing that it would be pointless to try moving through such an area undetected, Dallen left the shade of the trees and walked openly along the street, his stride casual but long. A group of small children, shabbily dressed but healthy looking, came running out of nowhere chanting a play rhyme and as quickly disappeared behind hedges.

Their presence was somehow disturbing to Dallen, then he realised he had always unconsciously thought of the Independent communities as being entirely composed of mulish disgruntled adults. Over-simplification, he thought. An occupational disease of Deregistratton Bureau workers.

Cordele had been depopulated in 2251 and kept empty for the statutory whole year, which meant that the people now living in it did not exist as far as Metagov was concerned. The convenient administrative fiction was that none of the small groups of dissidents who wandered in the spreading wilderness of the country would have been attracted to the deserted cities. But shelter and other necessities were to be had for the taking there, and the cities could again serve in their most basic role — places where those who needed to could band together for mutual support. In those circumstances children were bound to arrive, officially non-existent children, disenfranchised, not entitled to education or even the most rudimentary health care.

I’m getting out of the Bureau, Dallen told himself once again. As soon as I collect my back pay — as soon as I get what I’m owed for Cotta and Mikel.

He made steady progress towards his destination, encountering more and more people as he got farther into the enclave. Some of the adults eyed him curiously as he passed, but showed no inclination to challenge him. Either the local population was large enough for a stranger to remain inconspicuous, or the people were less defensive and insular than he had supposed. At a corner of one block he saw an open-air produce market apparently running on the barter system, and the presence of several mud-spattered trucks indicated that somebody was farming on a comparatively large scale.

On reaching the seventh block inwards Dallen found that it was non-residential, the side he was nearest being occupied by a brick-built church, a bank and a three-storey hotel. The hotel was the only building of the three which looked as though it had been kept in use. Making sure he was not being watched, Dallen took out the quarry finder — which was tuned to the signal from Beaumont's belt buckle — and looked at its circular screen. A crimson arrow glowed on its surface, pulsing rapidly, pointing to the hotel. Aware of the measured thudding of his heart, Dallen angled across the street. He entered the off-street parking area and had almost reached the building's entrance when a thick-set man materialised in the dense shade of the canopy. The man was youngish, prematurely grey, and had a pump-action shotgun slung on his shoulder.

"Where do you think you're goin', fella?" he said, sounding curious rather than hostile.

Dallen absorbed the fact that the hotel was serving as some kind of headquarters. I’ve got to see the boss."

The man extended a hand, husking thumb and fingers together. "Papers."

"Sure thing." Dallen smiled, slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and fired the sidearm without taking time to grip its handle. The wide-angle cone of radiation sleeted through the guard's body, turning him into an organic statue. Dallen closed with him before he could topple and, taking a chance on the small lobby being empty, waltzed the rigid form back into the hotel. A door beside the desk looked as though it led to staff washrooms. It was necessary to take another risk, but Dallen had begun to feel supercharged with confidence, like a man high on felicitin, and he bore the guard through the door without pause. The room beyond was empty. It took him only a few seconds to bundle the inert figure into a closet, then he was out in the lobby and running for the stairs.

On the second-floor landing he checked with the quarry finder and got a reading which told him to go left. Dallen hurried silently along the corridor, dragging the sidearm from his pocket, and halted at a door which was indicated by an abrupt swing of the bright arrow. Allowing no time for reflection, filled with a heady certitude, he twisted the handle and went through the door fast. The room contained one bed upon which was lying a black-haired woman of about twenty, naked except for a rumpled waist slip. She stared up at Dallen without moving. Items of her discarded clothing were draped on a chair, among them a durocord skirt and a man's belt with a metal buckle.

"It's Beaumont I want," Dallen said in a fierce whisper, unable to accept that something had gone disastrously wrong. "You'll be all right as long as you keep quiet. Do you understand that?"

The woman nodded, opened her mouth and screamed.

"You stupid…!" Dallen almost silenced her with his paralyser, then realised there would be no point. The scream seemed to have been amplified rather than damped by the building's partition walls and he could already hear startled male voices in an adjoining room. He turned back to the door, thoughts in turmoil, and was trying to choose between two unpromising courses — running for the street or locking himself in — when the woman pulled the trigger.

Harry Sanko, "mayor" of West Cordele, was wearing a full business suit, complete with traditional-style collar and tie, regardless of the moist heat. He was in his early forties and had regular features with a Latin cast which was emphasised by a neat pencil-line moustache. He was well-fed, articulate, forceful in his manner and smiled a lot in spite of having only one front tooth.

"What you did was stupid," he said to Dallen. "The only word for it is… well… stupid."

Dallen managed to nod in agreement. He had been dragged the length of the corridor to a conference room and had been pushed into one of the high-backed chairs which surrounded a circular table. Sanko was sitting opposite him and two burly young men armed with shotguns were standing at the door. The fact that Dallen was able to move his head meant that he had been zapped with a low-power personal defence weapon, but he derived scant comfort from the knowledge. He was very much aware of being totally helpless.

"Marion is a close friend of mine," Sanko went on. "She's a protйgй, you might say… and if you had touched her… or if you had used this on her…" He tapped Dallen's sidearm, which was lying on the table in front of him, and shook his head, apparently awed by inner visions of his retribution.

"I told you I was only interested in Beaumont," Dallen replied. "I didn't know your so-called protйgй had his belt."

Sanko leaned forward and showed his single tooth. "You are quite a stern character, aren't you, Dallen? You're sitting there, paralysed, helpless, not knowing whether I'm going to have you strung up or castrated with a blunt knife, yet you can't help referring to Marion as my so-called protйgй. A man in your shoes should be more diplomatic. I mean, how do you know I'm not sensitive?"

"People who plant bombs usually aren't."

"So that's it!" Sanko stood up, walked quickly around the table and sat down again, hard enough to make his chair creak. "I've got news for you, Mister Metagov — this is a civilised community here in West Cordele. We've got laws, and we enforce them. We don't have electricity or clean water or any amenities like that, but we're not savages. We don't go in for terrorism."

"Beaumont does."

"Beaumont was a brainless punk."

"War?" Dallen's fingers twitched, first sign of returning mobility. "Does that mean…?"

"It means he's dead. He was tried and executed yesterday along with two of his buddies — for stealing community property. Does that seem a trifle harsh to you?"

"No — just barbaric."

Sanko gave a barely visible shrug. "You've got to understand that in any Independent community almost the worst crime anybody can commit is the crime of waste. We have a small cash reserve for buying black market medical supplies, and Beaumont and his brother cretins blew some of it on bomb kits.

A few months back two of them wrecked one of our last working automobiles, and if they hadn't totalled themselves along with it we'd have had to…" Sanko broke off and gazed solemnly at Dallen, his tooth digging into his lower lip.

"I don't get this," he finally said. "Why are you here? What was Beaumont in your soft little life?"

"The day I pinched him in Madison he said his friends were going after my family." Dallen spoke slowly and carefully, his mind labouring to assimilate the news of Beaumont's death and the wider implications of what he had just heard. "About the time he was saying that somebody went into the City Hall and used a Luddite Special on my wife and son… but…"

"But what. Mister Metagov? Brain beginning to stir? How much cash does it take to buy one of those fancy toys?"

A corrosive acid was seeping through Dallen's mind, burning away one world-picture, disclosing another. "Somebody in Madison… Probably somebody in City Hall itself…"

"What were you saying about barbarism a minute ago?"

"But I can't see why," Dallen went on. "There was no reason for. it."

"Maybe a slug of this will get your head working." Sanko took a silver flask from his pocket, came round the table and poured some of its contents into Dallen's mouth. "A Luddite Special is its own reason, man. It only does one job."

"There can't…" Dallen gagged as warm neat liquor reached his throat, but the spasms seemed to accelerate the return of sensation to his limbs. He became aware of a twitching in his calf muscles.

"Your wife and kid must have known something. They must have seen something." Sanko drained the flask and tossed it to one of the armed men who caught it and left the room unbidden. "You're no Sherlock Holmes, are you?"

Dallen wasted no time in speculating who Sherlock Holmes was. He was appalled at his own lack of perception, at the weeks he had wasted, at his unconscious arrogance in assuming that he and his futile, insignificant. Earth-limited activities had been the root cause for what had happened to Cona and Mikel. The alternative theory was that there was a monster roaming loose in Madison City, enjoying the immunity that Dallen had personally gifted to it — but what had been the original crime? What could have been sufficiently serious to justify the erasure of two personalities? Had it been a murder? The circumstances did not fit — nobody had been found dead or reported missing.

"It still doesn't make sense," Dallen said. We don't have any serious crime in Madison."

"I love it!" Sanko laughed aloud, his mouth and the solitary tooth forming a notched dark circle. "Graft doesn't bother anybody in Madison and that means it isn't serious."

"There might be some petty…"

"Listen to me — Madison City is a kind of general store for all the big Independent communities in this part of the world. They come from as far away as Savannah and Jacksonville, any place that can scrape up big money, and it's from Madison they buy their generators, water purifiers, truck engines, whatever. Didn't you know?"

"I know my wife and son weren't involved."

"You're starting to bore me, Dallen. How did you get to Cordele? By car?"

"I flew."

"That's a pity — if you'd come by car we'd have taken it and let you walk back. A flier is no use to us though, so I guess you can take it away as soon as you've thawed out."

It was only then that Dallen realised he had been expecting imprisonment or worse. "You're letting me go?"

Sanko looked exasperated. "Maybe you expected to be cooked and eaten."

"No, but with what I know about Beaumont…" Dallen paused, deciding not to make a case for his detention.

"Try a little experiment," Sanko said, taking Mien's sidearm and dropping it into his own pocket. "When you get back to Madison make out a report saying you heard some non-existent people claiming to have ended the non-existence of some other non-existent people. I'd like to hear what sort of reaction you get."

It was late afternoon when Dallen reached the city. He circled in low over the south-western districts, over Scottish Hill and the immaculate, hermetically sealed suburbs which would later begin to glow in a simulation of life as the lights came on in a thousand empty streets. The tall buildings of the city centre, projecting above vivid toyland greenery, were washed with sunlight and looked impossibly clean, idyllic. A visitor winging down from space might have concluded that here was a community of contented, rational beings leading well-regulated lives — but Dallen's mood was one of disaffection as he picked out the pastel geometries of the City Hall.

His reckless dash to Cordele had, as well as providing vital information, jotted him out of grief-dominated patterns of behaviour, freed him from the emotional conviction that a craving for justice and revenge would, if strongly enough felt, bring about its own ends. He had been reminded that there was no even-handed arbiter, and that the most successful hunters were those who stalked their prey with coldness and calculation.

His ship hovered for a moment, then began its purposeful descent, its shadow a drifting prismatic blur which advanced and retreated according to the lie of the land beneath.