The Blackbird

Nineteen

The overcoat was draped over his head to protect his face from flying window glass, his body was rolled up in a ball to protect himself from unknown dangers, and he was falling through the air, on his way from the second-story window toward who knew what.

He landed in snow, thunking into it like a fist in bread dough, and kneed himself in the chest, knocking the wind out of himself. He lay all wrapped up in the overcoat for a few seconds, the material against his forehead, the whiskey warmth of his breath soft on his cheek, and gradually got himself together again. Then he kicked his way out of the overcoat, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, stood up in powdery snow into which he was sinking nearly to the knees, and looked up at the broken window from which he’d emerged.

Vivian Kamdela was up there, silhouetted by the light in the empty frame. Savagely he wished he had a gun right now, but then he saw that she was making shooing motions. She glanced over her shoulder, into the room, then leant frantically out the window, shooing him away.

“Women,” he grumbled. Changeable was one thing, but this was goddamn ridiculous. He picked up his overcoat, shook the snow off it, shrugged into it, and went plowing away through the deep snow, lifting his knees high, looking like a football player on slow-motion replay.

He didn’t know where he was going to, but he knew where he was going from; anything with lights. He headed into the darkness straight ahead, grateful there was no moon in the clear sky. Starlight reflecting from the snow made shapes visible from fairly close, but the darkness should be complete enough to hide him from any pursuit.

The only problem was running. Having to climb from step to step like this was exhausting, and within a dozen steps he was bushed. He kept going though, having no choice in the matter, but finally it was impossible to yank his legs through the snow any farther, and he turned around, tottering, to see no pursuit.

No pursuit? Why not?

Obviously pursuit had started, Vivian Kamdela had had no other reason for such frantic signaling to him. So what had happened to it?

Then he saw the deep furrow of his tracks in the snow, and understood. Wiser heads had prevailed in there. He could hear it now: “Why run around in the dark after him? He isn’t going anywhere. All we’ll have to do is follow his trail in the morning.”

Right.

If he was still alive in the morning. It was colder than hell out here. While he’d been running his exertion had kept him warm, combined with the whiskey he’d drunk, but now that he was standing still he could feel just how cold it was out here. His cheeks and the backs of his hands already had that cracked-glaze feeling of intense cold, and his earlobes had started to ache.

There were gloves in his overcoat pockets and he put them on, knowing they really weren’t thick enough, but they would help a little. For his head and ears he had nothing.

Nor for his feet. He was wearing ordinary socks and shoes, and they were soaking wet already, snow down inside both shoes, melting against his arches. It wouldn’t take long to develop frostbite that way.

All right. The name of the exercise was Survive, and the first thing to do was get himself organized and figure out exactly where he was in relation to the lodge and its outbuildings.

Ahead of him, succulent with yellow-lit windows, was the main building, out of which he’d just jumped. This was the rear of the building, opposite the side where he’d first gone in, meaning the lake was around on the other side of the cluster of buildings.

To the left of the main lodge, lower and with fewer fit windows, was the motel-like structure he’d been in briefly, in his salad days. Another similar structure was to the right. Farther to the right was a bulky shape without the definition of lights in its windows, a dark squared-off building, two stories high but not as broad as the lodge.

That looked like the logical first stop. It was shelter, and the absence of light suggested it was at the moment unoccupied. Grofield headed in that direction, not rushing this time but just plodding steadily along through the snow, feeling the tingles in his feet and ears and face and fingertips. His ankles and wrists were very cold, and he vaguely remembered reading somewhere that one should keep one’s wrists and ankles warm because that’s where the blood is closest to the surface and you don’t want to cool your blood. At the moment, however, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

Flashlight. Grofield stopped, and saw the light bobbing out from the lodge. A second later, another one followed. Not coming directly this way, but traveling at an angle to Grofield, so that his route and their route would intersect — at the building Grofield was heading for.

The bastards. They’d thought it over and decided Grofield would go to ground in the empty building, and they didn’t want that. It would be so much simpler and neater for everybody if Grofield would just quietly freeze to death overnight, out in the refreshing air. Then they could come out in the morning and see if he’d checked out in an interesting position — standing on one foot with a finger raised, for instance — and if he had they could then run wiring up through him, stick a light bulb in his mouth, and turn him into a lamp.

The flashlights bobbed toward the building, and Grofield watched them, knowing he couldn’t get to it before them, and even if he could it wouldn’t do him any good. He was unarmed, a condition he doubted they shared.

Still, there was nowhere else to go. He plodded forward, moving more slowly now to give them a chance to get inside the building before he arrived.

But they weren’t going in, at least not at first. He stopped again and watched, and saw one of the flashlights disappear while the other one bobbed along beside the building. The other one eventually appeared again at the back of the building, and the two flashlights came together once more.

Checking for tracks. Being sure he wasn’t already inside. Grofield didn’t like them at all.

The flashlights moved together now, and suddenly disappeared again. And then lights began going on, in the middle of the building at first, and then spreading out both to left and right, until every ground floor window was gleaming. And then nothing more happened at all.

It wasn’t until he moved again that Grofield realized how numb his feet were getting. And his ears weren’t tingling any more either. His fingers had become more painful, but they too would soon be numb if he stayed out here in the cold.

And there was still nowhere else to go but this building dead ahead. The others were full of people, but in this one there were only two. And both dressed for the outdoors. With any luck, one of them would have boots that would fit Grofield.

He moved forward again, and his body seemed heavier than it had ever been before. It was an effort to get the muscles to work, to make them lift a foot, move it forward, set it down again, shift the arms and shoulders to shift the weight so the other foot could be lifted, all of it heavy work, almost too much to do. It would be so much easier just to stand where he was. Nothing much hurt any more except his fingers and his throat when he inhaled through his mouth, and those aches would soon go away.

It was amazing how fast it happened, how easily a person could find a spot on his own native planet in which human life was impossible. He was being killed by temperature, silently and not too very painfully and very very quickly. He had to get angry at himself to keep himself in motion, angry at Colonel Rahgos and Vivian and Marba and General Pozos and Ken and even Laufman, the driver who’d loused up the getaway from the armored-car job and got him into this mess in the first place. Anger was a good fuel, it kept him warm enough to move, it gave him the determination to survive this mess somehow and spit icicles in everybody’s eyes.

There were no windows near the corner of the building, very little light-spill there. Grofield staggered forward, his feet now plowing a furrow through the snow, too heavy to be lifted up over the snow, and when he got to the wall of the building he sagged against it and just breathed for a while.

He closed his eyes too, and that was almost a fatal mistake. Happily he wasn’t balanced right against the wall, so when he started to fall over he woke up again, startled, realizing he’d lost consciousness, not knowing for how long, knowing only that if he’d been propped more securely against the wall he never would have awakened again.

No. It wasn’t going to happen, he was damned if he was going to let it happen. Could he allow himself to be so easily gotten rid of? They put him out for the night, and it’s all over.

He inched along the wall to his left, supporting a part of his weight on the wall, and when he came to the first window he peered cautiously in.

It was a storage room, with rough wooden partitions and rough wooden shelves full of cardboard cartons. The room was empty, but the door opposite the window stood open, with a well-lit hall outside and another open door beyond leading to another lit-up storage room. Grofield nodded, explaining to himself what he was seeing in an attempt to keep himself awake, and moved on.

All the windows looked into similar storage cubicles with open doors facing the same hall and more storage rooms on the far side. Halfway along the wall there was a door, with glass panes in the upper half, and looking through that Grofield could see a short hall leading to the central hall, and sitting in there were two black men, on kitchen chairs, facing in opposite directions, looking down the hall to left and right. They had machine guns on their laps, and they were smoking, and their heavy mackinaws were hanging open. They both wore high leather boots.

Grofield moved away from the door again, leaned against the wall, and began to mumble to himself. “All right,” he muttered. “Let’s wake up and think about this thing. The other half of the building is gonna be the same as this half. Right? Right. The way they’ve got it set up, I can’t get in without them hearing me or seeing me. All these windows are going to be locked, so if I break one they’ll hear it and they’ll know where I am. Right? Right. So there’s no way in. Right? Wrong. What do you mean, wrong? I mean, there’s got to be a way in because I need a way in.”

He stopped mumbling and stood there trying to think. There was less feeling in his fingers now, and the backs of his knees were hurting. His neck seemed stiff. His mind seemed stiff and fuzzy and full of glue and cobwebs.

He said, “Second floor.” He looked up, and faintly he could see windows up there, but dark. They hadn’t concerned themselves with the second floor, which meant they didn’t believe it possible for him to get in up there, and they probably knew more about this place than he did.

Still, it was worth checking out. He didn’t see any way to climb up along this wall, so he made himself move again, going on down toward the far end of the building to check out the other sides.

The other end of the building was mostly given over to one large storage area full of machinery, plows, and other mechanized devices, with an overhead door on the end wall. Grofield blundered along past this door, glancing in through the small window in its middle and seeing that an open space had been left down the center of the garage area, with an open door at the end leading to the corridor. He could plainly see the two of them sitting at their ease way down there in the middle of the corridor. Warm, comfortable, alert, well-armed. He hated them both.

He kept on moving, and at the end of the long door his hand bumped into a projection on the wall. He frowned at it and saw it was a metal box with a button on the front. A doorbell beside a garage door?

No, of course not. The garage door must be operated electrically, and this button would open it.

Wouldn’t it be nice to push the button and watch the door slide up and then walk into the cozy warm inside of the building? Wouldn’t it?

He pushed on, miserable, freezing. His eyelashes were weighted with ice, it was increasingly hard to see anything. He got to the corner of the building and then stopped and looked back.

Maybe?

Maybe.

He worked his way back again to the door, and studied it more closely. It wasn’t the hinged, faceted type, it was all in one solid piece. When the button was pushed, it would swing up and out while the top part was sliding backward into the building.

He looked up at the second floor. Windows, dark and empty.

Was it possible? There were handles on the door. If he could push the button and then stand on one of the low handles, would it then be possible to ride the door up to the second floor and then get off the damn thing before it slid inside? Get off onto the narrow window sill up there, hang on some way, and get the damn window open. Quietly. With earnest prayers that he would find it unlocked.

A very wild notion, all in all, even if he’d been in the peak of condition, which he wasn’t. But what else did he have going? And if it didn’t work, there was still a chance he could get away into the darkness again before they got here from where they were sitting. A small chance.

Everything was a small chance at the moment, and this was the only thing that looked even remotely possible, so the hell with it. He reached out his numb thumb and pushed the button.

A loud door. The engine whirred and whined like a derrick, while Grofield scrambled to get one foot on the handle and press himself face forward against the rising door. The racket the motor was making, and the slowness of the door’s rising, might both be caused by the addition of his extra weight. But at least the door was going up.

But Grofield wasn’t. His clothing was covered with ice, his body was half-frozen and clumsy, and he just couldn’t get his knees up under himself. He struggled and struggled while the door went up, but the metal surface was slippery under him, and he just wasn’t going to get anywhere.

And the door was headed inside. Squinting up ahead of himself he saw the top of the door frame coming, saw that it would just clear him, and resigned himself to not getting to that second-story window. What was apparently going to happen, assuming he didn’t get caught now, was that he would ride the door into the building and then back out again.

Feeling ridiculous and holding on tight, Grofield rode the door until it jolted to a stop, horizontal, just under the garage ceiling. Footsteps went by beneath him, and it sounded like only one pair. So they were smart, they sent only one man down here to check out the opening of the door, while the other one kept at his post in case it was meant as a distraction.

It was warm in here, in comparison with outside. He could smell the nice oily smell of an electric motor. He could feel how badly his body craved to stay indoors. He was waking up enough to understand just how close to the end he was out there. He wasn’t dressed for that kind of weather, not his feet, not his head, not his hands.

It would take a minute or two for the guard to assure himself that Grofield wasn’t around, and then he’d lower the door again. While waiting, Grofield lifted his head a little and looked around.

Not much to see. Two-by-twelve joists running from left to right, with the upstairs flooring set on them. Just ahead, the motor for the door, mounted on a solid iron framework suspended from the joists. To both sides, the metal tracks for the door.

Without thinking twice about it, Grofield crawled forward over the door, moving as silently as he could, his icy clothing slipping noiselessly over the metal of the door. He reached out and closed his hand around the nearest part of the motor’s framework, and pulled himself forward, off the door and onto the framework. The iron strips were about three inches wide, and when he was done he was lying face down beside the motor, his thighs resting on one strip and his chest resting on the other. He lifted his feet — they were almost too heavy to lift — and wedged them into the angles between joists and upstairs flooring. He tucked his hands inside the front of his overcoat, between the buttons, so his arms wouldn’t dangle down. Nothing dangled down now but his head, and that not very far.

He was now propped into an odd but not really uncomfortable position, face down, hands tucked inside coat, knees bent, feet up behind him and jammed against the flooring above, head drooped forward so he was looking upside down back along the length of himself at the door he’d just crawled off.

That door didn’t move for another three or four minutes, and then suddenly it did, and a man came walking in from outside, stamping snow off his boots. He stood directly under Grofield and called something incomprehensible to his partner down there in the corridor. Then he turned back and watched the door while it finished curving out and down and at last snicked shut, after which he shifted his machine gun from the ready position to the over-the-forearm carrying position and walked away to the corridor, going back to his chair and his partner.

Grofield just lay where he was. It was warm in here, delicious, it must have been fifty-five or sixty up here at the top of the room where the heat collected. It was really beautiful. Grofield lay there, totally relaxed, his position slightly cramped but not too bad, and he felt how beautiful it was to be indoors, and his eyes slowly closed, and very gently he went to sleep.