Night Walk Read online

  The ferry turned out to be a primitive but fast ground effect machine, capable of crossing the mile-wide Strait in a couple of minutes. Tallon found the short trip exhilarating. The characteristic yawing ride of the hovercraft, the roar of the turbines, white spray flying on each side, the jostling of the other travelers in the stand-up passenger saloon -- all combined to produce a cheerful vacation mood. The vessel waltzed up its ramp and into the dock. Tallon strolled through the group of people waiting to embark, and began looking for a good restaurant. There was a diner attached to the rail terminal complex, but it looked slightly squalid, and he had no doubt it would charge high prices for indifferent food.

  He walked up sloping streets toward the center of city still enjoying the sense of freedom. Sweetwell was a bustling city with a suggestion of provincial France in its sophisticated little stores and sidewalk cafes. He would have enjoyed eating in the sunlight, but decided not to throw away all caution -- his picture was bound to have been included in the newscasts and there was always the chance that somebody might look too closely at him and start wondering. Accordingly he picked a quiet restaurant, with a Gothic sign identifying it as The Persian Cat.

  The only other customers were two pairs of middle-aged women sipping coffee and smoking, with shopping bags on the floor at their feet. Tallon flicked the eyeset, got behind the eyes of one of the women, and saw himself walk in and sit down at a vacant table. The tables were of real wood and were covered with what seemed to be genuine linen. Two large gray cats padded about among the chair legs. Tallon, who was not a cat enthusiast, shifted uneasily and wished one of the other customers would look at a menu.

  The food, when he finally got it, was quite good. The steak had been processed so well that Tallon could not detect the taste of fish at all, and he guessed it would cost him plenty. He ate quickly, suddenly impatient to be back on the train, gulped the coffee, and reached for his money.

  His wallet was gone.

  Tallon searched his other pockets mechanically, knowing all the while that his wallet had been stolen, probably during the jostling ride across the Strait. The ferry was an obvious hunting ground for pickpockets, and Tallon swore at his own carelessness. The situation was serious, for he was now in trouble with the restaurant and could not buy a train ticket later.

  Toying with the dregs of his coffee, Tallon decided that if he was going to start stealing money The Persian Cat was as good a place as any to do it. It seemed to have only one afternoon waitress, who spent long periods out in the kitchen, leaving the cash desk near the door unattended. It was a foolishly trusting thing to do, he thought; almost as foolish as not holding on to your wallet in a crowd.

  Two of the middle-aged shoppers were still in the restaurant. Waiting for them to leave, Tallon motioned to one of the gray cats and lured it over to him. He lifted the heavy animal onto his lap, trying to tickle it behind the ears, and adjusted the eyeset to put him behind its great yellow eyes.

  Tallon feared the other two customers were going to stay until somebody else came in and ruined his chance, but they finally gathered up the shopping and rang for their check. To Tallon's surprise it was not the waitress who had served him who emerged from the screen at the rear; it was instead a tall brunette of about thirty, wearing black-rimmed glasses and an expensively tailored business suit. He decided she was either the manager or the owner.

  One her way back from the cash desk the brunette stopped at his table. He raised the almost empty coffee cup to his lips.

  "Can I get you anything more?"

  Tallon shook his head. "Nothing, thanks. I'm enjoying your excellent coffee."

  "I see you like my cats."

  "Love them," Tallon lied. "Beautiful creatures. This is a particularly fine cat. What's his name?"

  "His name is Ethel."

  Tallon smirked desperately, wondering if real cat lovers were supposed to be able to tell toms from tabbies at a glance. He concentrated on stroking Ethel's head, and the brunette, after giving him a suspicious look, moved off toward the screen. The little encounter had filled Tallon with a sense of uneasiness, and he decided to waste no more time. He held the cat up and rotated it, making sure the restaurant was deserted, then walked quickly to the desk. The old-fashioned cash register was bound to make a noise when he operated it, so Tallon edged the door open slightly in preparation for a quick escape. He pressed a key on the register and feverishly scooped a handful of bills from the drawer.

  "Detainee Samuel Tallon," a woman's voice said softly behind him.

  Tallon spun, with the cat under his arm, and saw the expensively dressed brunette. Her eyes, behind the black-rimmed glasses, had a hard speculative glint in them. She was aiming a gold-plated automatic pistol squarely at his chest.

  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.

  twelve

  Tallon was clearing the outskirts of the city when he heard the lonely clattering of a single helicopter. Its navigation lights drifted across the sky, high up in the predawn grayness. In a technology that had learned to negate gravity itself, the helicopter was a crude contraption, but it was still the most efficient vertical-takeoff machine ever devised, and it was unlikely to go out of use as long as some men had to run and others had to hunt them like eagles.

  Holding Seymour's head upright, Tallon watched the solitary light drift out of sight beyond the northern horizon. Amanda had wasted no time, he thought. Now that any glimmer of hope of not being reported to the police was gone he began looking for a safe place to wait out the coming day. He was walking on a second-class motorway, lined on one side with native trees and on the other with stunted palms grown in the higher gravity of Emm Luther from imported seeds. At that time of the morning traffic was limited to infrequent private automobiles, traveling fast, trailing turbulent wakes of dust and dried leaves.

  Tallon kept close to the trees, hiding each time he saw headlights, and scanned the quiet buildings for a likely place to sleep. As he left Sweetwell behind, the neat garden factories were gradually replaced by small flat-blocks, and then by private houses in the higher income class. The tailored lawns shone in the light from the motorway. Several times as he walked, his view of his surroundings seemed to dim slightly, and he whispered fiercely to Seymour, urging the terrier to alertness. But in the end he had to admit to himself that the fault was in the eyeset. He fingered the tiny slide controlling the gain and was shocked to discover it was almost up against the end of its slot. It looked as though the damage he had done to the power unit was progressive in effect, in which case . . .

  Tallon dismissed the thought and concentrated on finding a place to spend the day. Lights were beginning to appear in windows as he opened the door of a shrub-covered shed behind one of the larger dwellings. The darkness in the shed was filled with the nostalgic odor of dry earth, garden tools, and machine oil. Tallon settled down in a corner, with Seymour, and sorted out some of his new possessions. He had Amanda Weisner's gold-plated automatic, enough food for several days, a roll of bills, and a radio. Later in the day as he lay in his private universe of blackness, with the eyeset switched off, he was able to pick up the first newcasts.

  Detainee Samuel Tallon, he learned, was still alive and had reached the city of Sweetwell. Tallon, who had been convicted of spying for imperialist Earth, had forced his way into a Sweetwell restaurant, had assaulted and raped the proprietress, and had then vanished with most of her cash. It was now confirmed that, although blind, the escaped detainee was equipped with a radarlike device that enabled him to see. He was described as being armed and dangerous.

  Tallon smiled wryly. The bit about rape was particularly good, coming from Amanda. He fell asleep and managed to doze most of the day, only coming fully awake when low growls from Seymour announced that people were moving around outside. Nobody came into the shed, and after a while Tallon stopped thinking about what he would do if they did. Winfield's philosophy that a
man had to do his best with the present and leave the future to itself was not especially attractive to Tallon, but it was the only one that worked in the present circumstances.

  At dusk he gathered up Seymour and the pack and cautiously opened the door. As he was about to step out a large plum-colored limousine swept up the short driveway and rolled to a halt outside the main house. A thickly built young man got out, with his jacket slung over his arm, and waved to someone in the house who was beyond Tallon's field of vision. The young man walked toward the front entrance, stopped at a bed of pale blue song-flowers, and knelt down to remove a weed. At his touch the flowers began a sweet, sad humming that was clearly audible in the dark confines of the shed.

  The song-flowers were a native variety that fed on insects, using the plaintive humming sound to attract or lull their prey. Tallon had never liked them. He listened impassively for a moment, holding Seymour's eye to the narrow opening of the door. The heavy-set man discovered several more weeds and uprooted them; then, muttering furiously, he came toward the shed. Tallon slipped the automatic out of his pocket, reversed it in his hand, and stood waiting as the crunching footsteps reached the other side of the door.