Star Bridge Part 10

He squared his shoulders and stepped purposefully onto the first strip, his eyes watchful. Brilliant light drew his eyes to the left. Above a glowing, multicolored door, were wriggling letters. They spelled out: THE PLEASURE WORLDS. As Horn stepped to a faster strip, they were gone behind him.

As if he were carrying out a grim mission, Horn moved from strip to strip, his face set and determined. Men and women glanced at him and looked away, and in that flicker Horn read distaste and uneasiness and a touch of fear.

What is it you sense? Horn thought. An a.s.sa.s.sin? Or is it only the vague knowledge that I could kill you so easily, I the barbarian, unsophisticated, savage, and powerful? Or is it your own society you fear and the security measures necessary to sustain it?

The slideways moved through the eternal tunnels of plastic and metal, past the near-hypnotic displays of shopping centers, the tantalizing odors of restaurants, the garish beckonings of amus.e.m.e.nt districts. Urging, luring, demanding. The slideway was a living snake weaving to the changing tunes of a skillful charmer. People got off and people got on, but it was always the same snake. Helplessly, Horn moved with it, watching the strips that split off into other corridors or turned downward, thinking dazedly how a man could stand in one spot and go entirely around this world, how he could keep traveling all his life and never pa.s.s the same spot twice, how this went on endlessly, this headless snake swallowing its tail....

Horn shook his head vigorously. Danger could be anywhere and was probably everywhere, but he had to decide where to go. He couldn't just stand and wait for the decision to come to him. But it was hard to think while the snake twisted mindlessly to the compulsive rhythms of music and the pleas and commands to buy this! buy that! do this! do that! use this! use that!... Horn tried to close his mind to it, but words forced their way into his consciousness: "All guards not now in their a.s.signed barracks will report there immediately. All guards-repeat-all guards will report to their a.s.signed barracks. No excuses. No exceptions. Guards on post will wait until relieved. All unreported guards will be shot on sight...."

The snake turned to look at Horn. He walked quickly to the right-hand strip and stepped onto the first strip heading down. As it carried him away from the brilliance, he heard the voice saying: "A meeting of Directors has been called for some unspecified time within the next twenty-four hours. Presumably the most urgent business will be the election of a new General Manager to replace...."

Down. That was the right way. Down toward the barracks. Down in obedience to the general command, which could only mean that Duchane knew he was inside Eron dressed as a guard. The Guard would be inspected, a monumental task but one guaranteed to unmask an a.s.sa.s.sin hiding behind a gray uniform and a yellow ident.i.ty disk his description did not match.

And if he didn't report, the manhunt would begin in Eron. Any solitary guard would be captured or shot.

Idly, Horn noticed the level number glowing on the wall as he stepped around a corner to take the next strip down: 111. He had been on the top level then; there were one hundred and twelve numbered levels to Eron. It was an odd fact that occurred to him suddenly, and he felt an odd satisfaction in the reflection that he had been where few barbarians had ever been.

The hunt was about to begin again. Horn felt a familiar flutter of something between panic and excitement. His hands got cold; he suppressed a s.h.i.+ver. He breathed deep for calmness, turned a corner, stepped onto another moving ramp. Down. Down, seeking his level, seeking the level of rats and vermin and other hunted things.

Down past flickering lights and darkness, intermixed: residence levels, schools, middle-cla.s.s shopping centers, restaurants, amus.e.m.e.nt areas, music, babble, people.... They blurred together; they became a kaleidoscope, bright, colorful, flickering, fantastic, meaningless.

As he was carried lower, men in uniform began to join him, guards answering the order to report. They became a stream fed by countless tributaries as it dropped lower down the smooth, sloping channel; inevitably the stream became a river.

The lights brightened. The slideway leveled out into a wide, low-roofed area where guards waited with drawn pistols. Between them the river flowed, Horn carried with it. Horn glanced at the faces bobbing in the river around him; they were blank and careless. But the men with the guns were watchful.

Ahead of them would be the long, narrow barracks with the stacked bunks against the walls and the eating benches between. Horn remembered them well. Once there his last chance would be gone. His eyes searched the walls ahead, searching for an opening; he kept his gun hidden beneath his arm. There were slideways leading down from here. Most calls for the guards came from below.

When the break in the walls appeared, Horn was ready. He saw the slideway when he was fifty meters away. He sneaked his pistol into his hand and edged toward the right side of the gray river. When the slideway was ten meters away, his gun was on his hip, slanting upward toward the low metal ceiling.

He pulled the trigger. The bullet screamed against the ceiling and ricocheted off a wall.

"There he is!" Horn shouted.

Guards turned to look. The river began flowing more swiftly. Men broke into a run. Horn lowered his shoulder and broke through the line of armed guards at the wall, dodged through the opening onto the slideway, and he ran down the moving strip in long strides, weaving from side to side.

The bullets that followed him were late. The feet that ran behind him were slow. In a few minutes, he lost them. He went down.

After innumerable turns and innumerable descents, the strips stopped moving. They looked as if they hadn't moved for a long time. The long inclines were darker, narrower, dirtier. Horn moved out into a roadway, his nostrils flaring to a general odor of decay.

Here the people were pasty-faced instead of golden; their clothes were drab and ragged; they had the blind look of moles. They trudged along the unmoving strips, their eyes down with their feet in the half-darkness, to no music except the shuffle of shoes on plastic.

The shops were dirty and poor. The plastic facings were cracked; large pieces had broken free. The goods on display matched the appearance of the stores they were sold in.

Horn walked with the ragged men and women, feeling a certain kins.h.i.+p with them. Like them, he was hungry; like them he had known that life was sorrow, and sorrow was eternal.

They walked among the factories where the sound of machinery shook the air, beat it with hammer blows, shattered it with explosions, and the air retaliated against the people who moved through it, swaying. They pa.s.sed the open doors and the long, dirty benches of communal kitchens, where the odor of rancid, rotten food drifted out to them, and many turned aside and entered.

Horn hesitated, feeling his hunger like a living thing inside, but it was folly. He fished a final pellet out of his pocket and let the crowd carry him along. As they entered another stretch of miserable shops, Horn noticed that the people shuffling near him had begun to inspect him warily out of the corners of their eyes. Even here, he had no place.

It was the uniform. If he wanted to hide, he had to get rid of it. He swung into a half-lit doorway. It was a clothing store. Cheap overalls and sleazy wrappers were stacked in the window. The door had a handle. He twisted it and pushed it open and went in.

A bell tinkled somewhere in the back; it had a cracked, hollow sound. As Horn's eyes adjusted to the darkness, something white moved, came close. It was a claylike face above a crooked body.

"Yeah?" It was a throaty whisper.

"Clothes," Horn said harshly, annoyed by a feeling of revulsion.

The face shook from side to side, laughing with a cracked, hollow sound like the bell. "Nah! The butcher'll nah get me. No clothes for gray guns. It is the law."

"Clothes," Horn repeated savagely. "I'll pay for them."

The doughy face shook. It had lines of dirt in the wrinkles. After a moment Horn realized that the gnome was laughing again. "Nah! Gray guns nah make so much."

"Ten kellon," Horn said.

The gnome stopped laughing and hesitated before he shook his head. "Nah, nah."

"Fifteen."

They settled on twenty-five. The gnome handed Horn a thin pair of coveralls, reputedly white, and motioned for him to change in the back room. Someone might see.

Horn shrugged, opened the grimy door, and walked into a room stale with old odors of food and sweat. It was even darker than the shop. Quickly he opened his tunic and started to pull it off.

Strong hands yanked the tunic down over his arms, pinning them back. Something whispered through the air. Horn threw himself forward, going down on his knees, rolling. Something grazed his head as he went, but the man who had been holding his tunic sailed over his shoulder and hit against a wall with a thud and an explosion of air.

The tunic had ripped. Horn's arms were free. He was on his feet, turning to meet the expected charge. Something black flickered toward him. Horn threw up his arm and lunged with the other. The blow was numbing; his right arm was useless. But his left fist connected. As the second man staggered, Horn hit him again with a chopping blow that dropped him to the floor, moaning.

The first thug was rising dazedly. Horn turned, bringing up his knee sharply. The dark shape slammed against the wall again and slithered down it limply. The second one, on his hands and knees, was shaking his head like a sleepy bear. Horn chopped the edge of his hand against the back of the man's neck. He pitched forward.

Horn stood still, breathing deeply, listening. The room was silent now. He stooped and found the pistol that had been torn off in the struggle. He turned slowly, making a complete revolution. Nothing. Quickly, then, he stripped off the gray trousers and the remnants of the tunic and slipped into the loose coveralls. He pushed the pistol into one of the deep pockets and shook his right arm. The numbness had left it; there was a sore spot on the forearm, but it worked out as Horn clenched and unclenched his fist.

His eyes had adjusted themselves to the darkness. He paused at the door to glance back at the men on the floor. They were big, heavy brutes, but their features were puffy, doughy. They looked soft and degenerate. Horn shook his head and went back into the shop. His hand was holding the pistol in the deep pocket, but the look of shock and helpless fear on the face of the crooked man brought his hand away.

He had been lurking near the door. Horn turned to him, his mouth twisting. "A cap," he said.

The second one he tried on fit well enough. He pulled the misshapen bill down low over his forehead. He stepped close to the s.h.i.+vering, silent shopkeeper, his hand held out. The man drew back fearfully.

"Here," Horn said. He dropped the coins into the man's grimy hand. "I'm paying for the clothes. You'd find a way to betray me if I didn't. I'd advise you not to try. The Guard or Duchane's agents would find the money. They'd take it away and you, too. They'll never believe you didn't help me. Forget you ever saw me."

The man nodded, his eyes rolling.

"Give me an ident.i.ty disk for a warehouse laborer," Horn said.

Clutching the coins, the gnome bent beneath a table piled high with cheap cloth. In a moment he came up with a yellow disk hyphenated with numbers.

"Get rid of that uniform," Horn said, as he pinned the disk on his cap. "Fast. And you'd better take care of your boys. They're going to be unhappy with you."

Horn walked quickly to the front door. He stood there for a moment, studying the twilight street. Even the slaves were ready to rob him, kill him. He hadn't found his level yet. He would have to go lower still, down to the lowest levels, the warehouse levels.

Or perhaps, he thought, an a.s.sa.s.sin has no natural allies.

He saw a guard burst through the shuffling ma.s.s of slaves and speed past and disappear again. Horn's eyes narrowed. The workers milled. A rising murmur reached Horn's ears, became shouts and curses. A squad of guards fought its way through the barriers of obstructing flesh, clubbing their pistols right and left to clear a path. Sullenly, the slaves parted.

When the tumult and shouting had pa.s.sed on into the distance, Horn slipped through the door and joined the roiled stream. He let it carry him along for minutes, trying to see whether any faces followed him for long. There were so many of them, and they seemed so alike that he gave up. He turned aside at the first wide ramp leading down. The air, which had been fresh, although warm, at the top levels, was stale and hot here. It became worse as he pa.s.sed through huge, dark caverns cluttered with stacked crates, boxes, barrels, bales. There were occasional working parties, but Horn kept well clear of them. Twice he saw thick, squat freighters in their wells, being loaded or unloaded. They were distant and well-lighted. Horn kept to the deepest shadows as he made his way deeper into Eron.

Downward, fleeing, where the rats scurried away from his footsteps and flying things brushed, flapping, past his face. The pa.s.sages grew narrower, dustier, hotter. Sometimes there were holes in the ramps. The dark caverns, dotted frequently with thick, N-iron beams, were deserted. They had been given up to rot and decay centuries ago. The air was stifling.

Horn tried not to think about the overpowering weight piled above him, supported by these long-forgotten beams. The ma.s.s of human flesh alone was a shuddering thought.

Horn stopped. He was in a dark, narrow corridor. The floor was rough underfoot, and the walls were chiseled rock, warm to the touch. Dust was thick in the air; cobwebs clung to his face. He swept them away with a coa.r.s.e sleeve.

He was below the lowest level. He was down into the ancient catacombs in the heart of Eron's rocky crust. He tried to take a deep breath and walked forward wearily.

The corridor eventually turned right and widened. The light took Horn by surprise. Hours in the hewn pa.s.sageway had covered him with cobwebs and dirt. Horn blinked. After a moment he saw that the light was only a dim reflection. He went on, turned left, and stopped at the edge of a vaulted chamber cut out of the rock.

Crude wooden benches were arranged neatly on the rough floor. The rows faced toward the far end of the room. That end was bright. Blackly, ma.s.sively silhouetted against the light was a symbol carved out of the living rock; it was a circle bisected by a thick line extending above and below it and ending in horizontal arms and feet.

Horn recognized it. It was the scientific symbol for entropy, and this was an Entropy Cult chapel. There were a few people scattered singly on the benches, their heads covered and bent in thought or weariness. Their clothing was ragged. Horn sank gratefully onto a bench and bent his head into his arms.

He had run until he could run no more; this was the end. He had run from the naked desert of Earth deep into the rocky heart of Eron; he could run no farther. But what could a quarry do except run?

Eron wanted him, needed him as badly as it ever needed anything. It would never forget. It would never rest until he was in its hands, Horn the a.s.sa.s.sin, smasher of images, threat to empire. There was no hope for him.

And he realized what he would have to do. Even the most timid animal will fight when it is cornered. While there is a chance for escape, it will run, but when it can run no farther, it will fight. And so Horn would fight. The only way to survive was to destroy Eron. Horn clenched his jaw: he would destroy Eron.

Only long afterwards did the decision seem funny: one man declaring war against man's greatest empire. At that moment Horn only knew that it was logical and just. Eron could be destroyed; he would destroy it.

It went no farther than that. In his weariness, he didn't think of odds or means or plans. There was only the decision, implacable, unshakeable, and- His arms were seized, twisted behind him while he came up off the bench. Helplessly, Horn braced his shoulders against the pain.

THE HISTORY.

Atoms and men....

They are moved by certain general forces in accordance with certain general laws, and their movements can be predicted in certain broad generalizations.

Physical forces, historical forces-if a man knew the laws of one as well as he knew the laws of the other, he could predict the reactions of a culture as accurately as the reactions of a rocket s.h.i.+p.

One historical force was obvious-Eron. It couldn't be overlooked. Its influence was universal.

Challenge and response. That was a force. Eron challenged; man responded with the Tube. Out of the Tube sprang the Empire.

But now the greatest challenge was the Empire itself; it shaped its own responses. By its own grim pressures, it created the forces that threatened it. It created its enemies and cut them down and found new enemies rising behind, beneath, within.

It created the Cl.u.s.ter and destroyed it, as it had destroyed other growing cultures and would go on, creating and destroying, until it grew too weak to respond with renewed vigor and was itself destroyed.

And there were other forces working, unseen, inexorable, sweeping before them men and worlds and empires.

What of a man? Is he at the mercy of these forces? Is he helpless to determine his own destiny?

The laws of cla.s.sical physics are statistical; the unpredictable, individual atom enjoys free will....

11.

THE TURNING TIDE.

Horn woke to darkness.

He woke with the dream still vivid, remembering the sensation of being tossed and driven in the fury of the flood that rammed irresistibly through the tube, remembering the choking, gasping helplessness and the long, wild tumbling into nothing. He remembered, too, the sudden surge of decision and energy with which he had caught a handhold in the tube, blocked it with his body, withstood the furious battering of the raging water, and slowly, surely, forced it back upon itself....

Under Horn was rock, warm, worn smooth. The air was dusty and stale, but it was breathable. Horn sat up, recalling the narrow dimensions of the cell, and felt rested, restored, and alert. He sat in the darkness, hugging his knees to his chest, and remembered how he had been brought to this place.

On either side of him, there in the Entropy Cult chapel, had been a dark-cloaked man, his face shadowed and anonymous under a hood. Horn's arms had been twisted up tightly behind him; the hands holding him had been strong and sure, and he could get no leverage. They had moved him easily, silently, across the rough floor. None of the bent people on the benches had even looked up.

As they went through a break in the rock wall into a dark corridor, Horn glanced back over his shoulder. Uniformed guards poured into the room through an entrance near the carved entropy symbol, like a gray wave. Horn and his escort moved quietly through a maze of black tunnels before they stopped.

They tied his hands behind his back, took his gun away, and fitted two nooses around his neck. One cord led to the man in front who led the way; the other trailed to the hooded figure behind. If he tried to escape, he would be strangled.

Horn trotted anxiously between them, trying to keep the cords slack. It was a nerve-wracking, exhausting effort that kept him at a constant half-run with no time for thought of anything except the tightening cords around his neck. They seemed to walk forever, through eternally branching, eternally dark corridors cut out of the rock. Horn started to stumble; it threatened to leave the silent figures with a corpse to carry.

Before Horn collapsed, they entered a room partially lighted by a hand torch blazing up from a metal bracket fastened to the wall. The ceiling was dark, bare rock not far overhead, but the light didn't reach the other walls of the room. From the echoes, Horn formed the impression that it was deep and wide.

Someone had been waiting for them. It was a man, shorter than his guards but dressed like them in a concealing, hooded robe. His face was hidden in shadows. On the breast of the robe was embroidered the bisected entropy circle.

Horn stood between them, struggling to stand straight. One of his captors spoke. It was the first sound Horn had heard him make.

"He fits the description. Found in chapel fifty-three."

The voice sounded hollow. It bounced back and forth between the rock walls. Horn looked straight ahead, his face immobile.

"Pull back his cap." The voice was firm and decisive.

As the cap was pulled back from his face, Horn caught a glimpse of the face under the hood. The light slanted across it as the man studied him. It was a hard, dedicated face. Horn had never seen it before. The voice, the face, both strange; Horn wondered why his intuition was making such an issue of it.

"It's the man."

They put him in the cell, cut his hands free, and gave him food and water. The food was coa.r.s.e, but it was filling. Horn needed it after the bulkless nourishment of the food pellets. The barred, metal door had slammed behind them. It had been a solid, final sound.

Alone in the darkness and the complete silence, Horn had eaten and then investigated the cell. It was completely bare but clean. There was no exit except through the door, which admitted what air came into the room. Horn fingered the lock. It was newer than the door and escape-proof. Its small square of minute holes needed the insertion of tiny, magnetized filaments.

Before he had time to worry about it, he had fallen asleep.

Now, awake, he wondered what had awakened him. He heard again the odd, clinking sound that seemed loud in the total silence.