He rushed up to the set and slammed the button which turned it off. He began to rub his forehead then.
I turned the set back on again, full blast.
“Let us pray—”
“Damn it!” he cried, turning it off again.
I turned it back on.
“…Thy kingdom come—”
He hit the button, and I did it again.
“…on earth as it is in heaven…”
He tried holding it in the Off position then. I overrode him.
“…and forgive us our trespasses…”
He made a loud, bleating, animal noise and dropped to his knees. He crawled forward, reaching, located the plug and pulled at it “…not into temptation…”
He was shaking when he rose, breathing heavily. I began strobing the lights again. I set the stove to buzzing once more. I kicked on the computer’s taped greeting. None of these seemed to reach him this time, though. He rushed forward, set his teeth and glared down at Ann.
The pain became excruciating, and then a wave of blackness seemed to roll up through her. I drew her to me and held her as tightly as possible, as if I could somehow keep her alive within my own consciousness.
I knew that her body had died. But she seemed still to be with me.
“Ann?” I said, as I moved back through telephone exchanges.
“Yes?”
I linked with the regional unit, found an area where the traffic was slow.
“We lost,” I said.
“I knew that we would. I told you.”
… The prospect swirled, racing beads on an infinite abacus…
I’m sorry. I tried.”
“I know, Steve. Thank you. If I’d met you sooner… I was always weak. I wish—”
The strange presence was suddenly nearer than it had ever been before, almost palpable, something I seemed just about ready to identify…
“Of course,” she said, and I did not understand. She was weak, growing weaker. She had no right to exist at all now, except by this kind of symbiosis. I did not know what I was going to do with her. “Let me go now, Steve.”
The presence grew stronger. It was almost intimidating. I held her more tightly, trying to share my strength with her.
“It’s all right,” she said.
In that moment, I felt that it was, as if she had just been granted some special vision I did not share.
“Really. I must go.”
She began disengaging herself from my mental grip.
“It is the big Angra research facility—Number Four—just outside Carlsbad. That’s what you want. She’s there,” she said. “Good luck.”
“Ann…”
The sensation, whatever it was, was like a parting kiss. Then she moved toward the stranger, who welcomed her.
I had a vision of them, passing across a sheet-metal plain where roses of aluminum, copper, brass and tin swayed in an ozone breeze beneath a sky lit by an arc of blue sparklight. The figure whose hand she took wore a metal mask, unless of course that was its face…
… I followed the track, back, back, to the clackety-clack, to the ragtime rhythms, quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit un gula campum, as we rocked, racing, westward, under the Southern moon full-risen, moonlight, night flight, seeming dreaming, track away. Steve, did she say?
Clack.
Chapter 13
dozed after a time, a light and troubled sleep. Half-consciously, I checked periodically with the computer, keeping track of our distance from Memphis. I believe that I dreamed, but the particulars escaped me. I welcomed the distancing effect that a period of unconsciousness would place between me and the evening’s events. Light and broken though it was, my slumber gave this much to me.
The moon had climbed much higher by the time I came fully awake and decided that I could no longer postpone full forethought. I did not want to take the chance of riding all of the way into the railroad yard. Which meant that another unscheduled stop was in order. I was not familiar with Memphis. I did not want to stop too far out of town and simply find myself lost in the middle of the night; and I did not relish the idea of a long walk through unfamiliar territory. I decided on a sudden stop right before the railroad yard, unless something better presented itself along the way.
While I had cleaned up the computer record of this trip so far—back at regional—there was nothing I would be able to do about the memory of two unexplained stops in the minds of the train’s crew. The stops would be reported and there would have to be some sort of investigation. When it was seen that the crew’s story did not match the record, someone at Angra who must now be hunting transportation anomalies in this direction would be alerted. This coming situation was the necessary result of my present security. It was another reason for my getting off at a late point and not dawdling in the area. I would have to move on as quickly as possible. I began to wonder whether there were any way in which I might provide a false trail for Angra’s investigators. I began to consider what little I did know of the geography of the area and to speculate as to what might be quickly available to me.
So, later, when I initiated the braking program, there were all sorts of lights in sight. I crouched before the door, caused it to open and hit the ground before we had come to a complete halt. I headed forward, not wanting the crew to catch sight of me, down off the siding and across a field. I did nothing to the computer this time, other than to order it to shut the door a little later.
When I felt comfortably out of sight I slowed to a walk and caught my breath. I headed toward a row of streetlights beyond darkened houses, crossed some sort of drainage ditch and passed through someone’s yard. A dog began barking within the house. It shut up after I made it to the sidewalk and crossed the street.
I walked for about fifteen minutes after that, trying without success to get an idea as to where I was in relation to anything that might be of use to me. It was unfortunate that I had jumped off near a residential area. They are simply too dead after a certain hour to be of much use for the sorts of things I had in mind. I kept my mental ears open for the familiar voices of computers, but the only ones I could hear at all were too somnolent in terms of current activity to be kicked into service, most of them functioning as glorified timers at the moment.
I continued, turning after a time onto a larger thoroughfare. An occasional car passed, but I dismissed the notion of trying to flag one down. I did not want to leave anyone with the memory and possible description of a hitchhiker around this place at this time. I stretched my faculties as far as I could reach, casting about in all directions, seeking computer activity.
Faintly, far off to the right, there seemed to be some action. I turned right at the next corner and headed toward it. I kept walking past houses—darkened, for the most part—expecting to hit a commercial area. But I didn’t.
Instead, the area remained unchanged but the signal grew stronger, finally reaching the point where I could read it clearly. It was some insomniac gamester engaged in an elaborate four-way contest involving two players in Mississippi and one in Kentucky. There was a light behind drawn curtains in a house across the street, up ahead, which might well be its source. I slowed my pace.
Lickticktertick.
… I passed along the connections without disturbing their play. It was a telephone-line hookup, and the first exchange I got to I departed their circuit. Slowly shifting holes in an enormous piece of luminous Swiss cheese…
I plunged into, out of, along and through a great number of these. I finally got the feeling, jumping from circuit to circuit, for the ones which led to functioning computers as opposed to those in use between people’s phones…