For a year and a half Blake had been working in the shack sporadically. He had come across it accidentally, and he had returned with equipment in his copter, some of it stolen, some bought and paid for, all of it necessary. That year he had invented a filter that would pass only pure H20 through a permeable membrane, regardless of the source of the water. Equally interesting to him had been the idea of the direct manufacture of electricity from the molecular excitation of various alloys spun out into wires. He had accomplished this also. At the bottom of the swift brook there were half a dozen long wires being whipped continually. Anchored upstream the loose ends danced against a plate with a feeder line that vanished into art insulated cable in a tree trunk that housed a storage battery; the wires shimmied and twisted and made electricity. But he hadn’t finished with this yet. The wires wore out too fast.
There had been other things that he had tried, some he had been able to bring off, some would take more hard work, some probably never could be done. His work was taking him into all fields of science, and he had many ideas drawn up ready for patenting. He had been biding his time until he knew Obie Cox couldn’t touch him again, but when that time had come around, he had been busy, and had forgotten to pack up until he realized that the leaves had fallen and the air had the bite of frost and the smell of snow. So he packed his copter with notebooks and sketches and schematics of those things that he knew were ready for a patent search, and he locked up all else in the shack. He knew that barring a landslide that would bury the shack completely, it was impervious to any outside interference. The material he had lined it with would withstand flames and heat up to four thousand degrees, and would deflect any kind of explosives. The snows would come and cover it for him, hiding it until his return. He left in his single-seater copter and headed south.
Blake was a fugitive on several accounts. His copter was stolen. In a credit card economy anyone without a proper credit card is automatically suspect, and it is illegal to sell a copter or plane, or hovercraft, or underwater craft, or spacecraft or the atomic engine, or turbine motor, or jet pack, or rocket cluster to run any of the foregoing to a minor. Although Blake had several different sets of papers, all forged, none of them would have stood up for the sort of investigation that buying a copter entailed. So he had stolen one several years ago. Too, most of the big equipment he had in the shack was stolen, for much the same reasons. He could have paid cash for anything he had wanted or needed, had tried hard to buy equipment with cash, but it had drawn unwanted attention to him, so he had been forced to steal. Also, there were a lot of policemen scattered from city to city who remembered the golden-haired boy who could jump a General, or goose a vehicle of any make into running. He was something of a legend in those cities. Never booked, never picked up for anything, never identified in any way, except as the well-built blond boy with the books, he was suspected of being the gang leader in any town where he showed up. None of those who got to know him ever put the finger on him, but there were others, the ones on the fringes who knew him by sight only, and they were the ones who added to the myth of the boy with the golden hair. He could leap from building to building; he could outrun a cop car; he could make people do things they didn’t want to do, and he could do things to them from a distance; he could heal….
This last was the elusive spoor that Merton’s men kept running across and following. Those who got fixed up by him never talked about it, so that it was hard to track them down. But there were the rumors that were like ripples on a pond; everyone knew someone who knew someone who had been taken care of by the kid.
Blake grinned at the reports and never denied anything or admitted anything. He flew low over the mountain, under the Air Patrol radar. He didn’t want to be challenged. It always upset the Air Patrol to challenge his craft and see it elude them. The copter he had stolen over two years ago had undergone radical changes, so that although it looked much the same, it was not. Near Harrisburg the challenge came. Blake sighed. He hadn’t really expected to be allowed to fly from upper Pennsylvania all the way to Cincinnati without being hailed. Any unauthorized craft was a menace to air traffic, theoretically, and there could be no exceptions.
“Aircraft of E designation, heading west, number 927-083, proceed immediately to Air Patrol strip A-27. You will be escorted by an Air Patrol craft.”
Blake looked at his instruments, setting his course, then looked for the A.P. craft. It was a hovercraft outfitted with a booster jet. It dipped at him, turned slightly to the left, slowing down somewhat for him to follow. He maintained his course. They were passing north of Harrisburg, well out of the traffic lanes. The voice repeated the message, this time more stridently. They were now west of Harrisburg. The designated field was changed from A-27, to C-33. The hovercraft drew in closer and Blake could see the cop making a hand signal for him to turn to. He thumbed his nose and pressed his acceleration stud. The copter lifted vertically, shooting up like a rocket. At two thousand feet he leveled and, still accelerating, streaked westward. There was a moment of leeway while the cop got over his stunned surprise, then he used his booster and came after Blake. The copter dropped as suddenly as it had risen, dropped and reduced speed so that the hovercraft overshot it and lost it before the pilot could make a turn. Blake hugged the ground and headed for the nearest wooded area, half a mile away, folding his blades all he went. When he entered the woods the craft was a ground effect vehicle. The cop searched the area for half an hour before giving up.
When Blake got near Cincinnati, he crossed the river to approach from the Kentucky side. It was less heavily populated here, and the hills that lined the river made better cover than the myriad subdivisions where the houses stood window to window, matched up like dominoes over the flatter Ohio land. It was a dark, frosty night, no moon, no stars either, hidden as they were by the dense layers of smoke, smog, and airborne wastes of all sorts. The copter made the only noise, and not wanting to attract more attention, Blake converted it again to a ground effect vehicle and skimmed over the black earth. Excitement and anticipation were rising in him.
He took a wide detour around the U.N. area of the spaceship, and his new direction took him within two blocks of the Voice of God Memorial Temple erected as near the spot as had been possible where Obie first communicated with God. Blake saw the roadblocks in time to turn again; every road leading to the river was blocked off. He stopped at the side of the woods and considered his next move. He didn’t know what was happening in the area, but he’ did know that he didn’t want to get mixed up in anything at all, not now, not when home was within hailing distance practically. The sky was being patrolled by police copters and hovercraft, so he didn’t even consider taking to the air. He knew his little craft would get through the woods without any trouble, but there was the river after that, and he was certain that if there was an official net out, the river would be heavily patrolled. While he was sitting there quietly trying to decide what to do, he heard a distant rumble as indistinct and rolling as summer thunder. He cocked his head. He knew the sound. Here? Out in the middle of the woods?
He lifted the craft from the roadbed so he could get a better view and he saw them coming. People, thousands of people, carrying electric torches, kerosene torches, flares. Over them the police craft hovered, spotlights blazing down on the masses. Blake couldn’t hear the message being directed at them, but he suspected that they were being ordered to turn back. The police craft dipped and swayed, and others joined it. A line of ground cars was across the road, and there were more police manning that barricade. Blake shook his head. There were thousands of marchers. And four, five hovercraft. Where were the National Guards? Why didn’t the cops release anti-mob gas? His eyes narrowed. They wanted them to get through. The cops were going through the motions only. He watched the oncoming mob for another moment, then turned into the woods, keeping high enough to see them. They stretched across the road, coming in like a tidal wave, chanting, yelling, screaming, roaring. The hovercraft over them simply lighted their way, and now and again Blake could catch snatches of the messages being sent down: “…turn back… arrest… anti-mob gas…”