He then checked. The two were unconscious, no one else was in sight. He mounted the transbelt. Perhaps they had not been looking for him in his proper person, perhaps no one had given him away. But he did not hang around to find out. One thing he was damn’ well certain of, he told himself, if anybody had squealed on him, it wasn’t Mary Sperling.
It took two more parabombs and a couple of hundred words of pure fiction to get him out into the open air. Once he was there and out of immediate observation the brassard and the remaining bombs went into his pouch and the bandolier ended up behind some bushes; he then looked up a clothing store in Waukegan.
He sat down in a sales booth and dialed the code for kilts. He let cloth designs flicker past in the screen while he ignored the persuasive voice of the catalogue until a pattern showed up which was distinctly unmilitary and not blue, whereupon he stopped the display and punched an order for his size. He noted the price, tore an open-credit voucher from his wallet, stuck it into the machine and pushed the switch. Then he enjoyed a smoke while the tailoring was done.
Ten minutes later he stuffed the proctor’s kilt into the refuse hopper of the sales booth and left, nattily and loudly attired. He had not been in Waukegan the past century but he found a middle-priced autel without drawing attention by asking questions, dialed its registration board for a standard suite and settled down for seven hours of sound sleep.
He breakfasted in his suite, listening with half an ear to the news box; he was interested, in a mild way, in hearing what might be reported concerning the raid on the Families. But it was a detached interest; he had already detached himself from it in his own mind. It had been a mistake, he now realized, to get back in touch with the Families-a darn good thing he was clear of it all with his present public identity totally free of any connection with the whing-ding.
A phrase caught his attention: “-including Zaccur Barstow, alleged to be their tribal chief.
“The prisoners are being shipped to a reservation in Oklahoma, near the ruins of the Okla-Orleans road city about twenty-five miles east of Harriman Memorial Park. The Chief Provost describes it as a ‘Little Coventry,’ and has ordered all aircraft to avoid it by ten miles laterally. The Administrator could not be reached for a statement but a usually reliable source inside the administration informs us that the mass arrest was accomplished in order to speed up the investigations whereby the administration expects to obtain the ‘Secret of the Howard Families’-their techniques for indefinitely prolonging life. This forthright action in arresting and transporting every member of the outlaw group is expected to have a salutary effect in breaking down the resistance of their leaders to the legitimate demands of society. It will bring home forcibly to them that the civil rights enjoyed by decent citizens must not be used as a cloak behind which to damage society as a whole.
“The chattels and holdings of the members of this criminal conspiracy have been declared subject to the Conservator General and will be administered by his agents during the imprisonment of-“
Lazarus switched it off. “Damnation!” he thought. “Don’t fret about things you can’t help.” Of course, he had expected to be arrested himself … but he had escaped. That was that. It wouldn’t do the Families any good for him to turn himself in-and besides, he owed the Families nothing, not a tarnation thing.
Anyhow, they were better off all arrested at once and quickly placed under guard. If they had been smelled out one at a time, anything could have happened-lynchings, even pogroms. Lazarus knew from hard experience how close under the skin lay lynch law and mob violence in the most sweetly civilized; that was why he had advised Zack to rig it-that and the fact that Zack and the Administrator had to have the Families in one compact group to stand a chance of carrying out their scheme. They were well off … and no skin off his nose.
But he wondered how Zack was getting along, and what he would think of Lazarus’ disappearance. And what Mary Sperling thought-it must have been a shock to her when he turned up making a noise like a proctor. He wished he could straighten that out with her.
Not that it mattered what any of them thought. They would all either be lightyears away very soon … or dead. A closed book.
He turned to the phone and called the post office. “Captain Aaron Sheffield,” he announced, and gave his postal number. “Last registered with Goddard Field post office. Will you please have my mail sent to-” He leaned closer and read the code number from the suite’s mail receptacle.
“Service,” assented the voice of the clerk. “Right away, Captain.”
“Thank you.”
It would take a couple of hours, he reflected, for his mail to catch up with him-a half hour in trajectory, three times that in fiddle-faddle. Might as well wait here … no doubt the search for him had lost itself in the distance but there was nothing in Waukegan he wanted. Once the mail showed up he would hire a U-push-it and scoot down to—
To where? What was he going to do now?
He turned several possibilities over in his mind and came at last to the blank realization that there was nothing, from one end of the Solar System to the other, that he really wanted to do.
It scared him a little. He had once heard, and was inclined to credit, that a loss of interest in living marked the true turning point in the battle between anabolisim and catabolism-old age. He suddenly envied normal shortlived people-at least they could go make nuisances of themselves to their children. Filial affection was not customary among Members of the Families; it was not a feasible relationship to maintain for a century or more. And friendship, except between Members, was bound to be regarded as a passing and shallow matter. There was no one whom Lazarus wanted to see.
Wait a minute … who was that planter on Venus? The one who knew so many folk songs and who was so funny when he was drunk? He’d go look him up. It would make a nice hop and it would be fun, much as he disliked Venus.
Then he recalled with cold shock that he had not seen the man for-how long? In any case, he was certainly dead by now.
Libby had been right, he mused glumly, when he spoke of the necessity for a new type of memory association for the long-lived. He hoped the lad would push ahead with the necessary research and come up with an answer before Lazarus was reduced to counting on his fingers. He dwelt on the notion for a minute or two before recalling that he was most unlikely ever to see Libby again.
The mail arrived and contained nothing of importance. He was not surprised; he expected no personal letters. The spools of advertising went into the refuse chute; he read only one item, a letter from Pan-Terra Docking Corp. telling him that his convertible cruiser I Spy had finished her overhaul and had been moved to a parking dock, rental to start forthwith. As instructed, they had not touched the ship’s astrogational controls-was that still the Captain’s pleasure?
He decided to pick her up later in the day and head out into space. Anything was better than sitting Earthbound and admitting that he was bored.
Paying his score and finding a jet for hire occupied less than twenty minutes. He took off and headed for Goddard Field, using the low local-traffic level to avoid entering the control pattern with a flight plan. He was not consciously avoiding the police because he had no reason to think that they could be looking for “Captain Sheffield”; it was simply habit, and it would get him to Goddard Field soon enough.
But long before he reached there, while over eastern Kansas, he decided to land and did so.
He picked the field of a town so small as to be unlikely to rate a full-time proctor and there he sought out a phone booth away from the field. Inside it, he hesitated. How did you go about calling up the head man of the entire Federation-and get him? If he simply called Novak Tower and asked for Administrator Ford, he not only would not be put through to him but his call would be switched to the Department of Public Safety for some unwelcome inquiries, sure as taxes.