He would have tumbled to the pavement, if hands had not caught him and held him upright.
"Help…" he said again, weakly, feeling the last of the small spurt of strength he had been able to summon up draining from him in the sudden relief of still being alive. "They've had me in their cells…"
A fainting spell misted his vision for a few seconds. When it cleared, he became distantly aware of being half-pulled, half-lifted, forward for a little space; then lifted again by many hands to the head-height of the crowd. Dimly, he realized he was being passed along by an unending succession of hands above the heads of the multitude - and, at the same moment, became crazily aware that here and there about the square there were the figures of other casualties of the. tight-packed gathering - men, women, and even some children, being passed toward the outskirts of the crowd by the same means.
In his present exhausted, slightly confused state, it was a curious sensation, rather like floating across strangely uneven ground, while receiving innumerable pats on the back; and, strangely, it brought back the dream he had had of starting out on foot, alone, across a plain to a Tower seen far off in its distance. He was conscious mainly of a naked feeling from the cold, wet air cooling him through the thin shirt and trousers that were all his captors had left him to wear in his cell. After a while the number of hands beneath him became less; and, a few moments later, he was let down into an upright position with his feet on the pavement of one of the streets leading into the square.
"Hang on," said a man's voice in his ear.
There were two of them, one on either side of him. He had an arm over the shoulders of each, and they each had an arm about his waist. They half-carried, half-walked him forward through a lesser thickness of people for a little distance, and then abruptly brought him back into warmth, for which he was grateful.
They had helped him up a ramp into the body of a large truck that seemed to have been fitted up as a first aid station.
"Put him there," said a woman with a stethoscope hanging from her neck, who was working over someone on a cot. Her elbow indicated an empty cot behind her.
Gently, the two men carrying Hal put him down on the cot.
"See if anyone outside knows him," said the woman briefly. "And shut the door as you go out."
The two went. Hal lay basking in the warmth and the growing joy of being free. After a while, the medician with the stethoscope came over to him,
"How do you feel?" she asked, putting her fingers on his wrist at the pulse-point.
"Just weak," said Hal. "I wasn't in the crowd. I just got away from a Militia ambulance. They were taking me to the hospital."
"Why?" said the woman, reaching for a thermometer.
"I had a bad cold. A chest cold, that went into bronchitis, or something like that."
"Are you asthmatic?"
"No." Hal coughed thickly, looked around for something to spit into, and found a white tray held under his nose. He spat; and the sensor-end of the thermometer was tucked beneath his tongue for a moment, then was withdrawn.
"No fever now," said the woman. "But you're still wheezing. You're not moving air well."
"Yes," said Hal. "The last few days. I had a pretty high fever, I think, but it broke early this morning.''
"Roll up your sleeve," she said, producing a pressure gun and thumbing an ampoule into it. His fingers fumbled clumsily with the fastening of his sleeve cuff, and she laid the gun aside to pull loose the cuff closure and push the sleeve up. He watched the nose of the pressure gun pressed against his upper arm, felt the coolness of a drug being discharged into the muscle, and himself rolled his sleeve down and fastened it once more.
"Drink this," said the woman, now holding a disposable cup to his lips. "Drink it all."
He swallowed something that tasted like weak lemonade. Less than a minute later a blissful miracle took place, as his lungs opened up, and shortly thereafter he became busy coughing up large amounts of the secretions that had clogged his constricted air passages.
The door to the truck by which he had been brought in opened and closed again.
" - Of course I know him," a voice was saying as it approached him. "He's Howard Immanuelson, one of the Warriors in Rukh's Command."
Hal looked and saw the round, determined face of one of Gustav Mohler's grandsons from the Mohler-Beni farm, coming toward him with a man behind him who might have been one of those who had carried Hal in earlier.
"Are you all right, sir?" the grandson asked. Hal had never known his name. "Is there someplace I can take you to? I drove in earlier this week in one of our trucks, and I can bring it around in a moment. You needn't worry, sir. We're all faithful people of God, here!"
A blush stained his skin on the last words. Hal appreciated for the first time that the urging of the truck driver with the accordion that Hal be put off from the Command, that evening at the Mohler-Beni farm, might have been a source of embarrassment to their host and his family.
"I don't doubt it," he said.
"He can't go like that," said the medician sharply, from another stretcher at which she was working, "unless you want him back down with pneumonia, again. He needs some outdoor clothing. Somebody out there ought to be able to spare a jacket or a coat for a Warrior of God."
The man who had come in with the grandson ducked back out of the truck.
"Don't worry, sir," said Mohler's grandson, "there's lots of people who'll be glad to give you a coat. Maybe I'd better go get the truck and bring it here so you don't have so far to walk to it."
He went out, leaving Hal to wonder if someone out there would actually be willing to give away an outer garment and expose himself or herself to the temperature Hal had just felt, at the request of someone else who was probably a stranger.
However, the man came back before Mohler's grandson had a chance to return; and his arms were filled with half a dozen coats and jackets. Left to himself, Hal would have taken any one and been grateful for it; but the medician took charge and picked out a jacket with a fleece lining that wrapped him with almost living warmth.
"Thank whoever gave it, for me," said Hal, to the man who had brought it.
"Sir, he's already thanked," said the man, "and proud that a member of Rukh's Command would wear a garment of his."
He left with the rejected coats. A moment later, Mohler's grandson came in and helped Hal out to a light truck that was now standing in the street beside the first aid truck, surrounded by a considerable crowd that broke into applause as Hal came out, his elbow steadied by the young man.
Hal waved and smiled at the crowd, let himself be helped into the other truck, and sat back exhaustedly in his seat as the grandson lifted the vehicle on its blowers and the crowd made a lane before it to let it move off.
"Where to, sir?" asked the grandson.
"To - I'm sorry, I don't know your name," said Hal.
"Mercy Mohler," said the other, solemnly.
"Well, thank you, Mercy," said Hal. "I appreciate your identifying me; and believe me when I say I appreciate this ride."
"It's nothing," said Mercy, and blushed again. "Where to?"
Hal had put his memory to work to turn up the address he had written on the mailing envelope containing his papers. Nothing that he wanted to remember was ever forgotten; but sometimes it required a certain amount of mental searching to turn it up. At the last minute, he changed slightly what his memory had given him. There was no need to advertise the fact he was going to the Exotic Consulate.
"Forty-three French Galley Place," he said. "Do you know where that is? Because all I have is the address."