IT WAS THE DAY OF THE ROBOT Page 7

  He was out of the building before I reached the bottom of the stairs but I didn’t let that deter me either. When a man is carrying a woman in her arms he can’t move as rapidly as a man who is unencumbered, and I caught up with him before he had gone thirty feet.

  The light of dawn was harsh on his features as he turned to face me.

  Claire was still beating with her fists on his chest, but he centered all his attention on me the instant our eyes met. He stood very still, looking me up and down.

  Claire was staring at me too, her eyes very wide. Suddenly she stopped struggling, and the terrified child look I’d expected to see in her eyes had either vanished or hadn’t been that kind of look from the instant she’d started to struggle. Her expression seemed now wholly that of a grown woman aware of her peril, but overwhelmingly relieved and grateful that someone in whom she had complete trust had come to her rescue.

  “You’ve made a bad mistake,” I said. “She’s my woman. If you put her down you’ll have a better chance of making it my life or yours. Using her as a shield won’t help you because there are holds I can clamp on you that will make you release her. If your arms aren’t free you’re going to be in trouble.”

  That wasn’t strictly true, because as long as he held on to her I’d be at a disadvantage. I couldn’t start working him over without running the risk of seriously injuring Claire. But I hoped he’d be too dumb to realize that or too enraged by the unexpected opposition he was encountering to think clearly. Just to have his claim to her disputed must have irked him, and in the ruins a struggle to the death to retain possession of a woman taken by force was so basic to survival that it made a resort to violence almost instinctive.

  He wasn’t dumb. But I’d guessed right about how he might feel about killing me or getting himself killed and settling the issue with the free use of his arms.

  “She may have been your woman last night,” he said. “But you might have a hard time proving that, because she’s been fighting like a wildcat. A woman who comes to the ruins knows what to expect and I’ve never before met one who would only let just one man make love to her. So I don’t think she was your woman to begin with. There are women who won’t let any man touch them. She seems to be that way, but it won’t take me long to make a real woman out of her.”

  He narrowed his eyes and looked me up and down. “I don’t think you’ve got what it takes, chum. So she’s better off with me. Why don’t you just fade and give her a chance to become a real woman.”

  He was baiting me with the deadliest insult he could think of, and it convinced me that he had no intention of using Claire as a shield. He was going to set her down, all right, and do his best to batter me to a pulp the instant I closed in on him.

  I was right on all counts, but my closing in was delayed for a second or two, because when he eased her to the pavement he took a slow step backwards, and kept a tight grip on her wrist.

  “Get this straight,” he said. “I’m going to let go of her, but she stays right here, where I can see her while I’m making you wish you’d taken my advice. If she tries to run I’ll go after her and I’ll have to hurt her — real bad. Is that clear?”

  I knew that if Claire ignored the threat his rage might become so great that he would be capable of killing her. And I wasn’t sure I could keep him from breaking away from me, even if I threw a hammerlock on him, and kept pounding away at his kidneys.

  Much as it went against the grain I had no choice but to warn her. “Do as he says,” I told her. “You’re not to run. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, the look of complete trust still in her eyes. “I will not run,” she said.

  “She catches on fast,” Giant Size said. “I’ll give you this much. She pays attention to what you say. It’s too bad you haven’t got what it takes to make her your woman. That’s what I can’t understand. Why are you willing to get yourself killed for a woman you can never hope to make feel like a woman. With me it’s different. I’ve never met a woman yet I couldn’t change, even the cold kind that pretend to hate the very sight of a man and clamp their teeth together when you try to kiss them.”

  “I’m going to change you in a lot of ways,” I said. “Maybe you won’t be so good at that when I’m through with you.”

  He let go of Claire’s wrist and she moved back against the wall of the building next to the one we’d just left and a crazy thought flashed across my mind for an instant. Why hadn’t Agnes followed us out and watched two men fighting over the kind of girl she’d been sure Claire was, even though it was the exact opposite of the truth? It should have given her a grim kind of satisfaction.

  We started squaring off, and if someone had told me right at that moment that anything could have prevented what seemed certain to happen I would have accused him of believing in miracles.

  It’s always a mistake not to believe in miracles. I don’t mean the wand-waving kind, but the way life has at times of playing fast and loose with the laws of probability.

  When you’ve nothing but your own bare fists to fight with you can surprise an opponent in two ways. You can lash out at him very fast, before he can come at you, or — you can hit him so hard he’ll be too dazed to retaliate. I was getting ready to hit Giant Size so fast and hard he’d be staggered by the first blow when the miracle happened.

  Around the corner, less than fifty feet from where we were standing, came two Security Police officers with compact little handguns jogging in black metal holsters at their hips.

  I couldn’t believe it for an instant, but in another way it didn’t surprise me at all. I’d been half-expecting them to come into the ruins in pursuit of us, because when the sound of the sirens had died away in the abandoned subway entrance it had still seemed to be echoing in my ears and it had accompanied me along the blue-lit tracks and remained with me, at intervals, all through the night.

  The moment they came into view I knew that they wouldn’t want Giant Size to even try to kill me, because taking me alive would be of the utmost importance to them.

  For a second or two I rebelled against the miracle and was almost sorry it had taken place, because I still wanted to do to Giant Size what he was hoping to do to me. But when more than your own life is at stake you’ve no right to resent an opportunity to split up the odds against you and turn the resulting confusion into a weapon that can give you the upper hand.

  I didn’t try to hide from Giant Size just how startled I was. I made a production of looking scared, and gesturing toward the corner in so alarmed a way that he’d realize instantly that the danger was too great to let a personal feud ruin our chances of staying alive.

  Whether he had a knife or not I didn’t know. I’d been prepared to have him come at me with a knife from the instant he’d set Claire down, but I was sure he knew that a knife couldn’t help him now, for a Security Police handgun was a much more formidable wea­pon.

  It was an intricate weapon as well, and it couldn’t just be drawn and fired from the hip. You had to trigger and aim it and it took close to a half-minute to do that if you wanted to have a fair chance of bringing down a running target at a distance of seventy feet. And we could widen the distance by that much and more in twenty seconds if we ran fast enough.

  “They haven’t drawn yet!” I shouted at him. “They’ve just seen us. We’ve still got a chance if we can get to the end of the block before they open fire.”

  He either caught on as fast as I’d hoped he would or was way ahead of me, for he forgot all about what he’d threatened to do to Claire if she tried to escape the instant I swung about, gripped her by the wrist and we both broke into a run, heading for the cross street at the opposite end of the block. He broke into a run too, without even looking at us, his fear of the police making a fight to the death for a woman he coveted a luxury he could no longer afford.

  I’d made one bad mistake. I’d misjudged by a few seconds the time it would take to reach the end of the block, and the first blast came when we wer
e still directly in the line of fire and not around the corner out of sight.

  I heard an agonized gasp close to me, and waited for Claire to sag against me with a constriction tightening about my heart. But she kept right on running, her hand so steady in my clasp I knew almost instantly that she was all right.

  It was Giant Size who had been hit. He had fallen behind and when I looked back to see how bad it was he was down on his knees on the pavement, swaying slowly back and forth. He was clutching his stomach, a look of bewilderment in his eyes. Blood was trickling from between his fingers and all at once the red glistening turned into a gush and he collapsed forward on his face. Apparently the bullet had gone right through him.

  Another blast came then, so deafeningly close to us that it made my ears ring and I could feel the pavement vibrating under my feet. Then we were at the cross street and no longer in danger of being cut down by a straight-line blast. There was a piled-up mass of bricks and mortar extending outward from the building on the corner and the instant we were on the far side of it we slowed down long enough to catch our breath.

  The third blast was followed by a clanging sound and a cloud of dust spiraled upward and hung suspended in the air above us for an instant. I tightened my grip on Claire’s hand and we broke into a run again. The cross street was quite long, but we could see clear to the end of it. Our chances of getting to the end just by running were certainly not good.

  There were a lot of branching side streets in the ruins and dark, weed-choked alleyways between buildings. Some were basement-level cul-de-sacs, or dead-end alleys terminating in brick walls too high to scale. But a few were open at both ends, and you could cross through them to a street running parallel to the one you happened to be on. If you were very lucky, you could even come out two or three blocks away, for there were passages that were like the inside of a horn. They circled around underground and doubled back on themselves, and you couldn’t tell where you’d be when you emerged into the sunlight again.

  We desperately needed to find that kind of passageway, because I doubted if coming out only one block away would save us. They’d seen us turn into the alley and follow us … and you can be just as dead on one street as another.

  They were shouting at us to stop now, warning us that they’d shoot to kill if we kept on running. But there were no more handgun blasts. I was pretty sure I knew why they were withholding their fire. They’d rounded the rubble and seen how long the street was and were confident of overtaking us. Either that, or they were putting their chips on the alleyways between the buildings, knowing that it we plunged into a dead-end one we’d be trapped with a vengeance.

  Taking us alive would have pleased them better than killing us. I was certain of that, but the fact that they had blasted at all convinced me that if they had to kill us … they’d do it.

  They’d killed the wrong man with a shot intended for me and had missed again before we’d turned the corner. But it could hardly happen a third time, for the Security Police were crack marksmen. It had been freakishly accidental, and must have infuriated them. In fact, their pride had taken so terrible a pounding they might well decide to forget the warning they’d just given us and blast anyway. Just knowing how easy that would be for them increased the feeling I had that our prospects of staying alive if we remained in the open were at a very low level.

  I could hear their footsteps clattering on the pavement behind us, but I didn’t look back to see how close they were. We passed an alleyway that ended in a high wall and another that was choked with rubble and bisected by an iron bar. But then we came to one that looked more promising, if only where it led. But it was the wrong time to speculate about the risks we might be taking if we plunged into it. They were shouting at us to stop again, their voices so loud now they could not have been more than a few yards behind us.

  I tightened my grip on Claire’s hand and whispered urgently, “Walk now … slowly. Stop running and walk. We must seem to be obeying them. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she said, her steps slowing.

  “We’re going into that alley,” I told her. “Turn when I do — and don’t let go of my hand.”

  We came to an almost complete halt before we turned. I wanted it to look like the first move in a surrender that would keep them from blasting again.

  CHAPTER 9

  We needed only two or three seconds of grace and the strategy worked. They had no way of knowing we’d come to another alley and we were in the passageway and running again before we heard them cry out in rage.

  The alley was open at both ends. Sunlight from the adjoining street glowed at the far end and we could see the glimmer before we were a third of the way through. We could also hear them shouting at us again, but they continued to withhold their fire.

  The alley curved a little and was as dark as pitch and their reluctance to blast wasn’t hard to understand. A few dislodged bricks from high overhead could have cracked their skulls, despite their protective headgear; and in the ruins just a loud shout had been known to bring a ten-story building down, its crumbling framework undermined by the vibrations alone.

  We came out into a street as narrow as the one we had left. It was just about the same length and there was only one thing different about it that stood out. It wasn’t deserted but was clamorous with sound, and the sound was coming from a careening fifty-passenger beetle filled with excited riders who were leaning out of the windows and shouting at the top of their lungs.

  There was a frayed banner stretched across the front of the beetle but the lettering on it had a bright, recently gilded look. The lettering read: SIX-DAY BICYCLE RACE.

  The beetle was coming straight toward us at so rapid speed that I had less than two seconds to make up my mind. We could either leap aside and let it go careening past, or risk getting ourselves killed by grasping the guardrail and attempting to climb on board.

  It was a risk either way, because if we leapt aside the Security Guards would be free to do exactly as they pleased about letting us go on living.

  Coming to a quick decision was easier than making Claire understand, in just those two seconds, what would happen if she failed to grasp the rail with both hands and hold on to it with all her strength while I leapt aboard ahead of her, bent over and lifted her into the vehicle by taking firm hold of her wrists. I couldn’t have remained on the pavement and just hoisted her up. The beetle was moving too fast.

  We made it. But if someone had asked me just how, when we were safely inside, breathing harshly and swaying back against the twenty-odd passengers who blocked the aisle, I couldn’t have ex­plained it to him. In a really desperate emergency there are reflexes which seem to take over while your brain issues automatic commands. If the beetle hadn’t been moving quite so fast we probably couldn’t have accomplished it, for even Claire seemed to realize how vital it was to make every second of exertion count.

  All of the seats were occupied and the standing passengers filled every foot of aisle space. There were ten or twelve windows, but we could only see the occasional glint of sunlight on glass and were denied a view of the passing buildings as the bus continued on.

  I held tight to Claire’s waist as the bus swayed. It had all happened so suddenly it had left me a little dazed. The men and women around us were in an abnormal state too. But they were not dazed. They were shouting and gesturing and elbowing one another aside in an effort to see out of the windows. It made very little sense, because the bus was merely on its way to the races and it was too early in the morning for the streets to be lined with people.

  It wasn’t too surprising, however. They were almost frenziedly anticipating what they were about to witness, and had to share their wild elation with every pedestrian who happened to be within shouting distance. A craving for excitement on the most primitive of all levels — that of a hunter stalking a jungle beast solely to bring it down and watch it die — had taken complete possession of them. What had once been a spectator sport had beco
me something quite different, and if the bus had struck one of the pedestrians and killed him they would have rejoiced in the spectacle. They were powerless to stem the rampant brutality which had been unleashed in them, and would have regarded the accident as a favorable omen, in­creasing the likelihood that they would not be disappointed when the races got under way and the death toll started to mount.

  “Where are we going?” Claire whispered, her voice so low I could barely catch what she was saying. “What is a bicycle race? Are we still in — in danger? Does danger mean that we will die soon … unless the danger goes away?”

  I thought for an instant she must have read the banner draped across the front of the bus. Then I remembered how often the words “bicycle race” had come to our ears just in the past three minutes, and realized how unlikely that was.

  But could a child have grasped it so quickly, just by hearing the words? She must have associated a bicycle race with the destination of the bus very swiftly in her mind, for her question convinced me that she was both bewildered and frightened by her lack of knowledge of how dangerous a bicycle race might be.

  I had no intention of telling her about the death toll. But before I could decide on the best way of keeping the truth from her without seeming to lie it came right out into the open at the far end of the bus.

  There was a sudden commotion at the far end, and the pressure which was keeping us hemmed in became a violent jolting that hurled us back against the guardrail. It was as if someone far down the aisle had been hurled backwards and caused fifteen or twenty other passengers to lurch in almost as violent a way. You’ve seen it happen to a collapsing row of cards. You give one card a vigorous tap, and the entire row goes backwards as the tap is relayed from card to card.

  The swaying and lurching of the passengers blocking the aisle was followed by a prolonged, agonized screaming. It went on and on until it was drowned out by an alarmed clamor and the shout of a woman who was clearly on the verge of hysteria.