CHAPTER VII
The strain on his face—the heaviness of his eyes—the taut lines of his throat. His body was exhausted.
Like dripping water the pressure pounded at him.
The night before, she had found him at Long Beach.
He cast off the depression to find euphoria; and the two alternated steadily with increasing peaks.
His hands were nervous. Blunt thumbs constantly scrubbed blunt fingertips in despair or anticipation.
... The trucking had all been arranged for.
The deliveries from the Ship occurred nightly. He had sent follow-up letters to cities who had not responded to his first request. The answers had finally arrived.
The warehouse, floor by floor, was filling. Already some trucks were waiting.
There was the continual bump of handled packages sliding from the chute, being sorted, being stacked. But worries piled up inside of him: fears of an accident, a broken package, a suspicious employee, a fire.... The Oholo, the guilt, the depression.
Eagerly now he listened to the general information report from the Ship. Most advancemen were on schedule. No irreparable accidents. Certain inaccessible areas had been written off. A few advancemen recalled for necessary Ship duty. One killed, replaced, in Germany. World coverage estimated at better than seventy per cent in industrial and near industrial areas, a coverage probably exceeding the effective minimum—short only of the impossible goal.
He had been talking to a trucker in front of him without really hearing his own words, his fingers and thumbs rubbing in increased tempo.
He hated the man as he hated everyone in the building, everyone on the planet.
The trucker shrugged. "I'll have to deadhead back. That has to go in the bill, too."
"All right," Parr snapped irritably. "Now, listen. This is the most important thing. Each of the lots has to be mailed at the proper time. Your bonus is conditional on that."
"Okay," the trucker said.
"I can't overstress the importance of that," Parr said. He handed the slip of paper across the table. It was a list of mailing information, Ship compiled, that was designed to assure that the packages would all be distributed by the mails as near simultaneously as possible.
"You deliver the Seattle lot, that's number, ah, eighteen on the list, the last."
"I understand."
"When your trucks are loaded, you may leave. I'll pay you for lay-over time."
"I've got a bill here," the trucker said.
The two huddled over it, and after the trucker had gone Parr leaned back staring at the ceiling, his nerves quivering.
_______________
He knew what he was guilty of, at last. Knowledge came suddenly, from nowhere like an electric shock, and it stunned him. Logically he demanded proof; but there was no proof. It came, it was; it was beyond logic. Nothing in his memory ... and for a moment he thought he had lost the memory under Lauri's first vicious assault ripping into his mind; but, and again without reason, he knew it was not in the memory she had destroyed. She was connected with it, but not like that.... He was guilty of treason. He could not remember the act, but he was guilty. What? When? Why? He did not know; he was guilty without knowing what the treason was: only the overpowering certainty of his guilt. Wearily he let his head droop. Treason....
"Mister Parr?"
"Eh? Eh?"
"There's somethin' heavy in this one. It don't feel like paper. I think it's metal of some sort. Now, look, Mister Parr, I don't want to get tied up with somethin' that's not square. You said all these packages had paper in them. And I'd kinda like to see what else there is in this one, Mister Parr, if you don't mind."
Parr wanted to jump out of the seat and smash at the man's face. But he forced himself to relax.
"You want to open the package, is that it?" he said, gritting his teeth.
"Yes, Mister Parr."
"... Then go ahead and open it."
Having expected refusal, the worker hesitated.
"Go ahead," Parr insisted. He kept his face expressionless, although, beneath desk top level, his hands bundled into knobby fists, white at the knuckles.
Then at the last possible second, as the worker's fingers were fumbling at the wrapping, Parr leaned forward. "Wait a minute. It won't be necessary to waste the parcel.... Unless you insist."
The worker looked at Parr uncomfortably.
A question of timing. Events hung in a delicate balance between exposure and safety. Parr reached for the drawer of the desk, his movements almost too indifferently slow.
His hand fumbled inside the drawer. "I think I have some of the metal samples around here," he said. His hand found the stack of gleaming dummy disks, encircled it possessively. He tossed them carelessly on the desk top and one rolled, wobbling, to the edge and fell to the floor.
_______________
Puzzled, the worker bent to the one that had fallen, picked it up, turned it over in his hand, studying it curiously.
"I don't see ...," he said suspiciously.
"That's our product," Parr lied. "We include some in every hundred or so bundles. The literature explains their function."
The worker shook his head slowly.
"As you can see," Parr persisted gently, "they're perfectly harmless." He tensed, waiting.
"... Yeah, uh ... I think I get it. Something like them hollow cement bricks they use to cure people of rheumatism with, huh?"
Parr swallowed and relaxed. "That's the general idea. You'll see.... Well, if you want to, go ahead and open the parcel."
"Naaah," the man said foolishly. "... There wouldn't be no sense in doin' that."
Beneath the desk top again, his hands coiled and flexed in anger and hatred. "I want your name," Parr said, a very slight note of harshness in his voice.
The worker let his eyes turn to the backs of his heavy hands, guiltily. "Look, Mister Parr, I didn't mean...."
Parr silenced him with an over-drawn gesture. "No, no," he said, his voice normal and conciliatory. "I meant, we might be able to use a man like you in our big plant in the East." He snarled inwardly at himself for the unnecessary note of harshness before: it was too soon for that.
Suddenly stammering with excitement, the worker said, "My name's George ... George Hickle ... George Hickle, Mister Parr. I got good letters from back home about my workin', sir."
"Where do you live, George?"
"Out on Bixel.... Just up from Wilshire, you know, where...."
"I meant the number of the house, George."
"Oh," George told him.
Parr wrote it down. "George Hickle, uh-huh."
"I'll be mighty obliged, Mister Parr, if you'll keep me in mind."
"Yes. Well. Good afternoon, Hickle. You ought to be getting back to your work now, hadn't you?"
And when the worker had half crossed the room, Parr drew a heavy, black line through the name. He had memorized it.
The pencil lead broke under the pressure.
And at that moment, the pressure in his mind vanished.
In automatic relief, he relaxed his shielding for the first time in what seemed years, and before he could rectify the error Lauri hit him with everything she had, catching him just as the shield began to reform.
_______________
Pain roared in his mind. From the force of the blow he knew that she must be near the warehouse.
It had been one quick thrust, leaving his mind throbbing and he sobbed in impotent hate and anger.
The pressure was back.
And slowly and surely she was closing in on him, compensating. She had struck prematurely, realized her mistake, and was narrowing the range, holding the final assault until assured of victory.
He stood up weakly and hurried to the door, brushing through a group of startled workers.
Outside, a cab was cruising, and Parr ran after it. It did not stop. He turned and ran frantically in the opposite direction, rounded the corner, still running, his heels thudding on the hot pavement.
He ran for blocks, the blood pounding in his head, sweat trickling into his eyes. Pedestrians turned to stare, looking back along his line of flight.
When Parr stopped, finally, he was trembling. He stared at his own hands curiously, and then he looked around him.
He swallowed hard. The world swam, steadied. His chest rose and fell desperately....
At the airport, he phoned the warehouse.
"Hickle? Get me Hickle.... Hello, Hickle, this is Parr. Listen, Hickle, are you listening? Hickle, I've got to leave town for two days. You've got to run things. You understand? Listen. I've left money in the drawer of my desk ... for the pay roll.... You know how to run things, don't you, Hickle?... Now, listen, Hickle, there's some trucking ... wait a minute.... Look.... You stay down there. Right there. I'll phone you back, long distance, later. Don't go away, Hickle. Wait right there. I'll tell you what you've got to do."
The last call for his plane came over the loudspeaker.
"Listen, Hickle, I've got to run. I'll phone you later, so wait. Wait right there, Hickle!"
_______________
Over Bakersfield, gratefully—infinitely gratefully—he felt the last wisp of pressure vanish.
He was free.
There was no consequence powerful enough to keep him from dropping his mind shield entirely. But he let it come down slowly, barrier by barrier, enjoying the release, prolonging the ultimate freedom beyond.
At last the roar of the motors, muffled, sang in his head like an open song, and there was nothing between his thoughts and the world.
His mind stretched and trembled and pained from the stress, and quivered and fluttered and pulsed and throbbed and vibrated and rejoiced.
He looked out over the wing, through the whirring propellers, at the hazy horizon, at the cloudless sky, bright and blue and infinite.
It was the best day he had ever known. It was freedom, and he had never known it before.
His mind was infinitely open as the sky above the clouds, and he stretched it out and out until he forced the limit, beyond which no mind may go, yet wanting to plunge on.
In the east, there was the dusk of night coming down, a cloak pulled up from the other side of the world by the grapple hooks of dying sunshine.
In San Francisco he phoned Hickle in Los Angeles, a man and a place so far removed that he wanted to shout to make himself heard over the telephone.
Then to a hotel—but now as a place of rest and refuge, not a symbol of flight and fear. His hate returned, beautiful, now, flower-like, delicate, to be enjoyed. To be tasted, bee-like, at his leisure.
The city outside was a whirl of lights and the lights hypnotized him with their magic. Soon he was in the streets.
There were cabs and scenes: laughter, love, death, passion—everything rolled into a capsule bundle for him. The city spread out below in a fabric of light, the hazy blue of cigar smoke closely pressing sweaty bodies, laughing mouths. A swirl of sensations.
"Somewhere else!" he cried madly to a driver.
China Town, The International Settlement, Fisherman's Wharf.... The cabbies knew a tourist.
_______________
He had been moving for hours, and now he was tired and lost, and he could not find a cab to get back to the Sir Francis Drake.
A girl and a sailor passed. A tall lithe blonde with a pert nose and high cheek bones and brown eyes, heavy lips and free hips ... a ... blonde.
The Oholo ... Lauri ... was a blonde.
He began to cast up memories of her, sickeningly, making his fists clench.
He wanted a blonde to smile at him, unsuspecting. A blonde with honey colored hair and a long, slim throat with a blue vein in it, so he could watch the heart beat. He wanted to hurt the blonde, and hold her, and caress her softly, and ... most of all, hurt her.
He wanted to shake his fists at the sky and scream in frustration.
He wanted to find a blonde....
Finally he found one. In a small, red-fronted bar, dimly lit. She was sitting at the end of the bar, facing the door, toying with a tall drink, half empty, from which the ice had melted.
"What'll it be, Mister?"
"Anything! Anything!" he said excitedly as he slipped behind a table, his eyes still on the woman at the bar.
"And the same for me?"
"Sure. Sure."
She brought back two drinks, picked up a bill, turned it over in her hand speculatively. She wore an off the shoulder dress, and high rouge on her Mexican cheeks. She made change from her apron, putting the money beside the second glass, sitting down in front of it, across from him.
Still he had not noticed her.
Two patrons entered. They moved to a table in the far corner near the Venetian blinds of the window and began to talk in low husky voices.
"I'll be back, dearie," the woman across from Parr said, sipping her drink, smearing the glass rim in a veined half moon.
She went to serve the girls.
When she came back Parr had brushed away the drink from in front of him.
"Listen, dearie," she said. "You got troubles?"
He grunted.
She snaked an ample hand half across the table and wiggled her shoulders to show off her breasts. "I bet I know what's wrong with you. Same as a lotta men, dearie. Want a little fun, I bet."
"Bring me that blonde," he said hoarsely.
"Listen, dearie, you don't want her. What you want...."
"The blonde!"
_______________
Reluctantly she stood up, frightened by his tone. She put a hand over his change, waited.
He did not notice.
She put the money into her apron pocket, heaving her chest.
Then she got the blonde.
"You wanna buy me a drink, honey?" the blonde said.
"Sit down!"
The blonde turned to the Mexican. "Make it a double." She sat down.
"Talk!"
"Whatdaya wan' me to say, honey?"
"Just talk." He had seen the pulse in the vein in her neck. The neck was skinny, and the face was pinched, lined with heavy powder. Her eyes were weary, and her thin hands moved jerkily.
"Just talk."
When she saw his wallet, as he brought it out to pay, she said, "Maybe we oughtta go somewhere to talk." Her voice was flat and nasal, and she tossed her head. She ruffled her coarse dirty-colored hair with an automatic gesture.
Parr wanted to kill her, and his hands itched at the delicious thought.
But not tonight. Not tonight. He was too tired. He ... tonight he just wanted to think about it. And then he wanted to sleep and rest and think.
She tossed off the drink. "Another one, Bess," she said shrilly, glancing at him.
He took two bills out of his wallet, two twenties, put them on the table, pushed one of them toward her without looking at it.
She drank two more shots quickly, eagerly, hungrily, as if there was need to rush through them and get them safely inside.
She leaned across the table, her eyes heavy. "I'm gonna talk, okay? Man wants to hear woman talk. Get yer kicks like that, okay. You're buyin'.... Hell, I bet you think I'm a bad girl. I'm not a bed girl—bad girl." Her hands twitched drunkenly below her flat breasts. "There was a sonofabitch in my town.... I came from up north, Canada." She drank again, hastily. "I could go for you, know what?... I'm getting drunk, that's what. Fooled ja, didn't I? Listen. You wouldn't believe this, but I can cook. Cook. Like hell. Wouldn't think that, eh? Hell, I'm good for a lotta things. Like being walked on. Jever wanna—walk on a girl? Listen. I knew a guy, once...."
Parr said, "Shut up!" For one instant, there was sickness and revulsion, and desire to comfort her, but it vanished almost before it was recognized.
She closed her mouth.
He pushed the twenty dollar bill into her lap.
"You be here tomorrow. Tomorrow night."
"Okay."
"You be here tomorrow night."
"Sure, sure, honey."
"You be here tomorrow night, and don't forget it."
She smiled drunkenly. "I'm here ... most nights, honey...."
"You be waiting for me."
"I'm always ... waitin', honey. Ever since I remember, honey, waitin'. Just waitin', honey."
But the next morning, when Parr awoke, Lauri was trying to center on his open mind. She was in San Francisco, looking for him.
The depression came back, and the guilt—the knowledge of treason—that made him want to go to a mirror and stand, watching blood trickle down his face in cherry rivulets like tears.
And fear.
When he shielded, she resumed the pressure.
_______________
At noon he was back in Los Angeles. Perspiration was under his skin, waiting icily.
He went directly to the warehouse.
Hickle, in surprise, crossed the room to him. "Mister Parr!" he said.
The right corner of Parr's mouth was twitching nervously. "Get a chair. Bring it to the desk."
When Hickle was seated before him, Parr said, "Okay. I've got some papers. I'm going to explain them to you." He got them out. "They're all alike in form. Here." He took off the top sheet and Hickle stood up to see. "This number, here, is for the truck unit." He circled it and scribbled the word "truck." "This number." He circled it. "This number is the lot number. You see, truck number nine has lots seventeen, twenty-seven, fifty-three, thirty-one."
"I get it," Hickle said.
Parr's body was trembling and he threw out a tentative wave of thought probing for the Oholo, afraid that she might come silently, knowing his approximate daytime location. He began to talk rapidly, explaining.
It was D-Day minus seven.
After fifteen minutes, he was satisfied that Hickle understood the instructions.
"There was a plain bundle this morning?"
"Yes, sir. I wondered about that."
"Get it."
Hickle got it.
Parr opened it. "Pay roll money, trucker money. Give the truckers their money when they give you their bills. I'm going to trust you, Hickle."
Hickle gulped. "Yes, sir."
Parr began to stuff money into his wallet.
She was in Los Angeles. He knew by the pressure on his mind.
"I've got to hurry. Listen. I want you to keep the workers here as long as necessary, hear? This schedule's got to be kept. And you take a thousand dollars. And listen, Hickle. This is just chicken-feed, remember that, when you're working for us."
"Yes, sir!"
He had her located, keeping his mind open to try to center on her.
_______________
He could center on her! She was only partially shielded, and she made no protest. She was not moving, and he could ... except that there was something wrong with the pressure. He was overlooking something. But she was not moving. Not yet.
"I've got to talk fast. All these final deliveries. You'll be busy. If you need help, hire it. And listen, I'll be here from time to time if I can."
"There's something wrong, Mister Parr?"
Parr searched for an excuse. "It's personal ... my wife, yes, my wife, it's...." He wondered why he had used that one. It had sprung automatically to his mind. "Never mind. I'll phone in from around town. I'll try to help you all I can by phone."
She was not moving, but the pressure seemed different ... alien!
He jerked out of his seat, kicking the chair over as he headed for the door.
A different Oholo!
There were two of them in Los Angeles!
He probed out.
Lauri was almost on top of him.
He skidded through the door, into the street, knocking a startled man out of his path.
He stared wildly in both directions. Several blocks away a cab was stalled with a red light.
And almost before him, a private car was headed uptown. With three huge leaps he was on the running board, yanking the door open.
He jerked himself in beside the frightened driver.
He twisted his head, shouting. "Emergency! Hospi...."
She had seen him trying to escape. She struck.
In the street, a flock of English sparrows suddenly faltered in flight, and one plunged blindly into the stone face of a building. The others circled hysterically, directionless, and two collided and spilled to the ground.
"Hurry, damn it!" Parr moaned at the driver. "Hurry!"
He slammed forward into the windshield, babbling.
The terrified driver stepped down on the accelerator. The car leaped forward.
Parr, fighting with all his strength, was twisted in agony, and blood trickled from his mouth.
He gasped at the driver: "Cab. Behind. Trying to kill me."
The driver was white-faced and full of movie chases and gangster headlines of shotgun killings, typical of Southern California. He had a good car under him, and he spun the wheel to the right, cutting into an alley; to the left, onto an intersecting alley; to the right, into a crosstown street; then he raced to beat a light.
He lost the cab finally in a maze of heavy traffic at Spring.
Parr was nearly unconscious, and he struggled desperately for air.
Run, run, run, he thought despairingly, because two Oholos are ten times as deadly and efficient as one....