CHAPTER 3

The travel strip overlooked a spacious lawn adorned with neatly trimmed hedgerows and stately trees. Behind the gleaming waters of a fountain three peacocks walked to and fro, their tails spread resplendently in the dawn light. There was only one dwelling visible from the strip, the white stone residence of an agricultural supervisor.

In the near distance there loomed a stretch of open countryside, the bright waters of a small lake and several acres of densely forested woodland. A long range of distant hills was also visible from the strip, their domed summits sparsely covered with tall firs and hemlocks and scrub oaks that grew in circular clusters.

At the edge of the moving strip there was a thirty foot drop, straight down to soft grass and earth spongy enough to cushion the jolt of a carefully calculated leap and diminish the risk of a sprained ankle or an even more serious injury. But the risk could not be lightly dismissed, and Teleman hesitated for an instant, holding Alicia very tightly to him.

"We've got to chance it," she whispered. "We've no choice."

"All right," Teleman said. "I'll go first."

He kissed her. She returned the kiss with fervor, pushing her lips hard against his mouth and running her fingers through his hair. She let out a long sigh when he released her and moved quickly to the edge of the strip, measuring with his eyes the distance from strip-edge to grass, getting the feel of the distance.

"Don't tighten up too much," he said. "Leap out just a little and tell yourself you're going to land on your feet. Watch how I do it."

"Don't worry, darling. I'll make it."

"It won't hurt to be sure. All right—here I go."

He leapt out and down, landing on his feet. But the jolt was severe, throwing him off balance. He sprawled forward on the grass, picked himself up and stared up in concern, rubbing his right shoulder vigorously and flexing his knees.

The slight stiffness and bruised feeling evaporated almost immediately, but not his alarm. "Wait," he shouted. "It shook me up a bit. I'm going to catch you. Do you hear? Catch you in my arms. That's the best way."

"I'm lighter than you are!" she shouted back. "I won't land so heavily."

"I still think—"

"No, darling. Here I come."

His breath caught in his throat when he saw her spinning through the air. But she landed without mishap, and with a lightness which a professional acrobat would have envied. She swayed a little but did not fall, and she was smiling when he reached her side. He took her in his arms and they remained motionless for an instant, breathing harshly, their hands entwined. Then she buried her face in the muscular rib-cavern of his chest and clung to him in a fierce and impatient way, as if even in that moment of great danger she would have welcomed the coming of the night.

There was a stirring in his loins and a restless tide of passion surged through him. But he contented himself with stroking her hair and whispering words of reassurance.

"We've got to keep moving. Agricultural supervisors don't go about armed so I'm not worried about being stopped before we reach the forest. Probably he's indoors sleeping. If he comes to the door I'll tell him we've got a hunting permit. If he demands to see it, a blow to the jaw will give us all the time we'll need."

He took her firmly by the shoulders and held her at arm's length, a warm gratefulness in his eyes. "We've got to keep moving," he said. "I haven't time to say all the things I'd like to say to you, not one small part of all the wonder-talk. Do you understand? The guilt feeling is gone, washed away."

She nodded, her eyes shining. "No regrets, darling. I'm glad for both of us."

They moved swiftly in the dawn light, across the wide lawn and between the towering trees, sending the gold and emerald peacocks fluttering into the shadows of titan oaks and cedars, their own smaller shadows lengthening on the dew-bright grass.

Teleman straightened in sudden wariness as they drew near to the white-stone dwelling of the supervisor. He reached out and took his companion's hand, and they moved with even swifter steps past the east wall of the building. No one appeared in the doorway and there was no stir of movement behind the half-shuttered windows with their orange awnings and projecting sills.

Then the dwelling was behind them and they were moving across a stretch of open woodland, weaving in and out between tumbled, lichen-encrusted boulders and the gray, bark-denuded boles of century-old trees. One of the larger trees had been lightning-blasted and several were mere rotting stumps looming ghostlike and isolated against the dark green foliage of the denser forested region just beyond.

A golden-winged hawk, startled by their approach, arose with a tumultuous flapping of wings and went soaring southward, and from a shadowed pool less than twenty feet in diameter there came a sudden splashing and the hoarse croaking of frogs.

Teleman bent, picked up a small pebble and tossed it into the dark water, standing motionless as he watched the ripples spread out and slowly disappear.

"Why did you do that?" Alicia asked, coming to an abrupt halt at his side. Her hurrying steps had brought a flush to her cheeks and she spoke almost breathlessly, her eyes wide with alarm.

"The scanners," he said. "The instant she alerts the guards they'll put scanning beams on us and pinpoint every move we make. They'll know exactly where we are. But we're safe so far."

"Safe? How can you be sure? You mean that pebble—"

He nodded. "Infra-beam electronics just happens to be part of my specialty. If they were scanning us now the rhythm of those ripples would be quite different. You'd get a more pronounced jerkiness—a jerkiness I've learned precisely how to identify at a glance. That kind of hair-trigger recognition is part of my job. You can't build a good bridge without such knowledge. Not even a good bridge, let alone more complex structures."

"Oh, darling," she whispered. "I'm glad we're both specialists. It may help us in a far more important way. If we can outguess them all—"

"We have a fighting chance," he said, his fingers tightening on her hand. He picked up another pebble and tossed it into the stream. The rhythm of the ripples remain unchanged.

"Love," he whispered. "Our new specialty, my sweet beloved. It's new, but I think—I think we know more about it right now than they do. Compared to us, even the love-privileged are jaded, blind to the bursting wonder, the glory of a fulfillment so complete that it changes everything we think and say and do. Do you mind if I call you my life and my bride?"

"Of course not," she breathed, coming into his arms again and drawing his head down until it rested in the soft hollow between her breasts. She swayed a little, her eyes closed, her moist red lips parted. Then she drew in her breath convulsively, and slipped from his embrace, still caressing him with her eyes.

"We're in the deadliest kind of danger and you're acting like a moonstruck boy," she said. "Don't you realize—"

"I only know that I love you," he said. "The guilt feeling is gone now, washed away. I realize we haven't a moment to lose. You don't have to remind me. But you've changed the world for me and I had to tell you. I had to make sure that you feel as I do. A man who flees for his life in a parched wilderness loses nothing if he pauses for an instant to quench his thirst. When he is renewed and refreshed, more life and strength flows into him."

"But we'll be much safer when we're deep in the forest," she said. "They'll still know where we are if they pick us up with the scanners. But we can weave about, hide in a cave, make it more difficult for them to overtake us."

"We won't hide," he said. "We'll keep moving until our strength gives out. There are ways of defeating the scanners. If we can get far enough away we may be able to disguise ourselves, take on a new identity."

"I don't see how—"

"Just wait and trust me. Talking about it right now will only delay us."

He reached out and took her hand. "You're right about the need for haste. Come on."

"One more kiss first, darling!"

Her lips burned against his again for an instant. He opened his lips and her tongue darted like a wet lash into his mouth and her hands dropped to her side in passionate surrender. She moaned a little and then pushed him away from her, letting out a long sigh.

"I was the impulsive one that time," she whispered. "Forgive me, darling."

They were out of breath again from running when they reached the heavily forested region. The dark barrier of vegetation which loomed before them cut off two-thirds of the sky and seemed filled with a vast murmuring, as if a thousand small furry creatures were breathing in unison while the wind sighed between the trees and owls hooted from the higher branches.

Quickly they passed into the dark wilderness between the trees, over areas of moist peat moss and across gigantic, hollow logs overgrown with ghost-pale creepers that seemed dreamlike and unreal in the half-light. A faint luminescence streamed from a few of the ground-hugging fungus growths and there were vapor shrouds everywhere, hanging suspended in the air and coiling sinuously about the boles of trees so massive that they resembled redwoods in girth and height, and conveyed an even more awesome impression of hoary age.

They were perhaps eighty feet beyond the edge of the forest wall, well within its pulsing heart of darkness, when they heard the thrumming.

It was faint and far-off at first, but it grew steadily louder, causing Teleman to halt abruptly and stare upward in alarm. High above his head the interlocking branches formed an almost solid ceiling of dark green foliage stirred only slightly by gusts and flurries of wind. Suddenly, as he stared, a gust of unusual force blew two of the branches apart, revealing a narrow patch of open sky.

Across the patch a shape moved, glinting metallically in the sunlight.

The flying machine hung poised almost directly overhead, like a great, hovering hawk with its wings wide-spread. It was moving, but slowly, slowly, as if seeking out prey in the forest aisle, the thrumming of its twin turbines sounding very much like the steady beating of wings.

The foliage overhead stirred again and the patch of open sky disappeared.

"They know where we are," Teleman said, standing very still. Alicia shivered and moved a little closer to him, her lips white. Above their heads the thrumming sound grew in volume, drowning out all the small voices of the forest. Almost at their feet a startled hare broke from cover and went scurrying into the shadows.

"If they're scanning us now it will be easy for them to send a para-guard after us," Alicia said, her eyes sharpening as she stared upward. "He'll be carrying a hand-scanner, and a hand-gun. He'll have no scruples about opening fire."

"They may drop more than one para-guard," Teleman said. "We'd better head for cover fast!"

He swung about, his gaze sweeping the forest aisle with detail-observing accuracy. There were several fallen branches directly in his line of vision, and a thin shaft of downstreaming sunlight glistened on a tangled mass of vegetation. His lips tightened when he saw the log. Huge, grayish and half rotted away, it stood out like a giant's thumb against the clotted greenery.

He gripped Alicia's arm and gestured. "That log looks hollow. If we can crawl inside it will be as good a blind as any. Hand-scanners aren't as accurate as big scanners. Not half as accurate. We've got to guard against being taken by surprise, caught defenseless in the open. If we can get far enough into that log they'll have to search. It will give us a breathing spell."

"It's worth trying!" Alicia breathed. "Come on!"

They were half way to the log when they saw the para-guard descending. There was a glistening high up between the trees and they saw the dangling, rust-colored boots of the airborne man before his head and shoulders came into view a hundred feet above the forest floor.

They crawled into the big log on their hands and knees, clearing a space for themselves by thrusting vigorously with their shoulders and scooping out handfulls of damp, weevil-shredded wood and clinging vegetable mold.

They wedged themselves deep into the log, their bodies pressed so close together that their breaths commingled and they became aware of each other's heartbeats. Cheek to cheek in stifling darkness they clung to each other, flesh bruising flesh in an intimacy so strange and unexpected that for an instant it drove all thought of danger from their minds.

Lines from a half-forgotten poet in one of the old books flashed into Teleman's mind, giving that intimacy a timeless aspect, making it seem eternal.

It seemed incredible, but they could still breathe. It was almost suffocatingly cramped in the narrow space into which they had wedged themselves. But there were eroded patches in the half-decayed wood which let in the air and by controlling their breathing they could avoid straining their lungs to bursting and turning and twisting in a tormented way.

As they clung together time lost all meaning, for moments perhaps dangerously long. They were only aware of each other's nearness, and the sweetness of not caring, not even allowing themselves to think and grow fearful again.

What aroused them to an acute awareness of danger drawing near they never quite knew. The snapping of a twig in the forest gloom, perhaps, or the screaming of a bird winging skyward, or the slow, steady clump of boots where the ground was not soggy and the stillness magnified sound.

From whatever cause arising, Teleman's alertness became instant and all-pervasive. Alicia, too, stiffened in alarm, her fingers tightening on his arm.

"Listen," she whispered. "Did you hear—"

"Be quiet," he warned. "I think he's close to the log. If we stay just as we are he may pass us by."

Silence for a moment. Then, unmistakably, another sound—a grunt of anger and frustration close at hand. It came clearly to their ears and suddenly, to Teleman, further waiting in complete stillness seemed an affront to his dignity as an angry and embattled man. It was intolerable and could no longer be endured.

Recklessness and defiance overcame him. He raised his fist and pressed firmly and with all his strength against the rotting inner surface of the log. He did not forget to exercise caution, tried not to make a sound. He knew that he was taking a very great calculated risk, but a peep-hole was vital. Complete sightlessness was no longer to be endured.

The wood crumbled under the steady pressure, flaked away in a patch a little wider than his hand. Sunlight flooded into the log, and the sudden brightness dazzled him for an instant. Then his vision steadied and he realized that the brightness was caused by a single shaft of sunlight slanting downward across the log. Beyond the shaft the forest was still gloom-enshrouded, bathed in a half-light that made the flickering shadows seem grotesquely alive, waltzing nightmare shapes caught up in a danse macabre.

In the midst of the shadows a silent, gray-uniformed figure stood with his back to the log, a hand-gun gleaming at his hip, his heavyset body, shaven head and bull-like neck giving him an aspect of primitive brutishness.

Security guards, whether airborne or not, were specialists of an unusual sort, with a biogenetic heritage of brutal callousness which made them unique. Callous from birth, they were under compulsion to exercise restraint, killing only when necessary. They were dangerous and deadly at all times, accurate in the use of weapons and completely sure of themselves. But the deadliness had to be triggered by a Monitor's command, set in motion by desperate men and women in flight.

Pity was alien to their nature, for compassion of any kind seemed monstrous and abnormal to them and human frailty they could not even understand. And yet ... there was something quiet, dark and inwardly tormented about them, a restlessness, an unease, as if they could not quite bring themselves to believe that they were not as other men.

The figure did not move as Teleman stared, did not even change the position of his head. There was a small gleaming instrument in his right hand and the hand was half raised and he seemed to be listening. Teleman knew that the instrument was a small, portable scanner and that he was using his eyes alone. Sound did not interest him, and there was no need for him to listen with his ears.

In a sense, though he was listening, with his entire body, standing tense and alert, and watching a tiny needle oscillate and vibration frequencies register on the scanner's luminous dial.

It had to mean that he was overstimulated in a deep, preoccupied way, caught up in such a trancelike intensity of concentration that it would take a shout to arouse him or the crash of a falling branch. He would be unlikely to hear small sounds. The splintering of wood even—although rotting wood does not splinter and it can be peeled away in damp fragments or torn loose with a violent wrench.

It wasn't the first time that Teleman had watched a para-guard stand immobilized and entranced and abnormally on edge, but in an almost infantile way. The brutish simplicity of their natures predisposed them to devote all of their energies to one thing at a time, to make progress slowly and in step-by-step fashion. Now luck—blind luck perhaps—was making that limitation play directly into his hands. The para-guard was abnormally preoccupied, and he was facing away from the log. He was facing away, his back was turned.

Teleman used both hands to tear a wide gap in the rotting wood. The decay was not uniform and the outer bark remained firm here and there. But he managed to rip apart enough of the soggy, flaking wood to clear a space for his head and shoulders. He widened the gap further by swaying vigorously from side to side, half propelling, half dragging himself from the log to the forest floor.

The leaves directly beneath the log cushioned his descent, but did not crackle as he rose swiftly and agilely to his feet. He turned just as swiftly, his eyes darting to Alicia's white face framed in the gap, and pressed a finger to his lips. There was a look of wild startlement in her eyes but she managed to nod in quick understanding, answering his look of reassurance with a thin, tight smile.