The Walking Shadow. Brian Stableford

was still staring at Diehl, waiting for some kind of an answer.

      “I don’t know how they do it,” said Diehl. “But someone scrambled a warning call to Wishart, and now they’ve hooked into your priority line. They can do things with telephones that we can’t, and they knew exactly when Heisenberg was due out. Why play practical jokes?”

      “Is there a radio telescope still functioning, anywhere in the Reunion?” asked the president. “Or even in Australia, come to that?”

      “There hasn’t been a radio telescope in use since the war,” replied the Secretary of State, as if mystified that the question should have been asked.

      “Is there an instrument that can be made to work?”

      No one could answer that.

      “He says that we can prove it,” added Lindenbaum, by way of explanation. “We can tap into their communications. He told me the frequency...but he says we’ll need more than an ordinary receiver. A radio telescope.”

      “It has to be a hoax,” said the Secretary of State. There was a murmur of agreement.

      “It’s been tried before,” said Diehl, ruminatively. “But it’s too far-fetched to work. Unless we can get proof. Or unless we can fake proof.”

      Lindenbaum looked at him as if he had gone mad. Then comprehension dawned. “It would never work,” he said. “We aren’t going to be able to keep control by inventing an imaginary emergency. No one would believe us.”

      Most of the faces around the table still had not yet caught on to what Diehl was suggesting, although the more Machiavellian minds were tracing it through.

      “If you’re going to tell lies,” said Diehl, “you might as well tell bold ones. And this is one hell of a lie.”

      “It’s crazy,” said the president.

      “And what if it’s true?” put in Marcangelo.

      Lindenbaum just shook his head in bewilderment.

      Diehl picked up his own phone, and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Get me the University,” he said. “I want to talk to the closest thing to an astronomer they have on the staff.”

      CHAPTER TEN

      “Ronnie,” said Rebecca, the urgency of panic in her voice, “we have to get him out. To the Movement. Somewhere safe. The police will be looking for him.”

      Ronnie was still trying to disengage himself from the clutches of sleep. He was a heavy sleeper, and even Paul Heisenberg’s name had not served to jerk him out of it.

      “Where is he?” he muttered, rubbing his right eye and shivering because of the cold.

      “Someone dropped him at the door, about three. I don’t know who brought him; I couldn’t see his face. You slept through the whole thing. Kit and Linda must have heard the buzzer, and Andy too, but none of them budged. I took him to my room, made him a drink, and talked to him...you know the way. It took me the best part of an hour, but when I realized.... Ronnie, it’s him. Can’t you get that into your head? Heisenberg.”

      “It can’t be,” said Ronnie, sufficiently awake to be skeptical. “How would he get out of that iron cage?”

      “I don’t know. But he did. Somebody brought him. Come and see him for yourself.”

      Ronnie fumbled for his trousers, seeming to take an infinite amount of time getting them on and zipping them up. His adrenalin was working now and the implications were slowly unfolding in his mind. If it was Paul Heisenberg....

      He followed Rebecca down the stairs to the half-landing, and threw open the door to Rebecca’s room. He took a long, long look at the person on the bed, comparing the face to the memory of all the old photographs he’d seen of Paul Heisenberg. Blond hair, a face just a little too effeminate to be handsome—a pretty face...those were the images that he called to mind, and compared to the real face before him.

      Paul stood up, a little unsteadily, and said: “Take it easy. It’s all right.” The words sounded hollow and absurd.

      Ronnie’s mouth went dry, and he stood quite still, losing his opportunity to deliver one of history’s great quotable lines. Eventually, he said: “We’ve got to get to a phone. Call Max Gray...someone in the Movement. If we could get you to the University we could hide you. But they’ll be all over town by now, looking for you.”

      “The one who brought me here,” said Paul, “said he would try to come back.”

      “Was he one of Wishart’s men?”

      “Wishart?” The name struck a chord in Paul’s mind that was almost the equal of the one struck by his own name.

      “Wishart—the Movement....” Ronnie trailed off, realizing that Paul could not and did not know the first thing about the Movement. “It’s a kind of political party,” he said. “The organization of your followers, the ones who have any organization at all. They’ll know what to do...if we can only get you across the river.”

      “We don’t have a car,” said Rebecca, from the doorway. “We’d never get him past the police if we had. They’ll have to come here, if we can hide him until morning.”

      Ronnie looked from Paul to Rebecca, and then back again, feeling an urgent need to act but not knowing quite what to do.

      “I’m going to phone,” he said. “I know who’ll give me a number where I can reach Wishart or Gray. Stay here. Don’t worry.”

      He turned, and he ran.

      Paul wondered how he was supposed to follow the advice to avoid worrying. He sat down again on Rebecca’s bed, and said: “I’m sorry.” Rebecca seemed to be on the point of bursting into tears.

      Ronnie, meanwhile, raced up the steps from the basement door and into the street. The car was already turning the corner, and its headlights picked him out immediately. It wasn’t a police car, but the moment he saw it he was afraid. He began to ran, but then the thought occurred to him that it might be the man that had brought Heisenberg to the house, returning to collect him. He hesitated in his flight, and the car drew up alongside him. The back door was flung open, and a tall man reached for him. A flashlight flickered on, and the beam sought his face. He put up his arm to shield his eyes, and ran again, this time as fast as he possibly could, howling:

      “Police! Police!”

      The tall security man gave chase, the beam of the torch playing on Ronnie’s back as he fled. There was a terrible prickling sensation in Ronnie’s spine as he realized that he might be shot dead, but no warning sounded and no gunshot was fired. The only noise was the noise of heavy footfalls and the dying echoes of his warning shout.

      He drew in breath to shout again, but he never got the chance. The flashlight crashed into the side of his head as soon as the man behind came close enough to use it as a club. Ronnie slipped on the ice-caked road and fell heavily. As he was hauled to his feet he heard a dull thud as a heavy shoulder was applied to a recalcitrant door.

      The security men knew the house, but they didn’t know how to get into it; they were trying to smash their way through the front door, which hadn’t been unlocked since the University took over the block. Ronnie was hauled back to the car, but not very roughly. They had no idea, yet, that Paul Heisenberg was in the house, and hadn’t jumped to any conclusions when they caught him outside. He looked up and down the street at the darkened windows. No new lights showed, and there was no sign of activity. No one wanted to get involved.

      Ronnie wanted to yell again, this time to spread the news instead of the warning. He wanted to tell the world that Heisenberg was back, and that he was one step ahead of Diehl’s cowboys, but he had the sense to keep quiet. When they spread-eagled him over the bonnet of the car and began the questions he pretended that he was more shaken than he was, too much pained to give reasonable attention. He mumbled and muttered “nos”