The Walking Shadow. Brian Stableford

to find some way of getting you out. I don’t want you to tell them who you are. Hopefully, they might not recognize you. They’re used to looking after awakeners. Trust me.”

      The words flowed over and around Paul, who could find nothing in them to which to connect himself. It was all incomprehensible.

      “There’s no time to explain,” said the other. “I’m sorry. If only that policeman hadn’t....”

      The voice broke off. The car swung around a tight bend, skidded, and stopped. Paul tried to push his feet into a pair of elastic-sided shoes, and had just accomplished the unreasonably-difficult task when the door at his shoulder was wrenched open and a gloved hand reached in to help him out. As he climbed out, he realized that he was terribly weak and sluggish, but he was now feeling a great deal better in himself. He felt alive, and ready to begin the business of living.

      A street of tall terraced houses stretched for about a hundred meters either way. There were street-lamps every twenty meters or so, but only one in three was operative. He looked up at the tall buildings but he could only see two windows where light shone behind heavy blinds. One house revealed by a street-lamp had its windows boarded up and its door battered down, but he could not tell how many other dwellings had suffered similar dereliction. All the brickwork looked very old.

      Beside the car, which had stopped in one of the darkened regions of the street, there was a low wall and a set of rotted iron railings. There was a gateway without a gate, and a flight of steps leading down into a deep well of shadow. Paul had to make a grab for the railings as he stumbled on the pavement. His companion caught him, and allowed him to pull away from the burning touch, supporting his weight effortlessly.

      “Easy,” breathed the voice.

      They paused, but only for a moment, while Paul collected himself. Then he felt himself hustled through the gateway and down into Stygian darkness.

      At the bottom, when they stopped again, Paul had to lean on the shoulder of his companion, his head resting gently against the edge of the plastic mask. He heard the ringing of a bell inside the house, loud and continual, as the other pressed the doorbell intermittently and insistently.

      The door opened, spilling the light of an electric torch out into the well. Paul blinked, aware only of a vague humanoid shadow.

      He heard the familiar voice speak rapidly, without waiting for a question or a challenge: “Awakener. Came out less than half an hour ago. Look after him until morning. I’ll try to collect him then.” Then the support was gone, and Paul had to lean against the door-jamb. Though he heard no sound, he knew that the man in the mask was disappearing into the night.

      “Wait! “ said a female voice, low and urgent. “Who are you? Wait!”

      There was no answer.

      A new hand reached out to take his arm and draw him into the corridor beyond the door. She didn’t ask any questions of him, but simply said: “Come on. It’ll be all right.”

      He managed to get inside, so that she could close the door. Somewhere up above, sounding strangely remote, the engine of the car growled into life.

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      Ricardo Marcangelo dropped his overcoat over the back of a chair, and then moved across the room to sit in another. There was only one other man in the room: Nicholas Diehl, the chief of security. He was standing by the window, still wearing his coat.

      “Lindenbaum’s on his way,” said Marcangelo, softly. He was a man of medium height, with a rounded face that might once have borne a permanent look of innocence, but which was now too lined and hardened. Marcangelo’s official title was Presidential Aide in charge of the Department of Internal Affairs, but in practice he handled relations between Lindenbaum’s administration and the Metascientists, and had ever since the city had become the official capital of the United States, thirty years after the Treaty of Reunion.

      Diehl, by contrast, was a tall, thin man with a pale face that hid behind a short-trimmed, white-flecked beard and moustache. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles and looked for all the world like a clerk. In fact, though, he was the head of the President’s security forces—effectively the master of the secret police.

      “Well?” said Diehl. “How did it happen?”

      “Somebody knew.”

      “That’s impossible.”

      Marcangelo shrugged. “They were there and waiting. They had the cage cut open before Heisenberg revived. They’d be clean away if Sheehan hadn’t managed to call in before he was chloroformed.”

      “The report says that he got in a shot at the man cutting the bars, and missed.”

      Marcangelo shrugged again. “As far as I can tell, he did what he could.”

      “But only one car was sent out. And they missed Heisenberg. It seems to me that the police fouled it up left, right and centre.”

      “They have the whole north side sealed off. The car can’t get out, and neither can Heisenberg. Maybe the police did fall down, but where were your men? Somebody knew that he was going to wake up tonight, and we didn’t even know that it was possible to predict that. You didn’t manage to pick Wishart up?”

      Diehl frowned, in a way that suggested mild petulance rather than outright anger. “He wasn’t there,” he said. “He’s gone underground.”

      “So he knew.”

      Diehl shook his head. “I don’t think so. The tap on his phone picked up a peculiar garbled hum just about the time it must have happened. Wishart answered it, but what was said was blotted out somehow—scrambled. I think that was the first Wishart knew. That call warned him to get out. Somebody else got Heisenberg out of the stadium: someone who knows how to scramble a call on a tapped phone.” Marcangelo looked at the thin man steadily. “And you have no idea who?”

      “Have you?” retorted Diehl.

      “It seems that everyone’s fouled up,” said Marcangelo, mildly. “Recriminations aren’t going to help. We have to find him, that’s all. It should only be a matter of time.”

      “It should,” echoed Diehl, grimly.

      “If he’s still alive,” added Marcangelo, with a lightness of tone that was obviously false.

      “If?”

      “A car crashed through one of the barriers about fifteen minutes ago, heading north. The barricade wasn’t strong enough—it was a minor road. Two cars went after it. While trying to shake them off it went into a bad skid and came off the road. Before the police got to it, it went up. Not just the petrol tank—the officer in the first car said there must have been a bomb. It turned the car into a heap of slag.”

      “The car that was used to get Heisenberg away?”

      “We don’t know.”

      “How many bodies?”

      “Apparently, none. It was quite some explosion.”

      Diehl’s face seemed as white as chalk in the bright electric light. In the silence which fell Marcangelo could hear the faint throb of the heating system. Even in the coldest night the Manse was kept warm. It was President Lindenbaum’s official residence, but tonight the president was out of town. A helicopter was bringing him back to deal with the emergency.

      “The police need support, Nick,” said Marcangelo, his voice still level and natural. “Castagna could do with a couple of hundred of your men, at least, to run a dragnet through the north side.”

      “I’ll tell Laker to put our agents on the street,” replied Diehl, almost absent-mindedly, as if he were still preoccupied with what Marcangelo had told him about the car that had crashed the barrier. “We’ll raid every house where we know of any connection with Wishart’s organization. Laker and Castagna can co-ordinate the operation. If he is dead, you know, it could simplify our problems considerably.”