VIII
It seemed that he hit much sooner than he should have. A moment of paralysis and then he was pulling hard, pulling himself up and over the barrier. It was identical to the barrier he’d just cleared, with one important difference: it rimmed the top of Harlem Six.
Soon he was standing next to similar cooling machinery, listening to a similar rumble and staring across emptiness at a dozen astonished faces made small by distance. He’d made it. He didn’t know how he’d made it, but he’d made it. That was all that mattered now.
He looked through the webwork barrier. The sheer drop made him dizzy. Turning away, he stumbled toward the place where the stairwell door should be located, shorted the lock and raced downward, not daring to try one of the elevators.
Across the abyss Eric Abbott had just cleared the paralysis that had left him but continued to hold his pursuers. No one moved to contact security central. All eyes stared in fascination at the opposite roof. The gap between the towers spanned some ninety feet. No one could make such a jump, yet their quarry had just done so, done it without mirrors, without visible mechanical aid.
A minute ago they’d had him trapped and had closed in on him confidently. Now that confidence was gone. They’d been cheated emotionally as well as physically. Despite the loss, no one expressed a desire to continue the chase.
Several precious minutes fled before the one in charge thought to contact downstairs. More time passed as he and his colleagues tried to explain what had happened. By then Eric Abbott, taking stairs four and five at a time, had reached the third floor of Harlem Six.
He fought to recall the layout of Tower Eight. There had been windows at the end of each spokelike corridor. Tower Six was the same. He reached one window, shorted out still another lock and pushed the thick glass aside.
Forty feet below, a mature sycamore reached for the night sky with heavily leafed branches. A few strollers could be seen well away to the right, enjoying the play of fountains and the smell of night-blooming flowers. Eric took a deep breath and jumped.
Several smaller branches snapped under his weight and one gouged his cheek, but there was no blood. He came to a stop, started climbing downward. On a large lower branch he paused, looking back into the lobby. Figures were moving about, but he couldn’t tell if they were visitors or anxious security personnel.
He dropped to the ground, brushed himself off as well as he could. This was the second suit he’d ruined in his search for Lisa Tambor. At least he should buy appropriate clothing.
The humor didn’t last long in his mind. He was frightened, badly frightened. Not from his capture but from his escape.
He’d put down his escape in Phoenix from the two men who’d sought to question him to a sudden surge of adrenaline. No such facile explanation would serve for the jump he’d made from the top of Harlem Eight. Nothing would explain that. It was fact; he’d done it. Even more terrifying was the fact that he’d been driven to attempt it. He’d gone over the edge in more ways than one.
Yet it was as if his body, if not his brain, had known all along he could make the jump. As he forced himself to walk calmly and at a modest pace toward 135th Street, he took stock of himself. Hands, feet, body all looked normal, all looked the same.
What’s happening to me? What in hell is going on? He’d felt the same confused terror that day back in Phoenix when he’d thrown a much larger assailant through a solid ceiling. It was much worse now.
He’d walked for ten minutes before an empty robocab hailed him. “Ride, sir?” the ingratiating mechanical asked.
“Yes. Yes, thank you.” He staggered to the open door and slumped in the seat. Absently he gave the name of his hotel, dreamily pulled his wallet from his coat pocket and scanned the contents.
It was all there: everything that went to make up Eric Abbott. Employee ID card, altered credit card, driver’s license, medical security, a long series of official and semi-official documents testifying to himself. To who he was … but not what.
What am I? The voice screamed insistently inside his head.
Blocks slid past and he didn’t see the lights that came to life, turning night to day on the grounds of Harlem Complex. Didn’t see the small army of security personnel that fanned out from four of eight towers to search walkways and grottoes and paths, all the places where an injured man might take refuge.
The futile hunt went on till morning. The searchers didn’t find Eric Abbott, didn’t find John Frazier, didn’t find the man who’d made that impossible leap from one tower to another. They didn’t find them because all three were sitting in a small hotel room in midtown Manhattan trying to sort themselves out.
Eric spent a long time in the hot shower, letting the water cascade down his body. He was not hurt. The remarkable jump had not strained any muscles. The water washed away dirt and sweat, but no memories.
Maybe I’d better go home, he thought. Go home while he still had his sanity, before anything else happened. Anything else? What kind of anything else? Nothing made any sense.
Waste of thought. He wasn’t going home now, whether his sanity was at stake or not. Why worry about an insignificant intangible like that when you had Lisa Tambor’ s address?
They wouldn’t warn her. There were no papers scattered on the floor of Candlewaif s office, nothing to indicate what he’d broken in to obtain. The computer file would appear to have been untouched. A check would show nothing missing.
No doubt the people who’d chased him were still trying to explain his escape. That should give the local security more than enough to worry about without wondering about his identity or motivations. Security would say no human being could make such a jump. No one but a machine, a robot. He started to giggle, clamped down on himself quickly.
Exiting the shower, he dried himself off and walked into the bedroom. In the top drawer of the single dresser were his wallet, school ring, keys, and tools. One of the tools was quite sharp. He opened it and with great deliberation ran it down his thigh. It was painful and the blood that seeped out was satisfyingly red and real.
So I’m not a machine, he thought. Thank heaven for small favors. That didn’t change the fact that his body was full of surprises. Time enough to work that out later.
Had they secured a picture of him? If so it would be circulating in the police files by midday. Move fast, stay ahead of investigations and suppositions. Move fast and rid yourself of this obsession before it kills you.
Meeting Lisa Tambor should be enough. If he could get in to see her, they could have a nice chat, small talk. That would be the end of it, surely. Wasn’t that how such obsessions were resolved, by confrontation with reality? He didn’t think the fact that he was in love with her would impress her much, and if they finally met, that alarming emotion might leave him. She might really have buck teeth or an unbearable personality. She might smell. She just might not be a nice person. It wouldn’t take very much to vanquish the illusion he’d cloaked her in.
He checked his wrist terminal and the entry so recently and laboriously acquired. There was Lisa Tambor’s address. Excitement and anticipation began to push aside his fear. Events had turned mad, but the aura of romance lingered around the craziness.
It was midmoming when the robocab deposited him at the prestigious location on the East River. Nearby, the Walesa Tower rose 220 stories into the sky, the home of diplomats and entertainers. Tambor’s address was in a more modest structure.
He’d eaten a good breakfast, caught up on his sleep, and dressed carefully in his spare suit. As he entered the lobby, he breathed a mental sigh of relief. Instead of a human guard the security was wholly electronic. Human guards were not much in fashion in residential buildings. They could be bribed too easily. You couldn’t bribe a machine, but an expert could find other ways to confuse it.
Selvern sold such security machinery, and while Eric hadn’t participated in the design of any, the basics were familiar to him. Twin video cameras ten feet above an input wall tilted down to stare at him.
“State your business, please.”
“I’m from the Magdalena Modeling Agency, here to talk to a former client, Ms. Lisa Tambor.”
“Ms. Tambor’s residence is East Riverside Twelfth,” the voice informed him. “If you’ll present your credentials, sir, I will announce you.”
“Thanks.” Eric spoke with a calmness he didn’t feel. Extracting the card he’d prepared so carefully the night before, he slipped it into the waiting slot. It was blank, but not to the machine. A mechanical gulp and it disappeared.
The card did not carry the imprint of the Magdalena Agency, since he had no idea what that might be. It did contain a rotocycling imprint which should fool the system. He stood and sweated and waited. The machine seemed to be taking an awfully long time.
Eventually the card reappeared. “Thank you, Mr. Lawson. I will announce you.”
