His caution was unwarranted. The police were not watching the street. No doubt their attention was aimed at the roof far above, where the real action was supposedly taking place.
He sauntered off into the park, forcing himself to maintain a slow pace. He was halfway to First Avenue when a voice shouted, “Hey you!”
Uncertain whether to run or turn and attack, he hesitated. A single yell could bring the whole horde of officials down on him.
The man in the metro police blazer and beret moved nearer, spoke irritably. “This is a restricted area, citizen. Didn’t you see the lines?”
“I’m sorry,” Eric said carefully. “I’ve been thinking and I didn’t …”
“Never mind.” He was fiddling with the call-all in his ear. Evidently it didn’t fit properly. He gestured toward the street with his stunstick. “Go on, get out.”
“Thanks. Sorry.” He turned and moved on. Maybe the cop hadn’t studied the reports on Eric Abbott. Maybe he’d just been called in for special duty. Maybe he was thinking about his girlfriend.
No matter. Eric had no more trouble. He saw the thin cord marking off the park as he emerged from the pedestrian lane. No police here, though. Only signs and ropes. He stepped over the cord and increased his pace slightly until he was surrounded by late-night strollers taking in the air along the river.
For several hours he wandered aimlessly through midtown, occasionally stopping to satisfy his suddenly ravenous hunger with fast food, trying to decide what to do next.
There was no way of knowing where Tarragon had spirited Lisa to. She might be in another codo in the same building or in another residential tower nearby. Or she might have been taken out of Nueva York altogther. How could he know without confronting Tarragon directly, which was out of the question?
He kicked at the slidewalk in frustration, was only half startled to see a narrow crack appear in the slowly moving pavement. Quickly he looked around to make sure no one had seen him. He would have to work at controlling his temper. It still stimulated something awesome and enigmatic within him. One thing he did not want now was to attract attention to himself.
There was no one he could turn to for help, no one he could trust. No one to help him find the answers he desperately needed to know.
But there were other ways of obtaining information. It might not be necessary to confront maybe-friends or certain enemies.
He entered a bar and went to the phone. The tiny directory screen lit up when he deposited a coin. A few quick punches of the keyboard produced the address he wanted.
Then he was back out on the street, no longer wandering aimlessly but with a definite destination in mind. Thoughts of Lisa drove him through the crowds.
The station was located beneath a District Administration building downtown, near the Battery. The aboveground floors were shuttered for the night, but the subterranean elevators were still operational and full of people.
His lift dropped him ten stories into solid granite bedrock and deposited him in a long hall. It wasn’t crowded nor was it deserted. It was very late, or very early, depending on how you arranged your day. The thirst for knowledge never dries up, no matter what the hour. Some of the supplicants were sleepy-eyed, others wide-awake.
He found a place in one of the shortest lines, and it wasn’t long before he was admitted to another, narrower hallway. Soft carpet muffled footsteps. To left and right stretched a long row of glass-enclosed booths. He walked to his left until he found a booth where the fiberoptic glass wall was bright green. Stepping inside he secured the door behind him. As he did so the glass turned crimson.
Sitting down in the comfortable, adjustable chair, he touched a switch which killed the audio. Not that he was likely to have any eavesdroppers to worry about, but he felt better confronting only a visual display. He could block that from sight with his upper body.
The screen responded immediately to his touch. “Welcome to your local Colligatarch Subsidiary Service Terminal . Through the miracle of modern science and communications, you, the ordinary citizen, have the same rights as anyone in the world to utilize the vast repository of knowledge that composes the Colligatarch Authority. Your requests will be handled by Nueva York Subsidiary Center.
“Please insert your identity credit card into the slot on your left and leave it there until you have concluded your session. Your account will be billed automatically according to the difficulty of your request and the length of time required to process it. The Colligatarch Subsidiary Service Terminal, Nueva York Center, is now open for your personal use.” The period that ended the sentence flashed green on the screen.
Surprisingly, he discovered he was homesick. The terminal wasn’t all that different from his bedroom console back in New River. The setting was less luxurious and the design more utilitarian, the keyboard and screen fashioned of far tougher materials, but the setup was similar. It had to be tougher, since it had to resist the heavy hands of ordinary citizens as well as the strawberry soda and melted chocolate applied by insufficiently supervised children.
Certainly some kind of tracer had been put on his altered card. If so, it would alert the authorities to his presence here. That still might not matter if he had enough time to extract what he needed from the machine’s data banks. The best solution would be to try to obtain an answer without using the names Eric Abbott or Lisa Tambor. He would need to be as concise and nonspecific as possible.
“I need to know the location of a friend,” he entered.
“Use the public directory,” the machine immediately responded. “If the name is not listed, I am not permitted to give out the information.”
“It’s not a question of its being listed or not,” he entered. “I have reason to believe the person in question may no longer be within the city limits. She was compelled to travel on short notice and was unable to leave a forwarding address.”
“In that case it is unlikely I can be of help to you, citizen.” The neat letters flashed on the screen. “If your friend has not informed you of her new destination, it is unlikely I will be able to do so.”
“You may have more information pertaining to her movements,” Eric supplied. He paused. There was no way of working around it anymore. Quickly he entered Lisa’s name, address, and phone number.
“I need any information on this woman’s location and/or movements you can supply,” Eric added. “It may be necessary for you to contact the Nueva York police department files for details.”
“If this is a matter involving police files, I still cannot help you,” said the machine. “I will, however, make the requested inquiry.”
Eric waited nervously. How many alarms would his roundabout inquiry set off? If so, how long would he have to escape this underground facility before Tarragon’s people arrived?
On the screen the word WORKING appeared. As the delay stretched into five minutes his nervousness increased. He found himself glancing frequently up the long hallway. The appearance of two policemen gave him a bad start, but they entered a booth half a dozen cubicles up the hall from his, to remove a drunk who’d chosen the warmth and privacy of a Colligatarch terminal to try to sleep it off.
Probably the drunk had used the usual ploy of setting the machine to solve some impossible task. Eventually watchdog monitors had overridden the program and alerted security to the fact that someone was occupying the booth for other than acceptable reasons. That was why the booths were fashioned of transparent material. Legitimate users had nothing to hide.
He waited another couple of minutes before asking, “Is there some difficulty with my request?”
The machine replied immediately. “You have supplied very little hard information. Therefore a considerable amount of secondary searching is necessary.” Eric thought to dig further, decided against it.
No more police appeared. It occurred to him that despite having been awake for some time now, he was not in the least bit sleepy. No doubt the tension was keeping him alert.
A flash of letters drew his attention back to the screen. Hope turned quickly to confusion.
He expected another declaration of helplessness from the machine but there was always a chance it might come up with some bit of useful information He got neither.
Instead, the glowing sentence said, “Go to Sublevel Six, Booth B.”
He considered a moment, then asked, “What about the whereabouts of Lisa Tambor? Does my query require rephrasing?”
