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he, too, had had to try to reach the commset as soon as they got into the
house. Sneezy puzzled over that compulsive attempt; he could not remember just
why it had seemed to be so important, only that it had. In the same way, he
thought, he had wanted to find and record every bit of data he could get on
Heechee history and activities for his diary. It seemed likely to him that the
urges were related, but he could not understand them.
"They will be gone soon," he whispered to Oniko, offering the only reassurance
he could find.
She looked at him without speaking. She didn't have to speak; what she would
have said would have been only, "Not soon enough."
The old men were doing what they were always doing. They were arguing.
How strange humans were, to decide even the simplest questions only by fierce
dispute. This time the argument was over whether or not they should sleep, and
which should do it first. Heimat was saying, "We might as well rest, Cyril. An
hour or two each, so we'll be alert when we go to the airport. Why don't you
go first? I'll stay awake to entertain our young guests."
"If you entertain that little one the way you want," snapped Basing-
stoke, "she will probably die of it."
Heimat shook his head sadly. "Old age has weakened you. What do you care what
happens to the little charmer?"
"Old age has made you a fool! There is a whole world of little girls out
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there. Once we are off this island, you can do what you like with all of them,
for all I care, but this one has credit we can use. Can she pay our bills
dead?"
"What bills? We've already got plane tickets."
"And how do we get to the airport?" Basingstoke inquired. "Shall we walk?"
Heimat looked thoughtful, then glum. "Perhaps you are right this time,"
he conceded grudgingly. Then he brightened. "So let us order a limousine now,
and there will be time for other things while we are waiting for it to come!"
How much of this Oniko was following Sneezy couldn't tell. Her body was limp
as she slumped against him. She lay with her eyes closed, but those slow tears
were still trickling down her cheeks, one after another, from her apparently
inexhaustible supply.
Sneezy closed his own eyes. It wasn't so much weariness, although there was
plenty of weariness, too, as an effort at concentration. Was there any
possibility at all of escape? Suppose he told the old men that he had to go to
the toilet again. Suppose they untied him for that; could he then break free,
catch Oniko up in his arms, and run out of the building with her? Could Harold
help? Was there any chance that such a plan, or any other plan, could succeed?
Or would they simply solve the problem of Sneezy and Harold, who had neither
credit nor sexual victimization to offer, by terminating their lives at the
first inconvenience?
For the first time in his young life, Sneezy contemplated the real possibility
that it would end within the next few hours at most. It was quite frightening
to a young Heechee. It was not merely a question of death-death came to
everyone sooner or later. But death under these circumstances could well be
total death, since there was no one nearby to do what was necessary to take
the dead brain of Sneezy and empty it into storage; it was not death he feared
so much as the prospect of his brain irretrievably decaying before he
could be transformed into an Ancestor . .
He became aware that the old men were quarreling again, this time more
violently. "What is the matter with the damned thing!" cried
Basingstoke in exasperation, and Heimat chimed in:
"You've done something wrong, you old fool. Here! Let me try!"
"Try as much as you like," growled Basingstoke. "It simply will not go on." He
stood back, glowering as the paler old man bent to the commset. Then
Heimat sat back, his expression bleak.
"What did you do?" he demanded.
"I did nothing! I simply turned it off. Then I tried to turn it on again, and
it will not work!"
For a quick moment Sneezy felt a rush of hope. If the communications set had
really been somehow broken, then perhaps the old men's plans would have to
change. Perhaps they must walk to the airport! Sneezy had no idea how far it
was, or even in what direction, but probably the men didn't either. They would
not dare waste time, perhaps. They would need to start immediately, for the
sun was almost rising outside, the sky in the windows brightening.
And if they left at once-and if, for some reason, they failed to kill the
possible witnesses they would leave behind-and if they did not decide to take
the children somehow with them-and if- There were too many ifs.
But then none of the ifs mattered. Sneezy saw the beginning glow in the
PV tank. So did Basingstoke, and he cried, "We need not accuse each other any
longer, Beau! Look, it is coming on at last."
So it was. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]