irritating thread of sound, just on the edge of hearing. They didn’t seem to be coming any closer. Perhaps the police were holding a search pattern over Salem:
If only they would stay away for ten more minutes.
Rowan forced himself to walk faster. But the extra effort involved began to jar him away from reality again. He fell into a walking dream of Bolivia, the rugged, sun-bronzed men welcoming him into the ranks of the insurrectionists, the trip to their remote mountain fortresses, the women waiting to welcome him, the important work waiting to be done. A new life. To be free of fear—for the first time in how long? Had he ever been free of fear? Had there ever been a day when someone wasn’t spying on him, prying and prodding and pushing him, wrapping him in gossamer that was as strong as iron, controlling him like a puppet? A spark of anger touched him then, and he blazed up like old dead wood. Let the insurrectionists give him a gun—that was all he’d ask for, that was all he wanted.
His anger saved him. He’d been staggering down Rantoulle Street in a somnambulistic daze, and had nearly missed his turn. But rage shook him momentarily awake. He turned onto Edwards Street, past the school. He could hear children playing in the schoolyard, their voices rising and falling through the mellow afternoon air like the shrill calling of birds, but he could not see them as he passed—to his eyes, only leaves and paper-scraps moved across the asphalt with the wind, and he also moved on with it, alone.
The sirens were getting louder. They were coming after him.
But then he turned a final corner, and the sea spread out below him, glinting and silver and vast, opening the world to the horizon. This was Quincy Park. As he stood on the road above, his eyes followed the long slope down to the seawall, then beyond the beach to the ocean, and to the slim white sailboat that waited there, like a sign, like a dove on the water, like the fulfillment of all the dreams he’d ever known.
Rowan started down the slope toward the ocean, his feet slipping on the grass, breaking at last into a ponderous trot. He was almost there. Hope opened like a wound inside him, molten and amazing.
Something slammed into his ribcage like a white-hot sword, sending him staggering back, knocking the breath and the hope out of him. For a second, the incredible shock of the impact dissolved all illusions, and he remembered, and knew that again he had failed to escape. Someday! he shouted in a great silent puff of pain and rage and sudden terrible knowledge. Someday!
Then another blow took him over the heart and drove him into darkness.
The fat man worked the action of the tranquilizer rifle and ejected a gleaming metal dart. “My God!” he breathed, reverentially.
Up the slope, the technicians were already reprogramming the mobile computers for the next runthrough, using the stereo plotting tanks to set up a paradigm describing all the possible sequences and combinations of sequences that might apply, an exercise in four-dimensional topography and systems-flow. Of course, the computers did all the real work: controlling the sequencing, selecting among tables of alternatives as the real-world situation altered and reprogramming themselves on the fly, coordinating a thousand physical details such as the locking of doors and the blocking of certain corridors that kept the human subject restricted to a manageable spatial network of routes and choices, directing the human “beaters” who helped keep the subject “in the chute,” triggering previously implanted fantasy fugue sequences such as the car crash and timing them so that they melded smoothly with real-world action. And much else besides. Nevertheless, the human technicians considered themselves to be overworked, and all made a point of looking harried and rather ostentatiously tired.
A small, foxy-faced man appeared at the fat man’s elbow. “Very nice,” he said briskly, rubbing his
If only they would stay away for ten more minutes.
Rowan forced himself to walk faster. But the extra effort involved began to jar him away from reality again. He fell into a walking dream of Bolivia, the rugged, sun-bronzed men welcoming him into the ranks of the insurrectionists, the trip to their remote mountain fortresses, the women waiting to welcome him, the important work waiting to be done. A new life. To be free of fear—for the first time in how long? Had he ever been free of fear? Had there ever been a day when someone wasn’t spying on him, prying and prodding and pushing him, wrapping him in gossamer that was as strong as iron, controlling him like a puppet? A spark of anger touched him then, and he blazed up like old dead wood. Let the insurrectionists give him a gun—that was all he’d ask for, that was all he wanted.
His anger saved him. He’d been staggering down Rantoulle Street in a somnambulistic daze, and had nearly missed his turn. But rage shook him momentarily awake. He turned onto Edwards Street, past the school. He could hear children playing in the schoolyard, their voices rising and falling through the mellow afternoon air like the shrill calling of birds, but he could not see them as he passed—to his eyes, only leaves and paper-scraps moved across the asphalt with the wind, and he also moved on with it, alone.
The sirens were getting louder. They were coming after him.
But then he turned a final corner, and the sea spread out below him, glinting and silver and vast, opening the world to the horizon. This was Quincy Park. As he stood on the road above, his eyes followed the long slope down to the seawall, then beyond the beach to the ocean, and to the slim white sailboat that waited there, like a sign, like a dove on the water, like the fulfillment of all the dreams he’d ever known.
Rowan started down the slope toward the ocean, his feet slipping on the grass, breaking at last into a ponderous trot. He was almost there. Hope opened like a wound inside him, molten and amazing.
Something slammed into his ribcage like a white-hot sword, sending him staggering back, knocking the breath and the hope out of him. For a second, the incredible shock of the impact dissolved all illusions, and he remembered, and knew that again he had failed to escape. Someday! he shouted in a great silent puff of pain and rage and sudden terrible knowledge. Someday!
Then another blow took him over the heart and drove him into darkness.
The fat man worked the action of the tranquilizer rifle and ejected a gleaming metal dart. “My God!” he breathed, reverentially.
Up the slope, the technicians were already reprogramming the mobile computers for the next runthrough, using the stereo plotting tanks to set up a paradigm describing all the possible sequences and combinations of sequences that might apply, an exercise in four-dimensional topography and systems-flow. Of course, the computers did all the real work: controlling the sequencing, selecting among tables of alternatives as the real-world situation altered and reprogramming themselves on the fly, coordinating a thousand physical details such as the locking of doors and the blocking of certain corridors that kept the human subject restricted to a manageable spatial network of routes and choices, directing the human “beaters” who helped keep the subject “in the chute,” triggering previously implanted fantasy fugue sequences such as the car crash and timing them so that they melded smoothly with real-world action. And much else besides. Nevertheless, the human technicians considered themselves to be overworked, and all made a point of looking harried and rather ostentatiously tired.
A small, foxy-faced man appeared at the fat man’s elbow. “Very nice,” he said briskly, rubbing his
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