precision of a man in a trance, fitted the unit into the vacant retaining clips, noting as he did so that the metal case had a heat scar which meant it could have been grazed by the thermal cutter which had ended Barry Lutze’s life. He wiped a dark and tacky residue off the two electrical connectors and locked them into the adjoining counter-gravity generator on his belt. Nothing remained for him to do now but to rotate the master control, thus energising the flight system, and step into the waiting elevator shaft and fall to safety. Hasson mused briefly, making himself ready.
It was, of course, an unorthodox means of taking to the air — one not recommended by any of the numerous manuals on techniques of personal flight. The CG field would be disrupted and unable to take effect within the confines of the elevator shaft, which meant he would fall fourteen storeys and more, passing well clear of the underside of the hotel, before any lift would be generated. The total free drop would be something like sixty metres, a distance he would cover in approximately four seconds, making a small allowance for air resistance. It was, granted, an unpleasant and uncomfortable way to embark on a flight, the sort of thing which might upset a nervous person or a raw beginner, but it was nothing, nothing at all, to an experienced air cop who in the course of an arrest had once plunged three thousand metres…
Hasson rotated the master control on his belt panel — and smiled a tremulous, disbelieving smile when he saw that the function light had not begun to glow. The message, if he accepted it, was that his counter-gravity harness was inoperative, that he had no chance of escape.
I’ll tell you three things this might mean, he said to himself, dulling his reactions with textbook pedantry. Then I’ll tell you the one thing it DOES mean.
It might mean you’re getting no power, but that isn’t definite. Current could be coming through, but the microprocessor in the monitor circuits may have decided that the power pack is not in the peak of condition. The microprocessor doesn’t seem to know what an emergency is — it treats every take-off as the beginning of an eight- hour demonstration flight.
It might mean that you damaged the CG generator when you hit that window frame down on the second floor, but that isn’t too likely — those units are built to withstand a fair amount of abuse.
It might mean that the function light itself is broken — that’s been known to happen, though not very often.
There was a louder, more immediate and more threatening rumble not far away, in the direction of the staircase he had recently vacated, and the ceiling of smoke became agitated, pushing down on him like a diaphragm. Still lying on his side, he drew his knees up and closed his eyes.
And the one thing it DOES mean — Rob, Mr Hasson, sir — is that you would stay up here and suffocate rather than take that drop. Who could blame you? Who in his right mind would choose to fall fourteen stories through a blazing building… and came out of it into thin air higher than the Empire State Building … with all that distance still below him, still to drop… without knowing whether his CG harness was going to work or not? It’s impossible. Beyond reason. And yet… And yet . .
Hasson stirred, moved closer to the grinning edge, and looked down into the descending and receding fiery circlets of the shaft. He looked into the black central disk — at the far side of which the world lay waiting — and understood that it was not an eye at all, that his father was not watching him, that nobody was watching him. He was alone. It was entirely up to him whether he chose to die, or to be born again.
He made the decision by relaxing his muscles, allowing himself to fall forward, giving himself up to a lazy dream-like tumble into the unknown, Four seconds.
Measured by normal human time scales, four seconds is a very brief interval — but Hasson was receiving incomparably vivid sense impressions at a cinematic rate, and for him all clocks stopped and the heavens ceased to spin. He had ample time in which to glimpse the flaming battlefields of successive floors, to feel himself breast the battering sound waves of their passing, to endure the growing emptiness in his stomach which told him he was gathering speed in response to the earth’s silent and deadly summons, to experience the alternation of light and shade, heat and comparative coolness, to think, to scheme, to dream, to scream…
And when, finally, in the murmurous, wind-rushing darkness — with the hotel receding above him like a black sun — he felt the counter-gravity harness begin to gather lift, to bring order into . howling chaos, he truly had been born again.
eleven
Al Werry and Henry Corzyn were buried in neighbouring graves on the sunlit, south-facing slope of a cemetery close to Tripletree.
Hasson, native of an island where cremation had long been compulsory, had never witnessed a traditional interment. The burial ceremonies he had seen portrayed in televised holoplays had prepared him for a surfeit of sombre emotion, but the actuality was strangely tranquil. There was a sense of rightness about the return to the earth which left him, if not comforted, in some measure reconciled to the facts of life and death.
Throughout the ceremony he remained apart from the main body of mourners, not wishing to make any statement about his relationship with Werry by joining any particular group. Sybil Werry, who had flown in from Vancouver, stood close to her son. She was a small dark woman, whose slightness of build made the fourteen year old beside her appear tall and unexpectedly mature. Theo Werry kept his head erect, making no attempt to hide his tears, following with slight movements of his sensor cane the final lowering of his father’s coffin. Looking at the boy, Hasson could see clearly on his face the imprinted features of the man he was to become.
May Carpenter and her mother, discreetly veiled, formed part of a separate element containing Dr Drew Collins and others who were strangers to Hasson. May and Ginny had moved out of the house a few hours before Sybil Werry’s arrival and were staying in another part of Tripletree. Not far away from them stood the disparate figures of Victor Quigg and Oliver Fan, both scarcely recognisable when attired in formal black. Behind the knots of individuals, placing them in a common frame of reference, the city sparkled cleanly and uncaringly in the distance beneath the pastel traceries of its aerial highways. Hasson saw everything with an intensely detailed clarity which told him it was a scene he would revisit many times in memory.
As soon as he got back to the house he went to his room, which the sun on the drawn blinds had filled with parchment-coloured radiance. He laid out his belongings and, working with calm concentration, began packing them into a new set of flight panniers. There was insufficient room for everything that had been in his cases, but he had no hesitation in selecting the items he required and placing the others in a sprawling heap on the bed. He had been busy for about five minutes when he heard footsteps on the landing and Theo Werry entered the room. The boy stood for a moment, turning and tilting his sensor cane, then moved closer to Hasson.
“Are you really going, Rob?” he said, his face alert. “I mean now, this afternoon.”
Hasson continued packing. “If I go now I can be on the west coast before dark.”
“What about the trial? Aren’t you supposed to wait around for that?”
“I’ve lost interest in trials,” Hasson said. “I’m supposed to attend another one in England, and I’ve lost interest in that as well.” .’They’ll go looking for you.”
“The world’s a big place, Theo, and I’m going to gallop off in all directions.” Hasson paused to make a proper acknowledgement of the boy’s presence. “That’s another line from Stephen Leacock.”
Theo nodded and sat on the edge of the bed. “I’ll get around to reading him some day.”
“Sure you will.” A sudden renewal of sympathy made Hasson wonder if he was being too self-centred. “Are you positive about not having those cataracts removed? Nobody would stop you having the operation done on one eye, anyway.”
“I’m positive, thanks.” Theo spoke with the voice of an adult. “I can wait a couple of years.”
“If I thought you needed…”
“It’s the least I can do.” Theo smiled and stood up, releasing Hasson from self-imposed obligations. “I’m going away myself, you know. I talked it over with Mum last night and she says she has plenty of room for me in Vancouver.” “That’s great,” Hasson said awkwardly. “Listen, Theo. I’ll go out there some time and see you. Okay?”
“It’s fine with me.” The boy smiled again, too polite to show his disbelief, shook hands with Hasson and left the room.
Hasson watched him depart, then returned to the task of loading his panniers with the essentials for a protracted solo flight. He had no fixed destination in mind — only an instinctive need to travel south and west, to begin his new life by pitting himself against the ancient curving vastness of the Pacific Ocean, to atone for the years he had wasted in parochialism and conformity by losing himself in domains where time and history had established no beachheads. A few minutes later — all preparations completed, all regrets put aside — he took off into the still blue air above Tripletree, and went for a long walk in the sky.
