Werry raised his eyebrows. “There’s a nutty idea for you! We’ve got a new solid-image job right there in the front room. Two-mete stage. May and Ginny are always watching it, and you can sit with them any time you want. Isn’t that right, May?”
May nodded. “The Nabisco Club is on tonight.”
Hasson tried to smile, unable to reveal that he planned so lock himself in his room and turn it into an outpost of his homeland by taking nothing but British shows from the satellite system. “Ah . … I’m a pretty poor sleeper these days. These nights, I should say. I need a set in my bedroom for when I can’t sleep.”
“Other people need to sleep,” Ginny Carpenter put in as she joined them at the table with a loaded plate.
“I’d be using the ear pieces. There’d be no…”
“Seems a waste of money when there’s a new solid-image set with a two-metre stage right there in the front room,” Werry said carelessly. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, though — I’ll take you into town with me on Tuesday morning and introduce you so my buddy, Bill Raszin. He’ll fix you up at the right price.”
Hasson did a mental calculation and decided he could not wait four days. “Thanks, but if you don’t mind I’d like to…”
“Good food going to waste here,” Ginny reprimanded.
Hasson lowered his head and began to eat. The moose steak was more edible than he had feared, but the flavour which got through the coating of sauce reminded him strongly of rabbit and after a few small mouthfuls he was unable to continue with it. He began marking time by eating thin slices of carrot which had been liberally glazed with brown sugar and which to him tasted like sweets. Werry was the first to notice his lack of appetite and began to chivvy him loudly, only subsiding when Ginny explained that people who were accustomed to a low standard of living were often unable to cope with rich food. Hasson managed to think of several apt replies, but each time he considered putting them into words he saw his father’s panic-stricken eyes and heard the well- remembered voice saying, “Everybody will look at you.” May Carpenter kept giving him sympathetic smiles and making overtly tactful efforts to discuss his journey, but only succeeded in making him feel more gauche and inept than before. He devoted all his mind to ensuring that no particle of food found its way into one of the painful mouth ulcers, and prayed for the meal to come to an end.
“Great stuff,” Werry announced as soon as he had finished his coffee. “I’m going into the office for an hour — just to make sure I’ve still got an office — then I’ll pick Theo up coming out of school and run him home.”
Seizing his chance, Hasson followed Werry out to the hall. “Listen, Al, I might as well admit it — I’ve turned into a real TV fanatic since they brought in these solid-image jobs. Can I ride into town with you and pick myself up a set this afternoon?”
“If that’s what you want to do.” Werry looked puzzled. “Get your coat.”
When he got outside Hasson saw at once that the weather had changed. A shutter of low cloud had been drawn across the sky and the air had a chill metallic smell which promised more snow. Against the leaden backdrop, the light-sculpted aerial highways of the city’s traffic control system glowed vividly and were as solid looking as neon tubes. The gloominess of the overcast re minded Hasson of winter afternoons in Britain and had the effect of improving his spirits a little. In a grey world his bedroom would be a cocoon of safety and warmth, with its door locked and the curtains drawn, and a television set and a bottle to keep him company and absolve him from any need to think or live a life of his own.
On the way into town he gazed about him with something approaching contentment, picking out one Christmas card scene after another. The car was cruising on the main road into town when the radio hissed loudly and a call came through.
“Al, this is Henry Corzyn,” a man’s voice said. “I know you didn’t want any calls this afternoon, with your cousin being here and all that, but we’ve got a serious AC here and I think you’d better come over.”
“An aerial collision?” Werry sounded interested, but not particularly worried. “Somebody taking a short cut? Flying outside the beams?”
“No. Some kids were bombing the east approach, and one of them misjudged it and hit some guy square on. They might both be dead. You’d better get over here, Al.”
Werry swore fervently as he took directions from the police- man and slowed the car into a street leading east. He switched on emergency lights and a siren, and the already sparse surface traffic melted away into the greyness before him.
“Sorry about this, Rob,” he said. “I’ll get it over with as quickly as I can.”
“It’s all right.” Hasson said, his feeling of insularity shattered. He had seen the results of bombing accidents many times during his career and knew the sort of situation into which Werry was now being precipitated. With the advent of the automobile, man had been transformed into the swiftest creature on the face of the earth, given a new dimension of freedom. That freedom had been too much for many people to handle, and the outcome had been a death toll in the same grisly league as those produced by more ancient scourges such as war, famine and disease. Then man had learned to put a judo hold on gravity, turning its strength back on itself, and had become the swiftest creature in the air, and with his new freedom — to soar with the lark and outstrip the eagle, to straddle the rainbow and follow the sunset around the red rim of the world — the Fifth Horseman, the one who rode a winged steed, had come fully into being.
The youngster who might once have killed himself and some of his fellows with the aid of a motor cycle or fast car now had a new repertoire of dangerous stunts, all of them designed to prove he was immortal — all of them frequently demonstrating the opposite. A favourite game was aerial chicken, in which two fliers would grapple high in the air and fall like stones as their CG fields cancelled each other out. The first to break free and check his descent was regarded as the loser: and the other — especially if he had switched off his field and prolonged the fall until the last possible second — was regarded as the winner, even though the winner often became the loser by virtue of misjudging his altitude and ending up in a wheelchair or on a marble slab.
Bombing was another game played on days when low cloud cover screened participants from the eyes of the law. The rules demanded that one should take up position in cloud above an aerial highway, switch off lift, and fall down through a stream of commuters, preferably without using the CG force to vector the descent in any way. The aim was to strike fear into the soul of the staid, ordinary flyer on his way home from work, and that aim was usually achieved because anybody who thought objectively about the thing realized the impossibility of judging the closing angles well enough to guarantee there would never be a collision. On more than one occasion Hasson had shot pain-killing drugs into bomber and bombed alike, and had stood helplessly by while the Fifth Horseman had added fresh coffin-shaped symbols to his tally.
Werry activated his microphone. “Henry, have you got any IDs?”
“Some. The kid who did it checks out as a Martin Prada, with an address in Stettler.” There was a moment of fretful near silence from the radio. “He might have been holed up in the Chinook all morning. If there was a party up there last night they could be starting to get a bit restless. This low-level stratus we’re getting swallowed up the hotel about an hour ago, so they’re free to come and go as they please.”
“What about the other guy?”
“All I know is he isn’t local. Judging by his gear, he’s up from the States.”
“That’s all we need,” Werry said bitterly. “Any sign of drug abuse on the kid?”
“Al, he hit a light pole on the way down,” the radio said in aggrieved tones. “I’m not about to start poking around in the mess looking for hypo marks.”
“All right — I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.” Werry broke the radio connection and gave Hasson a sidelong glance. “If there’s a US citizen involved it trebles the paperwork. How’s that for bad luck?”
His or yours? Hasson thought. Aloud he said, “What’s the narcotic situation like?”
“Most of the traditional stuff has died out, except for some acid but empathin is getting to be a big problem.” Werry shook his head and leaned forward to scan the horizon. “That’s the one that really beats me, Rob. I can understand kids wanting to get high, but wanting to get mixed up inside each other’s heads, thinking the other guy’s thoughts … You know, we get them down at the station some nights and for a couple of hours — till the stuff wears off, that is — they genuinely don’t know who they are. Sometimes two of them give the same name and address. One of them actually believes he’s the other one! Why do they do it?”
“It’s a group thing,” Hasson said. “Group identity has always been important to kids, and empathin makes it a reality.”
“I leave all that stuff to the psychiatrists.” Werry switched off his siren as a cluster of vehicles with flashing lights appeared on the road ahead. The outskirts of the city had been left behind and the country lay fiat and white all around, looking as though it had been abandoned for ever. Parallel to the road but hundreds of metres above it were two bell-mouthed aerial tunnels, bilaser projections glowing yellow and magenta, which guided fliers who were entering or leaving the city. There was a steady flow of travellers within the insubstantial tubes, but others were swarming down through different levels of the cold air, drawn by the activity on the ground.
Werry brought the car to a halt near the others, got out and picked his way across the snow to a group of men which included two in police flying suits. On the ground. in the midst of the thicket of legs, were two objects covered by black plastic sheets. Hasson averted his eyes and thought determinedly about his television set while a man drew back the sheets to let Werry inspect what lay underneath. Werry talked to the others in the group for a minute, then came back to the car, opened the rear door and took out his flying suit.
“I’ve got to go aloft for a while,” he said, pulling on the insulated one-piece garment. “Henry picked up a couple of blips on his radar and he thinks some of the punks might still be up there.”
Hasson peered up at the all-obscuring cloud. “They’re crazy if they are.”
“I know, but we have to go up and fire off a few flares and stir things up a bit. Let the good citizens see us on the job.” Werry finished zipping his suit and began to don his CG harness, looking tough and competent once more as he tightened the various straps. “Rob, I hate to ask you this, but could you take the car back across town and pick up my boy Theo coming out of school?”
“I should be able to cope if you give me directions.”
“I wouldn’t ask, but I promised him I’d be there.”
“Al, there’s no problem,” Hasson said, wondering why the other man was being so diffident.
“There’s a bit of a problem.” Werry hesitated, looking strangely embarrassed. “You see… Theo is blind. You’ll have to identify yourself to him.”
“Oh.” Hasson was lost for words. “I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t a permanent condition,” Werry said quickly. “They’re going to fix him up in a couple of years. He’ll be fine in a couple of years.”
“How will I recognise him?”
“There’s no problem — it isn’t a special school. Just look out for a tall boy carrying a sensor cane.”
“That’s all right.” Hasson strove to absorb the instructions on how to reach the school and to guess in advance what sort of relationship he might have with a blind boy, and all the while he was reluctantly fascinated by Werry’s preparations for flight, the instinctive rituals a professional never failed to observe before venturing into a perilous environment. All straps properly tightened and secured. Shoulder and ankle lights functioning. Fuel cells in good condition and delivering at the correct level. All the nets, lines and pouches associated with the air policeman’s trade present and properly stowed. Suit heater functioning. Communications equipment functioning. Face plate locked in down position and helmet radar functioning. CG field generator warmed up and all controls on belt panel at correct preliminary settings. Following the pre-flight checks with mind and eye, Hasson was lulled for a moment into visualising what came next — the effortless leap which became a dizzy ascent, the sensation of falling upwards, the patterns of fields and roads dwindling and wheeling below — and his stomach muscles contracted. propelling a sour bile into the back of his throat. He swallowed forcibly and distracted himself by sliding over behind the car’s steering wheel and examining the controls.
“I’ll see you back at the house,” Werry said. “As soon as I can.”
“See you,” Hasson replied stolidly, refusing to pay much attention as Werry touched a control at his belt and was wafted upwards into the cold grey sky at the centre of an invisible sphere of energy, his own micro-universe in which some of the basic dictates of nature had been reversed. The two other cops took off at the same time, stiff-legged, heads tilted backwards as they made cautious ascents into an unnaturally crowded medium.
Hasson started the engine, made a three-point turn and drove back towards the city. The sky had darkened perceptibly as the cloud cover thickened, although it was still mid-afternoon, and the translucent pastel geometries of Tripletree’s traffic control system were stark and garish at the upper edge of his field of vision. He found his way into the commercial centre without difficulty, aided by the fact that the city was entirely laid out on a simple grid pattern, and was leaving it again on the west side when he came to a snap decision about his craved-for television set. Slowing the car
