'Please stay where you are. If you have been involved in an accident within the tubeways, please remain stationary.' The computer's voice was heavy, even, reassuring. 'Assistance is already on the way to the point of the accident. Remain where you are.'
Disregarding the computer, I grabbed my suitcase and started back along the tunnel, away from His capsule. The going was not easy, for the floor, as well as the walls and ceiling, projected thousands of soft wires which were usually used to monitor the Bubble capsules. I walked carefully, pressing the flat of my foot against the sides of them, and forcing them down before me. As I walked, the ones I had trod down sprang erect again behind. Now and then, one of them would slip out from under my foot, and slide painfully up my pants leg, gouging my shins and calves. I could feel my socks getting damp with blood.
Behind, I heard His Bubble capsule shattering. He had probably formed His hands into mallets. I tried to hurry.
'Someone,' the computer said, its voice echoing through the tubeways, 'is moving through the tubeways without a capsule. I can pinpoint your location through my sensor cilia. Please sit and wait for the ambulance. It will be there momentarily.'
I turned into a branching tubeway that was blocked by a capsule at rest. I moved up beside it, pressed my body sideways against the wires projecting from the wall. I did not do that maneuver smoothly enough, and some of the cilia punched painfully into my back. I tried again, pressed them flat, and slid around the shell of the Bubble. The man inside looked out at me, wide-eyed, and said something that I couldn't hear through the plastic Bubble. I did not ask him to repeat it, but moved in front of his capsule, and hurried, as well as I could, down the tunnel toward the bulk of another car, a hundred feet ahead.
'I detect,' the computer said, perhaps a bit more loudly than before, 'two distinct movements within the tubeways. There are two individuals moving without benefit of Bubbles. I direct both to cease and desist, and await the arrival of the ambulance.'
I stumbled and fell, managed to throw the suitcase up in front of my chest and groin. I wire-punctured my shoulder, and sent a hot pain through my flesh, but I was otherwise unscathed. I stood, blessing my suitcase, and continued toward the next vehicle blocking the tunnel.
'Hey!'
I pretended I did not hear.
'Jacob!'
I could not stop myself. I looked over my shoulder. He was a hundred feet behind, back at the last capsule. He was waving at me. I turned, squeezed against the wires, and moved between the tube wall and the shell of the Bubble. On the other side, I moved more quickly than before, oblivious to what the stray wires were doing to my ankles and calves.
'This is a command to stop,' the computer said.
I kept moving, almost a slow run now, and I was certain He had not stopped following me.
'Halt!' the computer boomed. 'From preliminary scan of my sensory cilia, neither of you seemed to be wounded. From that same information scan, it is apparent the second of you is in pursuit of the first.'
I ran.
'You are both guilty of sabotaging the public transportation system, a crime which is punishable by not less than one and not more than five years in prison.'
This was not going to help my case on the other charges I had sustained in my flight with Him to Cant-well. Here was Jacob Kennelmen, probably the most timid, law-abiding citizen in North America, and he was involved in his seventh crime in less than two weeks. Leonard Fenner would have one helluva time explaining to the judge and jury just how basically good a man I was. Even if I did escape Him and this entire mess were settled somehow, I would end up spending some seventy-odd years in a WA prison.
Three hundred feet beyond the second capsule, there was a third blocking the way. As I was squeezing around it, trying to smile at the matronly woman inside who cringed against the far wall, He shouted to me from the other car a hundred yards back. 'Jacob!'
'Go to Hell,' I said.
'Look what I can do, Jacob.'
As I squeezed, I looked back through the wires that partially cut off my vision. He had taken off His shoes, and had formed His feet into large, gray blocks. He trod the wires down without care. His feet were iron-hard, and He could walk almost as fast here as He could on a concrete corridor floor. He moved quickly after me.
I tore around the car, slashing shallow grooves in my left cheek. Ahead, there was a crossways, I moved to it, plunged into the tunnel to my right. Ahead, seven or eight feet, there was another motionless Bubble waiting for the system to become operational again. I slid by it, snagging my clothes on the wires, my hands bleeding now. On the other side, I found another Bubble car only a dozen feet ahead of the last. I moved around it. There was a kid inside, maybe ten or eleven-years-old. He watched me with obvious fascination until I had reached the front of his Bubble.
'Hey!' he called loudly through the plastic. 'You crazy?'
'No!' I said, nodding my head. 'Being chased.'
He looked absolutely elated.
I stood there, panting, and realized I did not have very much more strength in me-not nearly enough to keep up this pace more than another five minutes. As soon as I slowed down, He would gain, and gain fast, if He was hot already gaining now on His hard, reformed feet. Ahead lay another Bubble car, only nine feet away. I was not even sure I could make that. The thought of squeezing around yet another Bubble with the wires gouging me was not at all pleasant. Then I had the idea. It came to me from sheer desperation.
'The authorities have been alerted and will arrive with the ambulance,' the computer said. 'You are urged to stop and make things easier on yourself. The sentence for sabotaging the public transportation system is no less than one year and-'
I paid no attention to the machine-mind's ramblings. I moved around to the opposite side of the kid's Bubble and dropped to the floor, hunched at the corner next to the tube wall, nestled back in among the wires. Hopefully, when He squeezed by on the other side, He would not see me through the plastic. I should be shielded by the kid's body. Then, when He went on, I could double-back and be rid of Him.
'What are you doing?' the kid asked.
'It's a trick,' I said. 'Will you help me?'
'Who's the good guy?' he asked.
'The one coming wants to kill me. He is not a policeman.'
The kid nodded.
Just then, I heard him coming up behind the kid's capsule, the wires singing as he leaped through them. I tried to huddle even deeper into the wires, did not mind that they prodded me mercilessly. On the other side of the Bubble, He pressed between the plastic and the wall. I could see His dark form.
'Hey!' the kid said, 'you chasing a fellow with a suitcase?'
'That's right,' He said.
My heart came up into my throat. That rotten kid, I thought.
Then the kid said, 'He went up past that Bubble.'
He nodded, kept going, did not look back. I slipped past the kid's Bubble, looked in at him and mouthed, 'Thanks.'
I think he blushed.
I moved back to the crossways and started to turn back to my smashed vehicle when I remembered the police and the ambulance would be there, or soon arriving. They would take me into custody, and I would never get out. I would not be able to go to Cantwell. Even the slim chance I had against Him would be destroyed. I walked into another side passage instead, and plodded along it, moving more slowly than I had when He had been hot on my tail. Now that I could relax a little, I was aware of the pain in my ankles, hands and face. I would have to get out of the system and find someplace to buy bandages and antiseptics.
'You are approaching an exit foyer,' the computer said. 'Do not proceed further, or I will have to initiate a deterrent until police can arrive at the same foyer.'
I kept moving. It was good to know that a foyer lay ahead and that I would reach it before any police could be there. Indeed, I could see the circular-membrane hatch at the end of the tubeway. I walked faster. A few more
