Svoboda had kept aside, and continued to do so while he wheeled Aliyat to the elevator. She took it together with them. Yesterday he and she had found what they wanted on the second floor, minimizing the distance Aliyat must go on her feet. It was another gamble that the hydrotherapy bath would be vacant, but a fairly safe bet at this time of day.
Hanno took Aliyat in, told her in a few words what came next, and left. Somebody else was walking by. Hanno went the opposite way, his expression preoccupied. Svoboda dawdled until she could slip in unobserved, carrying her overnight bag.
Again Hanno took shelter in a men’s room and spent an agreed-on ten minutes by his watch, seated on a toilet and contemplating graffiti. They were uniformly vulgar and semi-literate. I should raise the tone of this joint, he decided. Anything to keep from fretting. He undipped a pen, located a clear space, and printed carefully: “ x n + y” = z° has no integral solution for all n greater than two. I have found a marvelous proof of this theorem, but there is not room in this stall to write it down.”
Time. He left his smock behind and returned to the bath. Svoboda was just emerging; splendid girl. Aliyat leaned on her, no longer in a hospital gown but a dress, stockings, shoes, a lightweight coat that covered the bulges of bandages. Svoboda had kept the bag. Hanno joined them and lent his support. “How’re you doing?” he asked in English.
Air (and blood?) rattled. “I’ll make it,” Aliyat gasped, “but—oh, shit—no, never mind.” Her weight pulled at him. She minced along, unevenly, now and then staggering. Sweat studded her face and reeked in his nostrils. He had seen corpses less blue-pale.
Nevertheless she moved. And it was as though she gained a bit of strength thereby, until you could almost say she walked. That’s the wild card in my hand, Hanno thought. The vitality of the immortal. No normal human could do this so soon after such a wounding.
But she won’t be able to, either, unless she draws on whatever wellsprings are her own.
In the downbound elevator, she sagged. Hanno and Svoboda upheld her. “You must be firm and walk straight,” the Ukrainian said. “It is only for a little way. Then you can rest. Then you will be free.”
Aliyat peeled lips back from teeth. “There’s ... a dance ... hi the old dame ... yet.”
When they emerged in the lobby, she didn’t exactly stride, but you’d have to look hard to notice how much help she needed. Hanno’s eyes flickered back and forth. Where the hell— Yes, yonder sat the Indian, on the split and peeling plastic of a settee, thumbing through a decrepit magazine.
Wanderer saw them, lurched to his feet, reeled against a man passing by. “Hey,” he shouted, “why’n’chu look where ya going?” with an obscenity added for good measure.
“There’s the front door,” Hanno murmured in Aliyat’s ear. “Hup, two, three, four.”
Wanderer’s altercation loudened on his right. It caught everybody’s attention. A couple of guards pushed toward him. Hanno hoped he wouldn’t overdo it. The idea was to provide two or three minutes’ distraction without getting arrested, merely expelled— Trouble with Wanderer, he’s a gentleman by instinct, he doesn’t have the talent for acting a belligerent drunk. He does have brains, however, and tact.
Into the open. Dusty though it was, sunlight momentarily dazzled. The taxi stood at the curb. Hermes, god of travelers, merchants, and thieves, thanks.
Hanno helped Aliyat in. She slumped bonelessly and struggled for breath. Svoboda took her other side. Hanno gave an address. The cab started off. As it wove its way through congestion and squawks, Aliyat’s weight swayed to and fro. Svoboda felt beneath her coat, nodded pinch-lipped, took a towel from the bag and held it in place, more or less concealed. To blot up blood, Hanno knew; the injury was hemorrhaging.
“Say, that lady all right?” the driver asked. “Looks to me like they shouldn’t of let her go.”
“Schartz-Metterklume syndrome,” Hanno explained. “She does need to get home and to bed as fast as you can make it.”
“Yeah,” Aliyat rasped. “Cmon and see me tomorrow, big boy.”
The driver widened his mouth and rolled his eyes, but pushed on. At the destination, Hanno redeemed his promise of a lavish tip. It should buy silence, did pursuit guess that a taxi had been involved. Not that the story would help the police much, by that time.
“Around the corner,” Svoboda told Aliyat. “Half a block.”
Red dripped onto the sidewalk. Nobody else seemed to notice, or if they did, they chose not to get involved. Hanno had counted on that.
A small moving van stood in a parking garage. Hanno had rented it yesterday, contracting to turn it in at Pocatello, Idaho. Its bulk screened from casual glances how her companions lifted Aliyat into the body of it. A foam mattress and bedding waited, together with what medical supplies one could readily buy. Hanno and Svoboda peeled her clothes off. They washed her, applied an antibiotic, dressed the wound anew, made her as comfortable as they could.
“I think she will recover,” Svoboda said.
“Damn straight I will,” Aliyat mumbled.
“Leave us,” Svoboda ordered Hanno. “I will care for her.”
The Phoenician obeyed. She’d been a soldier, who knew first aid; she’d been a veterinarian, and humans aren’t vastly unlike their kindred. He closed the tail doors on them and settled himself to wait in the cab. At least he could indulge in a pipe of tobacco now, and a slight case of the shakes.
Before long, Wanderer arrived. Hanno had rarely seen him this joyful. “Whoopee ti-yi-yo,” he warbled.
“Maybe I better take the first stretch at the wheel,” Hanno said: The van growled to life. He paid the parking fee and set forth westward.
15
It was natural that Mr. and Mrs. Tu would arrange a picnic for their guests, the people they’d met in the cities, but the kids were disappointed that they weren’t invited too. These seemed like real interesting folks, in spite of not saying much about themselves. First was convalescent Miss Adler, whom the Tus met in Pocatello and drove here; she was mending so fast that her trouble couldn’t have been too bad. The rest had to stay at the hotel hi town but spent their days on the ranch: Mr. and Mrs. Tazurin, Mr. Langford, who admitted he was an Indian, and black Miss Edmonds, all different from each other and from everybody else.
Well, probably they wanted to be alone and talk about plans, like maybe for enlarging the house, making room for more fosterlings. They did act pretty solemn, nice enough but not like vacationers. Mostly they, including the Tus, strolled off by twos and threes, gone for hours.
On the brow of a hill that commanded a wide and beautiful view, Tu Shan had long since assembled a redwood table and benches. The party parked their cars nearby and got out. For a while they stood silent, looking. Halfway up the eastern sky, the sun made a few clouds as brilliant as the western snowpeaks. Between stretched a thousand greens, range, cropland, trees along the lazily shining river. A pair of hawks wheeled aloft, their wings edged with gold. A breeze mildened the air. It murmured and smelled of ripeness.
“Let’s talk before we unload the eats,” Hanno proposed. That was unnecessary, having been understood, but it got things started. Humans were apt to put off making difficult decisions, and immortals especially so. “I hope we can finish in time to relax and enjoy ourselves, but if need be we’ll wrangle till sundown. That’s the deadline, agreed?”
He sat down. Svoboda joined him on his right, Wanderer on the left. Opposite them were benched Tu Shan, Asagao, Aliyat, and she whose name among them remained Corinne Macandal. Yes, Hanno thought, in spite of having tried to get well acquainted and become a fellowship, we still un-noticingly divide up according to the partnerships we had.
None would have accepted a chairman, but one person had to take the initiative andWhe was the senior. “Let me summarize the agenda,” he said. “I can’t tell you anything new or unobvious. However, maybe I can save us further repetition.
“The basic question is, shall we surrender to the government and reveal to the world what we are, or shall we continue our masquerade, using new masks?
“On the surface, there’s no great hue and cry out for us. Rosa Donau was spirited from the hospital. Corinne
