The darkness of the woods in the hour before dawn was like a liquid frozen to a solid, imprisoning within its translucent substance the thin slivers of starlight, the waxen shapes of frozen leaves, the brittle tracery of branches, the cubes and cones of inky shadows. Moving stealthily, Hendley had a sense of shattering this density, of stealing then along the irregular, jagged cracks of the fragmented night.
In the distance he heard the hunters’ voices, strained by the intervening trees into the thin cries of children at play. Hendley, a red marker taped to the back of his uniform to identify him as the target, had been given a five-minute start. The gap had closed. The hunters could crash and blunder through the underbrush, careless of noise, while he must slink in silence.
“No weapons,” one of them had told him, grinning. “You don’t need to worry about that. We really have to catch you.”
No weapons. But with a shudder Hendley remembered a scene in a newsview film, not understood at the time, in which a group of Freemen had swarmed upon a single fleeing figure. And he remembered a glimpse of that lone figure lying afterward on the grass, motionless, as if he were asleep. No weapons. Only hands and feet…
He had no idea how many of them there were. In the open near the edge of the woods they had been a numberless mass, a restless, eager horde of hunters, impatient for the pursuit to begin, fanning out to blanket a ridge with their white uniforms. He’d heard their excited mutter, like a single animal growl, as he plunged into the line of trees. He’d looked back once, and they had seemed to surge toward him, straining against an unseen leash.
He paused, trying to place his position. Fortunately he had spent an afternoon in the woods planning his aborted attempt to scale the outside wall. He knew roughly where he was and where the main paths were that would represent added danger.
He analyzed his situation. Leaving the woods would be foolhardy. Of a certainty there would be sentries posted along the fringes, and in the open he could easily be seen for some distance even in the darkness. The cover of the narrow belt of trees and undergrowth was his only protection. He had to stay ahead of the hunters—or hide—for less than an hour. Was the sky already graying? Through the tangle of leaf and branch above he could not be sure.
Could he go overhead, flatten out against a tree trunk as high above the ground as possible? It might work. But if he were detected there, he would be trapped. They could shake him loose at their pleasure. Pleasure! The irony twisted his lips in a bitter smile. There were thickly clustered bushes where a fugitive might easily escape normal detection. But the hunters would be expecting this. The natural screens and covers would be closely searched.
His heart caught and sputtered. From the corner of one eye he’d seen a glimpse of white. Now it was gone. Fear shrilled in his mind, a voiceless scream. He flattened himself against the ground, listening. There was no snap of branch, no scrape of cloth, no rustle of dry leaf disturbed by a stealthy footstep. Yet there was something—a swift padding on turf. He wriggled forward to the outer edge of the woods. Another flash of white! Reaching the last few feet of cover, he waited, lying still. Moments later a white-clad figure ran past him, not even glancing his way, not slowing.
He lay still, puzzling over the maneuver. Were these additional sentries, racing ahead to make sure he did not slip unseen from the woods? No. The lookouts would already have been posted. This was another move, designed to…
His body sagged. A feeling of hopelessness settled over him. They had cut him off. A band of hunters had been sent ahead. They would be awhile returning, for they could not know how far Hendley had gone and they would have to range far beyond any point he might have reached. Then they would group, bisect the woods, and slowly begin to work their way back. He would be caught in the middle of a pincers movement, unable to go forward or to retreat. They would not worry about the time. Even at a careful pace they would find him before dawn. There was no escape.
For one moment it seemed to Hendley that any further resistance was futile. He might as well lie where he was and wait for them to find him. To be trapped at the last moment after desperate attempts to hide, to be crushed under the fury of the attack as the first light streaked the sky, would be agonizingly worse than not to have come close at all. What would he gain by frantic scurrying when there was no refuge? The woods were too narrow, too thin a line…
In a convulsion of anger he sat up. He shook himself. No, he would not make it easy for them! At least he could make them feel a little frustration, a little worry that they might be denied their jolts. With a bit of the luck which had deserted him until now, he might even fool them all. He had to try. To give up was somehow to make every step of his rebellion against the Organization meaningless. He had sought to find some value in life other than the mechanics of push-button work, other than, as it had turned out, the purposeless pursuit of pleasure in freedom. If he had failed, perhaps he had simply not known where and how to look. In the end the only thing of value he had found was the personal concern one human being might have for another —a concern beyond physical need, beyond pleasure, beyond self.
But that alone was worth struggling to save. He might never find Ann again. He could not give up trying so long as he was alive.
If only he had not drunk so much! He felt a physical letdown now, a heavy fatigue, that might tell against him. And his mind could not seem to take a tight grip on the problem of escape. It grasped without conviction at hazy solutions, lost its hold, slid off into confusion. Running was futile. Subtlety, not speed, had to save him. No point in breaking for the wall. The threat of a robot-guard defending the wall seemed less frightening than the human hunters, but the latter would be upon him before he could scale the wall. He must stay under cover. Forward or back then? The larger body of hunters was behind him. The advance party, fewer in number, might be easier to slip through undetected. But they would be alert for just that move. In the larger group there would be more confusion…
He seized the thought as hungry jaws clench over a morsel of food. Darkness, confusion, limited space and an excess of numbers—there had to be a way to use these factors. And as he examined the possibilities, he realized that he could not hope to exploit the situation by acting like a fugitive. He had to join the hunters. He had to go to them.
Cautiously he began to work his way back along the route over which he had fled. Nothing so concrete or shapely as a plan controlled his movements. There were too many unknown factors; too many unexpected things might happen. He had to act by instinct when the time came, adjusting to meet the specific situation, following only a general over-all purpose. But a small current of hope trickled through him, banishing his fatigue, sharpening his senses.
He was not sure what made him pause. He melted into the shadow of a tree, his back against the trunk to hide the telltale marker stripe of the hunted. There were no sounds ahead to give him warning. The hunters, sensing that he might be close, moved stealthily. Hendley could feel their presence. As he stood motionless, holding his breath, straining with eyes and ears, a shadow stirred in the underbrush less than fifteen feet away.
Muscles in his arms and legs began to jerk spasmodically from the effort to remain rigid. He felt the beginnings of a cramp in his foot, a tight hard knotting of muscle in the arch. He set his teeth, willing himself to remain inert as a stone. The hunter had paused. Was he looking toward Hendley’s tree? Was there a betraying thickness in its shadow?
The crouching figure crept forward again, one step at a time, his hands carefully parting the branches through which he moved. Now he drew level with Hendley’s position. Another step took him beyond the tree.
The hunter wouldn’t be alone. The others must be right behind him, fanned out across the width of the woods. If one of them blundered too close before Hendley acted, it would all be over. But his plan was crystallizing. The single advance hunter was the key, the unpredictable factor he had been hoping for. Now there were other shadows gliding through the woods. He saw two to his right beyond the first man’s position. And to his left was a slimmer, slighter figure—a woman, Hendley saw with a start. Others moved on either side, heard but not seen. They were all around him.
The first man, the eager hunter, was ten yards or more ahead. A patch of his uniform caught a hazy shaft of—not light, but a grayer darkness. At that moment Hendley stepped away from the tree.
“There he is!” he shouted, pointing. “There!”
The leading hunter whirled at the outcry. There was a fleeting second of stillness. Then another shout went up: “We’ve got him!” And suddenly the woods were alive with hunters crashing forward toward the lone figure in the lead. The man threw up his hands as two hunters stormed through a thicket to get at him. “No!” he yelled. But as they converged on him he panicked. He turned and ran.
They were on him before he had taken five steps, burying his cries under the fury of the attack. It wouldn’t have mattered what the unlucky man had shouted, Hendley thought. The hunters were too tense, their excitement drawn to too high a pitch. He’d relied on that edginess, but the success of the ruse brought no feeling of satisfaction. They would learn their mistake all too quickly. Any second someone might notice that the victim lacked the marker stripe of the hunted on the back of his uniform.
Hendley forced himself to wait. It would be fatal to turn abruptly and run from the scene. He would draw attention—and he wore the mark of the target. Carefully, keeping his back concealed as much as possible from the hunters who crashed past him through the darkness toward the struggle ahead, Hendley worked his way back and forth across the woods, trying to give the illusion of hurrying toward the action while actually drifting back with each maneuver. Quickly the horde of hunters thinned out. A last figure pushed past Hendley, breathing heavily, whimpering with frustration. Then the woods behind him seemed clear.
Using less caution now, Hendley tried to put more distance between him and the hunters. Even when they discovered their mistake, they wouldn’t expect him to be behind them. They couldn’t know that he had shouted the mistaken identification. Any overeager hunter could have made the error.
The sounds of the fight receded rapidly. Moments later Hendley heard what seemed to be an angry bellow. The mistake had been found! But it was too late, he thought, exulting. Surely dawn could not be far away. Surely he could elude them long enough to win!
Haste—and the illusion of success—made him careless. He stumbled onto a cleared path before realizing it was there. It was only six feet across, but prudence would have made him inspect it carefully if he’d seen it in time. Instead he found himself momentarily without cover. And facing him on the open path was a grinning Freeman. “That was a neat trick,” the hunter said.
Hendley spun away. He was not quick enough. Thick, powerful arms grabbed him from behind, stopped him, wrestled him to the ground. The other man’s bulk crashed on top of him. A hand clamped over his mouth. “Not a sound,” the man breathed.
As Hendley stared up at the hunter, his stunned amazement gave way to fear. The dark face grinning down at him was that of the visitor.
“Surprised? It wasn’t so hard,” the visitor said. “I threw in with those joyboys who were after you. I didn’t know what the hunt was all about at first, but one way or another I had to make sure of you. You know too much. One word too much. BAM.”
Hendley shook his head violently, fighting against the hand which gagged his mouth.
“I couldn’t take any chances with you,” the visitor said softly. “Once I saw what the hunters were up to, I figured everything was okay. You wouldn’t be a problem. But when I recognized your voice shouting back there, I guessed what you were pulling off.” There was grudging approval in the big man’s voice. “After that it was easy,” he said. “I heard you working your way back through the trees. I just slipped out into the clear and got ahead of you.” Suddenly the visitor brought his other hand up, carrying the belt from his uniform. Before Hendley had a chance to speak, the belt replaced the hand over his mouth, forcing his teeth apart to press against his tongue. He tried vainly to shout against the gag. He began to choke.
“Sorry it had to be you, friend,” the visitor said, easily controlling Hendley’s struggles to squirm out from under the crushing weight of the big man’s body. “But BAM is too important. If you hadn’t been acting funny, following me around, you wouldn’t have got involved. I’d have had to pick somebody for the switch, but it needn’t have been you. Now it has to be. I can’t have you running loose, knowing I’m tied up with the Brotherhood.”
Hendley stared up at him wildly, trying to communicate with his eyes. Ignoring the look, the visitor abruptly shifted his weight, flipping Hendley over onto his stomach. Jerking Hendley’s arms behind his back, the visitor tied them securely with the belt from Hendley’s uniform.
“Now,” he muttered, “the first thing is the identity disc. You’re going to become me, friend, and when they find you dead I’ll be officially dead, and they can stop looking for me. I guess you really didn’t know about the Brotherhood, did you? We’re against the Merger, you see—the Brotherhood of Anti-Mergers. The morale boys got onto me, and that’s why I’m here—before they could catch up with me.”
Horrified, Hendley renewed his desperate resistance. He tried to shout against the gag. “You’ve got to listen to me! I’m one of you! I feel the same way!” But there were only meaningless, muffled sounds. The visitor paid no attention. He was trying to tug Hendley’s identity disc over his hand. You fool! Hendley thought. If you’d just listen to me. It opens up and slips right off!
“This is going to hurt,” the visitor said softly. “But there’s no other way. It’s got to come off.”
One of the thick, strong hands seized Hendley’s recently healed left hand and began to apply tremendous pressure. Pain erupted blindingly, filling Hendley’s mind, blotting out all other awareness. He screamed against the gag. The pressure only increased. Waves of nausea seized him. Then, like a dry twig, the weak new adhesion of bone in his hand snapped.
He fainted.
When Hendley came to, slowly, swimming out of a pool of blackness and aching pain, his eyes opened to a graying darkness. It was not yet dawn. He’d been unconscious for only a few minutes. At first the only significance of this knowledge was that the hunt was not over. But the gray was a promise of dawn. Soon he could rest.
He saw the figure standing over him, struggling into a uniform which was far too tight—with a red marker stripe along the back. Hendley felt the loose folds of a strange uniform wrapped about his own body, tasted the remains of nausea in his mouth and the wet discomfort of the sodden gag, and shivered at the searing pain in his hand. He remembered.
The visitor glanced down at him. Seeing Hendley’s open, staring eyes, he paused. “I didn’t think you’d wake up till it was all over,” he said softly. “Too bad.”
Hendley began to fight against his bonds with the fury of hysteria, heedless of the pain tearing up his arm. Everything couldn’t end this way, so stupidly, so insanely! The man had to listen to him! But the visitor merely watched him as one might with objective curiosity observe the dying struggles of an insect. In the end Hendley’s wild, bitter rage spent itself as his energies were exhausted. He went limp.
“I’ll make it quick,” the visitor said, in a tone that was practical rather than sympathetic. “Sorry about the hand, but it couldn’t be helped.”
He finished adjusting the snug uniform. Hendley wondered if the man had forgotten the target stripe now on his back. It didn’t seem to matter. He would reap the safety dawn would bring. Suddenly the bulky figure lowered as the visitor squatted over Hendley. One of the meaty hands reached for Hendley’s throat. The gesture was arrested. The visitor was still, his head cocked, a frown knitting his forehead. Listening, Hendley heard the sounds which had disturbed the visitor: the rustle, snap, and whisper of men moving through the woods. They were already close.
“Organization be damned!” the visitor hissed through set teeth. “They’re coming back!”
Hendley felt no relief. The reappearance of the hunters could not save him. It made no difference at whose hands he was to die. Either way was a mockery of life itself. When the visitor’s blunt fingers closed suddenly around his throat he resisted almost automatically until a spasm of renewed anger against the irony fate had played on him made his struggles more violent. His legs were free. He tried to catch the visitor with his knee. His heartbeat was a huge drum exploding in his chest. He could no longer breathe as his windpipe closed inexorably under the squeezing fingers.
All of a sudden the pressure left his chest. He sucked air into his lungs. His vision began to clear. He saw the visitor’s back disappearing rapidly into the grayness of the woods. A patch of sky overhead was measurably brighter. It was almost sunrise.
There was a crash of bodies plunging swiftly through the underbrush nearby. A strange voice yelled, “We’ve got him now! Don’t let him get away!”
There was a lot of movement all around Hendley. Someone stumbled over him, cursed, picked himself up and ran on. Hendley peered after the running figure. What was wrong? Why weren’t they gathering around him, throwing themselves upon him? He was helpless…
Hope soared into his mind like a bird taking flight. The visitor wore the uniform of the hunted! He even wore the identity disc the hunters would be looking for! They would not ask questions—they had too little time left. The sky was brightening as if a light-wall had been turned on, just as the artificial dawn had come to Hendley’s small room in the Architectural Center during those plodding days of work that seemed so far away.
Hendley struggled to his knees. The visitor might yet escape. If he did, he would be back to finish off his task—to silence the voice that could link him with BAM. Hendley pulled feverishly in an attempt to free his wrists. The pain from his broken hand made him sway, reeling, consciousness almost blotted out. But the belt securing his hands was not tied tightly. It had not been meant to hold for long. He braced himself and tugged again. The belt held. The broken hand squeezed into a smaller ball. Hendley cried out, no longer able to contain the agony.
And his hand pulled loose.
He collapsed on the ground. He seemed to be able to watch the pain recede very slowly, like gently rolling waves. An unexpected chill wrenched his body. He lay shivering, his teeth clicking uncontrollably. But at last the pain was something he could look at, and measure, and know that he would endure it. It was no longer larger and stronger and more real than he was. He could tame it.
The visitor’s identity disc lay on the ground. Hendley picked it up. When he staggered to his feet he realized that day had come. He could see his way easily through the dense woods.
A scream cut through the cool, damp morning air, rising like the wail of a siren. It broke off cleanly, as if a wire carrying the sound had snapped. The air itself seemed to go on shivering, as if it still trembled from the shrill vibrations of the scream. But there was another sound now in the distance, the growl of the pack leaping upon its prey while the flesh was still warm and the hot blood flowed freely.
Shaking with fear and revulsion, Hendley stumbled out of the woods into the open. The hunt was over.